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All I know is that my assault marines are happy that can't be splatted as easily.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

Halfpast_Yellow wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I

Spoiler:

just ran 100,000 trials of a Leman Russ Battle Cannon attack against a target with a toughness between 5 and 7 and a save of 3+.

The results are not encouraging.

By percentage, the wounds distribution is as follows:

As you can see, 45% of the time, the tank fails to achieve anything at all. When it does manage to achieve something, it scores between 1 and 3 wounds.

Finally someone models this in a decent way. That mathhammer site is awful.

I disagree with your assessment, those results look very acceptable to me. 54% of the time we're doing some damage, ~28% of the time we're doing 3 or more wounds.

That doesn't sound horrible. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect one single battle cannon to regularly take out a high priority target alone every round.

Should we not use a comparison to determine the effectiveness of the weapon?
How does the BC line up to a LC when shot at a dread? How about a melta gun?
When shot at infantry, how does the BC compare to a HB when shot at MEQ?
Without a comparison we don't know how effective the gun is.

I did that:



Tank Battle Cannon



Lascannon



Meltagun, in Melta Range


Also, to those crying about terminators or tyrants or riptides or whatever, stop. 100000 trials says that the chance of dealing 6 wounds is equivalent to that of making a 12" charge. If you don't rely or worry about 12" charges, then don't worry about the battle cannon.

There was no whining when the 5th edition codex came out. In fact everybody was hyped up. I remember one guy wrote "this may be the time where Imperial Guard is at the top of its power during the past and future of 40k"

I am so sad I did not back this post up, this guy was a prophet. It was when I came into 40k and had no idea how bad IG had been and would become again.

If anybody complains that someone is whining about the weakness of a codex or a unit, I would recommend he creates a list with this codex/unit and proves the whining is wrong on the next big turnament in his area.

Fair enough, fair enough perhaps I was being to harsh. However while I do not play Imperial Guard, I do play Imperial Militia and make use of a Malcador and some Leman Russ and I have had quite the success with them. So I look forward to the better Anti-vehicle power the new battle cannon with bring me as my Anti-Infantry is covered by other units.

 Vulkan Fran'cis wrote:

There was no whining when the 5th edition codex came out. In fact everybody was hyped up. I remember one guy wrote "this may be the time where Imperial Guard is at the top of its power during the past and future of 40k"

I am so sad I did not back this post up, this guy was a prophet. It was when I came into 40k and had no idea how bad IG had been and would become again.

If anybody complains that someone is whining about the weakness of a codex or a unit, I would recommend he creates a list with this codex/unit and proves the whining is wrong on the next big turnament in his area.

Fair enough, fair enough perhaps I was being to harsh. However while I do not play Imperial Guard, I do play Imperial Militia and make use of a Malcador and some Leman Russ and I have had quite the success with them. So I look forward to the better Anti-vehicle power the new battle cannon with bring me as my Anti-Infantry is covered by other units.

It actually got worse at anti vehicle based on what we know so far. In 7th edition most vehicles had 3-4 hull points tops, and suffered from damage on the penetration result chart.

The 8th edition Leman Russ battle cannon is roughly the equivalent of a lass cannon vs other Leman Russes. If you want anti-vehicle you can probably buy 5-6 las cannon heavy weapons teams for the price of one vanilla Leman Russ.

UncleThomson wrote:

Here is the code, maybe someone can check it:

final int numberValue() { if (number > 0) { return number; } int result = 0; for (int i = 0; i < numberOfDice; i++) { if (max) { result = Math.max(result, d6()); } else { result += d6() / diceDiv; } } return result; }

Constructor chaining is usually good.

Bug.
random,nextInt(6) + 1 gives a range 1-6.
int / int gives an int, rounded down.
So when D6 returns 1 your D3 calculates as 0.
D3 as you have it provides numbers; 0,1,1,2,2,3 instead of 1,1,2,2,3,3


private static boolean toWound(int strength, int toughness) { int toWoundRoll = 4; if (strength < toughness) { toWoundRoll = 5; if (strength <= toughness * 2) { toWoundRoll = 6; } } else if (strength > toughness) { toWoundRoll = 3; if (strength >= toughness * 2) { toWoundRoll = 2; } } return d6() >= toWoundRoll; }

is also buggy. Take S 5 vs T8 This should be to wound of 5+, but you have to wound of 6+.
if(S < T)
if(S < T *2) //of course it is less than twice the T if it was less than T on its own.

