A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)
- Location
- Somewhere Beyond the Sea
Idk that doesn't really make sense to the lore though, like, plasma is explicitly referred to as some of best anti-armour weaponry in the setting that pretty much everyone has access to (and is the most volatile for the Imperium) and to have a tank-sized plasma gun not have that same AP feels like game balancing.
A tank sized plasma gun should pretty much core through any tanks lighter than a Leman Russ the same way a plasma rifle can kill a space marine, and even if they couldn't, ours are better than the Imperium's by a a notably large margin.
Turn 5 | Command selection results
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
@Mechanis how would our vehicle sized suncannons compare to vehicle lascannons when shooting at targets with medium vehicle armor?
Edit: after thinking for a minute I realize I'm being stubborn because it's what I envision, rather than because my idea is always superior in situations. What would probably make sense is to have mostly general purpose tanks with dual suncannons, backed up by a few dedicated "tank destroyer" tanks with lascannons in each tank detachment
Edit: after thinking for a minute I realize I'm being stubborn because it's what I envision, rather than because my idea is always superior in situations. What would probably make sense is to have mostly general purpose tanks with dual suncannons, backed up by a few dedicated "tank destroyer" tanks with lascannons in each tank detachment
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That sounds cool. I know it's probably not for this quest but I'm curious. How many cards have you come up with yet?
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
If we wanted to make an "armor penetrating" variant without pulling out the exotics, it's likely to be worth it to eat the EP premium to get some of the nastier grav-weapons as the main weapon - graviton thruster lances are "some of the most effective armor-piercing weapons in existence" and "unlike smaller graviton-thruster weaponry, Graviton Thruster Lances have significantly less limited range, being comparable to the average range of other energy weapons of similar scale." Combine those with any sort of secondary attack that can make use of the enemy armor being turned into swiss cheese (fatecasters, obviously, but the plasma bloom of a suncannon should also do well) and you should have something truly terrifying.
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Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
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It might not neccessary penetrate a tank, but if the interior is how enough to boil water and most of the exterior features are a bit, ah, drippy, it's certainly not going to be contributing much to a battle.
As the lore states, Plasma weapons are pretty much the Basic Fancy Anti-Everything Gun of the setting, in the same way that Las-weapons are the Basic Cheap Gun.
And of course, I remember the Leman RussBlast Template DropperExecutionor rather fondly.
If you are curious, the Major Arcana are divided into Light (the Imperium), Dark (Enemies thereof) and Grey/Twilight (various more nebulous things, such as The Galaxy, The Ship, etc), whose suites consist of Ruling, Commanding, Defending, Serving, and Foundation (For example, the Ruling Suite of Light consists of The (God-)Emperor, The High Lord, The Primarch, The Governor (Later replaced with The Ecclesiarch) and The Fabricator-General; the Foundation Suite of Grey is The Maze, The Tower, The Ship, The Path, and The World, to give an idea.)
Suites include Guns, Swords, Rods, Sheilds and Shadows for the original set, while the post Heresy set includes Creation (Creatia), Destruction, Chaos (Discordia), Order, and Adeptus, along with Angels (common for the Ecclesiarchy/Inquisition) and Brothers (Exclusive to the Space Marines).
There is also a single card - The Vision - which is outside of the suites and represents the person or persons conducting the cartomancy; this is always drawn at some point in a reading but when exactly varies (in the mundane versions it serves as a Joker- those are typically the Arcana of Light with four suites that may or may not corrispond to the officially recognized ones used for the cartomancy.)
Significantly superior barring certain exceptional examples of the latter (Archeotech, for example) or the relatively rare extreme-range engagement where atmospheric attunation becomes a problem. Like Lasguns, and Las weapons in general, their advantage is being good enough weapons on the cheap, not being particularly amazing. Plasma, as noted, has a blast radius, tends to make even things that are nominally capable of tanking the hit rather toasty, and generally does horrible things to surface features like, say, sensor heads, gun barrels, and similar.
It might not neccessary penetrate a tank, but if the interior is how enough to boil water and most of the exterior features are a bit, ah, drippy, it's certainly not going to be contributing much to a battle.
As the lore states, Plasma weapons are pretty much the Basic Fancy Anti-Everything Gun of the setting, in the same way that Las-weapons are the Basic Cheap Gun.
And of course, I remember the Leman Russ
Three sets of Major Arcana that are 5 suites of five cards, and twelve standard suites of 14 cards (five original, later superceded by five post-heresy, plus two later additions.)
If you are curious, the Major Arcana are divided into Light (the Imperium), Dark (Enemies thereof) and Grey/Twilight (various more nebulous things, such as The Galaxy, The Ship, etc), whose suites consist of Ruling, Commanding, Defending, Serving, and Foundation (For example, the Ruling Suite of Light consists of The (God-)Emperor, The High Lord, The Primarch, The Governor (Later replaced with The Ecclesiarch) and The Fabricator-General; the Foundation Suite of Grey is The Maze, The Tower, The Ship, The Path, and The World, to give an idea.)
Suites include Guns, Swords, Rods, Sheilds and Shadows for the original set, while the post Heresy set includes Creation (Creatia), Destruction, Chaos (Discordia), Order, and Adeptus, along with Angels (common for the Ecclesiarchy/Inquisition) and Brothers (Exclusive to the Space Marines).
There is also a single card - The Vision - which is outside of the suites and represents the person or persons conducting the cartomancy; this is always drawn at some point in a reading but when exactly varies (in the mundane versions it serves as a Joker- those are typically the Arcana of Light with four suites that may or may not corrispond to the officially recognized ones used for the cartomancy.)
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F0lkL0re
Officially not an Inquisitor
- Location
- Shetland
So how could the spike cannon be described then?
