Anti-tank vs blast

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

The size (calibre), the type of explosive, the material of the liner, and the distance from the explosion to the target surface. Speed is unimportant, all of that is imparted by the explosive acting on the liner and turning it into a high-velocity superplastic jet.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra

[TorvaldTheMild]

The heat from the jet is unimportant, its the velocity of the jet that punctures the armour.

Edited December 8, 2019 by TorvaldTheMild

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

The heat from the jet is unimportant, its the velocity of the jet that punctures the armour.

YES! The velocity of the JET. Not the projectile, the JET! As I have been for several posts now.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

*snip* by the explosive acting on the liner and turning it into a high-velocity superplastic jet.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra

[TorvaldTheMild]

Like I said its cumulative, which is why both velocities will determine the size of charge needed, configuration etc.

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

If you insist on contradicting yourself, I shall yield the arena to you so you can work in peace for the enjoyment and entertainment of the crowd.

[TorvaldTheMild]

How did I contradict myself, I've been arguing the same thing since I started debating with you?   I said its due to both.  I don't care about the 'crowd' if you were to prove me wrong I'd happily concede.

Edited December 8, 2019 by TorvaldTheMild

[Slasher956]

The issue isn’t AT...its a mix of blast being replaced with ransom shots, everything having a toughness, hit points being replaced with more wounds and lots of weapons getting multi damage...

 

Oh and to the person talking about the exorcist one shorting rhinos...err it’s still 80% of the sisters long range AT...ie anything over 36”...the other 20% are single use hunter killer missiles....

[Mazer Rackham]

 

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

 

 

As far as I know Challenger 1 had a 120mm rifled barrel and spat HEAT rounds through it?

 

And that is where we leave real world ballistics, armour sublimation and all that behind gentlemen and ladies, we don't want it in our gravity defying, rocket machinegun supermen, space-laser game, no sir!  

 

Please keep it OT everyone.

 

MR.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Mazer Rackham
Clarity.

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

 

 

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

 

 

As far as I know Challenger 1 had a 120mm rifled barrel and spat HEAT rounds through it. 

HEAT round without certain mods dislike rifling, since the spin dissipates the jet.

[Mazer Rackham]

Ah, must have used a sleeve or something then.

 

Every day is a learning day. 

 

Moving on...

 

MR.

[Noserenda]

As a treadhead i like the idea of dual profiles, its not something GW has ever toyed with outside of AC lists though :(  But yeah the problem isnt other weapons, its the Vanquisher being spectacularly badly statted.

[MegaVolt87]

I don't think you can revise AT weapons properly in isolation. It's a symptom of the wider issues with the overall shooting mechanics; which would fix AT weapons in the process with a complete re-work of ranged mechanics.

[Marshal Rohr]

The simplest solution is the dual profile, which GW seems reticent to implement. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult (it’s just a sub line on the weapon on the datasheet) but you’d have to go back and redo all the datasheets. When targeting an enemy infantry unit tanks do X, when targeting an enemy vehicle tanks do Y. This shouldn’t carry over into energy weapons, like lascannons, which are *only* anti tank. Ideally, they would try a system for everything so a bolter can’t hurt a rhino, or a lasgun can’t wound a land raider. Keeps the current hitpoint system without breaking the game. Edited December 8, 2019 by Marshal Rohr

[TorvaldTheMild]

The simplest solution is the dual profile, which GW seems reticent to implement. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult (it’s just a sub line on the weapon on the datasheet) but you’d have to go back and redo all the datasheets. When targeting an enemy infantry unit tanks do X, when targeting an enemy vehicle tanks do Y. This shouldn’t carry over into energy weapons, like lascannons, which are *only* anti tank. Ideally, they would try a system for everything so a bolter can’t hurt a rhino, or a lasgun can’t wound a land raider. Keeps the current hitpoint system without breaking the game.

If they are doing a significant overhaul for 9th they might be able to do it, though I think that's just wishful thinking I don't think they are changing the rules that much for 9th.

[Subtleknife]

I honestly dont get why they dont do dual profiles for some weapons. A host of weapons already have it ie plasma. It just makes sense.

[Claws and Effect]

Grav flux bombard already does that.

 

When targeting infantry you get an additional d3 shots for every 5 models in the unit.

 

When targeting vehicles or monsters the damage is increased from 2 to 5.

 

It's an elegant solution, but it was the weapon was also originally designed that way. It's a different task entirely to do that with every weapon in the game.

[Finkmilkana]

They actually recently went somewhat the opposite direction and changed the demolished cannon from 1d3 normal, 1d6 again 5 or more models to just 1d6 against all targets.

[Noserenda]

I mean Missile launchers have been doing literally exactly what tank cannons should have been doing since Rogue trader, where they probably would have had split profiles but cannons were an afterthought, Autocannons were originally an MBT style main cannon, which explains the weirdly under gunned Predator turret* 

(*At least until recently and 30k where the Predator Autocannon finally became less puny! )

Edited December 8, 2019 by Noserenda

[TorvaldTheMild]

Agreed but the predator autocannon is at least more useful this edition, I never took them before.

