While we're on the topic of farms, what exactly does the -50/-100 production thing here actually mean?
A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)
We don't have spare people skilled in making Starcrystal or Psy-Scopes, so we need to take some of them off production temporarily to train new workers.
Agreed on the fact that we need further information to correctly assess situation, but I'd like to point out another thing: maintainance and replacement. With how in-depth the military is, I presume the costs of replacement gear and rerecruitment are not going to be abstracted into simple -X arbitray resource per turn. While exotics may offer enough bang for buck that savings from lower numbers outweigh costs of further equipment, exotic-equipped troops will probably involve large overtime costs as gear gets worn down or lost and soldiers die, which we might not be able to bear without expending much more resources. VGW is a tough armour for its cost, but still there was a discussion if it's good enough to be issued as troop standard, and it is nevertheless unlikely to keep troop casualties low enough that exotic costs of replacements can be negligable, because it's not a walking tank that Ilthimar is, and that is definitely too expensive for use outside of elites and HQ.
TLDR: Yes, but in our current setup costs incurred by casualties introduce additional layer to calculations regarding where the breakpoint lies.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
My understanding is our gear doesn't wear out. It works perfectly as long as it's intact.
This is one of the reasons I want to get into a low-stakes ground battle: I want to know what attrition might look like.
"You killed everyone and took no losses" is a great outcome, but it doesn't tell us very much.
it tells us that Maintenance is negligible.
also, if we keep it up, it tells us everything we need!
...just equip all of our soilders in ithilimar, and watch our enemies cope and seethe /j
A Starblaster factory does make fewer than a sunblaster factory, but I think the differential cost is worth it, because Starblasters are much, much better, from what we can see.
And also, the ratio doesn't cancel out. We care about the relative number of troops we can produce. If we can produce 12 Sunblaster armed troops for the same opportunity cost as 10 Starblaster armed troops, then the ratio that matters is 12:10, whatever the relative cost of the Starblaster and Sunblasters themselves.
I'd agree that our elites need to be even more heavily armed and equipped than our regular troops. That doesn't make it sensible to short change our regular troops simply to maintain a differential.
If we were going to send 20 AP on producing, say 5 squads of infantry a turn with Sunblasters, if we could instead produce 4 with starblasters instead, that doesn't mean we have any less Starcrystals to spend on our navy, we'll just have one more Starcrystal farm.
And we'd have the later option to switch where the Starcystals went if it became important, while we couldn't switch any other ground equipment forges/foundries to support a later naval build up.
It doesn't matter where Starlances are better, what matters, in each case, is where we're better off investing BAP for our infantry load outs. We don't have to choose. Our Starcrystal production is not capped in the foreseeable future. We can just keep making new Starcrystal Farms if we want to use them for infantry, and just have that come our of our 'budget' for making production facilities for our infantry.
The counterpoint to this is that a person with a starblaster is a lot less likely to get killed than a person with a sunblaster, on the principle that offence is the best form of defence. Someone with a starblaster can engage and destroy grades and numbers of enemies that a person with a sunblaster would be killed by, and so survive.
I think there's a fair argument to make that Starblasters may need less replacements, even if each replacement is more expensive, on this basis.
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What are your thoughts on having a heavy a weapon platform like the guardians have?
I'm a bit iffy about it. With how good our basic gun is likely to be, it feels like it wouldn't add as much as it does to guardians with shuriken catapults.
But then again it would give them the ability to crack even harder targets.
I'm a bit iffy about it. With how good our basic gun is likely to be, it feels like it wouldn't add as much as it does to guardians with shuriken catapults.
But then again it would give them the ability to crack even harder targets.
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that's strange.
given this update post. Unless there has been a mechanics change, this may simply be confusion over the weapons costing more rather than you inquiring over the slot change cost.
to those discussing our main infantry using starcrystals, it confirms in creation two that we have 4 starting foundries for each exotic, and they are producing 800 starcrystals and 120 fatescopes per turn. thus, a new star crystal factory produces 200 star crystals per turn. enough to support a starblaster carbine production of 100 per turn.
that said, we do have the refit of the serpent of the stars and the building of more battleships since our fleet is capital ship light, and both probably involve mega lances for 1000 SC a piece. the their are plausible alternative options for starcrystals use we haven't discovered yet. frankly, star lances are amazing, but we shouldn't plan to have them on our cutters, and short a collosal ap investment, we can't afford an army of 500 warhosts equiped with them.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
That's basically what a weapons platform is. It expands the capability of the basic troop to give them anti vehicle capability or to make them more dangerous against massed assaults.
