Right now, single-shot weapons with the Accurate quality rule the battlefield.

So, to make Accurate useful but not utterly overpowered, and to emphasize that Accurate is about good shots, how about this:
The Accurate rule still gives its benefit of +10 to Aim but instead of the extra 2d10, it gains +1 Pen AND Felling(1) / increases Felling by 1 per DoS. Both Pen and Felling because goddammnit TB as armor sucks and Felling comes closest to doing something about that.

This way, Accurate (Basic? unsure about keeping this restriction) weapons are still great sniper weapons, particularly against big, tough targets, but they are no longer straight up better.

What do you think?

My sniper needs his +2d10 to do anything. A sniper rifle should kill a civilian human in one hit (one of my most common targets) and adding pen and felling doesn't help much with that.

I don't see much trouble in terms of power imbalance. Our heavy gunner always outdamages the rest of the party anyways, it's more about filling your role than being as powerful as everyone else in a firefight.

The problem with Sniper Guns, lets say the Long Las, is not that a good marksman can kill someone with it, the problem is that it makes a horrible Gunner a really good one with nice damage.

Lets take a Goon with BS20

he Shoots at 50m, so half range. He aims a basic Long Las, no Upgrades (Though a red dot seems to be the standard these days)

What does he do? He rolls on a 20+10+10+10+10=60, A FRIGGIN 60! He triples his BS!

Now give him a standard Lasgun with semi automatic

20+10+10=40, still, he doubles his BS, but what we notice is, that one of the additional D10 damage is already automatically included into the accurate and single shot bonus, yey!

It not just makes hitting something easier, nah, it makes it easier for the greatest failure on the shooting range and it has some bonus damage but also makes it easier to score that bonus damage, hurray! This has come so far that one of my one-shot groups tried to make the long las the standard rifle for their entire regiments. But they were not playing snipers, the stormed a city with them, guns blazing. That is not filing a role, that is just broken.

Hm, that is weird. It does work if you have players who leave sniper weapons for snipers and aren't trying to break the game. Would one solution be to require a proficiency trait and automatically grant it to classes that get the weapon? Another might be to hand-waive it as rarity, but then I think sniper rifles are quite common.

Lets take a Goon with BS20

he Shoots at 50m, so half range. He aims a basic Long Las, no Upgrades (Though a red dot seems to be the standard these days)

What does he do? He rolls on a 20+10+10+10+10=60, A FRIGGIN 60! He triples his BS!

That's

BS 20, +10 half range, +10 half-aim, +10 more for half aim, due to accuracy and +10 for single shot, right?

Now give him a standard Lasgun with semi automatic

20+10+10=40, still, he doubles his BS, but what we notice is, that one of the additional D10 damage is already automatically included into the accurate and single shot bonus, yey!

Meaning Burst fire, meaning you're comparing apples and oranges a bit here.

Have you ever thought about comparing burst fire to full auto? No? There's exactly 10% on each roll that burst fire is better (where the burst hits and the FA doesn't).

Does that make every FA weapon broken?

It not just makes hitting something easier, nah, it makes it easier for the greatest failure on the shooting range and it has some bonus damage but also makes it easier to score that bonus damage,

hurray! This has come so far that one of my one-shot groups tried to make the long las the standard rifle for their entire regiments. But they were not playing snipers, the stormed a city with them, guns blazing. That is not filing a role, that is just broken.

That always scares my designated sharpshooter ("sniper"). Single targets, preferbly high value ones he knows how to deal with, and does so very well.

Lotsa guys? his personal nightmare. Just as it should be.

eriktheguy, yeah, I get that it would be nice if the sniper could one-shot humans, but this system simply isn't that gritty. The lasgun should be able to one-shot people already, and it can't. Nor can the Hellgun. Or the bloody bolter.

+1d10 Damage is a pretty big amount in this system, and Accurate gives up to 2d10. At 3d10+(4-8) you are pretty **** close to the damage a tank round does, if without the blast. (3d10+10)
Yes, a full-auto weapon can do more damage. I hit a guy with a full 8-round burst from a heavy stubber once and that wasn't pretty. But a full-auto weapon is at -30 vs an accurate one. It is much easier to get the +2d10 through Accurate than it is to get, say, 2 x 1d10+4 from a Heavy Stubber.

That's why I think Accurate is too strong: It easily gets you the strength of a tank gun, without any of the drawbacks of a heavy weapon.