[Claws and Effect]

The only problem I forsee with dual profiles for everything based on what it is targeting is the sheer amount of bloat it would add to the rules.

 

I mean, how many distinct heavy weapons are there across the game?

 

The extremely high strength random number of shot weapons actually work fairly well for what they are supposed to be.

 

Take the Demolisher cannon for example. D6 shots at S10 with D6 damage. At max potential it can one-shot a Warhound Titan. Which is perfectly fair since it's a piece of ordnance designed to breach fortress walls. I imagine the outer walls of your average hive city are a good bit tougher than a Rhino hull, so it is perfectly logical for a Rhino to be utterly vaporized by a direct hit from a Demolisher.

 

Same for the Volcano Cannon. When you look at the things it's designed to shoot at, anything less than those targets will be atomized, and rightly so.

 

What stops those weapons from being overpowered is the swingy nature of the shots fired by it. The Demolisher can deal anywhere from 1 to 36 damage depending on dice rolls, with the average being around 17 or so.

 

A lascannon or missile launcher on the other hand, is a much smaller weapon that is intended to be man portable. It stands to reason that it's not as effective. You certainly wouldn't expect an anti tank rocket launcher to be as devastating as the main gun of a battle tank.

 

On the flamer side of the equation, sure it can hit a vehicle a lot of times. But very few flamer weapons have a strength higher than 5, which means you're probably not going to get a lot of return from shooting them at T7 and T8 vehicles.

[Noserenda]

You wouldnt need to give a second profile to everything. "Binful of HE" cannons like the demolisher only fire precisely that because their barrels are too short and fat to fire anything else for example, in fact its only a couple of guns it could work for that _dont_ already have an alt firing mode. I guess just a legacy of being older designs?

[Irbis]

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.

 

I actually like blast weapons being actually dangerous for once. It was always colossally stupid to me that half ton shell from Vindicator could only do one wound to a monster (or hull point to tank) when in reality, explosion that big would literally tear them apart. Maybe AT needs higher strength (and bonus to damage if you exceed target's toughness by X?) but I don't see how big explosions being good is a bad thing.

 

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.

 

Funnily enough that's kinda realistic. Look at US tank forces in France, Sherman with 76 mm anti tank gun had far superior penetration but all tank commanders demanded 75 mm version, as its high explosive shell was much better in all scenarios besides vainglorious tank duels with Germans (which was pretty rare occurrence). To the point tank units fielded 4-6 Shermans with 75 mm gun for a single 76 mm variant.

 

I read D-Day history pretty recently and analogy to Vanquisher and regular Russ gun came to mind pretty much immediately

 

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.

 

This makes no sense. If I focus flamer on one dude instead of swinging it in an arc to hit whole squad, why would he magically take less damage? If I hit big monster with mortar directly, making him absorb whole explosion and shrapnel, why would it take as much damage as troopers in a squad where said shell exploded in the middle hitting no one directly but covering area to hit multiple troopers?

 

Maybe characters could use some sort of blast protection, but anti-explosion and anti-flame fields of past editions were dumbest rules around

 

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.

 

You're aware that the 'not supposed to be AT' gun of ISU-152 (the closest analog to demolisher in WW2) with its 'short barrel and large calibre' gun could literally blow Tiger tank turret clean off with a single hit? Or kill the entire crew with the amount of spalling (turning inside of armor plate into shrapnel) it produced on hull hit even if it didn't penetrate? Sounds pretty anti-tank to me

[nanosquid]

I would have preferred if Blast stayed as a weapon type. It could be identical to Heavy except damage would spill over like flails. It makes little sense to me for a tank shell to be d6 shots rather than one shot that might catch multiple targets (eg d6 damage w/ spillover) Edited December 15, 2019 by Nazgob

[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.

 

This makes no sense.

 

 

What makes no sense is how damaging an explosion is to you being dependent on how many other people are near the blast, like you are wearing some kind of magnetic shrapnel suit that attracts the blast from all directions. The chance of a diret hit from a weapon causing more damage to a large creature is what the Damage stat should be for, not the number of shots.

[Panzer]

I would have preferred if Blast stayed as a weapon type. It could be identical to Heavy except damage would spill over like flails. It makes little sense to me for a tank shell to be d6 shots rather than one shot that might catch multiple targets (eg d6 damage w/ spillover)

 

Doing d6 shots with 1 damage each or 1 shot with d6 damage that spills over is pretty much exactly the same thing though. Just that having d6 shots is more reliable to get anything through compared to having just a single all or nothing shot. That's why former blast weapons got multiple shots to begin with. It just uses the core rules to achieve the same effect you want to achieve by adding a special rule.

Edited December 15, 2019 by sfPanzer