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Ok .

So lets say I've got two guns, attached to each other. I shoot at you. Am I twice as likely to hit you, or twice as likely to hurt you?

Seems to me that I'm exactly as likely to hit you, since I'm still effectively aiming the same gun. But if I *do* hit you, I have twice as much opportunity to hurt you.

What do you think?

I don't like (and have never agreed with) the current GW rules on twin linked weapons. If I have a gun that is two copies of the same thing I should be doing twice as much damage if I hit you, not be twice as likely (or less than twice, potentially, if I'm firing a blast/small blast weapon) as I would be firing a single shot of the same thing.

What do you think?

I think you're posting in the wrong forum, this is more of a "Proposed rules" or "General Discussion".
There's no rules question here, as twin-linked is very clear.
It's a abstract system.

Agreed - off we go!

Wheeeee!

Its nowhere near twice as likely. BS3 for instance has a 50% increase in likelyhood not 100% increase. BS4 is a 33.3% increase in likelyhood. Even BS2 is only a 66.7% increase.
On a fluff note I think it represents that if a shot would just miss or glance (not to be confused with rules glancing) a target, would the shot alongside it actually hit the target?

Well that's exactly the point. Fluff doesn't match up with rules. If I had a weapon mount on a tank that had two of the same thing attached (let's say I've got two .50 cal machine guns attached). I'm probably a bit *less* likely to hit, because the two guns are forcing more scatter and feedback and such that means my aim is going to be harder.

But if I do hit, there's no good reason to believe that i would hit with less than twice the force, since I'm effectively less accurate but twice as damaging.

It's just always thrown me.

Particularly with blast weapons. If I shoot two missiles (or whatever) at the same target, surely my potential for total damage is higher...

majendie wrote:
Ok .

So lets say I've got two guns, attached to each other. I shoot at you. Am I twice as likely to hit you, or twice as likely to hurt you?

Seems to me that I'm exactly as likely to hit you, since I'm still effectively aiming the same gun. But if I *do* hit you, I have twice as much opportunity to hurt you.

What do you think?

I don't like (and have never agreed with) the current GW rules on twin linked weapons. If I have a gun that is two copies of the same thing I should be doing twice as much damage if I hit you, not be twice as likely (or less than twice, potentially, if I'm firing a blast/small blast weapon) as I would be firing a single shot of the same thing.

What do you think?

GW represents this same thing in a number of different ways. Consider the twin-linked bolter, its bonus over a standard bolter is justified because its putting out that many more rounds. I have no idea how that different from a Storm Bolter who's long range and assault are justified for the same reason or heavy bolters and assault cannons who's higher rate of fire are used to justify extra dice. I don't think GW has it really thought out.

I haven't really done the math on it thought. Is a reroll to hit worth more than an extra dice to hit? I mean, your maximum total damage is lower but your likelihood of *any* damage is higher...

I think it just really falls apart of blast weapons. Reroll the scatter... yay?

majendie wrote:
Well that's exactly the point. Fluff doesn't match up with rules. If I had a weapon mount on a tank that had two of the same thing attached (let's say I've got two .50 cal machine guns attached). I'm probably a bit *less* likely to hit, because the two guns are forcing more scatter and feedback and such that means my aim is going to be harder.

But if I do hit, there's no good reason to believe that i would hit with less than twice the force, since I'm effectively less accurate but twice as damaging.

It's just always thrown me.

Particularly with blast weapons. If I shoot two missiles (or whatever) at the same target, surely my potential for total damage is higher...

I do see your point.

That ignores the fact that 40k is an abstraction. In 40k what is the Strength, AP, and number of dice rolled for a wall of missiles?-Or does a bolter only shoot 2-shells every round?-Its an abstractions, meaning when you take the total effects of BS, the weapons strength, AP, number of dice rolled or re-rolled and the sum total of all that is the lethality relative to the other weapons.

As an abstraction, it generally doesn't matter if a vehicle fired an extra missile at a given point of a battle. A vehicle arriving to a battlefield shooting everything and coming nowhere close to hitting before being destroyed is represented just as much by handful of dice missing and a model being removed on the tail end of the firs turn as it is by a model removed immediately after deployment.

Just imagine rationalizing a re-rolled wound... I just picture some guy getting knocked to the ground, saying "I'm ok" and then that bullet floats back off the ground tries for a second go. In reality this would probably look more like that stereotypical scene in a movie where the bullet goes right through a soldiers helmet, the soldiers unharmed but removes the helmet to take a closer look only to take a shot to the head. In 40k that's a re-roll despite being in reality two separate shots.