Fixing both those gives:
vs Terminators --------------------------
BS 4+, S 8, AP -2, SHOTS D6, D D3 vs. T 4, W 2, Sv 2+: average damage per turn 1.09, average turns to death 1.83, average kills per turn 0.55
BS 4+, S 5, AP -1, SHOTS 3, D 1 vs. T 4, W 2, Sv 2+: average damage per turn 0.33, average turns to death 6.00, average kills per turn 0.17
BS 4+, S 9, AP -3, SHOTS 1, D D6 vs. T 4, W 2, Sv 2+: average damage per turn 0.48, average turns to death 4.19, average kills per turn 0.24

vs Leman Russ --------------------------
BS 4+, S 9, AP -3, SHOTS 1, D D6 vs. T 8, W 12, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 0.85, average turns to death 14.05, average kills per turn 0.07
BS 4+, S 8, AP -2, SHOTS D6, D D3 vs. T 8, W 12, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 1.10, average turns to death 10.87, average kills per turn 0.09
BS 4+, S 8, AP -4, SHOTS 1, D D6 vs. T 8, W 12, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 0.77, average turns to death 15.65, average kills per turn 0.06
BS 4+, S 5, AP -1, SHOTS 3, D 1 vs. T 8, W 12, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 0.25, average turns to death 48.02, average kills per turn 0.02
BS 4+, S 8, AP -4, SHOTS 1, D 2D6 MAX vs. T 8, W 12, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 0.96, average turns to death 12.55, average kills per turn 0.08

vs Space Marine --------------------------
BS 4+, S 9, AP -3, SHOTS 1, D D6 vs. T 4, W 1, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 0.35, average turns to death 2.88, average kills per turn 0.35
BS 4+, S 8, AP -2, SHOTS D6, D D3 vs. T 4, W 1, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 0.97, average turns to death 1.03, average kills per turn 0.97
BS 4+, S 8, AP -4, SHOTS 1, D D6 vs. T 4, W 1, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 0.42, average turns to death 2.39, average kills per turn 0.42
BS 4+, S 5, AP -1, SHOTS 3, D 1 vs. T 4, W 1, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 0.50, average turns to death 2.00, average kills per turn 0.50
BS 4+, S 5, AP -1, SHOTS 6, D 1 vs. T 4, W 1, Sv 3+: average damage per turn 1.00, average turns to death 1.00, average kills per turn 1.00

Well, I just bought two Russes... planned on making them Executioners anyways because plasma is just hilarious, and my army uses a lot of plasma anyways. Don't care too much how good or bad it will be since I just play for fun.

Played a Steel Legion Guard army in 7th and was very rarely disappointed in my standard Leman Russ. We all played fun armies, and the standard Battle Cannon was a marine murdering machine. A bit sad to see its basic stats in 8th so far, but without having all the variants main weapon stats I will hold off making a judgment either way. Here's to hoping a triple Plasma Executioner will be fun though.

Wait wait, you only did MEQ, and BS 3? well we will work with that for the moment:

Battle cannon
3.5 * 1/2 * 5/6 * 2/3 = .97

Heavy Bolter
3 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 1/2 = .5

Formula is
Shots * Chance to hit * Chance to wound * Chance to fail the save = Damage per round

I think it's the last part you have backward because there is something really wrong in your sim, a battle cannon is twice as effective as a heavy B against MEQ, a battle cannon is effectively 2 heavy bolters for MEQ. Also, why are you using java, why not R, sql, or hell even excel/google calc are much better for this kind of tasks.

As someone who does charting and relational data for a living, label you axis, I'm literally not sure what I'm looking at. I assume it's deaths over the whole sim, but that's a guess.

