Hi folks.
I do not think D 20s suit any function where you roll more than one dice at once.
I really think lots of people are heavily influenced by GW poor rules writing , using dice in a limited deterministic way.(There are loads of great game that use D6 in a much more intelligent ways.)
If you are rolling hand fulls of dice, (Where the volume of dice rolled averages results ) then D6 are the best choice.
However, if you are just rolling one dice ,(for unit tests , like leadership or morale etc,) then a D10, D12 or D 20 works fine.
If you have to roll to see and hit your target, (and terrain ,range ,etc modify the chance for success.) Then this brings a natural fog of war, that is part of the shooting resolution.And also brings in tactical use of cover, and shooting for effect.
I totally agree with deciding at the start of the game turn, if you unit is moving to allow shooting on the move, or double movement, or moving to assault or remaining stationary to fire to full effect.
Making tactical decisions should be part of the game IMO.
(I am sure you young un's can remember what units are doing what actions in what order one game turn to the next.But Old duffers like me , who often partake of alcohol during a game.
Need to use 'order counters' to help us keep track of what units are doing what actions and when. )
I'm a huge fan of counters and tokens except for the part where it all gets really messy with 30 units on the table and in close proximity. I'm pretty sure my opponent accidentally rallied my own model in Deadzone last week (I thought the suppression counter was mine and he thought it was his).
And if you use stat cards then you can put the counters on the cards instead of on the models, but then it's hard to tell at a glance who's doing what, especially for the opponent.
I'm a huge fan of counters and tokens except for the part where it all gets really messy with 30 units on the table and in close proximity. I'm pretty sure my opponent accidentally rallied my own model in Deadzone last week (I thought the suppression counter was mine and he thought it was his).
And if you use stat cards then you can put the counters on the cards instead of on the models, but then it's hard to tell at a glance who's doing what, especially for the opponent.
Argh!
For the cards direction, go to any arts and crafts or dollar store, and pick up a small baggie of multicolored glass markers, typically used in smaller displays or aquariums. It's rare that you'll have more than 3 of the same unit, so a huge variety isn't necessary. Then just place one of these colored markers next to the unit and it's associated card, and bam, no more need to have dice on every unit, you just say "blue tactical squad" "red termagant brood" etc and leave the counters and tokens on the card.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I saw an idea on the "an idea for changing the game up ..." thread that would be pretty cool with Lanrak's command system, where in a game with alternating activations, high leadership models would "interrupt" the opponents action to activate a unit of their own.
Modifying this with Lanrak's system, that would make for a pretty interesting system, where you could forcibly activate any unit within your command range at the cost of a command point when your opponent tries to activate one of his units. That Battlewagon trying to roll up to my gunline to release a big swarm of Orks? Too bad, my devastators on the side of the board hit it first, stopping it in its tracks. Big squad of assault marines trying to flank one of my units? I interrupt, fire at them, and now they're suppressed.
Combine this with some way of bringing in reserves more quickly / reliably at the cost of a command point, and suddenly that makes "Commander" type units play much more like an actual commander rather than close combat beat-sticks. Thoughts? Idea credit goes to Knas Ser.
Rav1rn wrote: That Battlewagon trying to roll up to my gunline to release a big swarm of Orks? Too bad, my devastators on the side of the board hit it first, stopping it in its tracks. Big squad of assault marines trying to flank one of my units? I interrupt, fire at them, and now they're suppressed. ...Idea credit goes to Knas Ser.
That might be a cooler way of handling overwatch than just "everyone gets it all the time only at a penalty to BS." Interesting.
I think allowing a command modifier to be used within command range on one dice roll per turn per level.
Works great for showing the leadership of the unit ,and Characters .
I use small white dice,( face up to the value of the command modifier) on the unit cards in play testing.
EG SM Captain Command Value 2/9".
Gets to alter 2 dice within command range , by up to 2 pips per turn.
I have been experimenting with Heroic actions , in addition to this.(Gold Star markers.)
ONLY characters get Heroic Actions ,once per game .They can force an automatic roll of a 1 or a 6 within command range.Extending this to letting units move out of sequence once per game, in a alternating unit activation game mechanic would be cool.
If we are going to use alternating unit activation, would you be happy with an order & activation phase system similar to the one used in Epic SM?
EG
First Fire orders shoot first but do not move.
Charge orders move first, (After FF shooting ) up to double movement value , (And the only way to assault an enemy unit)
Advance orders allow the unit to move,(up to movement value,) then shoot.
But with more order options split into red , amber and green colours, and these colours used to tie the actions to phases..
An heroic action could allow one friendly unit unit to change orders after the game turn has started...(Eg a unit on advance orders changes to first fire or charge orders instead.)
Very much prototypes of thoughts here, but if I were going to rebuild it, here's some basic concepts:
1) Move from d6 to d10. This allows for much easier math, and much broader difference in statlines.
2) There are three main distinctions between models: Units, Characters and Vehicles. The reason for this is, one, Units are bought as a bunch (3, 5, 10, 30, whatever) and have stats as a unit, not as individual models and, two, Units behave differently than Characters or Vehicles, which are separate from one another. Everything that a Unit of troops does is done as a Unit, whether that's attacks, saves, taking Wounds, whatever. Characters are Individuals, and work differently. Vehicles are kind of a blend between the two, and I've not yet really worked on those rules yet.
3) Actions happen by rolling 1d10, and adding to it the Unit or Character's skill (BS, WS, S, T or LD) plus any modifiers from buffs, wargear, special conditions, etc. They are attempting to achieve at least a minimum total, based on what the action is they are attempting to do. As the "average" stat is going to be 4 (rather than 5, as any stat of 7+ is "incredibly super-human") the basic Difficulty for an action is going to be 9+, assuming no penalties or bonuses.
4) Still working on combat specifics, but rough idea is that a Unit has a # of W equal to the number of models in it. Units that are currently expressed as having multi-wound models will, instead, have higher T and Armor, which requires higher rolls to successfully injure in combat. Current idea is that every point above the basic DC for an attack a unit scores, they inflict 1 W on the target unit. Considering maybe having certain weapons provide bonuses to the attack roll, or apply debuffs to the enemy in certain circumstances (for example, a unit armed with heavy bolters gain a +3 on their attack roll, to indicate the superior killing power of this weapon over the standard lasgun, so that 2 identical rolls, lasgun vs heavy bolter, the heavy bolter inflicts extra casualties.) This, obviously, is going to require a bunch of work I haven't done yet, to keep weapons distinct, but also balanced, but not make some weapons obviously superior in all ways to every other weapon that they are auto-take.
5) Streamline all the Special Rules into some universal constants, so that there can be direct comparisons of apples to apples, oranges to oranges, and then counters and balances for every SR a unit might possess. Obviously, this is going to take a *lot* more work.
think allowing a command modifier to be used within command range on one dice roll per turn per level.
Works great for showing the leadership of the unit ,and Characters .
I use small white dice,( face up to the value of the command modifier) on the unit cards in play testing.
EG SM Captain Command Value 2/9".
Gets to alter 2 dice within command range , by up to 2 pips per turn.
while i love this idea, i can see its immediately ready for abuse. For example, i would never put a captain with regular marines, as at best im saving 28 points worth of marines each turn (2 marines roll 2 on armor save) or at worst 1 (1 marine rolls a 1). On terminators (especially assault terminators, dont get me started on storm shields) is where the captain would be most useful, as i can save 2 terminators from weight of fire wounds each turn, saving 80 points. This system seems to essentially promote efficiency calculations rather than actual tactics, since high PPM armies are going to use them to keep things alive, while swarm or more aggressive armies would have less tangible benefits, likely just insuring that some heavy / special weapon hits or wounds the target. It also potentially a massive buff to "on the roll of 6" rules like rending, which could easily unbalance things more than they already are.
If we are going to use alternating unit activation, would you be happy with an order & activation phase system similar to the one used in Epic SM?
EG
First Fire orders shoot first but do not move.
Charge orders move first, (After FF shooting ) up to double movement value , (And the only way to assault an enemy unit)
Advance orders allow the unit to move,(up to movement value,) then shoot.
This might just be me, but i don't really see what advantages this system provides over regular alternating activations. It seems like this system just standardizes the actions a unit would take and requires it to be preset at the beginning of the turn, rather than reactive as a alternating activation system allows for. You would also need specific counters to denote which action is which, i assume ones that can be disguised or hidden so your opponent cannot tell what acts when, rather than a simple "has been activated" "has not been activated" system.
But with more order options split into red , amber and green colours, and these colours used to tie the actions to phases..
So I'm thinking of re-writing the 40kBRB and then every codex and maybe the broken supplements like Escalation. Of course this is going to take ages, but hey, I have some spare time on my hands
So I may borrow some ideas from this thread, I hope that I wont cause any offence to the people who came up with the ideas.
Thinking about this, I may need a team to make this project viable
Borrow my ideas as much as you want, I'd only be flattered. I can't speak for others but I would be surprised if someone posted an idea on the internet and then said "don't use that! It's mine!"
Well, there's "original character don't steal" but that's not the same as "half-formed idea don't steal."
And also from al the suggestions - what do you believe are the best? or the better ideas? for game turns?
Yeah, i don't think anyone would be contributing to this thread if they wanted to keep their ideas to themselves, just be sure to give credit and / or ask permission if you use another persons work.
You're going to need to be much more specific when you say "what is best" because 11 pages in, I think there have been suggestions on almost every component of the game. Two good places to start are more interactive turns, for which there are at least half a dozen suggestions and certainly more to come, and reducing the amount of randomness and unnecessary dice rolling. Changing the way success / failure is determined is another place to look, as everything from changing to different dice to entirely new systems for determining success have been proposed, each with their own merits and downsides.
Basically, start from the core of the system, changing or getting rid of the pieces that irritate you the most and replacing them with better versions, and then build up from there. If you ever feel bored or fed up of working on the rules, it is quite fun to create a loose frame of a system, and bolt different ideas and concepts onto it, seeing what works and what doesn't, how all these pieces might fit together, and what the limitations of the current "frame" are. Good way to stay invested in the project while stress-testing different ideas.
I've been experimenting with games like x-wing a lot, and learning infinity and flames of war. I have to say, playing these other rulesets is truly a breath of fresh air after 40k, but I think my heart will always belong to the grim dark setting... so just to kill like 15 minutes of my time and wishlist, I'd like to to see:
-first of all, a core game based on skirmish size, meaning ~10 minis (20 for hordes) is enough for a typical game lasting about an hour. This is essential for people getting into the game, and friendly to painters/hobbyists such as myself, and altogether more efficient and appropriate for 28mm figures. Tanks/large vehicles could be included but totally not necessary, but only in larger games and very expensive (a space marine in proper scale and true to the fluff is pretty much a tank). There could possibly be an expansion and rules to play all peoples minis but lets be honest... if we are really going to reboot do it right. This was how it started and how it should have stayed. Buying a starter set, it should be functional as a real game from the get-go. IF NOT, then the game should still be treated the same way, with about 10 units that function as single entities. The game should not be gender-confused between skirmish and squad-based simulation. Big problem in 40k! IMO, squad based games should be 15mm sorry!
-Realistic combat tactics, that truly recreate the feel of a deadly firefight in the grim dark future. combat that is more deadly, more reliant on using cover and things like grenades and synergy in your own force to use supporting fire. More of a focus on shooting but punctuated by intense, short combats... combats should be decisive as well, not the headache they are in 40k.
-Some kind of 'gambit' factor. Essential to add another dimension to the game, the psychological factor of not knowing what your opponent is going to do and making your move simultaneously based on guesswork, this I take from x-wing and it is so simple yet makes the game so complex (as complex as real psychology). If you eliminate the IGOUGO turn style as suggested in this thread, I'd recommend something similar to x-wing: you plan out your order for every unit on a small device and then reveal either in order of activation due to skill/initiative stats, or active/reactive like infinity, or some other novel concept.
active/reactive is the most true to life I feel; because real life is simultaneous and what the enemy is doing is always affecting what you are doing. However, I think the orders system from infinity could be improved or tweaked, but it really works rather well. I feel there is some simple but elegant solution in there somewhere, that combines a gambit system with a system that allows the enemy to react to a miniature that's being activated or moved.
-Increased use of gaming devices to lay out all the stats and essential info about a unit right there on the table for all to see. X-wing uses game devices that pretty much eliminate all external bookkeeping, there is a counter for everything, and they give you all the info you need to move, make dice rolls and calculate wins right at your fingertips. Game aids are the best way to streamline the game, by eliminating the human error factor and keeping focus on the game itself.
-Polyhedral dice, preferably D20's. This goes along with the above, the more information we can encode into the game aids and statlines the better. A D20 dice is capable of far greater complexity in dice rolling than a D6, with far less dice rolling. Unnecessary dice rolls should be eliminated! And face-to-face rolls infinity style are awesome.
-Increased use of terrain and 3 dimensions, so that the game is playable in a 4x4 table but has just as much complexity as a 6x4. Again, packing more complexity into a more efficient design. Terrain is the 'third army'... and the one that benefit's the quality of game for both players equally.
-Across the board, streamlining and axing special rules and weaponry so that all factions maintain their unique flavor, but essentially function the same way other factions function. Let the heresies bloom, but not the special rules and crap that is waaaay to much to remember, without investing in $400 worth of books. That is not to say that there shouldn't be variety... think of it like Lego's. There should be basic universal rules that fit together and interact in novel ways, to produce the flavor. A handgun might look and feel different than a woo-woo alien laser cannon but keep them the same ruleswise, make the flavor with fluff and miniature.
-Fog of war system. using counters, minis (and indeed even perhaps whole lists) are only revealed in contact with the enemy. This can co-mingle with camo rules. markers can be used to represent the position of miniatures on the battlefield. The more the better. Using multiple counters so the enemy has know idea which is the real unit moving, using imposters and playing mind games, this is all good stuff and fits well with some of the races and factions in 40k, especially if more terrain is used in the game.
-Randomness.... not too much of it! and not for stupid things that any competent survivor of a grim dark future should know how to do. You know what I mean. But in the right places, randomness can be great. Dice rolling is fun and great aspect to the game, and using D20's mitigates the odds of expensive elite units failing on rolling 1's. Throwing a grenade, doing a controlled descent in a parachute, shooting a cannon shouldn't depend on a complex scatter system that takes time and effort to work out, for very little reward and a lot of unnecessary stupidity in the game, like when an elite superhuman soldier(you know who you are) fires a cannon right into his buddy by accident rather than the tank he's supposed to be shooting at. If there is a big target right out in the open like the broad side of a barn, it is hit. Period.
-Cards! It's a great way to add complexity to a game and also this falls under game aids. Every unit should have a corresponding card with artwork, that is also functional with the stats you need. Any upgrades should be in the form of mini add-on cards so that it is clear and visible. I love this aspect of X-wing. Also, it's a good way to use game-wide special rules and actions that affect your whole army, similar to an Ork Waagh! It is also a perfect way to change up miniatures without having to remodel them or buy new miniatures. Another source of eye-candy for those who like nice things, but hey you can always just write the stuff on a napkin and still have a more interesting game. Some 40k flavored things that can be transferred to the card dimension could be: psychic powers and psychic warfare, artillery support/air support, special army-wide orders, orbital strikes, possession and use of strange artifacts, Intelligence advantages (seeing enemy orders and hidden minis), manipulation of morale (that should have more of a factor in the game), and game-wide rock-paper scissors gambits. Possibly using something like an order pool from infinity, orders could be more like currency (or mana pool in MTG) and spent via cards that govern how your mini's are activated. For example you spend your orders on an "assault" card and the enemy on a "entrench" card. The other advantage of cards is the same card can be used for different factions.
-Building off the concept of universal rules that fit together like legos, the game should have a simple but effective system of point-costing your own custom miniatures! based on the statline, wounds, etc. and universal for all factions. If it is based on logic, playtested and it's the same rules applied to all factions, the game will be fair... no system is perfect but there can be logic and a formula behind points costs, even if it is somewhat limited in scope to prevent abuse of certain synergies.
Edit: forgot one thing
-taking this idea from the way units are created in a computer game I played called battle for wesnoth, divide weaponry into classes and form every unit with resistances/weaknesses to certain weapon types. For example weapons could be blade/piercing/impact/explosive/fire/dematerializing or w/e (it would need to be converted from fantasy terms to 40k terms, but 40k is part fantasy). All weapons would fall into one category or another. Again, this is all about 'meta' rules that apply across the board and create the need for synergy in your units, for complexity in power distribution (every strong unit has some weakness) and it's just beautiful.
This would solve something I've had a problem with for a long time in 40k... and just to give an example, being composed of warpstuff, Daemons are supposed to be nearly immune to conventional small arms fire (such as lasguns and autoguns having very little effect). But, they are vulnerable to psychic powers and ritualistic weapons such as blades! Eldar shooting weapons could also be classed as blades.
Fire is also a great theme in 40k, these kind of rules would allow it to really have purpose within the game. It is far more elegant than the AP rules currently being used. In a lot of parts of the game, the AP rules are almost non-functional, and weapons that truly have different character and ways of being used are lumped together. It is also a great way of representing the 'stopping power' of certain weapons... for example bolters have a high stopping power vs. lasguns that have a pitiful stopping power... not as useful against Orks! Another cool example... Necrons are essentially metal skeletons right? so how effective do you think weapons would be that are designed to puncture holes in a flesh bag? Very little. They should have high resistance to piercing weapons! Also should have high resistance to psychic/warp attacks... what you thought they had souls or something?
Also, Armor is a cool stat but not all armor is created equal... some armor is resistant to piercing and some is vulnerable. It seems like the resistances are complex but when you think about it you only need to make one roll to save, that is all, and apply modifiers accordingly!
Another note: calling BS about the idea that GW can sue over rules. Rules themselves are not copyrightable, so long as you use different terminology for everything, don't copy-paste words and names, and obviously don't advertise and sell it as 40k. If you had a generic sci-fi meta rules system that allows you to build units and use them in a functioning game there is no reason you couldn't play your own game in the 40k universe with it, and other universes too for that matter.
We're gonna playtest my "Potica Edition" again tonight with some tweaks.
For starters, we'll try Ld instead of Initiative for reaction tests to reduce the massive disparity between the likes of Orks vs Eldar.
Also introducing more positive mods to shooting, we felt that stuff didn't die fast enough (BS4 needed a 5+ to hit a lot of the time)
Our suppression system thus far:
You make a Morale test after every shooting attack, with a -1 Ld mod for every casualty inflicted by the attack (or every wound lost in the case of MCs and Vehicles). Make the test on 3d6 if the attack involved any Pinning weapons (as an aside, catching a unit in a crossfire counts as a Pinning attack).
If you fail the test, you get a suppression token. Each suppression token means a cumulative -1 to hit with all attacks and -1 Leadership for the entire unit. This applies to all Ld tests except rally tests.
You can try to rally in your Shooting Phase instead of shooting by making an unmodified Ld test. You remove 1 suppression token for a passed test +1 for every point you passed by (say you roll a 5 and your Ld is 7: you would remove 1+2 token). If the unit contains a Character, you remove +1 token, even if you fail the test. If you're within 6" of the Warlord, you remove +1 token, even if you fail the test.
Melee combat results: calculated as normal; every unit on the winning side removes 1 suppression, every unit on the losing side receives 1 suppression, then takes a Morale test (not modified by combat results, but modified by suppression).
Fall Back moves are typically voluntary and done in the Movement phase or as a reaction to shooting or assault.
There is no Broken or Pinned condition. If your unit is suppressed enough that its more trouble than it's wort in combat, it's in your best interest to move it into cover or away from enemies so it doesn't get slaughtered while trying to rally.
Best suppression system I've seen is in Flames of War actually. In that system, in order to make an assault, it's almost essential to pin a unit down... that can be accomplished just by shooting the unit, if they take a certain number of shots, or they take a hit from a weapon like a mortar, grenade or some terrifying area of effect weapon, then they are pinned. Other wise they get their full shots at you before you attack in cc, which can be deadly.
That's why suppression should be combined with overwatch; think of it as every unit is on automatic overwatch until they get shot at, in which case they naturally take cover and are vulnerable to assaults.
Also make melee more decisive -- another of Meade's points -- so it's harder for blobs to bog down elite close-combat troops. I suspect that means
1) Suppressing units so they can't fire Overwatch, as Meade said.
2) requiring a LD check for a unit being charged; if they fail, they're not fully prepared, and the charging enemy gets a free round of attacks or at least some super initiative bonus. (I forget who suggested this, but someone in this thread).
3) making it harder for the loser of an assault to pass its Morale check to keep fighting, probably by adding the number of Wounds it lost by to its roll.
4) making it harder for Fearless units to stay in the fight by restoring the old "no retreat!" system of extra wounds for fearless units that lose a round of close combat.
I totally agree if the command values were used with GW40k rules, they would be abused due to the limited tactical options in the game play
In the new system we are play testing, a characters are there to support the entire force, not just one unit.Because the game play is more focused on a combined arms approach.
If the Captain is off with a unit of terminators , who is going to influence reserve rolls ?, Or scatter rolls on deep striking units, or rally the other units in the force?
If the scout squad is suppressed they can not spot for the artillery, and the tac squads can not advance contest/hold objectives, or engage enemy units.
It is a bit difficult to explain clearly , as we are still sorting out quite a lot while we play test.But we want characters to command be able to influence the whole force, not just kill things, or improve an attached units ability to kill things.
Yes I would prefer to use the alternating activation with phases as used in Grimdark.
I can not think of a single game that just uses alternating unit activation, without some other system to augment it.
Infinity has (ARO?)reactions, Bolt action has random order draw,Epic SM had activation phases, etc.
If you just allow fixed alternate activation , with free choice of units and actions, this allows units to perform several actions without letting the opponent react.
EG Move then move into assault then assault.
And with the way 40k allows uber units , this could almost be as bad as the current game turn for alpha strike.
Making tactical decisions at the start of the game turn ,remain stationary and fire to full effect, move and shoot or shoot and move, double move or move & assault.
Is quite common in lots of battle games .
Simply placing a order/activation counter/marker next to the unit at the start of the turn is a simple way to keep track of what units are doing this game turn.
And these can be replaced if the unit becomes suppressed with suppression markers , which then limit the unit to moving OR shooting in a limited way.
The simple method of having a single counter/marker next to each unit is not that much book keeping , and allows much more tactical consideration.
Splitting up the activation into phases,where decisive actions ( fire support, charges, ) happen before the more 'reactive actions '(move and shoot , shoot and move.)
Makes the activation more 'filtered and tactical' .it replaces the 'reactions option' with in built sequencing .
Epic SM /NET epic was the closest to the 'perfect level of characterful' 40k type battle games in terms of depth and detail IMO.And that is why I would like to use its version of alternating unit activation.(because I know it works with the wide range of units in current 40k.)
What do you folks think of using a single assault value?(Assault values from 2+ to 6+)
EG 4+ means the model(s) in the unit are hit in assault on a attack dice roll of 4,5or 6.
And assault sequencing runs highest assault value strikes first.
These values are modified ,for charging , suppression , defending an obstacle , higher ground, outnumbering etc.
(Currently we are just using the WS as the Assault value for a starting point.)
So suppressing a unit before assaulting it gives you a bonus to your assault value , for sequence of striking and making you harder to hit.
I also like to see suppression rules that are not completely linked with morale, there is no reason for that! Even if you are a battle hardened veteran, it is just common sense to duck when you are under heavy fire, modern (and far future) weaponry is just so deadly that you have to take cover, or die. And the same goes for assaults... running headlong into troops armed with automatic weapons is just suicide unless you have some kind of covering fire and even then it's dangerous. Unless you are some kind of implacable robot or space bug, I guess. I realize in 40k pinning checks and morale checks aren't quite the same thing, but fearless troops still don't go to ground, morale is meaningless in general since it's so hard to pin a unit, etc.
That being said, good to have it interact with morale since for a unit of conscripts, facing that much incoming fire and being faced with a real combat situation can cause morale to break.
I'd say suppression is linked to morale even in real life -- the hardened Special Operator is going to duck and crawl and keep on going, moving from cover to cover and shooting back; the raw conscript is going to hit the dirt and stay there cowering for the rest of the firefight....
With a buddy of mine , we discussed about the sillynes that is the WS chart.
I mean even if you are WS1 and the ennemy is WS 8 or 9, the worst you get to hit is...5+...
Now its perfectly normal on a gameplay-wise standpoint, else if the modification was more severe, then lots of models would simply not be able to participate in the combat.
So what we thoug is that instead to make Models harder to Hit, make them reroll, the way BS do.
It can be simply and plain like BS is, with a Ws of 6 you can reroll attacks, but they only hit on 6's, WS7, you reroll and hit of 5's etc.
Or you get ONE reroll for each 2 point of WS above 5.
exemple if you have WS6 you don't make a rroll, if you are WS7 you can reroll ONE dice, WS9 you reroll 2 Dices, and that is in any addition to any reroll you allready have( outside Hatred or if you allrady did a reroll with the same dice.)
Oh merciful Emperor no more rerolls in this system. Yes, I don't like it that your chances can't get worse than 6+ or better than 2+ throughout most WH40K mechanics. But why is it so bad if some units have WS so high other units can't touch them in close combat, or T so high other units can't wound them in shooting or melee? Just make some extreme combinations -- e.g. WS1 attacks WS10 -- an automatic "sorry, you lose."
@Sister Sydney.
I agree completely with your views on suppression.All units react in a similar way immediately, ( thinking more about self preservation.)
The better disciplined /experienced units simply recover faster.
Eg
The unit is under enough threat to make the unit focus on self preservation , it becomes suppressed.
The unit recovers from suppression by passing a morale check.
As respect to assault, why not use the simple idea of the WS is the score needed to hit the model /unit in assault.
EG you need to roll 4+ to hit a WS 4 unit in close combat, and 2+ to hit a WS 2 unit in close combat.
This removes the need to have a chart at all and makes WS more important.
The bigger issue than the big chart is how narrow the range of possibility is... They don't even use the full 2+ to 6+ range possible on one die! So my Gretchin has a 1/3 chance of landing a blow on your Daemon Prince, really?
i've been toying with another way of running damage resolution, but its a bit odd and requires a D12.
A models stats (WS, BS, S) designate the number that needs to be rolled equal to or under to confirm success. Other stats (T, Defensive Skill (DS), Cover Rating) act as modifiers to this roll. However, you simply treat values equal to or less than that modifier as failed dice.
For example, my space marine (S10), hits another space marine (T3). I roll a D12, and remove any dice above 10 as a failure, then remove any dice equal to or below 3 as failures to show the enemy marines toughness modifier. If that marine was hitting a guardsman (T1), any value above 10 would be removed, then all 1's.
If a stat exceeds 12, for every point above 12 lower the associated modifier by an equivalent amount. If a models toughness modifier is lowered to 0 for any reason, the hit causes instant death. This way, my missle launcher (S15) will cause instant death to any model with T3 or lower, while an assault cannon (S13) will instant death all T1 models.
Thoughts? One of my main concerns is how strange the statline will look, since you'll typically have extremely high "rolling" stats, but very low "modifier" stats.
SisterSydney wrote: The bigger issue than the big chart is how narrow the range of possibility is... They don't even use the full 2+ to 6+ range possible on one die! So my Gretchin has a 1/3 chance of landing a blow on your Daemon Prince, really?
I guess that decision was made back when GW still remembered that it's stupid and frustrating to make someone roll dozens of dice when there's practically no hope of doing anything meaningful.
@Sister Sydney: Be wary! You are trying to make a game which is to be played. IF you go with specific auto wins like your talking about, your game will break (as 'oh look i get my X to Y level and troll you'), or it will fail in the eyes of many players. You must give a player hope that they can win so that they keep playing. Even if it goes against the reality of a situation. Think about it, how many great stories come out of those off kilter battles in the game as it is? Would you get rid of those? Give players chances, even if they are on in a hundred and they will at least try. Give em another chance in the form of a reroll and they will go for gold. You are attempting to create an enjoyable experience here too after all.
Many modern games have some kind of "critical hit" mechanic in place, for example Spartan Games exploding 6's mechanic or Infinity's that's based off a D20 system. It gives that little chance that even the smallest unit can hurt a large unit, but it's statistically improbable and doesn't require extra rolling because it's built in to the roll itself.
However it has to really be improbable and the game has to be complex enough that you don't just lose to random chance because of this. Having chance be part of the game means you have to react to a changing tactical landscape where you don't exactly know what will come next, and that can be fun, but losing for no reason other than the dice is not fun. There are plenty of ways for chance to have more subtle impacts on the game without risking that.
Another thing I hate about 40k, is the plague of grounding checks and terrain checks. Especially flying monstrous creatures being shot down by flashlights, landraiders being bogged down by a tree trunk, terminators forgetting how to walk.
Many modern games have some kind of "critical hit" mechanic in place, for example Spartan Games exploding 6's mechanic or Infinity's that's based off a D20 system. It gives that little chance that even the smallest unit can hurt a large unit, but it's statistically improbable and doesn't require extra rolling because it's built in to the roll itself.
What if we combined some of these ideas, such as weapon damage "types" and critical hits, loosely based on the current "on the roll of 6" systems.
Each weapon has one (possibly more) damage types, such as poison, penetrating, explosive, concussive, etc. Upon rolling a "critical hit" (in whatever form this comes from), the weapons damage type's special ability is activated. So penetrating might act like rending, and ignore armor, while explosive might deal double wounds, poison would automatically confirm a wound, etc.
Though it works nice on a d20 system i think it would work fine on a D6 so long as you further roll in an additional chart.
Thinking for MC, it would be like
1: nothing
2-3: Stunned (concussive)
4: Immobilized for the turn
5: Cannot move or shoot
6: Devastating hit d3 wounds
I think for vehicles can do
1: shaken
2-3: stunned
4: weap destroyed
5: immobilized
6: D3 additional HP, if it should wreck explode instead
In infinity you get a critical hit when you roll equal to your ballistic skill, and that works sort of like rending in 40k, you bypass armor save. So it's really 1 in 20 chance of having that success (usually against the odds). That's the beauty of the D20 system. No external rolling, charts, etc.
I hate charts btw, most of the time. I despised the vehicle damage chart in 5th ed. 40k. It was such a PITA and so boring to roll on that chart ALL THE TIME. Hull points sort of fixed that problem because it increased the likelihood of destroying a vehicle without rolling on the damn chart, but of course it was improperly balanced and the system was shot to hell. Charts are interesting because they are a non-quantitative measure of success, making the game far more interesting because not only is your unit damaged, it's leg is hurt or it's weapon is shot off or something or other. But it is simply a pain to roll on a chart.
X-wing game solves this by using mini-damage cards... for every wound you take you draw a card, but face down... only critical hits (more statistically improbable) are face up and you have some kind of detrimental systems damage or something.
X-wing's critical hits are good, but not that good that it wins you the game... most of the time it changes the way you have to play, which is totally cool.
Convenient markers for wounds (hull points in x-wing). Another useful side effect of not having more than 10 or so miniatures in the game, so it does double work of being a hit point counter and being a critical damage counter. Some of the cards just count as two hit points instead of one. Also you can usually make a repair by spending an action and turning the card face down, so you still have the damage just not the negative side effects.
It is a good point though. There are numerous bad effects that can happen to you in 40k, like blind, stunned, etc... that really never come up in the game and it would be interesting if there were a possibility that might happen to you just by being wounded.
