Hi all!

Now I know that there was a discussion as to the Assault Cannon being very underpowered compared to what we think it should be (or the Heavy Bolter just being too good by comparisson), but when choosing the armament for your Dreadnought who in their right mind would choose an Assault Cannon over Twin-Linked Heavy Bolters!?

I was hoping that, by the time this book was written, they may have tweaked the Assault Cannons rules to better fit their history, but as it stands this choice is surely a no-brainer?

Space Monkey said:

I wouldn't call it a no brainer- the AC does slighly more damage than the HB per RAW, and the twin linking only really gives you a reroll to hit and then makes you consume ammo twice as fast, you don't gain storm from it (unless that's a special rule). Not sure what a twin linked bolter costs versus the AC, but I'm betting it's comparable, which means you have a tactical choice to make.

There are some 'issues' no doubt with the cannon, but I don't know that the issues are that it's a bad gun, it's just 'not as good' as some of us would like, mainly when comparing it to the mighty heavy bolter and all of it's abilities and add ons.

Well admitedly I'm UK so no rites of battle so the rules in RoB might overwrite this, but twin linked in the core book is

+20 bonus when fired, uses twice as much ammunition and may score one additional hit if the attack roll succeeds by two or more degrees of success. combined with the fact that full auto can cause hits up to its rate of fire I would say this means a dreadnought gets a +40 to hit on full auto and

success = 1 hit

1 degree = 2 hits

2 degrees = 4 hits

each further degree = 1 extra hit up to double a heavy bolter standard fire rate

again this is RAW from the core book so might not be a true appraisal of the situation

From what I can see in the Deathwatch Core Rulebook it is just ONE addition hit IF you succeed by 2 or more DoS. If it were the way described in the previous post then it would be Storm....

muzzyman1981 said:

Aye, it is just one additional hit total, not one additional hit per DoS.

This means it's actually:

Success: 1 hit

1DoS: 2 hits

2DoS: 4 hits

3DoS: 5 hits

4DoS: 6 hits

etc

are we agreed that it can go up to 20 hits though? because twin linked does double the rate of fire of the weapon? although obviously 20 is impossible. you could get maybe 12 degrees of success which makes for 14 hits I believe?

[edit] Also sorry if I caused confusion, I was attempting to say exactly what Millandson has stated. if it had storm it would be 2,4,6 ... not 1,2,4,...[/edit]

Ummmmm, where does it say the RoF is doubled? It says the ammo consumption is doubled and the reload time is doubled but nothing about RoF......

Also the Assault Cannon is the dev's replacement for when you can't take the heavy bolter....like when you are wearing TDA.

The fact of the matter is that the rules are simply incapable of truly showing what an Assault Cannon can do. Your average Minigun spits out 3000 rounds per minute. The Assault Cannon spits out 120 rounds a minute (assuming a round is 5 seconds). That’s 4% of the rate of fire of a modern day multi-barrelled electrically powered machine gun.

It really should be spitting out 50 rounds a second, but given that from both a balance perspective and a rules mechanic perspective that would be basically impossible (you can’t get the 30+ DOS’s needed to hit with that many shots and even if you could it’d be too powerful to have in a game such as this). They’ve given it tearing to show the storm of incoming fire, but the truth is that that’s a stopgap at best.

To get a little bit closer you’d need to give Storm to every Assault Cannon and then double the clip size to compensate for the additional ammo expenditure. It would still only be firing out 4 rounds a second (rather than 50), but at least it would be better than a Heavy Bolter.

BYE

I completely agree with you, I will be doing the same thing when the players in the game that I run get to the point of using an Assault Cannon.

muzzyman1981 said:

Twin-linked Autocannons sure look nice. Even the option to fire in S mode is a plus!

Yup. Every weapon in the book has a good use situation, it's just some of them are pretty specific.

H.B.M.C. said:

I agree that the Assault Cannon is a little bit lame, but it's worth remembering that one 'shot' of ammunition does not have to equate to one bullet. If could be 20.

Except it's not. Ammo is tracked shot for shot in the 40K RPG line of products. Sure, in 40K a 'Heavy 4' assault cannon isn't literally firing 4 shots, it's firing many tens if not hundreds of shots. In the 40K RPG's though, each shot is a single shot, which is why you have clip size, and must reload. They're not an abstraction.

BYE

hmm, I think the distinction between rof and ammo expended is tenuous, as page 141 states rof tells you if it fires on full auto and how many rounds it expends when doing so.

but fair enough. so the maximum number of hits is 11 at 9 degrees of success?

H.B.M.C. said:

Not an abstraction in the case of weapons with multiple rates of fire, obviously. But a clear abstraction in this case.

I think they'd have had better luck representing ammo per shot or RoF as a percentage of the weapon's capacity, or as "units" of ammo (which wouldn't be too hard to adapt): two rounds from a storm bolter is one unit of ammo (for that weapon), while a full-auto burst from an assault cannon is one 5 unit of ammo for THAT weapon (even if it was actually several thousand rounds).

On the other hand, in the benighted 41st millennium, maybe 4 rounds per second IS a high rate of fire. Nobody in the 17th century would have complained about a mechanized gun that fired four rounds per second (except the people on the other end of it).

