darkrose50 said:

I wasn't arguing for or against anything - except against nerfing boltguns because of True Grit.

Besides if you think that bolter are great, I'll send you against a sizeable horde of Tau FireWarriors. What this will do? It will make you try to charge them in order to escape their firepower because you'll be outclassed. In melee, you'll pick them apart though.

And yes against a Demon Prince, you will want ranged combat too. But the Demon Prince will manage to charge you and when he does, you better have Karma to burn.

I don't understand this debate, to be honest. Bolters potentially make significantly more damage than a marine with a chainsword. That's the way it's supposed to be, I think.

Alex

Idea #1

(A) Bolters are Uber.
(B) Equipping a bolter goes a long way in making a Marine uber.
© Assault Marines do not get bolters, a loose a good deal of uber-ness.
(D1) A bolter with a chain attachment solves this problem [simple fix].
(D2) Balancing melee and ranged talents would solve this problem [moderately complex fix].
(D3) Balancing melee and ranged weapon damage (soaking damage, armor values, and what-not) would solve this problem [complex fix].

Some say bolters are supposed to be more powerful than melee weapons. I do not refute that argument. Any balance change I have recommended would result in bolters remaining superior, just less so.

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Idea #2

Bolters are superior:
(A) Damage-wise
(B) Bonus-to-hit-wise
© Multiple-attack-wise

I do not think bolters need to be superior in all three areas to reamin superior.

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Idea #3 (for emphasis)

A bolter with a chain attachment is a melee weapon. As such can be used in melee. Loosing the +10 bonus to parry is a small price to pay for the adding the uber-ness of equipping a bolter.

darkrose50 said:

See, I'm ok with that. My stats of a bolter damage a space marine 75% of the time. 50% even in the body. Sure, a fire fight between marine and chaos marine might take a few rounds to resolve, but hardly "forever". I'd rather a 4 or 5 round combat where tactics are important instead of whoever goes first and hits with a full-auto spray wins.

But I do realize I'm in the minority and would prefer a game much, much more closely matching the table top. I want my basic marines to start out good and improve from there. With experience they should be able to improve to astounding levels (IE, rank 4 or 5 marines) instead of straight out of the gate.

Assault marines don't need a bolter to excel at what they do. They don't start with a bolter because it is not their job to stand back and rake the enemy with ranged fire. Their job is to close with the enemy and tear them apart (for which a jump pack goes a long way to allowing to close any distance while staying in cover).

It is also worth factoring in the ability of the defender to avoid an attack when comparing melee attacks versus semi/full-auto bursts. A good dodge will completely negate the bolter marine's attack regardless of how many sucesses they rolled for the attack. Unless the bolter marine (who can't actually shoot an assault marine in melee anyway) has spent XP getting step aside and wall of steel they can dodge/parry exactly one of the assualt marines attacks.

Add in both of the Two Weapon Wielder talents and the starting assualt marine can try and force the defender to use their reactions against two chainsword attacks and then a bolt or two into their target from their pistol.

@Darkrose

Alright, since you kind of ignored my point earlier, I'll say it again.

Combat is not solely measured in terms of damage output. It is not simply a matter of accuracy, total attacks, and damage per attack. It has a finer flow involving the previous, along with things like mobility, toughness/damage resistance, and other supporting actions.

Ranged is good for damage output.

Melee is good for limiting your opponents actions. It prevents heavy/basic weapons from being brought to bear against the squad. For the most part, enemies will have trouble disengaging, and remaining useful in the fight.

In melee, survivability becomes important, as it also becomes difficult to leave. Because of this, a balanced weapon is by far more useful than one that is not.

You put together a hypothetical situation of bolt pistol and chainsword (character A) being worse than boltgun w/ chain and bolt pistol (character B). The problem is, this is in a vacuum.

Is there cover involved? At what range does such a hypothetical fight occur? Space marines can conceal themselves with some effort, so one could easily get the jump on the other. Its easily possible for either in this situation to engage in melee before shooting occurs. Once locked in melee, kit A beats kit B. A balanced weapon will more likely parry than the weapon that does not, so eventually, kit A will deal more damage than kit B.