Of course, the vehicles and creatures of 40k are diverse that it's harder to come up with a set of cards that simulates damage for everything, the way it is to simulate different effects damage might have on a starfighter (for instance- sensors down, engine damage, etc). But I think as a general rule, anything with a set of stats or generic abilities can have particular abilities targeted. One card for BS, one for WS, etc.
My problem with damage cards (or drawing damage tokens from a bag, which is an idea I've tried before) is that the odds of getting certain results change as cards are removed from the deck. That's why I ultimately prefer to roll on a chart.
On an unrelated note, my playtest buddy thinks I'm overdoing it with suppression. He says 40k is about heroic charges into a storm of bullets, not keeping your head down.
lord_blackfang wrote: On an unrelated note, my playtest buddy thinks I'm overdoing it with suppression. He says 40k is about heroic charges into a storm of bullets, not keeping your head down.
Listen to that man. (Didn't I already say something about that?...hmmmm :/) But note that not every one wants to fight assaults. Make sure there is room for shooting armies to shine too!
Your other point is also very good. You might be the only other person I know who figured out that the mechanic in question can be gamed. Though I find it to be just another game point that doesn't inherently break itself when it's planned out right. Many hex map paper chit war games use them just fine. As for a 40k use I'd be leery.
Yes, the thing about decks of cards is not only that the probabilities change but that they become less random as you draw from them. A deck at the end of the game is more ordered than a freshly shuffled one at the beginning.
Some game design could use this sorting effect deliberately (though I haven't seen one). But everyone designing games needs to be aware of it. Certainly guys in Vegas are well aware of this effect -- that's why they talk about "counting cards."
@SisterSydney: See any Collectible/Trading Card Game. Including any Deck Building game. Settlers of Catan's Development Card deck to high level players too.
Normally I don't refer players/designers to Mark Rosewater for any reason as I think he's an idiot in many regards who happens to also be very intelligent and in charge of Magic: The Gatherings design department (for better or worse). BUT he is as I said intelligent and he does have a lot of experience as a designer and is able to at the least admit when he's been wrong and kindly shares the things he learns. I therefore begrudgingly to the man but not his work recommend the following podcast on 'Randomness': Randomness Be warned, his voice is a bit...er...annoying. He has 80+ podcasts posted here, some of which you may find interesting.
You might notice he talks about 'hope' in this one too IIRC, of all the irony that is relevant to our thread.
Hi folks.
I think the problem could be that current 40k has been made up of so many layers , with completely different development ideas , and game focus, it is hard to define what the current game is supposed to be.
You can find elements/evidence of all game types and styles in current 40k rules , but it is such a holistic mess of concepts it fails to do any thing clearly.
If you want a skirmish rule set to play games of 40k with , there are plenty about you can convert /use 40k minis in.(Warpath 2.0 is one of many good rule sets currently available.)
The races from WHFB set the basic outline of the motives and fighting styles of the 40k forces.However, after the game moved to the battle game size, the WHFB rules just could not cope.
And so additional rules were added to patch up the holes.
As far as suppression goes,it needs to be in 40k, to stop the imbalance caused by the focus JUST on killing or be killed for in game effect.
Units racing over no mans land unopposed while the enemy just sit and wait to get assaulted for no good reason is counter intuitive.
However, unit being suppressed , before the enemy assaults them makes far more sense and allows actual tactics to be used in game!
If we simply use a value on the stat line that represents the chance the ENEMY will hit the mode/unit.
And allow this value to be modified .
EG
An Ork Grot mob has a WS of 2 , so enemy hit them on a 2+.
A Deamon prince has a WS of 6+ and is only hit on a 6+.
How can the lowly Grot mob possibly survive in assault ?
Well if a unit gets +1 to their assault value on the charge.
And +1 if they out number their opponent in assault.
And +2 to their assault value If the target is suppressed.
The Grot mob outnumber the Deamon Prince, and they could charge..However, if the Big Gunz suppressed the DP before the Grotz assault, it would help the little green ankle biters quite a bit...
Base WS 2+,+1+1+2 =a final WS of 6+
This helps the little dudes survive , and give them a chance to be useful in assault...even if it is just to bog down enemy units for a turn of two...
It also allows the use of in game tactics,rather than remove all tactical options and put all the emphasis on the units you take and which units face off against each other.
Suppression implemented well would open up the tactical options in game.Which would be good.
I agree it would be cool if a natural roll of X scored a critical hit , and unlocked the weapons special abilities .
Armourbane automatically penetrates armour .
Poison, penetrating hit automatically causes a wound on an organic target,
Haywire ,penetrating hit automatically causes damage to a mechanical unit.
Blast, automatically suppresses model.
Fleshbane, double any wounds caused on a organic target.
Criticals are fine as long as they're not coupled with to hit modifiers. Because then you get into this weird situation where you need a 6 to even hit a lot of the time and then all your hits are criticals and you never even see a normal hit.
@lord blackfang.
I agree, I would have these on the armour roll or the damage roll,(for effects that effect armour resolution or damage resolution.)
The possible exception of ' Blast' effects of HE warheads , which could auto suppress a unit on a 6 to hit.Because suppressing 1 in 6 models with HE rounds is not to unrealistic is it?
I've been playing with an idea that would hopefully be a bit of a middle ground solution between Armor Modifiers (2nd Edition) and the current AP system. I'm running a system where a higher AP value indicates better penetration capabilities.
Armor now has 2 components, Save Value and Armor Class (AC), split into 4 (maybe more) categories: Light, Medium, Heavy, and Super-Heavy. Each armor class interacts with AP values differently to change the models Sv value, though AP 6 ignores all armor saves. A standardized formula for each Armor Class's reactions to AP is being worked on, but is still very much TBD.
For example, a guardsman would have Sv (5+) AC(L). Light armor, 5+
Against bolters (AP 2) his armor would be ignored, as 5 + 2 = 7, or higher than can be rolled on D6. but against AP 1 weapons, he would get a 6+, and against AP 0 weapons, a 5+
A space marine, by comparison, would have a Sv (3+) AC (H). Heavy Armor (3+)
Against bolters (AP 2) he would still have his 3+ armor save, but if you go higher, to a heavy bolter (AP 3) his armor is reduced to a 4+. If you go higher, to a battlecannon (AP4) their save now becomes a 6+. Any higher, and his armor will be completely negated
Somewhere in the middle is the tau firewarrior, with Sv (4+) (M). Medium Armor (4+)
Against bolters (AP 2) he would still have his 4+ armor save, but going higher to a Heavy Bolter (AP 3), his save would be reduced to a 6+. Any further, and his armor will be completely negated.
At the extreme end of the scale is Super-Heavy armor, such as a terminator Sv (2+) AC (SH).
Against AP 0-2, his armor save is 2+, against AP 3-4, his armor value is 3+, and against AP 5 weapons like lascannons, his armor save is a 6+.
This change isn't so much about changing the mechanics as it is changing player behavior. If i no longer feel like I need AP 1-3 weapons to do damage to space marines, i can choose a more versatile weapon, which still affects power armor, albeit to a lesser degree. I've found that a straight one-to-one relationship between armor and AP simply does not have the depth necessary to simulate the system in place right now. One of the things i like about this new system is that i can now convey nuances within an armor Sv value that would otherwise be impossible.
---For example, both an Eldar Guardian and an Imperial Guardsman have a 5+ armor save, but Eldar armor should be massively more advanced than the Guard's. As a result, they may both have Sv (5+), but the Eldar's Mesh Armor is considered Medium Armor, while the Guardsman's Flak Jacket is considered light armor. As a result, an Eldar Guardian still gets his 5+ against AP2 (bolter) weapons, but loses it against anything else.
---Similarly, Artificer armor is supposed to be comparable to Terminator Armor in terms of protection, but Terminator armor is still far and away a better defense, so while both might get Sv (2+), Artificer Armor would be Heavy Armor, while terminator armor would be Super-Heavy.
EDIT ---You could probably work the critical hit effects in as well, say penetrating and explosive treat Armor Classes differently, maybe explosive treats the models Armor class as being one "tier" lower (IE Heavy becomes medium, medium becomes light), while penetrating reduces the armor class by 2 "tiers". Rending would of course ignore all armor saves, effectively being AP 6.
Lanrak wrote: As far as suppression goes,it needs to be in 40k, to stop the imbalance caused by the focus JUST on killing or be killed for in game effect.
Units racing over no mans land unopposed while the enemy just sit and wait to get assaulted for no good reason is counter intuitive.
However, unit being suppressed , before the enemy assaults them makes far more sense and allows actual tactics to be used in game!
Suppression implemented well would open up the tactical options in game.Which would be good.
To the first part suppresion does not need to be in 40k. Period. It may do well for it but likely not. The world of 40k is exactly about the type of combat you mentioned, even in the video games for the universe which attracts many of the players to it nowadays. (Firewarrior, Dawn of War 1+2, Space Marine, Squad Command, etc) Opening that disparity in the themes of combat between the two genres could be jarring to a new player trying to enter. The answer to this awkward combat has generally been overwatch which is, for a game, the best option I've seen. BECAUSE suppression only punishes the defender and rewards the first to charge (who will generally take a lead after that point iregardless) whereas overwatch can be rewarding to the defender, cinematic to the attacker, and give a fighting chance to a player already losing if they are lucky. (There's that hope thing we talked about) Many complain about overwatch being in the game ATM which is interesting as it doesn't completely cover the benefit gap for the most part that a charging unit gets with an extra attack while charging, which up till overwatch's intro was completely one sided.
A 'normal' model gets one attack in CC, a charging gets two. End of day = 2 normal attacks
A defender of a charge gets generally one, while a overwatching one gets an additional BS1 shot. end of day = 2 attacks, one of them is crappy
They actually are just 'balanced' in a minor way when thought of this way with the attacker still maintaining a slight edge.
@Rav1rn: Could you make a chart for it for us? I'm assuming yes? And how does vehicle armor work in this system? I really like where its going with the minor exception that the observation of detail borders "too much detail"
@Rav1rn: Could you make a chart for it for us? I'm assuming yes? And how does vehicle armor work in this system? I really like where its going with the minor exception that the observation of detail borders "too much detail"
I'll attach a picture of a rough chart telling you how much to add to a roll for each AP value. AP 0 is likely going to be treated a slightly special case, so it's not included. And yes the ratio of depth to complexity is a little higher than i'd like it to be, but it's an attempt to take the best of two very divergent systems, one of which is very non-linear, so it is what it is.
I talked about my vehicle damage system a few pages back, its basically a mix of current vehicle rules and monster rules. Roll to wound against a toughness value on a vehicle to glance / suppress a vehicle, then roll penetration against the sides AV like current rules allow for additional damage, using the weapon's AP instead of strength to penetrate the vehicle AV (as it probably should be). It's another reason for having AP increase in the opposite direction they do now, so we don't end up in weird situations where you have to correct for low AP numbers equating to high penetration ability.
To the first part suppresion does not need to be in 40k. Period. It may do well for it but likely not. The world of 40k is exactly about the type of combat you mentioned, even in the video games for the universe which attracts many of the players to it nowadays. (Firewarrior, Dawn of War 1+2, Space Marine, Squad Command, etc) Opening that disparity in the themes of combat between the two genres could be jarring to a new player trying to enter. The answer to this awkward combat has generally been overwatch which is, for a game, the best option I've seen. BECAUSE suppression only punishes the defender and rewards the first to charge (who will generally take a lead after that point iregardless) whereas overwatch can be rewarding to the defender, cinematic to the attacker, and give a fighting chance to a player already losing if they are lucky. (There's that hope thing we talked about) Many complain about overwatch being in the game ATM which is interesting as it doesn't completely cover the benefit gap for the most part that a charging unit gets with an extra attack while charging, which up till overwatch's intro was completely one sided.
A 'normal' model gets one attack in CC, a charging gets two. End of day = 2 normal attacks
A defender of a charge gets generally one, while a overwatching one gets an additional BS1 shot. end of day = 2 attacks, one of them is crappy
They actually are just 'balanced' in a minor way when thought of this way with the attacker still maintaining a slight edge.
I would argue overwatch has done more to work against the elements you listed than just about anything else. To get into assault, you generally have to get across the board (taking fire the whole time), deep strike (very risky), or buy an expensive assault vehicle. You can buy a normal transport and get across the board, but that still means more points spent on something that may or may not survive to get you across, and you still cant assault out of it, not even if it was stationary. For all of that effort, i'd say an extra attack is a fairly decent compensation, because there are very few cases where that bonus attack is what makes the difference. Either the unit hitting you was going to utterly destroy you, so the bonus attack is just icing, or it's a meh combat unit, and ends up doing slightly above average damage.
Overwatch, in its current form anyways, has no downsides. It's a free round of shooting, and for units that are traditionally weak in assault but excel at shooting, its a system that helps them compensate for that weakness rather than augment their strength like the charging bonus for assault units. But even if a penalty for overwatching was added, and the option whether or not to overwatch was made voluntary, odds are you would still want to overwatch almost all the time, because you get to hit with attacks before your opponent, then take some damage minus the damage you stopped by shooting some models, then you get to attack anyways, albeit slightly less effectively. And that's just for units that are so-so at melee, for pure shooting units, it's a no brainer.
While i love the idea of a squad shooting desperately at a charging unit before getting assaulted (and the awesome cinematics of it), it's current implementation is garbage, and having every unit doing it all the time, usually for minimal to no effect isn't cinematic, its busy-work. No serious penalty can be directly attached to it, as that will only polarize it further, with pure shooting units always taking it and decent to good melee-capable units avoiding it like the plague, so an indirect penalty, likely involving a hefty opportunity cost, is needed. Working it into some sort of command system as an improved system would be one way of doing it, but that only further handicaps melee focused units, since they now have the risk of facing units that can decimate them before they even get to strike, when they've already charged. I'd love to see 2nd edition overwatch, where a unit sacrificed it's shooting to fire at units moving into its field of fire, but that system is really complex and requires micromanaging models to the point where i'm not sure it's worth it...
EDIT hmmm some sort of facing counter could help with that goal though...consider that as an entry to your thought-experiement thread knucklewolf.
As for suppression, I would argue that done right suppression would do more to promote that sense of ridiculous, over-the-top bravado than avoiding it would, so long as you made sure there was an option to ignore the effects of suppression at the penalty of taking additional damage. And not some insignificant amount. It has to have some real weight, and here is where some random chance would really be advantageous for cinematic moments, as that feeling of figuring out whether your serious risk was worth the reward, and what kind of damage your'e going to take as a result. Is avoiding a system that allows for thoughts of "Is my stupid and daring choice to stand up when bullets are all around me going to pay off? Or did i just tell my men to kill themselves in the most foolish way possible?" somehow more fitting of the setting than allowing it? That's without even getting into whether or not suppression would make gameplay more interesting or more tactical.
@KnuckleWolf.
If you only have binary conditions in a system like 40k does.Then you have very limited in game interaction.
I would say DoW & DoW II has a better synergy to 40k as it is not a FPS, but a small sized modern battle game.And has suppression included in the game play .
The lack of tactical options for unit interaction in the game play of current 40k, also leads to the need to take special units for specific tasks (Which is great for selling GW product , but not that good for game balance.)
I am not advocating all units cowering behind cover and creeping about.
BUT making it actually worth while giving covering fire to assist charging units, and being able to reduce the enemy units in game effect without killing /physically being able to damage them.To introduce shades of grey into 40ks current black or white resolution.
Any game that uses a more interactive game turn removes the need for the clumsy 'over watch' found in 40k.And I think most on this thread would prefer alternating unit activation or interleaved action phases for the new rules.
All good modern battle games that I know of all incorporate a suppression mechanic.
40k has not got one because WHFB does not need one .(As suppression is not apart of ancient massed battle games. )
I agree with you , if you want to continue with the heavy strategy , light tactical focus of current 40k, then 40k does not need a suppression mechanic.
However if you want a well defined intuitive rule set with more tactical focus then a suppression mechanic of some sort is needed. (Even if it is just to get rid of the need for ridiculous rules that ignore massive shooting casualties.)
I also agree with Rav1n , that the option to ignore suppression should carry a significant penalty.
EG
Frenzy the unit may ignore the effects of suppression for one game turn.They press on in the face of overwhelming weight of fire.The unit automatically looses 2xD3 wounds /structure next game turn.
@Rav1n.
1)Higher AP beats more armour= intuitive. 2)All units using the same damage resolution = sensible .
However, why do you need to have 4 classes of armour for infantry, and more classes for vehicles and M/Cs ?
I know lots of people do not like to 'use numbers', but they are the best way of quantifying comparative values .
Simply using free values in comparison to get the score required for success delivers 1 & 2.
Armour value + Dice roll , compared to Armour Penetration value.
AV +D6 >AP no effect.
AV +D6 = AP = suppressed only.
AV +D6< AP= Suppressed +roll to damage .
Critical hits. Concussive(X) , on a natural 6 to hit the weapon automatically suppresses the target.(X determines the highest AV the weapon effects in this way.)
Armour bane , on a targeted enemies natural 1 to save , the weapon automatically penetrates the armour and allows +2 to the damage roll..
Poison , on a natural roll of 6 to damage ,target organic units automatically loose one wound.(In addition to any wounds caused in normal damage resolution.)
EMP, on a natural roll of 6 to damage ,target mechanical unit automatically looses one structure(In addition to any structure loss caused in normal damage resolution.)
Flesh bane,on a natural roll of 6 to damage ,targeted organic model receives 2 wounds.
I'm with Lanrak on the "no, we don't need four classes of armor" thing. And I think suppression would mainly benefit charging units rather than hurt them.
Yeah I'm not even gonna read that, two pages to explain AP = no thanks.
Meanwhile I'm (at least temporarily) dialing back the changes in my system and taking a more gradual approach. I have all the rulebooks from 2nd through 6th edition sitting on my lap and I'm making a combination that I think will play best but still be familiar to everyone.
That's a heck of a collection. Remember that most people will have largely forgotten the earlier editions, if they even played them, so "familiar to everyone" would be a weighted average that's a lot closer to 6th than 2nd.
@Rav1n.
1)Higher AP beats more armour= intuitive.
2)All units using the same damage resolution = sensible .
However, why do you need to have 4 classes of armour for infantry, and more classes for vehicles and M/Cs ?
I know lots of people do not like to 'use numbers', but they are the best way of quantifying comparative values .
Simply using free values in comparison to get the score required for success delivers 1 & 2.
Armour value + Dice roll , compared to Armour Penetration value.
AV +D6 >AP no effect.
AV =D6 = AP = suppressed only.
AV +D6< AP= Suppressed +roll to damage .
Monstrous creatures conform to the same armor classes as infantry, vehicles are the only exception, because I'd like to keep them feeling and playing different. Plus having each side have its own armor class and armor save would be a nightmare.
As I said before, doing the 1 point of AP means reducing the save by one results in weird situations, where units that should be durable aren't (This is the main problem i'd heard about 2nd edition's modifier system) or units become immune to damage, which would be frustrating to play against.
I have not found a way to only use the 1-to-1 method that accurately approximates current save results. There needs to be a second element in place to correct for the inaccuracies. I guess you could do something like having cover reduce incoming attacks AP, but thats a bit odd. Another AP/AV system I'm thinking of has armor class allow you to ignore a certain number of the AP values before they start to modify your armor using the 1-to-1 method, though this route probably needs the range of AP values to expand beyond 0-6.
@ Lord Blackfang.
if you want to write a cleaned up version of 40k 2nd ed, as a large skirmish game, that is a decent way to arrive at a cool skirmish rule set , like No Limits.
But if you want a battle game rules set for 40k, (3rd ed on wards, ) I would strongly suggest using Epic rules (Space Marine, and Armageddon,) as a starting point.
As the core rules cover all the basic interaction, and you can just add more detail to the resolution.
Trying to force backwards compatibility to WHFB , with modern type units, it always going to compromise the game development.
Because Land Raiders are not really chariots,Bolt guns are not bows, and swinging swords against shields is not the same as HMG type weight of fire vs flack vests.
(Skirmish games sort of work because there are larger spaces between units to manouver in.Ancient war is all about manouvering to get the best close combat match ups with ranged attacks in support.)
I can totally understand the resistance to change .It takes ages to learn to over complicated 40k rules!
The core of the 40k game should remain unchanged! Units still spend time in game moving shooting and assaulting ,and players still will roll to hit , roll to save and roll to wound/damage.
But how this is explained in the rules should be more defined because the rules should be in synergy with the 40k background, not WHFB background!
Using WHFB game mechanics and resolution methods for 3rd ed 40k battle game to the present day , has always been about maximizing short term sales, and nothing to do with improving the game play.(The corporate management over rule the game developers every edition!)
I agree that the rules should be remade from the ground up, but I'm not going to commit to a project that would require rewriting all the Codexes. I already know how that ends.
Hi lord_ blackfang.
The current codex books are hardly a shining example of good internal and external balance. And most players have to fix the imbalance in agreed ways!
So re-writing the codex books with clearly defined rules , and more direct stats, would be a lot easier to actually improve the level of balance across all lists.IMO.
For example if all units have the same stat line , direct comparison is much easier.
How do you compare AS 4+ to AV 12?
What about a weapon that has AP 4 to a weapon with AP 2?(There is no difference if you are facing IG , but a huge difference if you are facing SM.)
However.
AV 12 is exactly 9 better than AV 3.
And AP 6 has exactly the same value against AV 2 as it has vs AV 4.(AV 2 needs to roll 5+, and AV 4 only needs to roll 3+ to save.)
If you just clean up 2nd ed , you will need to re -write all the codex books .In fact any significant changes to the game will need changes to the PV , and so need agreement among players.
A clean well defined rule set is so much easier to balance.(Most other game manage it with a couple of years of open beta.)
Also if you use direct comparative values, it makes PV calculation a lot more accurate than a ton of exceptional conditional exceptions.(Special rules.)
I also think units should be costed at the unit level, as this removes any synergistic anomalies in the elements in the unit.
Mind you I am looking at this as a long term game development project.I am no too bothered how long it takes to get it 'right.'
(Its just a part of my hobby I enjoy.)
Direct comparison of armor values and penetration=Binary system you just berated? Yes? o_O
There is in fact, contrary to the assumption of what has been said in a previous post(s) a 'Suppression' mechanic in place as it stands, it's called 'Assault grenades'. It just doesn't feel like what you all seem to want. So go rewrite that idea into your new rules. It already sits at the right timing anyway.
Rav1rn is onto something though it just needs some refinement. I wouldn't dismiss it right away.
@Lord blackfang.
No worries, do what you want to get the results you are after.
@KnuckleWolf.
A direct comparison to give a proportional interaction of 2 variables is not a binary system is it?
As this takes the difference in both values to give proportional results.
So a AV of 4 saves on a 2+, 3+,4+,5+ , 6+ ,etc depending on the AP of the weapon hit.
Just saying that armour stops ANY hit on a 'X'+, or it does not work at all if the weapon has an AP of' 'Y'.
Is the sort of 'binary system'I was referring to. A Fixed value for pass or fail.
(I may have used the wrong terminology sorry. )
Suppression exists in current 40k in the form of 'bolt on rules and limited effects.'Simply because suppression is not part of the ancient warfare found in WHFB and by extension it is not part of the core rules for 40k.
Where as a new rule set which allows suppression to be a natural part of the basic damage resolution would be more intuitive IMO.
In fact that sort of sums up the problem with 40k rules, IMO the game play wants to reflect the modern tactical battle , but it can only achieve this by tacking on extra rules to get there.
@Rav1n.
Why do you want to keep vehicles separate?
If you think of armour value simply as the equivilent thickness of armour plating.Then we can simply map them to numerical values.
And then we can simply say AP is the amount of armour thickness the weapon would penetrate.
This allows us to use the same resolution for a very wide range of units .
Because an IG tank has much thicker armour than an IG flack vest.Does not mean we have to resolve damage against it differently does it?
I understand this is not 'super accurate ' but it a simple method to recreate the natural resolution in a simple way.
Rather than the AP modify the AS,
Why not simply let the AV modify the AP?
Eg
If a weapon has AP 5, the model has an AV 2.
Now the weapon has an AP of 3,(5-2=3) roll over 3 to save.
Yes this means you let the numbers get as big a range as needed.(They are not tied to a dice roll score.But generate the dice roll score in opposed comparison.)
I may not have explained that too well sorry.
Hi Rav1n.
I am just writing this to try to clarify the idea I proposed in the last post.
You wrote.
'I have not found a way to only use the 1-to-1 method that accurately approximates current save results. There needs to be a second element in place to correct for the inaccuracies. I guess you could do something like having cover reduce incoming attacks AP, but thats a bit odd. Another AP/AV system I'm thinking of has armor class allow you to ignore a certain number of the AP values before they start to modify your armor using the 1-to-1 method, though this route probably needs the range of AP values to expand beyond 0-6.'
So to respond to what you posted directly.
1) I think most people would prefer cover to modify the chance to see/hit the target. Making cover a separate or additional armour save is not as intuitive.(I agree with you. )
2) The idea to have armour class ignore a certain number of AP values before the AP starts to takes effect is a good idea.(It replicates the actual physical interactions of the weapon hit on armour.Armour modifies the weapon hit power, not the other way around! I totally agree with this concept! )
3) You are right that to include the diverse and varied weapon and armour interaction found in 40k , with one system.Requires us to use a range of values beyond 0 to 6.(Again I am in agreement. )
I can understand that it may look weird to some people to have values on the stat line that are not 1 to 10 or 1 to 6.
But AV of vehicles go up to 14 do they not?
So if we extend these armour values down to cover all units , we get the 'armour thickness rating of all models' , from 1 to 14.(Or higher if we include super heavies.)
This allows us to define in more detail how well protected each model in 40k is in a simple and easily compared way.
(An AV of 4 is 2 less than and AV of 6.And it is 6 less than an AV of 10. Whats the difference between AS 5+ and 5+ Inv, and AS of 3+ a 6+ inv, and a AV of 10?)
And now we can work out what comparative Armour penetration value weapons should have.And we can give these values of what ever is necessary to get the resulting save roll we want.
In this way the D6 roll for armour save represents the variables in the interaction, the angle of impact, the weaker spots in the armour etc.
(It does not define the artificially fixed value that may need to be modified by an opposing value.)
In short you have to roll over the difference between AP and AV to make your save.
I can understand the concern over having 'odd' values on a stat line .but if we are happy with AV 12 , why not stretch to AP 17?
And some weapons would auto penetrate some armour, and some armour would be naturally invunerable to some weapons.
However, I prefer natural scaling , to additional fixed values (inv saves.)
I believe if we use a simple and intuitive weapon and armour interaction like this one for the new 40k rules.It opens up the space for more tactical options like suppression.(And in advance rules different weapon and armour types, Ablative, Reactive, and Reflective, vs Kinetic, Energy and Chemical.).
Please post and concerns or questions you may have.I know I am not to good at explaining things...
Personally I love a system that is not just numerical, but has weapons classes and each unit has resistances based on the different weapons. Of course, this would require a game that is a little less complex in terms of the numbers of miniatures and vehicles that are running around, but more complex in terms of what the miniatures are capable of and their stats/abilities. (or a real battle game where each squad is treated like a unit) And why shouldn't they? As hobbyists, wouldn't we rather do more with less?
Anyway like in Infinity, you have face to face rolls... you essentially are making two rolls a roll for the gunfight itself (both mini's shooting at each other) and a roll for the armor. If weapons are divided by class, then you would add or subtract to the miniature's armor save roll. For instance you would add + 3 for bulletproof cover. You could even have a convenient little card for each unit's stats... resistances are shown by the symbol for the weapon type next to either a green or a red number that shows their resistances.
Lets say they are hitting you with an energy weapon and you have 'reactive' armor, well reactive armor is not useful against this kind of weapon so you subtract -3 to your roll.
Lets say you a a space demon and you are being hit with an energy weapon. Well, you are already made of energy so this might have very little effect, lets say +6 to your armor save rolls. Conversely, you might get a -6 if you are being hit with a blade weapon!
I'll say it again, this will FORCE people not to spam and to play to the fluff, and to play tactically because every unit will be weak against something, if you build your army out of one kind of unit you are screwed.
This way you can represent heavy armor (resistant to more weapon types) and light armor (only resistant to some weapon types) unit by unit. And you can really build a unit that looks exactly like what it is supposed to be, using the rules. And you can build certain weaknesses into every kind of unit, to make the game more tactical, not just a 'beatstick' game. In other words, winning the game is entirely dependent on having certain units attack other certain units and being in the right place at the right time to provide suppression fire or support and so on.
Ok, so as a revision to the proposed two-component armor system.
Reduce the armor save by 1 for every point of AP (EX: AP 2 reduces a 4+ to a 6+)
Light = No reduction to AP Medium = Ignores 1 point of AP Heavy = Ignores 2 points of AP Superheavy = Ignores 3 points of AP
Has some problems, specifically for 4+ save models, where against AP 2 weapons (Boltguns, Shuriken Catapults, etc) they get a 5+ instead of a 4+, but they also get a 6+ against what were previously AP4 weapons now, not an equal tradeoff but it's something. Much simpler now, but that simplicity has repercussions that make it much less accurate to current save rules.
There are one or two other directions in the works, but this is looking the most likely. Thoughts?
On another note, but running in the theme of this thread I think (which is crazy bananas but I like it) is why doesn't the community use a system, that is not meant to patch up 40k, but rather an uber generic system that sort of operates like an open source rules design?
I was in a conversation with a dude at the game club the other day and he was actually complaining that all these companies that come out with rules often change the rules in negative ways later on... on purpose because that's what they do to sell models.... make some models good and others suck (the new edition of FOW was brought up)... and it got me thinking, could companies like GW even survive without writing rules?
I'll compare rules to language.... when rules are successful, you don't think about them at all. They are merely the vocabulary you use to express yourself in a game, and invisible unless you start to think about them, just like you never think about the words and grammar you are speaking with, just what you are speaking about. Rules also are best when they are universal, just like the language that everyone knows is better just because everyone knows it. By far the most useful trait of a language is the number of speakers, the same way that 40k is a useful ruleset to know merely because there are so many players (that is changing because the rules are so shoddy).
So that is my theory. Miniatures games are a special kind of game, not like a computer game or a chess game because the physical components of the game are so resource-intensive. Therefore it's in all of our best interest to have rules that allow us to use our miniatures in the most efficient way possible, and serve our needs first! Rules are far better off being something the community owns, open-source style, so that they can be generic, universal and leave the companies free just to create awesome miniatures and background IP material like they should! If their miniatures are great and they manage the company responsibly and price them accordingly there is no reason they wouldn't stay in business, and probably be better off since more people would be enjoying their miniatures in games and the market would grow. If such a system grew large enough, there would be no going back and companies would be forced (or glad to, in the case of smaller ones that just want to make cool models) work with the open-source ruleset.
