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A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)

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Ok, something I really want to do before we decide to do a deep redesign of our forces:

Get into a ground battle.

Now, we don't want to jump right into trying to land on Ork planets or engage with demons on Crone Worlds, but sending some of our up-armored militia out on scavenging expeditions should get us new information on how things work, and since we'll be getting a bunch of troops back home with Meros ending next turn, that's probably a good time to start doing it.

We know where Kronite is, and we know there's stuff to poke there, so we could do it immediately next turn; what other targets do we have? I know Alratan wants to hit up the True Stars.
 
Alectai said:
Absolutely, we're not in an urgent hurry for that, and SAP is probably going to be very busy with any obligations we'll catch as part of the Aeldmoot aftermath.
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obligations from Aeldmoot are more likely to be deals with other world for our dockyard space or bonesinger AP than stewardship, because we suck at it. I'd say go heavy on the vaults. we know there is good shit in there somewhere, and we might as well find it before we redesign our military.
 
Professor Vesca said:
Yes but then we would be throttling how many soldiers we can field by how many Ithilmar suits we are making.

We picked Brigandine for a variety of reasons, all of which have been stated by various people. But I shall reiterate.

Wraithweave-and-Needlers are a test case, our first foundry so that we can gather data on what our foundaries do (all our tables are probably screwy post-fall) and how much of it they do. Its so we arent spending all of our bonesinger AP making stuff all the time. We build a foundary and just works forever spitting our armor and guns. Because of how the costs of the armor and the gun shake out, its a nice, cheap, simple test case so that we can plan our future foundaries.

We need *SOME* suit of armor now, and wraithweave are cheap so the hope is our shiny new foundry will produce a bunch of the things which will last basically forever until destroyed or lost.

Our idea is to be the arms dealer of the Aedlari, and so giving them better suits that suit their tastes will just be good sense both from a trade standpoint and a 'We dont want the Aeldari to become more of an endangered species than we already are' sense. Wraithweave Brigandine just seems like it would fit with what we know of the Asuryani.

These foundaries will be all about ratios. If we want to automate the raising of detachments we will want foundaries to support those detachments. Because they need kit when they finish Space-Elf-Bootcamp. So having a foundary that just spits out stuff as fast as we can train people just seems like good sense.

Having extra for an emergency is also good sense, and these seem like decent kit to hand out if say, Vulkan decides to pay us a house visit and tell us what he REALLY thinks of the Aeldari. We can throw civilian militia in these suits and shove these needlers into their hands.

So there is a variety of reasons why we picked this suit and this gun.
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Our new allies' armour seems better and costs the same as our Brigandine armour, and they have an enormous amount of it.

The fact that we picked Brigandine doesn't mean we were optimal to pick it so it's the thing we should mass produce first. The fact that our warlike and so probably much more competent at picking what equipment is best to go to war with allies chose to go another route for their armour at this price-point is a strong argument for reconsidering. The fact that it's cheap isn't the problem. The fact that we can probably very easily and quickly design something better and manufacture it at the same cost is.

As I say, we should probably defer to the experts' experience and just see if we can buy their design and just produce that instead rather than having an attack of 'Not Invented Here' and insisting we know better than people who actually do know what they're doing.

And we've exactly zero reason to believe that choosing this particular gear will give a better guide to how producing gear we want our professional troops to use will work than making foundries to produce the actual gear our troops will use, or something much more similar to it.

There's loads of things we can choose to build facilities to mass produce.
 
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Candesce said:
Ok, something I really want to do before we decide to do a deep redesign of our forces:

Get into a ground battle.
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We should get one when we find the Val-Terrine pirates, but that won't be using any of our new gear. The Meros defense won't either considering that ends this turn as well.

We could probably stand to assault one of the weaker Ork systems once we've got some detachments refit, so we can properly stress test the gear.
 
Karnax626 said:
We should get one when we find the Val-Terrine pirates, but that won't be using any of our new gear. The Meros defense won't either considering that ends this turn as well.

We could probably stand to assault one of the weaker Ork systems once we've got some detachments refit, so we can properly stress test the gear.
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Alternatively, we could just ask our allies their expert opinion and why they made the design decisions they did, rather than spend lives to reinvent the wheel?

After we've incorporated their lessons into our design I think we can consider live fire exercises.
 
