Space marine drednaught with Chaos dred launcher

[xerrol nanoha]

I think that there's no reason to throw out the MM just yet, but that there is definatly room for expansion to make it more interesting.

The question then is what exactly does the MM dread need to make it more viable? In what ways are MM dreads more vulnerable or weaker than alternatives.

Instead of approaching the MM as having a problem, it would be better to look at changing the weapon or adding abilities to deal with those specific problems.

For instance, if the MM dread has difficulties against infantry or in melee, one could add either courage damage if Infantry are the problem or an AV on hit effect similar to the brightlance (armor shred) or the lascannon (vehicle snare/slow of some degree).

Or one could use upgrades that produce either of the above effects, either a single target snare/suppression ability, or an armor debuff (I recall some people recently complaining to me about Space Marine not having enough debuff effects).

There are lots of ways to make the MM dreadnought better, While these ideas might not be great I think we should be absolutely sure there is nothing salvageable from the MM dread before trying to replace it with a carbon copy of another race's unit.

[Arbit]

I think the MM dread is good but situational. It's best to think of it as an anti-all hybrid shooty-melee dread. It's a very aggressive, all-in sort of unit, kind of like a deff dread rush.

-It should be in melee mode unless it's targeting a heavy melee squad/hero. 100% FotM with ~54 short ranged dps and 73 heavy melee dps means it should be getting as close as possible. If it starts punching, good! More damage that way.
-It's really excellent at chasing down mobile AV like ml tacs, tankbustas, firedragons, etc because they can't stop to fire without getting melta'ed or punched in the face.
-It's very bad against lascannons and PMs (like pretty much all dreads are)
-It still has 70 melee skill and a special attack, so it can put up a pretty good fight against melee squads (but requires more assistance than a straight melee dread obv)
-Also great for genbashes

I used to play this is 2v2s and it worked pretty well, particularly against eldar
TM starting scout, tac, scout, T2 dread, dread
And just go all in on T2. Use all your red on the repair global. Upgrade both scouts with sarges and infil so you can grenade their lascannons. Kit out the TM with good stuff (if they get a dread too, TM melta with mark target makes a VERY good partner for your dreads). If they get to tanks, get a lascannon - snare plus the MM dread should net you an easy kill if they overextend. You'll probably see your bleed go way down since your opponent will be focusing on countering the dreads, so it's surprisingly often that I will get a second dread but still manage to tech to T3 and get DAoT.

Obviously it doesn't work well against certain builds. If they go heavy T1, you'll probably need a dev or ASM, and pop cap and upkeep will keep you from ever getting double dreads. Certain commanders will cause a lot of trouble - warboss with nobs, FC, etc. Lascannons really shut them down hard, which is why you need the infil scouts to take care of those. If they already have a setup in T1, you probably don't want to get a MM dread.

It's a fun but risky strategy. I'd love to see someone more skilled then myself try to pull it off.

[Dark Riku]

Problem is you are assuming the dread with a TM in 2v2 ...
An AC dread can actually stand up against a lascannon and pm's easily since the scouts can repair from a safe distance instead of having to run into the enemy army and the AC barrage disrupts while dealing quite some damage.