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My thoughts on Melta Weapons in this game...

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3 months ago
Oct 5, 2024, 2:06:45 AM

What we've been given is fun and all, but I wish they would have been portrayed more accurately. They SHOULD be short range beam weapons that do more dps the longer you concentrate fire. As currently presented they are filling the role of shotgun which should have gone to the Space Marine Scout Shotgun. I don't expect the devs to change them at this point but I wondered if anyone else noticed this? Games like Dawn of War and Inquisitor: Martyr did a much better job of portraying melta weapons. In the table top game, melta guns are not meant for clearing mobs. They are for high toughness and high armor targets. I think that's why bolt weapons tend to take a back seat in this game, too many weapons trying to fill the role of the bolt gun. From a gaming perspective, melta weapons should be anti armor versions of the Pyreblaster. My post is not a complaint, just my insight and critique from 20 years of playing table top and various video game versions of Warhammer 40k. 


Have a powerful day...

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3 months ago
Oct 5, 2024, 6:49:30 AM

Well it's not really a beam weapon, it's kinda like they portray it in this game, but instead of the wide spread it's incredibly concentrated. 


Closer to Plasma than a beam weapon. 


But they likely had it fill this role since armor wasn't going to be in the game as enemies. 


So, likely it's just a practical matter rather than one of staying true to form. 

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3 months ago
Oct 5, 2024, 6:55:28 PM

MrsHeadshott wrote:

Well it's not really a beam weapon, it's kinda like they portray it in this game, but instead of the wide spread it's incredibly concentrated. 


Closer to Plasma than a beam weapon. 


But they likely had it fill this role since armor wasn't going to be in the game as enemies. 


So, likely it's just a practical matter rather than one of staying true to form. 

Wrong. They ARE beam weapons. Short ranged, heat beam weapons. They are portrayed like that in every other game I've played including table top.


"The Meltagun, also called a "Fusion Gun," "Melter," or "Cooker," is a powerful, short-ranged anti-armour weapon that produces an intense, energetic beam of heat in the tens of thousands of degrees Centigrade. " -40k wiki


They should be melting Extremis and Terminus units, not sweeping the floor of gaunts.

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3 months ago
Oct 5, 2024, 6:59:18 PM

Bladerunner777 wrote:

TenTigers wrote:

What we've been given is fun and all, but I wish they would have been portrayed more accurately. They SHOULD be short range beam weapons that do more dps the longer you concentrate fire. As currently presented they are filling the role of shotgun which should have gone to the Space Marine Scout Shotgun. I don't expect the devs to change them at this point but I wondered if anyone else noticed this? Games like Dawn of War and Inquisitor: Martyr did a much better job of portraying melta weapons. In the table top game, melta guns are not meant for clearing mobs. They are for high toughness and high armor targets. I think that's why bolt weapons tend to take a back seat in this game, too many weapons trying to fill the role of the bolt gun. From a gaming perspective, melta weapons should be anti armor versions of the Pyreblaster. My post is not a complaint, just my insight and critique from 20 years of playing table top and various video game versions of Warhammer 40k. 


Have a powerful day...

Agreed. I also liked how meltas were made in DoW series. But the best representation I saw in Operation Flashpoint WH40k mod. In this mod multi melta worked just like in table top, it had the range of around 250 meters and it was a continous stream of energy, kinda melta hose :D It took about 3 seconds to destroy a Land Raider. Obviously I do not expect something like that in SM2...but the range should definitely be buffed.

Yeah that's why I don't understand the design system here outside of "that's how it was in SM1." They really should have used the Pyreblaster as it's counter. Low damage/high penetration versus high damage/NO penetration. Both short range.

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3 months ago
Oct 5, 2024, 7:32:47 PM

Functionally, the Meltagun has more in common with a Plasma Gun than a Flamer. While the Flamer is used to incinerate large numbers of foes at short range, the Meltagun is used to attack point targets, destroying heavily armoured vehicles at short range by literally heating the vehicle's armour into slag and melting through to vulnerable internal components.

- 40k wiki. 


I was just thinking of a beam weapon like las or dark lances rather than focused blast of reactive accelerant. Beam implies light based energy to me. Lasers work because the light rapidly produces heat, rather than heat producing light. 


They did produce a beam version for portability and range that required extended targeting and massive amount of maintenance after use. 


Either way, it's not for clearing gaunts. 



Updated 3 months ago.
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3 months ago
Oct 5, 2024, 8:24:34 PM

Beam weaponry seems to be particle beam often. There is a distinction between possible beam and las weapons. 


So yeah, meltas are a two part particle beam of fuel particles. 


Just to clarify my earlier mistake. 

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3 months ago
Oct 5, 2024, 9:30:27 PM

MrsHeadshott wrote:

Well it's not really a beam weapon, it's kinda like they portray it in this game, but instead of the wide spread it's incredibly concentrated. 


