Anti-tank vs blast

[TorvaldTheMild]

Its safe to say that a lot of anti-tank weapons have fallen behind.  So many blast weapons are better equipped at  taking out tanks etc.  Just look at the demolisher vs the vanquisher or the Macharius heavy vs the vanquisher, the only anti-tank weapons that are good at their job are when they have multiples, like lascannons etc. or titanic weapons like valcano cannons.  How would you make anti-tank worth it.  I think that a blanket rule wouldn't work because things like predators would just become too OP.  But I think GW/FW have to look at weapons on an individual level, like vanquishers have them hit with their normal damage but + D3 mortal wounds along with it if they are shooting a tank or monster, or re-rolls or something that makes them worth taking.  Its sad not seeing my vanquishers etc. on the table top.

[ERJAK]

There's no such thing as blast weapons.

 

And anti-tank weapons aren't falling behind AT ALL. Ask anyone who's tried to field a Landraider about how 'anti-tank' weapons need to be buffed and they'd spit on you. Hell, even SoB have a brutal tank answer in the exorcist missile launcher (which has about a 90% chance of killing a rhino in one shot with miracle dice).

 

There is an issue with some weapons being significantly better at anti-tank than others, but anti-tank as a whole is fine.

 

Anti-infantry on the other hand...

[TorvaldTheMild]

A blast weapon is a weapon that explodes, we don't have templates anymore but there are still blast weapons in theory. Land raiders get wasted because vehicles are vulnerable to not only many anti-tank weaponry but also blast weaponry which is extremely potent at tank killing and more so than anti-tank weapons that don't have multiple anti-tank weapons like 4 lascannons etc.  You aren't going to do much damage to a land raider with a vanquisher, you will with a predator that has multiple anti-tank weapons or a demolisher which isn't designed to be a tank killer. You missed my point, single shot or double shot anti-tank weapons absolutely are being left behind and they are far outperformed by blast weapons and there are a hell of a lot of units that have this problem, making them worthless to field, like a vanquisher etc.  The risk reward is also so high, especially if you have poor BS on a one shot.  I'm not talking about anti-tank as a whole, you need to read my OP again.    

Edited December 7, 2019 by TorvaldTheMild

[Claws and Effect]

If you buff anti tank, you'll start seeing the opposite problem of tanks and other vehicles being utterly pointless to take because they'll likely be destroyed before you can do anything with them.

 

No one likes picking up their 300+ point vehicle before it has even gotten to move. Make anti tank too good and you screw the people that like to field them.

[TorvaldTheMild]

If you buff anti tank, you'll start seeing the opposite problem of tanks and other vehicles being utterly pointless to take because they'll likely be destroyed before you can do anything with them.

 

No one likes picking up their 300+ point vehicle before it has even gotten to move. Make anti tank too good and you screw the people that like to field them.

Again I already stated that I said a blanket rule wouldn't work as it would make things like predators OP, I specifically said GW/FW need to look at weapons individually.  I swear people just can't wait to disagree they won't even read all the comment.

[MARK0SIAN]

Former template weapons are definitely very poor at simulating any kind of area effect now, making them much more useful at targeting single, multi-wound units instead and this is definitely something that needs to be addressed.

 

However, I think vehicles already die to a stiff breeze as it is, I really don’t want to see anything that makes them even more vulnerable.

 

Part of this problem is they can be damaged by weapons that really shouldn’t be hurting them at all and some of the medium weapons that might be able to chip away at them have too great a chance of doing so. This is partly a result of the wound table and AP mechanic in use but it’s also a result of increased volumes of fire and just how easy rerolls are to get for a lot of armies. Again I’d like to see something done about this.

 

Overall though, I think dedicated AT weapons are ok, it’s the stuff around them that needs to change.

[TorvaldTheMild]

Yeah the wound system really sucks this edition.

Again I am talking about changing single shot weapons not all anti-tank as I said anti tank units with multiple anti-tank weaponry are good at what they do but not single shot dedicated anti-tank weaponry, which is seriously underpowered especially in comparison to blast.