I think what the original poster is trying to get at is that doubling the number of rounds fired doesn't increase your chances to hit if both weapons are firing not only parallel, but very close to each other. If you're gonna miss with one, you're probably gonna miss with the other. But during the times when one of the weapons IS lined up correctly to get a hit in, the other one is probably going to hit too, so there's a better chance of actually taking out the target. You wouldn't get an extra dice to hit and wound with, because those weapons are still firing at the same target, not separate targets.

That said, the argument can also be made that when firing at moving targets, a twin-linked weapon does have a better chance of hitting because not only are you putting more bullets out there, but they're also spread apart somewhat, so if a bolt round goes by a few inches from someone's head, the second bolt round traveling six inches to the left or right might hit their head. Anti-tank weapons, that's not as sense-making, because vehicles are big targets so missing with one lascannon isn't as likely to have the second one hit, but twin-linked lascannons and assault cannons and autocannons tend to be spread out a bit wider than a combi-bolter is.

majendie wrote:

Seems to me that I'm exactly as likely to hit you, since I'm still effectively aiming the same gun. But if I *do* hit you, I have twice as much opportunity to hurt you.

No you are not correct. You are not 2 feet away from me when shooting. If that was the case, of course you will do more damage. In most cases we would be quite far apart when the shooting happens. What you are doing is getting a better chance to hit me. Just because you are firing 2 guns, doesn't mean all the bullets from both guns are going to hit.

So instead of shooting say 50 rounds of ammunition, you are shooting 100 rounds of ammunition. Since we are far apart, and the chance to hit should be harder for you to hit me. (not included in the game, but hope you get my point.) Now that you are shooting 100 rounds, you have a better chance to hit me since not all those 100 rounds will hit. Maybe 50 will miss maybe more, but since you are shooting a bigger spread you get a better chance to hit.

That is why I believe GW got it right. You have a better chance to hit, not to do more damage. Other wise, why do we have machine guns? To better hit since we are firing more bullets, one of those bullets will hopefully hit.

majendie wrote:
I haven't really done the math on it thought. Is a reroll to hit worth more than an extra dice to hit? I mean, your maximum total damage is lower but your likelihood of *any* damage is higher...

I think it just really falls apart of blast weapons. Reroll the scatter... yay?

I think it is that twin linked guns really should shoot twice as much, but that would just get crazy in number of shots for some things. As for the math, rolling twice as many dice to hit will always be better than re-rolling to hit.

Lets say I'm shootin 10 Bolters.

If twin linked is re-roll then those 10 bolters produce 8.9 Hits.
If twin linked is double shots, then 10 bolters produce 13.3 hits.

This is why at 12.1" or greater a storm bolter is always better than a twin linked bolter.

I understand the abstraction, the role TL serves from a rules standpoint, but it does seem daft to actually look at the model and what it's theoretically going. Especially single-shot weapons, or low rate of fire weapons, like TL lascannons, TL Autocannons, etc.

If I could control the rules, I'd have TL weapons be cheaper points wise than two seperate weapons, and each successful hit counts as two, i.e. TL lascannon hits a rhino, gets two chances to pen it.

We seen the principle of "twin-linking" at work in WW1 and WW2 era naval gunnery, and in anti-aircraft gunnery.

In the naval case the whole battery works as a giant shotgun, flinging a pattern of eight to 14 shells that hopefully straddles the target.

The AAA case is slightly different in that the object is simply to ramp up the rate of fire to fill the air with a continuous stream of projectiles.

WW2 AAA heavy batteries worked a bit like naval batteries, flinging a pattern of shells that were calculated to explode and fill a volume with shrapnel.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
We seen the principle of "twin-linking" at work in WW1 and WW2 era naval gunnery, and in anti-aircraft gunnery.

In the naval case the whole battery works as a giant shotgun, flinging a pattern of eight to 14 shells that hopefully straddles the target.

The AAA case is slightly different in that the object is simply to ramp up the rate of fire to fill the air with a continuous stream of projectiles.

WW2 AAA heavy batteries worked a bit like naval batteries, flinging a pattern of shells that were calculated to explode and fill a volume with shrapnel.

That is what I was thinking of as well. Why do planes how twin guns? Why not just one? It's not to do more damage, but to hit. Even one hit can cripple a plane so all you need is that one hit. Thing is, it's so hard to hit a flying moving plane, you add more barrels, to shoot more bullets. Again, not to do more damage, but to hit.

Yeah. Never liked it when they made this rule. Simple math is this.