Closer to Plasma than a beam weapon. 


But they likely had it fill this role since armor wasn't going to be in the game as enemies. 


So, likely it's just a practical matter rather than one of staying true to form. 

The way melta seems to be in the horus heresy books, is more akin to a channeled beam per se. But in the same vein that would give massive recoil, as you have a weapon that has the reaction the last CERN experiment had with 2 particles.. only with thousands more lol

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3 months ago
Oct 5, 2024, 10:13:15 PM

Yeah, they're doing hot fusion and somehow directing that uni directionally to weaponize it. 


I still maintain the reaction is happening inside the gun, the resulting heat doesn't constitute a beam. 


But what do I know. Lol. 


And it's really irrelevant. The hot shotgun interpretation works for pvp purposes. And arguably works better in PvE than it would otherwise. 

Updated 3 months ago.
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2 months ago
Oct 6, 2024, 7:49:14 PM

Yep, it burns hotter than the sun and obviously we're talking about adeptus astartes controlling it so it's not like we can compare the crazy strength required to control that to anything rational for normal humans.


The logic of the reaction happening inside the gun would correspondingly do all the venting of said reaction through the barrel for as long as the reaction is taking place, where a prolonged action would cause a beam, but a singular one would be a "puff", but not donut shaped lol.


It would be better as a hard-to-use beam weapon with crazy recoil (as a skill-factor so it's not spammable) but then add shotguns as its own weapon genre, that way we could FINALLY have a weapon that ravages the bulwark shield, effectively destroying it outright. But I can make an educated guess that the reason it is not a beam, is far simpler. It's too particle-heavy for memory resources and would require more performance to "look good" and function correspondingly. It would logically function like a blowtorch if done "correctly" but tank performance maybe. We'll see if the flamers work well once they come to pvp.

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2 months ago
Oct 6, 2024, 8:21:55 PM

I would not mind if they kept the melta as it is now, shotgun style, but changed the multi melta to be more lore accurate. I think it would suit the heavy more.

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2 months ago
Oct 6, 2024, 8:38:52 PM

In my head, the pseudo science would have to make fields controlling the heat, which would double as the expulsion mechanism of the barrel. 


Then there would probably be some super substance that has such an incredibly high specific heat that the weapon doesn't heat up fast enough for the ambient energy to inflict damage on the armor it's aimed at. 


There is a lot being over simplified, but yeah. 


The puff seems the most consistent in my mind. But making it a crazy shakey beam would reduce the instant kill affect enough to be a viable PVP solution. The ttk has to be reasonable when compared to other weapons. 

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2 months ago
Oct 6, 2024, 9:07:07 PM

MrsHeadshott wrote:

In my head, the pseudo science would have to make fields controlling the heat, which would double as the expulsion mechanism of the barrel. 


Then there would probably be some super substance that has such an incredibly high specific heat that the weapon doesn't heat up fast enough for the ambient energy to inflict damage on the armor it's aimed at. 


There is a lot being over simplified, but yeah. 


The puff seems the most consistent in my mind. But making it a crazy shakey beam would reduce the instant kill affect enough to be a viable PVP solution. The ttk has to be reasonable when compared to other weapons. 

if you want a simple explanation of the "real world example" of it, just look at the sun. It has those reactions constantly, and to an extent a solar-flare is the closest you'd have to such a reaction in an uncontrolled manner (obviously not remotely comparable lol, but the closest), and in such a case, as long as the reaction is happening there is a propulsion of solar-mass, and upon it severing from the reaction the whole solar flare leaves as one long thing. So realistically, if you're gonna do the physics approach to it, it would actually be a mix of the two, a "projectile"-beam, like an elongated version of how the plasma projectiles work. 


Needless to say, whatever the devs want it to behave like is what it's going to be like. Doesn't matter if it described in the horus heresy books as a beam used to even cut through walls (like some star wars light saber cutting thing), even if that is a point of reference, they're doing it the way to have some "range limitable shotgun" and I doubt we'll ever see it changed. Eternal Crusade did it "correctly" according to lore, but we can't expect them to keep things lore accurate when it's being done in a manner they deem possible to balance according to their desires.


HOWEVER.. wtf are they going to do when volkite weapons come? Since those are clearly described as being beam/ray weapons with thermal damage.. so maybe they're intending to make THOSE function like the beams you'd expect from melta in the lore, and because of that.. they won't do it for melta, because it would seem too similar. Since melta gun's description is: "The Meltagun, also called a "Fusion Gun," "Melter," or "Cooker," is a powerful, short-ranged anti-armour weapon that produces an intense, energetic beam of heat in the tens of thousands of degrees Centigrade."