Actually, the way I've read it is that for every round shot as per RoF. It doesn't matter how many hit, the RoF being used (Single/Semi-Auto/Full Auto) tells you EXACTLY how many rounds are expended (check pg 141 under RoF). It's not abstract, say a Bolter shoots Full Auto it expends 4 rounds (without additional skills/talents/rules) even if the shooter only got 1 DoS. If an Assault Cannon shoots and only gets 2 DoS it still expends 10 rounds.

Maybe you could see it as an abstract but that. in my opinion, just adds needless details to an already complicated game. Either way, the Assault Cannon SEEMS to be weak compared to what it should be. However, unless there are rules to put Heavy Bolters on a Dreadnought in RoB, then the Assault Cannon holds it's own.

How is abstracting something that's clearly wrong over-complicating things? Abstraction does the opposite...

And yes: You can put HBs on them. In pairs.

Because then you have players thinking about I've shot so many rounds, say 200rds in a single burst, BUT that only equates to 1 "shot" from my "clip". It just makes tracking how many shots are left that much more difficult, not only for the players but the GM as well. It's better just to use what is in the book in this instance than add un-needed complexity in the heat of battle.

In the after action report (i.e. describing it to friends) maybe it could be elaborated on but why add that to the stats? Trust me, I agree that an Assault Cannon should be shooting MUCH more than 3.3rds/sec but I would only point that out in a narrative or other non-battle description rather than make it...."You spend 10 shots but its really 400rds which tears up the opponent". Sorry I just don't see why worry about what it really could shoot versus what it's shooting now.

Erm... you don't need to add to the stats or change anything at all. It fires 10 'shots' per round and the backpack still holds 200 'shots'. Just bear in mind that in 'reality' 10 'shots' is closer to a few hundred.

I have to say, muzzyman, that I totally disagree.

Whether you abstract the shots or not changes nothing as far as calculation goes. You could say that each "shot" of an Assault Cannon equals 1 round of ammo expended, or you could say each "shot" equals 20 rounds of ammo, if the ROF and Clip size are equal abstractions you're still knocking your ROF number in "shots" off your remaining number of "shots" left in your clip. It makes absolutely no difference.

And I have to say that thinking of the Assault cannons ROF and clip size as an abstraction makes it much more believable. A shame then that the damage does not reflect this.

Now I know there have been many different editions of 40k TT over the years but I, along with many others of my age category, most fondly remember 2nd edition (by far the best version! ) and in that version a HB did 2 Sustained Fire dice worth of Strength 5 hits at Pen -2, each doing d4 damage. The Assault Cannon by comparison did 3 Sustained Fire dice worth of Strength 8 hits at Pen -3, each doing 1d10 damage!!!

Third edition TT brought it down a bit with the HB at Strength 5, Heavy 3, and the Assault Cannon at Strength 6, Heavy 3, but as all stats for the troops and special characters were lowered to bring them more in line with each other, a single point of Strength difference was a huge advantage!

In later editions (not sure which cos I bailed on the war-gaming hobby at this point, embracing RP all the way) the HB was given Strength 5, AP 4, Heavy 3 whilst the Assault Cannon was once again boosted a little way back toward it's former glory with Strength 6, AP 4, Heavy 4, Rending!

I think adding Storm to an Assault cannon is the very LEAST FFG could do to bring it back in line with the fluff... or adjust the HB and normal Bolter downward a little (but that's a subject covered many times in previous threads so we won't even open that can of worms)

Just a thought...

<Edit> Siranui beat me to it!

H.B.M.C. said:

Every game is an abstraction. Does DW give you an exact count of shotgun pellets for ammo with the Scatter property? No, it's abstracted.

That said I do like the idea of giving a shot multiplier property to high rate of fire weapons like the Assault Cannon. A minigun, as has been mentioned, has a ROF of 3000+ RPM. When targets get hit they get hit LOTS of times. So following something like the Storm property makes sense to me in those cases where it's warranted.

As has been mentioned above you can marry the concept of ROF and consumed ammo pretty simply. For example you can say that the Assault Cannon has an ROF of 10 with the Super Storm (6) quality. This means that for every burst you're expending 60 rounds and every hit/DoS, to the maximum ROF, inflicts 6 hits to the location indicated. Done.

Of course such a weapon would be hard to balance in the system as it exists.

I agree but in the middle of the battle resolution is not the place for abstraction. For the actual calculations its better to just treat the shots as they are in the book. However, when describing the shot and result to the players then you could use the abstractions.

I also agree with adding Storm to the Assault Cannon, it SHOULD be a monster....able to tear up even large groups with a single sweep of the weapon. As I mentioned before I plan to give the Assault Cannon the Storm quality when my players have need of it.

PrimarchX: That just, again, seems like too much to have to worry about in the midst of figuring out what happened. I prefer to keep the stats simple, and elaborate in the description.

muzzyman1981 said:

Sure, I agree. It's just that there appears to be a call for hyper-realism in a game where bioengineered supersoldiers are fighting daemons and aliens across the Galaxy. For those who want to do it, such a thing isn't impossible, but has the result of being more complex.

/head desk.

More complex? Than not changing any of the stats, any of the mechanics, or indeed anything bar the flavour-text? How is this more complex?

When I order a JD, I ask for a shot of JD, even though that's 25ml 'in reality'. I don't ask for 25ml. The 'shot' of JD is an abstraction. It's really not very complicated...