Let me see if I can muster the motivation to do this in google calc so i can share it and you guys can just plug in numbers and get results.

**Edit** Ok took a little more time than I would have liked, google spreadsheets has a really weird "and" syntax. Here is the link, you'll only be able to read, so copy it into your own sheet, fill in the yellow parts, leave the rest alone. It does all the str vs toughness calculations as well as AP vs armor save. Remember AP is a negative value. Go forth and math hammer in my name:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fPSOMkeynj_jwJEao7knl2sSA4IVuSonqrrMoovo078

 Grimgold wrote:
Wait wait, you only did MEQ, and BS 3? well we will work with that for the moment:

Battle cannon
3.5 * 1/2 * 5/6 * 2/3 = .97

Heavy Bolter
3 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 1/2 = .5

Formula is
Shots * Chance to hit * Chance to wound * Chance to fail the save = Damage per round

I think it's the last part you have backward because there is something really wrong in your sim, a battle cannon is twice as effective as a heavy B against MEQ, a battle cannon is effectively 2 heavy bolters for MEQ. Also, why are you using java, why not R, sql, or hell even excel/google calc are much better for this kind of tasks.

As someone who does charting and relational data for a living, label you axis, I'm literally not sure what I'm looking at. I assume it's deaths over the whole sim, but that's a guess.

Let me see if I can muster the motivation to do this in google calc so i can share it and you guys can just plug in numbers and get results.

**Edit** Ok took a little more time than I would have liked, google spreadsheets has a really weird "and" syntax. Here is the link, you'll only be able to read, so copy it into your own sheet, fill in the yellow parts, leave the rest alone. It does all the str vs toughness calculations as well as AP vs armor save. Remember AP is a negative value. Go forth and math hammer in my name:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fPSOMkeynj_jwJEao7knl2sSA4IVuSonqrrMoovo078

Vertical axis is percent, bar categories are # of wounds.

The plots shows the percentage of trials that achieved a given number of wounds, out of 100000 trials. I used Excel. Essentially, it tells you what you can expect from the Battle Cannon.

And personally, I don't find the "average wound count" metric very useful. It doesn't really give you an idea of the distribution, which is more important when planning.

Grimgold wrote:Also, why are you using java, why not R, sql, or hell even excel/google calc are much better for this kind of tasks.

I'm absolutely loving the way we already have 3+ competing mathhammer modeling systems, and the edition hasn't even been released yet.

It is mostly 3 older systems that are already in use and their problems. I agree with Katherine tough distribution,variance, etc are important things to bear in mind.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned already here but I will: multi-meltas are 27pts a pop. I'm not expecting lascannons to be cheaper. If a LRBT is 120-150 my opinion is that the guy will be fairly costed with the standards

Lord Kragan wrote:
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned already here but I will: multi-meltas are 27pts a pop. I'm not expecting lascannons to be cheaper. If a LRBT is 120-150 my opinion is that the guy will be fairly costed with the standards

They're absolutely going to be worth it. The numbers for the melta gun are superb, and if MMs are still range 24, I think they'll remain the better choice for anti tank, but with the added detail that short range isn't that much of an issue since moving with heavy weapons is just -1 to hit.

That said.

If the Knight's Thermal Cannon gets a d6 blast with the melta profile, the gun itself had better cost something in the region of 100 pts, because it's phenomenal.

Knight survivablity will likely take a hit tough: Superheavies/GMC are no longer a thing in 8th edition.

Earth127 wrote:
Knight survivablity will likely take a hit tough: Superheavies/GMC are no longer a thing in 8th edition.

20 wounds at toughness 9, possibly with a static invul, isn't exactly a matter of grave concern. What may matter is the drop in BS from, combinatorially, the loss of +BS formations and the loss of move & fire without penalties.

Superheavies were immune to most vehicle damage chart, they are probably going to have one now.

In the Q&A Pete said they were toning down superheavies and closing the gap.

T9 maybe much but remember s5 and up wound on 5s now.

Most of what we have seen so far points to increase in lethality and decrease in defences generally.

Are people factoring in that Battlecannon is not Ordinance anymore?

