Yes we are. And in that rulebook, a lance weapon is capable of blasting an escort (at least four times the size of a Sovereign Class Starship) in two with one shot.
As is a weapon battery. They both do the same amount of damage. Note that a battery isn't one weapon, just like a barrage isn't one shot. However, it is a relative indication of its ability to damage a target.
Lances are armor piercing, but they don't do massive amounts of structural damage. It's a maxim in the game that a lance armed ship can't defeat an opponent ship of equal points with batteries - it can;t do damage quickly enough to defeat it.
In those rules, a nova cannon is a huge weapon, so powerful that it can only be fired forward. Why? Because the recoil is so massive that it can requires the ships engines to compensate for that. Yes, the recoil is so powerful that it'd knock even ships that big backwards if they didn't have their engines going. And according to the book, it fires a projectile nearly the speed of light with a blast radius half the size of the moon and unleashing a force more potent than a dozen plasma bombs (plasma bombs which are superior to the aformentioned 610 gigaton nuclear torpedo).
Um, were did we get 610 gigaton nuclear torpedoes?
Yes, this is a waste of time - you have all sorts of assumptions that aren't based on anything.
Again, having actually played the game, I know what the Nova Cannon can and can't do.
It is an area of effect weapon that does relatively little damage to anything that isn't hit dead on by the blast. 90% of the target area takes 1 hit - which wipes out unshielded fighter and bomber flights but won't take out an escort unless their shields are already down.
Again, how do you go from that to an order of magnitude more powerful? Even assuming teraton weapons (which is a BIG assumption on your part based on your misunderstanding of what the word 'barrage' means) getting that up to petaton is done purely by your assumption that the nova cannon does more damage.
In reality, it's clear from the source material that while the explosion is powerful it doesn't translate that damage well to targets in the area.
I don't think you quite understand how the game works. My understanding isn't perfect, either, as I've never played it, but at least I'm making an effort to read the rules and understand what's going on, which you can't seem to be bothered to do. Go
HERE to page 22, where it talks about Nova Cannons.
With a perfect shot it does inflict 1d6 hits, while it inflicts 1 hit on everyone within the blast radius. But that's
automatic damage. Read my above post. Even the most powerful weapons batteries can see their fire reduced to piddling amounts, and see no results come from their fire. A Nova Cannon, however,
always inflicts damage, and if it's a direct hit, the target counts as being struck multiple times! And you're trying to claim that it's
weak? That one gun which can outdo a dozen or so guns in its ability to damage numerous ships, and can potentially outdo them in its ability to damage a single ship with nothing more than indirect fire, is weak?
Oy. I'm sorry, you just have no frickin' idea of what you are talking about.
The Nova cannon, like the Lance, is armor piercing.
However, it doesn't kill ships very well. Because it can't do that many hits of structural damage.
The max amount of damage under any circumstances that a Nova Cannon, assuming a perfect hit on the table, no scatter, and a perfect die roll, is 6.
Weapons batteries won't normally do that much depending on the armor rating of the ship, but a perfect hit for them can do considerably more.
Even if you factor in averages for the armor on the die rolls, you aren't talking about an order of magnitude more damage.
Most often you are talking max 1 hit. A bomber flight of Starhawks does the same.
But then, that's the comparison - Starhawks attack with plasma bombs. The comparison is it does more damage than a bombing group.
Big boom, but it doesn't do much actual damage on the playing table. To have a chance to kill ships you really need massed Nova Cannon fire, and even then it isn't likely to kill cruisers.
That's in contrast to the Nova Cannon which
always damages.
Every. Single. Time. Not only does it always inflict damage, but it inflicts damage to multiple ships at once. And the lance cannon always inflicts damage at least
half the time. Do you honestly not see the difference between firing a dozen guns or more to
potentially get one or two solid hits on an enemy ship, in comparison to
one gun which
always gets a solid hit on a ship,
and the ship next to it,
and the ship next to it, and which, if it scores a direct hit, can get up to the equivalent of
six solid shots? Do you
really not see the vastly superior firepower that the nova cannon has at its disposal?
Try playing the game and get back to me. LOL.
The vast majority of the time, a Nova Cannon hits a couple of ships for 1 point of damage. It's pure luck when it actually hits a ship dead on, it will only hit 1 of those, and then it still does no more than 6 points of damage, averaging 3.5.
So if you hit an escort dead on, you'll kill it (1 shield, 1 hit). A light cruiser? No. Anything above that is out of the question - it can't kill them under any circumstance, because it doesn't do enough raw damage.
There's a reason that all of those guns are massed together and fired together, and listed as one weapon in the game. That's because, individually, those weapons aren't much. It's firing together that they start getting better results.
Absolutely - but then, my argument was talking about the batteries of a ship, not individual weapons.
The Dictator class ship has a firepower of 6 on its port/stbd batteries. That is shown to be capable of 'destroying a city with sustained bombardment.'
That's impressive, but no where near the numbers you are throwing around. And clearly within the realm of even old Trek ships.
Megatons, kilotons? Based on what? Based on your complete misunderstanding of the rules? Based on your inability to comprehend that just because "Weapon Batteries" have a bigger number under the Firepower/Strength column, they're not more powerful than lance weapons and nova cannons, because the way those three weapons interact with the rules are completely different?
Again, I understand the mechanics - having actually played the game.
What you refuse to understand is that the damage levels are similar, not orders of magnitude different.
Any player of BFG would look at you like you were from mars if you suggested that a Lance should do 10 times the damage of a weapons battery, and that a Nova Cannon should do 100 times the damage.
It doesn't work that way except in your head.
And you're going to seriously argue that, after telling us all that that feat would require petatons of power, that those selfsame lance weapons are only in the kiloton to megaton range? Seriously?
Um, I didn't make that argument, you did.
Six weapons batteries on a Dictator can destroy cities with a sustained bombardment.
If a barrage is more than one shot - and feel free to look it up, it is - then three battleships with 12-18 lances could destroy a continent with those power levels, over the course of time. 'A couple of barrages' could easily be hours of shots with hundreds of firings, even more.
Also, my source, the novel Execution Hour, is one specifically about naval ships. It's a primary source that discusses ships and naval combat.
You just don't like what it says.
They didn't because there's more to those weapons then that single number. The rules and the background both make it quite clear that the lances are the far more powerful weapon, not the weaker ones.
Yes, a lance is more powerful than the individual weapons of a battery. It isn't necessarily more powerful than all the weapons of the combined batteries. Your argument places them an order of magnitude higher than the battery itself - that doesn't work in game.
The primary advantage to a lance is it burns through armor. However, it doesn't do much raw damage in BFG terms.
]Please, stop wasting both your time and ours, as you clearly don't have the barest shred of a clue of what you're talking about. I don't quite know what to make of this latest argument. It either demonstrates your complete and utter ignorance of what you're talking about, or it demonstrates that you're a bald-faced liar, purposefully misinterpreting the data for your purposes. I'm gonna assume the former, though, because being ignorant of a sci-fi universe or a game system isn't a big deal, and I don't enjoy accusing people of being liars without a bit more evidence (and prefer to think that someone wouldn't lie about something so stupid as this).
Again, I've played the game. WH40K is a very fun universe, but I don't actually have anything invested in it being 'kewler' or more powerful than Trek. I like them both. I have source material on both. I've played numerous games in both. And I've written games for both.
What I don't care for is the presumption there is no other way to interpret the data as how you've presented it. You have admitted it flat out - you have no experience about what you are lecturing everyone else on.
That makes you look fairly silly.
