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Okay so here are my thoughts on options for storm raven loadouts, any additional discussion would be nice. Mathhammer at the bottom.

Stock
TL Assault Cannon
TL Heavy Bolter
4x Stormstrike

This load out seems kind of schizophrenic to me. You've got S4,6,8 weapons with AP values all over the place. not sure i'd leave a raven this way for any good reason (math hammer says i'm wrong....)

Turret
I like the TL Assault Cannon, but TL Lascannon might also be worth looking into for popping higher AV vehicles, especially with POTMS.
The Plasma Cannon I cannot get my head around. I guess you'd take it if you wanted to make the Stormraven a ground-assault vehicle, because you can't use the PCs against air or FMC, and one shot at S7 is not great for popping tanks.

Nose
TL Multi-Melta I like for vehicle popping, get yourself into range and bam, vehicles are gone, especially enemy flyers which tend to have low enough armour that you're pretty much always gonna pen.
Typhoon - The only weapon-change that costs, and it costs a good amount at that, and is the only thing you can slap on a SR that isn't twin-linked. That being said, 2 shots at s8 are arguably better than one s8 melta shot with TL, especially given the range limitations of the MM, and it gives you ground-assault cupcakes to play with as well.

Hurricane Bolters - Bring for massive ground assault, horde clearer, that being said, they can't pivot down, and being side-mounted have a hard time seeing any targets that are too small.

How weapons fare vs particular targets, best options are highlighted in green.


So what i'm seeing here is that for anti-infantry, if you're going against low-toughness, weak armour, like a lot of xenos, TLHB, TL Assault Cannon, and Hurricane blotters will eat them up. For MEQ, TL Assault Cannon still wins, but the typhoon is doing more damage than the HB, and the Hurricanes are not really that good. And lastly, if you really want to use a SR to counter TEQ, Then MM/PC is the way to go.


Anti-vehicle, the TL MM wins every time for nose guns, and the TL Assault Cannon wins over the lascannon at everything except AV 12, which is basically dreadnoughts, chimaeras, and serpents. for rhino equivalent, speeders, tanks with 13-12-10, or 13-11-10, you'd be better off with the TL Assault Cannon, and even on AV 12 Vehicles, if you can get side armour then again the TL Assault Cannon wins.

So

Anti-TEQ
TL MM
TL PC

Anti- MEQ
Typhoon Missile
TL Assault Cannon

Anti-Horde/xenos
TL HB
TL Assault Cannon
Hurricane Bolters

Anti-Tank
TL MM
TL Assault Cannon


Thoughts?

Good analysis and looks like a ton of work!
But isn't it a bit obvious from the start?

AC, MM and HB sponsons (if points allow) are the most popular choice proposed in every post that asks this question.

I can confirm from experience that it is the by far most effective configuration when we are talking TAC lists

Mostly I was looking at this myself, and as a huge math nerd, I was then forced to do the math. given that I had done it all, it seemed only decent to share it with everyone else on dakka.

Nice to see the thorough analysis! Thanks for sharing!

So can you run the numbers for the psyammo that GK's get making everything +1 str I.e. best load out is TLAC, TLHB, and HB all with +1 str. I thought it'd be nice to see how these improved bonuses compare to the LasC and MM.

Since you said you like doing math....

Gatekeeper wrote:
So can you run the numbers for the psyammo that GK's get making everything +1 str I.e. best load out is TLAC, TLHB, and HB all with +1 str. I thought it'd be nice to see how these improved bonuses compare to the LasC and MM.

Since you said you like doing math....

Or perhaps with the MM as POTMS and MM are very tasty when you ant to kill any vehicles.

I would definitely apply the psyammo upgrade. I have never seen a GK stormraven with Hurricane Bolters without psyammo.

Your hurricane bolters also neglect half range for the rapid fire. This doubles the damage output.

Well noticed Ansacs!! Completely forgot rapid fire.
I can run the psybolt numbers, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow as I'm really busy the next 24 hrs

How many targets are you assuming blasts hit?

Also when you are listing things that are AV12 it should be worth noting the armor values of things sharing the sky with you. You just list ground targets. I view the flyers primary job as air superiority fist, and ground attack second. So when I’m evaluating guns, I care more about what it takes to keep the skies clear, rather then what tanks they can pop.

Nice to see the numbers, thanks for doing this.

I was wondering when someone was going to ask about the blasts. I assumed a hit gets you 3 as does scatter up to 4" because BS reduces it to zero. Then applied a gaussian distribution beyond 4" and averaged the result.

Yeah, other flyers tend to have AV 10, 11, or 12, but the damage to a rhino with AV 11 is the same as a storm talon with AV 11

The more accepted average hits for a small blast is 1.5 models. Against fully spaced targets a hit actually only gets 1 model.

Well then the PC gets even worse, lol. The good numbers for the Typhoon vs MEQ were using the krak missile shot, not the frag cupcake, so that satays the same.

Good stuff

Personally I run my GK ravens with Melta, AC and Hurricane with psybolts, seems to be a good all around flyer

GK raven is the best loyalist marine flier.