When and how should you use it.

I don't see why I would take it over scatter gun and or impact grenades.

2 hours ago, jocke01 said:

When and how should you use it.

I don't see why I would take it over scatter gun and or impact grenades.

Exhaustable squad support weapons in general are unpopular, so you're not all wrong. That being said, the main attraction of the Barrage trooper is access to blast beyond range 1. Cover busting is a big deal. Impact 2 also gives the Fleet Troopers a decent anti-armor punch when combined with their regular guns' tendency to generate crits. In short, the Barrage launcher is a generalist weapon that will help wherever you need it. It doesn't have the raw infantry killing potential of the scattergun, but it still does a good job at getting rid of dug in infantry, and it's much better at pushing those last few points of damage on a vehicle. Impact grenades are not very popular on fleet troopers because they have lower damage than the pistols, and force you to get closer than you need to.

I've loved it since day one

I don't use the scatter gun at all. Fleets with an extra trooper and the grenade launcher have wiped out units in cover completely on several occasions and sufficiently devastated them in others.

The short range of the fleet's blasters does lend to just taking concussion grenades instead of the launcher but I find closing to range 1 and still having enough unit strength to do enough damage can be difficult. The difference between range 1 and 2 (other than being 6 inches) is pretty substantial in game terms, at least in my experience.

Range 3 impact can be helpful too but I think it ends up being a matter of preference and play style.

1 hour ago, Crawfskeezen said:

I don't use the scatter gun at all. Fleets with an extra trooper and the grenade launcher have wiped out units in cover completely on several occasions and sufficiently devastated them in others.

The short range of the fleet's blasters does lend to just taking concussion grenades instead of the launcher but I find closing to range 1 and still having enough unit strength to do enough damage can be difficult. The difference between range 1 and 2 (other than being 6 inches) is pretty substantial in game terms, at least in my experience.

Range 3 impact can be helpful too but I think it ends up being a matter of preference and play style.

I can see value in blast, however 1 black and 2 white don't feel as good as 2 red. Blast is better vs heavy cover, but pierce will in most cases be as effective vs light cover and even better vs no cover.

I understans using it against another target just to finish them of by split fire. But exhaust, 33 points and you have to have one unit on range 1-2 and another at 3.

Impact + blast can be useful vs vehicles in cover like airspeeders. Sadly they are immune to blast. I think there exist other better options for impact.

In my opinion the launcher should be 22 points and the scatter gun 33. I might be wrong, but I can't see where the launcher is worth taking since it got such a high cost, exhaust drawback and non combo keywords.

It's not as bad as some of the other exhaustible weapons, but the Scatter Gun is so good I can't imagine I would ever not take it.

Exhaust weapons are generally considered not great. I don't know about that but I do think they are bad on fleets because of their short range. They need to move to keep targets in range of their main weapons and readying will slow them down too much.

When it first came out I was not impressed with the grenade launcher. Seemed over-costed and cover busting didn't beat out Pierce IMO. Then came Duck and Cover and multiple units that can improve their cover by 1 if in light cover. Most of the counters to heavy cover involved short range, maneuvering around it, or just trying to brute force through it. Now the fleet troopers with the grenade launcher solve that problem at a decent range of 2, or 3 on its own.