Also, on full auto, its entirely reasonable to think of full auto burst as being akin to the modern notion of the three round burst. It helps if you consider the semi auto burst to not so much be a rate of fire setting on the weapon, but rather the character making a rapid series of single shots. A true "full auto" would be closer to the exceedingly high RoF of some weapons, like the heavy bolter, where it isn't intentional for every shot fired to hit.

@Khouri

Actually, dodging full auto only removes one shot they got per DoS of the dodge.

KommissarK said:

Hence the "good dodge" part. My point was that a full-auto burst can be negated from a single dodge (more hits obviously makes this harder) whereas additional talents are required to negate swift or lightning attacks.

darkrose50 said:

The Recoil Suppression of Astartes Power Armour provides the ability to FIRE basic weapons one-handed. You can't Melee one-handed a bolter with a chainsword attachment. That is why Assault Marines go into Melee with a Bolt Pistol and chainsword.

pvhammer said:

Unfortunately you can, if you read not the power armour , but the weapons paragraph on page 140:

Basic Weapons normally require two hands, but can be used one-handed with a -20 penalty to hit. While wearing Astartes power armour this penalty is negated.

One of the great editing feats so common in the book i guess

These would be the guys that can comfortably lift almost 3 tonnes? And there are quibbles about recoil suppression? According to the much maligned p208 even out of their power armour they can quite comfortable twirl the average human about their fingers so... Well, erm, firing a bolter into combat wouldn't seem to be too much of a problem.

Kage

tkis said:

I understood the -20 to hit as pertaining to ranged combat.

It seems silly to me that a Power Axe is Unbalanced, a Power Fist is Unwieldy (when they are designed for Melee) and a one-handed bolter with a chainsword attachement is not.

It does not really make sense for me as well , and probably will be adressed in the errata, but right now it is RAW.

darkrose50 said:

5 requisition, 5 that´s nothing, 2 more for the fire selector. Quite the contrary of this is true, because assault marines can use two bolters at rank 1.

darkrose50 said:

Actually, no. This stems from a misunderstanding of long bursts and why the US military disapproves of them (and hence introduced weapons that were incapable of them). This proved somewhat controversial and though for the most part a wise move, they have since reintroduced some weapons with full-auto capacity. But it's a little more complicated than declaring that a gun on full-auto isn't more likely to hit the target. There are also some considerations in the 40k universe that real world (RW) soldiers don't need to worry about.

A trained soldier firing on full-auto at a target is probably about as likely to hit him as he would with a 3 round burst, maybe a little more likely, simply because he's throwing more lead at him. However the extra chance to hit will be fairly minimal, especially at anything more than 15m. So for a slightly greater chance to hit you've wasted a much bigger chunk of your ammo. A 3 round burst would have had pretty much the same effect.

At (very) close range full auto can sometimes be useful. Even then it isn't really worth using unless the target includes a group - as in you have multiple hostiles within a few meters of you and you really need to put them all down. Even then a veteran will probably use multiple short bursts to put them down.

Of course in the 40k universe there may be another reason to go full-auto - stopping power. In the RW a 3 round burst that hits will probably be enough to put down a target. That isn't necessarily the case when the target is a xenos monstrosity that just keeps coming. You need to hit it and preferably with as many bullets as possible. You'll run out of ammo a lot faster, but having spare bullets won't help you if you're dead.

But, realistically full auto shouldn't give you a bonus to hit beyond short range. Any further than that and the bullets will just be hitting air as they fly over the target's heads.

I've been thinking about the full-auto vs short burst thing. I don't have a problem with full-auto getting a big bonus to hit, you are filling the area with lead so to speak. I think full-auto should be best for two things though: suppressing fire and hitting large groups. So what do people think of the following idea:

When firing on full-auto you can only assign a maximum of Full auto rate/3 (round down) hits to any single target. So a heavy bolter that scores 10 hits has to spread the shots out onto 4 different enemies (3, 3, 3, 1). Of course, mobs count as lots of targets so you can blast away at a mob without worrying.

That way a full-auto is definitely a waste of ammo against a single target, but great against a squad of orks/imperial guardsman.

The numbers may need to be tweaked until it feels right, maybe match the short burst rate of fire if you have one, and 1/3 full auto rate if you don't.

Personally, I just chose a more simple tweak for Full Auto/Semi Auto.

