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 Insectum7 wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
More factions should develop kneeseeker missiles. How hard could it be?

There is no role that a titan can fulfil that could not be done more effectively and efficiently than by any other vehicle form factor, other than “big stompy robot”. And that is why we love them!

Is that true? I think of a Titan as a big, moving, gun platform. Other things can do that, like a Collossus or Leviathan, but the Titan can move over terrain that large tracked things cannot.

That's only the most surface level of characterisation. In reality a tracked vehicle can go many many places a Titan cannot due to the ground pressure. The ground pressure exerted when a Titan takes a step, forcing all of its immense weight onto a single foot would be enough to smash solid rock beneath and itd sink up to its waist.

Besides, unless you're sending titans on solo missions (which we're repeatedly told is bad news bears for the titans) it doesn't actually matter as they can only go where their supporting elements (whom are tracked) can go anyway.


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The_Real_Chris wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:

And something like a titan may have the voidships to survive a single lance-strike, but what about 4 in quick succession? Even a warship like a Destroyer, many times the size of the largest titan, can't withstand such a bombardment and will be destroyed in short order. Titans are demonstrably vulnerable to a couple of Superheavy tank-hunters, again far less firepower than even a small escort ship let alone a capital ship can bring to bear.

Having used lances a lot against ground targets in Epic A I can tell you... Lance strike does D3 unsavable hits on a 2+. Warlord titan has 6 void shields. A salvo of 4 lances would do 6 2/3's points of damage on average. So would slightly damage a fully shielded titan, or mostly kill and give a critical to an unshielded titan and break it. Get into cover though like ruins or a forest and you are hit on a 3+ so taking 5 1/3 hits. You just hope there isn't a second barrage coming your way in that case

Against a battleship 4 lances wouldn't get through its shields. Against a cruiser you are hitting on 4's so probably won't get through the shields, though if you lock on you will get 2 hits so knock down shields and do a point of damage.

Epic clearly massively downscaled bombardment power for the sake of the game.
Orbital Bombardment in 40k was basically the same potency as a single demolisher cannon shell. But I think it's safe to say that a macrocannon with the bore diameter of a city block should, realistically, hit harder than a mere demolisher cannon!

Your typical BFG escort vessel is well over 10x the height of a Titan in length, which is gonna mean it's like 1000x or more the volume and mass. It's gonna have vastly more power for shielding. Yet an escort only as 1 voidshield in BFG - clearly BFG voidshields and Epic/40k voidshields are not the same calibre of voidshields. An escort will evaporate upon coming under fire from a cruiser, which will have enough firepower to destroy *two* such escorts with a single volley on average.
That escort - with mass 1000x a titan has the firepower to threaten peer opponents - it's packing some massive firepower including multiple cannons by themselves that are larger than the titan.

Then, we know titans can be brought low by 'mere' volcano cannons. Volcano cannons that can be carried by something as 'small' as a Baneblade. Compared to the naval guns these weapons would be miniscule. A titan just cannot compare to naval firepower.
Which is pretty realistic historically as well. The last battleships were carrying 18" high velocity guns that fired shells weighing 1.5 tonnes. The largest sort of equivalent land-based guns were a puny 6 inches and fired a featherweight 45kg shell.
Titans may be dramatically exaggerated in beloved 40k fashion, but so is the navy!

Imo the ground pressure argument isn't so great because the Imperium has suspensors or other antigrav technology that might alleviate it.

Which is why Void Shields in particular are so essential.

As covered earlier? They mean your opponent needs to really concentrate on collapsing them. The odd shot here and there can and will drop a Void Shield. But they’re fairly easily raised back up, and predominantly just need the VSG to cool down and be turned back on.

Now, I daresay that over the course of a battle, the VSG’s will degrade, as they’re repeatedly tripped, reset and raised again, the generator never really getting the chance to full cool down. So each time a shield is raised again? Its generator is a least a little bit closer to overheating, meaning the shield can take less.

You can plink away with relatively small weapons, yes. Each strike incrementally taxing the VSG. But you’re still best off clobbering it with as many of the biggest weapons in rapid succession as you can. Because once the shields are down? The Titan and indeed Battleship is in serious trouble.

And remember. Where there are multiple void shields? You’re only ever hitting one at a time. They don’t share the strain, but shoulder it in sequence.

