A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)

[Skjadir]

Even retaining the rifles, you are talking about a difference of 42 EP for Needlers or 21 for slightly cheaper Spike Rifles. Compared to the 84/105! EP difference between just rifles.
It's even worse if you drop to carbines, as I did for maximum cost saving- that's a 126 EP difference in cost per Detachment in favor of Needlers, just for the rifles of the Fire Squads.

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Yes, and we can assume that there is a difference of power, range and damage for that EP increase going by the info we have on the starblasters a pretty high one (one as the QM are pretty much the only one how big that difference there is actually we pretty much have to guess).
If cost was everything, we would never go away from lasweapons just update the armor.

 

[Professor Vesca]

Yes, and we can assume that there is a difference of power, range and damage for that EP increase going by the info we have on the starblasters a pretty high one.
If cost was everything, we would never go away from lasweapons just update the armor.

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I am sure there is a difference in range and firepower but we have X number of people to arm. Is firepower and range also our only metric?

We dont need to obliterate the Biel-Tan warriors from existence. We just need to poke enough holes in them that they die and then leave.

 

[Skjadir]

I am sure there is a difference in range and firepower but we have X number of people to arm. Is firepower and range also our only metric?

We dont need to obliterate the Biel-Tan warriors from existence. We just need to poke enough holes in them that they die and then leave.

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Biel tan aren't the only ones we are fighting.
We have an ork empire next door with the full setup of infantry, vehicles and titans.

Edit:
And if we want to optimize against Biel-Tan ?
Flamers all the Flamers with some back up long range infantry.

 

[Mechanis]

Yes, and we can assume that there is a difference of power, range and damage for that EP increase going by the info we have on the starblasters a pretty high one.
If cost was everything, we would never go away from lasweapons just update the armor.

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The point is: the more EP per Detachment you spend on equipment, the longer it will take to improve your existing armies. There's even an argument to be made for just spending a turn making a giant pile of Brigandine to hand out to as much of the army as possible, and not even touching the weapons yet. It's not like Lasguns can't kill things, after all.

 

[Profilozof]

This makes me think about how high-cost equipment and our low military AP synchronise quite well, expensive squads and detachments being more mil AP efficient.

 

[MonkeyTypewriter]

If Starblaster rifles are so overwhelmingly superior there's no reason to build anything then they're just going to get nerfed until there's legitimate trade offs again. The same is true with our Ilthimar armor, or any other weapon system.

 

[Skjadir]

The point is: the more EP per Detachment you spend on equipment, the longer it will take to improve your existing armies. There's even an argument to be made for just spending a turn making a giant pile of Brigandine to hand out to as much of the army as possible, and not even touching the weapons yet. It's not like Lasguns can't kill things, after all.

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Question in that regard.

Is it 1 Steward AP to Retrofit 1 Detachment type (line Detachments)?
So we want Retrofit 2 Detachment types we need 2 AP ?

Mostly because Steward AP is pretty tight.

And the only two Detachments that really need a retrofit right now are militia line and assault.
Then one can calc how much armor is needed for all of that, start outfitting with spikes/needlers, add flamers to the assault squads, and use the left over to upgrade some spike/needlers into starblasters.

 

[BigFungus26]

I decided to do some more tinkering with the armour designs to see if we could make a nice upgrade for our Void Guard suits and here's what I got so far in terms of a concept.

[ ] Heavy
[ ] Powered
[ ] Holo-field Projector
[ ] Autotargeters
[ ] Improved Power-Assist (Powered & Semi-powered only) X2
[ ] Extra Plating.
[ ] Extended Operations Modification.
[ ] 2 slots reserved for Conversion Shields.

Total cost without conversion shields = 8EP

This would significantly improve upon the Void-Guard suit (extra nimble, extra plating) while also giving them near-equivalence to the Ithilmar's survivability thanks to the extra armour and conversion fields, if anything, this suit might actually be faster than the Ithilmar considering it doesn't have a super heavy backpack weighing it down.

Only drawback is that we gotta wait until the shields are finished and we know the stats before we can redesign our suits, so for the moment, Void Guard and Brigandine will have to be our mainstays and the Ithilmar goes to the Hearthguard, I don't like it, the Cult of Fuckloads of Armour doesn't like it, but we have to have at least SOMETHING ready for Biel-Tan.

As for weaponry... we probably should go for something like Needlers until after Biel-Tan has attacked us and we have some breathing room to upgrade our kit.

Another thing I think everyone missed is that the vision showed Biel-Tan using las-lances which means they might not have upgraded their military equipment all too much, which means they might still be rolling around with trauma vests and lasguns if we're lucky, and if they are? Then our void guard suits and needlers will handle them just fine.