And furthermore I'll bring up the problems the community is having with the ruleset... we are unable to play armies that fit the background fluff, and unable to play balanced games without spamming or ignoring whole classes of unit such as vehicles, and any fixes we can try are quickly made obsolete due to the way GW is pooping out rules and rulesets, which also tend to invalidate the armies we've lovingly collected. Any homebrew fixes or band-aids need to be balanced against the rest of the game, and unless they are incredibly simple, need to be massively playtested against the rest of the game the 12 or w/e how many codices there are in order to gain acceptance with the community, and the rest of the game is constantly changing in the time it takes to do that playtesting. That is what I've observed with the homebrew efforts on 40k... they just can't keep up. But again, if people just worked on a ruleset that you could literally play anything with because it is so generic but customizable (with a unit-building function perhaps) then adapting to new releases would simply be a matter of calculating out the points for it according to the open-source rules, depending on whatever you think it's representation in the game should be! As a community any efforts we make are far better served towards something that belongs to the community and is completely independent of miniatures companies and therefore stable enough to be playtested, the game aids sold, and the system gains acceptance in the community as a balanced and fun game... to play with any miniature!
@Rav1rn: Really smooth but as you pointed out its lost something. I like the first version better but still think its too wordy. Could you cut down the number of classes? I pointed out earlier how well StarCraft II did with only three. I might go so far as to try two (Light Armor/Heavy armor) And then three weapon types (Energy, Ballistic, Explosive). I don't know, the first drafts outputs just sounded so right on :(
@Meade: I'm a staunch supporter of open source games and your right it would do well if only it came to pass. Shortly after sixth ed 40k came out and the clamor for change really kicked into high gear I like so many started working on my own system as a experiment and something to do to fiddle with as I was laid up with broken foot and couldn't do my other hobbies. I started it in a notebook as "d10 Battle: the WarGame Companion to d20 the Roleplaying Game". But as you point out in a roundabout way, the community is its own worst enemy here as it can't decide on any thing and everyone thinks their way is best and so on and so on. See above thread as evidence. One solution that I've tried to get momentum behind is the creation of modular cores of game mechanics that can be stuck together. 40k does this already as do many tabletop games. To that end I've made a rough draft core for units statistics, combat, terrain, and turn structure. But no one will ever get behind mine or anyone else's particularly on the net where we can't meet and actually test. Cheers! And they said the Internet would change the world for the better hahahahaha
Hi again.
@Meade/KnuckleWolf. I think the core problems with developing a generic rule set to cover games similar to 40k, are these.
1) Because GW will not define 40k clearly , (so they sell it to a wider audience.)Some players want a more detailed skirmish game, (Skirmish sized minatures,)some want a larger battle game(huge model collections, ), some want more narrative synergy, some want more utility in units etc.
So if you picked 100 gaming groups they would all probably want 100 different versions of 40k.(GW plc version of 40k is poor because it is driven by compromises to try to appeal to everyone.)
2) When people sit down to write a new rule set, they often let their favorite game influence their decisions.If they have only played 40k for example they try to see how to fit the current unit roles and special abilities into the new rules.(Loads of great ideas are discarded due to 'I do not see how that would work with 40k ', argument.'
3)Younger folks soak up data like sponges, and prefer to learn rules , than learn in game tactics.(This is a proven medical fact ,peoples brain functions change as they get older. I am not trying to be offensive.)
So to appeal to older gamers a straightforward rule set focused on tactical interaction, is preferable.But younger gamers see this as too 'simple to be fun'.Younger folks need a level of 'chrome' the older folks do not.
So to get anywhere we need to agree on what we a re trying to achieve.A clear design brief.
That way if we want multiple rule set we can develop them , in tandem and everyone know what the objective of each rule set is.
Also it is very important to get the core game mechanics and resolution methods refined before we even look at the level of 'chrome' we may want to add later.
My own preference for a generic rule set it to define detailed element interaction.Then you can determine the element as a single model for skirmish games, or a unit for larger battle games.
Same rules just substitute models for units , or units for models .
So new players can learn to play the game with 12 minatures a side, and then when they get a bigger collection and more experience they can play 12 units a side , with the same rule set!
(If they want to..)
@Rav!n.
How about we restrict what weapons can be fired at what types of unit to limit the need for lots of classes?
So weapons get a target class, Light and Heavy.As well as units getting a Light and Heavy armour classification too.
This way light armoured units get saves from 6+ down to 2+,only l being effected by weapons with the light armour target class.(Small arms anti personnel support weapons.)
And heavy units get saves from 6+ down to 2+ ,(Super heavy infantry , vehicle & Mcs.)only being effected by weapons with the heavy armour target class.(Anti tank type weapons.)
Epic Armageddon uses this simple distinction between Anti Personnel and Anti Tank.(AP and AT)
We could just list the weapons armour save modifiers as AP and AT.
Eg
Bolt gun AP 2 AT -(No effect vs heavy targets )
Lascannon AP - (no effect vs light targets , too agile to target effectively)AT 5.
Missile launcher AP 1(Frag) AT 4(Krak)
This would allow the same rules for all units,(Armour save vs modifier, .then strength vs toughness.) but use 2 tiers to keep weapon and armour interaction more intuitive.
@Meade: I'm a staunch supporter of open source games and your right it would do well if only it came to pass. Shortly after sixth ed 40k came out and the clamor for change really kicked into high gear I like so many started working on my own system as a experiment and something to do to fiddle with as I was laid up with broken foot and couldn't do my other hobbies. I started it in a notebook as "d10 Battle: the WarGame Companion to d20 the Roleplaying Game". But as you point out in a roundabout way, the community is its own worst enemy here as it can't decide on any thing and everyone thinks their way is best and so on and so on. See above thread as evidence. One solution that I've tried to get momentum behind is the creation of modular cores of game mechanics that can be stuck together. 40k does this already as do many tabletop games. To that end I've made a rough draft core for units statistics, combat, terrain, and turn structure. But no one will ever get behind mine or anyone else's particularly on the net where we can't meet and actually test. Cheers! And they said the Internet would change the world for the better hahahahaha
That's interesting and it confirms my own experience. As for myself I am just nerdy with rules writing, it's something I enjoy thinking about and I think every game I ever played I enjoyed making my own contribution to it. Even if nobody gets behind our rules it is still a useful exercise to think them up.
I think the net is the place to BS about this stuff because only here will you find other crazy people that are into it! I think the game club is the place to actually attempt it however. Only a real life community of gamers can support such a thing and they really take a lot of convincing, the first step is for the group to move on from religiously playing one kind of game. Goaded by the recent year of GW rules fail, which at this point makes the game near unplayable, we've done GW scenarios and gotten into x-wing. Recently i've done a few scenarios that worked out well. My goal for the moment is to learn as many different games as I can, it really helps become familiar with the different ways rules can work especially when you are talking about more than 2 or 3 games.... actually I'd consider myself a collector of rulesets now (I think I have about 10 or so on my shelf)!
The people in my club are nuts about the 40k universe and all have 40k models, so it makes sense for me to experiment with skirmish and conversions from other systems (got my eyes on deadzone) to convince them that 40k can be played better in other rules systems.
I just thought, why not make personal armor and vehicle armor the same as toughness, going from 0 to 10 and working in the same table?
Say marines have T4 and armor 4 (just an example). They are shot by a weapon with S5 and AP 3. The number to penetrate armor would be 5+, and would need a 3+ to wound.
Vehicles would have armor from 6 to 10 and no toughness. Poisoned weapons would have high Str and low AP; haywire weapons on th eother hand would have very low Strenght and very high AP,
This system doesn't increase the number of rolls, allows for a more nuanced variety of different armor, and doesn't have the weird situation where a weapon could be extremely good at blowing up tanks but would do nothing to personal protection.
So to get anywhere we need to agree on what we a re trying to achieve.A clear design brief.
That way if we want multiple rule set we can develop them , in tandem and everyone know what the objective of each rule set is.
Also it is very important to get the core game mechanics and resolution methods refined before we even look at the level of 'chrome' we may want to add later.
My own preference for a generic rule set it to define detailed element interaction.Then you can determine the element as a single model for skirmish games, or a unit for larger battle games.
Same rules just substitute models for units , or units for models .
So new players can learn to play the game with 12 minatures a side, and then when they get a bigger collection and more experience they can play 12 units a side , with the same rule set!
(If they want to..)
Yes! That I can get behind. Design the game around the 'elements' keeping them to around 12 or so. There is no reason a single element can't function in a skirmish game, then be scaled up to battle game, or used in a different scale battle game like 15mm (in my opinion 28mm is not proper for battle games).
There also is no reason that a generic system can't work for both a fantasy and sci-fi setting (steampunk too). Especially fantasy sci fi... many similar themes are just ported over. This is another reason why I don't understand the fixation on armor saves. IMO units shouldn't have armor/invul/blah blah saves (and toughness is just another save, the most important one), just ONE SAVE TO RULE THEM ALL and various modifiers for resistances, cover. All of the various conversions they use like toughness, invul, armor, are all various roundabout ways of deciding, is this miniature hurt or not, does it have natural defenses to negate this kind of attack or not. And it forces everything else like psychic/magical warfare, poisons, differences in weapon types like fire vs. energy vs. ballistic, all to be tacked on in awkward ways. For example, why should the system have so much detail when it comes to different types of bullets, but offer nothing when considering a flame attack, or a disintegrator beam, or an energy blade? And how is a layer of plate armor differing from an extremely tough layer of skin?
Armor/invul saves are something I'd like to point out a general concept with; when trying to refine a generic ruleset, you really have to make the mental distinction between game mechanics, and 'fluff elements tacked onto the game'.
GW is the worst offender when you consider the problem of fluff elements tacked onto a game. They introduce things because 'wouldn't it be cool if this guy could do this stuff and that". In order to make a generic system, you need to refine things to the ultimate basics: number of rolls, types of rolls, types of moves/orders. You need to have a very refined idea of 'this is where the core mechanics go' and 'this is where the unit's character/fluff etc' goes. I dream of playing these games with units that have more character, but that does not necessarily mean more rules! Thinking about how the same rules can apply across genre boundaries and scale boundaries is a great way to start.
@Rav1rn: Really smooth but as you pointed out its lost something. I like the first version better but still think its too wordy. Could you cut down the number of classes? I pointed out earlier how well StarCraft II did with only three. I might go so far as to try two (Light Armor/Heavy armor) And then three weapon types (Energy, Ballistic, Explosive). I don't know, the first drafts outputs just sounded so right on :(
We can't really cut down the number of classes using only this system, the 5+ and 6+, 4+, 3+, and 2+ armor types all play so differently from each other with the AP system. So far as using weapon types to differentiate effects of different armor types, it'd be amazing on a smaller scale skirmish game, but i feel that the scale 40K is running at would play too slowly and not be able to use that system to full effect, there's just too much to do to work through all of those different reactions in one turn. That being said, the critical results system talked about for the past few pages is very exciting, and would be a great place to bring these weapon-type-effects into play.
Another idea i'm working with is each armor interacts with AP a bit differently.
Light: Each point of AP reduces armor by 1
Medium: Ignores the first 2 points of AP Heavy: Ignores the first 2 points of AP, takes a change of 2 AP points to reduce save (AP 3 and 4 both reduce the 3+ to a 4+, AP5 and 6 reduce it to a 5+)
Superheavy: Ignores the first 3 or 4 points of AP, takes a change of 2 AP points to reduce save
I don't like this one as much, it's got a bit too much going on and only fits the current results a little better than the simple version.
Say marines have T4 and armor 4 (just an example). They are shot by a weapon with S5 and AP 3. The number to penetrate armor would be 5+, and would need a 3+ to wound.
Vehicles would have armor from 6 to 10 and no toughness. Poisoned weapons would have high Str and low AP; haywire weapons on th eother hand would have very low Strenght and very high AP,
I like the idea of poison and haywire replacing their special rules with in-game mechanics, definitely need to try to work these in.
@Rav!n.
How about we restrict what weapons can be fired at what types of unit to limit the need for lots of classes?
So weapons get a target class, Light and Heavy.As well as units getting a Light and Heavy armour classification too.
This way light armoured units get saves from 6+ down to 2+,only l being effected by weapons with the light armour target class.(Small arms anti personnel support weapons.)
And heavy units get saves from 6+ down to 2+ ,(Super heavy infantry , vehicle & Mcs.)only being effected by weapons with the heavy armour target class.(Anti tank type weapons.)
Epic Armageddon uses this simple distinction between Anti Personnel and Anti Tank.(AP and AT)
We could just list the weapons armour save modifiers as AP and AT.
Eg
Bolt gun AP 2 AT -(No effect vs heavy targets )
Lascannon AP - (no effect vs light targets , too agile to target effectively)AT 5.
Missile launcher AP 1(Frag) AT 4(Krak)
This would allow the same rules for all units,(Armour save vs modifier, .then strength vs toughness.) but use 2 tiers to keep weapon and armour interaction more intuitive.
This is the best I can do....
My concern with this system is exactly the example you gave for the lascannon, as you're trying to justify the system by replacing what should be one system's domain with another's. If the lascannon is too unwieldy to effectivly target smaller targets, shouldn't that be the concern of the "to Hit" system rather than the AP system? And if it does hit, if it can blast through tank armor shouldn't it annihilate a guardsman armor?
Also, restricting what can be shot at what is a blow that will only polarize units further, and make generalist units less effective than they are now. Why would i ever take a lascannon on my tactical marines if i could never fire it at the models the rest of my unit is shooting? Sure you could put some other systems in place to make this issue less of a problem (like your proposed "Target Zone" rule) but its still something that seems to get in the way.
It also removes an element of control from the player, as the system is now dictating what the "correct" use of weaponry is instead of the player deciding. I have a similar problem with the old "Target Priority" rules or whatever they were called where you could only shoot at the nearest unit unless you passed a test. Cool idea, not the greatest implementation, and i'm not entirely convinced there is a way to do it well.
That being said, i really love the idea of seperating AP and AT values, and am going to have to play around with it for a while to see if i can get it can shine. I already see tons of potential for "In-AP differences". For example, AP4 has basically been the catchall AP value for a while, with everything not amazing at penetrating, but not bad at it getting lumped in there. Now we can break those weapons up a bit more. If a Heavy Bolter, Autocannon, and Assault Cannon are all AP4, but have varying AT scores (say 2, 3, and 4 respectively) then that opens up a lot more options.
Unfortunately it still suffers the problems of using only the 1-to-1 method without a second system in play, and if we add Armor Class in, at that point we have 4-5 different components of the AP/Save system, which may be getting a bit too high. I do like the idea of the "Superheavy" armor class using the AT values instead of AP values though, done wrong it could lead to a lot of abuse, but i want to work with this idea.
rowenstin wrote: I just thought, why not make personal armor and vehicle armor the same as toughness, going from 0 to 10 and working in the same table?
Say marines have T4 and armor 4 (just an example). They are shot by a weapon with S5 and AP 3. The number to penetrate armor would be 5+, and would need a 3+ to wound.
Vehicles would have armor from 6 to 10 and no toughness. Poisoned weapons would have high Str and low AP; haywire weapons on th eother hand would have very low Strenght and very high AP,
This system doesn't increase the number of rolls, allows for a more nuanced variety of different armor, and doesn't have the weird situation where a weapon could be extremely good at blowing up tanks but would do nothing to personal protection.
The better question is, why do you need to separate toughness, armor saves, and 'armor penetration' (wtf) in the first place? Why roll the same conversion twice? If I told you my fancy new game required you to roll to hit, then to roll to hit again, would you be excited about it? This is why GW rules are so twisted they get confused between their rules for MC's and for vehicles.
Vehicles, infantry, creatures, they are all machines of one kind or another. basic human beings, the standard for any game, usually go down with the swing of an axe or being hit by a bullet or w/e. certain armored beings are immune to other kinds of weaponry. It all can be represented by one roll, all you need to do is determine by a unit's stats what class of weapon they have and what they are vulnerable to.
I don't think there's much wrong with the sequence of hitting, penetrating armour, resolving damage.
In case of infantry I always found it odd that you determined a wound BEFORE penetrating its armour.
It also gives you 3 ways of differing units:
* making them harder to hit (how fast/hidden it is, maybe?)
* making them tougher to penetrate (how armoured it is)
* making them more resistant to wounds (how tough it is)
Shandara wrote: I don't think there's much wrong with the sequence of hitting, penetrating armour, resolving damage.
In case of infantry I always found it odd that you determined a wound BEFORE penetrating its armour.
It also gives you 3 ways of differing units:
* making them harder to hit (how fast/hidden it is, maybe?)
* making them tougher to penetrate (how armoured it is)
* making them more resistant to wounds (how tough it is)
I don't have a problem with to hit rolls, just separating toughness/armor/armor penetration into three classes.
Wouldn't a unit that has thick hide or thick armor be more resistant to being wounded automatically? What is the difference between a guy in a robot suit with an armored shell, and a guy driving a tank with wheels? Essentially none. Some units might take more punishment before going down (wounds, hit points).
If we've already determined through dice rolling that a unit is 'hit', then why are we giving them a 'cover save' which if you pass it, means that you like hit a rock instead? Uh, isn't that just another way of saying, you didn't hit? Now you see the logic in having cover be a modifier to hit, not to wound.
All of these problems can be solved simply by giving weapons a class (which you limit to like 6 or 8, and combine different classes), and a damage value (the number to roll dice by) then unit by unit, modelling them according to what different types of weapons they are resistant to. You have a (pierce) class of weapon, for example. the weapon hits everyone with the same DMG, but certain units have either weakness to pierce or resistance to pierce, and they modify the roll accordingly.
Look at it in terms of math. take a D10. lets say you are firing on a model with an armor sv, versus one without. In this system, lets say the strength of the weapon is 5 (we already determined it hit) so the victim needs to pass or fail (do they take a wound). Say you are using an armor save system. First you roll to wound, in this case we are using a toughness stat lets say it's 5 and you get a 50/50 chance to wound, without the armor save. Lets say you then add a 5+ armor save, that would make the chances of you saving the wound is 75%.
Well I could do a very similar thing with a modifier. Lets say I wanted to build a unit that was well armored, I would give it a +2 resistance in this system (since the math prevents me from giving +2.5) to normal weapons... lets say impact, blade, energy. But it would have zero resistance to (pierce) weapons. So when I'm rolling a normal wound save, I'd add 2 to my save for a 3+ save, it comes out to roughly the same odds: 70% success rate compared to 75%. The only real difference here is that in one system, I would be checking a stat, then rolling two dice. In my system, I'd be checking a stat, and rolling one die. The math is the same. The work is 50% less. I will say it again, toughness is just another save. Don't even get me started on 'feel no pain' rolls, oh my god. Now if you use a D20 system, then it's even easier to create detail in terms of how certain weapons affect certain units without piling on the saves.
So what makes my system better or worse? Well it's worse because you have to put more information into the statline, specifically a small table where you list (hopefully in a visually friendly way using symbols) the various resistances to different weapon types. It's also worse because you may need to do math in your head adding up modifiers (this can be a little annoying at first in infinity but you get used to it). But keep in mind you are usually just adding or subtracting one modifier.
OTOH It's better because, you encode a vast order of magnitude more information and possibilities into your units, you explore different kinds of weaknesses and resistances that have themes in 40k using one system (such as weakness to purifying flame) and once you are familiar with the rules and the units, the game speeds up because you are making less die rolls.
The saves are done the way they are for speed. If i have to hand dice back and forth to do the rolls and saves in the "correct" order, it would take much much longer than me doing all of my rolls, then you doing all of your rolls, and there's no reason to when the math is the same. This is an issue that could be easily solved by having GW put "Designer's Notes" here and there explaining why some things are what they are.
"We know it doesn't make sense to roll cover saves with armor saves instead of right after the "To Hit" rolls, or to roll FnP after armor saves instead of right after wounding, but it means less dice are changing hands, which means a faster game!"
@Meade
A lot of the systems GW put into place make sense when you consider they are limited to a D6. You don't have the resolution necessary to use a whole bunch of modifiers, so splitting toughness and armor makes a lot of sense in that context. Not to mention it means that players play a role in their models death, instead of just sitting there removing models, which is what happens if you collapse armor and toughness into one value (unless you are letting player roll to beat the weapon's strength but lets not get into that).
Yes you can move to a D10 or D12 system, but you're going to run into the problem that people have D6's, and don't want to buy a whole bunch of new dice just to playtest a game. I was planning on running D12's, and despite the freedom the larger dice offered, i'm probably moving back to the D6 with heavily modified comparisons instead of the larger dice, because the audience you're aiming for is likely not going to spend money on dice when they could spend it on models.
Otherwise, many of the rules are done for the purpose of speed. Now, this is debatable, but i think going "I have a 5+ Feel no Pain save" would be faster than applying a FnP modifier and then rolling against that. It would be fairly easy to make Fnp just do something like (+1) toughness, but if the alternative is faster and has more player involvement, at the expense of it being less "streamlined", then i think it's a fair trade-off.
Now, having spent this entire post defending GW (ugh never thought i'd have to do that), there are a ton of problems, namely their need to have "as few dice rolls as possible" in all the wrong places. Why am i rolling for warlord traits and psychic powers, but cover is something that is almost worthless if you have a decent armor save? I'm slowly coming around to leaving Cover as distinct save, so long as everyone gets it, because it means that low armor models will actually get some sort of save to roll for, rather than just pulling models.
The better question is, why do you need to separate toughness, armor saves, and 'armor penetration' (wtf) in the first place? Why roll the same conversion twice? If I told you my fancy new game required you to roll to hit, then to roll to hit again, would you be excited about it? This is why GW rules are so twisted they get confused between their rules for MC's and for vehicles. .
Don't think I don't agree, I'd like a more streamlined system. Some of my favourite wargames are the DBA variants, where units aren't even classified strictly on what equipment they have, but how they behave and what battlefield tactics they follow. Also, a wargame where you can easily field 50 or more individual models need simple mechanics, unless you want to play for days.
That said, 40k evolved from antiquated, roleplaying like mechanics to what's today. Making a streamlined, "sensible" version would basically make it a completely ifferent wargame that happens to have space marines. In that case we can save a lot of effort: there are tons of sci-fi games out there, we just have to write the army lists for them, so I'm in favor of at least keeping the basic attack resolution.
Also, I'm in favor of keeping the d6 intead of d10 or d20, and there's so much variation within a d6. Using two rolls allows for a wider amount of possible results.
@Rav1n.
There is a natural gradation in weapon effects across a range of targets in the real world.
Weapons developed to be effective vs lots of small agile targets , spread out their effect/energy across a wide area.(A hail of machine gun bullets, HE fragmentation, chemical flame sprayers etc.)
Weapons developed to be effective vs large heavily armoured targets , put all their energy/effect onto a single point of contact.(AT rounds, APFSDS, HEAT , HESH etc.)
And there are weapons that bridge both types of target, but are less effective against each class than weapons designed specifically as 'anti personnel' or 'anti tank.'
A machine gun is light and can be brought into action quickly, (Quick to load, light enough to track fast targets.)
A large ordnance weapon takes a long time to re load, re charge.It is too clumbersome to track small agile targets that can be dealt with by lighter weaponry.
That is why real world tanks have main armament with AT /HE rounds for large high value targets, and machine guns to deal with infantry /light vehicles close in .
Also the ammunition for ordnance is usually limited , when compared to small arms.
So using a split weapon effect class AP/AT , is intuitive .(And can be explained to the player if needed.)
Allowing all weapons to be effective vs all targets , then having to add in additional rules and systems to artificially restrict the interaction after the event is just over complication for the sake of it.
Splitting the armour and armour save modifiers into 2 classes AP and AT is the simplest way to cover 40k 'saves on a d6' system elegantly.(Thats why Epic Armageddon used it!)
Using stats to clearly define the abilities of units and weapons in game is not restricting the player, it is informing them.So they can make their own choices.
I hope that explains my reasons with more clarity.(P.S what other game systems are you familiar with ?)
@All.
The systems GW use make sense when you look at the restrictions the game devs are put under.
Make it look and sound inspirational to drive sales. Everything has to be backward compatible, so do not change any thing too much..
Tons of other games allow , fast to learn tacticaly complex games only using a D6. (Practically every other game than 40k/WHFB !)So I would prefer to try our basic new system with D6 first , and upgrade the dice to D10 etc if needed.
For damage resolution it is important to keep 3 stage resolution .
To hit ,(Base score required to hit set by target/size skill, modified by cover ,etc.)
To save ,(Compare potential damage to armour protection to get chance(dice score) to save against damage.)
To damage.(penetrating weapon damage modified by targets resilience /toughness)
Mainly because of the wide variety of weapon functions and target types that can be covered in detail with a 3 stage resolution.
(EG simple incorporation of suppression for failed armour saves that do not take any other damage.)
(We use this convention;- attacker rolls to hit, defender picks up successful to hit dice and rolls saves with them, attacker pick up failed saves and rolls to damage, to speed up dice rolling.)
AFAIK, there are lots of good rule sets for modern-scifi skirmish games already in print.And there are lots of good modern battle games for 20mm to 6mm minatures.
But there are not any good modern battle games for 28mm heroic minatures. This is the type of rule set I would like to develop.
Here is the list of core game mechanics and resolution methods I think would be best fit.
Interactive game turn, alternating player activation , (units or phases.)
Direct representation stats for resolution methods.(Distance in inches, dice score required for success( or dice modifier) or number of dice rolled.
(I would prefer to use direct comparison of higher numerical value stats to widen scope of interaction if needed.).
Mobility is modified by terrain and suppression.(Expressed as how and how far the element may move.)
Universal 3 stage damage resolution.(Covers all weapon and target interaction.Applied to close combat and ranged.)
3 state morale system, OK suppressed , routed.
Set up and organisation ...
Force selection based on element availability set by theme of force./Game objectives to be covered by randomly drawn mission cards.
Can we agree on this basic outline ?
Are you ok with the ideas for set up and organisation in principle?
The better question is, why do you need to separate toughness, armor saves, and 'armor penetration' (wtf) in the first place? Why roll the same conversion twice? If I told you my fancy new game required you to roll to hit, then to roll to hit again, would you be excited about it? This is why GW rules are so twisted they get confused between their rules for MC's and for vehicles. .
Don't think I don't agree, I'd like a more streamlined system. Some of my favourite wargames are the DBA variants, where units aren't even classified strictly on what equipment they have, but how they behave and what battlefield tactics they follow. Also, a wargame where you can easily field 50 or more individual models need simple mechanics, unless you want to play for days.
That said, 40k evolved from antiquated, roleplaying like mechanics to what's today. Making a streamlined, "sensible" version would basically make it a completely ifferent wargame that happens to have space marines. In that case we can save a lot of effort: there are tons of sci-fi games out there, we just have to write the army lists for them, so I'm in favor of at least keeping the basic attack resolution.
Also, I'm in favor of keeping the d6 intead of d10 or d20, and there's so much variation within a d6. Using two rolls allows for a wider amount of possible results.
Agreed, there are more streamlined versions of sci-fi. Those versions however, translate nothing of the character of 40k and in most cases it is merely a more efficient (but probably more fun) way of pushing around a pile of marines and tanks for a couple hours.
That's why I think, if you are going to bother to rewrite rules at all, they need to offer something totally different and new, but something that is far more capable of expressing that flavor we know and love... at least one version of it. That's why I'd like to see a modern, skirmish based ruleset that has plenty of variation in terms of statlines and abilities built into the rules themselves. And, something more friendly to the 'fantasy sci-fi' genre but still maintaining a modern warfare feeling.
So using a split weapon effect class AP/AT , is intuitive .(And can be explained to the player if needed.)
...
For damage resolution it is important to keep 3 stage resolution .
To hit ,(Base score required to hit set by target/size skill, modified by cover ,etc.)
To save ,(Compare potential damage to armour protection to get chance(dice score) to save against damage.)
To damage.(penetrating weapon damage modified by targets resilience /toughness)
Mainly because of the wide variety of weapon functions and target types that can be covered in detail with a 3 stage resolution.
(EG simple incorporation of suppression for failed armour saves that do not take any other damage.)
(We use this convention;- attacker rolls to hit, defender picks up successful to hit dice and rolls saves with them, attacker pick up failed saves and rolls to damage, to speed up dice rolling.)
....
Certainly three stages are baked into the core of 40K.... How does AP vs AT work in your system of armor saves, though? I'd love to see an outline.
For my next playtest I've come up with a mechanic that adds a bit of risk management to both sides and makes Leadership scores a bit more prominent.
Instead of taking pinning tests and the like while taking fire, you accumulate suppression dice. Speaking in classic 40k terms, every time a unit would normally be called upon to take a pinning test, just put 2 dice next to it. Every subsequent time it is called upon to take a pinning test, add 1 more die.
A unit with any pinning dice on it at the start of its own turn takes a single Pinning check using ALL the dice. This determines whether the unit can act that turn or not.
Under this system, the attacker doesn't get "real-time updates" on whether the enemy is already pinned or not, so he has to decide whether to pour more firepower into the same target to improve his odds, or risk spreading out the pinning dice to other targets. The problem is, of course, that the odds of failing jump pretty rapidly. 3d6 is fair enough, giving even odds to Ld10, but anything above that makes a pass highly unlikely.
Addendum: Fearless units accumulate pinning dice as normal, but do not take the test. Instead, they remove all the dice but suffer one AP - wound per die.
A player could also "pay" for certain abilities, such as reactions during the enemy turn, by placing suppression dice on his own units.
Interesting, but the math gets one-sided as the number of dice increases, as you say.... unless you make it something besides a regular Ld test. "Roll all the dice and take the best two"? I dunno...
@SisterSydney.
I suggested the AP/AT system as an alternative to the AV vs AP system I previously discussed.It was my attempt to simplify Rav1ns multiple armour class & modifers system.
The idea of classing targets armour saves, and weapons armour modifiers was inspired by Epic Armageddons damage system.
(I tend to look a good battle game rules for ideas.)
Because a D6 only delivers a short range of possible results.IF you want to list armour save as a a nominal value 'X+' in a game setting as wide and as varied as 40k..
You have to either extend the range with additional rolls to save, and or supplimentary systems.(40k used inv saves and vehicle rules.)
OR simply divide the armour saves and effects into 2 overlapping groups.(Like Epic Armageddon does with AP and AT.)
If we say light armour saves 1+ to 6+, for all target with saves currently 6+ to 2+, (with inv saves going onto basic save to reach a minimum of 1+ save.)
And heavy armour saves 2+ to 6+ , for all targets with 2+ save and inv saves of 5+ or better,to AV 14.
Here is an example range of saves.
Light armour or 'Armour - Personal'(AP)
AP 6+ (Ork boy.)
AP 5+(IG Trooper.
AP 4+(Dire Avenger)
AP 3+ (Space Marine.)
AP 2+ (Ork Mega Nob)
AP 1+ (Chaos Lord, 3+ save 5 + inv.)
Heavy armour or 'Armour - Tactical assault .(AT)
AT 6+ Terminator Armour (2 + save and 5+ inv)and AV 10
AT 5+ Terminator Chaplin (2+ save and 4+ inv.) and AV 11
AT 4+ AV 12
AT 3+ AV 13
AT 2+ AV 14
So small arms only have an AP rating, and do not effect AT saves.
Support weapons can effect both types of target and have an AP and a AT modifier.(Often using a different projectile/fire mode.)
A fewsupport weapons are too large/clumbersome and or slow to load/recharge.And so are not really any use vs small agile targets and so only have an AT value .
Boltgun, AP 1/ AT -
Missile launcher AP1 (Frag) /AT 2 (Krak)
Rail Gun AP -/ AT 3
These values are open to adjustment obviuosly.And vehicles would need to be given toughness and wound equivalents.
It is the simplest way to use armour saves and modifiers across all units .
