Hi everyone,

I GM a group of RT for nearly 3 years now and i gave them a Mars-Pattern BC as reward for one of their adventures. In the creation process of the Battlecruiser i read the rules about the Nova Cannon. If i understood it correctly it deals 2d5+4 damage, armor ignoring but blocked by voidshields.

My question is: Why is this so low? Thats 14 damage at its maximum and the fact that it is blocked by shields means that its completely useless as a singleweapon on long ranges, cause the shield will be up again, before the next shot. What concerns me even more is: the Titan Forge Lance deals 1d10+4 damage, armor ignoring as well. So in fact the nova cannon deals the same damage as the Lance, but the shells are extremly rare and expensive.

So did i miss something?

Why are Nova Cannons so hyped?

Sry for my bad english, its not my native language.

A Nova Cannon deals that amount of damage per hit , and according to the rules each shell causes 1d5 hits to every target within 1 VU or 1d5+2 hits to one target if the shell impacts directly. This means that on average a Cruiser-sized vessel is taking 3 hits, reduced to 1 for Void Shields, or 5 hits reduced to 3 if directly struck. A solid Nova Cannon hit thus deals an average of 30 Hull Integrity damage to a Cruiser-sized target.

Now if you want to make them even more powerful you can consider having them ignore Void Shields altogether, as they were portrayed in Battlefleet Gothic. This ramps up the average damage to 30 on an indirect hit and 50 on a direct hit against any target, quite the terrifying concept to be sure.

Okay thank you very much

plus because they are fired like micro cannons, they technically can be fired from double listed range at a penalties, for some that is, i believe, 80 VU's! Granted you will have to find a way for them to see a target that far away, but it is doable.

plus because they are fired like micro cannons, they technically can be fired from double listed range at a penalties, for some that is, i believe, 80 VU's! Granted you will have to find a way for them to see a target that far away, but it is doable.

In fact, you don't. it is specifically noted in the rules that you can only fire the Nova canon in the mentionned range bracket (usually 6-40).

hum, must have mis-read that somewhere. Probably that blurb about adjusting difficulty of the test based on range like normal tripped me up.