I recently published a blog post comparing the Trooper Heavy Weapons and looking at if you'd want to spend more for the exhaust weapons. Check it HERE.

At the end I posted a ranking of the various Trooper weapons. I thought I would re-post that here and ask y'all to reply with your own rankings:

1. Scattergun
2. DLT-19
3. Flamer
4. MPL-B
5. HH-12
6. Z-6
7. MPL-I
8. T-7

What do you think? I almost talked myself into ranking the MPL-B higher, but I think I need more games with it first to make up my mind.

The Z-6 is definitely better than the MPL-B and the HH-12. Not needing to Ready the weapon each turn AND having such high damage potential gives it an edge.

I can only assume this list is to drive controversy... The Z-6 should be #1 or #2.

1 minute ago, WWPDSteven said:

I can only assume this list is to drive controversy... The Z-6 should be #1 or #2.

Nope, I actually use the Z-6 in almost every game I play. Given the option I would prefer the weapons listed above it in my Rebel Trooper squads.

As I'm mainly Rebel player, my ranking may be a bit skewed, as I value imperial weapons by how much I don't want to see them on the opposite side It is also subjective list, based equally on my preference as on other measures. That said, for me it's:

1. DLT-19 - these bastards are everywhere, and for a good reason. Best range, great damge/cost ratio, high reliability

2. Z6 - in one of those games one will roll 4 crits with Z6. I did, once. It is usually more like 1 hit, but it's a cheap weapon on a cheap platform. What's not to love?

3. MPL-B - ranged blast, Impact 2. But mostly ranged blast. Sooooooooooooooo fun!

4. Flamer - with Snowies a spray weapon got its ultimate platform. Just watch it wreck faces.

5. HH-12 - great with Veers, so-so with Vader.

6. Scattergun - simply because I haven't used it yet, I'm so enamored with Barrage Trooper.

7. MPL-I - Ion is not that great. I prefer to kill armored stuff quicker, for which I need more impact, rather than try to disable them. And I usually ignore ATSTs at all, focusing on other stuff, and that's what Ions are best against.

8. T-7 - again, ion in my local meta is just too situational.

2 minutes ago, Shanturin said:

As I'm mainly Rebel player, my ranking may be a bit skewed, as I value imperial weapons by how much I don't want to see them on the opposite side It is also subjective list, based equally on my preference as on other measures. That said, for me it's:

1. DLT-19 - these bastards are everywhere, and for a good reason. Best range, great damge/cost ratio, high reliability

2. Z6 - in one of those games one will roll 4 crits with Z6. I did, once. It is usually more like 1 hit, but it's a cheap weapon on a cheap platform. What's not to love?

3. MPL-B - ranged blast, Impact 2. But mostly ranged blast. Sooooooooooooooo fun!

4. Flamer - with Snowies a spray weapon got its ultimate platform. Just watch it wreck faces.

5. HH-12 - great with Veers, so-so with Vader.

6. Scattergun - simply because I haven't used it yet, I'm so enamored with Barrage Trooper.

7. MPL-I - Ion is not that great. I prefer to kill armored stuff quicker, for which I need more impact, rather than try to disable them. And I usually ignore ATSTs at all, focusing on other stuff, and that's what Ions are best against.

8. T-7 - again, ion in my local meta is just too situational.

Good reasoning, but I am sure you'll like the Scattergun once you've used it. It is magic when combined with Concussion Grenades.

And I totally get the Z-6 love, I just hate the inconsistency. If it were in a squad with offensive surges it would be magic.

The Z-6 is better than most weapons just on a purely mathematical perspective.

White Dice have 5 Blank, 1 Surge, 1 Hit, and 1 Crit. With Rebel troopers, that translates to a 1/4 probability of generating a hit/Crit per dice. The average expected damage is 1.5 each time a Z-6 shoots.

Lets compare that to the DLT-19. There is 1 blank, 1 surge, 1 crit, and 5 hit results on Red dice. That translates to a 7/8 probability of generating a hit/crit per dice. With an average expected damage of 1.75.

So the DLT-19 has a slightly higher expected damage, and a very low probability of no damage. However the Z-6 has a very large potential damage. Considering that the Z-6 is only 22 points, on a very cheap unit, it compares quite favorably.

Scattergun and Pierce is so good.

Z-6 being on every trooper is more an indictment of how bad the Rebel Trooper heavy weapon choices are, rather than how good the Z-6 is. A 6 damage ceiling is pointless if you aren't realistically rolling 3+ on a consistant basis, and aim isn't very efficient with non-surge white dice.

Funny to rate them all in the same list since as was accurately stated you can only use one of two on any given trooper unit.

But I guess a list of which trooper type was best wouldn't leave as much room for sizzling hot takes like saying anything negative about the Z-6.