 

[Professor Vesca]

Biel tan aren't the only ones we are fighting.
We have an ork empire next door with the full setup of infantry, vehicles and titans.

Edit:
And if we want to optimize against Biel-Tan ?
Flamers all the Flamers with some back up long range infantry.

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Yes, but...

We dont need to equip all of our infantry with anti vehicle weapons or anti titan weapons. All we *really* need for them is to be able to poke holes into their counterpart. Fancier stuff can wait to be built and distributed.

Our intent is not to optimize against anyone, not Biel-Tan, not the Orks. Our goal is to put guns into hands that arent garbage. The holes these things make will down and ork just as easily as they will down an aeldari. That is the target we should be aiming for. How killy do our guns *actually* need to be to put guns into as many hands as we can, so that we live long enough to give every man woman and child their own personal suit of terminator armor.

The answer in my opinion is: They dont actually *need* to be that killy. Biel-Tan presumably started out with equally shit militia as us. So we just need to distribute *actual* armor, such as brigandine, and *actual* guns, such as needlers and spike rifles.

 

[Mechanis]

Question in that regard.

Is it 1 Steward AP to Retrofit 1 Detachment type (line Detachments)?
So we want Retrofit 2 Detachment types we need 2 AP ?

Mostly because Steward AP is pretty tight.

And the only two Detachments that really need a retrofit right now are militia line and assault.
Then one can calc how much armor is needed for all of that, start outfitting with spikes/needlers, add flamers to the assault squads, and use the left over to upgrade some spike/needlers into starblasters.

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I have already answered this question twice, but here's a third time: one Steward action will refit multiple Detachments, once you actually have the equipment to distribute.

And again: consider carefully whether you want all your army in Okay equipment in the next couple of turns, or a or a smaller amount of Goodish troops mixed with Poorly Equipped ones. This goes double if you want to be mixing in Razorwinds, Mirages, or anything of the vehicles likely to be developed this turn.

 

[Copperscale]

I decided to do some more tinkering with the armour designs to see if we could make a nice upgrade for our Void Guard suits and here's what I got so far in terms of a concept.

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I was doing the same thing... but I went for "even cheaper"
How cheap can it go?

[] Printed power Armor
-[] Heavy 1.5
-[] Powered *1.75
-[] Autotargeters +0.5
-[] Enhanced Sensors +0.2
-[] Extra Plating x 3 +0.6
-[] Improved Power Assist x 3 +0.9

For a total of 4.825, or 5 points.

 

[Professor Vesca]

Basically one steward action is all that is needed to throw the guns and armor into a giant pile, inform the soldier-types where that pile is, and to then double check that everyone has one suit of armor and one shooty-stick. Once we set the system up it runs itself until it either runs out of guns or out of bodies, or we meet whatever number we set for it.

It could be accomplished with a very long queue and a worker with a clicky counter.

 

[Skjadir]

This would significantly improve upon the Void-Guard suit (extra nimble, extra plating) while also giving them near-equivalence to the Ithilmar's survivability thanks to the extra armour and conversion fields, if anything, this suit might actually be faster than the Ithilmar considering it doesn't have a super heavy backpack weighing it down.

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I would drop these two:
[ ] Extra Plating.
[ ] Extended Operations Modification.

For sensorsx2, VGA is pretty much just for our ranged units.
And it pretty much is about as survivable as Ithilmar as that doesn't have extra plating, "just" the gav-shield.

I have already answered this question twice, but here's a third time: one Steward action will refit multiple Detachments, once you actually have the equipment to distribute.

And again: consider carefully whether you want all your army in Okay equipment in the next couple of turns, or a or a smaller amount of Goodish troops mixed with Poorly Equipped ones. This goes double if you want to be mixing in Razorwinds, Mirages, or anything of the vehicles likely to be developed this turn.

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With the amount that gets asked (and likely will be in the future) maybe an Q&A post that get added to the Informational threadmark is in order ?

 

[Professor Vesca]

The Volkharii Eldar are so persnickety about the stuff they make that they only are able to produce half as many guns as they need to arm their soldiers.

"Two people to a rifle! When the rifleman is shot, the other soldier will take his rifle and his ammunition and keep going!"

I know enemy at the gates is mostly propaganda but the idea is amusing to me.

 

[sunrise]

Could we fit the laser rifles on the militia jetbikes when we fit the troops with better rifles?
and hand out the las pistols to the currently unarmed vehicle crews?

