Why? Because Math. So first and foremost I'm a Dark Eldar player, I don't really like Space Marines or those do-good'er Craftworld Kin. However I do play both factions in EC and am primarily making this post as a comparison between the primary Eldar weapon (the Shuriken catapult) and the Space Marine primary weapon (The Bolter). As a disclaimer this is meant to be a discussion between the stats of the Dire Avenger versus the Tactical Marine on the tabletop and how they apply in Eternal Crusade. Currently in EC a basic Space Marine tactical has.. A health of 200 An armor of 100 And a toughness of 100 On tabletop meanwhile.. A Space Marine has an average toughness of 4, with a 3+ armor save on a D6. He also has a ballistic skill of 4 and a weapon skill of 4. He is usually armed with a boltgun that is strength 4 with an AP value of 5, that fires one shot at 24" and two shots at 12". Currently in EC a Dire Avenger has at it's base.. A Health of 200 An Armor of 100 And a toughness of 80 On tabletop meanwhile.. A Dire avenger has an average toughness of 3, with a 4+ armor save on a D6. He also has a ballistic skill of 4 and a weapon skill of 4. They are usually armed with a shuriken catapult that is strength 4 with an AP value of 5, and fires two shots at 12". However, their weapon has a special rule that on 6's to wound they ignore armor. Also in EC the bolter has the following stats.. It does 38 damage at 20 meters and 28.5 at 100m It has a penetration of 80 A reload speed of 2.37s/1.8s It has 30 rounds of ammunition per magazine and 150 in reserve. A spread of 2 deg A recoil of 0.22 deg / 0.5 deg A firerate of 333.33 RPM On tabletop it's a strength 4 AP 5, rapid fire weapon with a 24" range. Meanwhile the Shuriken catapult has the following stats.. It does 20 damage at 12.5m and 12.78 at 80m. It has a penetration of 80 It has a reload speed of 2.49s / 1.89s It has 55 rounds of ammunition base with 275 in reserve. A spread of 2 deg. A recoil of 0.15 / 0.05 And a firerate of 750rpm On tabletop it's a strength 4 AP 5, assault 2 weapon with a 12" range, that has the special rule of 'rending' meaning it ignores armor. So let's look at what it takes for a standard Tactical Marine to kill a Dire Avenger in shooting. For this first example we will assume the Space Marine is shooting from 24" away which is a modest range that it is outside the Dire Avenger's current shooting distance. The Space Marine will have 1 shot at BS 4, meaning he will need a 3 or higher on a D6 to hit. (A probability of 0.66666666666). Assuming the Space Marine hits his target, he then needs to roll a 3 or higher on a D6 to wound as the Dire Avenger is toughness 3 versus a strength 4 weapon (Another probability of 0.66666666666). When all's said and done a Tactical Marine with a basic bolter has a probability of 0.44444444443 (Probability to hit times the probability to wound) to wound the Dire Avenger which is roughly 11/25 shots would hit and wound. (Unless of course you're a cool-guy Imperial Fist and have the 'Bolter Drill' rule in which case you re-roll 1's to hit with bolter weapons, but we're going to ignore that for now.) Yet our lucky Dire Avenger still gets to make is armor save which is a glorious 4+ on a D6, ( 3 in 6 odds) equating once again to a probability of 0.5 pass or fail. Multiplying the probability for the Space Marine with a bolter to hit and wound (0.44444444443) times the probability of the Dire Avenger to fail his armor save (0.5) we get a wonderful probability of 0.22222222221 for the Space Marine to kill his Dire Avenger enemy! Which means roughly 11/50 shots will kill a Dire Avenger. Talk about odds! So let's look at the Dire Avenger with his Shuriken Catapult meanwhile.. Just like our Space Marine the Dire Avenger is BS 4, meaning he needs a 3+ on a D6 to hit (A probability of 0.66666666666). The Shuriken catapult similar to the Bolter is strength four, however it is trying to wound a toughness 4 Space Marine. Which means it will need a 4+ on a D6 to wound with 6's causing rending and thereby ignoring the Space Marine's armor (a probability of 0.33333333333 for a normal wound, and a probability of 0.16666666666 to ignore his armor). If we take these probabilities and multiply them together we get a probability of 0.11111111111 for the Dire Avenger to flat out kill the Space Marine with no armor saves allowed or 11/100 shots will insta-gib a space marine. Or 0.22222222221 to cause a normal wound. But let's assume our Space Marine doesn't get instagibbed and he manages to actually get an armor save! A delicious 3+ on a D6 which is a probability of 0.66666666666 to make his save, and a probability of 0.33333333333 to fail his armor save. If just like before we take the probability to wound without instagibs (0.33333333333) and multiply it times the probability of him failing his armor save (0.22222222221) we get.. 0.07407407407.. Which means 37/500 shots (that didn't instagib) would kill the space marine. If we then add this together with the probability of getting rending, which instagibs marines we have a probability of 0.184 for the Dire Avenger to kill the space marine with one shot. Meaning on average 23/125 shots will kill a space marine. So all in all a Space Marine's chances of killing a Dire Avenger with a bolter on tabletop is 11/50. A Dire Avenger's chances of killing a Space Marine with a shuriken catapult on tabletop is 23/125. Both weapons at 12" dish out the same number of shots (2 a pop) but with Eldar having the significant advantage of being able to assault after firing. Which gives them an added advantage of getting in close to finish the team off after shooting them. So let's compare all this to EC and take a look and what we've got! Let's assume for the same of this a Space Marine lands every single shot onto a basic Dire Avenger's chest at 20m, doing a full 38 damage with each shot. Without considering toughness as a factor it would take about 8 full shots to down a Dire Avenger. With each shot firing every .18 seconds according to the weapon's RPM. Meaning it takes about 1.44 seconds for a Tactical Marine to kill a Dire Avenger, assuming all of his shots hit. On the opposite end of the stick let's take a look at a Dire Avenger shooting a Space Marine in the chest at 12.5m, doing 20 damage per shot. With an armor of 100 and health of 200, it would take about 15 shots for the Dire Avenger to down him. With each shot firing at about 0.08 seconds according to the weapon's RPM. Meaning it takes about 1.2 seconds for a Dire Avenger to kill a Space Marine, assuming all of his shots hit. 8 A Shuriken catapult is capable of putting out 15,000 damage if fired continuously without reload over a full minute at 10m. (750rpm times 20 damage) A Bolter is capable of putting out 12,666.54 damage if fired continuously without reload over a full minute at 20m (333.33rpm times 38 damage) So with all of that said what do you guys think? Do these weapons live up to their stats on tabletop? Does it even matter? You tell me!