This means the tank now gets to fire all of its weapons in the shooting phase, as opposed to none or some at snapshots.

This should be taken into account when considering a units kill power

takonite wrote:
Are people factoring in that Battlecannon is not Ordinance anymore?

This means the tank now gets to fire all of its weapons in the shooting phase, as opposed to none or some at snapshots.

This should be taken into account when considering a units kill power

No, they mostly aren't.

Martel732 wrote:

takonite wrote:
Are people factoring in that Battlecannon is not Ordinance anymore?

This means the tank now gets to fire all of its weapons in the shooting phase, as opposed to none or some at snapshots.

This should be taken into account when considering a units kill power

No, they mostly aren't.

But firing the Battlecannon on the move has a -1 penalty. Combine that with the probable -1 penalty someone else mentioned for firing the Battlecannon and other weapons at once and you are looking at '6's to hit.

Either way though, the blast is really underwhelming. The Battlecannon is more of a high calibre direct fire howitzer than a standard tanks gun, and for a weapon that was once firing a large blast a mere D6 hits is rather pathetic. 2D6, D6+2, etc would have been better.

I doubt the Russ is gonna take that penalty. Lighter tanks like the predator will. I doubt there will be a -1 to fire the battlecannon, either. Or there will be an order to get rid of it.

D6 is the tradeoff for not hitting your own dudes. Ever. Take your lascannon and heavy bolters firing at full BS, not exploding to a stiff breeze, not immobilizing on a twig and not exploding when assaulted and run. Oh, and split fire. Or use a variant that doesn't have a battle cannon, but all of these benefits.

Jeebus.

Martel732 wrote:
I doubt the Russ is gonna take that penalty. Lighter tanks like the predator will. I doubt there will be a -1 to fire the battlecannon, either. Or there will be an order to get rid of it.

D6 is the tradeoff for not hitting your own dudes. Ever. Take your lascannon and heavy bolters firing at full BS, not exploding to a stiff breeze, not immobilizing on a twig and not exploding when assaulted and run. Oh, and split fire. Or use a variant that doesn't have a battle cannon, but all of these benefits.

Jeebus.

Or use the 72" range and only move if there's nothing in LOS....

Good morning, added wounds and damage so you can calculate damage against tanks and such.

Also not competing models, one just gives you the median amount and the others try to figure it out the median amount by running thru 10,000 + iterations. They should give the same answer since 10,000+ iterations should mean the MoE small enough to not worry about. The fact they don't align means the random function is off, or more likely the math used in the random function is off somehow.

As for adding a probability distribution, you should only use the median value when doing comparisons and planning your army. I'm also not familiar with googles statistics functions, but it might be fun to learn them. So I'll think about it.

There's a use for both distribution and average when it comes to mathhammer. I like having both info sets personally. Distribution is where the context comes from, and average is the easier number set to work with on the fly (I can do that on a napkin, not so much the distribution).

It's not a matter of one being better IMO. Who doesn't want more tools in their toolbox?

I usually work with averages out of convenience, but distributions are nice too.

Maybe you all forget, that the Leman Russ used to be just as survivable as a Land Raider (and the Demolisher variant had even higher AV than the Land Raider), if Land Raider is supposed to have over 2 dozen wounds, (and may even have higher toughness) this is some major shift in the power of the Russ hull (at least half as survivable as a Land Raider).

The Russ is currently the same aromour (3+) as a space marine infantry (which can easily get cover save bonuses that a big tank can't), which is really daft considering other infantry like Ork Meganobz and Terminators have better armour 2+ (probably a riptide too..)

The battle cannon is supposed to be DANGEROUS against all targets (but not the best), it used to reliably penetrate armour, have a good chance to one hit explode low-medium AV vehicles, be scary for all but the most heavily armoured troops out in the open. You all forget that the Russ used to have split fire, no penalty for shooting on the move (up to 6"), could move up to 20" a turn, had BS4 and cost as much as 2 guardsman squads - including sponson heavy bolters (that would be 100p in 7th edition points).

