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I'm totally lost on what indirect/direct fire mean with minimum ranges.

Like the Basilisk... if something's within its minimum range, it can still fire? How does it scatter? How are wounds allocated? Do I need LoS? What if it's in its 'normal' range? When do I get to choose? Do I get to choose at all? Ideally could someone walk me through the actual steps I take to figure out where the template is actually placed?

Bonus questions!

With the Barrage rule, if I have a Griffon and two Colossuseseses, can I fire the Griffon first and reroll if I want to, then base the Colossus hits off that result?

If I have a psyker with the Divination rule, how do I determine what I can reroll? Can I always choose to reroll scatter dice, assuming it's not a reroll of a reroll?

If something is within the minimum range it scatters the full 2d6, it doesn't get to subtract its Ballistic Skill like it does in normal range (same as when firing at something not in Line of Sight, full 2d6)

Wounds are allocated to the models closest to the centre of the blast marker first.

You can use the Griffon to fire the ranging shot for the multiple barrage, but the closest model to the target always fires first, so it has to be closer than the other artillery in the unit.

With a blast (or barrage) weapon you can either re-roll the direction AND distance, or nothing at all, you can't re-roll only part of it.

I feel like perhaps you haven't looked at the Barrage rules, some of this stuff (such as firing the Griffon first) seems very clearly spelled out there?

I've got to agree with Evertras in many ways. I've read and reread that section a dozen times and it still makes my brain hurt.

Seriously, GW should just make a flowchart in a FAQ or something.

You can only fire at something in range unless you scatter.

If you fire indirect, aka barrage, you don't need to see your target and work out wounds and cover from the center of the blast marker. When you scatter you scatter full

If you fire direct, you must see your target and work out wounds from the gun, as well as cover. When scattering you subtract BS.

 Evertras wrote:
I'm totally lost on what indirect/direct fire mean with minimum ranges.

Like the Basilisk... if something's within its minimum range, it can still fire? How does it scatter? How are wounds allocated? Do I need LoS? What if it's in its 'normal' range? When do I get to choose? Do I get to choose at all? Ideally could someone walk me through the actual steps I take to figure out where the template is actually placed?

See page 34 of the rules for the 'barrage' special rule that will answer most of your questions. Its not the most intuitive place for these rules to be, but that's where they are.

Basically, the way the barrage rules are written in this edition means that you 'can' choose to fire indirectly and if you do, a few things happen:

1) You can fire at targets out of LOS.
2) You can fire at targets within the weapon's minimum range.
3) You do not subtract the firer's BS from the scatter roll.


Now, the rest of the bullet points for the barrage rules *seems* like they should only apply when the weapon is firing indirectly as well, but they haven't FAQ'd it yet so by the RAW all the rest of the bullet points apply to barrage weapons even when they're fired directly.

However, this seems wrong, as it means that whether or not you fire the weapon indirectly, casualties and cover saves (and vehicle armor arcs) against barrage weapons are determined from the center of the blast as opposed to from the firing model, and they cause pinning.

Again, I think these all probably *SHOULD* be only if the weapon is fired indirectly (that's the way I choose to play it as I think its a simple error on their part).

Bonus questions!

With the Barrage rule, if I have a Griffon and two Colossuseseses, can I fire the Griffon first and reroll if I want to, then base the Colossus hits off that result?

If I have a psyker with the Divination rule, how do I determine what I can reroll? Can I always choose to reroll scatter dice, assuming it's not a reroll of a reroll?

Only the Griffon gets to re-roll its scatter dice, however the closest vehicle to the target is placed first in the case of a multiple barrage, so if the Griffon is the closest then you'll get to use its re-roll for that initial blast point that the other Colossus are based off of. If the Griffon isn't the closest model then you'd just get to use its re-roll to determine where its particular blast within the multi-barrage gets placed (although that's a bit debatable given the rules for re-rolling blast scatter as explained below).

As for which dice you get to re-roll for a scatter roll, see pg 33 for blast weapons for your answer there (you must re-roll all the scatter dice).