Karnax626 said:
We should get one when we find the Val-Terrine pirates, but that won't be using any of our new gear.
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If they're still not caught after this turn, we could switch out some of our forces so that they actually have armor.

Assaulting an Ork world is going to take a while before we have the forces for even a very weak one, and I'd rather have a purpose for the fight beyond "let's blood our troops." That's part of why I'm pointing at scavenging.

Alratan said:
After we've incorporated their lessons into our design I think we can consider live fire exercises.
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I don't know about live fire exercises, but at some point I want to spend time and AP testing what armor might work for Bladedancers.
 
Hrm. Had a thought.

We're concerned about our troops being the victim of artillery, right? it's something our existing defenses don't work well on, and it can kill lots of troops. Putting conversion shields on said troops will help, but only so much.

Can we develop equipment - maybe based off of our Sweeper weapons - to fuck with artillery firing at us? Just, deflect their shells long before they get anywhere near our troops, rather than trying to depend on an infantry shield deflecting it point blank.

And then mount these defenses on our troop transports.
 
Alratan said:
Our new allies' armour seems better and costs the same as our Brigandine armour, and they have an enormous amount of it.

The fact that we picked Brigandine doesn't mean we were right to pick it. The fact that our warlike and so probably much more competent at picking what equipment is best to go to war with allies chose to go another route for their armour at this price-point is a strong argument for reconsidering. The fact that it's cheap isn't the problem. The fact that we can probably very easily and quickly design something better and manufacture it at the same cost is.

As I say, we should probably defer to the experts' experience and just see if we can buy their design and just produce that instead rather than having an attack of 'Not Invented Here' and insisting we know better than people who actually do know what they're doing.

We have no reason to believe that we designs we produced in a mad panic while our people didn't have a single clue about what they were doing in terms of war is worth putting into long term mass production as you're advocating.

And we've exactly zero reason to believe that choosing this particular gear will give a better guide to how producing gear we want our professional troops to use will work than making foundries to produce the actual gear our troops will use, or something much more similar to it.

There's loads of things we can choose to build facilities to mass produce that we haven't just seen examples of experts choosing to go a different route for.
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I mean, directly comparing the two sets of armor, they're both fine? Wraithweave brigantine is medium-weight unpowered armor, compared to lightweight semi-powered armor? For special features, they get autotargets, we get sensors and void-sealing. They're screwed if they try to fight in an airless enviroment, and ours are better for scouting and intel gathering. Theirs are strictly better for combat, but ours is more a 'utility' design.
 
Vehrec said:
I mean, directly comparing the two sets of armor, they're both fine? Wraithweave brigantine is medium-weight unpowered armor, compared to lightweight semi-powered armor? For special features, they get autotargets, we get sensors and void-sealing. They're screwed if they try to fight in an airless enviroment, and ours are better for scouting and intel gathering. Theirs are strictly better for combat, but ours is more a 'utility' design.
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Wraithweave brigantine is light armour, the same as semi-powered light armour, being semi-powered gives it more armour than unpowered armour. Semi-powered armour seems to come voidsealed by default, given that it's not available as an add on-option.

I defer to the experts judgement about what's more useful. Notably, semi-powered light armour with sensors would be quite possible and just as cheap.

Compare Farslayer armour. Same price, comes with aim assist and sensors and seems automatically void sealed:

Light Semi-powered armour: Cost 1.25 Slots 2
Auto-aim: Cost 0.5
Enhanced Sensors: Cost 0.2
Total Cost: 1.95-> 2

The description of powered armour enhanced sensors also suggests they're better than the (unenhanced) sensor package on the regular armour.
 
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I was torn on whether to switch or not after my main concern was addressed (the Zahr-Tan allocations), but I think I've settled on switching.
[x] Plan: The Aeldmoot, industry edition v3

Mainly because if it comes down to it, it's easier for us to give the Industry v3 CField to infantry than it would be to give the Aeldmoot's CF to vehicles. Equipment slots are a lot less limiting for us than System slots, and cost is less of a factor considering we'd only be giving these to specific elites.

