Well, most Missiles being bad at Anti-Tank is not a balance issue of the Tabletop, it is intended. Missile Launchers are a universal gun, decent against vehicles and infantry, thanks to their choice of ammunition. But for that variety they are no ace in any of that category. In the TT HKM is just a Krak-Missile with unlimited range and that rightfully so fr it is no magical anti-tank weapon. It is the primary weapon of no vehicle at all, and making is nearly as strong as a Lascannon would also not fit the setting.

Also if this one-shot gun that probably requires a Techpriest to reload after a Battle is so important to your Mission, maybe change the overall encounter a bit? There is always a chance that they fire the Missile before they even get to the Leman Russ, even more so there is a chance that they will miss that thing or cause that little damage that nothing at all happens. Reliance on a one-shot-only gun for an entire encounter that is strong enough to cause an entire wipe is maybe not a good approach. after all. And because the PCs are off the Death Korps they cant even retreat and gladly accept to burn a Fate Point.

SO if you are willed to change the entire start of the campaign that was nothing else that army consolidation, digging and building some trains maybe some minor changes to vehicle load-out wont hurt either. At last give them tons of melta-bombs or satchel charges so they can make some suicide bomb-run before they get smashed.

It is the primary weapon of no vehicle at all, and making is nearly as strong as a Lascannon would also not fit the setting.

Oh, I dunno, personally I wouldn't see the problem - I mean, it is a one-shot weapon, so it's impossible to make the lascannon, or any other anti-tank weapon for that matter, look any less useful. Simply because it can still miss, and even if you hit it might not be enough, and even if it is enough the enemy might have more than that one tank. Too many dependencies, where a lascannon would just keep shooting every turn.

At last give them tons of melta-bombs or satchel charges so they can make some suicide bomb-run before they get smashed.

+1 to this though

Oh, I dunno, personally I wouldn't see the problem - I mean, it is a one-shot weapon, so it's impossible to make the lascannon, or any other anti-tank weapon for that matter, look any less useful. Simply because it can still miss, and even if you hit it might not be enough, and even if it is enough the enemy might have more than that one tank. Too many dependencies, where a lascannon would just keep shooting every turn.

Well, maybe it is just hard for me to accept the Idea of a usefull HKM.^^ But you kinda have a point there though buffing weapons, so that they life up their representation in fluff might be an overall futile endeavor for that will never work.

But if we already do have grenadiers, why not make use of them, throw bombs and grenades. The Centaur is an open vehicle for fast infantry deployment and some support fire. Make them leave the coffin that will be most likely the first target of the LRuss anyway - maybe even before they fire their HKM. And what more honor can your PC achieve than by flanking a Tank with a Satchel Charge, blowing them self up it that steel behemoth. They have to full fill the death quote of the Grenadiers - not everyone can be a Watchmaster. xD

I'm not ready to swap the two heavy stubbers for lascannons. It doesn't fit with the Siege of Vraks outfitting of the Centaurs and wouldn't really be reasonable besides. Autocannons bother me for the same reasons.

The DKoK favors lascannons over missile launchers all day every day. To the point where they can't even take missile launchers in their army list. Jury-rigging a HK missile launcher to the Centaur wouldn't be much different than jury-rigging a lascannon on it as Centaurs can't mount a HK missile launcher normally.

The DKoK favors lascannons over missile launchers all day every day. To the point where they can't even take missile launchers in their army list. Jury-rigging a HK missile launcher to the Centaur wouldn't be much different than jury-rigging a lascannon on it as Centaurs can't mount a HK missile launcher normally.

Ah, good point. Did not know that Centaurs can not have them. And yea, Lascannons all the way. A year ago I saw some pretty neat PaK 38 Lascannon and PaK 37 Autocannon conversions.

Maybe you can grant such weapon to your squad? When they try to establish a forward outpost they should also have some heavy weapons to create some sort of fortification.

I most certainly do not want to engage anything bigger than a VW Beetle from aboard a centaur...^^

There's not much in TT that can pop a LRBT from the front. A krak missile certainly can't.

It takes an average of 18 hits to the front with a krak missile to take out a LRBT from the front, and it is literally impossible to one-shot it. From the POV of a single squad it might as well be invulnerable.

Krak missiles are not for taking on heavy armour from the front. They are for taking out light to medium vehicles, or rear shots at heavy armour if you can manage it. The only (Imperial) weapon that can do that in TT with any reliability is a close-range melta shot.