I think that it's designed for a paradigm we shouldn't engage in. Guardians are light infantry that can crew heavier weapons they can't carry.
The need for a heavy weapon platform is them compensating for a weakness while introducing new ones. It makes their forces slower and less agile, less able to exploit their mobility advantages.
We should be looking at heavy power armour to carry weapons, making them quicker to redeploy and more flexible when in the field, although if we have line troops with Starblasters, we won't need that many other heavy weapons beyond what our vehicles have
Generally, I think the canon Craftworld Eldar's hi-lo equipment/troop mix strategy is insane given their population issues, and we'd be mad to replicate their mistake. They (and we) simply can't afford to try to win battles by burying the enemy in poorly armed quasi-civilians, which is what Guardians basically are.
We can't afford an army of 500 warhosts equipped with anything at the moment. We need to massively expand up our production facilities whatever we do. The question is whether we build Starcrystal farms as part of our infantry military-industrial complex, or not, and I think that doesn't have an obvious answer, when we don't know the relative costs, relative effectiveness, or what other Steward or Warrior AP constraints that may be in play.
I'm afraid we're in danger of talking ourself into a configuration for our future military well before we have enough information to make that kind of judgement.
We should defer taking a strong view on this until we know more.
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As I understand it, it's changing Weapon slots into System slots that costs extra. Changing System slots into Weapon slots, or changing a Weapon slot directly into another kind of Weapon slot doesn't cost anything else on top.
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That was my thought as well.
A dude in an Ithilmar variant (with a targeter) probably works better than a heavy weapon platform.
Probably armed with a starcarver or a point singularity projector.
Well Mechanis did say this when he pointed out the the we should really build a Shrine of Khaine thing.
So we are definitely going to want to plan in a decent amount of give in the future.
The question is, who are we intending them to face? What're the missions we want them to perform? And is the set of problems those missions present better solved by a small squad of people with Starblaster Rifles, or a tank with a vehicle grade weapon, or a heavy jetbike.
Although I think a person in heavy power armour is better than a grav-platform a mount for a heavy weapon, who are we planning to kill with infantry heavy weapons.
For example, I could see value in a super-heavy infantry squad armed with Ithilmar + Conversion Field + Starcarvers to deploy in boarding operations or as the tip of the spear when deploying into hostile territory from infantry scale Webway Gates, either fixed or temporary. It's who you'd send when you need to concentrate the maximum amount of firepower into the smallest possible package.
They'd make a good elite choice.
But only if we think that's the kind of mission we'll be doing.
Although, with relatively smaller forces, we should have relatively fewer casualties as well. Eldar Guardians seem expected to die in droves in every battle, based on their canon performances, and their replacements would need new gear after every battle. Even if every individual Guardian's gear is cheap, if they regularly die in large numbers it would cost a lot to keep replacing them. People with better gear may die a lot less, so both become more skilled due to experience and so die even less, and thus need their equipment less frequently even to begin with and then even less frequently as they get more competent.
That doesn't mean we won't take casualties and need stockpiles for replenishment, but I think we shouldn't go with the apparent canon Eldar strategy of deploying lots of relatively poorly equipped troops and just accepting very high casualties and so replacement costs as the price you have to pay.
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I think that's overkill for boarding operations. You don't need that much range and power for close quarter combat.
I would use vibration weapons, implosion hammers and fatecasters.
Vibration weapons have significant AOE and debuff the targets (we are outnumbered), and ignore most cover.
Fatecasters also ignore cover, which is the biggest obstacle when attacking a fortified position
Implosion weapons can be used as a "can opener" for the other obstacles.
With that much concentrated starcarver fire from the inside, you are likely to cut the ship in half... And I'm a assuming you want something from the ship if you're boarding, instead of just wiping it from the sky.
