H.B.M.C. said:

AV of heavily armoured vehicles is too high. See my post in the Weapon Analysis thread. According to that conversion the dreadnought would have AV 35. Up the offensive powers of nids a bit and you're good to go. Also: Righteous Fury.

Also: Grapple. Throw the Dreadnought in the mud and hit its Rear Armour. With the Overload it's nice to have the players eradicated him easily the first time around. Second time, he'll be nastier. He's really a great adversary for a campaign.

Alex

>>>>That quote will live on in infamy though. Single-handedly, modern-day infantry division. With ease .
No disrespect to you though, Wolf, it's just that I consider this an example of over-the-top marketing speech by Alan Merrett. Com'on.<<<<

I live in hope we will one day see Marines who can live up to their reputation, rather than being a disappointment in the flesh.

Righteous Fury only causes Critical Damage, not extra damage. It doesn't help you take of Structural Integrity.

BYE

:sigh: Much as I utterly hate to imitate Lynata, I'm going to use the Munitorum Manual to point out a small flaw that has been introduced by this errata...

As it stands, the Astartes Bolter has been reduced to nothing more than a giant pistol. The problem however has a very minor fix: putting the rate of fire back where it was. In the Munitorum Manual, the bolter is stated to have three firing modes: Single Shot, 4-round burst, and full-auto. The Bolter has always been a fully automatic gun, I see little reason to change that. What they have done here is make all weapons, including the shotguns, such better options that no one will ever have a reason to use the bolters anymore. Hell, the assault shotgun now makes a better bolter than the bolter, I'd say that's a much bigger problem than the previously overpowered bolters.

ak-73 said:

Maybe he was referring to an Iraqi division

I am curious as to how this is going to end up. Since this is a work in progress and a living errata, I am sure that we will see a number of tweaks before the final product is done. The great thing about this forum is that it allows many people with hundreds of ideas come together, exchange ideas, and hammer out something which will come pretty close to the ideal. I estimate that within a few weeks there will be some tweaks which everyone will be happy with given the feedback given.

Daisuke said:

I must disagree here; there are other sources that show that the bolter is capable of single shot, burst fire but not full auto.

An example would be the Imperial Armour books - to quote from Imperial Armour III (page 50) "The weapon has single shot and semi-automatic setting, firing a burst of three bolts in quick succession". It describes the boltgun in question as a standard Mark IV model.

DW

peterstepon said:

However, support for DW will fade ever so slightly as the focus shifts more on Black Crusade and what comes after it. There will be a limit of how many updates there'll be, I guess. Given the feedback here and how closely FFG/Ross listens to the fans, I am pretty certain that bolters will be a bit better in a future iteration.

Right now, just use the old ROFs (except for the OP Heavy Bolter) and it'll work just fine. You just need to make sure that the Storm Bolter doesn't outclass the HB.

Alex

It's a real shame they lost Automatic fire, since that actually gets used at times in the novels to good effect. But I imagine most GMs aren't too strict on keeping track of Ammo (I've never played with a GM who cared in a Sci Fi game) so it might be pretty good. but if you had one, suddenly spray and pray (Well, smite in this case) might not be so useful outside of the right environments.

peterstepon said:

Of course a Space Marine bolter is meant to be on the same damage scale as a Fleshborer, and a Tau pulse rifle is meant to have a much higher punch (comparable to a heavy bolter).

So basically it seems that as well as bringing the bolters back to more sensible levels they have properly weighted the weapons compared to each other

Still worried about the removal of supressing fire from bolters (an errata to say that supressing fire can be done with semi-auto weapons in Deathwatch? I can understand the removal of full-auto for the purpose of reducing "I point, they die", but removing the ability for suppressing fire seems harsh), and I think the double whammy of nerfing the heavy bolter and Unrelenting Devastation was unnecessary. Just bringing the heavy bolter back in line seems like it would have been enough (main concern is that it looks like it will leave assault marines well in the lead for chewing up hordes... which I am not so keen on).

Ignore rubbish about infantry divisions with ease. A modern infantry platoon if it is in a position where it will prevent it using its heaviest weapons against it.

"The weapon has single shot and semi-automatic setting, firing a burst of three bolts in quick succession" - A contradiction in itself. Burst fire is not "semi-automatic". Semi-automatic is what they mean by "single shot" (unless they are meaning it has a bolt you have to work between shots). Burst fire is seperate (and anything capable of burst fire is at least theoretically capable of fully automatic... it may have that option removed, but the mechanism is pretty much identical aside from being limited).

peterstepon said:

Maybe he doesn't know how big a Division is.

I was familiar with the old-school thinking of the four-shot burst, but three is a new one to me. As I've said before though: 3-4 shots in 5 seconds isn't full auto and never will be full auto. It's either a quick burst or rapid semi-auto fire.

The UD changes are good, in that because it's now a flat d5, weapons other than the HB and AC are now gaining an advantage from it.

I had already twigged that the autogun had lost full-auto fire, but I hadn't realised it had only 3 shots (so they are really abstracted things here). Then I discovered it had 2 full actions to reload... Now, I know that stat will probably never be used, as it will largely be a horde only weapon (and I realise the changes are to make it less insane in the hands of big hordes, and I am fine with that, the loss of suppressing fire aside), but what are they doing with that gun?

"We have emptied our clips!"

Sergeant: "Ok, now remember, you have to load each and every new round individually. No cheating by replacing the magazine in its entirety!"