 

[Skjadir]

So a pretty broad upgrade would be these 3:
Line:156 EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment), 26 total detachments = 4056EP
Assault:144 EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment) + 40EP (20 Flamers), 19 total detachments = 3096EP
Militia Heavy:172EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment)+20EP(10 Flamers), 9 total detachments =1728EP

Total:8880EP
With the left over i think we can also cover the few elite detachments we have?
But would have to check.

Also yes include the Flamers for all the Militia Assault squads because its a cheap are pretty damn good weapon for them.

Edit:
Hearthguard Light Support:66EP per, total 8 (two away)=396EP
Hearthguard Line:100EP, Total 4 = 400EP
Hearthguard Skirmish:108EP, Total 8 (Two away)=648EP

Not all covered, might be able to get them all if we don't include the flamers (at least the ones that are home).

Still just dumping all the Brigantine on the Eilites and most of the normal forces should fix some short term issues, add in next turn to get the rest and add weapons (like the Flamers for assault units) and i think we have enough time to switch to complete passive gear creation with setting up some foundries.

 

[Professor Vesca]

So a pretty broad upgrade would be these 3:
Line:156 EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment), 26 total detachments = 4056EP
Assault:144 EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment) + 40EP (20 Flamers), 19 total detachments = 3096EP
Militia Heavy:172EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment)+20EP(10 Flamers), 9 total detachments =1728EP

Total:8880EP
With the left over i think we can also cover the few elite detachments we have?
But would have to check.

Also yes include the Flamers for all the Militia Assault squads because its a cheap are pretty damn good weapon for them.

Click to shrink...

Assuming the math is correct and I have no reason to believe it isnt.

I think I can get behind this as a temporary stop-gap while we figure out what we ACTUALLY want to have for our warhosts. It makes me feel a lot better when we eventually rotate the militia out for proper soldiers. And then we will have brigantine and needlers in storage in case of an emergency.

 

[Mechanis]

Could we fit the laser rifles on the militia jetbikes when we fit the troops with better rifles?
and hand out the las pistols to the currently unarmed vehicle crews?

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In order: no, that would require redesigning the vehicle in question (it's a little more involved than just duct-taping the gun to the handlebars), and yes, but that would cost extra AP, which you may not feel like spending on the fairly marginal benefit of armed tank crews.

 

[Nemonole]

Hmm. Budget Militia Assualt Squad refit being a Void Guard Armor + either a Needler Pistol or Flamer Pistol?

...Well, the Militia Assault Squad seems to be 5 Close Combat Weapons, 5 Light CCW + Laspistol. If we upgrade to Void Guard for them with their inherent '+1 sidearm capacity', we can give the ones with a full size CCW pistols and the ones with light CCWs a full size longarm. Maybe a carbine for mobility? Power weapons are nice but far too expensive for a budget refit.

This is 90 EP at most (Needler Carbines or Pistols), 75 at cheapest (Flamers in both full size and pistol variety). A mix might be for the best? Militia Assault Detachments have 2 of these Assault Squads in them.

 

[Vehrec]

So a pretty broad upgrade would be these 3:
Line:156 EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment), 26 total detachments = 4056EP
Assault:144 EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment) + 40EP (20 Flamers), 19 total detachments = 3096EP
Militia Heavy:172EP(Brigantine for the entire detachment)+20EP(10 Flamers), 9 total detachments =1728EP

Total:8880EP
With the left over i think we can also cover the few elite detachments we have?
But would have to check.

Also yes include the Flamers for all the Militia Assault squads because its a cheap are pretty damn good weapon for them.

Click to shrink...

I feel like, rather than 4 point flamers and 2 point brigantine, we should invest the same amount of points in giving our assault infantry Void Guard armor to go with their swords. For a mere 10 extra EP per squad, you can also replace their laspistols with needler pistols. That feels like a better assualt unit in the grand 40k tradition than a bunch of guys with flamethrowers.

 

[Skjadir]

I feel like, rather than 4 point flamers and 2 point brigantine, we should invest the same amount of points in giving our assault infantry Void Guard armor to go with their swords. For a mere 10 extra EP per squad, you can also replace their laspistols with needler pistols. That feels like a better assualt unit in the grand 40k tradition than a bunch of guys with flamethrowers.

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A flamer is 2 EP per, not 4 these aren't heavy flamers.

And the added flamers are a pretty massive upgrade offensivly for them in the way that the VGA isn't (sadly).
Also they are staples on a good number of assault units for a reason at least on TT.

 

[Vehrec]

A flamer is 2 EP per, not 4 these aren't heavy flamers.

And the added flamers are a pretty massive upgrade offensivly for them in the way that the VGA isn't (sadly).
Also they are staples on a good number of assault units for a reason at least on TT.

