I have been playing the single player campaign for a while now, and i am around level 16 with my main squads but i still don't have my dreadnought, although i have armor and weapons for one. What do i have to do to unlock it?

The Dreadnaught is Davian Thule, so to use him, you have to cure his poisoning. Check the available missions and go for the ones where you attack primary hives to get DNA samples. Doing so will result in him being cured and put into the Dreadnaught. He'll show up as a nice suprise at the end of a certain mission.

What I'm wondering is what weapons you found. I found power claws and armour but NOTHING ELSE. His abilities mention an assault cannon. One of his skills is specifically to make the assault cannon more powerful, but I never FOUND an assault cannon. WTF?!

i have not got any ranged weapons for the dreadnought yet just power-claws ,armor, and misc upgrades.

Huh, same here. That is... odd. I wonder what's going on with the lack of assault cannon.

i got the same thing but i don't mind because dreadnoughts are muts better in melee and strike allot of fear and give your team a morale booster.

Ah, but in the actual tabletop game rules, the assault cannon has strength 8. That's the same as a powerfist/powerclaw which is the normal close combat weapon for the dreadnaught.

The assault cannon can hit targets about 1.5 times further away than a bolter can, and it can hit up to 9 targets per turn. The assault cannon is awesome.

Also, nothing stops you having both an assault cannon AND the powerfist on your dreadnaught. It would just be replacing that heavy flamer.

ow i diden't know thad it was thad strong.
i al ways tought the melee of a dreadnought was the best.

Well, both can be good. The thing is, I believe you can use TWO powerfists with the heavy flamer. (Though not upgraded ones)

You'd only be able to use a single powerfist with the assault cannon. But it is essentially an antitank gatling gun... I know what I'd be going for.

I prefer a chaos dreadnaught though. They screwed everything up in the newest rules for the tabletop game, but in the slightly older rules...

Well, how do you like this? The Space Marine dreadnaught can, I believe, use twin powerfists with a heavy flamer, or it can replace one or both powerfists with heavy weapons. Such as a twin assault cannon, twin heavy bolter, or missile launcher.

Meanwhile, the Chaos dreadnaught... It usually has a twin linked heavy bolter on one arm and a power claw with special ripping attack on the other arm. You can optionally attach a Havoc missile pack to its shoulders. That holds 12 frag missiles (I think it was 12, could be wrong). Once they run out they're gone for good until the next battle, but you can fire several at a time. 3 missile bursts, usually, but I think you can just fire the whole lot at one target. Now that would hurt.

Also, the power claw can be replaced with either a thunder hammer, or a power scourge, a truly evil weapon that stops enemies from getting a bonus when they gang up on you in close combat.

The heavy bolters can be replaced with a twin linked autocannon with special ammo feed. Or twin lascannons. Or my personal favourite, the Mark 1 heavy plasma gun (plasma cannon is the new name for heavy plasma gun).

The mark 1 heavy plasma gun fires either every turn on low power (basically a long ranged normal plasma rifle) or each TWO turns on max power since it has to recharge, but when it fires it's the most powerful weapon in the entire game (apart from instant kill warp vortexes, or a certain sword called Drach'nyen. Look that sword up. You will both love it and bricks will be pooped.)

Also the MK1 fires several shots on max power, all with a small blast, rather than one bigger blast for the modern space marine version of the gun.

Now if only that was in a Dawn of War game. Not that crappy Defiler...

quote DG

Ah, but in the actual tabletop game rules, the assault cannon has strength 8. That's the same as a powerfist/powerclaw which is the normal close combat weapon for the dreadnaught.

The assault cannon can hit targets about 1.5 times further away than a bolter can, and it can hit up to 9 targets per turn. The assault cannon is awesome.

Also, nothing stops you having both an assault cannon AND the powerfist on your dreadnaught. It would just be replacing that heavy flamer.

whoa I don't know what edition you played in, but the Assault cannon is not that badass on the table. Strength 6, 4 shots a turn, 24" range-same as a bolter, a little less than a Heavy bolter

Also on the table you always have a ranged weapon and a CC weapon(a powerfist gives Strength 10 for a dread)

It was SECOND edition. Second edition was far more awesome than all the newer ones, in my opinion. I've got some of the updated rules but not the new rules for the assault cannon. Sounds like they really screwed it up.

The assault cannon was originally literally a gatling gun version of the autocannon, and thus was strength 8.

It could fire up to 9 shots per turn back then but had a chance of exploding in your face if you rolled too many jams. (You got randomised sustained fire back then, which I liked)

And it was 32 inch range, I think. Possibly 40. Quite a bit longer than a bolter. Second edition rules had different rules for armour. Specifically, you had a "save modifier" for each weapon, instead of an AP value. A bolter had Save Modifer -1. So, if you had some power armour, a bolter shell would change the 3+ save to a 4+ save. The assault cannon had Save Modifer -3. So you can probably tell it was pretty damn awesome. It meant that anything LESS than power armour provided no protection at all against an assault cannon shell. Power armour had its save reduced to needing a 6 to avoid the shot penetrating. Terminator armour was pretty much the only good defence against an assault cannon, apart from force fields. (Terminator armour ended up being left with needing to score more than 9 on two dice to save against the assault cannon)



Meanwhile the autocannon was strength 8, 72 inch range, and fired between 1 and 3 shots a turn.

And Dreadnought powerfists were strength 8 too, just like any other powerfist.

Only a terminator Chainfist or heavy plasma gun max power blast could be strength 10 in those days.

The new 40K rules are extremely, extremely lame. If my understanding is correct, you can't fire into close combat, which is stupid. Both sides score hits in close combat instead of just the winner, which is also stupid.

And what the hell did they do to the space marines?

The special "Shaken" rule that made space marines so much better in the face of fear is gone.

"Rapid fire" was originally a special space marine rule. ONLY space marines could fire twice per turn by standing still, and only with bolters. Now they've gone and let absolutely anyone in the universe do it as long as they have a "rapid fire" weapon.

And Terminator armor has been completely and utterly raped.

What is it now, 2+ save on one dice, right, with alternative 4+ save against all weapons if the normal save is bypassed?

That's what it is now, correct?
Do you know what it used to be like?

3+ save on TWO dice added together.

Speaking of which, why are all the force fields screwed up too now? From what I read it seems you have to CHOOSE when you get shot to use EITHER your armour save OR your force field save.

In 2nd edition you did your armour save, and if it failed, then you used the forcefield AS WELL.

It makes absolutely no sense that if you activated your power field, for example, your armour would suddenly be like wet tissue paper.

*facepalm*

So yeah, basically, they completely f*cked up the game after 2nd edition. They managed to make my army completely and utterly impossible to use, for one thing. My space marine assault squad didnt have jump packs, but DID have power weapons and plasma pistols. It seems now they can't have power weapons, can't have plasma pistols, and MUST have jump packs.

WTF!?!!! Not to mention they went and made a rule that you could only use stuff that was actually on your model, and you couldn't use the model if it didn't show the right equipment. Thanks, Games Workshop! Thanks a lot! You made the equipment my models have illegal TO have, then you said I was a bad person for not having the RIGHT crap on my models.
And of course since they're space marines, they've lost their advantages of special morale rules and rapid fire. They're pretty much pussies wearing power armour now.

RAAAAAAAAAGE!