Maybe marines take 2 rounds to reload it because they're dealing with the abuse their team-mates are giving them for using such a little 'mortal' gun.

The 'enemies' weapons (which obviously is has some cross over with PC's weapons) seem to me to have been either streamlined (hugely in the case of an autogun (which is fine)) or improved on where they were pointless previously. I'm not entirely sure they've gone far enough with the Nids, but only in the most extreme cases, against vehicles.

With that, and the fact that a lot of things are going to be alive a lot longer it's done a lot to increase the number of enemies that are actually threats at all. Which is a good thing overall. You don't need to field such lage hordes any more and many more elites are actually more than just a foot note now which I can only approve of.

I can understand the need to tone things down because autofire is so powerful in the game. Surely it would have been better to amend autofire rules rather than, changing all the weapon stats to drop autofire in so many case, including the autogun!!!!

Essentially, that's exactly what they've done. Just via a simpler route, really.

Consider there to be two 'rates' of autofire. 'slow' and 'fast'. Slow-autofire weapons are not really designed to be fired fully automatic and aren't particularly great for it. They put out a few bullets and give a +10 bonus and 1 extra hit per 2 DoS. 'fast' autofire weapons like the HB and AC gain a +20 bonus and 1 extra hit per DoS.

Face Eater said:

To be fair, vehicles are a weakness that many Tyrnaid creatures find hard to overcome, if I understand it right. Even in 40K, the HT has only S6, is that right? What would mean he could do only a glancing blow against a Dreadnought's front armour. At best.

About autofire: there is a house rule floating around these forums here that says, iirc, to switch the rules for DoS needed to get an additional hit between Semi and Full Auto. I have heard many good things about it.

Alex

Siranui said:

Siranui said:

Too true, realistically with big heavy guns the line between slow autofire and fast trigger pumping does start to blur. IMHO auto cannons could do with being put on the SA side rather than the FA side (at least for the tripod mounted varieties).

And, rhino1976, I do agree, that good portion of this is due to opness of FA in this game. As it seems to be up in the air as to weather bolters are FA, if the rules weren't so baised they may not have started FA and if they weren't so heavily weaighted toward even FA 4 then they might not have needed it.

ak-73 said:

In TT Hive Tyrants are Monsterous creatures, roll an additional D6 penetration giving them a fair chance against most things.

I've seen people say that, IMHO it make's auto fire weapons pretty redundant, especially in DW where the bonus to hit is rearly needed. I preffer to have both modes need 1 per at only short range and 2 per at longer ranges (sadly not GM'ed a game recently to try it out). But that might not even go far enough.

I don't like the fact that each line has it's own rulebook, I would prefer one generic rulebook and each line to be an expansion of it, but I accept that is a personal choice and some people don't like the generic rulebook idea and I don't want to start up that argument/debate again. I have got used to the idea that I can buy each line and take parts from one line and use them in another line fairly easily and have learnt to live with it.

Correct me if i am wrong, but new weapon rules only seem to be for Deathwatch, so now seems that Deathwatch is becoming a totally new line that wont be very compatable at all. Before I could take an enemy from another book and with with minor adjustments use it in DW, now when converting i have to decide whether that autogun they have is an auto auto gun or semi auto auto gun. I accept i am been slightly comical/flipant, but it concerns me that rather than bringing the rules closer together into one game, they are drawing them apart further.

I like the games, wouldn't buy them, play them and bother to take time out to post if i didn't, but thought more time went on more they would try and combine lines, not seperate them. I thought from reading stuff about Black Crusade it might do something to help combine the games, but am starting to fear that is not the intention.

Face Eater said:

Ah yeah. House Rule - Monstrous Creature trait: MC's half all AV they attack (in melee).

That makes them a bit more effective against armour than in TT but perfect accuracy overall is impossible.

Alex

The fluff makes a lot more sense if Marines can outfight entire divisions of mortal troops.

There are something like 20 million soldiers on earth today. About 1300 divisions worth. If this is about average for an Imperial world and a company of Space Marines are enough to take a planet, they all need to be able to outfight 13 divisions each.

There are many fictional characters up to this feat - Alex Mercer/ZEUS from Prototype or anyone from a Dynasty Warriors game for instance.

In short, to play the role the fluff demands of them Space Marines need to be Pretty Tough.

The wording of the revised weapon stats where that they would speed up play, it did not suggest that it was ment to rebalance the game.

I wonder if this was a series of typos and that they were not aware of the reaction it was going to generate. Kinda like if someone were to type a word in a book like the bible wrong and start a war of dogma by accident.

peterstepon said:

The wording is marketing speech. There has been lots of complaining about the Heavy Bolter here, FFG responded. And used the opportunity to reduce damages and put damage stats more in line with the Bolter, etc. stats of DH and RT. Give those guys a break, they merely responded to the feedback from many fans here.

Alex

Now all we need to do is get rid of Unnatural Strength and Toughness and a few wounds and Marines will have been comprehensively nerfed back to tabletop levels!

It won't make any sense that we are transporting these five dudes across interstellar distances in a mile long battleship to fight two genestealers, but hey.

AluminiumWolf said:

You have a point but I prefer something between super-heroic marines and tabletop marines. If a kill-team can break the spearhead of the enemy's forces, their elite forces, that's good enough for me. It will shatter the morale of the 1300 standing divisions.

Alex