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A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)

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Skjadir said:
Not sure where the Brigantine is going to be our main armor is coming from, VGA is too expensive and let's equip everyone with needlers is coming from.

Because that is pretty damn false.
This the goal is still VGA or better for everyone and plasma weaponry everywhere.
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The post i quoted contradicts that.

It says that we need basic line infantry, and that we have a population in the billions, which means that we need to recruit cheap infantry armed with Needlers and wraithweave.

We don't have a troop that uses needlers and wraithweave, so that means refits of newly recruited militia, which is inefficient, or actually rationalizing a new troop which uses needlers and wraithweave and raising that.
 
10ebbor10 said:
It's because the winning plan does that.
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I'm mildly irked about that.

Having seen Zahr-Tann's choices in equipment, I think Void Guard Warsuits are actually a solid design that we'll be using for a long time - more expensive up front but with a significantly discounted holofield included where they've needed to buy infantry Flare Shields everywhere - and while the brigandine is likely to be our vehicle crew armor for the indefinite future, it's unpowered and blocks the use of plasma weapons.

Our plasma weapons are very damned nice. We shouldn't be equipping our forces with armor that prevents handing them out. The only reason my plan went with Spike Carbines is because our current forces haven't gotten power armor everywhere yet, and Spike Carbines got picked as our vehicle crew weapons for some reason. Otherwise I'd have gone with Sunblaster Calivers.
 
[x] Plan: The Aeldmoot, industry edition v3

I really don't like the refractor choices for this plan, but I kind of don't like the refractor choices for most of the plans, so whatever. At least this doesn't start brigantine production.
 
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IronFist said:
The post i quoted contradicts that.

It says that we need basic line infantry, and that we have a population in the billions, which means that we need to recruit cheap infantry armed with Needlers and wraithweave.

We don't have a troop that uses needlers and wraithweave, so that means refits of newly recruited militia, which is inefficient, or actually rationalizing a new troop which uses needlers and wraithweave and raising that.
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And that still misses the mark because that would be pretty shitty troops.
When at the end the problem isn't with the EP cost, but the AP cost to raise new detachments.

The foundries for the infantry equipment are setup very fast.
Pretty much the only info we are lacking is much production one is pushing out per turn.

Candesce said:
I'm mildly irked about that.

Having seen Zahr-Tann's choices in equipment, I think Void Guard Warsuits are actually a solid design that we'll be using for a long time - more expensive up front but with a significantly discounted holofield included where they've needed to buy infantry Flare Shields everywhere - and while the brigandine is likely to be our vehicle crew armor for the indefinite future, it's unpowered and blocks the use of plasma weapons.

Our plasma weapons are very damned nice. We shouldn't be equipping our forces with armor that prevents handing them out. The only reason my plan went with Spike Carbines is because our current forces haven't gotten power armor everywhere yet, and Spike Carbines got picked as our vehicle crew weapons for some reason. Otherwise I'd have gone with Sunblaster Calivers.
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Brigantine at least for me is the next armor we are going to replace pretty much because it is the armor for the vehicle guys and having to replace that means having to redo all the design, just for that to my understanding (or we have to do that under the current system).
 
IronFist said:
also, 1 guy in Ithilmar with a Fatecaster vs 20 guys with needlers?

My money is still on the ithilmar suit, outside of a white room scenario.
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Even in a White Room, the guy in the Ithilmar suit is likely to go in a lot more experienced than the twenty guys with needlers.
RandomTechPriest said:
After thinking about it, I think most of our military problems can be solved by producing more Starcrystals. Arming everyone with Starblaster Carbines would remove the need for large and expensive anti-tank weapons and would simplify logistics massively. No need to toy with unit compositions when everyone has a anti-everything on hand. Plus, at the cost of only 8 EP each its very cheap compared to comparable weapons
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One of the things I'd like to look for in the True Stars are stockpiles of exotics and the tools/infrastructure to make them.

If we can find a discounted way of expanding exotic production they're a great weapon and simplify things enormously.

Skjadir said:
Because that is pretty damn false.
This the goal is still VGA or better for everyone and plasma weaponry everywhere.
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Depending on relative production rates, I can a scenario where it might be more effective to pair Starcrystal forges and sets of Starblaster Carbine forges.

