The deal with special weapons is that they are most often designed to be move and shoot weapons... That's why basically every single one of them (except plasma) is classed as Assault. Leave the heavies to their platoons. If you examine real life, the army doesn't field squads of 10 men to a single machinegun implacement. The implacements opperate individually or in tandum with other implacements, while the infantry squads are designed to move into a good (optimum ranged location). In terms of 40k, this means rapidfire range.
If you look at your units as being
Heavy = long range and stationary
Rapid fire = medium range, mobile until in range
Assault = less than 6" from your opponents.
I think we're saying the same thing here, minus the heavy weapons thing. Sure you can fire a plasmagun at 24", but it works much better if you rapidfire into a unit. A 1 is a 1 no matter how close you are to a unit and regaurdless of whether you fired once or twice. Granted you're more likely to overheat when rapidfiring, but nothing wagered, nothing gained.
In terms of the grenade launcher, it simply doesn't have the range or real effective stopping power of other assault weapons. Any weapon below S7 needs to be fired more than once (especially at BS3).
I'm speaking in terms of an IG army but the theory applies across the board. (Which is why I'm still bitter about the new rules for guardians having to have a weapons platform...)
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