One thing I love about Titans is just how vulnerable they are to infantry assault. It’s a reckless or stupid, perhaps recklessly stupid Princeps that takes his Titan unsupported into dense urban terrain. You need your own infantry to flush out the enemy, and stop them literally jumping on to and even formally boarding your Titan. If they get right on top of you? They can directly attack your VSGs, stuff grenades into places you really don’t want a grenade etc. It adds a really nice combined arms focus to the various armies.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Imo the ground pressure argument isn't so great because the Imperium has suspensors or other antigrav technology that might alleviate it.

Yeah, this is my suspicion. I think titans were probably created in the DAOT as propaganda vehicles as much as anything. Sure, the same tech could probably make a more efficient vehicle in a grav tank (which also exist, see the Custodes vehicles), but if you have the tech to make a giant humanoid figure that appears to defy physics and crushes all before it, I can see that being more useful in pacifying colonies than the grav tank even if strictly speaking it is less efficient.

But voidshields don't make you immune to naval bombardment, because voidshields are a central part of naval warfare as well and any ships (plus their weapons) are well positioned to deal with voidshields.

If we base in on the BFG models, a typical lance bank (of which a cruiser will have two per broadside and equated to firepower 2 ingame) has two turrets of 3 barrels each.
So we might conclude that something like a Lunar class cruiser (one lance bank and one macrocannon bank per side) can strike with 6 lance shots.
So 6 lance strikes would be half of a single broadside of a typical cruiser (rate of fire unknown, varying greatly)

Using tabletop rules to judge weapon effectiveness is very hard - voidshields work very differently in different editions. Varying from a straight invuln (meaning even the first shot can sail straight through) in 40k 8th, to a simple AV12 'wall' in 40k 7th, to a 'wall' with its own invuln save in AT18.

If we equate 6 lance shots to 6 volcano cannon rounds (which is being very unfavourable to the naval lances as those barrels are like 10m in bore lol) then a Titan in 8th could survive with some hot rolling, would be obliterated in 7th, and probably unfased in AT18 (although probably very vulnerable for strike #2).

but 'realistically' - Titans are said to be vulnerable to weapons orders of magnitude weaker than even naval escorts are carrying in multitudes.

Hell in Taros Campaign a Warhound titan was brought low by a strike-bomber, in a manner which was a very close narrative interpretation of a 7th edition ingame-attack. Brought low by a level of firepower which doesn't even register as being able to harm an escort in BFG.
If a titan can reasonably fight another titan, then it must therefore be highly vulnerable to a warship. It is like an ant to a god.
The only real excuse that might not be the case is if the warship lacked the precision to reasonably target a titan, but unfortunately for the titan precision-lance strikes on ground assets are not an uncommon occurrence in 40k depictions.

To add to the bit about tau - in BFG races launched squadrons of bombers. For the Tau, one Manta was equivalent to a squadron of bombers and was significantly tougher. Forgeworld/Epic had a Manta being roughly Reaver titan equivalent.

Also I assume punching down through all that atmosphere robs a lance strike of a lot of power.

Also in addition to lance strikes Epic A had bombardment options as well, that used the large (5") of the two blast templates, often two or three of them. These were macro weapon strikes and normally removed a targets save.

Do we know if a Manta token specifically represented one aircraft in BFG, or are you just basing that on the FW model token being a single Manta? Basing it on tokens would put a Manta as equivalent to 2-3 other bombers, which I suppose isn't unreasonable.
A single Manta isn't holding much to even an escort though. With probably about a 50-75% chance of getting shot down on the approach and only a 1/3 (for most escorts) chance of doing anything.

I think the comparison rightly shows that the scale of titan warfare is a scale that barely registers in BFG.

40k could benefit with making planetary scale voidshields more common, similarly to how Legends Star Wars had planetary shields everywhere.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Do we know if a Manta token specifically represented one aircraft in BFG, or are you just basing that on the FW model token being a single Manta? Basing it on tokens would put a Manta as equivalent to 2-3 other bombers, which I suppose isn't unreasonable.
A single Manta isn't holding much to even an escort though. With probably about a 50-75% chance of getting shot down on the approach and only a 1/3 (for most escorts) chance of doing anything.

