Warhammer 40K Tabletop VII: Common Sense is not RAW.

[Cheesegear]

true enough but than how often do you run terminators at 8 men strong?

7 Terminators and Lysander/Chaplain?
15 Blood Claws and Wolf Guard? (Yes. It totally is the same thing.)

...Often enough that I feel the need to point it out.

I will actually 100% agree with you here as the potential waste and thus the reason I love the new baal with its 1 cannon.

See the part that I emphasised? You said it.

However after dropping off its cargo the hope would be that you can surround your land raider with enemy on both sides since you can fire both directions (thanks to the machine spirit) however this is never the case in which case the other cannon is indeed wasted.

Fixed it for you. I have never had my Land Raider surrounded in my life. Any of them.

so what you are saying here is that the one is ineffective at anything but transport and the other is too good at being something besides an expensive transport?

I know you just tried to Straw Man me, but, yes. Like Valkyries and Vendettas.

If you manage to kill things with the bolters you will run into the same problems you do with the flamers i.e. taking models away to stop the assault or breaking so again not really "softening"

But, as people keep pointing out, Bolters don't kill things. Maybe a few here and there, but, not too many.

also unless your opponent is playing a very spread out army

If they're deploying second, or, notice that you've got a Vindicator or two (yes, you did mention Vindicators as your Land Raider was taking heat off of them), they will spread out. Even Orks and Hormagaunts will do it.

If you are commiting the raider and its contents to kill 1 unit than ether the 1 unit can take the pain of the flamer or you would have been better served deepstriking or using another unit to deal with the target.

And that's why nobody uses Land Raiders.
Except Black Templars and cheesed Blood Angels armies.

The only reason people use Land Raiders is to transport Hammernators, and then throw those as the biggest unit they can find. Flamestorms will most likely be useless. As will Boltguns. But, the Crusader has a larger Transport Capacity. Which is what you want in a Transport.