I have two marines with heavy bolsters. I have six shots. Should hit four times. Could hit six. Could miss six.

Twin linked heavy bolter gives me three shots. If I miss any I can re- roll. So should get three hits.

I would rather have the four hits with a chance at six. But. I also roll poorly so whatever. As irks I probably get a benefit from twin linked so I'm sure it balances out by BS, but it always feels like I am being robbed of shots.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yeah. Never liked it when they made this rule. Simple math is this.

I have two marines with heavy bolsters. I have six shots. Should hit four times. Could hit six. Could miss six.

Twin linked heavy bolter gives me three shots. If I miss any I can re- roll. So should get three hits.

I would rather have the four hits with a chance at six. But. I also roll poorly so whatever. As irks I probably get a benefit from twin linked so I'm sure it balances out by BS, but it always feels like I am being robbed of shots.

It depends on the gun. If the two barrels fire simultaneously, I'd think it'd be more appropriate to roll 1 "to hit" and then 2 "to wounds". If the guns fire in sequence, then the first shot can be a tracer for the 2nd... so it should be something like "first shot fires at -1Bs, 2nd shot fires at +1 Bs" or simply double the number of shots.

Davor wrote:
That is what I was thinking of as well. Why do planes how twin guns? Why not just one? It's not to do more damage, but to hit. Even one hit can cripple a plane so all you need is that one hit. Thing is, it's so hard to hit a flying moving plane, you add more barrels, to shoot more bullets. Again, not to do more damage, but to hit.

It depends on the plane. If we're talking about WW2 planes, it was partly to increase the spread of bullets but mostly just to increase the rate of fire. The guns on WW2 planes tended to fire at the highest rates possible so that in the split second an enemy whizzes across the gun sights they'd be hit as many times as possible. Each gun on a P-51 Mustang could fire around 13 rounds per second. A strafing run would only last a couple of seconds and in a dogfight an FW190 zipping across the gunsights at 200mph would only spend about 0.1 of a second in the gun lines, so 1 gun vs 6 guns means you hit ~1.3 time compared to ~8 times. By using 6 guns, that rate of fire was increased to 80 rounds per second.

Modern gatling guns installed on aircraft have a rate of fire in the ~100 rounds per second range from a single gun.

Twin linking has often been a rule that annoys me, as to represent TL guns better would only take mildly more complication. It just depends whether the TL represents a higher rate of fire for an already fast firing gun or simply a bigger bang for a powerful slow firing gun.

2nd edition TL worked a bit better.

A twin-linked weapon is like a more controllable shotgun. Its notionally the difference between the hit probability of a shotgun versus a submachinegun.

I think the best way to think of twin-linked weapons is to think about how the weapon is aimed and fired. With a single barreled weapon your weapon is aiming at a single point no matter how fast it shoots. With a double barreled weapon you have two points down range simultaneously and you're actually aiming between those two point and as long as your target is any where between those two points you're gonna hit. This improves the hit probability at a given instance. You aim at a target, they move left they get hit; they move right, they get hit; they stand still they get hit.

Increased chance to hit is fine and dandy, but what if with those 100 shots, I land a vast majority, say 75. I've hit you more often, and consequently will do horrendous damage. Twin-linked as it stands now doesn't show this. Having two of the same gun, 40k mechanics-wise, does, as I'm still spewimg forth twice the number of shots that the fluff claims, but if I'm accurate I'm rewarded for it. If you make all your to hit rolls on the first go with a twin-linked weapon, you've wasted the points spent on twin linking. If twin-linking worked more like a hurricane bolter (3 twin-linked bolters firing as one weapon), it would be more accurate to how it would work out. So, a razorback would get 2 heavy bolters firing as a single weapon, and a hurricane bolter would be 6 bolters firing as a single weapon. With numbers like that, though, I can see why GW did what they did from a balance perspective.

majendie wrote:Seems to me that I'm exactly as likely to hit you

Umm...











Nah, there's probably no benefit...

majendie wrote:
Ok .

So lets say I've got two guns, attached to each other. I shoot at you. Am I twice as likely to hit you, or twice as likely to hurt you?

Seems to me that I'm exactly as likely to hit you, since I'm still effectively aiming the same gun. But if I *do* hit you, I have twice as much opportunity to hurt you.

What do you think?

I don't like (and have never agreed with) the current GW rules on twin linked weapons. If I have a gun that is two copies of the same thing I should be doing twice as much damage if I hit you, not be twice as likely (or less than twice, potentially, if I'm firing a blast/small blast weapon) as I would be firing a single shot of the same thing.

What do you think?

