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How much is the tri-las pred BA then? Measure it in blacksun filters please.

Forget exactly right now. I wanna say 13 or 14 meltaguns.

SGTPozy wrote:
How much is the tri-las pred BA then? Measure it in blacksun filters please.

Rules cannot be copyrighted. Just say the amount of points.

The forum requests (or perhaps requires?) that we do not.

The triple lc BA predator costs some amount of points.

Twitter allows a certain number of characters.

I'm not saying the two are the same, but I'm not saying they're different.

Point is, the hammerhead is cheaper with better armor and jink but the predator has a better loadout with TWL LC and two LC sponsons. The hammerhead ain't exactly crowding out much in the Tau heavy support since riptides are Elites and I haven't seen broadsides on the table in a long while. The predator is competing with land raiders.

The difference is that knights laugh at the tri-las predator, whereas they should have to take the railgun Hammerhead seriously.

Martel732 wrote:
The difference is that knights laugh at the tri-las predator, whereas they should have to take the railgun Hammerhead seriously.

Couple things:

- On a 5 or 6 with the railgun on the damage table they lose D3 ADDITIONAL hull points. So you're knocking out 2-4 hull points there, that's quite a threat.

- An imperial knight costs fully 3x as much as a hammerhead. Yet an IK is gonna have a tough time killing that hammerhead with his S8 Ap3 cannon or 36" range thermal cannon when you've got 72" range. You want railguns to be even better, and pose a frightening threat against something that costs three times as much.

- Imperial Knights shouldn't even be in 40k, so I'm not too concerned about how things are or aren't effective against them.

"An imperial knight costs fully 3x as much as a hammerhead. Yet an IK is gonna have a tough time killing that hammerhead with his S8 Ap3 cannon or 36" range thermal cannon when you've got 72" range. You want railguns to be even better, and pose a frightening threat against something that costs three times as much."

American anti-tank guns cost much less than a third of a Panther or Tiger tank, but could threaten them for sure.

The Rail Hammerhead is just a logical hard counter for the Imperial Knight to me.

 TheSilo wrote:
Yet an IK is gonna have a tough time killing that hammerhead with his S8 Ap3 cannon or 36" range thermal cannon when you've got 72" range.

Why are we assuming that the two units get into a 1v1 shooting match and ignoring the knight's speed advantage and melee power, as well as the knight's ability to ignore the Hammerhead and kill the rest of your army?

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheSilo wrote:
Yet an IK is gonna have a tough time killing that hammerhead with his S8 Ap3 cannon or 36" range thermal cannon when you've got 72" range.

Why are we assuming that the two units get into a 1v1 shooting match and ignoring the knight's speed advantage and melee power, as well as the knight's ability to ignore the Hammerhead and kill the rest of your army?

Because he's arguing that the hammerhead should be able to solo an imperial knight.

Yup. That's what hard counters are. Specialists than can destroy a much more expensive unit of a certain niche.

Martel732 wrote:
Yup. That's what hard counters are. Specialists than can destroy a much more expensive unit of a certain niche.

Then pay the points and take Longstrike.

Make the Railgun a Beam weapon. Any unit under the line suffers a hit.

What you really need is to make that 1 shot more reliable.

Kill Longstrike (gloriously) - make his XV02 Pilot Battlesuit not experimental, allow all tanks(HH and Skyray, maybe Devilfish too) to get the upgrade, up the points, get rid of some long strike special rules...Or keep him and his specific rules and add this.
- This lets games workshop still sell the Longstrike model, but they throw in a few more arms and heads on a sprue so you can model them differently. - everyone would by 3-4 of these rather than 1.

50 pts more you get the Veteran tank commander upgrade - adds a veteran tank commander to your Hammerhead who wears the battlesuit
Gives the model:
BS 5
Tank Hunter
Overwatch and Supporting Fire - keep rule that allows multiple overwatch per phase
Blacksun filter

Also - up the tank cost to 150 base but change the gun to:
Primary weapon with Armorbane which allows - roll 3d6 and pick the two highest for armor pen
- I only say this because the Necron ghost arc is now primary weapon with 2 firing modes.

Kitted out with Spines, Pod, submunitions it's a 225pt tank.

 TheSilo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yup. That's what hard counters are. Specialists than can destroy a much more expensive unit of a certain niche.

Then pay the points and take Longstrike.

Nah, Longstrike should be even better than what I listed. And he's not really good enough as currently implemented. Modern armor is incredibly lethal.

Ferros wrote:
Make the Railgun a Beam weapon. Any unit under the line suffers a hit.

I like this. Fluff wise it makes sense. Quote from the codex -

It fired a form of ultra-high velocity projectile. I saw one of our tanks after having been hit by it. There was a small hole punched in either flank - one the projectile's entry point, the other its exit. The tiny munition had passed through the vehicle with such speed that everything within the hull not welded down had been sucked out through the exit hole. Including the crew. We never identified their bodies, for all that remained of them was a red stain upon the ground, extending some twenty metres from the wreck.

