Upgrades - how do you do them?

[Lord Manton]

When I started playing, I played Ultramarines. Being 12 I had no idea what I was doing so I just built the squads with what they had. The old tactical squads in those days only had flamers and missile launchers, so that's what they got.
Then I moved on to space wolves. Their upgrade spree came with a melta gun and power fist and power sword and an axe, so naturally my squads found themselves armed to the hilt with as many legal upgrades as I could fit into a unit. A couple of additions ago, I figured out that this made my standard Grey Hunter squad cost over 200pts and that this was a stupid way to go about it.
These days I have a purpose in mind for each squad. I'll tend to kit a squad with melta x2 and a combi-melta and ditto with the plasma squad. The beauty with these units is that plas can take out light vehicles and rear-armour almost as well as melta will and melta is pretty handy at taking out heavily armoured troops if there aren't any vehicles nearby. Then there's usually an assault unit in there with a couple of power weapons and CCW.
I think, Mr Mystery, you e just grown up and become a sharper player, cutting out wasted points and maximising the utility of your units. As Yorkie points out, a squad that's equipped for close range anti infantry and long range anti tank isn't any good at either and is ultimately a liability.

[Chris*ta]

One thing I have been pondering is whether it's worthwhile to include an Anti-Tank weapon (melta gun) in a squad that's not otherwise intended for AT.

While in practice one melta gun doesn't have much chance of destroying something or even disabling it, the threat that it could should change the way the opponent plays with his expensive toys.

I'm not heavily into the serious play, but this makes sense in my head. What does anyone else think?

[Alaric]

One thing I have been pondering is whether it's worthwhile to include an Anti-Tank weapon (melta gun) in a squad that's not otherwise intended for AT.

AP 1 is good for killing more than just tanks. Ive killed many a characters with the instant death fun that is STR 8.

[Mr Mystery]

One thing I have been pondering is whether it's worthwhile to include an Anti-Tank weapon (melta gun) in a squad that's not otherwise intended for AT.

While in practice one melta gun doesn't have much chance of destroying something or even disabling it, the threat that it could should change the way the opponent plays with his expensive toys.

I'm not heavily into the serious play, but this makes sense in my head. What does anyone else think?

That's part of my thinking too, at least in some armies.

Spreading out the ming can reduce 'safe' areas for certain units.

I reckon I'd still spread with armies such as Marines, as being numerically small (not to mention Combat Squadable) it makes sense. Other armies will of course vary.

[Haighus]

Yeah, Marines can get away with it, because they can just combat squad the 2 weapons into different units. But by that point, it functionally makes no difference to have the combined squads specialised or not, except you can't choose to have specialised squads when you don't want to combat squad. Personally I would go with specialising.

[Charon]

When I started playing, I played Ultramarines. Being 12 I had no idea what I was doing so I just built the squads with what they had. The old tactical squads in those days only had flamers and missile launchers, so that's what they got.

These came from 2nd edition where units could split fire between other units and tanks.
Having Lascannon and Flamer for example was not a drawback as the Lascannon fired at the tanks (or Big Ones in case of Tyranids) while all the Bolters and the Flamer shoot another unit.
That also explains some of the more... questionable tank designs. They worked well under these conditions but fail to work in the current version of the game.

[Haighus]

It would be cool if they brought that back- give split fire to all units, and make units that have split fire already... better at splitting fire?

[CoffeeGrunt]

I've always said that tanks should split fire with their weapons like Superheavies, because the Tau slave their secondary weapons to Drones, and the Guard have one or two men for every gun on the Leman Russ, (judging by the viewport and gun beside it.) Space Marines have Machine Spirit to do this to a decent degree already, but it feels like something that should be the rule, not the exception. After all, most tanks would be equipped with anti-armour main cannons and anti-infantry support weapons, but in 40K such a setup is never optimal.

Still, the game is what it is.

[Haighus]

Yeah, if the weapons on an Imperial Bastion can be slaved to shoot at multiple targets, and can be found on damn near every Imperial world with a classification of civilised or more advanced, and they are meant to be basic and fairly stupid, then why can't Guardsmen manning a sponson, or the supposedly far superior machine spirits found in all Space Marine vehicles capable of doing such a thing? (never mind the fact that the sponsons on a Predator can be remote controlled and Marines are supposed to be able to multitask incredibly effectively).

[Houghten]

Brief plug for Dropzone Commander, in which every tank (and, indeed, infantry squad) can fire each weapon at a different target if it wants to.