Krak missiles are not for taking on heavy armour from the front. They are for taking out light to medium vehicles, or rear shots at heavy armour if you can manage it. The only (Imperial) weapon that can do that in TT with any reliability is a close-range melta shot.

Nah, a BS4 Twin-Linked Assault Cannons with Psybolt ammo atop of some nasty Land Raider can do wonders too. xD

If you do not want to closely engage some AV14, best way to pop it are Lascannons, lots of them and praying for a lucky hit.^^ Though I heard that you can now glance anything to death with the new edition? Is that true?

Also: The Leman Russ is one of the best MBTs in-verse for a reason. Tough as Nails, hitting like a brick - Hammer of the Emperor much?

Krak missiles are not for taking on heavy armour from the front. They are for taking out light to medium vehicles, or rear shots at heavy armour if you can manage it. The only (Imperial) weapon that can do that in TT with any reliability is a close-range melta shot.

Nah, a BS4 Twin-Linked Assault Cannons with Psybolt ammo atop of some nasty Land Raider can do wonders too. xD

If you do not want to closely engage some AV14, best way to pop it are Lascannons, lots of them and praying for a lucky hit.^^ Though I heard that you can now glance anything to death with the new edition? Is that true?

Also: The Leman Russ is one of the best MBTs in-verse for a reason. Tough as Nails, hitting like a brick - Hammer of the Emperor much?

Well yeah if you want to go all cheatin' with the psybolt ammo.

Even a tau railgun (using 7th ed. rules) only has a 1 in 9 chance of one-shoting a LRBT from the front. It should be tough as hell.

Vanquishers work wonders too, or Destroyer weapons of course
both beyond Infantry capabilities

since there is no Javelin-equivalent in the 40k universe the most reasonable thing for infantry to do against an MBT is to score a mobility-kill by tracking the tank and then either charge the **** thing or line a shot up at the rear (not considering terrain like cities which are a tanks worst nightmare without infantry cover)

Comparisons with modern day tech or WW2 technology are misleading. The 40K setting has its own tech. While there may or may not be inconsistencies between fluff and crunch, we do not have to draw on real world examples. We either pick a fluff description or crunch from the TT and can draw conclusions from that.

What historical references are good for is which tactical considerations follow from the 40K status quo of AT weapons versus tank armour. I would argue that the WW2 lessons apply here: armour is to be protected by infantry, especially in an urban setting. A single meltagun can wreak havoc no end. There is no reason not to when life comes cheap and mech doesn't.

As for picking a basis, I prefer the crunch side, so I will go with that in the following.

Being S8 means the HK can fully penetrate any armour except a MBT's frontal armour. And penetration means not just scraping off 3 measly points of SI. We know a single hit must be better than an auto-cannon/plasma cannon hit and weaker than Lascannon. So it sits somewhere between 3d10+8 Pen 6 and 5d10+10 Pen 10. I suggest 4d10+8 Pen 8. Same for Krak missiles. Which is incidentally 1d10 more than in the Core.

Which in turn is incidentally the same I have done for Deathwatch.

Alex

why dont we compare to reality?

considering Forge Worlds awesomly good Imperial Armour book in why they give many details on tanks, weight, weapons and so forth its not a farfetched comparison
arguably the technology of armour in 40k seems to be stuck at WW2 level even though armour steel toughness has increased but i cant remember ever reading of reactive or fragmentation armour (ceramic plating) used on tanks (even tough they use it for Power Armour it seems)

HEAT warhead which by description are most similar to Krak Warheads are actually pretty good against steelarmour unless it gets ridiculously thick at which point it has almost no effect
Melta weapons would to extremly well against steel too but would have almost no effect on ceramic (its used to shield space shuttles during reentry after all and is non-magnetic and non-conductive) so again tank armour seems to be made from steel

the reason i used a javelin as example is because it is still basically the same HEAT missile but uses a top-down attack (it aims to strike the turret from the top) which is less armoured then the front (TT: barrage hit in the hull hit side armour) so this seems viable
also the javelin uses a bit of a trick called a tandem warhead, its actually 2 HEAT warheads that fire after one another to defeat standoff armour (the cages you see on modern APCs or the sideskirts of WW2 tanks) and reactive armour
its not the actually warhead that is weak but the way it is deployed against the tank is what makes all the difference

My two vouchers of Imperial scrip: Comparing technology is folly - 40k uses made-up terms and materials whose properties are up to author's fiat (for example the aforementioned melta<->ceramic relationship, when power armour is sheathed in ceramite and still quite vulnerable to melta weapons), not to mention that the sources (especially FW<->GW, just because they go more into technical details than the average novel) regularly contradict each other on how efficient something is or even whether X actually has Y in the first place.

