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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Oct 18, 2017 21:26:13 GMT
That is the one but I guess it doesn't show the cortex, unless it's the ball the head connects to. I know the Retribution one shows it clearly and I thought one of the human ones did, maybe it was Protectorate.
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Post by galrohir on Oct 18, 2017 21:42:45 GMT
I think it is. I took the liberty of updating the link with all the warjack blow-ups from the books (https://imgur.com/a/jLGrc) and the easiest one to see it in is probably the Cygnar and Rhulic ones.
It's in the body, at any rate, so I stand corrected.
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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Oct 18, 2017 22:26:16 GMT
I think it is. I took the liberty of updating the link with all the warjack blow-ups from the books (https://imgur.com/a/jLGrc) and the easiest one to see it in is probably the Cygnar and Rhulic ones. It's in the body, at any rate, so I stand corrected. Nice! The Ret one is actually the plug thing on top cause elves.
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Post by cygnarstronk on Oct 19, 2017 0:06:18 GMT
It isn't stated in-fiction since they wouldn't have anything to compare it to, but it's been mentioned by PP before on the old forums and at Q&As. It's also pretty obvious given the range values available to us and the amount of damage they deal. Stats don't exactly equal fluff but they're indicative. If the average rifle has a pretty low chance of actually killing some guy in plate armor then the bullet can't be carrying a lot of energy; in real life plate armor fell out of favor partially because it doesn't save you from projectiles. As far as why use it instead of bows it's the same reason we started using it in real life instead of bows; less training. Any idiot can pick up a gun, point it at the baddies, and pull the trigger. Throw in some training and they can hit more often. It takes more practice and a fairly specific muscle build to draw a heavy recurve bow. As for your middle paragraph, you're correct in that rules don't exactly equal fluff but you're misunderstanding the ways that they represent fluff. Weapon Master doesn't necessarily mean that the user is just jack and and punch through battleship armor, it can also mean they're smart enough and skilled enough to know where to aim so they don't have to. A Dawnguard Sentinal charging a heavy warjack isn't going to just beat against the hull, they're going to go for the joints, the gaps between the armor plates, the hoses. They're controlled enough to make their attacks count rather than relying on brute force and they have mastered their weapons enough to apply them in the most effective possible way. Even if you don't have that kind of training you can make up for it in other ways. For example, the Houseguard Halberdiers Officer has a once-per-game ability called Team Effort that could represent the special training he's put his squad through to work in tandem with their shieldmate, or a moment of brilliant tactical command that lets him direct his men to attack an enemy's weak point, or a rousing speech that puts fire in your blood and convinces his squad to push beyond their limits. The game has to be simplified down to stats but that doesn't mean those stats are a 1:1 translation of what's happening. My favorite example of this is the Chimera light warjack. It's fluff describes it as having a power field that causes it to appear to flicker and shift to make it harder to attack; it's model has the rule Apparition that lets it be placed 2" away. This placement isn't because it's teleporting around, it signifies that the warjack was never actually in the previous location, your opponent was just fooled by it's power field. Again all of this comes down to rule of cool, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some internal logic that can be fun to talk about. Edit: Found a link of Seacat talking about blasting powder. Doesn't cover it's power vs IRL gunpowder but it has some neat info about production and drawbacks: privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?77295-Doug-Seacat-on&p=1412140&viewfull=1#post1412140 Nah mate, nothing will make me think that ranges fo the guns in the game represent even a hint of a "lore" approach to the weapons. A rifle shooting at the same distance that a charging guy can cover in a few seconds is just stupid. Same thing with a bow or crossbow really, they should have greater range. Do not even get me started on artillery, cannons with 13 inches of range? A guy in battle armor such a steelhead can run about the same distance in one turn? No way. Warjacks and weapon masters? Sure, a weapon master is trained to hit where it hurts. And of course, the combined effort of multiple soldiers, or multiple attacks, could causa real damage to warjacks/warbeast even with just heavy bladed weapons. But scrapping them? It sounds nearly impossible, especially when targeting stuff that is really hard to reach such as arms (too tall to hit good, and always in movement) and the cortex that stand encased deep beneath armor plates that are never, ever going to pierced by man sized weapons. Also remember that a lot of warjacks are competent fighters, so hitting those spots wouldn't be easy when the jack is fighting back. They could take on steamjacks sure, with non reinforced joints, less armor plates and much slower reactions. But warjacks are totally different beasts. Lastly, the infantry armor problem is still there. Plate armor made most shields useless as you are the shield, it is really tough. When facing