Yes, it stated in their rules a bomber squadron was a single Manta. So if it was pure Manta vs a average escort (1 turret, 5+ armour) you would need 2 if it wasn't braced and 3 if it was. If it has another turret (2 like a sword or its getting help from another ship) you need 3 and if its braced 5, which is more than a cruiser carriers (but you can do fighter turret suppression etc.)

Trying to divine anything more than vague lore inferences from game rules is a fools game.

I think what we can say is that void shields afford titans a degree of protection from orbital bombardment that is not the case for vehicles without void shields. Equally, it is clear they would not be able to withstand sustained bombardment from all but the tiniest of orbital craft in the way the massive shields covering hives and fortresses can, and an enemy having orbital supremacy would be a pretty hard counter to deploying titans. That said, an enemy having orbital supremacy is a hard counter to any conventional army fighting in 40k, unless they are deployed around something the enemy wants to capture intact.

If the enemy does not have orbital supremacy, such as due to functioning ground defences, then the void shields on titans are probably enough to protect them from most passing attack runs made by enemy vessels unless they suffer unlucky hits.

 Tyran wrote:
40k could benefit with making planetary scale voidshields more common, similarly to how Legends Star Wars had planetary shields everywhere.

I don't think this is necessary. Having important orbital defences shielded is enough to deter most enemy fleets given how rare major warships are. A typical Imperial sector has less than 100 cruisers and battleships in service, usually in the region of one per populated planet. Losing one is a big blow. Likewise for most other factions- losing a capital ship is a problem, and for raiders even being damaged could be enough to result in a loss down the line if they can't escape being caught by Imperial retaliation.

So having just the hives void shielded with batteries of defence lasers, missile silos, and defence craft bases makes attacking one very risky, and makes attacking anywhere on the planet outside of the void shield but within range of those defences also risky. We have lore of space craft doing attack runs to limit their exposure to ground fire, but this is still risky and ships take damage. Space Marine vessels are essentially purpose built for this role, and even they will be cautious when trying to target bombardment cannons at and deploy drop pods to heavily-defended worlds.

If a backwater world like Verghast has void shields protecting minor hives like Vervunhive with populations in the millions, not billions, I think it is safe to assume that most worlds of a civilised tech level or higher have at least some installations that have void shields. Forge worlds probably have a majority of installations that are shielded.

Going back to the Siege of Vraks, that happened entirely because the Citadel of Vraks was heavily protected with void shields and defence silos for lasers and missiles. Attacking it from orbit was deemed more costly than sending in millions of guardsmen to die. In essence, a few vast warships were considered more valuable than 14 million guardsmen and the munitions and equipment they expended.


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The_Real_Chris wrote:
Also I assume punching down through all that atmosphere robs a lance strike of a lot of power.

It would, so more conventional munitions would probably be more effective in this role specifically. Probably why Space Marine bombardment cannons are linear accelerators.

A direct Lance strike on a Titan or other Void Shielded ground target could drop multiple shields.

If we look to the Squats? The Cyclops essentially mounted a starship grade laser, which fired a sustained beam. And it could, with a bit of luck, knock down multiple shields, as the beam is continuous, and so keeps applying pressure as each shield drops.

Given the ranges involved in starship combat, I think a sustained beam is likely and indeed advisable for a Lance type weapon. Gives you a chance to slightly modify the angle of your shot to hit the foe. Or at least, and I’m sorry for this poor description, wiggle it around a bit so it hits. Certainly at those ranges you ain’t eyeballing anything, so you rely on sensor suites to confirm location and successful hits.

So, when turned against ground targets, even Titans which are teensy tiny compared to even the most modest warship, a sustained beam lets you cut it up, and with a suitably aimed shot? Batter down a series of void shields. Enough? All depends. And certainly you’re less likely to drop any if the main beam doesn’t quite connect, as the void shield is taxed with shunting all the energy.

Certainly I think a lance strike, hitting a Titan directly, absolutely could take it from pristine with full shields to utterly spiflicated. But such a direct hit seems more luck than judgement against such a tiny target.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I'm not going to deny that some of Black Library is incredibly stupid. But I also don't think that we have to tarnish all of 40k because some BL author can't restrain themselves.