Simple fix: make Accurate give a +10 to any aim but require a full aim action (i.e. whole round of setup time) to add extra damage. After all if you don`t take the time to aim properly you`ll probably still hit but you probably won`t hit the vulnerable spot bit you wanted.

Slightly odd fix: make the Long-las use charge cells (making it one shot.) This kind of makes the longlas take "Crazy" Larkin-style hotshot packs and reduces it`s effectiveness as an all-round better lasgun.

eriktheguy, yeah, I get that it would be nice if the sniper could one-shot humans, but this system simply isn't that gritty. The lasgun should be able to one-shot people already, and it can't. Nor can the Hellgun. Or the bloody bolter.

Actually, I one-shot humans with my sniper rifle all the time. Between 3d10+ and some degrees of success shoring up the lowest die for insurance, it's usually pretty easy for a sniper to down a lightly armored humanoid target that doesn't see him (and it should be).

Let me fix that for you:

... it's usually pretty easy for a sniper to down a heavily armored MEQ target that doesn't see him, or sees him for you can jump, laugh and dance for giggles with a friggin sniper rifle in hands while still being SUPER ACCURATE (and it should NOT be).

We also used several house rules for Sniper Rifles, for example also the requirement to aim a full action or to brace the weapon like a heavy weapon on solid ground with a bi-pod (Like any sniper rifle should be if you try to be SUPER ACCURATE^^) Also we changed the paragraph about the extra DMG only activating for any additional DoS, not counting the initial success DoS etc.

And guess what? The guy with an already pretty good BS (Our sniper) hardly noticed any difference. It was the incompetents that suffered the most from this. Also our sniper was already pretty stationary though he had not to but now it actually made sense (It still made sense before but just because his camo cloak). With a selection of these rules it was pretty easy to get rid of the retards that took a Long Las just for being a rule wise upgrade for a Lasgun. (Also they had to take a city once and my little "Sniper Valley" Scenario where pretty horrible trained partisans with a REALLY bad BS wiped their ass with hunting rifles made them sick of it^^)

Because hey, if they want to stick with that rules, okay. But then even a Child with the Hunting Rifle of its Dad can one-shot a Player-Character from a distance where he has no chance to spot that little bugger.

As it stands right now, nothing comes close to the damage dealt by an accurate weapon unless you start getting into heavy weapons or get close enough to use a melta.
Accurate Basic weapons are just that much better than one without Accurate. And frankly, a sniper rifle dealing as much damage as a tank's main gun is really weird, in my view.

Personally, I'd like either all guns to be potentially deadly or all of them not to be. The difference between guns is in details (a bit more damage, a bit more Pen, ammo capacity etc.), not in tripling the damage...

This seems to come up with every 40K rpg at some point.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to say it does the same damage as a tank cannon. It might roll the similar damage if you get 4 extra degrees of success (at lower pen) but that the same damage as if you just managed to roll a hit with a tank cannon or even if you missed and didn't (or couldn't physically) scatter far enough. Plus you've done that same damage to everything within 8 or more meters and weather you detonated the guys head with a single high power rifle round or they were decapitated by nearby explosion the guys the same amount of dead.

Sure, it's not massively realistic there's a lot that isn't. I get that you can drop a man dead with single well placed shot sooo all shots are accurate at point blank range? Does it make sense that that battle cannon does the same damage at 7.5m's away as it does on direct hit? Nope.

And there's always the weakness of that single sniper shot, it is a single shot when it comes to dodging it. A good auto or semi auto attack makes them need a bunch of successes to avoid the damage. With the tank cannon, they need to be supernaturally quick to avoid a direct hit.

You'll go mad trying to make the system a 100% accurate simulation.

One of things that annoyed me about it was that when some-one got this massive number of successes on a accurate weapon shot and they'd roll up a deadly amount of damage...to the right leg. I was left thinking you specifically aimed to do the most damage and that was the leg (not that shot to the leg couldn't kill you).

So I make them do called shots to the head to get the extra damage. If they haven't got the skills that allow them to negate called shot penalties then that's basically the same to hit roll as a semi auto attack but gaining 1d rather than 1 extra hit. If they do have the special skills then they are supposed to deadly snipers able to kill a man with every shot (and still needing a bit of luck).

Which isn't something that should be discouraged in a game about soldiers fighting the scum of the universe if you ask me.