We know that Forges/Foundries produce much less than one AP'a worth of production, producing a trickle over time. Let's say for the sake of argument that each one produces 0.1 AP worth of production, or 48 EP. That's enough for 6 Starblaster Carbines or 8 Plasma Guns.

One Starcrystal Farm produces 40 of them a year, or enough for twenty carbines.

So, you could spend 11 AP to make 18 Starblaster carbines a year, or 12 AP to make 48 Plasma Guns.

From the description of the two weapons, I think in that scenario the Starblaster Carbines are much more useful overall than the larger number of plasma guns. The Starblasters can simply throw out a greater volume of more powerful fire with a better form factor, all in a more compact squad, which saves on armour and vehicles.
 
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Candesce said:
The only reason my plan went with Spike Carbines is because our current forces haven't gotten power armor everywhere yet, and Spike Carbines got picked as our vehicle crew weapons for some reason. Otherwise I'd have gone with Sunblaster Calivers.
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The biggest risk for vehicle crews in case of vehicle kill that they can do something about is getting swarmed - both Sunblasters and Needlers are decent to good against groups of enemies but Needlers are better in case of close combat since there is less of a risk of friendly fire due to lack of AoE.
 
Skjadir said:
it is the armor for the vehicle guys and having to replace that means having to redo all the design
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As someone who came out of the refit disaster with an utter hatred of using multiple types of armor, vehicle crew aren't actually a big deal - we get a free opportunity to switch out their armor when we switch out their vehicles.

Combined with the issues where vehicles get designed to use specific types of armor and can't readily be switched, we might actually have more trouble if they're using the same stuff as everyone else - and we'd be spending an additional 4 EP per crew per vehicle, which will actually add up fast if we stick with the plan to be heavily mechanized.

Zoolimar said:
The biggest risk for vehicle crews in case of vehicle kill that they can do something about is getting swarmed - both Sunblasters and Needlers are decent to good against groups of enemies but Needlers are better in case of close combat since there is less of a risk of friendly fire due to lack of AoE.
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Personally, I'd have gone with needler pistols as standard crew sidearms. Plasma isn't workable if we're not giving crew power armor, and while we can make a 2 EP power armor for our crews, I don't know that it'd work with our current vehicles. We're going to need to redesign enough stuff as is.

But we went with Spike Carbines, so.
 
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Skjadir said:
And that still misses the mark because that would be pretty shitty troops.
When at the end the problem isn't with the EP cost, but the AP cost to raise new detachments.

The foundries for the infantry equipment are setup very fast.
Pretty much the only info we are lacking is much production one is pushing out per turn.
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We are getting 7 more AP for raising troops, so that's hopefully somewhat mitigated.

We don't have a troop that uses needlers and wraithweave, so the only use we have for those two weapons is refits, which are horrible and take steward AP.
At least with the second plan, we'll be making part of the equipment we need for our rationalized troops. We can make a Starblaster/Fatecaster factory next turn and start stockpiling equipment for those troop types.

We'd just need to make a detachment that uses the new squads, which is just 1 Steward AP.
 
Alratan said:
Depending on relative production rates, I can a scenario where it might be more effective to pair Starcrystal forges and sets of Starblaster Carbine forges.

We know that Forges/Foundries produce much less than one AP'a worth of production, producing a trickle over time. Let's say for the sake of argument that each one produces 0.1 AP worth of production, or 48 EP. That's enough for 6 Starblaster Carbines or 8 Plasma Guns.

One Starcrystal Farm produces 40 of them a year, or enough for twenty carbines.

So, you could spend 11 AP to make 18 Starblaster carbines a year, or 12 AP to make 48 Plasma Guns.

From the description of the two weapons, I think in that scenario the Starblaster Carbines are much more useful overall than the larger number of plasma guns.
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That 90 starblaster carbines per turn or 240 Plasma guns per turn.
One can maybe raise 1 detachment. The other can likely raise 2-3.
Us raising like 10 detachments turns that into.

110AP for the starblaster carbines and between 40 and 60AP.
Add then another 40-50 AP for the armor.

There is at least some notion to the Plasma guns here.

IronFist said:
We are getting 7 more AP for raising troops, so that's hopefully somewhat mitigated.

We don't have a troop that uses needlers and wraithweave, so the only use we have for those two weapons is refits, which are horrible and take steward AP.
At least with the second plan, we'll be making part of the equipment we need for our rationalized troops. We can make a Starblaster/Fatecaster factory next turn and start stockpiling equipment for those troop types.

