Blast Flakk Cannon

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**DakkaHammer**

40 point upgrade to an aegis defense line or bastion
Flakk emplacement: counts as a weapon emplacement with a Flakk Cannon

Flakk Cannon -- S 6 -- AP 4 -- Range: 60" -- Heavy 2, Blast*, skyfire, interceptor**

Added: even though it is a blast weapon, it can still hit fliers.
*Any vehicle hit by the template counts as shaken until the end of it's next shooting phase. MCs can only fire snapshots until the end of their next shooting phase.
**The Flakk Cannon can only be fired at zooming fliers and (gliding?) FMCs.

Basically it's hurling proximity charges into the air as a deterrent for fliers coming in. If one goes off close enough to the flier in question, then the explosive force knocks it around a bit.

**curran12**

And an autocannon hit or lascannon hit does not knock something around?

Also, as per the hard rules of the BRB, blast weapons cannot affect flying models. Besides, even then given the size of flyers, a blast marker is such a huge advantage since they are all models with pretty giant surface areas, this is damn near a guaranteed hit, especially if it is a manned emplacement.

I get what you are trying to do with this, and I get that it is in response to some stronger flyers, but the cure to something being overpowered is to not ramp up the overpowered with a gun of "you lose your flying shooting" which is what this is.

**DakkaHammer**

That wasn't really the intent at all.

My original thought was to make the outside of the template half strength so it couldn't really do anything other than shake.

I don't have an issue with fliers, all I really wanted was a way to hurl templates at them. Do you have any ideas of how to make it less OP?

**curran12**

The auto-shake is the issue. For a 40 point upgrade, I can effectively shut down a flyer for the whole game. Sure it can snap fire, but you've more or less obliterated its ability to do anything.

And there's two issues with blasts and flyers, both of which I mentioned already. One, blasts cannot target flyers. Two, flyer models are so big and spread out that a blast could hit them almost all the time outside of the biggest scatters. Just to experiment, I grabbed a Razorwing fighter model, relatively small compared to other flyers. For most scatters, as long as you center the blast on the plane, the scatter needs to go at least 7 inches before it misses. If your manning model is BS, the only way you can miss is if you roll a 10 inch scatter in most cases. Oh, and since it is Heavy 2, you need to roll TWO 10 inch scatters in a row to not hit.

Also, you say you want it to be half strength, but I find this incredibly silly, as it breaks another core rule of the game, where blasts affect the whole thing. This is just a big load of weird, specialized rules for something that doesn't need them, and I don't understand why they would have them.

Here's the core flaws as I see them:

1. Blast templates just do not work with flyers. Ever.
2. Auto shake is insane.
3. Complex special rules just for this one thing alone.

Here is how I would change it:

Flakk Cannon
S6, AP5 Heavy 2, Skyfire, Interceptor, Flakk Cloud

Flakk Cloud: By throwing barrages of exploding material into the air, the gunner minimizes the ability for pilots to evade the shots. Jink saves cannot be taken against this weapon.

This way, you sacrifice the strength and killing power of a quad autocannon or Icarus lascannon for ways to reduce their defense.

**pretre**

Blasts can't ever fire at fliers, even with skyfire.

edit: Yeah, already covered but emphasis is important.

**DakkaHammer**

@curran12... That's actually a good idea.

And I know blasts can't hit fliers. But the Ork in me still wants to spam templates at whatever I can, and proposed rules seems like a good place for ironing out how to do that.
Edit: im going to add that to the first post

**curran12**

You kinda missed my point though with blasts, though.

As you have it, they will effectively never miss. That's broken.

**DakkaHammer**

Yeah.
What if I add:

blasts from the Flakk Cannon always scatter the full distance. If a hit is rolled on the scatter die, then use the arrow on the hit marker to determine direction

**curran12**

Then it pretty much becomes pointless and you might as well roll to hit and have it be in congruence with the established 40k rules.

If the sole basis for including a rule is "I want to do it" then you should rethink the rule. I know you said you like throwing templates, but this is kind of silly for that ot be the driving force of the rule.

**Belly**

I just want to see a scatter dice and template that deals with three dimensions.

**rahxephon**

^^ transparent scatter dice with an arrow inside of it thats on a D20 die. Could go anywhere but it would have a ridiculous amount of problems to try and put into practice...
Anyway, what curran proposed I though was pretty good. And as for orks and templates... we dont have a huge amount of them other than kannons and looted wagons which aren't exactly seen in abundance.
3D template = tennins ball

**DakkaHammer**

Well, it's clearly back to the drawing board with this.

**McNinja**

Considering that actual AA flak weapons do explode at a certain height in order to deal more damage and mitigate the speed of the plane so the operator can actually hit something, blast flak weapons do make sense. However, if you're just looking for a way to lob blasts into the air, I suggest trying to find some reasoning for it in some sort of fluff.

"Because I want to" is never a good reason to do anything, much less make a rule that allows you to do something previous disallowed.

**rahxephon**

Why dont you say its something like the TFCs tremor shots, but in the air. So the shock waves disrupt the flight path of the plane. Maybe it doesn't physically cause any damage to it, but forces it to go into hover mode or something like that. Then the template = the effective range of the shockwaves

**Mahtamori**

Here's a new take on it to make it more unique:

Remove Interceptor, auto-results and Blast.
Add Ignores Cover (or ignores movement-based cover)

If you really want it to intercept arriving aircrafts, then make up a new rule that doesn't let it shoot at ground so easily. A flakk cannon is essentially a proximity detonator grenade mounted on a 360 X-axis and extreme Y-axis mount. Evading isn't going to do a whole lot of good 'cause you just have to shoot nearby.
Sure, it might essentially be a blast, but for gaming balance purposes most games won't allow AA-emplacements to shoot at ground targets very effectively. Sure, it does make a blast wave, but effectively aircrafts have a lot of exposed components that are vulnerable to shrapnel and disruptions to airflow isn't all that great, either, but this is part of the damage that flakk guns do. A flakk gun is certainly not going to do anything to a Land Raider even on a direct hit and most likely not on a Falcon or Leman Russ, neither, but GWs flier game design is a bit slowed allowing flying heavy tanks.

**Scipio Africanus**

Belly wrote:
I just want to see a scatter dice and template that deals with three dimensions.

I love you.

**DakkaHammer**

Okay, I'll rework this and post again later today