Tabletop stats, lore stats, and TPS stats are all entirely different beasts that should never be compared mathematically. The most comparison you should do is whether units and weapons are effective against things they should beat, and ineffective against things they should suck against.
The entire purpose of this thread is to compare how the weapons in the game match up to their tabletop version. Are they accurate representations of their tabletop versions? It isn't arguing that they -should- match up, or that they shouldn't. It is merely a discussion of whether people feel they are, or are not.
You can't translate tabletop into the game anyway, everything it regulated by the number of points in the tabletop but in EC a dire avenger , a shoota boy and a chaos space marine must be equal. So there's no point to the discussion really. Also, in the current game, a basic shoota boy has more health and a gun with a higher dps than a bolter. So yeah, the game doesn't reflect tableotp or lore at all.
As a simple discussion? It doesn't need to have an ulterior motive. Personally I play tabletop and really look to this game as a fun representation of it, however it's always good to see how other people compare it to their tabletop experiences. I know when I first started playing I really loved seeing how the Shuriken catapult was arranged as a close-range weapon compared to what I had expected for balance. However I was really shocked at seeing how ineffective meltas were against infantry.
I hate to break it to you, but Dire Avengers don't use shuriken catapults (those are for eldar guardians). They use Avenger Shuriken Catapults, which are exactly the same except 18" assault 2, meaning there's still a 6" sweet spot where tactical marines outrange DA, but there's a middle 6" range where the DA outshoots (x2) the marine, plus the weapon retains its assault characteristic. Hold your horses, I'll also link the toughness calculation and show the numbers on that. Back in an edit. Edit 1: Link to how toughness is calculated for your reading pleasure. http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/loadout-itemisation-updates.52477/ Edit 2: Base toughness 80 (the Dire Avenger, and also HB, SH, and warlock) provides no damage reduction against any weapon. Base toughness 100 (everyone else) provides 0.089 mitigation against penetration 80 weapons (boltgun), or a better way to write that is they take 91.066% (rounded) of damage from pen 80 weapons. So the ASC deals regular 20 damage, times by .91066 equals 18.2132, divide 300 (health/armour combined) by said number, and shots to kill an EC tactical marine with the ASC is 17 shots, or 1.36 seconds TTK. Which means the TTK difference between a boltgun marine and a DA ASC is 0.08 seconds, and not 0.24 seconds, a significantly closer margin (at least in my view). Edit 3: You put damage over a minute for each weapon, I'll put down by mag. For ASC (at reduced 18.2132 damage and 55 round mag) deals 1001 damage (if you friendly fire a group of DA, it could be 1100 damage), taking 4.4 seconds to do so. The boltgun against a DA (38 damage, 30 round mag) deals 1140 damage, but taking 5.4 seconds to empty the mag. Against marine equivalents (100 toughness) the boltgun (now doing 34.605 damage, still 30 round mag) will do 1038 damage. I hope to engage in much math with you!
I see you've put a lot of maths in there, but would it not make more sense to do the number crunching for 18" where the ASC can get its two shots? Or 12" where both get two? Whilst the stats in the game aren't hugely accurate to what you get on Tabletop, at least the Dire Avenger is a decent shout right out the gate for Eldar. The Bolter Tac default loadouts for both flavours of Space Marines are garbage.
Okay then. For one thing, the weapon ranges are hugely different in EC and tabletop. 100 meters on tabletop would be longer than the range of an autocannon given a 7 foot height for a Space Marine in full armor (yes, the artwork showing their height shows the height as 8 feet but his feet are at 1 instead of 0). 80 meters would be longer range than a heavy bolter. The tabletop's dice for firing ranged weapons also don't equate to a single shot, instead they refer to a very vague concept that model A is trying to kill or incapacitate model B. We have no idea about rate of fire on the tabletop, or even how long a single game turn is, as unlike D&D, they don't tell us anything like 1 round = 6 seconds, so we don't know how long two models are trying to kill each other for. So we can't compare TTK since we don't know the TTK on the tabletop. And assuming that every round hits in EC would also mean you shouldn't be factoring in the To-Hit roll in the tabletop. Also when calculating dice chances for the tabletop game, I'm surprised you converted everything to decimals instead of staying with fractions the whole time and being more precise.
@Pouncey is right about the to-hit. Tomorrow I'll math the spread against respective target and see if I can get recoil worked into it. I think someone had a number for time in a 40k TT round. I spin the wheel and summon @Zed-Avatar to provide info! Or annoy him, whichever. And yes, everyone is aware that rolls in TT are interpretive of much more dynamic actions, but I have been waiting for a fellow math nerd (and a fellow dark eldar fan at that) and I'm not losing that. And he likes decimals *the blushiest Hesperax smiley that can be imagined* So excited!
