Does anyone else feel that Gatling Lasers and Miniguns are a little underwhelming for something you can only take 1 of per 500caps?
(Missle launcher performing fine)
I understand they are designed to plink at models over time but they really dont seem to pack any real punch. The main concern comes from attacking say a band of roving survivors or powerarmor users, currently due to PA strong armor bonus a minigun is unable to scratch PA even at close range you have better luck smacking them with say a baseball bat.
Is there any adjustment that could be made to make these Heavy weapons more intimidating without outright breaking them?
Mayhaps a broad special ability
Heavy weapon: May ignore in-built strong armor bonus, strong armor tokens unaffected.
This way both Survivors and PA users dont feel like unstoppable 40k space marines that are allergic to simple fire axes/ batons.
Also a viable option and brings strong armor in line with tokens for the purpose of Heavy weapons fire. Mayhaps its something our playtesting community can look into next wave.
I have used the mini gun twice in my games and both time it chewed though a Brotherhood guy in power armor. The +1 armor reduction per hit from walked fire turned him into swiz cheese. But I will admit if you miss and it starts over it can be disappointing.
The issue is that the Strong Armor on the Power Armor should block the one damage that comes from the mini-guns, unless i’m not remembering where it would have said differently.
The couple of times I’ve used the minigun/lazergat they were great. As mentioned above, the reductions in armor was a big deal. Couple of good rolls and you can do a lot of damage.
The issue crops up at long range where the mini gun only gets its flat 1 physical dmg which can never puncture the +1 strong armor bonus.
Granted at short range the additional black die can help, I feel like both in the games and RL if I stood down wind of a minigun and didnt move id quickly be turned to cheese.
In my experience the gatling laser and minigun either shred or plink. I’ve had games where I felt like it was a disservice to have it on a model, and others where it’s almost felt OP. No tactical reason, just seems that the dice luck usually goes all good or all bad when I’m around.
Short or long range fire?
With or without PowerArmored target?
I think my core issue is Im seeing a lot of power armored units space marine their way through Minigun fire but curl into a ball when struck with a 2x4… which just seems off to me.
Both. Typically I only equip a gatling laser or minigun on a power armor clad leader with Bruiser so that adds a very slight chance for extra damage even at long range. Still better at short range though. Usually crowd control with the extra green dice at long range while slow walking my way into the center of the battlefield, then switch off to target tougher units at short range.
The +1 armour break per consecutive hit can be extremely nasty at even long range and mods can make it even harsher, the only real issue i’ve found is that crits happen too few times in a game to make it worth giving this weapon to a heroic model
T60 power armor
Physical armor 3+1
The natural armor pen is all well and good to chip down that 3, its the +1 thats an issue, it can never be removed and a minigun has a base 1 physical dmg.
It’s certainly a weird limitation that they can’t hurt a model with persistent strong armor without a lot of luck, but models with those abilities aren’t common, and otherwise they seem to be in a good spot. If your particular meta has lots of people taking power armor, then just acknowledge that miniguns and gattling lasers aren’t great in ypur group and move on. As far as Survivors, these weapons are awesome against them, because you can easily plink off both those strong armor tokens and have a shot or two still go through, something you can’t accomplish with any other weapon in the game.
Walked fire weapons do tend to be pretty luck dependent, but I’ve had them feel OP more often than they’ve struck out completely. Not being able to get an extra crit token when you roll a crit result is quite tragic, and combined with slow firing means I never take them on heroic models, but that’s unrelated to your complaint.
The cap costs for mini gun and gatling laser will go down with the next updated that is currently in layout. Having played them for a year now and seeing them underperform at our last tournament, we have decided that the need to become cheaper in comparison to a laser rifle or more directly to the missile launcher…
It’s just so difficult do constantly deal damage with this weapon. As a rule of thumb from my experience: It is always better to shoot at squishy targets and not the heavy armored ones to make the best of those weapons…
I agree that the minigun/gatling laser both feel like pea shooters when up against power armor or deathclaws - you really need some luck on your side to hurt those things with such weapons. The minigun/gatling laser desperately needs a weapon mod like the Charged Barrel that’s available in Fallout 4. Instead of a pure improvement (like most mods in FWW currently are), it could represent a tradeoff - less rate-of-fire for more ability to punch through things like strong armor.
Have been using those adjusted costs in my meta, its small so we’ve got all of them on the NDA. Soft targets wernt really an option in our last little Battle mode meet. 5/8 Players brought BoS to the party, thats when a vast majority of players had questions.
As some people have mentioned, if fire is focused on one target, the cumulative effect (especially if the shooter has decent skill) can be very effective on Strong Armor at short range. It requires damage to be rolled on the Black Dice (or other effects/mods) to overcome the Strong Armor but this is quite common. The rapid fire is very inaccurate at longer ranges so has much less ability to be focused and less power so Strong Armor can shrug it off.
Overall, think of the effect of the Minigun/Gatling Laser in terms of what it achieves in all of its shots combined, rather than it being like 5 separate shots of a non-Walked Fire weapon. The effect is by design - one design principle behind F:WW is nothing is great at everything so Walked Fire has its strengths but is inferior in some situations too. If a player wants a model which is good in all situations, like crowd control as well as high damage at long-range, then the model will need multiple items, but that costs caps.
To bring in a “real world” example. The most common miniguns used in the the US military are 7.62 Nato, which is the same round as what the medium machine guns use like the M-60 and M-240 which are pretty powerful for anti-personnel. You can easily take out un-armored vehicles with a 7.62 machinegun.
In the game, miniguns are “5mm” which there are a few 5mm rifle cartridges out there but they’re pretty weak. The strength of the minigun is hitting unarmored targets. A 7.62 rifle, machinegun, or minigun will tear though a car or unarmored person, but if a target is covered in 3/8" armor plate steel even if you hit the same spot at close range, it won’t penetrate after dozens of rounds or more. Power Armor is tough, unless you hit a joint or some weak spot in the armor repeatedly, the rounds will just bounce off. That’s why you have to chip it away. They do make 7.62 armor penetrating rounds that would zip through 3/8" or crater half inch armor plate, but they’re not common, the military usually reserves AP rounds for .50 machineguns and anti-material rifles.
There were some 5.56 miniguns, which shoot the same round as the M-16, but they were too weak and just wasted space in the armory, if you’re going to need a hardpoint to mount a minigun, you might as well use a 7.62 so you could take out vehicles with less ammo used. There is a company making a 5.56 “microgun” but it’s really a marketing gimmick and engineering exercise to reduce the parts count and reliability for a minigun.