10 minutes ago, DrunkTarkin said:

Funny to rate them all in the same list since as was accurately stated you can only use one of two on any given trooper unit.

But I guess a list of which trooper type was best wouldn't leave as much room for sizzling hot takes like saying anything negative about the Z-6.

Yeah, it's a little bit of an impractical exercise to put them all in one linear list like that. They all serve different purposes and interact with the unit they are equipped on and a faction's other units differently. Moreover, you are never going to have the opportunity to choose between a DLT-19 and a Z-6 when building a list.

At a minimum, the list should look something like this:

Empire

1. Stormtroopers + DLT-19

2. Snowtroopers + flamethrower

Rebels

1. Fleet troopers + scattergun

2. Rebel troopers + Z-6

Etc.

6 minutes ago, Orkimedes said:

Yeah, it's a little bit of an impractical exercise to put them all in one linear list like that. They all serve different purposes and interact with the unit they are equipped on and a faction's other units differently. Moreover, you are never going to have the opportunity to choose between a DLT-19 and a Z-6 when building a list.

At a minimum, the list should look something like this:

Empire

1. Stormtroopers + DLT-19

2. Snowtroopers + flamethrower

Rebels

1. Fleet troopers + scattergun

2. Rebel troopers + Z-6

Etc.

Impractical, yes. But I approached it as if I could take them with any unit. It was a rather spur of the moment thing.

@Orkimedes you seem to be more gifted with statistics than I am based on other posts. For my own curiosity, have you calculated the odd of rolling various numbers of successes with the Z-6? It is certainly a weapon with a much larger spread than the others.

Just now, shmitty said:

Impractical, yes. But I approached it as if I could take them with any unit. It was a rather spur of the moment thing.

@Orkimedes you seem to be more gifted with statistics than I am based on other posts. For my own curiosity, have you calculated the odd of rolling various numbers of successes with the Z-6? It is certainly a weapon with a much larger spread than the others.

I'm actually working on something like that for all of the weapons; but yes, the Z-6 has very high variability. I'll post when I get the other stuff together at the same time.

2 minutes ago, Orkimedes said:

I'm actually working on something like that for all of the weapons; but yes, the Z-6 has very high variability. I'll post when I get the other stuff together at the same time.

Admittedly not any kind of statistician but I think it would be appropriate to consider what they do over a six turn or twelve action game rather than a single die roll, since yes the standard deviations are going to be all over the place (lookin' at you, Z-6) but also the weapons that need reloading are going to take a beating in action effeciency.

18 minutes ago, DrunkTarkin said:

Admittedly not any kind of statistician but I think it would be appropriate to consider what they do over a six turn or twelve action game rather than a single die roll, since yes the standard deviations are going to be all over the place (lookin' at you, Z-6) but also the weapons that need reloading are going to take a beating in action effeciency.

Yeah, I’m trying to figure out how best to account for “soft” variables like exhaust, since it’s hard to know how many times a game you are going to be able to fire a weapon. Range is a big factor in that sort of thinking as well.

Just real quick, hear is what the hit table looks like for the Z-6:

I only ran 100k iterations, so the percentages may be off by about %.10 or so (and the hit/crit percentages should be identical in a perfect world).

Basically, it confirms what the average hit calculation (1.5) tells you; you are most likely to get between 1 and 2 net hits. Three hits is very possible; four or more is quite rare.

1 minute ago, Orkimedes said:

Just real quick, hear is what the hit table looks like for the Z-6:

I only ran 100k iterations, so the percentages may be off by about %.05 or so.

Basically, it confirms what the average hit calculation (1.5) tells you; you are most likely to get between 1 and 2 net hits. Three hits is very possible; four or more is quite rare.

Thank you good sir.

I can work with averages, but that kind of stats is a bit beyond me. Well done.

If I am reading it right, there’s roughly a 1 in 6 chance of getting 3+ hits? Similar to the chance of 0 hits actually. That agrees pretty well with what I’ve seen using them.

29 minutes ago, shmitty said:

Thank you good sir.

I can work with averages, but that kind of stats is a bit beyond me. Well done.

If I am reading it right, there’s roughly a 1 in 6 chance of getting 3+ hits? Similar to the chance of 0 hits actually. That agrees pretty well with what I’ve seen using them.

That’s basically right. You are actually slightly more likely to completely whiff than you are to get 3+ hits, but yeah should should see both possibilities a few times a game depending on how many Z-6 you are running.

9 minutes ago, Orkimedes said:

That’s basically right. You are actually slightly more likely to completely whiff than you are to get 3+ hits, but yeah should should see both possibilities a few times a game depending on how many Z-6 you are running.

Thanks again, I will look forward to seeing the rest of the project when you finish it.