Ah, so AP and AT are two different scales, each rated 1-6. As long as you're committed to using d6s and stats that directly say "roll over/under this number on the die to succeed," yes, that sounds like the most elegant solution. That said, my preference is still for an open-ended scale from 0 to infinity, where you roll 1d6 (or whatever) and add it to your stat, then see if you beat the target difficulty. More complex but not, I think, unmanageably so and worth it for the open-endedness it provides.
lord_blackfang wrote:Instead of taking pinning tests and the like while taking fire, you accumulate suppression dice. ....A unit with any pinning dice on it at the start of its own turn takes a single Pinning check using ALL the dice. .... The problem is, of course, that the odds of failing jump pretty rapidly. 3d6 is fair enough, giving even odds to Ld10, but anything above that makes a pass highly unlikely.
SisterSydney wrote:Interesting, but the math gets one-sided as the number of dice increases, as you say.... unless you make it something besides a regular Ld test. "Roll all the dice and take the best two"? I dunno...
"Best of two"? That would mean the more suppression dice you take, the better your chances would be of passing the Leadership test! Surely you mean "worst of two," you mathematical illiterate. What kind of ignoramus could possibly have posted such an oh wait that was me.
I'll do it your way in the first playtest, so Xd6 pick two highest.
Also working out a patch for fliers to make a clear cut distinction between gunships and interceptors, because the Vendetta has absolutely no business winning dogfights.
@lord_blackfang.
In reguard to fliers, how would you feel about using mission types for fliers?
Lots of war games split air support into;-
A) Combat Air patrol, (fighters shooting up enemy aircraft.)
B) Ground attack , (fighters/light bombers making straffeing and bombing runs.)
C) Transport, Air lifting troops into drop zones.
CAP missions ONLY intercept enemy Aircraft.
Ground attack and transport missions can be attacked by enemy CAP.The enemy CAP attacks first.
Unless the Ground Attack /Transport mission has a Friendly CAP.In which case the aircraft on CAP mission fiight and the Ground attack /Transport air craft make it through without being attacked by the enemy CAP.
Would you like to make air units a little bit more realistic?
(EG they take a flight path across the table and attack/deploy troops in one place along the flight path.)
I haven't read the whole thread, but I'll throw some of my ideas out.
1) Armor value for vehicles is an issue that overly complicates the game. You end up with anti-tank weapons that turn a Land Raider inside out and merely punch a whole in a Carnifex, who keeps coming unhindered. AV should go away and all models based on wounds, armor save and toughness. Want to make something immune to bolters, give it toughness 8 and move on. Want to allow something to be whittled down by heavy bolters, make it toughness 6 with more wounds and 4+ save. A Land Raiders should be toughness 9 with 4 wounds, 2+ save. Couple railguns take it out fairly easily, while it basically ignores autocannons. Some anti-tank weapons need to do multiple wounds if people insist on being able to one shot certain vehicles.
2) Any rule that says "roll to determine" should be changed to be a fixed number, a points per ability bought or "choose one of the following".
3) Wargear bought non-character models in the squad should be picked up by other squad members if the model carrying it dies. Basically, pull wargear models last. Sergeants and similar should get a "look out" sir, meaning their buddy could jump in front of the bullet. It boils down to certain armies get more screwed by current wound allocation rules than others because of the number of unique configurations in the squad (hormaguants vs SM tactical, 0 v 3).
4) Force org chart needs to be similar to Fantasy, minimum 50% core, max 25% characters, rest however you want. Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy becomes non-core and we move on.
@Lanrak, sounds like another load of rules and exceptions to bolt onto a medieval battle game! How would you go about that without making it another mini-game unto itself?
@lord _blackfang.
Most other war games use aircraft as off table support, along with artillery and reserves.And I would prefer to include flier units in this way.
So they are not in the core game as such.But are added in with the other supporting elements to expand the depth and detail of the game play.
And I would rather let aircraft adopt natural supporting roles , along with other units in supporting roles.Than try to shoehorn them into the core game of ground war infantry and vehicles.
If the core game is well defined and elegantly written , additional systems can be easily incorporated without the level of confusion and complication found in 40k 6th ed.
I would simply have a option to request off table support in the initial command phase of the game turn.
All off table support units have their entry /aim point marked with a counter.(One real counter 3 dummy counters.)
Only one unit type of off table support may enter the table per turn. Reserve ground units,or artillery strike,or air support.
At the end of the game turn , in the resolution phase , the dummy markers are removed, and the actual entry/ Aim point is scattered if required.
Then the off table support arrives and is resolved , before any morale tests are made.(So everything is sorted out for the beginning of the next game turns Command phase.)
So fliers on ground attack and transport missions are covered in a similar way.
Entry points are placed in the Command Phase as normal .In the resolution phase the exit point /LZ point is placed by the owning player and scatters if required.
The ground attack fliers can attack one enemy unit along this flight path,(entry to exit point ) and transport units may land as near to the LZ as possible.(Transport fliers leave the table next turn by the shortest possible route.)
There are several ways to include CAP, and the way they attack other fliers.But Ill not go any further , in case you are not interested in this direction..
Anyone have any ideas on a actually balanced point system without getting heckled to death?
As it is now the only way i can think of setting it up is by multiplying the statistic by the number of times used in the general game to get the points.
Its starting to get very wonky with grenades and weapons added to the initial stats. as well very strange with things like terminators compared to sm and scouts. (68 scout, 74 for marines, 81 for terminators before weapons and wargear only base stats and armor)
Anyone have any ideas on a actually balanced point system without getting heckled to death?
As it is now the only way i can think of setting it up is by multiplying the statistic by the number of times used in the general game to get the points.
Its starting to get very wonky with grenades and weapons added to the initial stats. as well very strange with things like terminators compared to sm and scouts. (68 scout, 74 for marines, 81 for terminators before weapons and wargear only base stats and armor)
any of you mathamations out there have any ideas?
Yup, prepare for this to get very ugly very, very fast.
The way i've always run my experiments in this is by separating all the main elements of the model into 4 groups, melee offensive and defensive, and ranged offensive and defensive. All the individual elements of the category get plugged into some sort of formula, then the composite score of each category is added together for a final composite value, which is used to calculate the final cost.
Of course other miscellaneous factors such as grenades, movement speeds, special rules, and leadership must be accounted for after the fact, as none of these really apply to any of these 4 categories.
The things that are and aren't important get kind of weird though. The really counter-intuitive element is that the actual formulas you use aren't terribly important, there is no "correct" method. I've personally run 4 or 5 different formulas in an attempt to get everything right, all of them "valid" but of varying accuracy. My favorite (though probably least accurate) method was normalizing each composite score vs a standard value, then squaring each composite before adding them all together (was a breeze to calculate costs).
I tested the formulas against almost all the troops in the game, and I usually got within about 1 - 1.5 points of the models expected cost, except for eldar and dark eldar, they came out wrong no matter what formula i worked with, much to my dismay. There were always exceptions though, and often times points were waaaaay out of sync. Typically, the higher the models cost, the less accurate your formula is. I typically found that if the models expected cost is above 20 or so, you need to start rounding to the nearest five.
What is important though is making sure that "effectiveness" vs cost is not a linear relationship, it needs to be logarithmic. That is, the higher you increase the models "effectiveness", the more it costs to increase it further. Look at a tactical marine vs a terminator. A terminator is in no way almost 3 times as "effective" as a tactical marine, but the pricing isn't wildly off, though they are underpowered due to the meta.
This logarithmic relationship means that you cannot just buy the most expensive, most powerful model imaginable and have it perform just like an equivalent number of weaker, cheaper models. You have to leverage the strengths of the unit to make up for the increased cost.
This does have the risk of going horribly wrong if the formula is too harsh on higher cost models, which is arguably what has happened to 40K. I think we can agree that weight of dice has outstripped the strengths of the more "elite" armies somewhat, though its far from the level of game-breaking.
As far as costing units accurately as possible .There are a few factors that need to be taken into account.IMO.
1)As the most accurate costing is arrived at by comparative assessment.(To define the relationship and formula required.)
Then the system has to be written with this in mind, so using the same resolution methods across all elements makes this job much easier.(So the way units behave and interact are covered in the same way to make direct comparison easier.)
2) It is important to cover synergistic effects within a unit by costing the net effect of the unit.
3) After the unit have been costed accurately , then extensive play testing is needed to find the synergistic bonuses and penalties in different army composition .
However, if you are trying to cost a game like 40k accurately , then I have no idea where to start.As the units are randomly made up of randomly costed elements.And they have random bonuses and penalties applied randomly throughout the game.
When GW game devs realized some fans could actually cost units more accurately using objective comparison and reasonable level of maths.They panicked and chucked loads more 'random stuff' into the game to invalidate any attempt to improve balance through more accurate costing.
So now the best we can do is agree to a subjective assessment of the general comparison in 'normal play'.But that has to be imposed by a TO, or agreed by a small group.You can not apply these subjective improvements on everyone.(Even GW tell you you can make stuff up because they can not be bothered to 'develop a game properly'.)
That is is another reason why a re write may arrive at a balanced system faster then a '40k 6th ed fix.' because players have been trying to fix and balance 40k since 4th ed.
And having witnessed over a decade of good intentions and huge amounts of effort, only manage to achieve very little improvements.
I have not seen anything to make me believe the Warhammer Fantasy Battle Game in Space can be salvaged with out a major re-write.
I am sure that Rav1n and others would be very capable of accurately costing units if they were given a reasonable chance of success.
But WHFB in space version 3.0 to 3.6 does not give them any chance at all.
Is it still about a "6.5 edition" type thing or are people set on a major rewrite?
For damage resolution it is important to keep 3 stage resolution .
Why exactly? I'd be interested to hear what you think, because to me it looks like you could just roll toughness and armour into "defense" and speed things up a bit
Hi Dakkamite.
Well myself and others are looking at a 'complete re-write', and others are looking at 'major changes'.
But its all good extended hobby fun for me!And there have been loads of great ideas and discussions so far!
As far as the 3 stage damage resolution goes, it down to 2 reasons, scale and detail.
If its lots of 2mm to 15mm minis on a unit base, then they are seen as a 'blob' units .So the players are not that bothered about super detail. And a single attack /defence roll is fine.
BUT if a player has taken hours and hour lavishing time and effort to make a 28mm minature look as good as possible.They want the level of detail to be higher to represent their level of investment.
And the 3 stage process allows complex results to be built in simply on a stage by stage resolution .
it is possible to let the armuor value represent unit confidence , and weapon armour penetration represent threat level, to get a simple simulation of suppression built into the core damage resolution .
I have tried using 2 stage damage resolution in 40k re write before ,(2008 to 2010).
When we used Epic units in play test the players were happy enough, but it just 'felt wrong' when using 28mm minis. (We play a wide range of games , so I tend to look at good battle games for first play test /inspiration.)
So 2 stage resolution looks great on paper , and should work great in game, but it fails to clear a psychological hurdle in 40k players concept I did not expect!
But that could just be my group?
Also allowing the defender a save roll keeps the level of interaction higher ,than just the attacker rolling dice .
(Attacker rolls to hit, defender picks up successful hits and rolls saves, attacker picks up failed saves and rolls for damage.)
Played a test game today. Oh, how glorious the 4th edition terrain/LOS rules are. It actually matters where you put your units!
We didn't really get to test the suppression system much, because we foolishly played Nids vs Eldar and both armies have huge Fearless bubbles.
Our aircraft system worked well, I thought.
Basically you have two elevations. Low flight for ground attack / combat air drop, and high flight (what are the proper terms for these???) for combat air patrol. You declare your elevation at the start of your move. Fliers in low flight can attack ground units and be shot back (on 6s) but cannot shoot upwards. Fliers in high flight can only attack other fliers at their level or below and cannot be hit from the ground (except with Skyfire).
Gunship type craft then get a special rule that they cannot fire weapons if flying at high elevation, preventing them from dogfighting with interceptors while still allowing them to travel at a height where they can be safe from ground units.
At the end of the day, it does most of what Lanrak posted, just in a slightly different way. CAP doesn't really interact with ground units, gunships can't shoot interceptors.
That actually makes sense to me, cheers for the explanation.
Are you guys looking at shrinking the game a bit? I've found with this much detail and that many models its a bit of a slow and clunky mess.
I just want the game to stop getting in the way of fun. That'd be my goal for any sort of rewrite. Just the other day I had a dreadnaught ready to assault something but my boyz were already in combat with him, and they were unable to move out of the way at all... so the dread just sat there for a turn! Not fun.
@ Dakkamite.
My group and I are looking at focusing on the detail at the level of the element interaction .So detailed unit interaction in a battle game , and detailed model interaction in the skirmish game.
Both games types can use the same rules and stats.(So players can start with a few models a size for skirmish game to get the hang of the rules .And eventually as their collections grow , they can play the battle game if they want to.)
We are also focusing on writing rules to reflect 'modern warfare' in a straightforward and intuitive way. As you can use the fluff to explain any rules effects.Using modern warfare type units with modern warfare type rules need a lot less explaining!
It is preferable to base the interaction on modern warfare.An equal blend of mobility , firepower and assault fits our perception of what 40k should be.)
So far we have been playing a few games , to sort out the core mechanics and resolution methods.The action phases play through quite quickly.
Because we use the same resolution methods for all units.And use stats in a direct way to reduce the need to look up charts.
I am rubbish at explaining ideas, but I hope you get the basic concepts?
@lord _blackfang.
We both have developed different ways to solve fliers in 40k.
Mine was to introduce realistic time over table ..To get fliers to behave in a more synergistic way with modern warfare.
As you are writing a 'revised 6th edition' , your solution is probably the best fit for what you want to achieve.
lord_blackfang wrote: Played a test game today. Oh, how glorious the 4th edition terrain/LOS rules are. It actually matters where you put your units!
We didn't really get to test the suppression system much, because we foolishly played Nids vs Eldar and both armies have huge Fearless bubbles.
Our aircraft system worked well, I thought.
Basically you have two elevations. Low flight for ground attack / combat air drop, and high flight (what are the proper terms for these???) for combat air patrol. You declare your elevation at the start of your move. Fliers in low flight can attack ground units and be shot back (on 6s) but cannot shoot upwards. Fliers in high flight can only attack other fliers at their level or below and cannot be hit from the ground (except with Skyfire).
Gunship type craft then get a special rule that they cannot fire weapons if flying at high elevation, preventing them from dogfighting with interceptors while still allowing them to travel at a height where they can be safe from ground units.
At the end of the day, it does most of what Lanrak posted, just in a slightly different way. CAP doesn't really interact with ground units, gunships can't shoot interceptors.
All interesting. What were the LOS rules from 4th? I missed that one.
have you considered opposed rolls or face to face rolls, where the attacker and defender roll their die at once? Maybe if you really love the 40k to hit, to wound, to save sequence you might also like that better participation involved, just sayin'.
If you and your buddies are bothering with a complete rewrite of 40k rules I'd at least look at all the different options for rolling dice.... there are a ton out there that give far better variation even if you are sticking to D6's.
Complete rewrite is the only way to go, unless you are houseruling with a group (we call them garage gamers) that rarely play with others or pickup games, in that case houseruling you are better off. But everyone has their own opinion on how to fix 40k, and they will all disagree. Granted there are clear winners like the charge range rules and random list creation rules for 6E 40k that are the most unpopular.
SisterSydney wrote: All interesting. What were the LOS rules from 4th? I missed that one.
Area terrain blocked LOS between units on opposite sides, and models inside could only see and be seen within 6" of the border. Models and terrain had height categories assigned so you could exempt large models (so MCs and vehicles typically could be seen over forests and ruins but infantry could not).
This, together with the restriction that wounds could only be assigned to models within LOS of the attacker, meant that clever positioning actually prevented your models from being shot, as opposed to the "everyone can always see everyone else" we have now. And most units couldn't "Run" back then, so difficult terrain formed good choking points for assault armies, and shooty armies had to anticipate routes of approach and set up actual fire lanes. Good times.
Yes, that sounds WAY better than the current "let my squish my face against the table to see if my guardsmen can see your Daemon Prince's left butt cheek through these ruins, ow ow ow now I have one of your Bloodthirsters stuck in my ear."
I'd actually simplify further and say only Titans and Gargantuan creatures are tall enough to see over forests and buildings -- even a Baneblade can't fire its main gun over a typical house.
@Meade.
I agree that opposed rolls speed up resolution and keep both players involved.However, this resolution works great for element vs element single dice rolls.
Eg My model/unit rolls a single dice roll vs your model unit single dice roll.(So great for skirmish model to model interaction or 'blob unit' to 'blob unit'.)
But as most players see 40k as lots of guys shooting or assaulting , they like to roll multiple dice, one for each models attack. This resolution method could work if we disconnect the number of dice rolled from the number of models attacks.But this may prove too counter intuitive /radical change for some players.
(How would you handle 30+ dice rolled vs 30 + dice rolled ?)
I suppose I want the end game play resolutions to be similar enough to current 40k resolution methods , that it is familiar to people that play current 40k.
(Just far more straight forward and intuitive.)
I know there is a wide range of opinion on what 40k is supposed to be.Because GW just chuck a load of cool ideas into 40k and hope it inspires enough people to buy 40k product.
And this wide range of cool ideas cover just about every type and style of game .So players just pick the bits they like and assume everyone else sees 40k the same as them.
That is why 40k is such a shambles , and a clearly defined design brief is so important.
Everyone knows I want a modern warfare battle game re write rule set for 40k.
And lord_blackfang wants to improve the current 6th ed rules using some complimentary alternate systems.
There are not any right answers to this , just 'better' versions of 40k rules in varying degrees of 'better' depending what you want 40k to be. (We can all agree 6th ed 40k is very poor in terms of clarity and brevity!)
If you're looking to bring in infinity style face to face rolls, i agree with lanrak in that it doesn't really fit the idea most players have of 40K (huge piles of dice being thrown at a time) and probably wouldn't work too well with the scale 40K runs at, at least, not as the main mechanic for things like damage resolution.
However, you could probably bring the face-to-face rolls into making leaders feel like leaders by letting the leaders of each unit roll off against some value to benefit or punish the units performance. Having started to read net-armageddon, i liked the idea of "action tests" that determine how well a particular unit responds to orders, IE necrons would follow orders without fail, but guardsman might be a bit flimsy, while orks would be outright rebellious. Mixing that with "leader" face-to-face rolls can really help bring that factor out without completely stopping the unit in its tracks if it fails, as if one unit fails its roll, it show the unit failing to accept the order in time to gain an advantage, but if both pass, then it comes down to which leader commanded his troops better.
For example, an ork boyz squad led by a nob (say leader: 3) tries to shoot at a tactical squad led by a veteran sergeant (Leader: 5). Before the boyz shoot, the marine sergeant could declare a face-to-face roll to see if he is able to get off a quick order to his troops. Maybe he tells them to duck in cover, or to brace for impact, or to keep moving to perhaps negate a bit of the suppression effects they would have received otherwise.
A similar version could be applied to melee as well, by having the leader order the squad to back up slightly to avoid assaulters, or to overwatch, or just to pump them up for the coming assault. You could probably bring it into the challenge mechanics as well, though im not entirely sure how it would function there, maybe bonuses to attacks or saving wounds, or penalizing/benefiting the units in combat seeing the leaders either triumph or be slaughtered.
You would of course by limited to doing maybe one of these actions per game turn per unit, otherwise it would be far too slow, and you would never have to think tactically about when it would be best to use or hold onto that test. Could also create a nice divide between leaderless units and those with an officer in their ranks, as leaderless units will be much less...reactive? reliable? than units that have a leader in their ranks, more so than just the leadership system allows for.
SisterSydney wrote: Yes, that sounds WAY better than the current "let my squish my face against the table to see if my guardsmen can see your Daemon Prince's left butt cheek through these ruins, ow ow ow now I have one of your Bloodthirsters stuck in my ear."
I'd actually simplify further and say only Titans and Gargantuan creatures are tall enough to see over forests and buildings -- even a Baneblade can't fire its main gun over a typical house.
That leaves me wondering if that has happened to you.
No, actually. In fact I love Baneblades and kinda wish they could shoot EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME. And Scout. And Infiltrate. And Deep Strike via parachute dealing an S:10 wound to every model underneath them instead of mishapping.
But I wouldn't write a codex around my personal favorite unit. I'm not Matt Ward.
@Rav1n.
I see what you mean about using face to face rolling off for unit leaders/characters.
But this could devolve in to multi-layered multiple function command systems , that could end up very complicated and confusing if we are not careful.
But if the game turn mechanic had this as part of ts core it could work as the core activation system.
However, it would need careful balancing and costing as 'friendly values' may become of variable value depending on 'opposing values'.
(A bit like how 6th ed AP values depend on the opponent for their efficiency and in game value.)
This is why I would prefer the rolls to be made vs values on the models stat line.(With modifiers.)
As this allows player to use tactical advantages that are availble to them to increase their chances.
As far as area terrain goes, 4th ed system makes sense with the scaling discrepancies found in 40k.(TLOS only really works if both ground and vertical scales are equal.)
I am not sure vertical scale needs to be defined in finite ways.(With height levels etc.)
As most terrain is in scale with minatures vertical scale, and its quite easy for players to agree what terrain&obstacles give cover to what units before the game starts.
Because peoples terrain options and uses varies wildly from place to place, trying to define it in too detailed ways can be counter productive.
What i've been wanting to work into the rules set is a way for units to feel "heroic" if on a smaller scale - Let me explain:
While i enjoy big mission large point games, sometimes I want my Kill Team to feel heroic. Thats why any rules set we would propose would need to have a "Intro" beginner style game to allow players to understand the rules while using their new models. All LOS / Terrain is 4th edition of 40k
All units taken are 200 points max
1 model has a USR All Wargear open to the squad (within reason)
Individual movement
No AV at all
Imagine this: Two (new) players are learning the game and playing a mission. They roll on the table and get "PoW rescue"
Player A has to get his squad of 10 into the enemy camp in the middle of the table and rescue the captured solider.
Player B has to get his "guards" (10 man squad) to protect the objective before Player A can get there.
They both roll off for turns and player A goes first. He moves his guys forward.
Player B then gets to use his Auspex upgrade he took to "scan" for any intruders. One of his guards spots a enemy solider .
Now, a effect like overwatch comes into play. Player B can attempt to "raise the alarm" or go for the hand to hand combat roll. To raise the alarm he must role a leadership check, to go into hand to hand 6 inches is required.
Player B fails his leadership check, now player A has a chance to silence the enemy in hand to hand with his assault role or open fire with his gun and blow the mission parameters.
Player A opts to go into hand to hand combat and "eliminates" the target with a knife kill. (gains +1 VP for not breaking mission parameters)
Combat ends..
Repeat and rinse. alternating between player A and B. Much more interactive but at the same time keeping the UGOIGO system.
@Rav1n.
I see what you mean about using face to face rolling off for unit leaders/characters.
But this could devolve in to multi-layered multiple function command systems , that could end up very complicated and confusing if we are not careful.
I don't know why i didn't think of this before, but there's already a convenient stat in place to run this off of, it's even appropriately named: Leadership. Right now Ld is basically used to represent morale, which doesn't really make a lot of sense. But if it's changed so Ld actually denotes how well that model can command their squad, while special rules would help differentiate the models "morale" (IE stubborn, fearless, ATSKNF, etc) it makes more sense.
Another idea i liked from net-armageddon was the "triple move" action, which got me thinking more seriously about using epic's system of actions, but making it able to encompass 3 actions instead of two. The main problem i had with the epic system was not being able to move, shoot, and charge in the same turn, but being able to do 3 actions in one activation would solve that issue. So for example you could have actions like
Full-Fire = Unit may not move, all weapons may be fired.
Advance = Unit may make one move action, then fire. Heavy weapons must fire at reduced BS.
Double = Unit may make 2 move actions, then fire. Heavy weapons may not be fired, and all other weapons fire at reduced BS Sprint = Unit may make 3 move actions.
Engage = Unit may make one move action, one shooting action, then assault
Charge = Unit may make two move actions, then assault
Epic's system is also much better suited to the style of command interrupts i'm working on than a phase type system. So you can spend a command point to interrupt your opponents turn and activate one of your own units, but i was struggling to define at what point in your opponents turn you were allowed to declare your interrupt. Using Epic's system, I would say you were allowed to declare an interrupt whenever your opponent begins an action. So for example, Sprint would involve one "action", which is moving 3 times your movement speed. But engage would have 3 "actions", the movement, the shooting, and declaring the assault.
I much prefer this over allowing intercepts in between phases, because firstly breaking actions into phases gets annoying in unit-by-unit systems (If i'm running, why do i have to do movement phase move, then shooting phase move, rather than just one double movement), and second it allows for actions that should take more "time" without taking more than one turn to be more interruptable. If a unit is sprinting, it's never stopping to do anything else, it's just moving as fast as possible, and as such should less interruptable. Compare that to "Engage", the unit has to move, then stop, ready their guns to fire, fire, then prepare for the assault and charge. That should take a whole lot more "time" than just sprinting somewhere, even though they both count as an entire activation.
Also I've been thinking how to do alternate order systems. Loving the maneuver system from x-wing, I'd love a system of 40k that does the same sort of thing... you pre-set your orders (maneuvers are literally preset using cardboard guidelines) for each unit on a little face-down marker and then reveal them simultaneously (that way each player makes moves without knowing the opponents move... it is a more true-to-life simultaneous system and adds a gambit element). Sorry, I can't love gambit elements enough. Making moves simultaneously instead of planning each turn based on the knowledge of your opponents last turn... well it really is a third elements in games that I would place just as much importance on as using dice. It adds unpredictability because you never know what your opponent will do, and rewards knowledge and experience and even knowledge of your opponent and what moves they like to make. Not to mention playstyle... you can be the maverick and do crazy things a little harder to predict, or you can be a systematic commander advancing with precision and using careful positioning.
The problem is that orders and moves are so difficult for 40k that it's difficult to replicate. Although, a squad's movement in a battle is very straightforward and orders need to be simple... "assault that position!" "fall back!" "take aim! "take cover!" "advance in cover!". Perhaps these orders could be like guidelines, that basically govern all the movement in a squad for a turn. For example, you give an assault order and that requires your unit to move their full move distance in the direction of the enemy. Of course you could have some choice mixed in like how you move your troops or take cover... but it's a guideline basically. The idea is that both commanders are giving their orders on a changing battlefield simultaneously.
Shooting could then be done as a separate phase... perhaps in alternating activation or according to initiative stat (units with highest initiative shoot first counting down) or as part of another order system. mixed in with opposed rolls, every unit you shoot has the opportunity to back at you, depending on their order... if they did some kind of passive order like take aim or something, it would allow more shots back to the attackers. If they were suppressed they would get very few shots. If they were advancing with assault weapons they would get normal shots, etc.
Of course then assault becomes a little clunky, you would need to plan the assault in advance so do it as a move order, but it would also have to give you and the enemy opportunity for shooting once you get into assault. I don't see why it can't be done as a part of the shooting phase though, sort of a 'assault and shoot' move.
Movement could also be broken up into two parts, with shooting sandwiched inbetween. That would dovetail nicely with assault moves and consolidations. That way units moving free and not being harassed would move fast, units assaulting would move the same speed (unless they are tied in assault, but that should be extremely rare) and units encountering heavy fire would be taking cover or suppressed (normally).
The other problem is that if you want to introduce some kind of direction to a squad's movement (similar to x-wing, where maneuvers are done according to a ship's orientation), it has to be done with some point of reference.. oh wait that is what unit leaders are for. And it's even easier to implement with vehicles....
@ KnuckleWolf.
A FtF roll for duels instead of challenges does sound cool.
It may not fit with current 40k but it may fit with new rules quite well!(Could you post it here or put a link in for it?)
@ Meade and Rav1n.
I totally agree order counters placed at the start of the turn is the best option for a more advanced interactive game turn.
Command Phase.(Place orders call in off table support.)
Actions Phase (Units take actions as the orders they are given.)
Resolution phase (Resolve all outstanding actions effects, and try to rally units on poor morale.)
(Alternating actions can have 3 action orders, if they include a option for reactions.But interleaved phases and alteranating unit activation without reactions work better with 2 action sets, in my experience.)
However, I would class assault as JUST fighting in close combat with an enemy in contact.(Not include another movement into contact with the assault action.)
And I would prefer it if all orders had the same amount of actions.(Rav1n had 1 action with Full Fire order, and 3 actions with the other orders!)
If you want to use a reaction /interupt mechanic , why not use a variable bound game turn instead like Blood Bowl /Crossfire uses?
(Players take actions until they fail to complete an action successfully. Eg move without being detected, shoot without supresing the target, etc.)
However, I would class assault as JUST fighting in close combat with an enemy in contact.(Not include another movement into contact with the assault action.)
And I would prefer it if all orders had the same amount of actions.(Rav1n had 1 action with Full Fire order, and 3 actions with the other orders!)
If you want to use a reaction /interupt mechanic , why not use a variable bound game turn instead like Blood Bowl /Crossfire uses?
(Players take actions until they fail to complete an action successfully. Eg move without being detected, shoot without supresing the target, etc.)
I disagree about not moving into assault, it's hard enough to get into assault as it is, even more so if the average movement speed gets dropped from the current 6" to 4" to accommodate a triple move option. With the charge movement, an average speed model will have a max charge range of 12", about the same as now. Take away that charge move, and now they'll have a charge range of 8", which is only slightly higher than the current move distance! How often are players able to get into a an 8" charge range under current rules, where that 2" charge is the absolute minimum possible?
As for having all orders have the same number of "actions", i don't think it's a huge issue, because under current rules that's already what happens. If you don't move and fire, you can fire all weapons and don't have to snapshot heavy weapons (1 Action). If you move and shoot, you have to snapshot heavy weapons (2 actions). If you move-shoot-charge, you can't fire heavy weapons (3 actions). If you run, you can't fire any weapons (2 actions).
The number of "actions" per order is already not equal, but i've never heard anyone having a problem not being able to perform the same number of actions, because that's how the system works, and it makes sense from a realistic perspective. This system basically just added another step between standing still, moving and shooting, and running.
That being said, i am looking at a "Spotter" action that would allow that unit to pierce the Fog of War and inform other units where the enemy is. Of course, if you are already performing 3 actions (Move-Shoot-Charge, Triple Move, Move-Move-Shoot) you wouldn't be able to call out enemy locations, you're too busy with your own actions. So only orders with 2 or fewer actions (Move-Shoot, Stand-Shoot) would be able to "Spot" the enemy.
This does leave Stand-Shoot as the only order with less than 3 actions, but i'm worried about attaching any bonuses to this order, as it's already an action that avoids risks. You get to stay in cover, have some protection from assault, fire heavy weapons without penalty, take advantage of any height bonuses that may be in place, and "Spot" assuming that action is added. Adding BS bonuses would promote parking lot games, as would bonuses to piercing the Fog of War.
So far as the variable-bound turn lengths, that's really interesting. Not sure how well that would work though, seems like it could easily abused. I do like the interruption system though, because only certain HQ's and select few other models would be able to issue an interrupt order, making them feel like they are actually in control of their army, rather than simple beat-sticks.
Thinking about FtF rolls
I think one place of improvement could be using it for things like psychic powers or even in challenges of some sort. seems like a good place for it.
