yes but a 40m melta look too much versatile. Even if i do less damage, we are talking of a melta damage (that is supposed to be superior even to a laser cannon damage).
It is a very powerful weapon in the lore and i would not like to see it made useless, but i would also not like to see everyone who can get one spam it like it is spamed in spacemarine. If it is as short ranged like in spacemarine we would be back to intsantkill corner campers and no one would use it as an antitank weapon. If it has to be less powerful i would rather see a lore accurate weapon that has been balenced then the heresy that is the spacemarine meltagun.
Just make it work like a faster belching flamer with a quite smaller range. Means you need to hold the trigger down to melt someones face rather than press the button once. Its low ammo capacity will make sure people dont use it outside its purpose cause if you use it to kill infantry frequently you will see yourself constantly in need to run away from the frontlines to find ammo recharge locations.
I definitely hope they push ranges out as we get closer to launch. My main concern is people being stuck in the "arena" mentality, thinking "Well why would I ever need more than 40m of range when there aren't any hallways more than 30m long?" But designing a game like this to play out in isolated arena-style bases while completely ignoring all the space in between bases would be a huge waste of its potential. When you've got an 8km+ map, you should try to design the game so that players can make use of ALL of the terrain on it, not just the 10% of it that fits inside bases. And to do this you'll need weapons with a fairly long effective range. Though really probably one of the best ways to extend effective ranges has more to do with health mechanics than the weapons themselves: don't have regenerating health, or even better have bleed-out mechanics, and make healing rather hard to get. What that does is make it so plinking is actually worthwhile: even if you only land a couple shots before he ducks into cover, the damage you did is going to be creating more work for his team's medics and unless a medic gets to him you've still reduced his combat potential a bit. And of course if plinking at 100m+ is worthwhile then more people will plink, which puts even more burden on the other team's medics, and if you get enough people doing it then you can even start inflicting casualties. Having damage rewards or damage-scaled assist rewards (with appropriate anti-botting/farming measures of course) can also create an incentive to engage earlier.
while I emphathize with what you want as far as ranged mechanics... you're killing melee completely. What you've described is how things are in PS2... that wont work here.
All I can say is that when I play space marine MP my raptor/assault could cover 40m in the air very quickly. So if the terrain is built with good cover then anyone within an 80m diameter of a raptor would be fair game. Just build the environment so that it avoids having long stretches of flat earth without any cover.
Not really, it'll just make it situational. Namely: what good does 100+m of range do you in a hallway that's 30m long? I expect melee to dominate base fights and be extremely useful for breaching/roomclearing (though they'll have some competition with flamers, flamers are practically melee weapons anyway). Similarly, clever use of terrain and coordination with teammates (such as charging out of a transport or hot-dropping from the air) will make melee viable in-between bases, but those in-between fights and the initial assault will largely be ranged territory. Snipers with tunnel vision should have a hard time dealing with surprise chainsword (just make sure you yell surprise first). Basically you will likely need melee units to actually seize a base, but you'll need ranged units to escort your melee units *to* the base.
In SM raptors don't get an automatic kill if they're in range. A tac with Serrated Blade is far deadlier in melee because you can stun stab and has more firepower.. it's the lag that favors the ASM in SM. In EC we should see ALOT less lag which means the ASM must have more going for him.
OR. you know what you guys could do? Use the ranges from Dark Heresy Example Lasgun - 100m Bolter - 90m Bolt pistol - 30m So on, so forth. IT'S IN THE BOOK! ^_^
