A lot of weapons has had their ammo capacity lowered in this new ed.

Boltgun 24 -> 16

Storm Bolter 60 -> 32

Hvy Bolter 60 -> 48

Im quite ok with these, .75 rockets take a lot of place.

Laspistol/gun 30/60 -> 12/24

Longlas 40 -> 6

Hot-shot pistol/gun 20/40 -> 12/24

Las weapons got a huge drop. Ill admit they where probably too high before but I liked them being higher than Sp-weapons. I feel a drop to 40 for the lasgun could be enough (ajusting the others around this).

Autopistol 18 -> 12

Hand cannon 5 -> 3

Shotgun 8 -> 6

Hv Stubber 200 -> 60

Autocannon 20 -> 48

The autopistol drop really bugs me. They are usually depicted as small SMGs (like mini UZI or Ingrams) a clip of 24 would feel more right. 3 rounds in a handgun clip is also next to silly, raise this to 7 and ad inaccurate for the hand cannon! The Heavy stubber got a huge drop in ammo and could use an increase.

Plasma pistol/gun 10/20 -> 6/12

Perfectly ok with this

Hnd Flamer/Flamer/Hv Flamer 2/3/10 -> 3/6/9

Hmm, I must say I prefer flamers with small fuel capacity but packing a punch.

Grenade launcher 6 -> 3

My view of the GL is from imperial guard in the TT, that is, with a huge drum ammo. Hence Id prefer an increase in capacity to 12.

Needle pistol/rifle 6/6 -> 3/6

Its friggin needles! Clip size 100+ would seem perfectly logical. But Ok, for the sake of balance lets say 20.

For the sake of balance... I get the feel that a lot of these changes were made to fit the RoA system which is understandable but in my opinion doesnt represent autofire very well. Gone are the days where you open fire on full auto hoping that the sheer amount of bullets at leat will hit something. Instead every burst will be a calculation of risk/gain and less ammo will be wasted.

Autopistol

I got the same impression. A clip of 18 was reasonable.

Hand Cannon

I always thought of the hand cannon as a magnum revolver sort of weapon. 6 manual individually loaded rounds makes sense. Just give it a higher reload time than a gun with a clip.

Heavy Stubber

Always compared this weapon to something like an M60 machine gun. It's a big gun that has belt fed ammunition. A case of ammo would weight a lot and take up a lot of space but the gun could essentially be capable of unleashing a seemingly endless spray of bullets. It's good for pinning multiple enemies for a good while. Sad to see it's ammo capacity drop. To some extent it loses it's purpose with only a capacity of 60 rounds.

Las Weapons

I liked the original charge capacity much better.

Grenade launcher 6 -> 3

My view of the GL is from imperial guard in the TT, that is, with a huge drum ammo. Hence Id prefer an increase in capacity to 12.

Agree with this completely. A PC can carry a drum of 6 grenades but carrying capacity is limited due to the size of the drums.

Needle Weapons

I agree with your logic there as well.

I don't think you can look at clip sizes in a vacuum like this. Clip sizes need to be viewed in the context of Combat as a whole. Pacing how often you need to reload and at what ranges you're engaging at is an important consideration. The longer a combat lasts the larger the impact of reloading is. If combat will be over in 2 rounds it makes all the sense in the world to unload your autopistol every chance you get, but if combat is going to last 10 rounds and you only have 2 clips, you'll want to make those shots count. I think FFG lowered ammo counts to force reloading in combat, which is something anyone who used a lasgun in DH1 almost never had to do.

Setting numbers with "this makes sense" logic is no way to design a game.

Yes - the magazine sizes are too low without a doubt.

But...

The minituarized clips in general cause that at least sometimes in combat situations, clips have to be reloaded.

This makes an interesting combat feature, and I like it. Matter of personal taste I guess.

In terms of realism though, you are right.

