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Inspired by the boltguns thread. Currently, autocannons are almost always superior to heavy bolters, lascannons are almost always superior to missile launchers. So how do we rebalance these weapons to make them all viable choices?

Proposed changes:

Heavy bolter: S5 Ap5 Heavy4 36"

Missile Launcher: bump points to equal lascannons, auto-include flakk missiles.

The heavy bolter now has a functional role as an anti-light infantry weapon. The missile launcher is now a functional multipurpose weapon with both anti-tank and anti-air capabilities.

Make krak missiles AP 2 and lascannons AP 1. Krak missiles are even bigger joke in 7th than they were in 6th.

Depends on what you are fighting. Heavy bolters are in fact always superior against melee horde armies. Missile launchers are versatile (and exactly as good as lascannons against the majority of monstrous critters, meaning that they are absolutely better than lascannons against, say, almost all Tyranid armies)

But you can't count on that. When faced with Riptides or Wraithknights, lascannons are the winner. By a lot against the Riptide.

Heavy Bolter: 36" S4 AP4 Heavy 4

Missile Launcher: Comes with all missile types.

Krak Missile: 48" S8 AP2 Heavy 1

Frag Missile: 48" S4 AP4 Heavy 1, Blast

Flakk Missile: 48" S7 AP2 Heavy 1, Skyfire, Heat Seeker

Multi-melta: 24" S8 AP1 Salvo 1/2, Melta

Martel732 wrote:
But you can't count on that. When faced with Riptides or Wraithknights, lascannons are the winner. By a lot against the Riptide.

Sure. But by the same token you can't count on your opponent having those either. If you brought a lot of lascannons, and your Eldar opponent decided to run an infantry army, you have wasted a lot of points.

The missile launcher is a weapon defined by versatility. Whereas lascannons are effective against hard targets and worthless against anything else, and heavy bolters are effective against soft targets and near-worthless against anything else, the missile launcher can do both, but not as effectively.

If it were as effective as a lascannon AND retained its anti-light infantry ability, there would be no point in the lascannon.

The problem with that philosophy is that marine lists in particular have boltguns and S4 hth punches to the head to take care of infantry. Marines don't need more ways to kill T3 mooks. The missile launcher is a fail because none of its firing modes are good enough their job to justify using a missile launcher. It takes too much of a hit in effectiveness to pay for the versatility.

Martel732 wrote:
The problem with that philosophy is that marine lists in particular have boltguns and S4 hth punches to the head to take care of infantry. Marines don't need more ways to kill T3 mooks.

Do the math on the difference between a bolter and, say, a heavy bolter against infantry. (it is 4x as effective at 12" and above against marines for instance, and a whopping 7x better against necron warriors)

S4 hth and boltguns against rear armour will also kill most vehicles BTW.

Anything that can be killed by a heavy bolter is, in general, not what my BA lists worry about. The things that kill me in practice are seer councils, Riptides, Wave Serpents, etc. None of these units are even affected by heavy bolters.

Perhaps we're going about it the wrong way?

We should instead eliminate the missile launcher as a choice for anti-vehicle. Rather make it AA and Anti-infantry, give it ignore cover as well.

And the concept of a lascannon stopping after the first infantry model is hit is ridiculous, it should instead select a point on the board as a target and draw a line to it, all models along the line count as being hit, with -1 strength to the hit per model; Vehicles stop the line.

Martel732 wrote:
Anything that can be killed by a heavy bolter is, in general, not what my BA lists worry about. The things that kill me in practice are seer councils, Riptides, Wave Serpents, etc. None of these units are even affected by heavy bolters.

so... several units considered generally to be overpowered.

Alcibiades wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Anything that can be killed by a heavy bolter is, in general, not what my BA lists worry about. The things that kill me in practice are seer councils, Riptides, Wave Serpents, etc. None of these units are even affected by heavy bolters.

so... several units considered generally to be overpowered.

Okay then, and 2+ armor unit or AV 13+ makes the krak missile useless. That's a lot of units and vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Quickjager wrote:
Perhaps we're going about it the wrong way?

We should instead eliminate the missile launcher as a choice for anti-vehicle. Rather make it AA and Anti-infantry, give it ignore cover as well.

And the concept of a lascannon stopping after the first infantry model is hit is ridiculous, it should instead select a point on the board as a target and draw a line to it, all models along the line count as being hit, with -1 strength to the hit per model; Vehicles stop the line.

Well, AP rockets and missile are a mainstay of the real armed forces. It seems silly to get rid of the armor piercing option on a missile launcher. It just needs to actually pierce armor.

Alcibiades wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
But you can't count on that. When faced with Riptides or Wraithknights, lascannons are the winner. By a lot against the Riptide.

Sure. But by the same token you can't count on your opponent having those either. If you brought a lot of lascannons, and your Eldar opponent decided to run an infantry army, you have wasted a lot of points.