What we can do, however, is compare atmosphere and style, as this is the one thing that is somewhat consistent in the franchise, and which allows us to take inspiration from the real world ... including, in this case, how soldiers in a related situation would deal with a threat. Needless to say, however, there's still lots of room for interpretation (up to and including complete dismissal, because 40k apparently is what you want it to be), but this is working as intended.

What we can do, however, is compare atmosphere and style, as this is the one thing that is somewhat consistent in the franchise

Consistent? Like a WW1/2-esque tank carrying a super-powerful rapid firing plasma cannon from Star Trek?

Consistent? Like a WW1/2-esque tank carrying a super-powerful rapid firing plasma cannon from Star Trek?

No, but consistent like a WW1/2-esque tank, carrying a super-powerfull rapid firing cannon.

That to be consistent that would be a tank with an autocannon. Now you might argue that we also do have autocannons in WH40k, yes but basically they do very much the same.

Consistent? Like a WW1/2-esque tank carrying a super-powerful rapid firing plasma cannon from Star Trek?

No, but consistent like a WW1/2-esque tank, carrying a super-powerfull rapid firing cannon.

That to be consistent that would be a tank with an autocannon. Now you might argue that we also do have autocannons in WH40k, yes but basically they do very much the same.

I'm pretty sure that there is a massive difference between a weapon firing a conventional armor piercing round and a weapon firing a miniature sun enclosed into a magnetic containment field.

To make a long story short, each weapon has a pre-defined battlefield role due to the TT. A Krak Missile must do less damage than the Lascannon because the ML is more versatile.

Alex

I'm pretty sure that there is a massive difference between a weapon firing a conventional armor piercing round and a weapon firing a miniature sun enclosed into a magnetic containment field.

I am also sure that some future-fantasy armor is more stable than real-life compound steel. But that is not how a consistent comparison works - we have to abstract.

An in that regard the Leman Russ Executioner Turret more or less has the same impact than some sort of autocannon. It just pierces some armor better and has a splash effect. That is like comparing a Flak 2,o with a flak 3,7 just with different rounds.

We have to argue what force is applied in what way. What kind of sudo-sci-fi it looks like is not interesting if we compare the raw effect of weapons on their Armour counterpart. Also: Do you realize that you took the only "regular" Leman Russ Armament that that is somewhat distinguished from our "real" word in terms that it looks fancy?

Also: Do you realize that you took the only "regular" Leman Russ Armament that is somewhat distinguished from our "real" word in terms that it looks fancy?

The Leman Russ Annihilator mounts a twin-linked lascannon. The Eradicator fires mini-nukes. The Punisher has a minigun scaled for tanks. Any Leman Russ can have sponson mounted multi-meltas or plasma cannons. These things are not weapons that are "somewhat distinguished" from IRL tank weapons - they don't even have a legit counterpart. You can say that a plasma cannon should have a similar effect than an autocannon because both goes *kaboom* when they hit their targets, but it is a rather far-fetched comparison.

The difference between an autocannon and a plasma cannon is not just "LOL, the later hits harder" - for example, the plasma bolt will not be affected by gravity (or at least not in the way than the AC round).

Another example why the WW1/2 comparison won't work: the Leman Russ is equipped with a weapon stabilizer so it can fire on the move without re-acquiring the target after each shot. This kind of equipment was introduced late-WW2 (or mid-WW2 if you count the Stuart) and turned armored warfare upside down almost as much as later the ATGMs.

But in the end it is still "Bang" with a certain amount of destructive power, balanced to certain amount of armor.

So a Lascannon is made for roughly penetrating a Leman Russ Front.

So a Pak 38 is made for roughly penetrating a T-34 Front.

Bot are anti-tank guns, both do roughly the same thing. And now we cant compare them because a Lascannon is Light and the PaK utilizes gunpowder? I doubt that any soldier would care about that. What matters is the fact that it works. And so we can perfectly compare how these were utilized.

But hey, expand this:

LR Annihilator: Two PaKs... yea a complex build but still... PaK

LR Punisher Minigun - Wow, a fast firing gun? That is so special? The Gatling is not that much of a new design so lets take it for a Maxim, fast gun is fast.

LR Eradicator - Big boom for future concrete-steel-bunkers. Well, we do fine with a Churchil AVRE that also has some mortar for real-life concrete-steel-bunkers.