I tried volunteering a "Duel" mechanic to use instead of "Challenge" some time ago in another thread. It was met with some disgruntlement. :(
I agree with lanrak, i'd love for something along the lines of FtF to replace challenges, because currently challenges seem lopsided and boring. When I read the multi-page, epic duels between two characters in a black library novel, it' always exciting and cinematic and OTT. Then you go play the game and you see "my sergeant challenges your nob...Plink Plink...Your nob's dead". Not what i'd like out of the system.
The system needs some serious changes to make sure it's not just one character hitting first, killing the other, and winning the challenge immediately. That outcome should be a fairly unlikely result, like my sergeant weathering several attacks while preparing his thunderhammer, then getting a lucky shot in and breaking the opponent in half.
Maybe something like deuce in tennis, where the two players can in theory play for an infinite amount of time, so long as neither player wins 2 serves in a row. One player gets an advantage, the other player shifts it back to neutral, then one player gets an advantage again, until one of the players wins a serve with the advantage, thus winning the game.
Also, Psychic Duels where the model's combat stats are ignored and it's just the two models wrestling with each other using their mental strength? Yes, immediately. If not as core rules, as optional rules.
---------------------------
As to the idea of being able to "ignore" suppression at the risk of taking a lot of additional damage, why don't we simply expand the "Death or Glory" action for attacking vehicles to cover any of these stupid but potentially powerful risks? The name already fits very nicely and the idea of the rule is along the same lines.
This way that one system can cover as many ridiculous stupid ideas as we can come up with, such as a desperate charge that would let you gain an additional charge range (say D3" or D6"), or facing down that tank, or standing up when there's more bullets than air above your head. Done right, the system may not even need a set list of possible actions, the player could just declare a "Death or Glory" action and see if they pull it off or get shredded.
Sorry guys, I tried finding the post but there are 300+ posts and after scanning the ones in what I expected to be the right place, had no luck. Wondering if my memory is failing me :( Though I seem to recall it being called "Blade Duel" and that I offered it to someone else who was already doing a rewrite.
@Rav1n.
I did not express myself clearly sorry.
What I mean was , Move then move then assault is ok.(2 moves then fight a round of close combat.)
But not move then move them move into assault range then assault.(3 moves and fight a round of close combat)
So movement and assault are separate single actions like move and shoot are separate single actions. Unlike 40k where assault is a move and fighting a round of close combat, I would like assault to mean just[u] fight a round of close combat.
This is just so we get clearly defined single actions.I hope that is clearer?
If we can use 'Ready ' as an action to cover 'setting up /preparing' weapons and equipment.
Then Fire support /Full Fire orders is 'ready' action then 'shoot' action.
If we used 2 action sets for orders.This would allow the following actions.
Advance, move then shoot.
Charge, Move then move into close combat range of enemy unit.(The only way to get into 'assault' is to give a Charge order!)*
Double Move, Move then move again.(No closer than 1" away from enemy units.)
Evade, Shoot then move.
Fire support , Ready then Move.(Fire all weapons.)
Infiltrate, Ready then move (Increased stealth.)
* I was thinking about both sides resolving 'assault' at the same time , to speed up play.If we used this version.
Using a single assault value to determine the chance to hit and the order combatants fight.(And weapon effects displayed directly for each unit.)
We have been using 2nd ed movement values + 1" for infantry in our play test.
SnP 4" , standard infantry 5" fast infantry 6" with 2 action sets seems to work well.(As it means sacrificing a significant amount of mobility to shoot , and even more to shoot with everything.)
And as I was aiming for an equal blend of mobility firepower and assault it seems to be on track so far.
What if 'assault' wasn't an action you actively take? I am thinking take everything in terms of moving and shooting except when you have moved your troops close to the enemy they switch from shooting rolls to melee rolls? Even going so far as to allow situations where some of the squad is shooting and other members are in close quarters?
@ KnuckleWolf.
I think that idea could be cool! In the new rules all weapons have the same profile, (Effective Range,Attack, AP , Damage, )
So which weapon the models in a unit use to make an attack could simply be use the weapon with the shortest effective weapon range to the enemy .
Eg
Base to base out to 2" use close combat weapons,
2" to 12" use pistols , (If friendly models /unit in close combat with target,)
2" to max effective range (Non pistol weapons can not fire on enemy units in close combat with friendly models/unit.)
And weapon hits are resolved in the order of shortest effective range to longest effective range perhaps?
Eg a Mob of 30 Ork Slugga boys charge in to a 10 man IG squad,the 12 Orks within 2" of the IG models make 2 attacks each with choppaz.The 18 orks further than 2" away from IG targets, can shoot thier sluggaz at the IG targets. (18 pistol shots.)
I still think it is important to have a 'Charge' order to determine the difference between actively wanting to get close enough to use close combat weapons.(And get a bonus to the charging units assault value.) And just moving towards an enemy unit.
We could use the term Attack , to cover shooting and assault if we followed this idea to its logical conclusion.
So actions would be;-
move,(move up to the model/units mobility rate.)
Attack, attempt to hit a enemy with weapon in effective range.
Ready , prepare weapons /equipment to improve effectiveness of the next action.
Is this the sort of direction you were thinking of?
I love this idea. So much simpler and yet more fun than 10 pages of rules on who can consolidate into what and what attack wounds whom. "Hey, I am next to you, I'm going to chop your head off now!"
KnuckleWolf wrote: What if 'assault' wasn't an action you actively take? I am thinking take everything in terms of moving and shooting except when you have moved your troops close to the enemy they switch from shooting rolls to melee rolls? Even going so far as to allow situations where some of the squad is shooting and other members are in close quarters?
Brilliant! Treat close combat as just another attack.... that allows for a lot of cool possibilities!
-close combat weapons that have a secondary ranged attack... if you don't get close enough to swing your axe, you can still throw it!
-some ranged weapons can still attack in close combat, only with severe penalties on the 'to hit' roll, like rifles/automatic weapons. And pistols would dovetail nicely into that.
-expanding the initiative stat to serve the same function it serves in cc, to shooting. So shooters with a higher initiative get to shoot first (hopefully the defenders would still get to fire back reaction style).
Also solves a problem I have with the combat and shooting phases being separate... in battle everything is happening all a once, you have guys shooting and assaulting in haphazard order. I can see the sense in having a separate move and then shoot phase because they are things that also can happen simultaneously without conflicting... movement is always happening, and to some degree is planned on a higher level than the various sort of attacks that are just split level decisions. i still think the best is the sandwich type structure, where you have two separate move phases sandwiching a 'meat' of shooting/assaults/actions.
Possible complications: shooting at your own unit in cc... other games allow for this but you need to make a random roll to determine if you hit your own model or the enemy. This could also function as just part of the 'to hit' roll.... you roll to hit, and if you miss, you hit your own dude instead of the enemy! That way if you're a better marksman you might have a better chance of hitting the enemy (another overused action movie trope that has almost zero presence in miniwargames... the badass shooter saves the hostage/person about to be killed in a fight with a well placed shot.
If some members of a squad are in cc and some are not, then you have to also determine where the attacks go.. are you allowed to shoot at only one enemy unit? if so, then do some members of the unit shoot at the enemy in cc (with their own unit) and some make a melee strike? Although now come to think of it, that can solve itself... if you have rules in place for shooting into cc. Some would be able to make attacks with a pistol or gun (within a range of 2in) and some models could just opt not to shoot rather than hit their own guy?
Might also solve the crazy problem of a big blob of deadly shooting units being held up by one enemy unit in cc... where in RL they would just shoot their weapons....
As this concept appears to be accepted as a good way to reduce complication , and it is just cool so I want to include it ! Can we discuss the ways we could implement it?
I am just going to post some ideas/questions..
Is everyone ok with giving ALL weapons an 'Effective Range ' To determine when models can attack other models within the 'Effective Range' of their weapons?
And resolving weapon hits in the order of Effective Range shortest to longest. (So the models closest to the enemy models attack before models further away?
Would it be better to make shooting in to close combat permissible but with penalties. (Rather than ridged restrictions which could be more complicated...)
EG
Models in the same units as models engaged in close combat , may shoot at surviving enemy models that were engaged in the same combat after the close combat hits have been resolved.
The penalties for friendly models firing weapons into combat that contain(ed) models from the same unit are.
Pistol type weapons -no penalties.
Other weapons , any misses are applied to friendly models.(Note Heavy -Ordnance weapons are too bulky to fire effectively into close combat!)
Other units firing into close combat containing friendly models not from the same unit .Fire after all the attacks from the units engaged in close combat have been resolved.
The penalties for friendly fire into close combat are.
All misses are applied to friendly units.
If any of these hit cause a failed armour save of a friendly model, the unit containing the model that failed armour save automatically Route!
This allows friendly unit to 'hose down' armoured vehicles with small arms fire to get rid of enemy infantry assaulting the friendly vehicle with relative safety.
However, firing a similar volume of small arms fire , from behind, into an lightly armoured infantry unit that just been assaulted from the front is likely to have negative effects on their morale!
I believe in letting the players decide to take calculated risks , rather than dictate what they should and should not do ....(I may be in a minority of 1 though! )
I'm worried this change will shift the balance of power too far from assault. Many assault units are extremely fragile against shooting, so allowing units to fire at them while in melee could completely destroy these unit's usability. So the units usable in melee will shrink to pretty much only huge blobs of weak units (Ork Boyz), or smaller units of extremely hard models (Terminators). Combined with the loss of a move action during a charge, and I think it's a 1-2 punch that dwarfs even the change to 6th edition rules.
This could also essentially reduce the number of tactical options players have to deal with units instead of increasing them. If i can no longer prevent a unit from shooting by locking them up in assault, then my options are now just killing them at range, or suppressing them assuming the system allows for it.
I also see this option being incredibly selective about who can use it, particularly with the "If a model is killed due to friendly fire, the unit runs away" clause. This means that the only units that could reasonably use this option are extremely hardy units with good BS (Marines), while anything with a poor save and/or BS will never use it (Orks, Guardsmen, etc). If all it takes is 1 dead model, and an Ork boy will hit his own models 2/3 times, with the gun ignoring his armor and wounding on a 4+, why would i ever choose to fire into melee, except to force my unit to retreat, which could be done through a better system?
No matter how realistic it may be, a rule that is only reasonably usable by a few select unit's / armies isn't something i'd favor. Also, the current explanation for the "May not fire in melee" rule makes a lot of sense
There are some cool possibilities here, like halberds and spears actually extending the melee range, but these elements seem like a better fit in WHFB than 40K. Having monsters be able to attack models without having the targets being able to hit back, like you would expect from humans attacking creatures the size of a tyrannofex, would be cool as well, but again, not sure it's necessary or fitting.
Shooting down infantry models assaulting a vehicle makes a lot of sense, and would let infantry protect vehicles in a way other than bubble-wrapping it, though this option could create some problems.
So far as this system being simpler than current assault rules, i think that's the fault of GW for complicating it rather than an inherent problem with the system, and even there it seems like this would confuse things further
Declare assault, move into assault range, enemy consolidates, models attack in order of initiative and remove casualties, determine who won / lost melee and roll to prevent running away. They didn't need to break into into some complicated mess of different assault phases.
Simple Fix:The only models that may participate in a melee are models in base to base contact with an enemy model, and models in base to base combat with friendly models in base to base contact with the enemy. No measuring, if they touch, they are in melee, if not, they're out of melee and must move in ASAP when their turn comes around
I'd rather see something like a "Keep Firing!" order a leader model could issue that would allow the unit to get off one last round of shooting (not at the assaulting unit), but they are immediately destroyed in the melee, and the assaulters may consolidate. This way if you absolutely need to have this unit fire, you can make it happen, but only at great cost. This would actually fit nicely into the "Death or Glory" stupid choices rule, ignoring the enemy charging at you with chain-axes would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. Would also speed up combat resolution, because if i know i'm going to lose and don't care about trying to tie up the unit, i could just declare this order and try to get one last round of shooting off before destruction, rather than spend time trying to fight through it.
Building off that idea, you could also make this a replacement to overwatch, where if i choose to fire at the assaulting unit, remove casualties from the front, but if they still manage to get into assault, i'm immediately destroyed.
@ Rav1n.
I was just suggesting an alternative to the way 40k seems to restrict player choices with ridged and complicated rules.I am happy to change the penalties/conditions as required.
The basic principal of combatants use the weapon they are best with , at the and weapon selection is dependant on range they are from the enemy is agreeable to you?
Are you ok with a unit engaged in melee to be able to shoot with models further back from the enemy , to represent 'opportunity fire ' in assaults?
I am unsure about letting other friendly unit shoot into assaults myself.I just posted a possible way to implement it, off the top of my head.
I would like to speed up assaults to make them fast and deadly.
Just use an Assault value to determine the chance of the enemy hitting you.And the order the assaults are resolved in.(Highest assault values attack first in assault.)
And the saves and damage handled in the same way as shooting.
The highest assault value attacks first , them the opposing unit attacks back.
Then determine the effect of the assault. The unit that lost the most wounds / structure points has lost the assault.
Possible outcome suggestions...
The losing unit must 'Withdraw' from combat.(Moves 3" away from the enemy that beat them.)
The loosing unit takes a Morale test.
If the unit has more remaining wounds,than the unit that won the assault ,.
If successful the unit it is free to act normally receive orders next turn.
If the unit fails the Morale test it becomes suppressed.
If the losing unit has lower number of remaining wounds than that of the winning unit
If successful the unit becomes suppressed.
if it the unit fails the Morale test the unit Routes .
The winner of the assault may choose to consolidate their position by moving the models in the unit back into coherency and automatically recover any models from Suppression.
1) Remove Challenges
2) Remove Battle Brothers level of alliances
3) When allying, you must still stay within 1 FOC chart. Primary + Allies combined in one chart.
4) FAQ Tau and Eldar
5) If formations are going to be part of the game, they should occupy a place on the FOC chart. 0-1 Formation 1-2 HQ 2-6 Troops 0-3 Elites 0-3 Fast Attacks 0-3 Heavy Support
6) Instead of Armor Penetration where AP:2 is just as good at killing 6+ as 2+ it should work like this:
Have armor penetration count up. AP:1 means you need 1 higher than your normal armor save. So a 4+ save would have to roll 5+. And a 2+ save would have to roll a 3+.
AP:4 means that you need to roll 4 higher. So a 4+ would not get a save. A 2+ would have to roll a 6+.
7) Invul and Cover could work similar, but in reverse with a maximum of a 2+
Invul: 1 means roll 1 better than armor. So a 4+ save with Invul 1 on area terrain would have to roll a 4 + 1(ap) - 1(invul) - 1(cover) = 3+
That same model against AP:4 would have to roll a 6+
That way, high AP shooting would have a major effect that wouldn't be ignored, but units with good armor / invul wouldn't be instant killed by high AP shooting, and poorly armored units still would. Also, invuls would be reduced in power.
8) Remove night fighting (because everyone forgets)
9) Switch BS to a positive (like armor) BS:4+ means you have to roll a 4+ to hit.
10) Flyers could either Zoom or Hover. While Hovering they could be shot with full BS (or -1 for a jink). While Zooming, it would still take snapshots to hit, but they would also have to shoot snapshots.
11) Overwatch should be fired at AP:0 this somewhat mitigates the downside of charging through cover.
12) Interceptor fire should be divorced from Skyfire's ability to target the ground.
13) Assaulting units on the 2nd level of terrain should grant the units in that position a +1 to WS, but otherwise be ignored (charge distanced, BtB rules, etc). Remove the terrain to conduct the assault, and then replace it once the assault is done.
14) The first blood victory point should be replaced with a survivor victory point that would go to the army who has the most points left on the board at the end of the game.
15) FAQ the psychic powers and warlord traits.
16) If an independent character loses coherency to a unit, it is no longer joined to that unit, and that unit no longer has buffs from that IC, and vice versa. For instance, Look out sirs would only pass to units within 2". If an IC is separated from a unit, and there are still wounds to be resolved in the wound pool then the attacking player can allocate those remaining wounds between the IC and the unit.
On the issue of assault rules affecting balance....
First of all this deals with balance issues as a whole within 40k. Including points costs, various other rules concerning overwatch, movement, etc. I've already expressed my views on quick fixes to 40k to avoid a rewrite, so I'll spare everyone that.
It also deals with the philosophy of the game itself... do you want to recreate a modern/sci fi combat type situation with high powered ranged weapons shooting at each other. Or more to the side of fantasy in space.
I believe it can be a little of both, but you simply need to balance armies. If all armies have equal parts shooting and assault, or at least access to something like the same thing, the game will move towards balance.
Lets assume we want fantasy in space, with mighty close combat battles between heroic dudes. Well this does not necessarily conflict with the idea of modern warfare or deadly ranged weapons. In fact in the future, combat may very well tend back towards close combat if the pace of technology in personal armor and stealth catches catches up and matches the deadliness of ballistic weapons. We might assume that mighty heroes like space marines, or evil monsters like orks, simply have the capacity to absorb incoming fire. So instead of trying to balance the game by other arbitrary rules... you just try to represent reality (or this fictional reality) better.
So off the top of my head, some rules that express realism in a game and tactical variability and also can help in balancing assaults:
-suppression fire. Coupled with deadly artillery and possibly even off-board artillery rules (and other handy weapons that cause suppression just by hitting the enemy unit, and their primary purpose is to suppress and disorient/keep heads down... like mortars), this rule would help to reduce overwatch fire and fire in general for the assaulters to make their way across the battlefield.
-assault units that can either move fast and get into combat, or have strong enough toughness and armor compared to the firepower available in the game to have a chance walking across the board.
-utilize the missions and objectives in the game to ensure the need to take positions, often using assaults.. make it harder to completely eliminate an enemy through shooting. This can be done with different cover rules and better gone-to-ground or dig in/fortify rules, or in sci-fi, with mystical energy shields or clouds of bio-spore or ork smoke or anything else you might dream up. In fact more smoke on the battlefield and access to smokescreens is a great idea because that would let nightfight rules come more into play. Not to mention, more LOS blocking terrain but that is already recognized in a lot of gaming communities.
-faster, deadlier combat rules. Through some combination of combat rules, make it nearly impossible for combats to drag on past a turn. There are too many ways to bypass 'who won combat'. Being able to tie up strong assault units with weak ones or walkers is a glaring loophole in the game that debilitates assaulting units.
-make assault moves just like normal moves, don't add penalties or make assaulters roll every time and risk a crucial game-deciding step of getting into combat.
It is much easier to tweek a solid system to alter the style of game play that results.
Than try to limit the game play style with the choice of rules you put in the rules in the first place.(As 40k does.)
I would like assault in 40k to be fast and brutal, and 'resolved ' in the turn it occurs.
But as with shooting it can just delay /suppress the losing unit as well as destroy/route the losing unit.
Locking units in close assault IS required if you set the game play up to require it. But as you say if you allow the tactical use of smoke/cover and suppression to facilitate 'realistic assault ' as found in modern warfare.
You can tweek it to represent 'heroic fantasy in space charges' with a few changes to the system.(Give units a bonus to avoid being hit , or resilience due to fury/frenzy etc.)
I think we agree , if you start with 'ancient warfare rules in space' ,that focuses on close combat , and using ranged weapons in a supporting roles.(WHFB in space.)
It becomes impossible to arrive at a game where assault and shooting are balanced enough to let them be be equally viable in the system.Unless you limit shooting to a supporting role.
But this seems odd when 90% of units in the game carry ranged weapons....Or buff assaults to make them artificially viable , which makes shooting unit look under powered in comparison.(Does this sound familiar. )
I think we agree , if you start with 'ancient warfare rules in space' ,that focuses on close combat , and using ranged weapons in a supporting roles.(WHFB in space.)
It becomes impossible to arrive at a game where assault and shooting are balanced enough to let them be be equally viable in the system.Unless you limit shooting to a supporting role.
But this seems odd when 90% of units in the game carry ranged weapons....Or buff assaults to make them artificially viable , which makes shooting unit look under powered in comparison.(Does this sound familiar. )
I partially agree, I would say that if you limit shooting, limit long range supporting fire first and foremost. Like missiles, artillery, lascannons. The idea is that it is still necessary for your dudes to trudge across the battlefield and meet with the enemy. Keep those weapons powerful, but balanced by dig in rules (kind of like gone to ground, penalties to movement, but allows you to be very survivable and shoot), smokescreens and cover, make it very hard to win the game just by taking a bunch of artillery or special weapons and point-and-click from the other side of the board to eliminate your enemy. Just like in modern combat... you can't just blast the enemy from the sky, you always need your grunts to go up on foot and dig out the enemy to take ground.
and if we merge assault and close ranged weaponry, a rapid fire weapon becomes something closer to a cc weapon so unit start to look more the same, just use different styles of attack. If rapid fire weapons can still be effective even in close combat to some degree, it's not so much of a problem.
Better cover rules, yes, absolutely. Done right it solves both the problems of "I sit back and kill you from range without ever having to maneuver" and of "I'd like to charge you but since I have to run across the entire board in open ground it's a little World War I-like."
More smoke on the battlefield, awesome. Hadn't thought of that one. But a simple way to deal with any shortage of terrain -- and it creates a tactical option too. Do I use my smoke barrage now to cover these guys as they advance? Or do I save it for someone else later?
@Meade.
I did not explain my self too well again...
What I meant to say was when you are using units that are equipped and organised as modern warfare type units.Then the only way to arrive at a intuitive balance between ranged and close combat attacks is to use a modern warfare type system .(Which allows units to interact in a intuitive way.)
Forcing an ancient warfare based interaction system on modern type units , makes it practically impossible to balance ranged and close combat attacks without lots of heavy modification and artificial restrictions.(And the level of resulting complication can result in subjective opinion being confused with objective conclusion. )
If there is no artificial demarcation between how models make attacks .It just lists the effects of the attacks at different ranges.Then players can clearly see how each units in game abilities can be used to the most effect , in a combined arms type strategy.
I suppose the only restriction on weapon classification if purely for game balance and intuitive play.And including some ranged weapons that could be effective in a close assault is intuitive.
How do you feel about using these weapon classifications.
Assault , can be used when the unit is in Close Assault.
Small Arms, pistols and rifle /smg type weapons, the basic ranged armament of the unit .
Support , specialist weapons the unit carries to deal with specific targets types.
Fire Support. specialist weapons the unit carries to deal with specific target types.The unit can not move and shoot with these weapons, it needs to take a ready order to prepare to fire .(A Fire Support order.)
@ Sister Sydney.
Using cover , suppression and smoke, effectively adds quite a bit of tactical depth to most of the war games I play!
It is all about giving players in game options IMO.
This makes the game play interesting and it grows with the players experience.
dadakkaest wrote: Make a USR that ignores interceptor. Make this available at a points upgrade for some outflanking/scout units.
The interceptor rule is another example of a shoddy attempt to introduce reaction systems in the game. Combined with the overwatch, which 95% percent of the time just results in rolling massive amounts of dice that slow the game and do nothing, or, in the case of Tau breaking the game because you can potentially shoot your whole army and something close to normal ballistic skill.
They put interceptor on AA units to give them a chance to fire a fliers... or at least it seems this is the purpose of this USR. Instead it's used to hose down deepstriking units and infiltrate/outflanking, who are already fighting an uphill battle against the large shooting armies that dominate the game. Another example of, if they created the game to be balanced in the first place and include reactions, the rule wouldn't be so dysfunctional.
Anyway, yeah, you can make another USR. That negates the other broken USR. And then maybe make another USR that counters that, too, for certain very very special interceptor units. Eventually you will need whole sheet full of them, probably, oh and did I mention, you will have to re-cost units. That is so fun!
Someone should really take a bit of time to compile a bunch of these in a text document of some sort. Or at least the ones that have gotten an overall thumbs up from the vast majority of those who responded to it.
Otherwise, aside from my revised vehicle rules (which work fabulously btw)
The only other things which I believe need a bit of work are:
- Cover Saves: The fog in front of you wont stop my bullets. It just makes it harder to see you. Most sensible to me is some sort of modifer to BS or reduce the strength/AP of shots fired.
~~~Example 1: guardsman Lucky fires his plasmagun at a chaos marine Bob. The Bob normally has a 3+ save. The plasmagun is AP2. were he in the open, Bob would be dead. However, he is behind a concrete wall. It has a cover rating of 3/3, which reduces the strength AND AP of the shot by 3, effectively turning that plasma bolt into a bolt round [S7 AP2 > S4 AP5]. Still hurts, just not as much.
~~~Example 2: Chaos Marine Bob returns fire after surviving the blast thanks to his trusty wall. He returns fire, but that sneaky guardsman called in a mortar barrage of smoke rounds (or something), making him hard to see. The smoke is REALLY thick has an obfuscation rating of 2, reducing Bob's BS by 2. He now fires at BS2 instead of 4. If Bob were replaced with Random Ork 544922-B, he would hit on a 6.
- Night fighting should go back to 5e style, rather than random space magic darkness that deflects lascannons.
- 'To Hit' in close combat. Seriously janky tbh, and the fact that a WS10 model only has a 66% chance of hitting a blind, deaf, one legged grot in CC is absolutely dumb.
- Transports and assaults. Both to and from. I still think that you should be able to assault models inside of a transport somehow. Whether it be from dropping grenades inside, or by poking various long-hafted weapons through doors/fire ports/etc. And perhaps those charging from a non-assault vehicle that hasnt moved count as making a disordered charge? or let the unit they charge (and only that unit you sneaky Tau) re-roll their overwatch hits, as they had an extra second or so to ready themselves.
- Fliers. There should be a hardset difference between ATA and ATS craft. Now I know comparing to real life things is largely frowned upon in a game like 40k, but how many dedicated dogfighters have the weaponry or targeting systems to paste infantry? Or dive bombers/ground attack craft that can tangle with the former?
- Look Out Sir! is one of the dumbest mechanics so far IMO. If Steve the Guardsmen can follow the trajectory of a sniper round traveling 850m/s (speed of sound in atmosphere is 331 m/s by comparison) to save his commander, why can't he dodge it himself? Moreover, why is he only I3?!?!? Holy crap reflexes.
- Monstrous creatures. These should have to fill the following criteria: 1. Be a (largely) fleshy thing 2. Be considerably large/bulky. The sort of large bulky wherein it doesnt necessarily go through the wall of a building, but rather the whole bloody thing. Neither of those things? Go join mr Astartes Dreadnought over there in the walkers section. YES YOU TOO DREADNIGHT. IF PENETANT ENGINE IS HERE SO ARE YOU. ESPECIALLY YOU "WRAITHLORD -AKA- ELDAR DREADNOUGHT
- Charging through terrain, in so far as....
---Being slowed down because you had to climb over a purpose made barricade, allowing those on the other side to swing at you first? sure. Being slowed down because of the single barrel between you and them? nonsense.
---Having the ability to effortlessly manuever/smash through tight terrain, walls, etc but still being forced to wait for those around you to hit you with various insundry poking objects? nonsense
---Sitting still while Brother Steveicus zip-ties a melta bomb to your ankle/tread/tire/grav intake?Dumb. Step on him. Or run him over with your 22 ton battletank. Or spin your magic hovertank around to make him throw up in his armor and make him feel dumb.
---Unweildy. The rule makes no sense on the weapons that have it. Yes, a powerfist is a bulky weapon. How this makes you slow as hell in delivering a punch to your opponent's face is beyond me. Have it reduce your WS or attacks in exchange for hitting with the force of a battlecannon. or even -1 to your init, instead of a flat 1
- Unit by unit movement. Fantasy has unit-by-unit movement. It is literally 1 more stat. Joe Shmoe should not be moving as fast as an APC such as a rhino or chimera.
- Fear. Make it matter. Somehow. Considering literally every army has ways to ignore this in large-ish quantities if not entirely. It it quite literally a pointless rule right now. Gigantic axe wielding murderhouse of a Daemon over there? Dont worry, the lone Astartes Psyker missing an arm will save us.
- ATSKNF. or as I like to call it: And They Shall Ignore Half The Rules In The Rulebook.
- Line of Sight: this leads to more arguements than ANY other rule in the game in my group. If you are lucky enough to bring a laser pointer, which I now do always it isnt as bad. But when two people are competing in a game to see whose dice wants the other person's little plastic armymen to go back in the box more are judging LoS, shoutfests sometimes ensue. One of those things that is super hard to make a rule for, due to the rather objective nature of determining it.
~~~Example 1: Model all of your fire warriors to be kneeling? too bad. That wall is too tall for them. Too bad they aren't standing up, otherwise they could see. That's what you get for using a proper firing position!!
~~~Example 2: Did you make an epic base for Chaos Lord Wrekurface that adds another 1/2" to his height? Oops... sorry, he doesnt get cover from that window anymore. That's what you get for making your plastic dudes fancy!!!
~*~ The only part of the current TLoS system is how it interacts with the interesting situation of vehicle facings. I -do- like the idea of a krak missile sort of ricocheting off of the rear hatch of a rhino when it is at an odd angle.
@Lanrak, just to try to clarify my views on the ancient/modern warfare thing... I think that the setting of 40k is not exactly one or the other. Just because it's 'fantasy in space' and there are dudes with swords and shields, doesn't mean we should concentrate on the medieval warfare aspect.
As I said before it really is something new... you have to imagine what modern warfare would be like if we included powered armor and material that can stand up to modern ballistic weapons, and alien creatures that could do the same because of weird biology, or robots. So... a new technology causes a reversal to a state that existed in the past!
It really means that all the rules of modern warfare still apply, only you introduce new situations overlaid on top of it that changes the dynamic... but if you neglected to use certain units, like for instance taking some stormtroopers vs. some tau, then things would quickly revert back to modern warfare. I hope that helps you see my general philosophy about this.
How do you feel about using these weapon classifications.
Assault , can be used when the unit is in Close Assault.
Small Arms, pistols and rifle /smg type weapons, the basic ranged armament of the unit .
Support , specialist weapons the unit carries to deal with specific targets types.
Fire Support. specialist weapons the unit carries to deal with specific target types.The unit can not move and shoot with these weapons, it needs to take a ready order to prepare to fire .(A Fire Support order.)
The first thing that leaps out to me is how to differentiate assault and support, or is the only difference that one you need to be in base contact to use? Support weapons, would this include some close range assault weapons like flamer/melta and does it really make sense to give a separate class to these weapons?
Well, I'll tell you what I'm most interested in. Streamlining weapons types, so that it could easily be conveyed in a small logo on a unit's card. That includes streamlining the ranges of weapons, since I think it's one of those things that is hard and annoying to remember, and causes headache, whether you are premeasuring ranges or trying to guess before you fire.
I love the system used in x-wing, where you basically use one cardboard stick to measure all ranges. There is no need for measuring tape... targets are either in range band 1, 2, or 3 or out of range. Now in a 28mm game using futuristic weapons like laser cannons, it feels very dumb to have those weapons not have infinite range, considering the size of the board represented and the actual range of modern weaponry. So for your support weapons, like your big guns, and sniper weapons, and off-board artillery or air/orbital support, there is no need to check range. However, I realize that eliminates a lot of the complexity in weapons that you might want to have in a game. so maybe use range bands, and have a system that uses range bands; you have weapons that fire in range band 1, band 2 to 4, etc. Then you can also modify ballistic skill by range band.