I don't think we can blame BL for this. On a pure physics level, a Custodian Terminator being able to facetank a macrocannon (a primary starship armament, lest we forget) unharmed is probably far more egregious than the Khan going Dreadnought-tossing, and the former is actual codex lore.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

I think the scale of most 40k campaigns works when viewing the Imperium as a colonial empire. The comparison isn't WW2, it is the 16th-19th century European empires. How many British soldiers were needed to take and hold India? Not that many compared to the huge population in the region at the time. Most Imperial planets are sparsely populated, and those that aren't are occupied more than integrated.

I don't agree honestly. Even if you take the colonial framing - France lost 3% of its total population during the Napoleonic wars (20% specifically of military aged men).
In WW2 the military deaths only equated to about 1% of global population (although another 2% of the world civilians dying brings the total to 3% again).
The Imperium isn't engaging in small colonial wars pacifying stoneage natives, perhaps you could characterise the Great Crusade like that (but then the Great Crusade was a xenocide not colonial pacification). The Imperium in the 41st millenium is in a stage of constant total war against empires and species very much their equal or even greater in all but expanse.

And we know the Imperium has vast numbers of troops at its disposal. The Imperial Guard is greatly laboured to be in the billions or even trillions. Losing a couple million men would be a rounding error for them. If they mobilised a hive world, even just the accessible bits, you'd expect multiple billion soldiers right there.
So when GW tells us "this campaign was notable because so many people died" a few million just isn't gonna cut it.

Been meaning to address this.

Firstly, those colonial empires didn't just conquer "stoneage natives". India, for example, was on par with Europe at the time and was mainly conquered by playing off local rivalries and gradually expanding territory. The amount of troops needed to hold India was not particularly large relative to it's population, and it remained the single most populous part of the empire until it gained independence. In WW2, just 1% of India's population was mobilised, a tiny fraction compared to most belligerents. That is precisely because it was an occupied colony that was not automatically on the side of it's overlord. The UK couldn't push India too hard, or it might have rebelled (as it had in the past). Very reasonable fears, given India gained independence shortly after WW2.

India is the metaphorical hive world in our example, a great resource but also a potential liability. Fully utilising that manpower source is too risky.

As I said above, the big campaigns against rival factions are the interesting stuff, but they are not the norm. The single biggest threat to the Imperium for most of its 10000 year existence since the Horus Heresy has been internal rebellion. It is built around suppressing that, it intentionally neuters its military forces to minimise the impact of renegades, it fails to fully utilise its population for fear of them using their knowledge to gain independence.

Seriously, look at a list of the major galactic events between the Great Crusade and the end of the 41st millennium, and most of them are rebellions of some sort- the Horus Heresy and Scouring, the Nova Terra Interregnum (this lasted 9 centuries!), the Age of Apostasy and the Plague of Unbelief, the Macharian Heresy. The War of the Beast stands out as unusual, and even that finished with the Beheading. Many of the threats to the Imperium in the 41st millennium didn't even exist as coherent threats yet, like the Tyranids, Necrons, and Tau.

Re. total numbers. The Imperium has a million worlds. Even just one regiment per world at the default size of around 3000 would equal 3 billion guard troopers. 400 such regiments per world would top a trillion. However, they are also spread thinly, on garrison duties and offensive operations against enemy worlds and concentrated in the few great battles, as well as simply replacing the casualties being expended at huge rates. Accumulating massive forces in a given area is hard, especially as it needs transport from the navy between worlds.

An Allarus being able to tank a macrocannon shell is probably not that egregious. For a start "macrocannon" can refer to anything from "slightly bigger than a Baneblade Cannon" or "immense heavy naval artillery".

Plus explosions are actually quite inefficient and rending through armour, nor are their shockwaves actually very effective at squishing stuff inside heavy sealed containers.

On top of that the Custodes have the ultimate bestest ever most special gene crafting super duper human physiology, so they're going to be very resilient to whatever small shockwaves do propagate through the armour.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I'm not going to deny that some of Black Library is incredibly stupid. But I also don't think that we have to tarnish all of 40k because some BL author can't restrain themselves.

I don't think we can blame BL for this. On a pure physics level, a Custodian Terminator being able to facetank a macrocannon (a primary starship armament, lest we forget) unharmed is probably far more egregious than the Khan going Dreadnought-tossing, and the former is actual codex lore.

