Something bothers me about Deathwatch's stats for the assault cannon. In the background, the assault cannon is described as having a huge rate of fire, chewing through ammunition and armour, and prone to overheating.

And I just don't see that in the stats. A twinlinked heavy bolter beats the assault cannon in RoF and the storm bolter, a *basic weapon* comes close.

So a proposal.

1. Add the "Storm" quality. Huge RoF, huge ammunition expenditure.

2. Add the "Overheats" quality. The weapons is less reliable. Master-crafted and Exceptional variants may simply eject overheating shells instead of jamming. To represent how ridiculous an "auto-miss" sounds when firing point-blank at a horde.

3. +1 Pen for every hit on the same target after the first, stacking for future hits. So +0 pen for the first, +1 pen for the second, +2 for the third, etc. Hits being counted before Storm doubles.

So any thoughts on those suggestions?

What about having a rule that widen the overheat range depending on how long the cannon has been firing ? Like if its fire continuously for 4 turns, it could overheats on 83-100, and it could "loss" a point of overheat for each turn it doesn't fire.

Interesting!

As little as I've dug into the specifics of DW I don't think the problem is as much with the assault cannon as with how they handled the origonally slow firing but hard hitting heavy bolter.

The description of the heavy bolter had it firing at a "chunk chunk chunk" steady but slow rate of fire. Then Dawn of War decided that they had an RoF all but identical to an assault cannon. That visual stuck in FFG's mind to the point the hb and the azz cannon got stuck rsther similar.

The assault cannon should have ap 6 and razor sharp. Does it at least have that?

Btw... i need my spell checker! Sucks doing this by phone.

I'm going off the assault cannon stats in the Living Errata v1.1

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/deathwatch/news/faq/Deathwatch%20Living%20Errata%20v1-1.pdf

It's pen 6 at least...

Astartes Assault
Cannon
Mounted 150m –/–/10 2d10+12 I 6 200 3 Full
Devastating
(1) Tearing
80 30 Famed

Part of the issue, I think, is that FFG inherited a system where one cannot realistically have a weapon fire more than ten rounds a turn, and ammunition is tracked individually. In reality, the Assault Cannon should probably be -/-/200, but that doesn't work in the system. So you have to assume that each "round" is actually 20 or so.

It's an abstraction, sure. But other weapons manage to get higher RoFs than the assault cannon. Twin-linked heavy bolters spew out more "shots" and even the regular storm bolter also manages that trick. Which really jars with the description of the assault cannon,

If you add storm, you can easily have it be -/-/30, twin linked plus storm even more. I would add that an assault cannon automatically forces a pinning test as well.

I like this idea and will def play test it when my players get access to the assault cannon. Also is there an official ruling on back pack ammo supplies while wearing terminator armour? I know most assault cannons have the ammo drum/box but the Spacewolf model has it with a back pack feed.