I just swapped the DoS required to get additional hits between them, so Semi-Auto gets a +10 to hit (their bullets are more grouped, and so don't fill as much space as Full-Auto) but get an extra hit per DoS (because the bullets are more grouped, if the first round hits the following ones are more likely to hit too). Conversely, Full-Auto gets +20 to hit (filling the air with more lead possibly means hitting someone with at least 1 round), but need 2 DoS to get additional hits (the rounds are more spaced out, so just because one round hits doesn't mean others will).

It seems to work pretty well with me

MILLANDSON said:

Doesn't that make weapons with more than 4-5 round bursts much less powerful (i.e. Heavy bolter)? You can't get 18 DoS to make a full burst hit anything.

Theoretical max is 50 (base) + 20 (advances) + 5 (Chapter) + 5 (Armor) = 80 BS + 60 = 140. So, rolling a 1 would give you 13 DoS for a total of 7 hits maximum (1 for success, 12 DoS /2 = 6). So you're always wasting 3 rounds that can't possibly hit anything, and more likely that number is 4-5. I think the Astartes might redesign their weapons if they always wasted 50% of their ammunition.

I think simply swapping the to hit bonuses and making both 1 hit per DoS is the best solution. Semi is more accurate (+20), but they both sling a lot of lead (1 hit/DoS).

I posted this talent in the DH forum:

Controlled Fire

Pre-requisites: Ballstic Skill 45

The character is a true proffesional with semi-automatic weapons. They are able to pour accurate fire on to their targets. In many cases with not a shot being wasted.

Effects: When firing a Basic, Heavy or Single pistol on Semi-Automatic fire rate the character scores an additional hit per degree of success rather than every 2 degress of success. The total number of hits still limited to the weapons semi-automatic rate of fire.

If your games house rules have rules limiting the fully automatic additional hits, such as maximum ranges. Then they will apply to characters with this skill.

If it's available for Rank 1 Tac marines, and a bit later for others.

Personnally I can see the to hit bonus being effective at all ranges, if the user is well trained they should know how to take advantage of it, but the 1 hit per degree of success seems out of place at long or extreme ranges.

Looking at Assault Marines Space Wolfes, I think one thing to consider is the combination of Lightning Reflexes (double AG bonus for initiative) + Combat Sense (Switch AG bonus with Per bonus for initiative) + Wolf senses (At rank 5 = Unnatural Perception x2 ).

Considering the chapter bonus for Per Space Wolfes get, I think that there is a fair chance that the Space Wolf would nearly always be the first to act in combat.

Considering how melee combat works i.e. mostly only one parry/dodge, but possibly 3 attacks for a Rank 1 Assault Marine, that is a nice advantage.

Only problem is that Space Wolfes dont get Combat Sense, which I might house rule as an additional Space Wolf Advance for 400XP.

Opinions?

Radomo said:

Yes, this reflects another problem with the full-auto rules - it doesn't differentiate between heavy weapons and basic or pistols. Full-auto with a heavy machine gun is viable because it is designed that way - it is heavier than an assault rifle so it doesn't buck as much with each shot, especially when properly braced, so it is easier to retain control and mow down your enemies.

So there should probably be different rules for heavy weapons, to reflect the fact that they are supposed to be able to cut down swaths of infantry.

I tweaked it differently.

Full auto doesn´t give a bonus to BS when shooting at targets further away than short range (keep in mind that the heavy bolters short range is quite long). Also full auto only gives +10 to BS.

Semi auto gives +10 to BS if your target is further away than short range and +20 if it´s within short range. No bonus if the target is further away than the weapons range rating.

Single shots also have their role. Mainly for called shots. I´ve reduced called shots from full to half actions.

I hope that this gives me a healthy balance between the three firing modes, but I need to playtest that first.

Power already reduces Called shots down to a half action.

after reading all of this post......

I agree for give the SW the counter attack talent as a chapter advance...

If many agree I suggest to give to the SW one peculiarity....they have only -10 penalty for using the bolter one handed...what do you think???

Whizzer, go for it.

I'm all for modding the game to suit our needs, as long as a balance is maintained.

E

Power armor already negates the penalty for shooting one handed.

Anyone else notice that a Storm Warden assault marine with Thunderous charge has the potential to do more damage to a horde than a heavy bolter armed Devestator at rank 1 with only 1000xp, assuming he's in squad mode?