For an extra 25EP you could fit a vehicle scale Imploder (45EP) and an Amplifier (40EP). Given the description of what Combi-Grav Culverins can do such a vehicle would be able to reasonable threaten even heavy and superheavy tanks like Baneblades on their lonesome.
Even the heavy weapon scale versions of a Combi-Grav Culverin can kill/cripple most tanks in a single hit:Combi-Grav Culverin said:
There's Dark Lance/Brightlances and Prism Cannons. We even got a sneak peak at Prism Cannons in action during the Aeldmoot courtesy of Iyanden:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
That's a good question, Needlers are basically anti-infantry bullet hoses with infinite ammo, but Spike cannons seem a bit weirdly placed. Aside from the fact they can scale up to Naval grade while Needlers cap out at heavy.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
Ok, I no longer object to arming all our tanks with plasma.
Last weapon related question from me for now: are Heavy needlers worse than a plasma Culverin for pure anti-infantry work? (Obviously plasma would win when shooting at elite infantry or vehicles, but I'm wondering specifically vs stuff like ork boys)
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
They are anti-armor canons.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
I doubt it, because that Heavy Needler is probably spitting out hundreds--if not thousands--of shots per minute, while a Culverin will be lucky to shoot once every two, three seconds or so.
And that Heavy Needler keeps shooting until you stop holding the button down, while presumably constant firing of a plasma weapon will eventually risk an overheat, or at least having to stop to put a new plasma flask in.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The other boon of the needler is that all of its shots will hit a target so long as it's aimed in the general direction of a target that's in range. So you don't necessarily need something with area of effect; just spray a bunch of fire from your fatesever/needler gun in the right direction and all of the shots will hit until there's nothing left to kill.
I think the Spike Cannon is basically the Eldar equivalent to a 20th century tank's main gun. Or a 40k Battle Cannon. Probably gets more interesting with development options we haven't gotten to yet.
Right, it's the heavy machine gun to the Fusion Mortar's light artillery.
Another interesting item to go in the heavy slot is a grenade launcher; very cheap, very flexible, still not as good for wrecking infantry caught without cover as the Heavy Needler.
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
It's superb at taking down hordes, yeah, a gunline of Needler equipped rifleelfs can probably stop an Ork Boy rush dead, especially if they've got some sniper or light artillery support to occasionally clean up the bodies and headhunt the bigger ones.
- Pronouns
- Reader
Not sure on order but we have Organize Troops, a light cruiser and cruiser design, the particulars of our diplomacy with Stel-Uit and Stel'ys-Rann, the results of our various fleet and warhost deployments, maybe a rumor mill as a result of the communications agreement set up at the Aeldmoot.
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
Needlers cap out at heavy because scaling them up for more armor penetration/stopping power just gets you Spike weapons. Needlers are autopistols/rifles/Miniguns, Spike weapons are your hand-cannon .50 Magnum nonsense to conventional-ish projectile cannons.
(in that their mode of operation is "shoot a giant spike of pointy Wraithbone at things really hard" which tends not to do much secondary damage, but having a 20cm by 35 cm spike stabbed into it tends to do pretty bad things to, say, engines. or weapons. or really unfortunate crewmen.)
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Ah, so Spike weapons are just "We can't shoot bigger bullets while still strapping four barrels in front, but it's still shooting bullets pretty fast, and now we're using bigger bullets", right?
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
So Spike Cannons basically have been obsoleted by the fact we got relatively cheap plasma right?
No, spike has low fire rate. A spike rifle only fires as fast as a bolt action rifle, and it probably gets worse as they get bigger
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Well the rate of fire is also lower per barrel because its having to make bigger spikes of wraithbone exnihilo.
F0lkL0re
Officially not an Inquisitor
- Location
- Shetland
From the sound of it currently the spike cannon is basically a modern apds round without the ds part.
EDIT: It'll be pretty cool if we can develop canister rounds for the spike cannon so.
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Remember that the tank probably has a base cost of between 100 and 150 AP based on our existing designs.
The 70 EP for the upgrades to the hull and whatever the weapons cost are probably on top of this.
As a result, this is probably a massive false economy.
I'd go with a Vehicle scale amplifier and a Vehicle scale imploder, and probably a second Grav Shield and convert the Imploder into another Vehicle slot, probably for another grav weapon for synergy with existing grav weapons.
I'd probably go with Fateshredders, in the hope we can recycle them from our Needlestorm IFVs, and because this would make out tanks a lethal threat against both infantry and other armoured vehicles, particularly as Fateshredders could fire off axis at infantry while the Starlance was aimed at the vehicles.
The experience of the Tau contradicts this.
The issue with orks is that they don't suffer traumatic shock or get suppressed. Lots of relatively small injuries won't stop an ork, you need to do catastrophic damage that physically removes significant fractions of their mass from them to put them down.
That's why the Tau needed to upgrade to the slower firing but much higher stopping power Pulse Rifles to deal with them.
What you want to kill orks is Sunblasters, not needlers.
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Would it be possible to take the ammo creation process used by the Spike weapons and create a separate chamber dedicated to producing and holding a reserve of Spike ammo which is then fed into a rotary/automatic cannon?
Being able to quickly fire a ton of Spikes at once seems like something that would be quite useful for us.
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
With some caviat that the bigger bullers do take slightly longer for the gun to spin out, so there's a significant reduction each time the projectile size goes up, yes. But at infantry scale the difference is basically Full Auto vs Semi-Auto, which is still plenty fast. (It's the Heavy on up that really starts having to pace shots for Spike weapons)
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Some bright cookie is almost certainly going to suggest such an idea at some point; how practical that would be (especially for the man-portable weapons) is likely to be variable.
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