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I'm building a Space wolf droppod list and I plan on using some dreads for fire support in taking out heavily armored targets. Any suggestions on weapons loadouts? I currently plan on fielding a venerable dread w/ smoke, extra armor, TL lascannon, and dread CCW as well as a standard dread w/ smoke, extra armor, TL lascannon, and missile launcher. I expect my greyhunters, bloodclaws, and wolf scouts will do most of the infantry killing.

Extra armor, assault cannon, heavy flamer.

Assault cannon is better at taking out armor than a lascannon, and along with the heavy flamer, can pull double duty at taking out troops.

Either TL LC + ML if you plan to deploy on table, stand back, and shoot. Or AC/HF if you're putting it in a drop pod.

The good thing about Dreadnoughts is that the choice of weapons are brilliant and you can customise it to have weapons to take out whatever type of target you like.

Since you said you want to take out heavy armour targets, I would go with extra armour, lascannon as primary weapon, then either missile or close combat claw depending on your need for veratile shooting or high CC strength.

The assualt cannon is an excellent weapon against packs of troops and moderate armour vehicles. If you plan to take out heavy armour then Assualt cannon can struggle as you need to get 6's to enable you to get above 12armour due to its rending rule. Of course you get 4 tries at it though and if you do get a 6 then the chances of getting penetrating hits are greater than the lascannon.

My vote would be lascannon. (But never under estimate the power of the assualt cannon, whhuuuwhaahaha)

And always, always take a venny in a SW list.

Edit: Missed the venerable in the original post.  Oops.

But yeah, the SW venerable is a hell of a deal.  Put it in a pod if you can.

Posted By hellsguardian316 on 05/04/2007 4:31 AM
The assualt cannon is an excellent weapon against packs of troops and moderate armour vehicles. If you plan to take out heavy armour then Assualt cannon can struggle as you need to get 6's to enable you to get above 12armour due to its rending rule. Of course you get 4 tries at it though and if you do get a 6 then the chances of getting penetrating hits are greater than the lascannon.

Check the math, an assault cannon gets, on average, as many pens as a TL lascannon gets pens and glances on AV14.  The assault cannon is exceptional at busting heavy armor (at least, heavy armor that's not a Monolith).

(Edit: On normal AV14, the expected result from a TL lascannon is 0.15 glances, 0.15 pens.  The assault cannon gets 0.3 pens and 0.07 glances.  Its only real weakness is the Monolith; the assault cannon is just simply better at getting through armor than even a TL lascannon otherwise.)

Ah, but that's only within 24"; outside of that, the glance and pen chances of the assault cannon drop to zero, while the TLLC stays the same. Plus, a Dread with an assault cannon is subject to threats from plasma, meltas, and other short-ranged anti-tank while in its effective range; the TLLC Dread can lurk and snipe, hidden away from most nastiness.

Actually, the numbers work out in favor of the TL lascannon for armor penetration at all ranges. It's a slight edge, but statistically it's there. The AC is superior to a Lascannon, but twin-linking it gives the LC the edge. The AC does, however, have a chance of multiple hits that LC obviously can't match.

Posted By Centurian99 on 05/06/2007 2:56 PM
Actually, the numbers work out in favor of the TL lascannon for armor penetration at all ranges. It's a slight edge, but statistically it's there. The AC is superior to a Lascannon, but twin-linking it gives the LC the edge. The AC does, however, have a chance of multiple hits that LC obviously can't match.

A TL lascannon at BS 4 gets 0.15 glances and 0.15 penetrations per turn on AV 14  Without twin-linking it's 0.11 glances and 0.11 penetrations.  An assault cannon gets 0.07 glances and 0.30 penetrations on AV 14.  The TL lascannon is strictly inferior within 24", especially when you consider that you have to pay extra for it.  The only way that a TL lascannon comes out ahead (0.15 glances and 0.30 penetrations vs. 0.07 glances and 0.37 penetrations) is if you buy the tank hunters skill.

Your numbers on the assault cannon are wrong.
A single shot from an assault cannon (BS4) has a 1/18 (or 5.6%) chance of doing a glancing or penetrating hit. Which means that 17/18 (94.4%) of the time, it does nothing.