We'd just need to make a detachment that uses the new squads, which is just 1 Steward AP.
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No, it in the end will always be the warrior AP.
Having tons of shit troops is just that, tons of shit troops that are also dying in droves.

Feels at the moment like people try really hard to go for their "cheap" mass infantry as if that is somehow going to be useful instead of just adding more of a mess to a already bad foundation.
 
Honestly I see putting the brigantine on our troops as a stopgap until we can get large scale production of void guard warsuits going.
 
Skjadir said:
No, it in the end will always be the warrior AP.
Having tons of shit troops is just that, tons of shit troops that are also dying in droves.

Feels at the moment like people try really hard to go for their "cheap" mass infantry as if that is somehow going to be useful instead of just adding more of a mess to a already bad foundation.
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... we are agreeing, I think.

I don't want tons of shit troops, and want our troops to be equipped in VGA (as a minimum), not wraithweave.

I was criticizing the apparent u-turn in that direction.

The only use I see for the Wraithweave/Needler factories are as datapoints. And we might as well get datapoints from the gear we're using on troops that we rationalized, as opposed to future troops we don't have that don't even fit our doctrine.
 
VGA costs three times as much as Wraithweave. I'm not saying we don't want it, but we're always going to have a use for Wraithweave--for crews if nothing else.

We're not in an urgent rush to spam it.
 
Skjadir said:
Feels at the moment like people try really hard to go for their "cheap" mass infantry as if that is somehow going to be useful instead of just adding more of a mess to a already bad foundation.
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I think people are fundamentally misunderstanding what Zahr-Tann are doing if they think copying Zahr-Tann's armor design is going to be cheaper than VGW. Zahr-Tann gives individual Flare Shields to almost all of their infantry, and the exceptions have more expensive stuff.

Zahr-Tann is paying more per infantryman in defenses, and getting less. Unless the Flare Shield is much cheaper than I think, while still being comparable to a holofield.

F0lkL0re said:
Honestly I see putting the brigantine on our troops as a stopgap until we can get large scale production of void guard warsuits going.
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This is an argument to print brigandine with the Forge while building VGW production, not vice versa.
 
IronFist said:
The only use I see for the Wraithweave/Needler factories are as datapoints. And we might as well get datapoints from the gear we're using on troops that we rationalized, as opposed to future troops we don't have that don't even fit our doctrine.
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I actually would support Needlers as one of the weapons to have in the main lineup. Both due to their advantages and due to how differently they work. 40k is almost as bad as Star Trek when it comes to "reversing polarity" so you never want all of your stuff to work on the same principles. Ideally you should always have 3-5 different things going on so that even if your enemy shuts one of them down you are not left with your pants down to receive the spanking.

Ihilmar is good in this way since it has holo-field, shield and armor layered on top of each other.
 
Candesce said:
I think people are fundamentally misunderstanding what Zahr-Tann are doing if they think copying Zahr-Tann's armor design is going to be cheaper than VGW. Zahr-Tann gives individual Flare Shields to almost all of their infantry, and the exceptions have more expensive stuff.

Zahr-Tann is paying more per infantryman in defenses, and getting less. Unless the Flare Shield is much cheaper than I think, while still being comparable to a holofield.
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Hm.
VGA baseline combo of good armor + Holo-Field is a pretty brutal defense.
The Holo-Field also adds some really nasty offensive capability with advanced stealth.
 
Something people aren't thinking of, I think, are rate limiting steps.

Let's say we adopt a military doctrine that assumes mechanised infantry. That means our deployment speed is limited by how fast we can produce grav-APCs. It doesn't matter how fast we produce armour or weapons, as they may just pile up uselessly in our armouries.

This is particularly critical when it comes to foundry based automated production, as they can only make one thing, so we need to get the ratios right.

There are likely to be sweet spots in relative cost ratios of vehicles and the types of soldier equipment, dependent on squad size, that make some price points noticeably more efficient than others. For example, we could end up in scenarios, where, say, a 6 EP and a 7 EP piece of equipment has the same real cost, as the additional production of the cheaper item may just pile up unused unless we spend more AP to correct the production ratios.
 
None of that is hashed out yet!