Edited December 7, 2019 by TorvaldTheMild

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

I remember mentioning this back when it was made clear that we'd be losing templates and blast markers.

[Splog]

Blast weapons could be a (random?) number of hits minus the toughness of the target (possibly to a minimum of 1). Possibly slightly clunky, but means you only get one or a few number of hits against tanks. The weaker (T) a target is the more it will kill.

[TorvaldTheMild]

That's a good idea, so infantry would quite rightly get hammered by them and tanks not so much.

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

That's a good idea, so infantry would quite rightly get hammered by them and tanks not so much.

Single-model non-vehicle units (characters mostly) want a word about that.

[TorvaldTheMild]

There are ways around that but blast templates already hammer single model units, plus they are heavily protected by 10- wounds.  Also he didn't say anything about the base number/random number.

Edited December 7, 2019 by TorvaldTheMild

[MARK0SIAN]

For template/Bakst weapons, the easiest thing to do is just scale the number of hits according to the number of models in the unit up to a max number based on the weapon. That way a tank is only ever getting one hit but a blob of Orks might get 10 or so from a demolisher. Edited December 7, 2019 by MARK0SIAN

[Cleon]

In a local discussion about this a while ago we floated the idea of each model only being able to take one hit per die of a random hits weapon. So a unit of 3 surviving models could take 3 hits from a flamer, but potentially 6 hits from a twin flamer or 12 fro a quad mortar. It doesn't quite work because weapons weren't statted with it in mind, but  bringing it in and then allowing different dice (beyond just the D3 and D6) to add variety to weapons wouldn't be unwelcome.

[Tyriks]

Some armies (like Necrons) struggle to deal with armor already, removing the effectiveness of things like the DDA would make them even worse than they already are.

[Claws and Effect]

 

 

If you buff anti tank, you'll start seeing the opposite problem of tanks and other vehicles being utterly pointless to take because they'll likely be destroyed before you can do anything with them.

 

No one likes picking up their 300+ point vehicle before it has even gotten to move. Make anti tank too good and you screw the people that like to field them.

Again I already stated that I said a blanket rule wouldn't work as it would make things like predators OP, I specifically said GW/FW need to look at weapons individually. I swear people just can't wait to disagree they won't even read all the comment.

No. I read it.

 

Maybe if you didn't have a complex about being the only person allowed to be correct, you could take someone's contribution to discussion as exactly that.

 

Seriously dude. If you want to have a constructive discussion about something, don't jump down people's throats when they don't 100% agree with what you say.

 

It's a public forum. Other people are permitted to have opinions as well.

[sairence]

So...to respond to some of the assumptions here...

 

The Vanquisher gun is terrible. Not because it's an AT gun, but because it has been given singularly terrible stats and rules. It's ability to penetrate armour has simply not been carried over when they wrote the Guard-Codex. Literally any other Leman Russ turret is better.

 

The Demolisher is a siege tank. It has always been meant to crack open hard target, so to suggest it wasn't meant to be excellent at AT is a bit odd to me.

[TorvaldTheMild]

 

 

If you buff anti tank, you'll start seeing the opposite problem of tanks and other vehicles being utterly pointless to take because they'll likely be destroyed before you can do anything with them.

 

No one likes picking up their 300+ point vehicle before it has even gotten to move. Make anti tank too good and you screw the people that like to field them.

Again I already stated that I said a blanket rule wouldn't work as it would make things like predators OP, I specifically said GW/FW need to look at weapons individually. I swear people just can't wait to disagree they won't even read all the comment.

No. I read it.

 

Maybe if you didn't have a complex about being the only person allowed to be correct, you could take someone's contribution to discussion as exactly that.

 

Seriously dude. If you want to have a constructive discussion about something, don't jump down people's throats when they don't 100% agree with what you say.

 

It's a public forum. Other people are permitted to have opinions as well.