The missile launcher is a weapon defined by versatility. Whereas lascannons are effective against hard targets and worthless against anything else, and heavy bolters are effective against soft targets and near-worthless against anything else, the missile launcher can do both, but not as effectively.

If it were as effective as a lascannon AND retained its anti-light infantry ability, there would be no point in the lascannon.

I strongly disagree with that. How is a lascannon "worthless" against other things except hard targets, when it instantly nukes one of them? Even against lower AV vehicles, the missile launcher lags far behind with its AP3. And you are putting a LOT of faith in that punny frag missile doing anything remotely of note.

Missile launcher is crap. The way to truly make it "defined by versatility" is to give flakk missiles to all missile launchers for free. Then you can price it as a lascannon, so your points either buy you a single high quality shot, or a choice of one good strong shot, one good anti-air shot, and one mediocre anti-infantry shot.

Heavy bolters need to be either way cheaper than autocannons, or have 4 shots. I'd probably grab some heavy bolters for my guard infantry squads if they were only 10 points for 4 shots.

I don't know about the idea of a missile launcher cracking 2+ armor. Terminators and centurions wouldn't have stayed around very long if the average rebel rocket launcher could easily one-shot them.

The problem is that missile launchers cost as much as plasma guns but are mostly worse.

I think the real problem with Rocket Launchers as anti-tank is that in order to be good at killing tanks, you have to be good at killing super-heavy infantry.

So maybe just adding as special 'Krak!' rule along the lines of "This weapon has a +2 bonus when rolling on the Vehicle/Building Damage Chart"?

 TheSilo wrote:
I don't know about the idea of a missile launcher cracking 2+ armor. Terminators and centurions wouldn't have stayed around very long if the average rebel rocket launcher could easily one-shot them.

The problem is that missile launchers cost as much as plasma guns but are mostly worse.

You took the words right out of my mouth. It's okay for a special weapon plasma gun with a ROF of two to crack 2+, but not an anti-tank missile? Really?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I think the real problem with Rocket Launchers as anti-tank is that in order to be good at killing tanks, you have to be good at killing super-heavy infantry.

So maybe just adding as special 'Krak!' rule along the lines of "This weapon has a +2 bonus when rolling on the Vehicle/Building Damage Chart"?

No, anti-tank missiles should kill super heavy infantry as well. Because super heavy infantry are just little tanks.

The problem is that 40k tends to favour taking multiple specialized tools over one generalized tool, so the missile launcher gets outperformed in every role by the specialized tools. Pumping any of the missile launcher's stats would require pumping something else's to keep the specialist tool ahead of the generalist tool and feed into the never-ending spiral of escalation that gave us Riptides in the first place.

That said the biggest problem with the missile launcher is that you're paying 25pts for a tool that's mediocre against every target. I'd give every missile launcher flakk at the base price and call it a day, honestly. It's got its place (inexpensive ground-based AA that isn't useless if the other guy doesn't bring planes) and the idea of having a cheap general weapon that can at least damage every target that you can take in small games instead of needing several different squads to deal with stuff that just might happen is appealing.

As for the heavy bolter I really can't get behind making it S4. It's supposed to be a heavy machine gun that the people in power armour can tote around with no problem because power armour, not a light automatic. If I were going to change anything about it I'd make it Salvo 2/4, it's got one job that it tends to get outperformed at, so make it a bit better at that job.

The multi-melta's biggest problem is short range on a Heavy weapon, I'd take it off infantry squads entirely, since it's just fine on vehicles but if you were to edit it to make it better on infantry you'd make the normal meltagun irrelevant.

The lascannon and plasma cannon are basically fine.

Agreed. I can build generalization into my list, I don't need it on weapons themselves. The frag missile, in particular, is really terrible in my experiences.

The reason I say to drop it to S4 is that that still makes it good against light and medium infantry (wounding on 3+ against most targets), without making it suddenly brilliant at taking down light vehicles because of high RoF and glances.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The reason I say to drop it to S4 is that that still makes it good against light and medium infantry (wounding on 3+ against most targets), without making it suddenly brilliant at taking down light vehicles because of high RoF and glances.

It's supposed to be fair at handling AV10 is the thing. Increasing the RoF by one isn't going to suddenly make Land Speeders more tissue paper.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
It's supposed to be fair at handling AV10 is the thing. Increasing the RoF by one isn't going to suddenly make Land Speeders more tissue paper.

Exactly this. Keep in mind first that a standard bolter is strength 4 ap 5, and that a heavy bolter fire shells that are fairly larger. We're talking bullets several times the size of current era anti-tank rounds, filled with explosives. It had better pack enough punch to go through light armor. The suggestion I did like was to make them salvo 2/4. I play DA, so it makes a bit more sense from that perspective, but thinking of guardsmen trying to carry around a heavy bolter while firing it explains why it's heavy, not salvo.