plate and you are armed with a sword, you resort to weird combat styles such as half-swording and performing murder strokes with the hilt, they are extreme counter measures to either try to hit weak spots (very hard, but doable after wrestling) or just stunning the opponent and then finishing the fight on the ground. Full plate armor+shield in IK is usually ARM14-15 tops, easily whacked by most single handed weapons or an arrow. That's silly. Even a well made chain mail protected the wearer from almost all cuts and stabs, when worn with padding beaneath it. Combined with a shield it was excellent protection, yet it in the IK it is made out of paper. Imagine if all these moves and evolutions were necesarry to battle against humans in armor, how ineffective could man sized weapons be against being made out entirely of battle hardened steel, super strong and heavy, that feel neither pain nor fear and can't be stunned by concussion. It would be a nightmare to face one, even with the best training avaible. The only "reasonable" way that I fin in humans destroying warjacks in melee is magic. I can't know how strong will a relic blade or a stormblade sword be, but I suppose they can magically hack metal because of their qualities. Same thing applies to khadoran blasting pikes, those are advanced weapons that surpass normal attacks.
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Post by W0lfBane on Oct 19, 2017 0:35:11 GMT
You know maybe the gravitational pull on the caen is so higher than our earth gravity and that's why gun ranges are so low. And maybe that's why when you fall an more than an inch you take a pow10 damage roll.
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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Oct 19, 2017 3:51:46 GMT
You can find it unreasonable all you want, that's how it's presented in the fiction and rules and in comments made by the creators. I'm not sure why you find it so hard to accept that a world completely different from our own with different laws of physics, different technological progression, and different materials can't have guns that just aren't as effective as real life but okay.
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Post by kanelbullen on Oct 19, 2017 7:55:22 GMT
And taking down warjacks with bladed weapons would actually pretty doable. If you look at most warjack designs, every single one of their joints is open, and the inside is basically clockwork and pneumatic pistons/hoses. Pretty easy to damage something vital. I have to disagree there. Even if you hit vulnerable spots in the joints etc. you are still gonna be hitting a bunch of steel(?) parts with a bladed weapon. Because the blade cannot cut, you are using it as a bludgeoning weapon. There are weapons far more suited to this. Also, contrary to popular belief enforced by hollywood movies it is ill advised to hit metallic objects with a bladed weapon, because it dulls the blade fast or can even brake the blade.
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Post by cygnarstronk on Oct 19, 2017 8:15:37 GMT
You can find it unreasonable all you want, that's how it's presented in the fiction and rules and in comments made by the creators. I'm not sure why you find it so hard to accept that a world completely different from our own with different laws of physics, different technological progression, and different materials can't have guns that just aren't as effective as real life but okay. Well, then we can't have a discussion on that. If we say "everything works different, even laws of physics" then there is no point in debating. Maybe all metals in the IK are extremely soft? But it doesn't explain why the armor gets pierced by an arrow, as that too would be made by the same kinds of metal. Is gravity weird and projectiles can't fly at a distance? Well, then why even bother creating a cannon if it's range is about... the range of a BB gun in real world, maybe less. Warfare evolved with logic and needs of the battlefield. Guns started replacing bows because they were hitting much harder, not just because of ease of use. A crossbow isn't harder to use than a gun, and it surely is easier to make. Why bother wearing an armor that provides no real protection? Warriors of any era or world shouldn't be stupid, they'll only use stuff that works. Armor in the IK is clearly rather useless as it gets pierced by almost any direct attack, so let's all just wear padding and be mobile. Just imagine the amount of time it takes to make a sword knight armor, it covers the wearer and head to toe and has to bu custom fitted in order to be able to move inside that thing (ignoring the oversized shoulder pads that would make fighting inside that impossibile) and see that it offers nearly no protection against arrows and cutlass, why bother? Basically I think it all boils down to the rule of cool nothing more. It creates an aesthetically beautiful setting in which knights in armor can co-exist with guns and cannons and WW1 trencher troops, along with magic and robots and all sorts of monsters. But when we play the game, any range, damage roll and spell effect/feat is a mere rule to let us enjoy the game and not a representation of how a battle in the IK would normally be fought. edit: another example of absurd wepon ranges/pow is the hand cannon. it's a powerful handgun, so POW12 may have it's place, but freaking RNG12? A pistol with a range longer than a military rifle or crossbows? There is just no way to achieve it, the barrel lenght is too short and POW12 cartridge would be heavy, even with extra powder you can't achieve better range than a rifle. It has almost the same range as a trencher cannon, and that is... a pistol.