Edit: Admittedly this may change as we unlock more equipment like grenades, camo cloaks, and auspexes, but then I still prefer the vehicle plan anyway, and we'd be getting an infantry focused variant at some point in the far future anyway.
Vehrec said:
I mean, directly comparing the two sets of armor, they're both fine? Wraithweave brigantine is medium-weight unpowered armor, compared to lightweight semi-powered armor? For special features, they get autotargets, we get sensors and void-sealing. They're screwed if they try to fight in an airless enviroment, and ours are better for scouting and intel gathering. Theirs are strictly better for combat, but ours is more a 'utility' design.
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Technically it's lightweight. Wraithweave is a different material to wraithbone, so Medium for the former is equivalent to Light for the latter.
 
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Alratan said:
Our new allies' armour seems better and costs the same as our Brigandine armour, and they have an enormous amount of it.

The fact that we picked Brigandine doesn't mean we were right to pick it. The fact that our warlike and so probably much more competent at picking what equipment is best to go to war with allies chose to go another route for their armour at this price-point is a strong argument for reconsidering. The fact that it's cheap isn't the problem. The fact that we can probably very easily and quickly design something better and manufacture it at the same cost is.

As I say, we should probably defer to the experts' experience and just see if we can buy their design and just produce that instead rather than having an attack of 'Not Invented Here' and insisting we know better than people who actually do know what they're doing.

We have no reason to believe that we designs we produced in a mad panic while our people didn't have a single clue about what they were doing in terms of war is worth putting into long term mass production as you're advocating.

And we've exactly zero reason to believe that choosing this particular gear will give a better guide to how producing gear we want our professional troops to use will work than making foundries to produce the actual gear our troops will use, or something much more similar to it.

There's loads of things we can choose to build facilities to mass produce that we haven't just seen examples of experts choosing to go a different route for.
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Yes it does.

But we dont know how much it costs to make.

Even if we did we do not know how to make it. Ive asked about technology transfers before, but I suspect that is locked behind the Hall of Stewards. Two transfers I wanted to do was give Meros holofields for their swarm fighters, and to give our allies access to the knowledge to produce our exotics so they can field their own.

Yes we could make our own copy based off of what we have seen but why? We have our own armor designs already. They are perfectly serviceable and we know how much they cost per suit. More importantly we already know how to make them.

Zhar-Tann are more militant than we are, meaning they know how to train soldiers better than we do, how to run a military, and how to build kit to service their chosen doctrines. That doesnt mean we cant be better at soldiering and warmaking ourselves. Only that we need to put in the effort.

So whatever Zhar-Tann has fielded, its just what Zhar-Tann has fielded. Using whatever Zhar-Tann has access to to produce it. That doesnt mean our stuff is worse. We have word of god that our kit is fine and some of it is even pretty good. Fine is fine. The problem is not that our guns suck or that our armor is jank, our problem is we dont have experience putting all of that together into a functioning warhost, and the only way for us to learn how is to go out and actually start doing it and making mistakes.
 
Alratan said:
costs the same as our Brigandine armour,
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Where are you pulling that from? None of the Detachments, Equipments, vehicles or ships Zahr gave us came with Price tags. If your basing it on the sheer amount they have, That's a bad way to guesstimate that given their whole starting bonus revolved around having a functional starting army, which would have included an equipment stockpile.
 
Alratan said:
Wraithweave brigantine is light armour, the same as semi-powered light armour, being semi-powered gives it more armour than unpowered armour. Semi-powered armour seems to come voidsealed by default, given that it's not available as an add on-option.

I defer to the experts judgement about what's more useful. Notably, semi-powered light armour with sensors would be quite possibel and just as cheap.

Compare Farslayer armour. Same price, comes with aim assist and sensors and seems automatically void sealed.
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...do you think that I don't know that 'semi-powered' light armor is more protected than unpowered light armor? I'm well aware of that, I just don't think it's more heavily armored by default than unpowered medium armor.

And void-sealing is certainly not automatically on semi-powered armor. Because the first 'imperial Power armor', Mark 1 Thunder Warrior Armor, wasn't void sealed. Hell, it didn't even have fully powered legs!
 
Honestly as semi-powered armor I would say the Farslayer kit is threatened by haywire weapons. Whereas our wraithweave brigandine doesnt care.