Genuine question, does that bit of lore actually refer to a starship macrocannon specifically, or just a macrocannon in the abstract? The latter encompasses a much wider range of weapons, some of which are far smaller. There were even rules in the 6th edition rulebook for a macrocannon which was essentially a larger autocannon firing blasts.

The Aquila fortress that GW used to sell was armed with a macrocannon. A terminator tanking that is far more reasonable. Not knowing the specific wording of the lore in question, I cannot say more though.

I'd contest that "slightly" bigger. The smallest macrocannon I know of is the Aquila Strongpoint, which was still a Destroyer weapon back when it was part of the core game.

Most macrocannons are Ordinatus/starship weapons that are apocalyptically powerful.

Edit: Ninja'd by Haighus, but answering both. It was definitely not just a larger autocannon. The Aquila gun was a titan-killer and the only example of a macrocannon I know of that wasn't absolutely colossal. And the Custodian Terminator could "stride unharmed" from it, which is when you think about it even more absurd than merely surviving it.

I disagree,

Allarus Terminator Armour isn’t just thicker than a whale omelette in a remedial classroom. It likely contains some kind of field defence, like the Cataphractii. I can’t find a source which says either way, only that some Terminator Armours do contain some kind of force field. And whilst not exactly common? Refractor, Conversion and even Displacer Fields are more or less understood tech. And if anyone is gonna have it? It’s got to be the Custards, surely.

If it’s the field that lets you survive? It’s absorbing the energy of the blast. Oh I’m sure you’ll still be knocked over, if not lifted clean off your feet by the sheer oomph. But reducing it to a particularly nasty tumble for the person within the suit.

Even if it doesn’t?

Lexicanum wrote: stride unharmed from the blast of a macro-cannon shell.

isn’t the same as stride away from a direct hit by a macro-cannon shell. Or indeed stride away from the epicentre of a macro-cannon shell.

Also also? Macro-Cannons are again more a catch-all family name, with differently scaled applications. So to interpret the claim as “Allarus Custodians can tank a war ship scaled Macro-cannon shell to the face” is incorrect. Because it’s by no means saying that at all.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If it’s the field that lets you survive? It’s absorbing the energy of the blast. Oh I’m sure you’ll still be knocked over, if not lifted clean off your feet by the sheer oomph. But reducing it to a particularly nasty tumble for the person within the suit.

But this is not exactly "striding unharmed", is it?

Landing forces to attack a heavily void-defended stronghold does raise its own questions though. What're the logistics of that?

How much of a planet can a single stronghold cover? Can they only defend a very narrow space, or can a stronghold cover most of a hemisphere?
BFG lore mentions guided missiles in use by ground base stations which even opens up the possibility of a single station being able to cover more than they have LoS to in a hemisphere. Although in BFG iirc planetary defences have only a 90* upwards arc, allowing each battery to protect I guess about an eighth the sky (half a hemisphere in 3d).

So like you set your transports down in Russia and march all the way across Europe to launch a ground assault on the UK?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If it’s the field that lets you survive? It’s absorbing the energy of the blast. Oh I’m sure you’ll still be knocked over, if not lifted clean off your feet by the sheer oomph. But reducing it to a particularly nasty tumble for the person within the suit.

But this is not exactly "striding unharmed", is it?

You’ve still got all your bits and pieces where your bits and pieces ought to be. And it’s by no means guaranteed you’d be knocked off your feet. Really depends on the internal cushioning, if any, of the Terminator Armours suit.

I’d argue there has to be some or the fancy tech equivalent, lest the wearer survive a hit, only to be winded or knocked out by rattling around in their suit.

I think you are pushing it. If I came over to your house and gave you a "nasty tumbling" I don't think the police would agree I'd left you unharmed!

I also think people reading that text and leaping to assume that "macrocannon" refers to the smallest outlier in size (which is still a titan killer mind you), instead of the generally established class, are being more charitable than the text is due.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
There's not even a consistent size of what a "regiment" is.
Because that alone is a whole mess with depictions varying from approximately an IRL battalion to an entire IRL Army or larger.

GW certainly has a habit of using very poor military organisational structures, with poor use of terms that slip around. "Regiment" is clearly just thought of as "large cohensive group of Imperial Guard soldiers" that expands and shrinks as the narrative and author's interpretation requires.

This goes into a bit of a side note about the meaning of the term regiment.

