A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)

Eldar ironically don't really do indirect fire artillery which you'd really expect from a race that prefers not to fight.

The only indirect fire weapons they have are the Night-spinner and the Void-spinner. Both of which deploy clouds of Monofilament, and wouldn't actually benefit from psy-scopes.
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vsh said:

I'm pretty sure projectile has to be wraithbone for it to work. So maybe something like a grenade launcher or a bolter would work, but plasma or a d-gun likely not.

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Missiles that bend space to hit you and then deploy a plasma/melta/implosion/vortex warhead?

Edit: Starship suppositories

vsh said:

I'm pretty sure projectile has to be wraithbone for it to work. So maybe something like a grenade launcher or a bolter would work, but plasma or a d-gun likely not.

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There's mentions of the dark Eldar using pulverized wraithbone dust as a weapon I think, so it might be possible to create wraithbone plasma.

If it still has a psychic charge to it then it might be good against demons?

A Slipspace Tree said:

There's mentions of the dark Eldar using pulverized wraithbone dust as a weapon I think, so it might be possible to create wraithbone plasma.

If it still has a psychic charge to it then it might be good against demons?

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When we eventually start looking into anti-demon weapons, I think the Grey Knights armory is the place to look.

Psycannons shoot shells charged with negative psychic energy.
Psilencers amplify the wielder's psychic power and convert it to an anti-demon ray with a "crystal"

I think both of these weapons are based on Blackstone.

Once we get our hands on a blackstone quarry, we miight be able to try weaponizing it.

Unfortunately, it will be a rather unpleasant research path for our researchers .

IronFist said:

When we eventually start looking into anti-demon weapons, I think the Grey Knights armory is the place to look.

Psycannons shoot shells charged with negative psychic energy.
Psilencers amplify the wielder's psychic power and convert it to an anti-demon ray with a "crystal"

I think both of these weapons are based on Blackstone.

Once we get our hands on a blackstone quarry, we miight be able to try weaponizing it.

Unfortunately, it will be a rather unpleasant research path for our researchers .

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Grey knights aren't even start to be a thing until after the Heresy, so they aren't no "inspiration" from them for a long fucking time.

And the Eldar still have way better information about chaos and how to fight them i am pretty sure.

Skjadir said:

Grey knights aren't even start to be a thing until after the Heresy, so they aren't no "inspiration" from them for a long fucking time.

And the Eldar still have way better information about chaos and how to fight them i am pretty sure.

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Inspiration for the players OOC, not for the Seekers IC.

It's very unlikely that we would run into the Grey Knights IC gven how few of them there are.

And yes, they do. It's in the black library... and we conveniently have some Harlequins visiting.

The vote tally is a little hard to read but do we need to worry about having two of the superheavy/anti-titan designs as part of the top three?

A Slipspace Tree said:

The vote tally is a little hard to read but do we need to worry about having two of the superheavy/anti-titan designs as part of the top three?

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I think we're all in agreement that we're only taking one SH tank from this vote, just that there's some conflict on how the tank should be designed (generalist all-rounder Superheavy tank to act as our baneblade analogue - with a titan killing gun as the main cannon - to do everything reasonably well, or a hyper-specialized titan-killer going all in on trying to counter titans/superheavies at the cost of its secondary and tertiary weapons)

A Slipspace Tree said:

The vote tally is a little hard to read but do we need to worry about having two of the superheavy/anti-titan designs as part of the top three?

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Grouped results for convenience. There's a three way tie.

A Slipspace Tree said:

The vote tally is a little hard to read but do we need to worry about having two of the superheavy/anti-titan designs as part of the top three?

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I mean apart from us being unlikely to ever build any of the vehicles we design here apart from Cloudburst because we just flat out can't/shouldn't enter any vehicle that uses exotics into mass production.

And our Retrofit EP is quite limited at the moment, the main reason Anvil of Sundering is even a design is that with recycling it only costs ~118 or so EP+ chassis cost to build, means we can get a reasonable number build for cheap and get our army more capabilities against heavy/super-heavy/titan units.

Double SH starlance shouldn't be underestimated in terms of killing smaller units due to the high RoF it has.
Should make it pretty capable at slagging numerous vehicles at once.

And if we take a step back from the TT mechanics.
Its a grav vehicle, that can fly and is invisible most of the time with triple grav shields.
And the single starlance shots likely count as aoe attacks going by lore (when looking what the turbo laser does to infantry that it "misses" or that is to close.