In order for us to make use of farslayer armor we need to spend a turn designing, producing, and distributing it, which would delay or production of a foundry of *any* kind of armor suit and gun by another turn, if not longer depending on what else takes up our attention. In that delay we would instead of having ANY kind of actual armor, have NO armor while we wait for our farslayer to be produced by our forge, by our bonesingers, or from another foundry we produce. All of those things would be an opportunity cost in that we would not be able to raise that many new detachments while we wait for our new suit of armor to accumulate in sufficient numbers. Maybe when we are in a position to replace the Wraithweave Brigandine we can revisit the question and design a suit like the farslayer. But right now we dont have that design, or an equivalent, in our list of available suits.

We also have the issue in that Mechanis talked about the differences in what a foundry produces. There is a difference between producing cheap but complex or expensive but simple. We dont know how those suits will translate into a foundry output. So we dont know what a foundry strucutre will produce, if thats tracked in EP per structure, or by some other way.
 
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But the Brigantine isn't our battledress, that's the Void Guard Warsuit, it's aimed at militia and pilots in fully enclosed cockpits.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Yup. It's so dangerous because blood pools into the brain and bursts the brain vessels, which is way less than ideal.

Unfortunately, you can't weaponize that, because you don't have anything to crush the people against in that direction. You'd just be popping people up into the sky, which while hilarious, is of lesser effectiveness.


I'm not sure I understand the point of that one TBH.

All these gravity weapons only work because they have something to crush people against. (the planet). A ship hit with a gravity field would just get shoved to the side with no great harm. After all, the ship, the crew inside, and everyone else would experience the exact same acceleration.

Now, you could try to hit the ship with the edge of the field, so that one part accelerates and the other doesn't, or use it to ram one ship into another, but that gets tricky.
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the thing with the macro-weapon amplifiers is that they're hitting levels where the target ship's gravity becomes A Problem. and not a lot of people are building their ships to handle suddenly being trying to accelerate inwards towards its center of mass at high speed. Also tends to splatter the crew all over the walls, if their internal grav-compensation gets overpowered. and even if not, you have already surmised that one can dial the field area to just rip things apart with their own momentum.
Remember that even a small macro-weapon is easily the size of a football stadium. those things are putting out serious amounts of power.
LOLROFL said:
Actually, now that I look at it I am not sure how the Razorwind costs 66EP.

A naked Jetbike like the militia one is 21EP but the Razorwind's total weapons loadout shouldn't cost an extra 45EP as 2x Needler Rifles and 1x Heavy Spike Cannon is 6*2+12=24EP and the Razorwind has nothing else added to it besides those weapons.

@Mechanis is that 66EP cost an error or did I miss something?
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Fiddling with the slots of existing designs costs extra. Not much, for most vehicles, Jetbikes are just Smol and so it's fairly noticeable. right, anyway,
 
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Professor Vesca said:
Honestly as semi-powered armor I would say the Farslayer kit is threatened by haywire weapons. Whereas our wraithweave brigandine doesnt care.

In order for us to make use of farslayer armor we need to spend a turn designing, producing, and distributing it, which would delay or production of a foundry of *any* kind of armor suit and gun by another turn, if not longer depending on what else takes up our attention. In that delay we would instead of having ANY kind of actual armor, have NO armor while we wait for our farslayer to be produced by our forge, by our bonesingers, or from another foundry we produce. All of those things would be an opportunity cost in that we would not be able to raise that many new detachments while we wait for our new suit of armor to accumulate in sufficient numbers. Maybe when we are in a position to replace the Wraithweave Brigandine we can revisit the question and design a suit like the farslayer. But right now we dont have that design, or an equivalent, in our list of available suits.

We also have the issue in that Mechanis talked about the differences in what a foundry produces. There is a difference between producing cheap but complex or expensive but simple. We dont know how those suits will translate into a foundry output. So we dont know what a foundry strucutre will produce, if thats tracked in EP per structure, or by some other way.
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We could just build a VGA and/or Ithilmar Foundry this turn. We have squads that we can build with them. We have no greater urgency for Brigandine armour than for powered armour. We have no squads that currently use Brigandine, so we'd need to design new squads from scratch or refit them next turn anyway.

If you want to immediately raise new squads Brigandine is literally the worst armour you can possibly pick to make a foundry for.

By what mechanism are you suggesting that designing or buying a new design for power armour would stop us from making a foundry for other kinds of weapons or armour.
 
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