Varn said:

Yes. As I explained before, they are both relatively common jack-of-all-trades weapons that complement each other very well. Fluff wise everyone uses them, no matter what "favored" weapons a regiment has, you'll always find Heavy Stubbers and Missile Launchers in use somewhere.

Maybe its just me, but I've generally seen more in the way of heavy bolters than heavy stubbers when it comes to squads of IG.

@Varn

Fluff-wise, Las guns and Autoguns are pretty much identical. They both do comparable damage and have about the same reliability. Ammo is a bit easier to come by for Las guns, but Autoguns tend to be a bit more rugged.

While I agree that there are some guard regiments with autoguns, I disagree about the above notion. Ammo is the benefit to lasguns. You just need electricity or, failing that, sunlight or fire (gotta replace that crappy "24h in fire" rule, though - it takes 24 hours to reload a clip when you place it near a fire or in sunlight and it doesn't damage the clip. Catachan reloading should be much faster). Essentially, you can strike standard ammo out of your supply line.

Also, lasguns are Reliable, autoguns are not.

Autoguns benefit from having Full Auto and alternate ammo types. For low-level guardsmen without high BS, lasguns are straight better.

@KommissarK

In the tabletop or the fluff?

Tabletop mainly. I imagine they're more common in the fluff (but even the books I've read its generally been heavy bolters over stubbers).

I'm just going to point out that when I say "Fluff", I'm talking about books/stories/info docs. I try to stay away from comparing anything to the table top game simply becasue the rules for the table top game are so retardely unbalanced and scaled. They also get changed every few months and are written by hands that have no idea what the other is doing, so things just don't match up.

If things went by how the table top game is, then autocannons and melta guns would be have an Availability rating of Common and everyone and their brother would ride around in Valkyries.

 What could be changed is have a sort of Weapon Familiarity with the Regiment favourites, so instead of a -20 only a -10.

"Is there actually support in the fluff of an autogun regiment? I thought the whole point of making lasgun the standard IG weapon is to give them powerpacks that can be recharged in the field and avoid a huge logistical nightmare."

Yes and no. Autoguns are commonly issued by PDF regiments rather than guardsmen (since they require a lower tech base and PDF don't have to ship things across star systems).

Heavy stubbers are common PDF weapons for the same reason. See Siege of Vraks for the obvious example.

Whether Only War regiments should cover PDF troopers is an open question, but SP weapons should be useable - as noted, veterans, sergeants and engineers have canonically a lot of love for the assault shotgun and autopistol.

Cifer said:

Fully agreed with this. A while back, I looked at the Dark Heresy costs and weights for lasguns compared to autoguns, regarding them from a logistics point of view. In terms of equipping and supplying armies, the lasgun is overwhelmingly superior.

Assuming an average of an hour of firing (overall, not including reload time, and not all at once) at the fastest fire rate available to the respective weapons every day, then each day consumes 7,200 autogun rounds (240 standard box magazines) per person, or 2,160 lasgun discharges (36 standard charge packs) per person. During that time, the Autogun will suffer an average of 50.4 malfunctions, while the Lasgun will only suffer a tenth as many. Add in reloading and time clearing jams (full actions for both, as standard), and that hour of firing increases by a further 24 minutes for autoguns, or a further three for the lasgun.

Across an Imperial Guard Company (assumed strength of 300 souls), assuming no other weapons for the sake of convenience, that works out to 2.16 million autogun rounds a day, or 648 thousand lasgun discharges, with the company suffering from more than fifteen thousand autogun malfunctions, or a little over fifteen hundred lasgun malfunctions.

That's mainly a factor of fire rate - the more controlled, slower rate of fire of the lasgun makes it more efficient, and its reliability keeps it functional in the field for longer in any period of protracted fighting, while the larger capacity of the charge pack over the magazine gives it endurance. The autogun also requires an eightfold increase in time spent reloading the weapon or clearing misfires, compared to the lasgun. In the grand scheme of things, the lasgun is far, far more efficient.

But then you consider the mass of that ammunition. Using the rough "10% of weapon weight per clip" guideline, an autogun magazine weighs 350 grams, while a lasgun charge pack is slightly heavier at 400g. The big issue here is that with autoguns, you have to provide just over two million bullets per day per company (or equivalent materials, for local manufacture)… which, with a 30-round magazine as standard, basically works out to just over twenty-five tonnes of ammunition per company per day… a month-long campaign, employing a hundred companies of Guardsmen with autoguns requires the transport of more than 2.2 million tonnes of ammunition for those autoguns alone. Lasguns are not so space-intensive - any lasgun charge pack not currently in use can be recharged, even if only by leaving it near a heat or light source. If every Guardsman is carrying 4 charge packs, and recharges diligently, then a company needs only be equipped with less than half a tonne's shipment of lasgun charge packs (480 kilos, for twelve hundred charge packs) for the entire campaign whether it lasts for a month or a decade.

Since when has 40K ever been realistic or even reasonable? The tanks are designed terribly, they have anti-tank cavelry, cities that are MILES high, don't forget eh 8ft tall super soldiers with automatic rocket launchers and totally impractical armor, they have giant walking cathedrals (not to mention spaceships), see any sort of inovation as heresy and give no fucks about wasting huge amounts of resources. I really don't care that the lasgun is "clearly superior", I want my troops armed with slug guns, if not for stat reasons, then for purely thematic ones. The fluff clearly supports this, so I see no reason for it not be an option.

Well this discussion is at least partially null and void right now since the Week 2 Update allowed (nearly?) every Speciality to grab SP whenever the get Las instead.

HOLY FLAMING HERETICS!

The new starting feats and gear for Heavies it basically word for word exactly what I wrote. Not trying to say I'm feeling rather smug right now, but damn I' feeling pretty smug right now. It's good to see that the devs pay attention to their players. GG everyone who though things needed changing.

Nice feeling, isn't it. :) Good job.

Now, if we can just get them to do something about Comrades…

Oh don't worry, that's what my next thread is going to be about. It makes no sense that a trained soldier is no more useful than a headless one armed chicken. There are plenty of good orders to go with comrades, but the comrades themselves are next to useless for most classes.

Varn said:

What? I dont think you read it properly.

The heavy is not going to get a:

>"talents that cover all basic Heavy weapons and their favored weapon."

They start with 2 talents and 1 weapon.

They arnt allowed to:

>"kit out in a way that makes them useful in jsut about any situation"

Because of weight and because imperial guard will never get to train in all weapon systems, unless they spend a large amount of XP. Especially because they will never encounter all weapon systems in one game.

>"especially with the current XP costs/aptitude system already being so expensive"

As far as i know WepSpec starts with the right aptitudes to buy any training. Thats included in the decription of the character. Or atleast, should allways be.