Artillery BV pricing

[DevianID]

Howdy.  Was talking about artillery and I realized I never asked about my issue here.  The old BMR rules for thumpers snipers and long time was 5/10/20 damage.  We can see a hold over of this in artillery cannons, which use the old damage values.

However, when tac ops added damage to the artillery it seems they didn't increase the BV to match.  The thumper is half the bv of the sniper, which makes sense back when the thumper did 5 and the sniper did 10.  But at 15 and 20 after the tac ops artillery damage increase these battlevalues should be higher right?  In the case of the arrow versus the sniper, the sniper used to do half the damage, but now they do the same damage and the sniper even has longer range.  Yet we see the arrow, which post tac ops artillery damage increase, is 240 bv while the identical damage sniper is only 85.

So should the artillery BV go up to match the listed increased damage?  Or is the damage of the artillery supposed to match that of the artillery cannons?

[DevianID]

A follow up question about artillery BV pricing.  Even the Artillery Cannons seem off.  It appears that the thumper and sniper cannons, in the weapon BV formula, get a +1 to hit penalty.  This would make sense if they HAD to fire indirect for +1 to hit even with LOS, but per an earlier rules question, it was answered that they do not apply this +1 to hit if the unit has valid LOS.  Thus, even the base artillery cannons BV is too low... a 5 damage gun with range 3/4/9/14 is 53 BV, or 41 BV with a +1 penalty (but they dont take that penalty).  Same with sniper, the BV is accounting for a +1 penalty to hit the gun doesnt seem to have.  Since we are seeing more and more exotic weapons on units, can we get a balance pass on these guns that have had their rules changed?  41 to 53 is relatively minor on an artillery cannon, but the thumper full artillery piece does 15 (FIFTEEN!) damage for 43 BV now.  Even just the 17 hex direct fire portion with its +4 long range penalty is worth a ton more then 43 BV (the 43 BV looks like it was build for a 5/2 scatter thumper).

This isnt mentioning game effects like AE damage or anything, those are nebulous to price at best.  Im just referring to the straight direct fire single target raw damage... all the cool indirect fire stuff seems free, which is why LRMs are so amazing. 

But yeah, if artillery cannons DO take a +1 penalty, as the tac ops rule says they fire with the indirect fire rules, ignore this as then they seem to be priced OK (I have no idea how splash damage on the long tom artillery cannon was worked out, so I didnt mention it) and just consider this a bump for a pass on main artillery, with that giant damage boost with no BV increase when they added 10 damage to them.

[Hammer]

Page references per stuck post.

[DevianID]

(Old book)
Tac ops pg 285: "Artillery Cannon attacks are resolved in the same fashion as indirect LRM Fire... [see pp 111-112 of TW]"
Compared to mech mortars Tac Ops page 324 "...operate in the same fashion as LRMs, and can be fired directly or indirectly... but do not require an entirely blocked LOS".

So if artillery cannons can fire directly without a +1 indirect penalty, then their BV would need to go up ~29% as they wont suffer the +1 indirect penalty they seem to be paying for with their BV.  A thumper that can fire with no to-hit penalty should be 53 BV for a 5 damage gun with that range, not 41.

The BV table is on 383.  Artillery and artillery cannons stat sheet is on pg 405 (includes the larger damage artillery with no BV markup).  Mech mortars are on 408.

Also, since I looked at mech mortars... they also have seemingly inaccurate scaling.  The MM1/2/4/8 goes 29/57/86/114.  However, this EXACTLY corresponds to 2/4/6/8 damage using the no-cluster roll airburst ammo using the BV forumla.  The MM1/2/4/8 should instead be BV 14/29/57/114, as 2 MM4 at 2x57 bv will then equal 1 MM8 at 114.  Thus, the mech mortars are incorrectly priced as if they were MM2/MM4/MM6/MM8.  The ammo is also off.  The ammo goes 24 12 6 4.  If MM go 1/2/4/8 as listed then the MM8 should have 3 shots per ton, not 4.

[DevianID]

Bump for artillery pricing (artillery seems to use old damage values and is thus wildly underpriced--or the damage value is wrong, artillery cannons have a +1 to hit factored into price but if they can shoot direct they shouldn't have this, mech mortars are priced 2/4/6/8 but should be 1/2/4/8, mech mortar 8 has too much ammo)