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Let's say you take a Support Tank Ace. You can choose between 3 bonus abilities. Let's talk about 2 of them: Full Payload, and Well Stocked Magazines.

Full Payload gives you full damage per wound.
Well Stocked Magazines allows you a reroll on the number of shots. You can combine that with Catachan's doctrine or the Gunnery Experts DOctrine to get 2 rull rerolls on say, a Manticore.

Ultimately, which is better? Potentially you can get more shots, which means more chances to wound, which means more damage. But being able to ensure max damage for when you do wound is also pretty good.

Not to mention that you can always use a command reroll on the second die, if it comes up short....

General Hobbs wrote:


Let's say you take a Support Tank Ace. You can choose between 3 bonus abilities. Let's talk about 2 of them: Full Payload, and Well Stocked Magazines.

Full Payload gives you full damage per wound.
Well Stocked Magazines allows you a reroll on the number of shots. You can combine that with Catachan's doctrine or the Gunnery Experts DOctrine to get 2 rull rerolls on say, a Manticore.

Ultimately, which is better? Potentially you can get more shots, which means more chances to wound, which means more damage. But being able to ensure max damage for when you do wound is also pretty good.

Not to mention that you can always use a command reroll on the second die, if it comes up short....

Full payload.

Gunnery Experts or Catachan covers most of your re-roll needs.

I would also mention that it depends a bit on what you want to use your artillery for.
If a significant part of the artilleries work in the first few rounds (before it might be destroyed, bracketed or trapped in melee) is to remove 1W units because those are to well protected for your standard infantry, to far away/you don't want to approach them (e.g. Oldmarines with Bolter Drill) or hide out of line of sight (Tau Drones), Full Payload might be wasted.

Full payload except wyvern. They can get really beastly when they get to reroll all 4D6.

I think that stocked seems better, assuming that you have no other access to reroll shots. For example, with a Tallarn manticore it would prevent that horrible low shot roll. However, something like a Basilisk already has some insurance with the roll 2 pick highest, so payload would be better.

Full Payload is easily the best on Manticores and Basilisks, as there are other ways to assist with the number of shots.

Protip : Full Payload also makes Hunter-Killer Missiles do their full 6 damage

Don't forget that the Full Payload ability will also work on any equipped Hunter Killer Missile; that's a flat 6 damage that might be pretty scary to something.

Full Payload with Catachans and Gunnery Experts, Magazines with everyone else.

Re-rolling shots should generally be prioritized over more wounds per shot.

 Esmer wrote:
Re-rolling shots should generally be prioritized over more wounds per shot.

That's not backed by the math, though, which actually indicates that Full Payload is always superior by quite a large margin, against targets that the Manticore should be shooting at.

Well-Stocked Magazines increases the average shot count from 7 to approximately 8.8, we'll round up to 9 for simplicity. Thats 2 extra shots on average.

However Full Payload increases every shot from d3 to flat 3, which is a 50% increase.

Furthermore, a Manticore with Full Payload still has options to assist with the number of shots, whereas a Manticore with Well Stocked Magazines does not have any other option to boost its Damage characteristic.

Edit: after calculating out a few of the competing builds, a Cadian Manticore in theory has the highest average raw damage output due to Overlapping Fields combined with Direct Onslaught letting it hit on 2+ rerolling 1s. Catachan with Harker is a close 2nd and costs less CP

Edit 2: a Vostroyan Manticore with Yarrick can also hit on a 2+ rerolling 1s!