From those numbers, you can figure out that the assault cannon has a 83521/104976 (79.7%) chance of doing nothting with a full volley of four shots. Or a 20.3% chance of a glancing or penetrating hit.

A regular lascannon has a 2/9 (22.2%) chance of doing a glancing or penetrating hit. A tl lascannon has a 7/27 (25.9%).

So on the basis of calculating simply glancing and/or penetrating hits. Which on surface makes the lascannon superior vs. the assault cannon vs. AV14. However, if you work the numbers out further to just consider penetrating hits, the assault cannon swings ahead of the LC but not the TL lascannon.

Posted By Centurian99 on 05/06/2007 7:12 PM
Your numbers on the assault cannon are wrong.

No, my numbers are not wrong. The only time an assault cannon won't cause damage against AV 14 when a 6 is rolled for the first penetration dice is if the second penetration dice rolls a 1. Thus: (4/6)*(1/6)*(5/6) = 5/54 = 9.3% of the time you get a damaging hit.

Buoy, your numbers are wrong...but so were mine. Here's the full workup on TL Lascannons and ACs.

BS4 TL Lascannon Probability: 1 or more Glancing/Penetrating hits
AV10 = 8/9 (88.9%)
AV11 = 20/27 (74.1%)
AV12 = 16/27(59.3%)
AV13 = 4/9 (44.4%)
AV14 = 8/27 (29.6%)

BS4 Assault Cannon Probability: 1 or more Glancing/Penetrating hits
Method: Determine chance of getting 1 hit from one shot. Take the inverse of that probability and raise it to the 4th power to determine the chance of getting nothing out of all four shots. Then take that the inverse of that probability to determine the probability of getting at least one pen/glance. Complicated, but beats figuring out the individual probabilities of getting all 16 possible outcomes.

AV10 = 65/81 (80.2%)
AV11 = 4160/6561 (63.4%)
AV12 = 2465/6561 (37.6%)
AV13 = 2465/6561 (37.6%)
AV14 = 5764801/8503056 (32.2%)

Well, those are actual #s. If you want to be precise about it, the assault cannon beats the twin-linked lascannon only against AV14. Against all other targets, the TL lascannon is a better bet. The one thing that?s not figured in here is the effect of the assault cannon always penetrating vs. AV12...IIRC, it basically makes them a wash if you're only considering penetrating hits.

Regardless of the exact numbers of what will do more damage, las cannons or assault cannons, there are a couple of additional factors you should probably look at. The first and, in my mind, most important is range. Are you planning on having the dreadnaught show up in a drop pod and be in close range or are you planning on it being long range fire support? At short range, the assault cannon is probably your best bet due to its over all power and diversity. At long range you'll need to stick with the las cannon and missile launcher. If you don't know what you want to do, I would advise sticking to long range. At long range your potential for survival is much much higher than at short range. Sticking to the 36'-48' range category away from your enemy severely limits the amount of fire that can be directed at your dreadnaughts (no melta guns, no gauss guns, no plasma guns, no multi meltas, and the list goes on). It also completely eliminates the worry of getting charged by something with a power fist, melta bombs, witch blades, etc. Even if you assume that the long range weapon load out will statistically do less damage per turn than the close range load out, your dreadnaughts will definitely live longer to put out more turns of shooting than the close range ones will. So all in all, I would advocate twin las cannon + missile launcher dreadnaughts over other variants.

I agree, somewhat. The only really viable options are TL Lascannon/missile launcher (if you expect to start your dreads on the table), or AssCan/HF (if you're going to droppod).

Either way...you want at least 2 dreads.

Centurian and Buoyancy

Were your numbers taking into account the BS5 that SW ven dreads have? If not, how would that change the statistical differences within 24"?

BS5 makes almost no difference for the twin-linked lascannon, bringing it up to 0.16 glances and 0.16 penetrations from 0.15/0.15. The assault cannon provides 0.09 glances and 0.37 pens at BS 5, which is up from 0.07/0.30.