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

I don't think you can look at clip sizes in a vacuum like this. Clip sizes need to be viewed in the context of Combat as a whole. Pacing how often you need to reload and at what ranges you're engaging at is an important consideration. The longer a combat lasts the larger the impact of reloading is. If combat will be over in 2 rounds it makes all the sense in the world to unload your autopistol every chance you get, but if combat is going to last 10 rounds and you only have 2 clips, you'll want to make those shots count. I think FFG lowered ammo counts to force reloading in combat, which is something anyone who used a lasgun in DH1 almost never had to do.

Setting numbers with "this makes sense" logic is no way to design a game.

Agreed. Forcing players to choose between reloading and tossing the weapon for a sidearm is interesting. Never having to worry about ammo is boring.

I'm fine with lack of realism when it serves a purpose for gameplay.

If it is a rare weapon, better dont toss it around though - your GM could decrease its item status... ;D

Or make it disappear ;-)

I agree with both sentiments here and would personally like to see at least a few items change. Even if weapons should have less ammunition in the name of balance I feel like the hand cannon at three is taking it... too far.

I would readily agree to many other balancing features before finding this plausible. At least five would be a typical high caliber pistol cylinder size. Six would resemble the Desert Eagle. Neither is so many as to make ammunition and reloading a non-issue. Honestly two or one would make more sense since that would be a shot pistol or a double barrel pistol with an enormous shell. If you go this route though the range should be increased and it could probably even get accurate, single shot pistols in M2 are long range match guns that fire rifle cartridges.

The other weapon with a silly ammunition capacity is the Sniper Rifle. Now that you can fire it twice a round having 1.5 rounds of firing before you spend 1.5 rounds loading it seems pretty prohibitive and from the "realism" point of view most bolt action sniper rifles have at least 5 round capacities. Again, five is not so much that it makes reloading irrelevant, but it feels less silly.

Their ammo capacity is a balancing factor against their sweet damage profiles. A higher clip capacity or faster reload would make those two guns objectively the best in their class, rather than different flavors of that weapon class. I think what FFG is going for for each weapon class is guns that play very differently without there being an obvious 'best' gun. Reality can take a backseat to mechanical balance.

I understand and agree, I just don't think giving hand cannons and sniper rifles a slightly larger clip size of say, five, would be unbalanced particularly, especially given other mitigating factors of size rating, etc.

I understand that its a balancing issue and thats what bugs me. Instead of creating a setting and build rules around it we have a new rules system and the setting is being bent to fit.
These rules are probably well balanced but what I feel Im left with is for example a 12 clip SMG that fires about 4 rounds in 10 seconds.

The image I get in my head of a fire fight with this system is anything but cool. Instead of defying death running through a hail of bullets against the crazed autopistol wielding cultists he´ll just be throwing away pot shots.

And dont tell me the clip is just an abstract...

What I would prefer are higher clip sizes and to balance this more ammo wasted meaning more cinematic fire fights!

Currently the RoA-system represents this very poorly, but maybe something simple like that you get extra hits for every two DoS could fix this. For all I care that could be a general rule also limiting the number of possible hits in melee as well maybe giving more meaning for slow and heavy weapons.

You're free to envision million-round magazine uzis spraying bullets like an action movie, so don't make the hard number of combat math a flavor thing. The clip sizes are there for combat pacing and to balance weapons against each other - that is it.

If you don't like the clip sizes, refute them with math. "Feels right" is a crap reason to set a number that affects play. That isn't game design.

And guess what: literally every mechanic is an abstraction.

Abstraction is not a black-and-white thing.

Differences in approaches are HUGE.

You're free to envision million-round magazine uzis spraying bullets like an action movie, so don't make the hard number of combat math a flavor thing. The clip sizes are there for combat pacing and to balance weapons against each other - that is it.

If you don't like the clip sizes, refute them with math. "Feels right" is a crap reason to set a number that affects play. That isn't game design.

And guess what: literally every mechanic is an abstraction.

No need to be patronizing.

Talking about a board game or a table top game I agree with you. Talking about a RPG, if the system feels right or not is essential in my view.

Of course rules are abstractions, but then again when it comes to gear in all its forms, I prefer as little abstraction as possible.