[X] "Forgehammer" Main Battle Tank (Max slots)
-[X] Light Grav-Vehicle Chassis
-[X] 1x Starlance (Vehicle Slot)
-[X] 1x Spike Cannon, 1x Heavy Needler (Heavy Slot)
-[X] 1x Vehicle Holo-Field
-[X] 2x Vehicle Grav-Shield
-[X] Convert 4 System Slots -> 1 Heavy + 1 Ranged Slot
-[X] 1x Starcarver (Heavy Slot)
-[X] 1x Needler Rifle (Regular Slot)
-[X] (Crew Equipment), Void Guard Armour, Spike Rifle, CCW Knife.

[X] "Vaul's Anvil" Superheavy Grav-Tank (Revamped)
-[X] Heavy Grav-Vehicle Chassis.
-[X] 1x Starblade (Superheavy Slot)
-[X] 1x Starlance (Vehicle Slot) 1x Fatesever Cannon
-[X] 2x Fatecaster Rifles (Heavy Slot) 1x Starcarver (Heavy Slot).
-[X] 1x Vehicle Holo-Field, 3x Grav-Shields
-[X] Trade in 2 Ranged Slots -> 1 System Slot.
-[X] Trade in 9 System Slots -> 1 Vehicle Slots + 1 Heavy Slot
-[X] 1x Fatesever Cannon (Vehicle Slot).
-[X] (Crew Equipment) Void Guard Armour, Starblaster Rifles + CCW (Hammers)

[X] "Chisel" Fast Assault Jetbike (Bright Talon Refit)
-[X] Heavy Jetbike Chassis
-[X] 1x Starcarver (Heavy Slot),
-[X] 2x Needler Rifles (Ranged Slot)
-[X] 1x Vehicle Holo-Field,
-[X] (Crew Equipment) Void Guard Armour, Flamer Pistol + CCW

Got the unitcrunch site working, the "https://www." part of the link was missing.

Ran some tests between Starblade Vs SH Starlances to celebrate.

The following are assumptions made for the stats of all the weapons:
-Both Starblade and Starlance are given a BS of 3 to match the accuracy of the Twin Pulsars on a Scorpion Superheavy
-There are two SH Starlance configurations, one with a SH Starlance with the Twin-Link Trait which is normally how a vehicle with two weapons is supposed to function as seen with the Space Marine Falchion which has 2 Volcano Cannons and one with 2 separate SH Starlances firing.

-Starblade:

• 6 Attacks (Same as Warlord Volcano Cannon, the flavor text for the Starblade indicates that it still retains some of the Starlance's re-fire advantage over regular-las weapons which is why I gave it a 6)
• S40 (just shy of Double a Warlord's Volcano Cannon)
• AP -6 (same as Volcano Cannon)
• D47 (based on description of SB being able to overkill a Warhound like a Guardsman shot by las-cannon, las-cannon does 7x of Guardsman's hp pool so the 6 hits should do 7x Warhound hp, could be higher given las-cannon vs Guardsman's great AP and S disparity)
• Blast and Devastating Wounds (Simulate Shadowsword trait) Traits added

-SH Starlances

• 12 Attacks (Double the best possible attack count of the Warhound's Dual Barrel Turbolaser and matches the larger Warlord's Laser Blaster)
• S22 (Just shy of a Volcano Cannon which has 24)
• AP -4 (Same as Turbolaser on Warlord)
• D13 (Just shy of a regular Volcano Cannon which has 14 since QM said it does less damage than a VC, was initially set to D12 but 1-shotting Leman Rus's was funny)
• Blast trait added, Twin Link trait was added for the 1st version (see Space Marine Falchion with two Volcano Cannons vs Baneblade Shadowsword) while 2nd version just has 2 SH Starlances firing (not how it works on TT)

Tests were performed against platoons of 4 targets each aside from the Leman Rus and Baneblade where I did a company of 24.

Vs Leman Rus Company:

• Starblade averages 6/24 kills
• TL Starlances averages 9/24 kills (I initially had the Starlance at D12 and it only got 4 kills which was kinda sad so I bumped it to 13 so it could one-shot them)
• 2 Starlances averages 15/24 kills (this is why having 2 of the same weapon results in Twin-Linked instead of 2 separate weapons firing)

Vs Baneblade Company:

• Starblade averages 6/24 kills with 52% chance of 6 or more kills
• TL Starlances averages 4/24 kills with 58% chance of 4 or more kills
• 2 Starlances averages 6/24 kills with 54.5% chance of 6 or more kills

Vs Stompa Platoon:

• Starblade averages 3/4 kills with 61.8% chance of killing 3 or more and 30.8% chance to kill all 4
• TL Starlances averages 2/4 kills with 60.1% chance to kill 2 or more and 6.4% chance to kill a 3rd
• 2 Starlances averages 3/4 kills with 56.7% chance of 3 or more kills and 13.3% chance to kill all 4

Vs Warhound Platoon:

• Starblade averages 2/4 kills with 78.3% chance of killing 2 or more, 46.6% chance to kill 3 and 18.9% chance to kill all 4
• TL Starlances averages 1/4 kills with 75.7% chance of killing 1 or more and 5% chance of killing a second
• 2 Starlances averages 1/4 kills with 95.3% chance of killing 1 or more, 42.5% chance to kill a second, and 2.9% chance to kill a third

Vs Reaver Platoon:

• Starblade averages 1/4 kills with 24% chance to kill a second one
• TL Starlances averages 1/4 kills with no chance to kill a second one
• 2 Starlances averages 1/4 kills with 14% chance to kill a second one

Vs Warlord Platoon:

• Starblade has a 46% chance to kill a single Warlord
• TL Starlances have a 5.4% chance to kill a single Warlord
• 2 Starlances have a 41% chance to kill a single Warlord

From these results we can see why a vehicle armed with two of the same weapons has that weapon given the Twin-Linked trait instead of being given two of the same weapon (it's disgustingly OP).

Overall the Starblade predictably performs worse against large groups of lighter vehicles like Leman Rus but actually does better against Baneblades and up compared to the Twin-Linked SH Starlances.

I suspect if we included the Vehicle grade weapons that a Starblade armed tank would also have that it's performance against lighter vehicles would be much more competitive and it's lead Vs heavier vehicles would increase.

Surprisingly, even against the OP "Two SH Starlances firing at Once" configuration the Starblade actually does somewhat better against Titans though predictably falls behind even further behind against lighter vehicles.

Out of curiosity I ran a test to see how well Twin-Linked Starblades would do against a Warlord Platoon and it turns out they have a 60% chance to kill one and a 2% chance of killing 2.

LOLROFL said:

12 Attacks (Double the best possible attack count of the Warhound's Dual Barrel Turbolaser and matches the larger Warlord's Laser Blaster)

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Just to be correct, the 12 attacks match the number of attack from a warlords triple blaster ?
Because it's noted the RoF of a SH starlance is faster than even a 4 link turbo blaster version even if that comes close.

Skjadir said:

Just to be correct, the 12 attacks match the number of attack from a warlords triple blaster ?
Because it's noted the RoF of a SH starlance is faster than even a 4 link turbo blaster version even if that comes close.

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12 attacks is 2 times as many as the Warlord's triple blaster which gets 6. The Warhound's Double Barrel Turbolaser has a chance to fire 6 shots since it's a D3+3.

LOLROFL said:

12 attacks is 2 times as many as the Warlord's triple blaster which gets 6. The Warhound's Double Barrel Turbolaser has a chance to fire 6 shots since it's a D3+3.

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I meant more the matches the warlords laser blaster part, than the double the fire rate of a double Barrel Turbolaser from a warhound.

Can anyone explain what having S40 even does?

I last played in 4e, and back then Vehicle AV only went up to 14 and S to 10.

Skjadir said:

I meant more the matches the warlords laser blaster part, than the double the fire rate of a double Barrel Turbolaser from a warhound.

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No, the Warlord's Laser Blaster only fires 6 shots, I only included the bit about the Warhound's Turbolaser because it's interesting that it can occasionally match the ROF of the triple barrel Laser Blaster.

Interestingly the Laser Blaster is AP -4 vs the Warhound's AP -3 though this comes at the cost of only being S16 vs the Warhounds S20.

IronFist said:

Can anyone explain what having S40 even does?

I last played in 4e, and back then Vehicle AV only went up to 14 and S to 10.

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I don't think it does all that much unless you are shooting a Warlord Titan. The odds of killing a Stompa or Warhound didn't really change when I tweaked it down to S30 but the odds of killing a Warlord dropped from 46% to 31%.

I think that mostly comes down to the Warlord being T14 and dummy thicc at 100 wounds while the only other T14 unit I could find didn't have the wounds to actually tank a hit from the Starblade when it does D47 (Stompa is T14 like the Warlord but only W30).

I mostly just made it S40 because of how it's should be much stronger than a Volcano Cannon.

LOLROFL said:

I don't think it does all that much unless you are shooting a Warlord Titan. The odds of killing a Stompa or Warhound didn't really change when I tweaked it down to S30 but the odds of killing a Warlord dropped from 46% to 31%.

I think that mostly comes down to the Warlord being T14 and dummy thicc at 100 wounds while the only other T14 unit I could find didn't have the wounds to actually tank a hit from the Starblade when it does D47 (Stompa is T14 like the Warlord but only W30).

I mostly just made it S40 because of how it's should be much stronger than a Volcano Cannon.

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Does the instant death rule still exist, and does it apply to vehicles?

IronFist said:

Can anyone explain what having S40 even does?

I last played in 4e, and back then Vehicle AV only went up to 14 and S to 10.