GW seems to follow essentially the British Army meaning of regiment, which is an administrative ceremonial unit, not a tactical unit. British Army regiments have no fixed size and can contain any number of battalions (the actual tactical unit that is deployed in force organisations). The Royal Tank Regiment at its peak in WW2, for example, had over 20 battalions. 2-4 was more typical. The brief exception to this was the period of the Carden Reforms, where most regiments had a set structure.

However, the Administratum treats regiments as broadly interchangeable, which I always took as an example of the Administratum being the inefficient mess it is supposed to be and taking shortcuts. Imperial commanders don't actually deploy regiments except at the highest levels or if given no other choice, they deploy battlegroups composed of elements of several regiments to give a combined armed force. It is actually quite flexible, but hampered by the Administratum sending them reinforcements and supplies as if everything fits in the same box.

Regiments do vary massively. Krieg has at least one example of a siege regiment being 200000 strong at mustering, and Valhalla one at 120000. The 50th Gudrun rifles were 500000 strong, although apparently divided into battalions. At the other end, elite armoured and particularly super heavy units can be very small, often 1000 men. Typical is apparently around 3000 strong, with Cadian regiments are generally supposed to be ~4000-8000 (the difference might depend on whether they have units in training and garrison rotations or not). How much regiments are formally divided into battalions is an open question, they are occasionally mentioned (some fo the FW force orgs for the regiments deployed to Taros have subdivisions called "brigades" that are broadly battalion strength, I think this might be a bit of an error).

I think it is probably a reasonable rule of thumb to average out at 10000 per regiment, as that accommodates the larger regiments skewing the numbers.

I have never found good numbers for PDF regiments, they probably vary even more.

Dunno, I’m surprisingly bouncy for a middle age podgy lad

Also entirely unharmed and unharmed are again not quite the same thing. If you can get back up and keep fighting? You’re unharmed enough and your big spangly armour, power field of some description or not, has done its job.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I'd contest that "slightly" bigger. The smallest macrocannon I know of is the Aquila Strongpoint, which was still a Destroyer weapon back when it was part of the core game.

Most macrocannons are Ordinatus/starship weapons that are apocalyptically powerful.

Edit: Ninja'd by Haighus, but answering both. It was definitely not just a larger autocannon. The Aquila gun was a titan-killer and the only example of a macrocannon I know of that wasn't absolutely colossal. And the Custodian Terminator could "stride unharmed" from it, which is when you think about it even more absurd than merely surviving it.

The example I am referring to is in the "ranged weapons" section of the 6th edition rulebook (image behind spoiler tags for size):


This is the smallest example of a weapons referred to as "macrocannon" that I am aware of. I don't think any model was ever produced attached to this. I reckon it would look something like a Conqueror cannon with an auto-feed.

Even the Aquila strongpoint could be reasonable though. In some editions D weapons could still be stopped by invulnerable saves.


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 kirotheavenger wrote:
Landing forces to attack a heavily void-defended stronghold does raise its own questions though. What're the logistics of that?

How much of a planet can a single stronghold cover? Can they only defend a very narrow space, or can a stronghold cover most of a hemisphere?
BFG lore mentions guided missiles in use by ground base stations which even opens up the possibility of a single station being able to cover more than they have LoS to in a hemisphere. Although in BFG iirc planetary defences have only a 90* upwards arc, allowing each battery to protect I guess about an eighth the sky (half a hemisphere in 3d).

So like you set your transports down in Russia and march all the way across Europe to launch a ground assault on the UK?

That is pretty much what the Imperium tries on Vraks and Taros, to varying degrees of success. Can also risk direct assaults, but obviously that is a far more bloody affair into AA fire.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I think you are pushing it. If I came over to your house and gave you a "nasty tumbling" I don't think the police would agree I'd left you unharmed!

I also think people reading that text and leaping to assume that "macrocannon" refers to the smallest outlier in size (which is still a titan killer mind you), instead of the generally established class, are being more charitable than the text is due.

On the contrary I think you're reading it an overly pedantic and far less chartable than the text is due.

We usually say things like "bullet proof vest" when they're only actually capable of stopping a small pistol bullet and leaving you badly winded. Whereas you seem to be doing the equivalent to insisting anything less than stopping a .50 caliber round without breaking stride is ridiculous and disingenuous use of the term.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I think you are pushing it. If I came over to your house and gave you a "nasty tumbling" I don't think the police would agree I'd left you unharmed!