I feel it's a good compromise. It retains some complexity, and adds some in the sense that it's easier to model distance lowering our ballistic skill, but also enables us to use something very handy; just buy a long thin wooden dowel at a hardware/art store, paint it up in colored bands, and then when you go to fire.... all you do is read the little picture on your card, and instantly you know what dice to pick up... all without measuring tape (although you could just as easily use one) or adding or subtracting anything in your head!
You could have a picture of the weapon class, a little square for instance. Then below it have a segmented bar, lets say you are working with 4 bands. Each segment represents a range band. Now you could color code those bands green/yellow/red for instance to represent challenges to ballistic skill at certain ranges. Black or empty segments would mean it's impossible to fire at a certain range.
Now it depends on what kind of dice system you are using what those color coded segments mean... if you are using a D20 system, for instance you might just add or subtract from your ballistic skill. If you are using a dice pool system you might add or subtract dice to your pool. If you are using a multiple-polyhedral dice system you might shift your dice, etc. Just depends on the kind of system you want to use. If you like rolling dice use the pool system, if not then the d20 system, if you want to be a cool guy then use different poyhedrals...
And as for weapons... let's talk about the basic information you need to convey about weapons.
a) Range: Best done with range bands. This can convey info: is this a melee weapon or is this a long range sniper type weapon. Also can include information on how the shooter's ballistic skill is affected at different ranges. It can also convey information about weapon accuracy... an accurate weapon in the hands of an unskilled shooter would be useful, but an inaccurate weapon in the hands of an unskilled shooter would be useless.
b) Arcs of Fire: Although this is a more advanced skirmish type rule, you could have arcs of fire for every weapon, some attacks are 360 degrees like psychic mind-bullets and some are highly focused, like heavy weapons and sniper rifles. This is independent from the unit's vision/awareness arc, because some units might be equipped with weapons that face forward and backward, and some might be equipped with heavy weapons like mortars that require set-up but also have pistols and rifles on hand. This would make heavy weapons teams more vulnerable and realistic since infiltrators could sneak up from their behind for instance.
c) Templates: If the weapon has a template, you need to convey that info. Possibly with a small symbol that conveys the range, and template used at that range (this would streamline for instance, the torrent special rule, which is basically just a range combined with template at the end).
d) Damage: Usually a number, meant to be converted by a toughness stat into wounds. Conveys the raw power level of a weapon. This can also be potentially simplified into damage bands. That might represent the damage of certain weapons at range: for example the melta, which loses power at range. You could easily combine this in a graphic with a system of range bands; put two range bands together and for every range band, above or below it is a damage band: with a color for it's damage level. So a melta might have a violet (ultra-high) damage in the first band; but a red damage in the second, and so on. Other weapons that might lose power at range: tractor (gravity) beams, lasers (IRL lasers dissapate from atmospheric effects) disintegrators, plasma, sound weapons... plenty of exotic possibilities.
e) Weapon Quality: Is this weapon: fire, explosive, piercing, blade, psychic, impact, disintegrator, etc. Conveys the way power is physically distributed by a weapon. is it spread out, is it tight and focused, is it kinetic or electromagnetic, or some other exotic form. Best conveyed with a small logo representing the damage class. This System can encompass the AP system: just combine a number with the symbol for weapon quality for instance: piercing 3 might convey a md. strength piercing weapon. How 'piercey' it is. But you could do the same thing for fire, Fire 2, or blade 4 or w/e. This eliminates the need for 'power' weapons and special rules for ignoring invul save.
f) Shots: depends on the dice mechanic used, this possibly might combine with ballistic skill and range bands influencing how many shots you get. The more shots you get the more likely you are to hit; but also the more potential wounds you can cause so I think it's not as simple as increasing the number of dice you roll.
g)Wounds or hit points caused: possibly to be integrated with the damage stat, you need some kind of system of how many wounds/hit points a weapon causes or does it cause instant death.
h) Complexity of Use: This ties in with Lanrak's suggestion, that maybe special orders be required to use certain weapons. It also dovetails nicely with an order/reaction system that allows reactions, because certain weapons might be able to react (pistols, rapid fire) while others may not (missiles, heavy weapons). Essentially, you would need to sacrifice movement and 'command' to fire a heavy support weapon, or to take aim with rifles and other mid-range weapons.
i) Special Rules: Unless they portray spectacularly bizarre effects, like hallucinogens, or you change into a squig or a spawn, special rules should be eliminated or streamlined into something that all armies have access to. The ulitimate goal should be, all the information required to produce special effects are encoded into the stats (and how the stats interact) and all it takes is a weird combo of stats to produce that special effect. Then, once people are familiar with the system itself, they make their own units and cost them appropriately in a system that everyone else knows and understands, and carry over more of the background lore into the game.
Again I'm putting all this stuff out there not to force it on anyone, but merely to share ideas and put them out there and receive feedback and inspiration. I'm not fixated on immediately coming to some kind of consensus... that really depends on your gaming group and what it is you're after. I'm only here for the heresies...
Wow, that one last little post I made actually got prop'd. And then I didn't check back till now. Figures lol. I've been sucked into X-Wing by Fantasy Flight of late and that has been sucking up time and creative energy. Not to mention the Magic:TG marathon I pulled last weekend . Someone really should (now that it is pg15) compile all these random Ideas and get them into the OP if possible. How you're going to organize them I ain't got any clue. Something does seem to to be taking some kind of shape here at least. I will go back to my lurking now..muwawahahahwaha
@Meade.
As far as the ancient warfare /modern warfare style goes.I think we actually agree on the basic principals., but express it differently! (It should be modern warfare with concessions to the background, with a few tweeks/additional layers . Rather than ancient warfare with massive patches to try to get the basic game to work.)
My thoughts on the weapon classes were simply to try to cover how weapons work across all units.
I wanted to class Assault weapons , as the weapons that can be used in Close Assault .
A)The ones that are to used to make BtB (to 2" away.) attacks.Swords , axes, Power gloves etc.
B)The ones that are SAFE to fire at ranges up to 4"* through friendly models in close combat. Pistols , and similarly classed weapons.(May be shot guns?)
(* I am testing using a 4* close combat shooting range for pistols ATM.It is just an idea to restrict range of shots from models engaged in close assault but further than 2" away. )
(Firing super heated plasma balls, high energy thermal beam or chemical/ high rate of projectile spray weapons in close combat is not really that safe for friendly models !)
The idea of Small Arms is to cover the effects of the infantry units main weapons , so they can fire at separate targets to the Support/Fire Support weapons , in an intuitive way!
Eg a IG Squad can fire is (Small Arms ,) lasguns at the Ork boys mob, and the (Fire support ) lascannon can fire at the Batlewagon.
Support weapons (current special weapons ) , are the specialized weapons that allow units to engage enemy units more effectively than Small arms.
Fire Support weapons .(As current heavy/ordnance , as above but can not move and fire.)
I wanted to move away from 'special heavy weapons /ordnance' , and simply just class the weapons as they are on the unit .
So a Heavy bolter is a Fire Support weapon in a IG squad, but just a Support weapon on a Leman Russ Battle tank.
I have always wanted to use a unit card with the new rules.
And have the units weapons effects listed under their stats.The combined effect of the unit and the weapons they carry.
I will try to rationalize the list of weapon information you listed.
I would use ..
Class.(Assault, Small Arms , Support, Fire Support.)
Effective Range , (Could be a colour and a number like X wing?)Eg Assault ;- Red , 1 ,2,3(and 4.) For BtB , 2", 3" and 4".
Armour Penetration.How good the weapon is at defeating enemy armour .(Subtract enemy armour value to arrive at the save roll required, perhaps.)
Damage . The number needed to roll to damage the soft target behind the armour.(This is modified by the enemy resilience/toughness .)
Attacks ,how many hits , the area of effect of the weapon.
Notes, Any special abilites of the weapon/model carrying the weapon. EG Ignores cover, Armour Bane, Parry, etc.
I was thinking of showing fire arcs separately, in diagrams for generic type weapons /models.(And maybe halving fire arcs when units are suppressed?)
I would prefer the fluff to decsribe the nature of how the weapon works .And the weapons profile to just show how it works in the game.And detail what weapons can be used and when in the orders system.As this keeps the weapon stat line cleaner.
its what we have been using for basic play testing in the new rules .I can explain the basic concepts and interactions in more detail if needed?
This is just my take on the basic concepts, open to modification and changes as required..
@Knuckle Wolf.
The problem is there are 3 sets of ideas running in this thread.
A)House rule fixes for 6th ed ,
B)Major modifications for 6th ed.
C)And a complete re-write from the ground up.
As far as C) goes I think it would be helpful if we could agree on a outline of the new rules, covering all the excellent ideas this thread has brought up for a new rule set .
EG .
Modern warfare style battle game.
Interactive game turn, alternating activation , either unit by unit or action by action.
Using the stat line directly to determine in game interaction.(Reducing the need to look up charts and tables !)
Using a unit card with in game info on one side and strategic army comp on the other.(So no flicking through books to find stats and rules !)
Unit leaders and characters to actually command units .
(And have unit coherency as a range from the leader ,character rather than model to model.To speeed up movment of models and allow tactical positioning!)
Have a simple suppression mechanic included in the basic damage resolution.
Allowing the use of suppression ,smoke and cover to be tactically preferable to charging headlong into heavy enemy fire on planet bowling ball!
Cover all interaction with the same straight forward resolution.All models have the same stat line , all weapons have the same stat line, (with different values obviously .)
Special abilities (rules) , add to the game play and do not detract from it!
(Use 'chrome' sparingly to make the game sparkle , not collapse under the weight of it!)
Hi folks.
Just for those interested in writing a new rule set.Can you let me know if you have issues with any of these basic mechanics /resolution ideas?
1)I believe we want an equal blend of mobility, firepower and assault in the game , with an interactive game turn.(Alternating single unit or single action.)
2) Allow units to pick actions and the order the actions are taken in by using 'order counters'. (2 or 3 action sets.)
3) Have a clearly structured game turn , with defined phases.
EG
Command Phase.(Place order counters call in reserves /arty etc.)
Action Phase(s) Models move and fight !
Resolution phase, (To tidy up stuff before the start of next turn.)
4) Use stats directly , the distance in inches (for effective range and mobility), the number of dice rolled or the basic dice score required for success.
These direct values may be modified.(Eg difficult ground reduces movement by 2", resilience value adds to damage target score required.)
5) I believe the weapon and armour interaction should be the most detailed in the game , (to allow penetrating hits to cause suppression, for a simple suppression mechanic.)
So adding a D6 roll to the targets AV (save roll.) And comparing it to weapon hit AP is a simple way to get proportional results.
(As used in FoW for armoured units.)
6) All weapons have the same stat line .And are resolved in the same way.(Roll to hit, roll to save, roll to damage.)
Class,name Effective range , AP,Damage, Attacks,Notes.(Special abilities are covered in the notes.)
7) Unit leaders and characters are the focus of the unit .All coherency measurements are taken from the unit leader/character models.
(This means speeds up model movement and tactical positioning on the table .And mimicks the unit having an invisible base x" diameter , with the leader in the center.)
8 ) Separate the morale of the unit from the command ability of the leader/characters.(To allow leaders/characters to actually command !)
9) Only use positive modifiers.
If the task becomes harder add to the target score .(So success on a 3+ becomes success on a 4+.)
If the task becomes easier add to the dice roll.(So a result of 3 counts as a result of 4)
10) Include smoke/blind munition use back into the game , to allow tactical combined arms tactics.(Request smoke bombardment to cove an advance for example.)
And allow cover to be used universally as a modifier to hit at range!(EG Soft cover +1 to targets stealth, Hard cover +2 to targets stealth.)
Please post and alternatives or comments you may have.
I'm happy with all of this except order counters. It's not the "counter" part that worries me, it's the "order" part. The game has a hard enough time defining what a "charge" is and what a "fallback move is" and has pages of rules to define those two actions; if you have an order like "advance" you either need to define it very loosely (move in any direction you want however much you want) or write agonizingly detailed rules about what "move towards the enemy" means.
Hi Sister Sydney.
I was proposing the use of simple actions like , 'move', 'attack' or 'ready' .
So orders are just made up of these 3 simple actions.How far and what direction the unit moves, what enemies the units attack, is down to the player upon activation of the unit.
I am trying to convey the general idea that unit will have a 'elected a mode of operation' at the start of the turn.
Eg The leader(s) tells the unit to give covering fire, advance and fire on targets of opportunity , run towards cover, or charge into an assault etc.
A bit like the old options of stand still and fire to full effect, move normally and have limited shooting , or move at maximum speed and not make any ranged attacks , or charge into close combat.
EG.(Orders I have been using in the new rules play testing..)
Advance move then attack.
{Charge move then move into close assault.(If assault are resolved simultaneously, or at the end of the game turn?)}
(At the )Double ,move then move .
Evade attack then move.
Fire support ready then move.(Set up then fire to full effect.)
Infiltrate ready then move, (Increased stealth.)
(We have been using paper counters with A,C,D,E,F,I on for play testing hence the names I picked... )
This is just to try to inject some tactical decision making at the start of the turn , rather than write complex and detailed actions that restrict how units operate.
Has that made the intention of using order counters any clearer?
I know I am not very good at explaining things, so please if any thing is unclear please let know so I can try to explain it better.. .
Well we did start by using colours but we noticed how some players claim to be colour blind when the put the wrong order down.( And the kids took all thier felt tip pens back.. )
I would like to point out as I am rubbish at explaining things, I want to keep the rules clear and as as straightforward as possible.
Because of this I would like the rules JUST to explain how players and in game elements interact.I would prefer to keep the background narrative separate.
And with this in mind , I want to keep away from 'but that would nerf/ buff unit /equipment X too much!' type comments.
With the new rules , they are going to require lots of play testing to arrive at final values.So rather than try to make the rules conform to pre conceptions from 40k 3rd -6th ed.I would prefer to try to get the game play intuitive and free flowing .(Removing the need for willing suspension of disbelief/WTF moments.)
Is the basic order counter composition, using simple actions, 'move' 'attack' 'ready',O.K. with you?
If it is then we have to look at how many actions per order we want to use.
The real choices are;-
Do we want to go with 2 action set orders, or 3 action set orders.
Do we want to use alternative unit activation or alternating single player actions.
Most set phase game turns allow 3 actions per game turn , one for each phase.
Because they want to keep moving, shooting and assaulting distinct and separate actions/ resolutions.
Looking at a wide range of games that use this type of game turn.(Excluding 40k because it is such a mess!)
They only allow units/models to perform a maximum of 2 actions per game turn.
1)Do not move in the movement phase and gain a bonus, (to cover, and/or ranged attacks.)
2)Move in the movement phase , then shoot OR assault, OR move again.
Maybe 40k players are pre disposed to the idea of 3 action sets.But in a more interactive game turn , are they needed?
Would 2 actions per game turn flow better ?
Also remember if we are using alternating unit activation, allowing more actions increases the 'temporal distortion' in the game .
In the fact units do more without any natural reactions available from the opposing units. Which may increase the need for interupts /conditional reactions.(Adding to rules bloat.)
I am in favor of 2 action order sets.(Simple to learn and remember,and the lets the interaction flow quickly.)
As they can be used with either alternating unit activation or single action activation.(We can work out game turns for both if you like.Give players the option to pick which is their favorite!)
And give up to about half a dozen possible orders, which is enough for tactical depth , without being overly confusing.
Is there any one who wants to use 3 action order sets ?(Please post reasons why so we can debate this.)
@lord- blackfang.
That is an excellent idea! A cool addition to a basic 2 action order game turn ,to allow 'characters' to be more special/useful than 'unit leaders'.
Let them have a 'Heroic Action' , to use maybe once per game turn/or once per game.
Well if most people are happy with 2 action set orders.
Then we have the option of alternating unit activation , or alternating actions.
Basic turn structures .
Command Phase. Place order counters next to units.Request off table support.
Action Phase.[b].
Alternating Actions.
Player A .Turn order counters over and take first action with all units.
Player B Turn order counter over and take first action with all units.
Player A removes action counters and take second action with all units .
Player B removes action counters and takes second action with all units.
OR
Alternating unit activation.(With action structure sequencing , similar to Epic SM.)
Player A activates a single unit on decisive orders.(Fire Support, Charge.)
Player B activates a single units on decisive orders.
Player A activates units on mobility orders.(Double , Infiltrate.)
Player B activates units on mobility orders.
Player A activates units on reaction orders.(Advance , Evade.)
Player B activates units on reaction orders
[b]Resolution Phase. Plot arrivals, resolve all remaining actions.Attempt to rally units on poor morale.
Note placing orders face down so they are hidden from the opposing player then turning them over when units activate, and removing them when units have completed all actions.
Allows older gamers with dodgy memory, (made worse by beer .) To be able to keep track of what units have done what and when.
I think it is a good idea to structure alternating unit activation in some way, to reward tactical use of units.(So the imbalance in number of units on each side can be countered a bit.)
I would like to keep the cool additions, (like lord_blackfang suggested) out of the basic game development , and put them in a 'file of advanced rules '...
Has any one got other preferred game turn structures we can discuss?
Very thoroughly thought through. I'm not sure, however, I understand what makes something a "reaction" order as opposed to being in one of the other categories.
Also, where does overwatch / opportunity fire fit in?
I don't know about issuing orders during some sort of command phase before any actions are taken, because it seems like it runs the risk of getting in the way of just playing the game. The more time spent thinking and planning before actually doing something during the game turn, the less your'e actually playing the game.
It's one of the advantages having a unit decide what it's going to do when it's activated has over planned orders, as there's less time sitting around twiddling my thumbs while my opponent plans his entire army's actions. There is the loss of a "bluffing" option, but i feel like a similar effect can be achieved by thoughtful activation and withholding of activations and interrupts.
In the system i'm working on, the players roll off at the beginning of each game turn to see who has the first activation phase. Players must activate at least one unit per activation phase. For every 500 points above 1000 points the game is played at, one additional unit must be activated per activation phase. (IE 1850 = 2 units activated per activation phase, 2000 means 3 activated per phase), Don't know how well this would scale to apocalypse though, but i'm not terribly concerned about that right now.
The player with the lowest number of units may choose to activate less than the required number of units in their activation phase, so long as they still activate at least one unit. However, if the opponent activates all of his units, and the player has any unactivated units remaining, those units activations are lost and the next game turn begins. Hopefully helps resolve some of the "one army has way more units" problems alternating actions cause, and gives a slight advantage to the lower unit count player, particularly if the difference in unit counts is extreme (Draigowing vs Blobguard).
This system allows for some interesting tactics built around manipulating activations, where if i hold back key units until the end of the game turn, there's the chance that i can win the first activation phase next game turn, and activate them immediately again. Things like extra brutal shooting, extreme movement across open ground, maybe even extremely risky choices involving deep striking could all build off of that option.
I could also move a unit out of cover at the end of the game turn to avoid damage, then if my opponent wins the activation and tries to shoot at it, i could declare an interrupt, and move it back into cover, essentially wasting my opponents attack. Alternatively, i could try to psych my opponent out by doing the same thing, and make him ignore the unit for fear of wasting an activation, then activate it at the first opportunity to my advantage and rush it forwards to a new position.
I still dislike the idea of giving units orders ahead of time. Since you are so doggedly pursuing that route however I have to ask: why? What is it we are trying to achieve with it?
Addendum: Some would call me a hypocrite since I have fallen in love with X-Wing to which I would point out that X-Wing is trying to do a very different kind of battle and under those circumstances (Space combat at high speed) it makes sense. And it is worth pointing out that the Planning Phase of the game and the sometimes hit or miss nature of the maneuvering mechanics is my one sore spot with the system.
@Sister Sydney .
'Reaction' is just a name.(Picked because they are last and re-act after decisive shooting/moving.)
Opportunity fire can be represented by Fire support orders.If we allow the unit to fire before the opposing units move, or let them hold fire until after opposing units have moved.
@Rav1n & KnuckleWolf.
The reason I prefer to issue orders before the action , is simply to re create the tactical decisions of the force commander .To help the player feel they are in control of a military force.
Eg , Alpha and beta squad give covering fire , Delta advance along the left to draw fire, Echo find a way round the right flank.etc.
Rather than 'erm attack in some sort of way in some sort of order .Just make it up as you go along basically because I cant think of tactical plan of action ...'
However, if we are using alternating unit activation , we could simplify the orders to focus on shooting, focus on moving, or move and shoot.(Green Amber Red, as used in Grimdark.)
(But for alternating actions , as the actions are taken one at a time rather than in an action set, more detailed options in the orders work fine.)
However if the structure of giving orders then carrying out those actions ,may be seen as too much faffing about by some folks.
Why not start with just listing the orders,and letting the players decide when they activate the units .For players with less interest in tactical planning .
How about using the orders from the Grimdark rules which played fast and fun with alternating unit activation .(In quite a few play tests!)
Green (guns) stand still and shoot, Amber (advanced moves)charge* or double move Red (reaction ) move and shoot or shoot and move.
(*When players charge they have to declare intended target before they move.)
Then in the next level we can let players choose to place orders face down in the command phase.
And finally for full tactical interaction , use alternating actions and the 6 orders I listed previously.
This way players pick the game turn that gives them the level of tactical planning they are happy with.(All just using the 3 basic actions , but in different ways.)
I think in the basic requirement for structured turn, all units must activate in every turn.Even if they are put on Fire Support orders , and do not shoot , for example.(Effectively doing nothing, but potential to shoot at targets of opportunity.)Is preferable to min max limitations on how many units may/must activate.
I would like any 'interupts' to be tied to the force command structure , eg giving characters 'Heroic Actions' based on the cool idea lord_blackfang posted.
I also agree that randomizing who activates first each turn is important.
I just had a though.
Remembering all the great times I had learning new games at my old game club.They all had one thing in common.
The guys running the group would break rules in to quick start ,(basic rules to let you get the hang of how the game plays out.)
Then the Core rules .Everything you need to experience the full game.
Then the Advanced rules, either from the game or house rules for narrative games , or more varied missions, more detailed combat etc.
Would this be a good idea for this development?
As I could see lots of ideas being suitable for one of the above.And we do not have to 'reject' or argue over what is included, but just where it goes along the learning the games scale!As we seem to have quite a wide range of ideas, it may be a good idea to widen the scope of the development a bit to keep as many good ideas as possible?
I do wonder if "orders" would fit best as an advanced or optional rule: they add another layer of interesting decisions, but I'm not sure the added complexity is worth it for most gamers...
@Sister Sydney.
If we are moving away from structured fixed phases.
Then we need put something in place to keep the structure of the game turn.
Imagine you are playing a large game and you and your opponent have 20 units a side.
Half way through the 2nd turn, you think your opponent has activated the same unit twice.
They say they only activated it once.Who is mistaken , have they cheated you?or was it a mistake on their part or your part?
If we take the choices from current 40k, stay still and fire to full effect, move to full effect,(including into close assault .) Or move and shoot.
They map to the action sets, 'ready then shoot', 'move then move again', or 'move and shoot'(and shoot then move?)
We could use these 3 simple choices if you prefer?
These could be given names as ' orders', 'Fire Support','Charge', 'Advance'.(Green /Amber /Red for coloured plastic counters perhaps?)
These simply replace the choices from the structured fixed phases in the army level alternating game turn of 40k.
So place them as you activate units in the quick start rules(To keep track of who has done what!)
Place them in a Command Phase in the core rules .
And have extended orders and alternating actions in the advanced rules.
I can not think of any game with alternating unit activation that does not use order counters or order dice to show what units have done /they intend to do.It just makes it easier to keep track of whats happening during the game.
I'm all in favor of putting down counters after a unit does something so you can remember what it can and can't do next. Say, my unit moved, it gets a green counter so I know (1) I can't move it again this turn and (2) it can't fire heavy weapons at full BS.
Putting down order counters before the unit acts to represent the commander telling it what to do -- that's different and not as appealing to me.
The reason I prefer to issue orders before the action , is simply to re create the tactical decisions of the force commander .To help the player feel they are in control of a military force.
Eg , Alpha and beta squad give covering fire , Delta advance along the left to draw fire, Echo find a way round the right flank.etc.
Rather than 'erm attack in some sort of way in some sort of order .Just make it up as you go along basically because I cant think of tactical plan of action ...'
My problem with this line of reasoning is that 40K is not a 100% accurate military command game. I mean, we have daemons popping out of inter-dimensional portals, super-humans dropping from orbit to scream and smack people around with maces, and officers whose entire purpose in battle is to shoot their own men! This is a game, games are supposed to be fun, and spending 10+ minutes planning for every possibility only for my opponent to stay perfectly still and out of sight, essentially wasting my time, is not fun.
I also disagree with the assertion that "making it up as you go" means you don't have a plan in place. You still have to think about how and when you use units, there's just a much lower probability of what you choose to do to be worthless or immediately countered, and less time spent planning instead of playing.
It's like the argument that speed-chess is a much less "real" version of chess than normal chess. There's an element of truth in there, you have less time to plan and think about every possibility, and thus it's less strategic, but its still a game where skill, thought, and practice are key elements in victory. And if i had to choose the more engaging version to play, i don't think anyone would say normal chess is more engaging, where it's perfectly legal for a player to spend 4-5 minutes thinking about every possibility before touching so much as a single pawn.
-----------------------
Also, to revise my earlier AP system, i think i've found a nice solution that avoids a lot of the math, but still gives the outputs and diversity wanted. Still requires both a Save (Sv) value and an Armor Class (AC) value.
If AP is lower than AC, use the base save.
If AP equals defenders AC, reduce the defender's save by 1 (3+ becomes 4+)
If AP is 1 higher than defenders AC, their save becomes a 6+, unless they would receive a 6+ or worse save if the AP was 1 lower (a 3+ would become a 6+, but a 5+ would get no save)
If AP exceeds AC by 2 or more, the model receives no save.
First of all if you haven't played x-wing, you are missing a big part of how much fun it can be to make simultaneous orders. Yes as has been pointed out, you might have alternating activations where player A moves a mini, then player B, and tbh, combining this with pre-planned orders does complicate things. Thus, it seems like an extra chore of just marking something down you would be doing anyway, to produce an effect that you just could replicate with a UGOIGO system.
I really think it is none of those things. Done right, it can be the most enjoyable part of the game. In fact, it is one of the most enjoyable phases of x-wing for me.. since so much is on the line in those moments.
It's been suggested that this is like agonizing over a chess move... in fact it is the opposite. You are forced in one phase (and without waiting for your opponent) to choose the general range of possibility for your moves.... this means that you decide all your moves in one shot and as part of one plan in your mind's eye, and all the while having to guess what your opponent is going to do (again... exciting!). That prevents you from agonizing over the rest of your turn, or your activations, or however you want to do it. It actually limits your ability to agonize over all your moves, athough the small decisions you make while carrying out those moves can be incredibly important.
Personally, I hate the idea of the epic-style activations where one unit goes, another unit goes, etc. I think it is incredibly boring and uninspired, and tedious. It is a huge turn-off for me. I would much rather play an active/reactive system, or like x-wing, simultaneous orders but higher initiative units get the advantage in movement and firing.
Of course, those who just want a simplified version of 40k will avoid this like the plague. If that's what you want, it really seems like you'd be better off playing a tweaked version of mantic's warpath ruleset... you'd have a lot more chance of getting games in.
On 40k vs. modern battle game:
Yes 40k is a game of lasers, space orks and daemons and elves. This is exactly why we should avoid using a system of AP values that shoehorns all these incredibly diverse and fantastic beings into a system that is more apt to describe a WW2 tank battle game.
You simply need to encode information about these diverse beings into the statline, and not into the special rules. You need to build these things into the most basic, core structure of the game (the statline of the unit), and not on the periphery in the form of either a weird special rule that can potentially break the game the way it interacts or a simple special rule that merely the changing of a stat. And the best way to do that is through the expression of weapons, and the way they affect different units.
I've also invested in the Tomorrow's war rulebook... and reading that through it is very interesting as well! I think before anyone tries making up rules they absolutely need to get their hands on as many rulesets they can and try different games.
I've been working on a rewritten set of rules distinct from 40k and I came up with a few concepts that I thought I'd share and see what people thought. All of this is tentative and depends at least partially on stats for all models rewritten around these rules, it's also a work in progress badly in need of feedback/testing.
Armour: The normal armour saves with a stat on a weapon to determine whether it ignores it or not seems overly linear and static to me, I much prefer Warhammer Fantasy's penalty applied to armour save system. I untethered it from Strength such that every weapon has Strength and Armour Piercing much like it does now but instead of flat-out ignoring saves above a certain level AP applies a penalty to them, which removes the hard dividing line between effective/worthless weapons shooting at hard targets like Terminators.
Movement/Shooting: I drew from Warhammer Fantasy a bit again here, models have a Move stat usually between 3 and 6 inches for infantry models, and they can choose to not move and fire everything (including move-or-fire weapons), move their full movement stat and fire non-move-or-fire weapons at a penalty, or move double and not shoot. The increased move range of models allows me to make the game more mobile and makes closer-ranged weapons more valuable, plus I can differentiate between different bikes/jump packs.
Assault: I did away with the assault phase entirely; it's byzantine and needlessly complicated. Instead there's one 'Combat' phase where you attack either with shooting weapons or if you're in combat radius of an enemy unit close combat weapons. Models have a close combat radius of 6", if you're inside that you can only fight other people within that close combat radius with melee weapons, and most small arms have a melee profile so non-assault units/armies aren't left entirely out in the cold and a player's tactical options are increased. The restrictiveness of 40k close combat lock is dialed back some, you still can't shoot into or out of close combat but you can move freely within close combat radius and you can move out of it, though at the penalty of the enemy getting a free out-of-sequence attack against you when you depart. This is intended to simulate close-range firefights in addition to the straightforward base-contact in-your-face punching matches in the standard 40k rules. This also cuts the complexity of the game turn down by ensuring that a given unit can only attack once (very occasionally twice) in a turn instead of potentially three times (own shooting/own assault/enemy assault) with the intent of speeding things up. Removing the in-combat/out-of-combat arbitrary distinction also makes the game feel more natural and removes a lot of clarification necessary to ensure models can't get within 1" of enemies they're not locked in combat with that's necessary under the current rules.
Stats: In 40k the vast majority of models have all their stats between 2 and 6, with the 7-10 range reserved for giant monsters, demons, and the like; unfortunately this means there's very little differentiation between models when 3 is "human recruit who's been through boot camp" and 4 is "veteran genetically-modified super-soldier with decades of battlefield experience after being raised on a death world". I aim to cut out things like Greater Daemons, Daemon Princes, and high-level legendary Special Characters to allow for a wider range of stats and cut away the ceiling on stats in a few cases; I'm aiming to expand the former 2-4 range where almost everyone's WS/BS/S/T stats fall to 2-6, with 7s and above reserved for special cases. Additionally I cut the Initiative stat (with the redesign to close combat it doesn't mean much anymore) and the Attacks stat (for reasons I will explain in a moment), and added the Reaction stat (which I will explain in a moment). Tentatively considering making everything a multi-Wound model (1 Wound would be reserved for cannon fodder like Grots or Gaunts, 2-3 would be for most infantry, 4+ would be characters and things that come on 40mm bases, 6+ you'd start to see Monstrous Creatures and vehicles), with good wound allocation rules the bookkeeping wouldn't be too strenuous and it'd allow for more flavourful games in terms of the numbers involved (a dozen Space Marines standing against a hundred-strong Tyranid Swarm, for instance).