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Post by galrohir on Oct 19, 2017 10:55:46 GMT
And taking down warjacks with bladed weapons would actually pretty doable. If you look at most warjack designs, every single one of their joints is open, and the inside is basically clockwork and pneumatic pistons/hoses. Pretty easy to damage something vital. I have to disagree there. Even if you hit vulnerable spots in the joints etc. you are still gonna be hitting a bunch of steel(?) parts with a bladed weapon. Because the blade cannot cut, you are using it as a bludgeoning weapon. There are weapons far more suited to this. Also, contrary to popular belief enforced by hollywood movies it is ill advised to hit metallic objects with a bladed weapon, because it dulls the blade fast or can even brake the blade. I agree there's weapons much more suited to it, but depending on Warjack design, effectiveness may be high (we don't really know because we don't have super duper detailed schematics). I mean, as a (pretty dumb) example, take an old pocket watch. If you hit it with a hammer it's probably going to stop working. If you stick a knife into it's innards a bunch of times, it's also probably going to stop working, even if you don't actually break any of the gears. This also goes for a 'jack's pistons or hoses. As for the second point, also entirely true. But also remember most "swords" in the Iron Kingdoms are about as realistic as the muppets (Exhibit 1: Caspain Battleblades. Exhibit 2: Fellblades). And the guys with more realistic blades usually have two of 'em, so losing one to cripple a warjack is probably ok. Just chuck it in there and hope for the best!
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wishing
Junior Strategist
Posts: 353
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Post by wishing on Oct 19, 2017 11:02:03 GMT
Basically I think it all boils down to the rule of cool nothing more. It creates an aesthetically beautiful setting in which knights in armor can co-exist with guns and cannons and WW1 trencher troops, along with magic and robots and all sorts of monsters. But when we play the game, any range, damage roll and spell effect/feat is a mere rule to let us enjoy the game and not a representation of how a battle in the IK would normally be fought. I agree completely. The game rules are abstractions. And what comes first is the artistic depiction. It looks cool to have a big robot standing next to a medieval knight standing next to a guy with a machine gun. These things being unrealistic in terms of logic are not seen as important. In the game rules, we would imagine that a machine gun is a shooting weapon of some sort, so the weapon is given a range. But how far a range it should have? The only important thing is how the range of the gun fits into the desired gameplay experience. The feeling of realism and appropriateness is a factor, somewhere, but it is a far distant concern.
