Got help from friends and other players on several ideas regarding the Meltagun on how they work and branching weapon types, there should be only two types of Meltaguns in-game. Its can be exclusive to the Veteran due to their Astra Militarum background or it can be shared to the Zealot Class for horde or boss killing capabilities.
1st type: Kantrael Pattern Meltagun(Magazine/Total Ammo:30/180): It fires in a Cylinder Cone thats similiar to Space Marine 1 and Space Marine II in which it is used for horde clearing, normal Attacks would have minimum range about 10-20 meters cone and medium armor penetrating capabilities. Alternate fire would be charging your Meltagun and waste the entire magazine to increase damage and range of the Meltagun and can penetrate carapace armor easily.
2nd Type: Mars Pattern Meltagun(Magazine/Total Ammo:40/240): Something like Dawn of War Soulstorm where it attacks using a Beam type weapon thats good for Armor piercing attacks against carapace armor and bosses but horrible against hordes. Alternative fire would be charging the beam for increase damage and armor penetration at the cost of consuming more ammo.
Would prefer a beam version with a range barely longer than melee charge range, designed to take out the heaviest armour.
The energy shotgun thing is just some random nonsense they came up with because those devs needed a 40k skin for their weapon concept rather than design around the tabletop gun.
If we’re sticking with the concept of the melta as it stands in tabletop and most lore, a concentrated short range anti-armor weapon, only the 2nd “Mars” type makes sense.
The problem with this, and why games like Space Marine implemented an altogether different functionality akin to the first “Kantrael” example, is that Meltaguns make really poor weapons for fighting infantry level targets. There’s nothing in Darktide you’d really bring a Meltagun to fight if you were building a 40k tabletop army. Pretty much everything in Darktide is just basic infantry as tabletop 40k is concerned, even the bosses are just big infantry, not proper Monsters. A Meltagun is scary when it can one-shot a battle tank or daemon engine, but a Meltagun being able to vaporize a Space Marine in a single shot is less impressive when a Plasma Gun can do so with twice the range and twice the rate of fire. Tuning it to specifically be an anti-boss weapon would be the obvious choice, not sure how much utility that may have in Darktide however, maybe for high Havoc but for the average Heresy player it might be something they don’t even shoot every game.
I hate the Space Marine depiction of meltas with that stupid cone! It’s NOT a grutting energy shotgun! It’s a anti tank weapon that fires a focused concentrated short-ranged beam that melts through armor.
Maybe if fatshark releases demons of nurgle/deathguard as a faction with tons of tanky plaguebearers, plaguetoads, bloat drones, wavves of nurglings and maybe even a Great unclean one/chaos lord/demon prince it would make more immersion sense for meltas.
Maybe as an environmental weapon like heavy bolters in SM, or the breaching charges in darktide, you find in missions, use it until is out then discard it.
That way all classes get to have their turn on the fun toy. It could be used in proc gen maps to open new paths, or take down armored sentinels/demons/tough karkers.
It could double for anti-Ogryns as well, would need to have long equip time and bad mobility stats to solidify it’s role as a heavy anti armor weapon that isn’t quite meant for a tiny human to weild.
It sure would be cool if Fatshark took their Leman Russ Tanks
and turned them into an event using the wide open areas available in most missions.
The event would be destroying the tank, would benefit greatly from Rumbler, Voidstrike, Boltgun, Plasma, Melta etc with alternative rear weakspots teams could strategize around if nobody brought those weapons.
What do you want to kill with it? How do you want to add it to make it make any sense?
these are questions nobody answered yet. We aren’t even close to lore-wise power of plasmagun and people are already losing their minds(Despite the fact that it actually lacks damage).
If you add melta - it will be a oneshot-machine, and those people will be foaming out or their mouths along with some youtubers because “OP”(although is will make sense for melts to oneshot everything).
If it won’t be oneshot machine - then it will have no point to be present. Basically will be plasma but even worse because of lacking range.
There almost no ranged weapons left that can be fitted into the game without escapating power level. Grenade launcher maybe the only think that can still fit.
“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.”
There it is, the description of Meltagun according to Warhammer Wiki.
Range of Double Barrel Shotgun, infinite cleave through that effective range, equip time of Boltgun, one shot on sustained Monstrosity weak spot hit (3s), must be charged to fire (also 3s or so), and no more than 5 “charges” before it is out of ammo. No ammo resupply from Scavenger. Mobility during charge up would be that of Thunder Hammer during heavy attack charge up.
It pretty much would have to be a highly situational ranged weapon that a melee focused Vet could take. Any “ranged focused Vet” would get wrecked once ammo is out.
Yeah, it would be a tough one to balance, not going to lie. Even with all that it might be very overpowered. Then again, Uncanny Inferno staff still exists.
“Most work by combining highly pressurised gases into
an unstable sub-molecular thermal state, which is fired out in an
intense blast of heat that can turn even tank armour into molten
slag. Targets are vaporised within seconds, usually accompanied
by a distinctive hissing sound as the beam boils away the water
vapour in the air.”
It still supposed to oneshot spacemarines, and even tougher stuff. There’s no enemies in darktide that can and supposed to live after a shot of this thing into the head. Maybe only Beast of Nurgle.
Darktide will literally need to add Chaos Space matines and tanks for melts to have targets.
If the game was lore accurate alot of our weapons would be much more powerfull it’s true but lore accuracy is a double edged sword the enemies would also be much more powerfull. Being in the same room as a beast of nurgle would give us turbo aids, enemy ogryns would act like our ogryns, enemy plasma gunners would one shot us same with snipers, flamers would kill us in micro seconds etc etc. I want the the game to be as lore accurate as possible but concessions has to made for the game to be playable.
I think you all are missing the point that just because a weapon is designed to do one thing (beam to melt armor) doesn’t mean it can’t also work in other ways.
I’d love to see the melta implemented as a beam weapon with ammo and its own heat meter. The heat meter being basically how long you can hold the beam. I imagine this being pretty quickly, eg about 3-4 seconds to top the heat meter.
During that time, it should be enough to melt about 2-3 crushers (not much different than the kill potential of a bolter). You could also sweep the beam around a pack of lesser enemies and/or elites to melt a larger group. Not as effective as a flamer against a large group since the AoE would be much smaller plus less beam time, but it would be better at melting flak and elite unites mixed into the horde, Although wouldn’t have nearly The range or cleave ability of plasma. I think it could Be a fun weapon in a unique role.
Lorelets and wikipedia warriors arguing against Meltaguns despite we already have anti-tank grenades as an option for vet that works perfectly fine? Some things never change.
And still, why would you want more powerful weapons if less powerful ones are failing to show themselves properly while the power being the biggest distinction between them?
That’s something you should say in fromt of the mirror because only then it will be correct. You didn’t answered to my argument. Not like you can though.
What should I answer? Bad player has discovered a 40k wiki and made up some arbitrary “power levels” based on it, when the game does not have any. If this was an accurate lore-friendly simulator, all would function completely diffirently. Besides, krak grenades are literally anti-tank grenades and could not be used against non-armored targets, while in Darktide they stick to flak vets lmao.