RandomTechPriest
He Who Steals Toasters
Fatecasters would be ideal for boarding actions. The ability to shoot around corners and cover cannot be overstated in situations like that. Just throw out smoke grenades / gas grenades and fire blind and the enemy will die.
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alternately, add in grav thrusters to the mix. Chippity choppity, this ship is now my property.
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I think that's entirely unnecessary when we can make an alternative frigate with a Haywire weapon and just fry the crews nervous system until they die. much cheaper than making the equipment for boarding party with fatecaster, designing boarding party detachments and forming them into several boarding specialized warhosts.
sorry, but it's just a very expensive approach to a very easily solved problem. in general, ease back on the fate weapons. we produce 6 Fatebender scopes per bonesinger AP invested. much less generous than the 40 starcrystals per BAP we get from our other exotic foundry. their not something we should casually throw around.
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Next turn we are probably starting the Meson blaster chain too.
Remember that 40K ships are the size of cities, and can have internal spaces that titans can walk around in. And while Fatecasters are great, they're significantly more expenisve and seem to have a much lower RoF than Star weapons.
And concentrated starcarver fire may be a good way to do damage to relatively unprotected internal components and be useful for cutting through floors and walls (and inded that's one benefit of having them), I'd expect it to do little or nothing to the actual hull of a voidship. They're made to shrug off sterner stuff than that.
Generally though, the main use case I see for something like starcarvers+ithilmar+conversion fields is as the tip of the spear to clear a deployment zone around a temporary Webway portal on top of an enemy. The combination of immense damage and high rate of fire in a small well protected package is exactly what you want in that scenario.
That should be something we do relatively frequently, as it's the usual way that Eldar seem to deploy into ground combat.
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I'm pretty sure that's the opposite, Fatecasters should have a higher RoF than Starlances. The latter fires faster than other races lance weapons, but that doesn't make it fast.
I think the discussion on gear really comes down to what we're using ground forces for. The way I see it, any time we're deploying them it's because there's some reason orbital bombardment is undesirable. And that includes very precise orbital bombardment with minimal collateral damage using Fateshredder or Fatesheer cannons to hit what we want and only what we want with wraithbone spikes with orbital velocities fired from our PD and CIWS batteries.
As we have no desire that I can see to ever take and hold ground, the main mission I can see us deploying our forces to achieve is, basically, hostile acquisitions and assassinations. It's when we want to take something or kill someone in particular.
In those scenarios I think concentrated firepower is what we need. We want to hit the enemy as hard as we possibly can, seize or kill what we want as quickly as possible with minimal casualties, and then exfiltrate as soon as we can. We don't want to be deploying lots of troops in multiple places at once, if we need to hit multiple targets we may even want to hit them serially, overwhelming each with overwhelming force before moving onto the next.
Thing is, Needlers are described as attempting to compensate for the lack of a Fatescope's accuracy by increasing the RoF. Starblasters, by contrast, are described as having a Hellgun's rate of fire, and Hellguns are described as 'sending pulsing sheets of lasbeams downrange', which seems like they can fire nearly continually.
As we have no desire that I can see to ever take and hold ground, the main mission I can see us deploying our forces to achieve is, basically, hostile acquisitions and assassinations. It's when we want to take something or kill someone in particular.
In those scenarios I think concentrated firepower is what we need. We want to hit the enemy as hard as we possibly can, seize or kill what we want as quickly as possible with minimal casualties, and then exfiltrate as soon as we can. We don't want to be deploying lots of troops in multiple places at once, if we need to hit multiple targets we may even want to hit them serially, overwhelming each with overwhelming force before moving onto the next.
Thing is, Needlers are described as attempting to compensate for the lack of a Fatescope's accuracy by increasing the RoF. Starblasters, by contrast, are described as having a Hellgun's rate of fire, and Hellguns are described as 'sending pulsing sheets of lasbeams downrange', which seems like they can fire nearly continually.
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Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
This is correct, and it is notable that their derivative gun, the needler, is basically a bullet hose. You just hold down the trigger and spray needles everywhere.