Weapons and Combat: Explaining some of the above changes briefly shooting attacks are rolled as Ballistic Skill versus Reaction, which permits me to have harder-to-hit infantry units represented in a manner that doesn't require me to go overboard on passing out alternate types of saving throws and allows me to apply modifiers to shooting attacks simply and easily; this includes cover giving a +1 (soft) or +2 (hard) bonus to Reaction for the sake of defending against shooting attacks, hopefully limiting the arguments over what type of cover something is. Attacks got cut because now every weapon's got a Rate of Fire stat (this includes close combat weapons); attacking multiple times with a weapon incurs a penalty to hit, so faster fire isn't always good. Going back to some of the things mentioned above I'd also like to touch on armour saves here; armour saves are sometimes as high as 0+ or 1+ (auto-succeed unless you're getting attacked by a weapon that penalizes armour saves), but AP- is only found on basic close combat weapons and light small arms (splinter weapons, lasguns, shotguns, the like); heavy small arms (bolters, pulse weapons, shuriken weapons, gauss weapons, etc.) will have an AP of -1, machine-gun equivalents one of -2, and heavier weapons go up from there (out to -7 (ignores all armour saves) on heavy ordnance, lascannons, lances, meltaguns, and the like). I also implemented a vehicle toughness system; vehicles have most of the same stats as infantry (point-defense weapons are the only ones with melee profiles, Strength is only really relevant if you want to ram something, and Leadership works slightly differently), heavy armour (battle tanks and the like) will have a 0+ save, skimmers, flyers, and light walkers will have a 1+ save, this makes them immune to small arms while still opening up the door for a lucky heavy bolter hit to do a bit of damage. Invulnerable saves are still present and not modified by armour penetration; they're almost exclusively the province of characters, can be taken in addition to armour saves, and are absolutely never better than 4++.
Vehicles: As mentioned above vehicles have pretty much the same stats as infantry; they're usually higher, but you've got Move for varying vehicle speeds, WS for point-defense weapons firing in melee range, BS for long-range/unwieldy main guns, S with potential applications in ramming, T for getting attacked, W for hull points, Ld for the pinning rules I'm going to get into next, and an armour save for getting attacked. Without overmany special-case rules I'm hoping the game will run more smoothly.
Pinning: I drew on Epic and Battlefleet Gothic for this one; every time a unit is attacked by a distinct enemy unit and every time a model in said unit is killed in a turn put a marker by them, plus one extra marker per unit shooting at them if they're being shot by a pinning weapon (rapid-fire machine-gun types, barrage weapons, snipers, the like). At the beginning of their turn roll a Morale test applying the number of markers as a penalty to their Ld (certain things can also provide bonuses back here, cover helps, as does wearing really heavy armour, some special rules help too), if they fail they have to either hunker down (can't move, attack at a penalty that turn and are hit more easily in close combat next enemy turn) or bolt (make a double move either towards the rally point or away from whatever was attacking you in CC, can't do anything else, must pass a morale test to regroup in subsequent turns), then remove all the markers. This also covers morale tests in close combat, mind.
Army Organization: This is where it starts to get really weird; it occurred to me that the reason behind the Force Organization Chart is that we don't want people to be spending a hundred percent of their points on Riptides, but then we run into the problem of unnecessarily byzantine rules tacked on to correct for the fact that the current linear points system is flawed. Real-time strategy games manage to be more balanced without restrictions on what you put in your army with the simple expedient of having more than one kind of resource you have to expend to get guys, I had the idea that it might be interesting to have things cost more than one kind of points for balance purposes and potentially to allow for ease of scenario control. Current theory includes three: "Requisition" points, used for pretty much everything, adjusting this adjusts the absolute size of the game; "Glory" points, used for elite/specialist troops, heroes, and relics, adjusting this adjusts the 'specialness' of the scenario; and "Arcana" points, used for upgrade weapons and vehicles, adjusting this adjusts the blastiness of the scenario. This allows for army composition to be controlled easily and simply with just the points values, though it'd also be a nightmare to balance and annoying on bookkeeping while building your army list. The only restrictions on your army list are going to be requiring a certain number of guys to support vehicles or characters, more in the vein of Battlefleet Gothic than anything else.
Psykers: I'm a bit fuzzier on how I'm going to do them, but the idea at this point is to make powers less drastic than in 40k today (nothing like JotWW), most powers will be a minor shooting attack or a short-term buff. Additionally psykers can roll opposed Ld tests against nearby enemy psykers trying to use powers to shut them down, representing Ravenor-style psychic mental struggles.
These are the general concepts I built around that apply to everyone, there's plenty more around how each individual army would function within this system but I'm not going to go into that here and now.
@Sister Sidney and Rav1n.
I will try to explain my ideas for having the 3 levels of complexity in the rules .
Rather than quick start, basic and advanced, perhaps it would be better to give them names like Alpha , Beta,and Gamma?
So players can pick the game turn they are happy with.And the damage resolution they are happy with, and the morale system they are happy with from any of the 3 levels of tactical complexity.
I understand current 40k players cover a wide spectrum of people with different levels of tactical and strategic loading /preference in their games.So to write single rules set to please everyone is impossible!
But starting with simply placing counters next to units as they activate.(basic 3 options.)And then advancing to placing orders before the actions starts IF players want to.
Then increasing the orders to 6 types placed before the action starts in a game turn that simulates simultaneous actions.(Interleaved actions .)IF players want to .
Is a way to cover a wider range of gamers and play style preferences.
In the same way keeping the rules focused on element interaction , where the element can be a single model in a detailed skirmish game, or a unit in a detailed battle game .
Allows the same core rules to be used in a variety of ways...
But to achieve this level of 'mutability' , we need to have clearly defined and straight forward rules.
And so it is important to focus on a real world counterpart to base the rules around.(So game play is intuitive!)
And in modern combat we have special forces popping up unexpectedly , and helicopters and VTOL planes dropping troops and support in tactical close air support roles , and Russian Commissars(NKVD,) killing thousands of their own men...So using modern warfare as a base for the rules actually fits 40k quite well.
And as Meade pointed out;-
''It's been suggested that this is like agonizing over a chess move... in fact it is the opposite. You are forced in one phase (and without waiting for your opponent) to choose the general range of possibility for your moves.... this means that you decide all your moves in one shot and as part of one plan in your mind's eye, and all the while having to guess what your opponent is going to do (again... exciting!). That prevents you from agonizing over the rest of your turn, or your activations, or however you want to do it. It actually limits your ability to agonize over all your moves, athough the small decisions you make while carrying out those moves can be incredibly important. ''
Which in my experience is pretty much how placing orders before the action starts works..
You commit to a plan then execute it , rather than prevaricate over every units action when you come to activate them.
@Meade.
I included the 'alternating action' option in the game turn levels for people who prefer more 'simultaneous' type activation.
And I agree the stat line should cover 80%+ of the game play .With special rules just covering the things that are actually special in game .
I prefer to use the term 'special ability' , to show the unit/weapon is different to the way other units weapons work in game.(Not just in the fluff!)
EG
Special ability of chemical weapons 'Ignore Cover'.As liquid acid,or burning chemicals find their way around and through small gaps etc.
Models claiming cover get no bonus from cover when hit by a chemical weapon.
This makes sense as most weapons fire single point contact projectile(s) (kinetic or energy,) directly at the target.And so chemical weapons are a special exception to this.
(I agree X-wing is an excellent game!I hope you enjoy Tomorrows war as much as we did! )
AnomanderRake wrote: I've been working on a rewritten set of rules distinct from 40k and I came up with a few concepts that I thought I'd share and see what people thought....
Mostly, I think "cool" to "awesome."
Assault: I did away with the assault phase entirely; it's byzantine and needlessly complicated. Instead there's one 'Combat' phase where you attack either with shooting weapons or if you're in combat radius of an enemy unit close combat weapons...
Ruthlessly elegant.
Stats: In 40k the vast majority of models have all their stats between 2 and 6, with the 7-10 range reserved for giant monsters, demons, and the like; unfortunately this means there's very little differentiation between models when 3 is "human recruit who's been through boot camp" and 4 is "veteran genetically-modified super-soldier with decades of battlefield experience after being raised on a death world". I aim to cut out things like Greater Daemons, Daemon Princes, and high-level legendary Special Characters to allow for a wider range of stats and cut away the ceiling on stats in a few cases....
Yes. If you don't care about backwards compatibility with current Codexes, this is absolutely the way to go.
Tentatively considering making everything a multi-Wound model....with good wound allocation rules the bookkeeping wouldn't be too strenuous...
Yes, it would, it would, oh merciful Emperor it would....
Vehicles: As mentioned above vehicles have pretty much the same stats as infantry...
Yay.
[quoet] I had the idea that it might be interesting to have things cost more than one kind of points for balance purposes and potentially to allow for ease of scenario control. Current theory includes three: "Requisition" points, used for pretty much everything, adjusting this adjusts the absolute size of the game; "Glory" points, used for elite/specialist troops, heroes, and relics, adjusting this adjusts the 'specialness' of the scenario; and "Arcana" points, used for upgrade weapons and vehicles...
Fascinating. Hard to implement, as you say, but fascinating.
Automatically Appended Next Post: PS: So people think Tomorrow's War is really good?
Vehicles: As mentioned above vehicles have pretty much the same stats as infantry; they're usually higher, but you've got Move for varying vehicle speeds, WS for point-defense weapons firing in melee range, BS for long-range/unwieldy main guns, S with potential applications in ramming, T for getting attacked, W for hull points, Ld for the pinning rules I'm going to get into next, and an armour save for getting attacked. Without overmany special-case rules I'm hoping the game will run more smoothly.
Wow these are some great ideas for vehicles, i'd never considered having WS be used for defensive shooting in melee.
Stats: In 40k the vast majority of models have all their stats between 2 and 6, with the 7-10 range reserved for giant monsters, demons, and the like; unfortunately this means there's very little differentiation between models when 3 is "human recruit who's been through boot camp" and 4 is "veteran genetically-modified super-soldier with decades of battlefield experience after being raised on a death world". I aim to cut out things like Greater Daemons, Daemon Princes, and high-level legendary Special Characters to allow for a wider range of stats and cut away the ceiling on stats in a few cases; I'm aiming to expand the former 2-4 range where almost everyone's WS/BS/S/T stats fall to 2-6, with 7s and above reserved for special cases.
This is pretty much what i did in my rules. I extended the scale from 1-10 to 1-12, with 2-6 being used for something like 80-90% of the models in the game. Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a large need for point cost changes, due to the relationship between the resolution system and modifiers like movement penalties.
Example: BS 2 == Ork Boy
3 == Imperial guardsman
4 == Veteran Guardsman / Eldar Guardian
5 == Space Marine
6 == Veteran Space Marine
Then using a D6, you have these rules to follow to resolve most effects.
Attacker's value exceeds defender's value by 5 or more == 2+, causes instant death for "to wound" rolls
Attacker's value exceeds defender's value by 3-4 == 2+
Attacker's value exceeds defender's value by 1-2 == 3+
Attacker's value matches defender's value == 4+
Defender's value exceeds attatcker's value by 1-2 == 5+
Defender's value exceeds attacker's value by 3-4 == 6+
Defender's value exceeds attacker's value by 5 or more == Failure
This leads to some really cool situations like BS4 and BS 5 are both hitting on a 3+ against a stationary target (cover 3), but BS5 is still hitting on a 3+ if they move enough to gain a +1 modifier to their cover rating, while a BS4 model would not be hitting on a 4+
Current theory includes three: "Requisition" points, used for pretty much everything, adjusting this adjusts the absolute size of the game; "Glory" points, used for elite/specialist troops, heroes, and relics, adjusting this adjusts the 'specialness' of the scenario; and "Arcana" points, used for upgrade weapons and vehicles, adjusting this adjusts the blastiness of the scenario.
This is interesting, ill have to think about it. The primary concern is how incredibly complex this could get. I'd say at most 2 types, along the lines used in the Deathwatch RPG, so requisition for most things (general units, upgrades, etc) and then i like the name glory points that you used. Maybe tie glory to your HQ somehow, like the more points you put into your HQ, you receive more glory points to be spent on specialist units and the like? Idk i feel like there's a lot of potential here, but bringing it out will be a long and arduous process.
Rav1rn wrote: Then using a D6, you have these rules to follow to resolve most effects.
Attacker's value exceeds defender's value by 5 or more == 2+, causes instant death for "to wound" rolls
Attacker's value exceeds defender's value by 3-4 == 2+
Attacker's value exceeds defender's value by 1-2 == 3+
Attacker's value matches defender's value == 4+
Defender's value exceeds attatcker's value by 1-2 == 5+
Defender's value exceeds attacker's value by 3-4 == 6+
Defender's value exceeds attacker's value by 5 or more == Failure
This leads to some really cool situations like BS4 and BS 5 are both hitting on a 3+ against a stationary target (cover 3), but BS5 is still hitting on a 3+ if they move enough to gain a +1 modifier to their cover rating, while a BS4 model would not be hitting on a 4+.
This is very good, may I use it?
Also on the subject of working out wound allocation for multiple-wound models my theory was to track the wounds for a unit as a single entity, and every time you get enough wounds to pull another model you pull it from the nearest guy to the attack's source, so a given unit of two-wound infantry wouldn't need to track more than a single wound counter next to them at a time; this would also allow me to do medics (Apothecaries, Guard Medics, Ork Painboyz, the like) and techs (Techmarines, Bonesingers, the like) very simply and efficiently since all they do is at the beginning of the turn pull some number of loose wound counters off of one unit within their radius (Medics do non-vehicle units, techs do vehicles).
First, get rid of as many re-rolls as possible. Next, get rid of as many Universal Special Rules as possible. (Especially the ones that give re-rolls.)
Acute senses, ATSKNF (just use Fearless), Armorbane, Blind, Crusader, Fleshbane, Furious Charge, Hatred, Interceptor, It will not die, Monster Hunter, Poisoned, Preferred Enemy, Rampage, Shred, Shrouded, Smash, Tank Hunters, Zealot... all gone. In fact, with very few exceptions, I'd relegate all special rules to the codices.
Roll off D6+ Warlord's Initiative. (Makes this pretty useless stat a little less useless.)
The Game Turn:
I move, you move, I shoot, you shoot, I charge, you charge. Close to the current, familiar method, but more organic, with less waiting. The second player has a chance to be more proactive each turn, and avoid being slaughtered by Alpha Strike. No clunky "unit activation phase" nonsense or superfluous morale checks to see if a unit does anything or just stands there.
MOVEMENT PHASE:
Normal rules apply for moving. Unit cohesion, climbing levels in buildings, vehicle facing, etc. If an infantry unit is going to cross Difficult Terrain at any point during their movement, they roll 2D6 and move up to that distance, even if that distance is not far enough to allow them to enter the Difficult Terrain.
SHOOTING PHASE:
IC's/Sergeants issue Orders. Someone mentioned making Leaders/ICs/Sergeants more relevant. Great idea, but instead of some convoluted mathematical system involving tokens or "command points," just use the "Junior" or "Senior" Officer rules the IG has. Orders can be in each codex and tailored to reflect each army's fluff. (Ork orders should be hilarious.)
Any grunt can tell you that concealment does not always provide cover, but cover always provides concealment. (e.g., shrubs aren't bulletproof, walls are.) The 6th ed. cover rules don't reward the tactical use of terrain as they should. Shooting at something in cover is harder to hit, therefore "a unit shooting at a target IN COVER does so at -1 Ballistic Skill."
Instead of having Rapid Fire, Assault, Heavy weapons, etc, that have different movement requirements, I suggest a simple, one-size-fits-all solution:
Normal infantry may:
1. Remain stationary and fire at full BS.
2. Move up to 6" and fire snap shots. (Flame Template weapons fire normally)
3. Move up to 12" and fire nothing at all.
If the unit rolls the 2D6 for Difficult Terrain, it may:
1. Choose not to move and fire at full BS.
2. Move up to 6" (if the distance roll allows it) and fire snap shots. (Flame Template weapons fire normally)
3. Move further than 6" (up to the distance rolled) and fire nothing at all.
Grenades: (One per unit/shooting phase regardless of distance moved.)
Frag Grenades: 6" range, S5, Large Blast, Suppression, D3" Scatter.
Krak Grenades: 6" range, S8, Small Blast, Suppression, D3" Scatter.
Closest casualties are removed first. This is realistic and objective. Why would the models closest to the shooter NOT be hit first?
With Template weapons, models under the Template are removed.
Shooting units cannot target units in Close Combat. Template weapons may scatter on to units in CC, though.
No more "Look out, Sir!" It's overused, bogs the game down with endless re-rolls and if you want to keep specialists alive longer, teach them to stand behind the cannon fodder.
Suppression. No overly complicated "value system" with "light" or "heavy" suppression. It’s too complex to be a part of the core rules. Just make it a Special Rule given to certain weapons. (Storm Bolters, Heavy Bolters, Flamers, Big Shootas, Punisher Cannons, Stubbers, Autocannons, Sniper Rifles, Ordnance, etc.) A unit fired on by a Suppression weapon forces a Leadership test. If the test is failed, the suppressed unit can’t Shoot, Assault or Overwatch. This also adds another facet to the importance of leaders/SGTs. Fearless units cannot be suppressed. Suppressed units may use Grenades (1 per shooting phase.)
Shooting damage and Wound allocation. This seems to be one of the biggest points of contention. The schools of thought seem to be:
1. Streamline the 6th ed. system. Roll to Hit, Roll to Wound, Roll to Save. It's not a terrible system if you just cut out all the ridiculous re-rolls given by all the damn special rules.
Pros: Everybody already knows the system. One could focus on fixing the individual units without spending months play testing a new system.
Cons: The ruleset is an "accumulation of band-aid solutions that never fixed the fundamental problems." There are broken units and power imbalances everywhere.
2. Use an earlier edition to avoid having to rewrite every single stat line from every single unit in every single codex.
Pros: Avoid rewriting everything in every codex.
Cons: The ruleset will still be an "accumulation of band-aid solutions that never fix the fundamental problems"
3. Create a streamlined system integrating Armor Saves into Toughness that would require rewriting every single stat line from every single unit in every single codex.
Pros: You will actually have balanced units that will probably never need updating.
Cons: It will take forever.
In it, the author offers up a promising solution. Instead of a saving throw, Armor is worked into a stat called Evasion, which is how hard the target is to hit.
Roll to Hit, Roll to Wound. Done. Instead of multiple charts to memorize, there's just one.
Stat lines would have to be rewritten like so:
Same thing for vehicles:
ASSAULT PHASE:
The 2D6 charge range is good. It means that casualties from shooting (and overwatch) may cause a charge to fail. This is realism.
The charging unit will move into BtB contact with their target unit, as in 6th ed. The attackers will receive +1 attack for charging, +1 attack for having two weapons. Attacks will proceed in Initiative order until all members of both units have struck. Casualties will be removed and models will pile in 3".
At the start of the next turn, the first player may break contact by passing a Leadership test. If he succeeds, the unit may move as normal. If the test fails, the unit remains locked in CC. The second player may also attempt to break contact the same way. If neither unit successfully passes its Leadership test, the assault continues, even if both players wish to break contact.
Issuing and accepting Challenges will be at the discretion of the players, but there will be no penalties for refusing.
The Next Turn:
Once the Assault Phase is complete, start the next turn. Player 1 can start each turn, or players may begin each turn with a new Initiative roll-off. Perhaps with an arbitrary bonus going to the Warlord whose forces gained the upper hand?
Regardless, the next Movement Phase will begin with Player 1 moving unengaged units, and using Leadership tests to break units out of Close Combats. Continue until the game is complete.
Beyond that, I'd rework the Allies Matrix to coincide with the fluff, and I'd keep Apocalypse a separate game and keep Apoc units out of 40K.
In it, the author offers up a promising solution. Instead of a saving throw, Armor is worked into a stat called Evasion, which is how hard the target is to hit.
Roll to Hit, Roll to Wound. Done. Instead of multiple charts to memorize, there's just one.
I'm sure the author will realize how terrible this idea is the first time he actually tries it on the table and realizes that he has turned the game into a giant match of rock-paper-scissors. I hope he plays against Eldar and realizes nothing in his army can ever hit the Avatar.
The 2D6 charge range is good. It means that casualties from shooting (and overwatch) may cause a charge to fail. This is realism.
Nothing I've ever seen in war footage would make me think that if the guy in front dies, all his buddies teleport back to where they started.
@SpaceNinjaJetPilot.
Just using alternating action phases is a good fix for current 40k's poor level of player interaction.(And it allows for a lot more tactical decision making. )
And most house rules include it as a primary fix.(Yes, it does improve the game the most with the minimum of fuss!)
(I have extended it to cover multiple action sequences in a dual activation game turn for the most tactically advanced version of the new rules my group is working on.)
@All.
For several reasons previously discussed, a 3 stage resolution process, roll to hit,roll to save, roll to damage, is the most appropriate for a 40k re write.
Also why use charts and tables, when we can use stats directly ?As this seems the most elegant way to cover interaction.
Especially if we use 'unit cards' with all the unit info on them.We can just play the game without having to look anything up!
@ AnomanderRake.
I agree with most of your observations and comments (However, I would prefer to look at good modern battle games for solutions , rather than WHFB variants.)
Could I ask folks make it clear if their ideas are for house rules/ modification to 40k 6th ed.Or a brand new rule set?
Because sticking with 40k stats and resolution methods /game mechanics makes sense for house rules and current game mods.
Lanrak wrote: @ AnomanderRake.
I agree with most of your observations and comments (However, I would prefer to look at good modern battle games for solutions , rather than WHFB variants.)
Could I ask folks make it clear if their ideas are for house rules/ modification to 40k 6th ed.Or a brand new rule set?
Because sticking with 40k stats and resolution methods /game mechanics makes sense for house rules and current game mods.
But makes less sense for a complete re-write.
The WHFB parts are specifically for design aspects 40k and WHFB share that WHFB does better. I also looked at GW's side games, Flames of War, WARMACHINE, and Bolt Action while setting this up, I didn't straight-up grab stuff from any of them in quite the same way but some bits of design philosophy certainly impacted my rules.
Lanrak wrote: Could I ask folks make it clear if their ideas are for house rules/ modification to 40k 6th ed.Or a brand new rule set?
Because sticking with 40k stats and resolution methods /game mechanics makes sense for house rules and current game mods.
But makes less sense for a complete re-write.
House rules are little things. They're another "Band-Aid on the accumulation," to quote the OP. And Warpath (the self-proclaimed answer to the current 40K mess) is what a brand new rule set would look like. It's not 40K anymore, and it will never gain traction, imho. Anytime I bring any of this up in my gaming group, they take another swig of the Kool-Aid and tell me to "go play Infinity." Or Flames of War. Or any other game that isn't40K.
A solution to 40K still has to be40K. Just fixed.
So I'm going for something in the middle. A "re-boot." A 7th Ed. If GW said, "Hey you, take a crack at this mutha." Then this is what I would do...
That's why I'm against "activation phases." Say what you will about the 40K game turn, its simple. "I do all my stuff, then you do all your stuff." An I move, you move, I shoot, you shoot, I charge, you charge game turn is infinitely more tactical, and realistic, without being a wholesale departure from what 20 million players are used to. That's why I suggested the Movement rules I did, and their effect on shooting. (And why I'd cut things like "Look out, Sir" and Challenges.) It's streamlined, but its still40K.
That's also why I'd dump 75% of the USRs and relegate the rest to the codices. 40K players love their special rules, but keep them out of the core set, and in the codex where they belong. (If you want a core rule set that's under 20 pages, this is a no-brainer.)
I would not completely rewrite the core rules. I would, however, completely rewrite all the stat lines. For everything. They're not balanced. A bare-bones "troop" choice from one codex should equal the same choice from any other codex. Not identical, but equal. If one unit is better at CC, the other should shoot better. If one unit's troops are better everywhere, they'll cost more and have less of them, etc. Certainly, all units in all categories won't be perfectly even, but basic troops should.
Which brings up the only really big change I have. Getting rid of saving throws. Working that resilience into the Toughness stat. Roll to hit, then to wound. Bada bing, bada boom. ICs, HQs, MCs, psykers... sure, let them have a save. A psychic power, a piece of war gear, whatever... I'm fine with that, but everybody having one is for the birds.
Without completely restating everything in my first post, that's what I'll be working on. Not just house rules, and not a completely new rule set, but a streamlined, simplified40K.
@ SpaceNinjaJetPilot.
I did post '... for house rules and current game mods. '
So if you want to modify WHFB in space in any way that keeps WHFB core game mechanics ,resolutions ,and stat lines in some way.
As it does make sense to keep the rules 'looking familiar' if the target audience has only played 40k/WHFB.
However,I have found more experienced war gamers are able to see past the 'rules sold with the minatures' bond.
And are very happy to switch out rules and minatures as they want to.(And obviously not GW plc core demoghraphic.!)
We have used several rule set mods,) for games of 40k, depending on what size game and level of detail we want.
From FUBAR, Stargrunt II, Tomorrows War, Fast and Dirty,Epic Armageddon and NET Epic. etc.
Yes you can make a better rule set than 6th ed 40k, simply by using an alternating phase game turn , and clearing out the inane amount of special rules.In fact lots of people have proposed this type of thing since 4th ed!
This is absolutely fine, and as valid as a complete re-write as a method to improve 40k rules.
But we need to keep the developments separate with clear definition to avoid confusion!
Would you be happy to use '40k modified' and '40k new ', as a simple distinction between re working current rules/stats to arrive at a better rule set.
And completely new rules stats and game mechanics to achieve a better rule set.?
As some ideas may fit one type of development very well but be unsuitable for another.
The army with higher average initiative always starts, unless they make a "tactical pause" giving the other army first go
Movement phase happens to any unit in first army
Movement phase happens to any unit in second army
Rinse and repeat until all units have moved/not moved if decided to
Then above is repeated with shooting phase, but with a difference: reaction sub-phase, happens just before shooting where a unit can take cover,then afterwards is allowed "pot shots" (25% of troops can take snap shots)
Assault phase follows movement phase and current assault phase.
The army with higher average initiative always starts, unless they make a "tactical pause" giving the other army first go
Movement phase happens to any unit in first army Movement phase happens to any unit in second army Rinse and repeat until all units have moved/not moved if decided to
Then above is repeated with shooting phase, but with a difference: reaction sub-phase, happens just before shooting where a unit can take cover,then afterwards is allowed "pot shots" (25% of troops can take snap shots)
Assault phase follows movement phase and current assault phase.
At that point you would probably want to just make a new characteristic. Because initiative is only used in CC this would severely harm any unit that is not a dedicated CC unit. Or eldar.
Hi folks.
if you want a variant on interleaved phases.
Eg rather than simple.
A moves.
B moves
A shoots
B shoots
A assaults
B assaults.
(With a roll off to decide who goes first each turn)
We could use.
A Moves.
B Attacks (Shoot or assault depending on range.)
A Reacts.(Move or Attack)
B Moves
A Attacks (Shoot or assault depending on range.)
B Reacts (Move or Attack)
If we keep the Initiative stat it in the 40k mod , it can only be used for close assault order,If it gets used for any other reason it needs to be re-named or replaced IMO.
I ended up dancing around the issue of turn order in a way that eliminated the need for an Initiative stat entirely:
Player 1 Movement
Player 2 Reaction Fire
Player 1 Combat
Player 2 Movement
Player 1 Reaction Fire
Player 2 Combat
The Combat phase covers both shooting and CC depending on how far away from the enemy your are, but barring a few special cases only one army is attacking in any turn so there's no need to determine who goes first. A unit that doesn't attack in the Combat phase may attack in the Reaction Fire phase after the enemy's turn at a penalty.
@ Larnak
I see your point. Mine's a mod. Not a rewrite.
Lanrak wrote: Hi folks.
if you want a variant on interleaved phases.
Eg rather than simple.
A moves.
B moves
A shoots
B shoots
A assaults
B assaults.
(With a roll off to decide who goes first each turn)
We could use.
A Moves.
B Attacks (Shoot or assault depending on range.)
A Reacts.(Move or Attack)
B Moves
A Attacks (Shoot or assault depending on range.)
B Reacts (Move or Attack)
I like the idea of Player B being able to affect Player A's movement phase (while sticking with my stodgy ol' A moves, B moves, A shoots, B shoots, A assaults, B assaults game turn.)
I thought about expanding Overwatch to once per turn, instead of just in the Assault phase.
Player A declares which units are moving. Player B's units can choose to fire Overwatch and possibly suppress them, or hold onto it in case they get charged.
@lord blackfang.
I prefer the second one too , that is why I proposed it!
The idea that the opposing army gets to 'react' to your movement ,(with the opportunity to launch an attack of some sort.)Before you can continue with the rest of the actions you want to take.Was the core idea I thought was worth discussing.
AnomanderRake has proposed a cool alternative!
However, just limiting the 'interupt'' to a shooting action, might be seen as an unfair to more assault based armies.
How do you feel about?
Player 1 moves.
Player 2 reaction attacks
Player 1 attacks.
Player 2 moves
Player 1 reaction attacks
Player 2 attacks.
This way we can simply define what a reaction attack can be and what a standard attack can be,(for close assault and ranged attack options.)
Lanrak wrote: AnomanderRake has proposed a cool alternative!
However, just limiting the 'interupt'' to a shooting action, might be seen as an unfair to more assault based armies.
Sorry if I didn't express myself clearly; there's no functional difference between a "shooting attack" and a "close combat attack" beyond range and a simple rule governing the fact that you can't shoot into close combat and limitations on using melee-range weapons against airplanes. A unit that chose to hold for reaction may make a free melee attack if an enemy unit moves into their combat radius.
SpaceNinjaJetPilot wrote:
That's also why I'd dump 75% of the USRs and relegate the rest to the codices. 40K players love their special rules, but keep them out of the core set, and in the codex where they belong. (If you want a core rule set that's under 20 pages, this is a no-brainer.)
No no nononono!
There may be a few too many USR's, but you absolutely want them in the main rulebook.
Back in the bad old days before USR's, there were at one stage 4 differently worded versions of "And They Shall Know No Fear" going around. I remember in Fantasy at one stage, there were some magic armours/items that gave 'Always Strike First'. But their resolution system if two models has ASF different between the four items: One said roll off, one said go with highest initiative, one was with highest weapon skill, and the fourth had no guidance.
Until GW gets significantly better in the exactness of their rules ala Warmachine, having only a single definition of the rule in one book is the way to go,
I would not completely rewrite the core rules. I would, however, completely rewrite all the stat lines. For everything. They're not balanced. A bare-bones "troop" choice from one codex should equal the same choice from any other codex. Not identical, but equal. If one unit is better at CC, the other should shoot better. If one unit's troops are better everywhere, they'll cost more and have less of them, etc. Certainly, all units in all categories won't be perfectly even, but basic troops should.
I'm sure this is the plan, but cost functions are pretty difficult to work out. Is a 5+ invulnerable worth more or less than 3+ armour? How much better is 2 S5 WS5 attacks than 1 BS4 S4 shooting attack? How much better is fleet than fear?