 Drunkspleen wrote:
If something is within the minimum range it scatters the full 2d6, it doesn't get to subtract its Ballistic Skill like it does in normal range (same as when firing at something not in Line of Sight, full 2d6)

Wounds are allocated to the models closest to the centre of the blast marker first.

You can use the Griffon to fire the ranging shot for the multiple barrage, but the closest model to the target always fires first, so it has to be closer than the other artillery in the unit.

With a blast (or barrage) weapon you can either re-roll the direction AND distance, or nothing at all, you can't re-roll only part of it.

I feel like perhaps you haven't looked at the Barrage rules, some of this stuff (such as firing the Griffon first) seems very clearly spelled out there?

The griffon barrage thing I was less confused on. I'm more confused on the ranges and direct/indirect.

So let's say there's a unit 24" away from my basilisk, so it's under minimum range. I can fire at it, but I don't subtract BS from scatter. A hit is a hit. Wounds and cover are from center of template.

Now let's say it's 40" away. Now it's within 'normal' range. Do I choose to fire directly or indirectly if I have LoS? Suppose there's a big wall o' cover between the basilisk and the unit. Can I choose to drop a template behind indirectly and negate the cover if I get a direct hit? Can I choose to drop a template on them and subtract my BS, but then give them the cover save?

I'm probably going to make my own flowchart for this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 yakface wrote:

 Evertras wrote:
I'm totally lost on what indirect/direct fire mean with minimum ranges.

Like the Basilisk... if something's within its minimum range, it can still fire? How does it scatter? How are wounds allocated? Do I need LoS? What if it's in its 'normal' range? When do I get to choose? Do I get to choose at all? Ideally could someone walk me through the actual steps I take to figure out where the template is actually placed?

See page 34 of the rules for the 'barrage' special rule that will answer most of your questions. Its not the most intuitive place for these rules to be, but that's where they are.

Basically, the way the barrage rules are written in this edition means that you 'can' choose to fire indirectly and if you do, a few things happen:

1) You can fire at targets out of LOS.
2) You can fire at targets within the weapon's minimum range.
3) You do not subtract the firer's BS from the scatter roll.


Now, the rest of the bullet points for the barrage rules *seems* like they should only apply when the weapon is firing indirectly as well, but they haven't FAQ'd it yet so by the RAW all the rest of the bullet points apply to barrage weapons even when they're fired directly.

However, this seems wrong, as it means that whether or not you fire the weapon indirectly, casualties and cover saves (and vehicle armor arcs) against barrage weapons are determined from the center of the blast as opposed to from the firing model, and they cause pinning.

Again, I think these all probably *SHOULD* be only if the weapon is fired indirectly (that's the way I choose to play it as I think its a simple error on their part).

Bonus questions!

With the Barrage rule, if I have a Griffon and two Colossuseseses, can I fire the Griffon first and reroll if I want to, then base the Colossus hits off that result?

If I have a psyker with the Divination rule, how do I determine what I can reroll? Can I always choose to reroll scatter dice, assuming it's not a reroll of a reroll?

Only the Griffon gets to re-roll its scatter dice, however the closest vehicle to the target is placed first in the case of a multiple barrage, so if the Griffon is the closest then you'll get to use its re-roll for that initial blast point that the other Colossus are based off of. If the Griffon isn't the closest model then you'd just get to use its re-roll to determine where its particular blast within the multi-barrage gets placed (although that's a bit debatable given the rules for re-rolling blast scatter as explained below).

As for which dice you get to re-roll for a scatter roll, see pg 33 for blast weapons for your answer there (you must re-roll all the scatter dice).

So basically, the only difference between indirect and direct is subtracting BS with direct. If I can see them and they're in 'normal' range, I always want to fire directly. Is that correct?

 Evertras wrote:

So basically, the only difference between indirect and direct is subtracting BS with direct. If I can see them and they're in 'normal' range, I always want to fire directly. Is that correct?