Why are we pretending like we know what the final stage of our army will look like when we don't even Know how much we don't know!?

And no, don't say "This is obvious because I've worked it out." We are effectively in the Wild West of the setting where nothing is hammered down, and we don't even know how much we don't know. Getting something we will always have some use for is just good sense!

Especially since we can retool it if it turns out that we are, indeed, never going to use Brigantine. This is not a permanent choice that will forever belabor us!
 
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Alratan said:
Something people aren't thinking of, I think, are rate limiting steps.

Let's say we adopt a military doctrine that assumes mechanised infantry. That means our deployment speed is limited by how fast we can produce grav-APCs. It doesn't matter how fast we produce armour or weapons, as they may just pile up uselessly in our armouries.

This is particularly critical when it comes to foundry based automated production, as they can only make one thing, so we need to get the ratios right.

There are likely to be sweet spots in relative cost ratios of vehicles and the types of soldier equipment, dependent on squad size, that make some price points noticeably more efficient than others. For example, we could end up in scenarios, where, say, a 6 EP and a 7 EP piece of equipment has the same real cost, as the additional production of the cheaper item may just pile up unused unless we spend more AP to correct the production ratios.
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Rate limiting steps are pretty easily avoided by just building more stuff.
We could as an example go ham on super heavy attached transports and should still be fine.

Forge actions on us building one super heavy foundry go pretty ham on the Fore AP to BAP gain.
 
Zoolimar said:
I actually would support Needlers as one of the weapons to have in the main lineup.
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It's fine to put it on the main lineup, and variety is great.

But the troops we have rationalized and can call up don't make use of needlers and wraithweave brigandine, so starting with a factory for those two items is not useful when we want to raise more troops efficiently.

Alratan said:
Something people aren't thinking of, I think, are rate limiting steps.

Let's say we adopt a military doctrine that assumes mechanised infantry. That means our deployment speed is limited by how fast we can produce grav-APCs. It doesn't matter how fast we produce armour or weapons, as they may just pile up uselessly in our armouries.

This is particularly critical when it comes to foundry based automated production, as they can only make one thing, so we need to get the ratios right.

There are likely to be sweet spots in relative cost ratios of vehicles and the types of soldier equipment, dependent on squad size, that make some price points noticeably more efficient than others. For example, we could end up in scenarios, where, say, a 6 EP and a 7 EP piece of equipment has the same real cost, as the additional production of the cheaper item may just pile up unused unless we spend more AP to correct the production ratios.
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This is thinking way too far ahead.

We don't need to know the exact ratios to know we're going to need at least one of each.
 
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How about we just get a VGA and Ithilmar foundry up this turn so we get a benchmark to our actual production capability (since all we're working with is guesswork estimates and plentiful industry could contribute to the final tally) and then once we find out how much we get, we go on from there?

Might as well bite the bullet

@Mechanis are you able to give us a rough estimate as to how efficient the production infrastructure is compared to using bonesinger AP? Do the plentiful industry and industrious options we picked in chargen factor into the production rate and - if so - are we able to learn how much they factor in (as percentages)?
 
Zoolimar said:
I actually would support Needlers as one of the weapons to have in the main lineup.
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I'm hoping we can eventually develop perks for our needlers the way we did with plasma. It's reasonable to believe we can, between the venoms of shuriken weaponry and the fact they were our first crash research to get a weapon better than lasguns in mass.
 
Alectai said:
Why are we pretending like we know what the final stage of our army will look like when we don't even Know how much we don't know!?
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We don't know it but we know the general problems that eldar face. So we can make the general outline of what the army should look like. And I don't see line infantry in unpowered armor as a viable option going forward. It's just a waste of personnel and materials.

If we can swing some kind of Psychomata knock off it may be worth it to use them as meatshield troops but eldar themselves? No. Not outside protecting Craftworld. If you need to pour line infantry into some kind of venture in hopes of plugging holes with the bodies you have already got outplayed.
 
Candesce said:
I'm hoping we can eventually develop perks for our needlers the way we did with plasma. It's reasonable to believe we can, between the venoms of shuriken weaponry and the fact they were our first crash research to get a weapon better than lasguns in mass.
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If we can get them an actual AP/Explosive variant that isn't just pure kinetic energy or at least hits a lot harder than they do at the moment (rail gun direction there) i would also support them.
 
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