The problem with changing too much about the missile launcher is part fluff, part balancing of the game. For starters, an AP 2 krak missile is just silly. Terminator armor is described as being able to casually shrug off missiles that orks might fire at them, not take them down in one hit, guaranteed nearly. Also, for scaling issues, a lascannon needs to be better than a missile launcher, so we'd have to make it S 10, AP 1. First off, a strength 10 heavy weapon is terribly overpowered. Being able to 1-hit T5 models is a bad idea for something like a lascannon, and if it's AP1 it would make multi-melta all but obsolete.

A heavy bolter is 25 mm a modern AT round is 84 mm

 Bobthehero wrote:
A heavy bolter is 25 mm a modern AT round is 84 mm

84 mm? What handheld rifle fires an 84 mm? An anti material rifle is 12.7mm. Half the size of a bolter shell.

Martel732 wrote:

 TheSilo wrote:
I don't know about the idea of a missile launcher cracking 2+ armor. Terminators and centurions wouldn't have stayed around very long if the average rebel rocket launcher could easily one-shot them.

The problem is that missile launchers cost as much as plasma guns but are mostly worse.

You took the words right out of my mouth. It's okay for a special weapon plasma gun with a ROF of two to crack 2+, but not an anti-tank missile? Really?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I think the real problem with Rocket Launchers as anti-tank is that in order to be good at killing tanks, you have to be good at killing super-heavy infantry.

So maybe just adding as special 'Krak!' rule along the lines of "This weapon has a +2 bonus when rolling on the Vehicle/Building Damage Chart"?

No, anti-tank missiles should kill super heavy infantry as well. Because super heavy infantry are just little tanks.

Considering that traditional anti-tank weapons (e.g. Thermite) use temperatures of about 4,000 degrees, and plasma weapons use roughly 10,000,000 degrees, I'm ok with plasma being better against 2+ saves.

From a gameplay perspective you can't have long range, heavy weapons that completely outperform close range weapons. Then you'd have something akin to the modern drone war, save/effective sure, but real boring for a table top strategy game.

Well you COULD have that, its just that the inferior weapons would have to be two things.

1) cheap platforms
2) cheap themselves

 kingbobbito wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
A heavy bolter is 25 mm a modern AT round is 84 mm

84 mm? What handheld rifle fires an 84 mm? An anti material rifle is 12.7mm. Half the size of a bolter shell.

Carl Gustav hand held recoiless rifle also anti tank =\= anti material

 kingbobbito wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
A heavy bolter is 25 mm a modern AT round is 84 mm

84 mm? What handheld rifle fires an 84 mm? An anti material rifle is 12.7mm. Half the size of a bolter shell.

The Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle is 84mm and can be fired from the shoulder.

I wouldn't equate a Heavy Bolter to a 25mm cannon, but I could see it being equivalent to the 25mm OCSW project that was half heavy I machine gun, half automatic grenade launcher.

The big issue is that we are stuck on a 1 to 10 scale. There needs to be a bigger range than that to accommodate the nuances of varying weapons. Just for example, Auto-Cannons covers a wide range of weapons, ranging from 20mm weapons that have little more punch than a heavy machinegun to 57mm weapons that can shred aircraft kilometers away. They can't all be Strength 7, AP 4.

Make the Frag missile S3 5" blast, auto include flak missiles. Bump cost to equal lascannon.

IMO, heavy bolter is fine. It's sub-par on marines, and outstanding on IG tanks. Can't really make it better for marines without making it too good on those tanks.

-Matt

Jefffar wrote:
The Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle is 84mm and can be fired from the shoulder.

I wouldn't equate a Heavy Bolter to a 25mm cannon, but I could see it being equivalent to the 25mm OCSW project that was half heavy I machine gun, half automatic grenade launcher.

The big issue is that we are stuck on a 1 to 10 scale. There needs to be a bigger range than that to accommodate the nuances of varying weapons. Just for example, Auto-Cannons covers a wide range of weapons, ranging from 20mm weapons that have little more punch than a heavy machinegun to 57mm weapons that can shred aircraft kilometers away. They can't all be Strength 7, AP 4.

You learn something new every day, didn't know the M3 had a rifled barrel. Still, would you agree with my point that a 25mm round has more than enough potential to crack light armor, considering a 12.7 mm round does it so easily?

In 40k terms, I think autocannon is literally a specific weapon, not a classification of weapons. Consider that everything anyone uses is millenia old, so perhaps that specific scale of autocannon was really popular forever ago and it just became a universal standard? (like the 5.56 is today). Keep in mind that every single bolter anyone owns is almost exactly the same, and any lasgun anyone owns is almost exactly the same. Sure, there might be some autocannons out there that are a higher caliber, but they're so rare you'll never see one in a standard sized game. I know it's a terrible justification, but it's the best I can do with the fluff.

 Bobthehero wrote:
A heavy bolter is 25 mm a modern AT round is 84 mm

And AV10 isn't a tank. A 12.7mm machine gun is going to up and wreck an armoured car, AV10 is just a step above a soft-skinned vehicle.