I think that you are not considering spray and pray.

If you are firing a weapon, strafing the enemy attempting to hit something, you are more likely to hit something if you have two machine guns doing the same job instead of a single gun.

I think my objection is really more about the blast weapons, and the mechanic used to represent that. I think the argument laid out above for the planes and the AA batteries makes sense; it's about the only reason you would use more guns to shoot at the same target.

I believe older battleships (think the big WW2 ones) had multiple barrel turrets simply to increase the rate of fire. The weapons were effectively reloaded manually so in order to fire faster, you needed more guns. Modern naval cannons are automatic and fire very quickly; they don't need multiple barrels pointing at the same thing, they're better off having them on separate turrets so they can engage more targets simultaneously.

So things like the Quad Cannon are the perfect example of twin linking; it's a bunch of barrels all spraying lots of bullets at a fast moving target in the hope of hitting more times. You don't want to hit just once, and have a higher chance of doing so, you want an opportunity to hit as many times, and do as much damage, as possible. So the idea that twin linking is a cheaper way to get more opportunity to hurt something kind of works for weapons like that.

Blast weapons however, kind of suck to twin link. I was thinking of this last night because I was building my new Scorpion Super Heavy (very excited to get it finished... mmm). It has a twin linked pulsar, which really just feels like a waste. The tank is clearly modelled with two distinct barrels; two entirely separate weapons. And yet the only benefit is that if I want to, I can re-roll the scatter. I think that TL blast weapons should work differently.

- More shots; perhaps not, especially given the blast mechanic where you can choose to place each shot differently
- More hits per shot; this makes sense (perhaps not really necessary in the case of the D strength pulsar, but hey
- Do away with twin-linking of blast weapons altogether; give them another shot or something, change the point costs; just don't make this a weapon option, because it doesn't make sense. Gaining a re-roll for the scatter as a result of something like Guide makes sense, since that's a blessing/battlefield luck scenario that allows you to have more of a chance to hit what you want.

What other actual game mechanic changes might help?

Nobody's really built battleships since WW2 because after Midway, the dynamics of naval combat changed completely. The sinking of the Bismark, followed by the Yamato at Midway, demonstrated that it doesn't matter how many big guns you have linked together and pointing in any given direction, none of them are going to be able to to jack to the aircraft carrier outside double their maximum range.

Modern naval ships also rely much more on missiles and torpedoes.

IIRC the point of twin linking was to synchronize the two barrels' fire sequence so that each one fired off its round when the other one was chambering its following shot- they don't actually fire simultaneously.

Twin linking effectively double the rate of fire to improve the effectiveness of "spray and pray" shooting (which is why it was so prevalent in AA guns). As such, the BRB rules for twin linking make perfect sense.

Naval cannons on the other hand are not an example of twin linking- they're meant for true simultaneous fire and would thus fall under the description of "Ordnance Barrage".

Regarding the abstraction, it helps if you think in terms of effective fire rather than purely concentrating on the to-hit roll. Two weapons firing linked together are more likely to be effective than just one firing. The reroll to hit is how the rules deal with this.

majendie wrote:
I think my objection is really more about the blast weapons, and the mechanic used to represent that. I think the argument laid out above for the planes and the AA batteries makes sense; it's about the only reason you would use more guns to shoot at the same target.

I believe older battleships (think the big WW2 ones) had multiple barrel turrets simply to increase the rate of fire. The weapons were effectively reloaded manually so in order to fire faster, you needed more guns. ...
...
...

The main guns in WW1 and WW2 ships were loaded by power machinery. A 12-inch shell weighed nearly half a ton without its propellant cartridges, and would have needed an enormous crew to shift by pure muscle power. The men operated the machinery and dealt with damage control.

Beatty's Battlecruiser Squadron (1915-16) was bad at shooting due to lack of practice, and tried to compensate by increasing their ROF by getting rid of the safety shutters and doors between the turrets and magazines. This had dire consequences at the Battle of Jutland.

In terms of pure game rules, you have to remember that models have a limited number of weapons they can fire per turn, and vehicles being able to snap fire their extra weapons was only introduced a short time ago in 6th.

Some poster have mentioned they feel robbed of a second gun by twin-linking, and to them I suggest thinking about it more like this:
When you see twin-linked it is a pure accuracy buff to an existing weapon, you are not paying points for a second weapon (hence why a twin-linked gun is always cheaper than 2 non-twin-linked weapons).

But it's not just olde-timey boats either. As mentioned, look at AA guns. And if that's not enough, they even did it on the other side as well. I mean...









Sometimes more just really is more.