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So, I have a Fire Raptor coming in the mail. Awesome. BUT, before I get the thing I want to work out how I'm going to arm it.

The quad heavy bolter is a much better weapon than the twin linked auto cannon for the independent turrets it has, but considering I play Blood Angels, and my AA is a little on the weak side, I feel like more often than Codex Marines I'd be relying on that thing to clear the skies, which means the auto-cannon would be the better weapon.

But even then, those side turrets don't really swivel forward, do they? So you can't bring all the guns to bear on the same target they way you can with a predator with sponsons, can you?

So maybe using this thing for AA is still a bad idea, use the forward mounted avenger bolt cannon to take down tyranid and light armored flyers, and use the quad bolters to spray into light ground targets.

Thoughts anyone? How do you guys use your fire raptors? Thanks!

IMO the two choices are very even. The Quad bolters are better against infantry but at the cost of being useless against AV12 which is a very common target to have in your los. The autocannon is about equal against Av10/11 and the all important T6 FMC. Where the autocannon becomes a major boon is always having something it can hurt in los and range. Av12 is a very common side Av on flyers and several tanks.

 ansacs wrote:
IMO the two choices are very even. The Quad bolters are better against infantry but at the cost of being useless against AV12 which is a very common target to have in your los. The autocannon is about equal against Av10/11 and the all important T6 FMC. Where the autocannon becomes a major boon is always having something it can hurt in los and range. Av12 is a very common side Av on flyers and several tanks.

But that's just it, the quad heavy bolter is actually better against T6 FMCs. 6 shots that need a 5+ to wound = 50% better than 2 shots that need a 3+ to wound.

The autocannon is only significantly better against AV12/13.
Against AV11 they're soooooo close to being even, with the quad heavy getting six changes to roll a 6, and the autocannon getting two chances to roll a 4+, slight edge goes to the autocannon since it can penetrate, which barely matters at AP4, since your opponent will probably jink and you have a 66% chance to shake / stun him which means nothing since he'd already be snapping shots.
And then against AV10, the quad heavy gives you six chances to roll a 5+ vs. two chances to roll a 3+, so the quad heavy will shave off more hull points, where as the autocannon will cause more penetrating hits.

So the heavy bolters are better against literally all non-armored targets, 3x as good against most infantry targets, and then against armored targets, the autocannon is really only significantly better against AV12 and AV13 and debatably worse against AV10

So here's my dilemma, overall, the quad heavy bolter is clearly the better weapon, but the autocannon will help more against AV12 fliers, which is a weak spot my army has combating.

Also I JUST got my raptor delivered....

Man, decisions decisions, maybe I'll see how hard it is to magnetize the weapons...

IMO the weapons are about equal. The reason I say this is that;
-The example of a T6 Sv3+ is literally 0.4 vs 0.6 hp on average per turn per turret. I would not call that a significant different personally and I would consider the fact that you will definitely be lining up the S6 AP3 weapon on that target.
-AV10 the quad bolters are objectively better but how often does AV10 actually matter? Venoms and chimera side armour are the only "important" units I can think of that I regularly line up an AV10 shot with a fire raptor turret. This is not a vulture with vector dancer the side turrets need to be able to shoot what they can see as the missiles + avenger cannon are much more damaging. The chimeras are easy to do this with but a savy player will only give you 1-2 shots a game at their venoms like this and almost always through ruins. Lining up venoms can be a pain (they are fast and small). If your experience differs though venoms are very important.
-The quad bolters are vastly better anti infantry. Really anything worse than a MEQ is going to feel the pain...unless they GtG in some ruins.
+AV12 is the single most important AV in the game. The targets that have this AV are; waveserpent, vendetta, stormraven, heldrake, fire raptor, sicaran side armour, scorpius side armour, all of the IG artillery vehicles, battlewagon side armour, imperial knight side armour, etc. Pretty much the only time I don't line up AV12 is necrons and nids.
+AV13 is also important but lets be honest that 2 autocannons is not going to be a huge boon unless you put tank hunters on them.
+The range actually matters here. This is a flyer so the movement is constrained. Add that to the very limited fire arc of the turrets and you will see why I appreciate the extra 12" of range. You are going to want that avenger cannon and missiles targeting the unit of warp spiders or flyrant. You will be very unhappy if your turrets are out of range or can only target AV12. These are not problems with the autocannons.
+Anti infantry is ridiculously common in the BA codex. You can even take HF on your TAC squads. Anything a heavy bolter is good against so are your flamers, heavy flamers, boltguns, or just punching...and if they GtG in ruins you laugh at them and they die anyways.

I personally have my vehicles pulling double duty between my CSM renegades army, my DA, and my SM armies so the choice was made by the CSM hades autocannon option.

Mine is quad hb's and that is what I would recommend unless you just have a complete shortage of med str weapons.

You won't be bringing either to bear with other weaponry except against infantry anyway. In a dog fight you'll want to be using those missiles and the vbc which is really 1.75 asscans more often than not. Also the qhb is better against nearly everything bar av11 where it's equal, and av12+ where the ac still isn't great.

And lastly the qhb's look cooler.. IMO.

Now all that said ansac makes some excellent points that could only have come from using the ac's pretty extensively, which I haven't much experience with.

I would say quad HBs. The number of shots difference is too much for me to ignore.

If the imperial raptor had the same options as chaos for reaper autocannons, then it would be a different story.