What are the best space marines before battle armor is a thing? I'm going to write this out explicitly as it seems to require many source books (Shrapnel 9, TechManual, Tactical Ops, A Time of War, AToW Companion, and errata) to get right. Does anyone see a flaw here or a way to make more capable non-battle armor space marines?
The ideal weapon seems to be the
DWS L5L Laser Sniper Rifle which has a TW range of 15 and does .6 damage with the heavy burst special at a cost of 2500. It is heavy though, with a base weight of 7.5kg + a battery pack which is at least 3kg for 10 shots. The use of a laser as the primary weapon in space makes sense as it has zero recoil. The use of a sniper rifle makes sense if you end up fighting TW units (including battle armor) since it has excellent penetration and range.
The ideal armor seems to be the Marine Combat Suit aToW page 295 which costs 15K and weight 20kg. This provides +2 to zero-g ops, is sealable, has 18 hours of life support, and provides AV 10 vs. flash. In TW it is nonencumbering armor with a damage divisor of 2.
Together, these imply that the minimum aToW strength of a marine is 6 so they can carry 39kg without being encumbered. This is above average but below the maximum baseline strength of 8.
The cost per trooper is 2000*sqrt(2500)*3 = 300K. For unclear reasons, the cost of armor isn't incorporated. If you do incorporate it, the cost is 315K.
In a squad, it's desirable to take advantage of a support weapon as well. A good choice seems to be an automatic grenade launcher which is also nonencumbering and delivers 1.49 damage while weighing 12kg with a cost of 975. The range is low (so just 1 is preferred), but this seems good in a role-playing sense as you can poke around a corner and crank off a bunch of grenades to wipe out opposition. The cost per support trooper is 2000*sqrt(975)*3 = 187350 or 202350 if you throw in the cost of the suit. The minimum strength remains the same.
The ideal squad is as small as possible given that the support weapon does more damage. Per TM errata, there are a maximum of 5 squads per platoon, so 5 squads of 2 do (0.6+1.49)*5=10.45 rounding to 10 TW damage with the heavy burst modifier and a damage divisor of 2. The average damage/trooper is 1. The cost is (300+187.35)*5 = 2436.75K or 2586.75K with the cost of suits thrown in. The transport tonnage of a compartment is .085*10 ~= 0.85 tons. This rounds to a nice and simple 1 ton.
The marine points for a boarding action are (1(marine)+0.5(armor with damage divisor 2))*10=15 per platoon.
One caveat: it appears that the damage of the auto grenade launcher may be wrong per discussion below. If so, the damage is (0.6+0.99)*5=7.95 rounding to 8 TW damage or .8/trooper.
Edits: updated to 5 squads of 6 instead of 4 of 7, updated again to 5 squads of 2.