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To my understanding, in 10 edition, means you wound on a 2+ against pretty much everything but does not impact the armor save at all (that is what the -AP part is for) and the invu save pretty much ignores everything apart from devestating wounds.

Something to note that none of the Titans have a toughness above 16 in the index, so 32 strength is pretty much the max you get benefit from. For Armor saves max is 2+, which i think gets fully negated by AP -5.

The main thing of interest is the damage per hit and the fire rate, as they both should hit, wound and penetrate armor at about the same rate (at least in 10 Edition).

The interesting part is what models of volcano cannon you go off and how you model the fire rate for the starblade vs how many shots does the SH starlance get at 4-5 times the fire rate and around 3 time the power compared to human designs.

IronFist said:

Does the instant death rule still exist, and does it apply to vehicles?

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Nothing i can find, but stuff like devastating wound could be used instead.
(so yes you could shoot an guardsmen with a lascannon or more extreme baneblade mainweapon, hit and then fail to wound in 10 edition to my knowledge)

[X] Cloudburst Mortar Assault Skimmer



No idea whether mortars make sense in the context of combat mechanics, but at least here I can see an attempt at innovation. The differences between other designs are pretty much incomprehensible to me.

I really don't think Trying to match out how well our vehicles and stuff does, On the tabletop with weapons that are "This is kinda like it would be like" stated by us and not the GM, Is not a very good metric for testing what vehicles we should pick. A Tabletop game will always be an abstraction to make a "balanced game", And weapons in lore definitely don't match up to weapons on tabletop, let alone all the little gribbly bits that actual combat involved that tabletops don't.

For example, One of the vehicle grade weapons was Talked up as "Firing as fast as a hellpistol here" but on the tabletop, a Hellpistol has an attack of 1. That because you can't have LESS attacks then one, So it rounds that up, Meaning Attacks aren't actually One trigger pull, Attacks can be assumed to be the amount of firepower your putting on in a pre-determined set of time, Just like how a heavy stubber, based on the M2 browning, but a Twin Heavy stubber IE two of them strapped together, have 3 attacks despite a individual gun having a ROF of 850ish.

All of this is a long winded way to say, as interesting as that is, I don't think it has any value to actually picking what vehicles we want because of the amount of abstraction that is involved to go from actual combat to tabletop game, and then FURTHER abtrasction to go from our weapon descriptions to a statblock.

frostgiant said:

I really don't think Trying to match out how well our vehicles and stuff does, On the tabletop with weapons that are "This is kinda like it would be like" stated by us and not the GM, Is not a very good metric for testing what vehicles we should pick. A Tabletop game will always be an abstraction to make a "balanced game", And weapons in lore definitely don't match up to weapons on tabletop, let alone all the little gribbly bits that actual combat involved that tabletops don't.

For example, One of the vehicle grade weapons was Talked up as "Firing as fast as a hellpistol here" but on the tabletop, a Hellpistol has an attack of 1. That because you can't have LESS attacks then one, So it rounds that up, Meaning Attacks aren't actually One trigger pull, Attacks can be assumed to be the amount of firepower your putting on in a pre-determined set of time, Just like how a heavy stubber, based on the M2 browning, but a Twin Heavy stubber IE two of them strapped together, have 3 attacks despite a individual gun having a ROF of 850ish.

All of this is a long winded way to say, as interesting as that is, I don't think it has any value to actually picking what vehicles we want because of the amount of abstraction that is involved to go from actual combat to tabletop game, and then FURTHER abtrasction to go from our weapon descriptions to a statblock.

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You are literally griping about abstracting fluff into game mechanics in a QUEST where we are making choices that are an abstraction of the actions taken by parts of an entire civilization and then hearing about how the results of those choices impact the civilization based on game mechanics like the result of rolls.

I am well aware of the fact that what is modeled in TT is not accurate to how things go in actual lore (Shields aren't modeled at all despite those being a big thing for Titans) but it is still a fun way to conceptualize an idea of how certain gear could potentially perform.

LOLROFL said:

You are literally griping about abstracting fluff into game mechanics in a QUEST where we are making choices that are an abstraction of the actions taken by parts of an entire civilization and then hearing about how the results of those choices impact the civilization based on game mechanics like the result of rolls.

I am well aware of the fact that what is modeled in TT is not accurate to how things go in actual lore (Shields aren't modeled at all despite those being a big thing for Titans) but it is still a fun way to conceptualize an idea of how certain gear could potentially perform.

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No, I am griping about trying to reverse abstract things to an already abstracted platform and then Using that to help inform what designs are or are not good at in comparison to each other, and feel like it needs to be said that these results really don't showcase anything about the Platforms, because we can't know for certain how things translate or even if we translated it correctly at all.