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Ah yes, how could I forget those classic eldar flamer units, the Striking Scorpions, Howling Banshees and Fire Dragons. Actually, that last one can have a flamer, but the point remains, I want to keep our assault units actually assault-y, even if we don't have grenades or jump packs or chainswords. Flamers aren't quite the same vibe, they feel more 'counter-assault' to me.

 

[Skjadir]

Ah yes, how could I forget those classic eldar flamer units, the Striking Scorpions, Howling Banshees and Fire Dragons. Actually, that last one can have a flamer, but the point remains, I want to keep our assault units actually assault-y, even if we don't have grenades or jump packs or chainswords. Flamers aren't quite the same vibe, they feel more 'counter-assault' to me.

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*looks at our heavy power armor and medium semi-power armor*
Yes because we follow the troops designs of other craftworld on what troops they field.

The flamer very much fit our troop design if you look at the forgefire squad, just downgraded a lot due to costs.

 

[sunrise]

A variant on Banging Out The Dents that does one less new vehicle to design a heavy version of the Battlecasting Support detachment
it replaces the two Guardian Militia Fire Squads and Brightstar with Forgefire Squads and the Fatebreaker with a Voidspear squad.
The goal here is to slowly replace the existing detachments using the warrior AP
For most this would be more gear then we can afford at this time but our battle pyskers are a limited resource we should protect.
For new detachment raised using the warrior AP the troops gear of detachments disbanded that turn can be used and the remaining gear can be made in the turn they get raised.

[X] Plan: Banging Out The Dents with Battlecasting
-[X][Steward] Design Additional Vehicles (1 AP)
-[X] Design a Detachment (1 AP each, 3 Max)
--[X]A Heavy Battlecasting Support detachment is an addition which brings the formidable firepower of Battlecasters to the field. A single Battlecaster is attached to the detachment's three
Forgefire Squads, as well as the Hearthguard Veteran, and Voidspear squads which form the elite core of these detachments, while a deadly Warcasting Circle brings terrifying displays of the Eldar's psyekic might to the field. A squadron each of Hearthguard jetbikers and Bright Talon Heavy Jetbikes provide flanking support for the detachment.
-[X] [Steward] Form and Function to Feed a World (3 AP)
-[X] [Steward] Design a Frigate (4 AP)
-[X] [Bonesinger] Assess the damage to Vau-Vulkesh's engines (4 AP)
-[X] [Bonesinger] Continue ship repair (1 AP)
-[X] [Bonesinger] Begin refitting the Dragonships of Quilan (1 AP)
--[X] [Bonesinger] Also offer Grav-shields (+1 AP)
-[X][Bonesinger] Refit an Escort (3 AP)
--[X][Bonesinger] 9x Damaged Lance Cutters to Nettle-class Escort Cutters
-[X][Bonesinger] Forge Actions
--[X][Bonesinger] 2x Wargear Production (10,000 EP, details TBD)
-[X][Seer] Present: Where are the Freebootas threatening Val-Terrine based
-[X][Seer] Future: What will be the strength of the next wave threatening Meros
-[X] [Seer] The Flaw, The Curse, The Claim (5 AP)
-[X][Seeker] Reverse-engineer Grav-weapons
--[X][Seeker] Gravetic Sheer Weapons (+2 AP)
--[X][Seeker] Gravetic-Oscillator Weapons (+2 AP)
--[X][Seeker] Gravetic-Implosion Weapons (+2 AP)
-[X][Seeker] Reverse-engineer Plasma Blasters
--[X] [Seeker] Power (+1 AP, +.5 turns)
--[X][Seeker] Range (+1 AP, +.5 Turns)
--[X][Seeker] Lower Cost (+3 AP, +2 Turns)
--[X][Seeker] Compromise: Safety (-2 AP, -2 Turns)
-[X] [Seeker] Reverse-engineer Conversion Fields (2 AP/turn, 3 turns)
--[X] [Seeker] Regeneration
-[X][Warrior] Muster a Fleet
--[X][Val-Terrine] 1x Combat Brig, 4x Battle Carracks, 8x Assault Ketches, 12x Lance Cutters
--[X][Val-Terrine] Deploy Hearthguard Iron Fist and 1st Heavy Militia
-[X][Warrior] Raise Warhost (1 AP)
--[X][Warrior] 4x Battlecasting Support Detachments, 2x Hearthguard Skirmish Detachment, 2x Militia Line Detachments

 

[Alectai]

Your regular reminder that Brigantine is actually roughly on par with Aspect Armor, and also looks kickin rad.

And we don't have to upgrade Literally Everyone, but getting our Militia squads into Brigantine with a Needler, and we can probably get several of our Militia Warhosts up to scratch.