#2 by Spack » Thu May 06, 2010 7:28 am
The reason for this is that these weapon options change the attack profile of the basic unit entry. If you have a model initially armed with say a pistol and a close combat weapon, then the attacks stat would be 1/2 (base 1 attack, 2 in combat due to bonus from having two single handed weapons). If you replace one of these weapons with say a power fist, then the attacks will no longer be 1/2 it will just be 1 (you only get the attack bonus if you have two power fists in this case).
So rather than having a long list of weapons on a single unit and them all showing as 1/2 for attacks it was decided that the power fist armed model should be split out from the rest of the unit. If you want a lot of identically armed models then you can simply highlight this line and use the + and - buttons to change the model count.
It also adds a lot more flexibility than was available before - for instance, if you have a squad of 5 marines with a mix of 2 bolt pistols, 1 flamer, 2 close combat weapons, and 1 power fist. In the old style entry there was nothing to show how each model was armed, in this new format it's now possible to set the options for each model independently if required and so the printed list now accurately represents the models themselves.