It should keep punching through all objects, maybe borrow rules similar to the apoc? blast - decreasing strength or range the more stuff it plows through.

Naaris wrote:

Ferros wrote:
Make the Railgun a Beam weapon. Any unit under the line suffers a hit.

I like this. Fluff wise it makes sense. Quote from the codex -

It fired a form of ultra-high velocity projectile. I saw one of our tanks after having been hit by it. There was a small hole punched in either flank - one the projectile's entry point, the other its exit. The tiny munition had passed through the vehicle with such speed that everything within the hull not welded down had been sucked out through the exit hole. Including the crew. We never identified their bodies, for all that remained of them was a red stain upon the ground, extending some twenty metres from the wreck.

It should keep punching through all objects, maybe borrow rules similar to the apoc? blast - decreasing strength or range the more stuff it plows through.

Or like bolt throwers in fantasy where the strength (and possibly ap) get reduced by one when they pierce additional ranks.

-1 str maybe? Some re-pricing might be in order, but it's a good idea. And it would make HRRs actually useful.

The Astra Militarum bunker-buster shell is R48", S10, AP1, Heavy 1, Armourbane(!) and Blast(!!). Replace the Blast with 24" range, and there you go: the super-railgun everyone is wishing for.

A Medusa with BBS is 140 points, while a Hammerhead is 125. The Hammerhead has +1 BS, +1 FA, +2 SA and is a Skimmer - that should be roughly +65 points, meaning that a Hammerhead with the super-railgun would be ~190 points. Sounds about right.

But that shell still has a terrible chance of actually taking out a tank or doing meaningful damage to a superheavy. I think D3 HP on a pen fits a railgun to a T.

There's a couple of problems with rail weaponry.

1) Low rate of fire.- When dreadnoughts and carnifex were the biggest target you would come across, having a single high strength shot counted for much more. However now we have 6 wound MCs and superheavies in normal games the standard rail weapons often struggle to be relevant.

2) Improved vehicle damage table - the low number of shots is made worse by the fact that the damage table will only offer a 33% chance to destroy a pen'd vehicle. With the chance to get that important 'explodes' result diminished, railguns are more likely to need to glance a vehicle down. Their low number of shots makes them inefficient in this role.

To improve them I wouldn't want them to be firing more shots. It wouldn't fit the fluff, and there is enough high AP rapid fire guns in the game at the moment as it is.
Vs multi wound targets I wouldn't mind seeing multiple wounds per hit, but D3 seems a bit too much. letting them cause 2 wounds on a 4+ would be more agreeable to me.

Penetrating shots would also be nice, but would be more difficult to apply to 40k than with bolt throwers in WFB

Vs vehicles would it be too much to simply let them re-roll the damage table?

Why is D3 HP such a big deal? I don't get it. Superheavies need a hard counter in this game other than suicide melta units that get cooperation from their opponent forgetting to bubblewrap.

Martel732 wrote:
Why is D3 HP such a big deal? I don't get it. Superheavies need a hard counter in this game other than suicide melta units that get cooperation from their opponent forgetting to bubblewrap.

Because not everything in the game is a super heavy.

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Why is D3 HP such a big deal? I don't get it. Superheavies need a hard counter in this game other than suicide melta units that get cooperation from their opponent forgetting to bubblewrap.

Because not everything in the game is a super heavy.

So? The rail gun on that thing should be able to one shot a predator no problem. That's the entire point of the weapon system. Not to pray for "5"s. Any less capable, and I'm going with the high yield missilesides.

Martel732 wrote:
But that shell still has a terrible chance of actually taking out a tank or doing meaningful damage to a superheavy. I think D3 HP on a pen fits a railgun to a T.

According to its fluff, the railgun's big strength is piercing armor, and with 10+2D6 armor penetration and AP1, that's as good as it can get.

Martel732 wrote:

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Why is D3 HP such a big deal? I don't get it. Superheavies need a hard counter in this game other than suicide melta units that get cooperation from their opponent forgetting to bubblewrap.

Because not everything in the game is a super heavy.

So? The rail gun on that thing should be able to one shot a predator no problem. That's the entire point of the weapon system. Not to pray for "5"s. Any less capable, and I'm going with the high yield missilesides.

I never said D3 HP when shooting at armour. I said multiple wounds vs models with a toughness value. Look again.

Vs vehicles I suggested letting railguns re-roll the damage table result. Like an offensive version of the venerable rule.

Lance

Then take broadsides, half the price of the hammerhead, and more likely to hit. Take two and you're at S8 but now you've got two shots at BS 4.5

"So don't take it" is not a way to fix anything. At that point I could just make my armies entirely composed of different types of riptides.

Haven't fielded my railhead yet, but Ordinance sounds like exactly what the weapons are.