Updated 2 months ago.
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2 months ago
Oct 6, 2024, 10:13:36 PM

Yeah the plasma ball is functionally how I see the melta, but a ball with less cohesion that breaks more quickly. 


No idea about the Volkite. 

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2 months ago
Oct 7, 2024, 6:07:46 PM

MrsHeadshott wrote:

Yeah the plasma ball is functionally how I see the melta, but a ball with less cohesion that breaks more quickly. 


No idea about the Volkite. 

Volkite is basically a big las-beam, not traveling las-projectiles but instead a "consistent beam of thermal energy" per se. So sort of like turning a flashlight on and off but not for very long because of how intense it is and heat-generating. There was a mod of it for SM1 that pretty accurately depicted it as a heavy volkite weapon compared to lore. You can probably find it fairly easily by searching "space marine volkite mod" or something. Think.. cyclops from x-men.

Updated 2 months ago.
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2 months ago
Oct 7, 2024, 7:56:29 PM

The way i would handle the Melta to keep it powerful yet balanced is to Reduce the Cone, RoF but buff the Attack strength and Range. This will make it more lore accurate and turn it more into an anti armor weapon and remain incredibly impactful. It will just be less cost effective at horde clearing

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2 months ago
Oct 7, 2024, 8:06:31 PM

Melta Weapons have a short range but are very powerful and their thermal blast's intensity increases as the distance to the target decreases. A Meltagun works by inducing a minute, sub-molecular reaction within a highly-pressurised pyrum-petrol fuel mix located within an ammunition canister, and then projecting the resulting plasma through the canister and from the weapon's barrel as a blast of incredible heat. Source 40 k wiki. I believe the depiction of the melta for SM 2 is pretty accurate. It is super heated pressurized gases that is discharged immediately. Pressurized gases when released does resemble a beam but quickly disperses within 10 to 15 feet. This is just my opinion and from what i learned dealing with Co2 and other Hazardous materials from work.

Updated 2 months ago.
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2 months ago
Oct 8, 2024, 12:55:25 PM

C4NNED wrote:

The way i would handle the Melta to keep it powerful yet balanced is to Reduce the Cone, RoF but buff the Attack strength and Range. This will make it more lore accurate and turn it more into an anti armor weapon and remain incredibly impactful. It will just be less cost effective at horde clearing

You know what they could do.. buff damage and narrower cone like you say, but give it a stupidly heavy recoil per shot going down for heavy melta and up for melta gun.

Would be nice if they at least made it a guaranteed deterrent to stormshields, at first just make it ignore the stormshield's effect but over time they could make a mechanic where the shield is on cooldown, so if a melta user blasted the stormshield up close.. it would be down for for a good minute or two. Would stop the stormshield bum-rushing of anti-material weaponry.

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2 months ago
Oct 9, 2024, 2:30:31 AM
Lore accuracies aside..   using a melta turns this game into a point and click adventure.  I would wager a delicious hamburger that you could train a chimpanzee to run ruthless with a melta 

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2 months ago
Oct 9, 2024, 6:18:51 AM

Mainfoldium wrote:

C4NNED wrote:

The way i would handle the Melta to keep it powerful yet balanced is to Reduce the Cone, RoF but buff the Attack strength and Range. This will make it more lore accurate and turn it more into an anti armor weapon and remain incredibly impactful. It will just be less cost effective at horde clearing

You know what they could do.. buff damage and narrower cone like you say, but give it a stupidly heavy recoil per shot going down for heavy melta and up for melta gun.

Would be nice if they at least made it a guaranteed deterrent to stormshields, at first just make it ignore the stormshield's effect but over time they could make a mechanic where the shield is on cooldown, so if a melta user blasted the stormshield up close.. it would be down for for a good minute or two. Would stop the stormshield bum-rushing of anti-material weaponry.

I like the idea of meltas ignoring Block on shields and NPCs. That could be an addition to the buffs to offset the nurfs..


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2 months ago
Oct 9, 2024, 7:55:41 AM

​The balance for 3 players is the reason why the developers had to find weapons to clear enemy hordes. If the Melta could destroy mini-bosses in just two or three hits, the game would become way too easy. This is a flaw created by the PVE development team, which is both foolish and short-sighted. In the future, when adding new weapons or classes, the developers will need time to balance everything for 3 players, which will also delay new content for those 3-player setups.

However, if they expanded the PVE mode to 9 players, they could introduce new enemies, weapons, or even temporary classes more easily. Bolter-type guns in large multiplayer maps wouldn’t become useless. We could see the Melta used to shoot at enemies like tanks, flying vehicles, or giant bugs, rather than just clearing hordes, which overshadows the Bolter. But honestly, I don’t expect much from a mid-tier developer like this one. If the 40K IP were in SEGA’s hands, we would definitely see something more exciting than just 3-player content.

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