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Post by galrohir on Oct 19, 2017 12:08:23 GMT
edit: another example of absurd wepon ranges/pow is the hand cannon. it's a powerful handgun, so POW12 may have it's place, but freaking RNG12? A pistol with a range longer than a military rifle or crossbows? There is just no way to achieve it, the barrel lenght is too short and POW12 cartridge would be heavy, even with extra powder you can't achieve better range than a rifle. It has almost the same range as a trencher cannon, and that is... a pistol. Ranges in the Iron Kingdoms are a casualty of abstraction for the wargame. If we go back to the original d20 game, firearm ranges were better. Not amazing, but much better: a military rifle had an "effective" range of 200 feet (which for any kind of rifle is absolutely horrendous, but whatever) and a maximum range of 2,000 feet compared to the 60 feet/300 feet we get in the current iteration of the rules. What happened? The wargame happened. You can't really have realistic gun ranges in a tabletop game like Warmachine because that'd just mean any sort of melee infantry that doesn't start halfway up the board is useless. I mean people say it's hard to deliver some infantry units now, with current ranges. Can you imagine what it would be like trying to deliver them if the ranges were "Basically All the Table"? So, abstractions were made, and we have a fun wargame. But then the new version of the IKRPG comes around, no longer d20. In an effort to marry the wargame and the RPG game together, they use mostly the same system, including of course ranges. But in an RPG, you can't just use tabletop measures, because you don't always play on tabletop scale. If your player wants to snipe the Llaelese dignatary from his nest 400 yards away and all you have is a range of 14 Inches....the poor GM's gonna have to do some mind math. To help with that, the developers introduced a conversion rate from the inches of the tabletop abstraction to a more common real-world measurement: feet. But here's the catch. Inches in the Wargame are also used for Movement. And there is no way you can make a conversion that will give you both realistic gun ranges AND a realistic movement speed. You'd need two conversions, and they didn't want that. So 1 Inch= 6 feet; and you get mostly realistic movement but absolutely idiotic weapon ranges. Now this doesn't explain how in Menoth's scrotum a pistol outranges a mlilitary rifle in the wargame (because they certainly didn't in the old d20 days) but it does explain why most guns in the IK have an effective range even smoothbore muskets laugh at.
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wishing
Junior Strategist
Posts: 353
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Post by wishing on Oct 19, 2017 12:45:02 GMT
In an effort to marry the wargame and the RPG game together, they use mostly the same system, including of course ranges. And this is the problem, right? By trying to link together a game of unrealistic abstractions (the wargame) and a game that is supposed to feel at least a little bit like real life logic applies (the RPG), one of them has to fall.
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Post by galrohir on Oct 19, 2017 13:20:41 GMT
In an effort to marry the wargame and the RPG game together, they use mostly the same system, including of course ranges. And this is the problem, right? By trying to link together a game of unrealistic abstractions (the wargame) and a game that is supposed to feel at least a little bit like real life logic applies (the RPG), one of them has to fall. Essentially, yes. It doesn't address other problems that are more lore based than anything (blasting powder and "fantasy stagnation" address most of those, to varying degrees of acceptance depending on player. I think blasting powder and "fantasy stagnation" are dumb explanations that make no actual sense, but we'll roll with it.) But when it comes to ranges, definitely. And it's a funny case study too because PP are actually the only guys I know that went this route. The 40k RPGs use an entirely different system with a completely different set of rules. I've heard Malifaux and Infinity are the same way, but I haven't actually checked. Battletech goes the extra mile by giving you very granular stuff for the RPG and then tells you "Ok, this is for people, if you want to use Mechs, just literally use Battletech Boardgame rules, but here's how you convert skills for your pilots." It's an interesting way to see how gameplay and fluff interact, at any rate.
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Post by cygnarstronk on Oct 19, 2017 14:42:24 GMT
Yeah, taking RPG stats as "lore" representations is going to make things look really bad. The only thing they tried to do to make ranges a bit more decent is "you can shoot much further, but at a -4 penalty".
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Post by Havock on Oct 19, 2017 14:48:04 GMT
Because a game of shooting at each other's army with gigantic off-table artillery would get dull really Firetrucking quickly.
Also, warjacks would cease to exist, instead cortices will be installed in relatively low-profile tracked vehicles where they can mount the biggest gun possible -either with an autoloader or serviced internally by well-protected crew-.
I'd want to see Nemo/Blaustavya watch the performance of a 120mm L/55 :v
"You pick whatever warjack you think can take it and put it right there. Yes that's two kilometeres away and no the gun won't go closer. By all means augment your warjack magically. Are we taking bets?"
It would be as ridiculous to them as this whole magic thing is to us.
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