I also think people reading that text and leaping to assume that "macrocannon" refers to the smallest outlier in size (which is still a titan killer mind you), instead of the generally established class, are being more charitable than the text is due.

On the contrary I think you're reading it an overly pedantic and far less chartable than the text is due.

We usually say things like "bullet proof vest" when they're only actually capable of stopping a small pistol bullet and leaving you badly winded. Whereas you seem to be doing the equivalent to insisting anything less than stopping a .50 caliber round without breaking stride is ridiculous and disingenuous use of the term.

Agreed. I think it is far more likely GW was referring to the macrocannon they sold a model for at the time than the macrocannons that only featured in lore at the time and hadn't seen a model since BFG was discontinued a decade earlier.

That rulebook profile reads like a mistake. We've seen or heard of no macrocannon that weak. It reminds me of how a multi-melta is a bunker-buster, but last I played Necromunda a cargo hauler could take 20 point blank MM shots from the best shooter in the game (Van Saar leader) and would usually be fine because rules writers don't understand numbers.

 Haighus wrote:

That is pretty much what the Imperium tries on Vraks and Taros, to varying degrees of success. Can also risk direct assaults, but obviously that is a far more bloody affair into AA fire.

Taros I feel is a poor example actually.
The book introduces us to the planetary defences on Taros and it's like a single missile silo. Enough to feth up a cruiser so they neutralise it with an infiltration force prior to the strike on the governor's palace (all in the prelude). Surely not enough even if repaired to materially hold up to the naval group they later turn up with.

But then when the Imperials show up for the proper war they don't even utilise their fleet at all.
In fact even in the empty deserts they're heavily harassed by Tau and don't even think to just scan the desert ahead and bombard Tau concentrations, nor to call upon a cruiser when they're pinned down under fire.


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 Ashiraya wrote:
That rulebook profile reads like a mistake. We've seen or heard of no macrocannon that weak. It reminds me of how a multi-melta is a bunker-buster, but last I played Necromunda a cargo hauler could take 20 point blank MM shots from the best shooter in the game (Van Saar leader) and would usually be fine because rules writers don't understand numbers.

When GW dropped the separate armourpen system and basically turned vehicles into cuboid monstrous creatures they really failed to adequately translate melta/armourbane to the new system and it's left melta in a weird space where it's actually not that good at killing tanks and is mostly just good at killing elite infantry.
They mostly translated melta to extra damage, when it used to be extra *strength* which is why melta has a relatively mediocre strength compared to other AT weapons. Which leaves melta really struggling to wound the high toughness of vehicles lol.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

That is pretty much what the Imperium tries on Vraks and Taros, to varying degrees of success. Can also risk direct assaults, but obviously that is a far more bloody affair into AA fire.

Taros I feel is a poor example actually.
The book introduces us to the planetary defences on Taros and it's like a single missile silo. Enough to feth up a cruiser so they neutralise it with an infiltration force prior to the strike on the governor's palace (all in the prelude). Surely not enough even if repaired to materially hold up to the naval group they later turn up with.

But then when the Imperials show up for the proper war they don't even utilise their fleet at all.
In fact even in the empty deserts they're heavily harassed by Tau and don't even think to just scan the desert ahead and bombard Tau concentrations, nor to call upon a cruiser when they're pinned down under fire.

The Tau had maintained a fleet in being in the star system, led by a Custodian class carrier. The Imperial Navy commander wanted the glory of a victory against the enemy flagship and also to eliminate decisively the threat to the water convoys shipping water to the Imperial ground troops. Rather than keeping his ships in orbit and potentially vulnerable to attack, or having them all escort the convoy, he took his flagship to chase the carrier. Unfortunately the Tau were using the carrier as bait to lure the heaviest Imperial flagship away from the convoy, which was then hit and destroyed by the other Tau ships. Even though the Custodian carrier was destroyed, this was a pyrrhic victory as the Imperial ground forces ran out of water.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


So…where do we begin rescaling and renumbering 40K? What works for you, Dakka? And of course because it makes for more interesting conversation, why?

I've always just mentally added a 0 to the end of any number GW provides, and it at least gets us in the ballpark.