Does it matter that it is a mini-nuke? Nope, not the slightest for its usage and field doctrine still is the same.

I dunno, but it is like saying that a rock and an intercontinental ballistic missile is roughly the same thing as they can both kill a guy from afar. And then saying that an army using rocks and an army using ICBMs will follow the same combat doctrine because they are using "roughly similar" weapons.

A lascannon and a Pak is an even worse comparison. The lascannon will need much different training than the Pak because it fires a beam of concentrated energy so no ballistics, no leading the target (the beam will hit it instantly), no advantage for sloped armor, no hiding from the target once the weapon is fired.

Also, the Eradicator does not destroy the bunker just cooks the guys inside. And no, there hasn't been a single MBT in service that was armed with a Gatling gun - the only Gatling gun users were the AA tanks.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone who thinks that applying WW1/2 tactics is inherently wrong, but other than the aesthetics, WW1/2 has as much stuff in common with the IG than any other randomly picked era past-Crimea War. Saying that "You should charge a tank with shaped charges, it kinda-sorta worked in WW2!" isn't more theme-friendly than feeding the tank with krak missiles until it drops dead Cold War style.

You're overcomplicating things.

To me it kind of is, simply because waste sacrifice of lives is part of the overall theme of the Imperial Guard, and because the tabletop has specific rules (and equipment) for this stuff, which indicates this is intended to happen.

Yes, krak missiles would work, too. The thing is, the Imperium seems to have a lot more grunts than krak launchers and missiles.

Also ... panzerschrecks and bazookas were already in use in WW2 as well.

Honestly, next thing we know you'll argue that bayonet charges and chainswords aren't theme-friendly!

As noted earlier, If you wanted the Gm, could decide that an HK missile works like a Javelin and thus always attacks a tank from the side (IE: top). I certainly would rule that weapons like a Hellstrike missile certainly work that way! If Players want to see their war in terms of modern combat (As I tend to), then that's fine. Modify accordingly. If you are more interested in a WWII esque feel than use RAW. Remember, As Lynata often points out: Both interprtations are equally valid even in the same 'verse! Also remember that different tech levels exist within the Imperium. An HK produced in an advanced industrial world might look slightly different from an HK produced at a modern Imperial Hiveworld!

You're overcomplicating things.

This. Analogies always have their limits. Only completely the same situations are completely the same in comparison.

However, one can compare certain aspects. And that's what I have done earlier when I claimed that tanks shouldn't operate in dense terrain without infantry support (in fact I would claim that for most settings) in 40K. Just as in WW2, infantry must ensure that your prescious Leman Russ Vanquisher doesn't get melta'd to slag by a single enemy anti-tank team/operator.

Alex

PS The gameline should have added top and bottom stats for vehicles. This is a RPG - add granularity compared to the TT.

And what exactly does a lascannon not firing ballistic shells have to do with the tactics of its use? That the gunner does not have to lead the target still doesn't change a thing about how this gun would be deployed in the field.

Ohoh... the instant-hitting alone would make the lascannon a very different beast on the field. For one, you don't have to aim with it. Just turn it to the direction of the target, pull the trigger and the beam will instantly hit regardless of range, wind conditions, evasive maneuvers or anything. You just need a guy with good eyes and the weapon is pretty much an auto-hit. As the beam cannot "bounce off" from the armor because of a bad angle, the firer doesn't have to possess special knowledge about said angles either. This means that equipping specially trained anti-tank crews with lascannons is pretty much superfluous as you will either waste talent (by having crack soldiers crewing a weapon that can be used by a rookie just as well) or waste a weapon. And when you spread out your lascannons amongst the squads (this is also a good idea because the lascannon is not a very stealthy weapon so a wider distribution will decrease material losses too), you move pretty darn far away from the way the Pak (or any other AT weapon, including ATGMs) was fielded.

As the beam cannot "bounce off" from the armor because of a bad angle, the firer doesn't have to possess special knowledge about said angles either. This means that equipping specially trained anti-tank crews with lascannons is pretty much superfluous as you will either waste talent (by having crack soldiers crewing a weapon that can be used by a rookie just as well) or waste a weapon.

Well, Lascannons get still fired with the Base BS of their crew (IG3, SM4) so there has to be some sort of skill involved. Also a waste of talent? Maybe ask Knight Commander Pask, one of the best know tank ace of the imperium about that - huge parts of his reputations are because of his skilled use of a lascannon.

Also fielding a PaK does not differ that much from fielding a Lascannon. Its greatest weakness might be it cumbersome nature and weight.