Sporocyte silly rules lawyering for entertainment.

[gauntlet]

Is there any reason in rules why Sporocyte cannot,

Advance move
Charge move
Pile In move
Consolidate move

EDIT: A pity, I found this on general description of Datasheets, p38

Move (M): This is the speed at which a
model moves across the battlefield. If a
model has a Move of ‘-’ it is unable to move
at all.

[gauntlet]

If you were forced to take a Sporocyte unit, how would you use it.
How many times do you guess you would get to use it, and how many rounds would it survive. When would it become an enemy target priority. Does it have different tactical roles depending where you put it, or is it an idiot gun, and a waste of points.

Movement wins battles! So what percentage of Sporocyte downside is attibutable to lack of movement?

At what points cost does it become effective, and compared to something in similar role?

EDIT: I completely forgot about the Seed Mucolids each turn. Which is whole extra different discussion.

[gauntlet]

Off the top of my head, I would want to Seed Mucolid EVERY turn. And only shoot guns using Hive Defences or Overwatch.

(Are the guns good enough to be worth a CP for Overwatch?)

[dkng]

You don’t need Overwatch to fire the guns.
The profile is weak, it’s overpriced by at least 50 points, you can seed a single Mucolid Spore 18” once per turn. Sadly not worth it.

[gauntlet]

How does Sporocyte compare to 15 barbgaunts?

The damage volume is similar, but barbgaunts can maneouver, and can focus all fire on a single unit, but the Sporocyte just chips a wounds off 4 different units.
Barbgaunts have 30W 4T but the Sporocyte has 10W 10T

[parzaius]

Jul 6, 2023 16:33:40 GMT gauntlet said:

How does Sporocyte compare to 15 barbgaunts?

Sporocysts get 5 shots. If you maximize their shooting (1 on your turn and 4 on their turn), that's 20 shots. 10 hits, 6.7 wounds, 3.4 through the marine save, ~6 wounds, divided amongst five targets, for an average of 1 damage at five units.

Barbgaunts average out to 52 shots, assuming a worst-case scenario of shooting into a unit under 5 models. That's 35 hits, 23 wounds, 7 through the marine save, ~7 wounds on a single target. This goes up to 10 wounds if the target was a full 5 models.

That being said, Barbgaunts are definitely going to go up in cost, while sporocysts are unlikely to come down (when would nids ever get a break?). So the numbers are less clear cut in the larger scope of things. Barbs also have the slow effect, while sporocysts bring nothing to the table, having lose their relay function AND their deepstrike deployment despite going up in cost so significantly.

[gauntlet]

T10 vs T4 makes the Sporocust exactly 3 times more resistent to Bolt Rifles. They are equal on that score W10 vs W30. But being a single model the Sporocyst is more vulnerable to anti-tank shooting.

[gauntlet]

The Sporocyst is very passive, an enemy can plan his path of approach to limit triggering of Hive Defences, and the Sporocyst cannot shuffle to improve line of sight.
An enemy can approach and receive one round of fire, then remain stationary on subsequent turns to avoid trigger of Hive Defences.

[Iryan]

Unfortunately sporocysts are very fragile for their points cost, and their immense size makes it pretty difficult to hide them outside of line of sight. If you do manage to put them outside of most major sidelines, you can spawn one mucolid spore per turn, which is worth about 2-3 spore mines in terms of durability and damage it deals; but the spawning range is much much lower than that of biovores, drastically limiting the actual utility of the mine spawn. Especially since, as mentioned before, you will need to hide the sporocyst well, or it will easily get shot off the board by antitank weaponry.

Its shooting is relatively weak, you would need to get a bunch of enemies running into its range for it to be remotely worthwhile. And that, again, depends heavily on lines of sight for various weaponry. IT does not have any OC either, so you cannot just put it on a deployment zone objective and control it like that.

So basically, it is heavily dependent on the terrain layout you are playing on. If you have good placement of ruins or full LOS blocking terrain so you can hide it in a way that any unit trying to shoot it has to move into its own shooting zone, the unit might be not too bad. If you cannot place it in such a way... it is just significantly too expensive to be worth it.

...but god would it be fun to use if it were significantly cheaper.... <3

...by the way, it is not good forum etiquette to keep posting repeatedly without any responses from other people. If you think of more stuff you wanted to say, you can always just edit your most recent post to include those thoughts instead.

[overlordmidas]

The Sporocyst might be funny if running three of them. 15 heavy bolter shots at every unit that moves out of your opponents deployment zone! what sort of army you would try and back this up with is another question entirely, but i'm sure there is a funny meme gunline list to be had here, a la bunkertown( a space marine gunline list running 3 hammerfall bunkers). 

[Iryan]

That would be cool. Unfortunately, while the hammerfall bunker costs 50% more than a sporocyst, it is way more durable (40% more wounds, 2+ save, T12), and perhaps more importantly it has guns with actually good 36'' range (and a powerful 48'' missile launcher on top as a bonus). The 24'' range on the sporocyst means that plenty of threats can just shoot it to bits from outside its effective range, which is why you need to hide it behind terrain. But if you hide it behind terrain, then you are not going to get much use out of the automated firing. 

If the sporocyst had 36'' range on its weapons, then you might get away with it being squishy by putting more important threats on the board to deal with, and reap the steady rewards. In its current state it either needs a cost reduction or a buff to its range and/or to its durability. I do not expect the codex to change either of these, but who knows, maybe I will be pleasantly surprised.

(alternatively make it so you can spawn the mucolid instead of shooting ANY time that the automated defenses get triggered )