Yep. Although like I said, the whole thing about pulling casualties from the center of the blast really only makes sense from the perspective of the shell being fired in a high (indirect) arc, and that's how the rule was written in the previous edition of the game, so there's a strong chance that the writers only mistakenly wrote it the way they did currently.

Therefore, I think you'll find a lot of people who still play that when you fire a barrage weapon directly you use the standard casualty removal rules for the weapon and they only use the barrage casualty rules when the weapon is fired indirectly (even though the RAW doesn't support that).

 yakface wrote:

 Evertras wrote:

So basically, the only difference between indirect and direct is subtracting BS with direct. If I can see them and they're in 'normal' range, I always want to fire directly. Is that correct?

Yep. Although like I said, the whole thing about pulling casualties from the center of the blast really only makes sense from the perspective of the shell being fired in a high (indirect) arc, and that's how the rule was written in the previous edition of the game, so there's a strong chance that the writers only mistakenly wrote it the way they did currently.

Therefore, I think you'll find a lot of people who still play that when you fire a barrage weapon directly you use the standard casualty removal rules for the weapon and they only use the barrage casualty rules when the weapon is fired indirectly (even though the RAW doesn't support that).

Ok, that makes a bit more sense. And yeah, I totally see what you're saying. That was part of my confusion, actually.

Thanks all for the clarifications, think I just needed it explained differently for it to 'click' for me.

(edit)

I'm wondering if that was an accident or not, though, as they removed the thing for 'you can't fire directly' for griffon and colossus. With RAW, the minimum range would be useless if it could only ever fire indirectly, so the FAQ would either have to let it fire directly or remove the minimum range to stay consistent, and they seem to have consciously chosen the former. I think the way you explained it makes more sense, and makes more interesting decisions (like my wall o' cover example), but I'm gonna have to go with RAW for now then.

 Evertras wrote:
So basically, the only difference between indirect and direct is subtracting BS with direct. If I can see them and they're in 'normal' range, I always want to fire directly. Is that correct?

Not only do you always want to, it's not actually an option not to I don't believe, since we are told "firing indirectly" means "[firing] at a target they do not have line of sight to and/or a target that is within the weapon's minimum range (if it has one)"

So you don't choose to fire directly or indirectly, you just assess the situation:

Target is within line of sight, and between the minimum and maximum ranges: Direct Fire
Target is out of line of sight and within the maximum range: Indirect Fire
Target is within (i.e. closer than) the minimum range: Indirect Fire
Target is beyond the maximum range: Cannot Fire

 Drunkspleen wrote:

 Evertras wrote:
So basically, the only difference between indirect and direct is subtracting BS with direct. If I can see them and they're in 'normal' range, I always want to fire directly. Is that correct?

Not only do you always want to, it's not actually an option not to I don't believe, since we are told "firing indirectly" means "[firing] at a target they do not have line of sight to and/or a target that is within the weapon's minimum range (if it has one)"

So you don't choose to fire directly or indirectly, you just assess the situation:

Target is within line of sight, and between the minimum and maximum ranges: Direct Fire
Target is out of line of sight and within the maximum range: Indirect Fire
Target is within (i.e. closer than) the minimum range: Indirect Fire
Target is beyond the maximum range: Cannot Fire

I disagree with that.

The rules say that you 'can' fire indirectly and if you do that then you now have the ability to fire at targets out of LOS and within minimum range.

So if you wanted you could still elect to fire indirectly at a target that was within range and LOS. Of course, the only thing that you'd be accomplishing is to make your scatter not subtract the firer's BS, so I don't know why you'd want to do that.


Of course, that's still coming back to the idea that the 2nd & 3rd bullet points are actually meant to apply regardless of how the weapon fires. As I've mentioned several times already, common sense and previous editions of the game dictate that there is a high likelihood that this is a simple error and that deciding whether or not to fire indirectly should be changing how the weapon's casualty removal is handled and whether or not it causes pinning.

Looking back on it I can kind of see your point, if you consider Indirect fire to be a larger thing than that single dot point, I can see how it reads much more as an optional thing.