 

No its not about being correct, you weren't arguing my point.

[TorvaldTheMild]

So...to respond to some of the assumptions here...

 

The Vanquisher gun is terrible. Not because it's an AT gun, but because it has been given singularly terrible stats and rules. It's ability to penetrate armour has simply not been carried over when they wrote the Guard-Codex. Literally any other Leman Russ turret is better.

 

The Demolisher is a siege tank. It has always been meant to crack open hard target, so to suggest it wasn't meant to be excellent at AT is a bit odd to me.

Because its a low velocity cannon, that's why its a short barrel and large calibre, its designed to set off a large amount of explosives.  It isn't supposed to be an anti-tank weapon, anti-tank weapons have long barrels and high velocity rounds so that they can penetrate armour whether its a projectile or shaped charge.  The reason a Demolisher can crack open a building or bunker is because of the yield of its explosives.  Its not supposed to be AT.

Edited December 7, 2019 by TorvaldTheMild

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

 

So...to respond to some of the assumptions here...

 

The Vanquisher gun is terrible. Not because it's an AT gun, but because it has been given singularly terrible stats and rules. It's ability to penetrate armour has simply not been carried over when they wrote the Guard-Codex. Literally any other Leman Russ turret is better.

 

The Demolisher is a siege tank. It has always been meant to crack open hard target, so to suggest it wasn't meant to be excellent at AT is a bit odd to me.

Because its a low velocity cannon, that's why its a short barrel and large calibre, its designed to set off a large amount of explosives.  It isn't supposed to be an anti-tank weapon, anti-tank weapons have long barrels and high velocity rounds so that they can penetrate armour whether its a projectile or shaped charge.  The reason a Demolisher can crack open a building or bunker is because of the yield of its explosives.  Its not supposed to be AT.

 

Shaped charge rounds don't care about velocity, and do in fact work just fine in low-velocity guns.

 

EDIT: The best solution is to borrow from games like Flames of War and have 2 profiles for each suitably large weapon: 1 for the AT round and 1 for the HE (or canister, or what have you) round. Choose which one to fire before going boom. The Vanquisher simply gets a smaller die to roll for the HE (since it's basically a Leman Russ Firefly) and a bonus to the AT round (say, woulds Vehicles easier or gets to re-roll to wound, or whatever).

Edited December 7, 2019 by Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra

[TorvaldTheMild]

Not true, shaped charges from a cannon etc. depend on high velocities to create a superplastic jet, which is what penetrates the armour.  An anti-tank shaped warhead is still dependant on kinetic energy.  They aren't the same as the infantry shaped charges they used in WW2 for example.

Edited December 8, 2019 by TorvaldTheMild

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

Not true, shaped charges should from a cannon etc. depend on high velocities to create a superplastic jet, which is what penetrates the armour.  An anti-tank shaped warhead is still dependant on kinetic energy.

So that's why static shaped charge do so much damage to their targets then? Because they're moving at such high speed? 

 

Or why slow but large shaped charge projectiles eat through so much armour?

Edited December 8, 2019 by Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra

[TorvaldTheMild]

One uses explosives whereas the other uses a chemical reaction due to the high velocity.  They are two totally different ways of producing the same effect.

Edited December 8, 2019 by TorvaldTheMild

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

One uses explosives whereas the other uses a chemical reaction due to the high velocity.

When an explosive charge detonates, that *is* a chemical reaction.

 

And the penetration of a shaped charge is down to the speed *of the explosively formed liner of the shell* not the speed of the shell itself. Doesn't matter if I glue it face-first to the side of a tank or throw it or shoot it out of a cannon, the effect is the same since it doesn't depend on the transfer of energy from the speed imparted by the method of launching to make the kill, unlike say an APFSDSDU around.

 

EDIT: I bet you want a rifled cannon for your HEAT round too.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra

[TorvaldTheMild]

Its down to the speed of the shell and the detonation, its cumulative.