The Russ was garbage in 7th, so a slight improvement compared to that means nothing, the Russ is supposed to be an iconic powerhouse,
It seems GW want to make the Russ a medium tank/just above a transport or a dreadnought (and a Russ can't close combat). If so, it should be costed appropriately. Which means a massive cost reduction to 7th! prob around 50% reduction.

Take into consideration what the Russ was.... a powerhouse!
Now its Battlecannon is being compared to heavy bolters and las cannons, weapons a guardsman can carry, what a joke.

Russ was never that great, except in 5th, and even then, it was less durable than its own points in say Rhinos.

You are referring to the 2nd ed Russ with targeters, I assume. Was not that good. I was there.

I doubt the Land Raider is getting 24 wounds. We'll see, I guess.

It is exactly as I described, points wise and survivarability wise (google leman russ datafax and see land raider datafax)
It was about the same points and survivability as a land raider, but without the transport capability.

I get it, the raider is supposed to be tougher, fine, but if its more than twice as tough and kick out more than twice the firepower than make the russ half the cost,, easy

 Makari wins wrote:
It is exactly as I described, points wise and survivarability wise (google leman russ datafax and see land raider datafax)
It was about the same points and survivability as a land raider, but without the transport capability.

I get it, the raider is supposed to be tougher, fine, but if its more than twice as tough and kick out more than twice the firepower than make the russ half the cost,, easy

There's also the issue of combat role; if there's some way to make LRBTs Troops, then having a mediocre, tough, all purpose unit that unlocks the actually *fun* stuff in your army makes a fair bit of sense.

the_scotsman wrote:
But here's the thing: Once you start increasing BS, the other gun options on the leman russ start becoming more attractive. The blasts have always been "the derpy, unreliable option that doesn't require buffing."

I'm just curious why I would consider a Battlecannon over, say, a Vanquisher if we extrapolate the conversions they're doing (S8, AP-4, Damage 2D6-take-the-highest) if we get some way to boost BS, or a bump to BS4, or something.

It just struck me as strange that they said "Explosives work on highly numerous infantry" and then showed a system that pretty clearly wouldn't work at all against highly numerous infantry. You'd never take a Battlecannon for that - you'd go straight for a Punisher with Heavy 20.

I think people complaining about battlecannons already is ridiculous. Here's why.

1st Yes the weapon now has to roll to hit but it's D6 shots. So potentially 6 shots with D3 damage each. Main tank cannons aren't meant to be firing at infantry, that's what sponsons and all other mounted weapons are for. The battle cannon will be a vehicle hunter. 1 battlecannon has the damage potential to do 18 wounds. Any middle value tank will be scared of it, especially at -2 to save.

2nd. in 7th battlecannon does diddly to terminators. Yes it crushed marines with AP3 but termies got their 2+. Now with the new AP system anything with a minus to saves immediately is better for termies. The battlecannon now forces termies to take their saves on a 4+. That is a huge buff. Yes marines get a 5+ from it but you can't get a buff in every aspect. There is also the chance of instant deathing their 2 wounds.

3rd. So far as we can tell vehicles can now fire all their wepaons since the battlecannon isn't ordnance. So now the vehicle can reliably shoot the sponsons, hull-mounted weapons, stubbers. And with heavy bolters now -1, marines will be taking saves on a 4+. This is a huge buff all around, just not against that one unit type and role for the vehicle.

All these complaints about , boohoo battlecannons nerfed. Not only are they premature, but they are unnecessary and incorrect. They just have a new target priority, get used to it. Imagine all the changes to other templet weapons. Especially for people who play orks...

Be patient! Wait for the full release! stop complaining in the meantime!

mhalko1 wrote:


2nd. in 7th battlecannon does diddly to terminators. Yes it crushed marines with AP3 but termies got their 2+. Now with the new AP system anything with a minus to saves immediately is better for termies. The battlecannon now forces termies to take their saves on a 4+. That is a huge buff. Yes marines get a 5+ from it but you can't get a buff in every aspect. There is also the chance of instant deathing their 2 wounds.

I may have been mistaken, but wasn't instant death discontinued in favor of Moar Wounds?