You have the issue of 'force multipliers' and 'target saturation' - where eg 90 points of pathfinders makes X unit twice as good through buffs, or 3 Helldrakes is more than 3 times more powerful than 1 Helldrake. Cronair is good not because the flyer itself is good, but because you can take 6 of them! Or you have the units which are only good because you can take special weapons - you'd happily pay 60pts for 10 guardsmen plus 40pts for the special weapons, but not 60pts for the 10 guardsmen.
There is also the occurrence where GW sometimes prices based on theme. They directly admitted to this once for th Dark Elf 6th Edition Errata, where warriors dropped by 3pts in order to underprice them and encourage more 'thematic' armies.
... so yeah, they TRY to do that. But its hard.
Which brings up the only really big change I have. Getting rid of saving throws. Working that resilience into the Toughness stat. Roll to hit, then to wound. Bada bing, bada boom. ICs, HQs, MCs, psykers... sure, let them have a save. A psychic power, a piece of war gear, whatever... I'm fine with that, but everybody having one is for the birds.
While I'm all for merging some of the statline together (looking at you, WS+I) I don't think that Sv should be one to go. The design decision behind Sv is that you have at least SOME input during your opponents turn, some control over whatever dies. I personally find it quite frustrating when an opponent rolls a bunch of AP3 wounds and says 'remove that many guys'. Whaa?
One of my favourite rule sets at the moment is Dust Warfare. The action/reaction system is quite cool.
Essentially it is:
Each unit usually gets 2 actions per turn (eg move+shoot), or one long action (eg, sprint)
INITIATIVE PHASE:
Players roll one dice for each unit. The amount of 5+s you get is your Initiative. Whoever gets the lowest initiative goes first.
COMMAND PHASE: Your opponent cannot react to actions that you make during the command phase.
Player 1: Pick up to (initiative) units and perform ONE action with them. Mark the unit as 'reacted'.
Player 2: Same as player 1, but you have more initiative.
ACTION PHASE:
Player 1: One unit at a time, do remaining actions for the entire army.
Your opponent can react to actions that you do! As long as unit has not already reacted and is not suppressed, they can react to your actions by eg running away or shooting back.
If someone manages to engage you in close combat, you can't run or shoot, but you can spend your reaction fighting back,
Player 2: Same as player 1.
Its a highly engaging turn sequence which definitely feels as though it is one player's turn, but has enough opportunities that the opponent doesn't get bored.
I'm very partial to systems where each unit completes its full activation all at once. I find that 40k with its Move/Shoot/Assault sequence ends up with a LOT of tracking and unnecessarily missed opportunities and rules. Its a lot harder to forget to shoot with a unit when you only need to activate it once per turn instead of thrice.
Two other things that I think need to be added to 40k:
1) Bring back the movement stat. There are so many 'this unit is fast', 'this unit is faster', 'this unit is fasterer, but in a weirder way' rules. Just give each unit a speed (6") and give +3" instead of fleet.
2) Rename a Game Turn to a Round. A Round consists of one Turn per player which is made up of 3 Phases. Easy.
SpaceNinjaJetPilot wrote:
That's also why I'd dump 75% of the USRs and relegate the rest to the codices. 40K players love their special rules, but keep them out of the core set, and in the codex where they belong. (If you want a core rule set that's under 20 pages, this is a no-brainer.)
No no nononono!
There may be a few too many USR's, but you absolutely want them in the main rulebook.
Back in the bad old days before USR's, there were at one stage 4 differently worded versions of "And They Shall Know No Fear" going around. I remember in Fantasy at one stage, there were some magic armours/items that gave 'Always Strike First'. But their resolution system if two models has ASF different between the four items: One said roll off, one said go with highest initiative, one was with highest weapon skill, and the fourth had no guidance.
Until GW gets significantly better in the exactness of their rules ala Warmachine, having only a single definition of the rule in one book is the way to go,
I'd suggest going to the exact opposite extreme; fewer USRs, yes, but also stick to USRs for units in specific Codexes as much as possible. Standardize the rules, set up to have fewer special-case arguments. This would also help avoid the problem of people needing to read and understand every single Codex to be able to play; when 95% of what the other guy's doing is covered under USRs you'll be able to strategize more effectively since you know what everyone can do.
I would not completely rewrite the core rules. I would, however, completely rewrite all the stat lines. For everything. They're not balanced. A bare-bones "troop" choice from one codex should equal the same choice from any other codex. Not identical, but equal. If one unit is better at CC, the other should shoot better. If one unit's troops are better everywhere, they'll cost more and have less of them, etc. Certainly, all units in all categories won't be perfectly even, but basic troops should.
I'm sure this is the plan, but cost functions are pretty difficult to work out. Is a 5+ invulnerable worth more or less than 3+ armour? How much better is 2 S5 WS5 attacks than 1 BS4 S4 shooting attack? How much better is fleet than fear?
You have the issue of 'force multipliers' and 'target saturation' - where eg 90 points of pathfinders makes X unit twice as good through buffs, or 3 Helldrakes is more than 3 times more powerful than 1 Helldrake. Cronair is good not because the flyer itself is good, but because you can take 6 of them! Or you have the units which are only good because you can take special weapons - you'd happily pay 60pts for 10 guardsmen plus 40pts for the special weapons, but not 60pts for the 10 guardsmen.
There is also the occurrence where GW sometimes prices based on theme. They directly admitted to this once for th Dark Elf 6th Edition Errata, where warriors dropped by 3pts in order to underprice them and encourage more 'thematic' armies.
... so yeah, they TRY to do that. But its hard.
No. Absolutely not. A Tactical Marine is never in any realm of the imagination going to be even remotely equivalent to a Termagant. The idea of 40k is that it's an asymmetrical game with points costs to balance things out such that if you want to play a themed game about a wave of Tyranids trying to overwhelm a Space Marine bastion and have the Space Marines outnumbered ten to one you can do it and it's balanced (at least in theory). Resetting the game back to "one soldier = one soldier" is absolutely the wrong direction.
Which brings up the only really big change I have. Getting rid of saving throws. Working that resilience into the Toughness stat. Roll to hit, then to wound. Bada bing, bada boom. ICs, HQs, MCs, psykers... sure, let them have a save. A psychic power, a piece of war gear, whatever... I'm fine with that, but everybody having one is for the birds.
While I'm all for merging some of the statline together (looking at you, WS+I) I don't think that Sv should be one to go. The design decision behind Sv is that you have at least SOME input during your opponents turn, some control over whatever dies. I personally find it quite frustrating when an opponent rolls a bunch of AP3 wounds and says 'remove that many guys'. Whaa?
I have another issue with that: granularity. With two rolls needed to wound you've got eleven possible results with linear progression in the odds, with three rolls needed to kill you've got 214 possible results with a bell curve of results and minor changes to stats impact the odds much less. The more rolls you take out of the game the more the game is decided by the dice since each individual die now has a much bigger impact on the outcome of the game.
Two other things that I think need to be added to 40k:
1) Bring back the movement stat. There are so many 'this unit is fast', 'this unit is faster', 'this unit is fasterer, but in a weirder way' rules. Just give each unit a speed (6") and give +3" instead of fleet.
2) Rename a Game Turn to a Round. A Round consists of one Turn per player which is made up of 3 Phases. Easy.
Move stat, absolutely. No reason a Terminator and a Harlequin should be able to run the same speed, no reason a Valkyrie (maximum speed 3 according to AI) should be just as fast as a Thunderbolt (maximum speed 6 according to AI). The Round consisting of a Turn is semantics; referring to Game Turns versus Player Turns is perfectly fine so long as you keep the wording consistent.
AnomanderRake wrote: No. Absolutely not. A Tactical Marine is never in any realm of the imagination going to be even remotely equivalent to a Termagant. The idea of 40k is that it's an asymmetrical game with points costs to balance things out such that if you want to play a themed game about a wave of Tyranids trying to overwhelm a Space Marine bastion and have the Space Marines outnumbered ten to one you can do it and it's balanced (at least in theory). Resetting the game back to "one soldier = one soldier" is absolutely the wrong direction.
Just to clarify, nowhere did I say 1 solder = 1 soldier. Obviously 1 Space Marine is not going to be equal to 1 Guardsman/Ork/Fire Warrior etc. I said that troop UNITS should roughly balance out. If that's 5 Space Marines to 10 Guardsmen or 20 Ork Boys or 16 gaunts...
Varying move stats was brought up before in this thread and others. Since it seems roughly half the forum writers (personal observation) do want to use it, despite being more practically argued against than for, I'm curious to know: How would you do it/like to see it done. For arguments sake lets say you must use a 6'x4' board and of course the model scale can't change. Please post your modified deployment zone size/area and rough turn by turn or round by round lay out of a games progress using some various units with these new speeds. Also, melee combat must NOT be possible in round one or until player turn three. I'll explain why if needed but that one should be mostly obvious.
KnuckleWolf wrote: Varying move stats was brought up before in this thread and others. Since it seems roughly half the forum writers (personal observation) do want to use it, despite being more practically argued against than for, I'm curious to know: How would you do it/like to see it done. For arguments sake lets say you must use a 6'x4' board and of course the model scale can't change. Please post your modified deployment zone size/area and rough turn by turn or round by round lay out of a games progress using some various units with these new speeds. Also, melee combat must NOT be possible in round one or until player turn three. I'll explain why if needed but that one should be mostly obvious.
I've got Move stats ranging from 3" (slow things like Obliterators and Wraithguard) to 20" (Flyers), I rolled movement, running, and charging into the Movement phase such that you have three options for what to do:
Remain stationary: Attack with any weapon at no penalty
Move a number of inches equal to your Move stat ("Full" move): Attack with non-Heavy ranged weapons at a penalty or melee weapons at no penalty
Move a number of inches equal to double your Move stat ("Double" move): No ranged attacks, melee attacks at a penalty.
This means the absolute fastest melee-capable units (Eldar/Dark Eldar Jetbikes at Move 15 (16-20 are reserved for Flyers)) are going to have a potential melee threat range of thirty-six inches once the combat radius rule (which I covered in my really long post earlier on this page) is factored in as compared to a maximum melee threat range of twenty-four inches in 40k today (12" move and 12" charge from a Jump model or someone hopping out of an open-topped transport or a Land Raider); with the standard 24" no-man's-land zone in normal 40k games that means you could potentially see melee on turn one easily but that's not a big change from 40k. If you really don't want to see melee combat on turn one you'd pick a scenario map that has further-apart deployment zones (though expecting players to start sixty-six inches apart to ensure that player A's Eldar Jetbikes can't charge player B's Eldar Jetbikes in round one isn't likely), but if one player really wants to get into melee and the other doesn't all the second person has to do is deploy back away from the edge of their deployment zone. The combat radius mechanic, however, also mitigates some of the problems with CC by making fights much less one-sided since non-Heavy guns actually matter in CC; if you think overmuch charge range isn't fair to people like the Tau consider that Fire Warriors are shooting at a penalty to accuracy with their pulse rifles in melee combat and they've got (*gasp*) playable Kroot for countercharges.
So the way I read that was an Eldar Jetbike, can engage in melee, turn one, covering a gap almost twice the base speed of your fastest flyer?
Second question(s): If the "response" to this is to start further back, are you still using fall-back-to-death morale style? Part and parcel to that is are you still using objectives in the middle of the board that said further back unit now has to work harder to get too if at all? To summarize are you still using punisher mechanics against a playstyle? You can of course do that if you want, (to control the game experience for example) I just want to know if that's the goal.
Lastly, if a even remotely strategic war game is your goal, which it may well not be (see O.G.R.E., Battleship, current 40klol) you need to eliminate turn one engagement as much as possible from it, and maybe turn two if the scale calls for it. Sometimes difficult to do in war games as they have, y'know, guns, but if you really want a good strategy layer your first turn almost needs to be 99% maneuvering and positioning. That statement can be backed up by almost any successful and enduring strategy game. (e.g. Chess, Go, Starcraft, Catan, etc. More recently the Flight Path system for Star Wars and Star Trek. Some have argued technicalities supporting variation on this theme in even Risk and Axis and Allies despite turn one combat)
KnuckleWolf wrote: Varying move stats was brought up before in this thread and others. Since it seems roughly half the forum writers (personal observation) do want to use it, despite being more practically argued against than for, I'm curious to know: How would you do it/like to see it done. For arguments sake lets say you must use a 6'x4' board and of course the model scale can't change. Please post your modified deployment zone size/area and rough turn by turn or round by round lay out of a games progress using some various units with these new speeds. Also, melee combat must NOT be possible in round one or until player turn three. I'll explain why if needed but that one should be mostly obvious.
I've got Move stats ranging from 3" (slow things like Obliterators and Wraithguard) to 20" (Flyers), I rolled movement, running, and charging into the Movement phase such that you have three options for what to do:
Remain stationary: Attack with any weapon at no penalty
Move a number of inches equal to your Move stat ("Full" move): Attack with non-Heavy ranged weapons at a penalty or melee weapons at no penalty
Move a number of inches equal to double your Move stat ("Double" move): No ranged attacks, melee attacks at a penalty.
This means the absolute fastest melee-capable units (Eldar/Dark Eldar Jetbikes at Move 15 (16-20 are reserved for Flyers)) are going to have a potential melee threat range of thirty-six inches once the combat radius rule (which I covered in my really long post earlier on this page) is factored in as compared to a maximum melee threat range of twenty-four inches in 40k today (12" move and 12" charge from a Jump model or someone hopping out of an open-topped transport or a Land Raider); with the standard 24" no-man's-land zone in normal 40k games that means you could potentially see melee on turn one easily but that's not a big change from 40k. If you really don't want to see melee combat on turn one you'd pick a scenario map that has further-apart deployment zones (though expecting players to start sixty-six inches apart to ensure that player A's Eldar Jetbikes can't charge player B's Eldar Jetbikes in round one isn't likely), but if one player really wants to get into melee and the other doesn't all the second person has to do is deploy back away from the edge of their deployment zone. The combat radius mechanic, however, also mitigates some of the problems with CC by making fights much less one-sided since non-Heavy guns actually matter in CC; if you think overmuch charge range isn't fair to people like the Tau consider that Fire Warriors are shooting at a penalty to accuracy with their pulse rifles in melee combat and they've got (*gasp*) playable Kroot for countercharges.
Good luck fighting jetseer councils all around with a bunch of ork boyz that can move...how fast?
Hi folks.
I prefer using direct stats because it speeds up play.
Eg Mobility 7".(Move 7" per movement action.)
Mobility , 'Special name 'for slightly faster than the other vehicles but slower than the really fast vehicles'. look up this value in the vehicle rules....
40k has tons of strategic decisions, (list building and deployment options for synergistic use of units and unit load out combos.)
What is actually lacking is in game tactical choice.
Limiting the rapidity and frequency of combat engagements by LOS blocking terrain, and tactical use of smoke/blind , coupled with a system based on target stealth,(skill for not being seen shot at!)Is a lot more practical and sensible IMO.
There is nothing wrong with using a movement stat.
OR using a range of clearly defined fixed values.(Like FoW, eg, Infantry Jeep, Half track , Tank , Fast tank, Slow Tank.etc.)
But simply saying everything works like this , than contradict this with lots of exceptions is poor rules writing.
If we were going to keep the 'names' for units mobility .I would prefer to do it like this...
Slow and Purpuseful =4"
Standard infantry =5"
(Fleet)Fast infantry =6"
Vehicles =6"
Fast vehicles/jump packs= 8"
Bikes and skimmers =12."
KnuckleWolf wrote: Varying move stats was brought up before in this thread and others. Since it seems roughly half the forum writers (personal observation) do want to use it, despite being more practically argued against than for, I'm curious to know: How would you do it/like to see it done. For arguments sake lets say you must use a 6'x4' board and of course the model scale can't change. Please post your modified deployment zone size/area and rough turn by turn or round by round lay out of a games progress using some various units with these new speeds. Also, melee combat must NOT be possible in round one or until player turn three. I'll explain why if needed but that one should be mostly obvious.
I've got Move stats ranging from 3" (slow things like Obliterators and Wraithguard) to 20" (Flyers), I rolled movement, running, and charging into the Movement phase such that you have three options for what to do:
Remain stationary: Attack with any weapon at no penalty
Move a number of inches equal to your Move stat ("Full" move): Attack with non-Heavy ranged weapons at a penalty or melee weapons at no penalty
Move a number of inches equal to double your Move stat ("Double" move): No ranged attacks, melee attacks at a penalty.
This means the absolute fastest melee-capable units (Eldar/Dark Eldar Jetbikes at Move 15 (16-20 are reserved for Flyers)) are going to have a potential melee threat range of thirty-six inches once the combat radius rule (which I covered in my really long post earlier on this page) is factored in as compared to a maximum melee threat range of twenty-four inches in 40k today (12" move and 12" charge from a Jump model or someone hopping out of an open-topped transport or a Land Raider); with the standard 24" no-man's-land zone in normal 40k games that means you could potentially see melee on turn one easily but that's not a big change from 40k. If you really don't want to see melee combat on turn one you'd pick a scenario map that has further-apart deployment zones (though expecting players to start sixty-six inches apart to ensure that player A's Eldar Jetbikes can't charge player B's Eldar Jetbikes in round one isn't likely), but if one player really wants to get into melee and the other doesn't all the second person has to do is deploy back away from the edge of their deployment zone. The combat radius mechanic, however, also mitigates some of the problems with CC by making fights much less one-sided since non-Heavy guns actually matter in CC; if you think overmuch charge range isn't fair to people like the Tau consider that Fire Warriors are shooting at a penalty to accuracy with their pulse rifles in melee combat and they've got (*gasp*) playable Kroot for countercharges.
Good luck fighting jetseer councils all around with a bunch of ork boyz that can move...how fast?
Twelve inches, more if they WAAAGH!, for an eighteen-plus-inch melee threat range. And a Jetseer Council isn't actually a thing under my rules; Warlocks are squad leader characters, you can't stick them into a big squad of just Warlocks. Not to mention that with the revised cover mechanics (plus to Evasion, makes the unit harder to hit), revised armour penetration mechanics (-x to armour instead of 'ignore armour below x'), rewritten Fortune (only affects armour saves) and Conceal (soft cover for +1 to Evasion, doesn't stack with normal cover), and nerf to Jetbikes (lower Evasion than infantry when stationary, higher when moving), even if you did have a Jetseer Council it'd go down pretty damn fast to anti-aircraft autocannons/lascannons/ion cannons (great AP value, high Strength, Multiple Wounds in the case of the Lascannon, and AA tracking to ignore the Evasion modifier from moving quickly as a Jetbike).
To KnuckleWolf: The goal here is to make the game move faster. I'm trying to build around a broader and more varied set of scenarios than standard 40k such that an army with really slow troops can work out fine in a defensive situation because they're tough and well-armed, but you can just as easily have a scenario where both players start very far away from the objectives and the person who can make better use of Jump Packs, Bikes, Skimmers, Flyers, and Deep Strike/Infiltrate is going to win. I'm not yet sure how composition mechanics are going to play into a core set of missions for pick-up games but I doubt I'm going to have a table you roll on for six missions that play out relatively similarly like 40k today does. As for fall back mechanics the scenario designates a "rally point", either a zone on the table or a table edge; if you get to an on-the-table rally point you rally automatically, if you run off the table edge you're out of the game.
I get where you're coming from on turn one engagement but I'm considering deployment to be "turn one" here. If someone decides that jetbikes into melee on turn one is a cool idea they'll have to contend with the enemy deploying to hard-counter them with the AA units that every balanced list will have at least a few of screened by fodder, and they'll have to contend with the fact that there aren't easy steamroll melee fights under these rules. Someone who charges an entire army of Shining Spears and Storm Guardian Jetbikes into an enemy force may find that he wipes a wave of sacrificial troops before getting silly quantities of bullets dumped on him and/or countercharged by some people he really doesn't want to engage in melee.
So yes, turn one charges are possible. They're also very easily countered.
Hrmmm. I understand deployment is very strategic, but it doesn't really count as "turn one" in my mind. One problem 40K and a lot of wargames have is they start you in range of the other guys and there's no room for maneuver, which takes out a lot of interesting interaction. Maybe realistic for medieval/ancient armies lining up and advancing, but dull and unrealistic for anything that fights at all like a modern force.
Maybe do something really radical, and make deployment types actual deployment types, rather than a range in which each player can line up. If i'm playing space marines and my opponent's playing IG, maybe he decides to deploy defensively, with all of his units set up and ready, but i decide to deploy via orbital decent, and have my entire army deep strike onto the table. Or Tyranids tunnel in from below, or dark eldar deploy via webway portals, daemons from warp rifts, etc etc etc.
The fluff is full of truly epic ways of entering the battlefield, from drop ships and shuttle craft, to crashing meteors into the planet, and SisterSydney brings up a good point, in that the current method is very reminiscent of medieval warfare instead of 41st millenium methods.
I think the solution might be to build this into the idea of "off table support" i see a lot of. Maybe have units be able to purchase a means to enter the battlefield like drop pods or spore pods, but for entire portions of armies instead of just one unit. So i could purchase a "Thunderhawk" deployment method for a formation of units, and would follow the rules associated with that, say "may carry 25 infantry models, as well as 2 large vehicles or 1 massive vehicle". Then this entire group of units would enter the table as one, with the exception of options like having assault marines jump out and descend on their own. Similarly, i could purchase outflanking for my bikers, or a stealth entry for my scouts.
Now THAT is an interesting idea. There even could be a standard list of deployment methods all armies can use (e.g. dug in) and then special methods for each army (e.g. webway).
SisterSydney wrote: Now THAT is an interesting idea. There even could be a standard list of deployment methods all armies can use (e.g. dug in) and then special methods for each army (e.g. webway).
Tau could have something like an ambush (which tau love to do in the fluff) or being droped in via orca.
Eldar+Dark Eldar could have webway gates.
Orks could crash meteors with engines into the planet.
Rav1rn wrote: Maybe do something really radical, and make deployment types actual deployment types, rather than a range in which each player can line up. If i'm playing space marines and my opponent's playing IG, maybe he decides to deploy defensively, with all of his units set up and ready, but i decide to deploy via orbital decent, and have my entire army deep strike onto the table. Or Tyranids tunnel in from below, or dark eldar deploy via webway portals, daemons from warp rifts, etc etc etc.
The fluff is full of truly epic ways of entering the battlefield, from drop ships and shuttle craft, to crashing meteors into the planet, and SisterSydney brings up a good point, in that the current method is very reminiscent of medieval warfare instead of 41st millenium methods.
I think the solution might be to build this into the idea of "off table support" i see a lot of. Maybe have units be able to purchase a means to enter the battlefield like drop pods or spore pods, but for entire portions of armies instead of just one unit. So i could purchase a "Thunderhawk" deployment method for a formation of units, and would follow the rules associated with that, say "may carry 25 infantry models, as well as 2 large vehicles or 1 massive vehicle". Then this entire group of units would enter the table as one, with the exception of options like having assault marines jump out and descend on their own. Similarly, i could purchase outflanking for my bikers, or a stealth entry for my scouts.
I like this; Epic had a sort of similar system with buying cruisers for orbital bombardment shots, I may draw on that a bit. I'm also considering requiring units to make some sort of sacrifice to be deployable by Deep Strike or outflanking, a Guard squad might have to pay a few points for a grav-chute, for instance; I'm also looking to make Deep Strike more interactive with the models on the table through the addition of more homing beacons/jammers. I like a mixture of units sticking together as a formation for purposes of Reserves; it echoes the sort of feudal hierarchical system you'd expect to find in most 40k armies and allows for some very flexible mini-detachments, not to mention allowing for Apocalypse-formation-like rules on a smaller scale (applied more broadly than dataslates, thank you very much) that open up more interaction between units and more army-building options, not to mention the possibility of tailoring the same block of miniatures to multiple scenarios instead of having each unit be black-and-white useful/useless in a given situation.
I think the idea of forces arriving sporadically throughout the game, from reserves,concealment is a good idea.
This would open up tactical options.
I was thinking of determining how much of the force is held in reserve, depending on the mission types.(If we use multiple mission cards and deployment /set up options, in a random senario generator method.)
Eg
In an attacking mission ,you could start with a 'scouting or recon' group, that calls in back up when encountering enemy units.
And the 'defencive patrol/ position group ' calling up reserves to support them.
This way players can start with more 'exotic' units, that are task specific.
How the reserves arrive would be race specific, they arrive as determined by the background.(Jump pack, drop pod,tellyporta,webway, tunnelers etc.)
If we are wandering into the 'strategic ' area of game development ,should we look at replacing the awful FOC40k uses.
Eg Rather than using function as a deciding factor, we use commonality to support thematic narrative of the force?
Eg replace Elite, troops , fast attack , heavy support .
With Common, Specialized, and Restricted.
And how rare a unit is in the force composition is determined by the HQ chosen.
Could air craft be counted as off board support, requiring a command vehicle on table to call in. although the thought of a sorcerer standing in a chaos rhino, summoning a heldrake to strafe infantry, seems weird. It would make people think, is it worth the points, as it may not reach the table.
Lanrak wrote: If we are wandering into the 'strategic ' area of game development ,should we look at replacing the awful FOC40k uses.
Eg Rather than using function as a deciding factor, we use commonality to support thematic narrative of the force?
Eg replace Elite, troops , fast attack , heavy support .
With Common, Specialized, and Restricted.
And how rare a unit is in the force composition is determined by the HQ chosen.
My conceptual org chart is a little complex and needs polishing right now but at the moment you've got as building blocks Elements (small groups of models of the same type), Characters (individual squad leaders), and Vehicles.
Squads are composed of a squad leader Character and some mixture of Elements, for instance a Space Marine Bike squad of a Bike-mounted character, a Bike element, and optionally a couple of extra Bike elements or Attack Bikes; most Elements can also have a light vehicle or a transport, a Bike Squad can have a Land Speeder accompanying them, for instance.
Getting up past that we have Platoons, composed of a Platoon-level character (a junior HQ choice in terms of 40k), who can be accompanied by Adviser characters (which is where you usually get non-leadership people like Bonesingers and Techmarines) and leads some number of Squads plus potentially an armour squadron of a couple of tanks. The type of Platoon is going to have a lot of bearing on what you can take here; an Eldar Aspect Platoon led by a Xentarch (senior Exarch) is going to have a lot of Aspect Warriors but it's not going to have many tanks or any Wraith units, for instance. You can also get unique formations here; these are the rough equivalent of a Dataslate formation in terms of you taking these X guys and getting this Y benefit but they're going to be a little more toned down, count against your normal limits, and you're limited to one per platoon. This is the rough equivalent of a standard 40k game.
Company level is for really big games; it's only here you start to get more senior officers (Space Marine Captains, Dark Eldar Archons, the like), accompanied by some selection of Platoons. This is where unique Platoon-level formations, the rough equivalent of an Apocalypse formation, come into play, as well as Super-Heavy vehicles and Gargantuan Creatures. The 'type' of Company is much less restrictive than the 'type' of Platoon; you've got certain more specialized Platoons only unlocked by specific Company officers (you might need a senior Spiritseer to be able to take a whole Wraith Platoon, for instance) but you don't have to declare "this is a Space Marine defensive line company" and restrict yourself to slower-moving Platoons in order to unlock a couple of scary things in the same way as you do at the Platoon level. This is the rough equivalent of an Apocalypse game.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
loki old fart wrote: Could air craft be counted as off board support, requiring a command vehicle on table to call in. although the thought of a sorcerer standing in a chaos rhino, summoning a heldrake to strafe infantry, seems weird. It would make people think, is it worth the points, as it may not reach the table.
I've split that up a bit; some aircraft would be off-table support, but the problem with that is that they're much less accurate while zooming around at high speeds than the planes that have models on the board, who are hanging around at low altitude hovering just above stall speed in order to see and target ground units accurately. You can take off-table support planes, but they're going to be much less effective than a plane actually on the table would be.
@ loki.
If we are going to include aircraft in a modern war battle simulation , then having them as 'on call' off table support.And making appearance as ground attack, or dropping off reserve units in LZs is the best way of incorporating them in a new rule set IMO.
(And having the equivalent of a forward air controller would make sense!)
However, if we are just modifying current 6th ed rules,they would need to spend more time on table to justify the use of actual models and current PV.
As AnomanderRake's suggestion .
@AnomanderRake.
I can sort of understand the idea you want to implement .A sort of OOB built bottom up.But I would prefer to use something a bit easier to use.
I would simply define elements as units.(As now, they can be a single model unit or a multiple model unit.)
And the units fall into 4 classes.HQ units, Common units , Specialized units and Restricted units.
(Maybe class off table support as Support units ?So we have Common Support , Specialized Support and restricted Support units.)
(The mission determines how many of these units are placed in off table support.)
Each HQ unit in a force , allows the player to take 2 to 8 Common units.
For every 2 common units you can take a Specialized unit.
For every 2 Specialized units you can take a Restricted unit.
However, it follows the idea the type of 'HQ you pick' determines what the units are classed as in the army.
Assault marines can be Common,(HQ equipped with Jump packs.)
OR Specialized,(HQ foot slogger or vehicle mounted.)
OR Rare , ( HQ with defence strong point , or siege type equipment.)
This assumes that unit leaders are equipped in a similar way to the rest of the unit.(Ranged weapon or close combat focused.)And there is no link between the old classification and the new one.(Not just troop choices are common in the new method for example.)
After a force has maxed out on common units , it can take a new HQ of a different type/Theme along with 2 new common units .(If points allow.).
So as in your concept the bulk of units in any sized force are of a' similar theme to the HQ.'
KnuckleWolf wrote: Varying move stats was brought up before in this thread and others. Since it seems roughly half the forum writers (personal observation) do want to use it, despite being more practically argued against than for, I'm curious to know: How would you do it/like to see it done. For arguments sake lets say you must use a 6'x4' board and of course the model scale can't change. Please post your modified deployment zone size/area and rough turn by turn or round by round lay out of a games progress using some various units with these new speeds. Also, melee combat must NOT be possible in round one or until player turn three. I'll explain why if needed but that one should be mostly obvious.
To start with, the easiest thing is to simply give everyone a move stat of 6". Combat speed for vehicles is their move stat, Cruising speed is double their move stat. Everything going all right so far. Beasts/Cav/Bikes all get 12" obviously. That sorts out most things without changing balance at all.
Now pick out things with eg Fleet. This could translate to a +1" or +2" Move - or make your Run your full Move (or a fixed amount) instead of D6. Slow and Purposeful translates to -1/-2".
Moving through terrain halves your movement, rather than rolling dice.
Run moves probably remain at D6 for nearly all models, with speed modifications affecting move+assault rather than run,
Personally I dislike random charge distances also, and would make charges = the base movement stat plus 2" (or some fixed amount... +2 or +3 probably works best)
This would result in move/run/assault like so:
Infantry: 6/D6/8
Cavalry/Beasts/Bikes: 8/D6/10
Jump Pack: 12/D6/8, or 8/D6/10
Then you can also add in a move type: Foot/Wheeled/Jump/Hover/Beast, which would change the effects of difficult/dangerous terrain.
But then the 'fasterer' models, eg Eldar, Hormagaunts, Seekers of Slaanesh and the like, could be given an extra inch or two of movement to show their fastness.
Also in relation to your post, assault CAN occur first player turn if player 2 scouts to a bad spot; or second player turn under most circumstances if player 1 moves forward. Battles between two assault armies can quite easily have combat on turn 1.
Also, Imperial Guard's unique way of entering the table is in a huge landing craft like the ones on the cover of the 5th generation rulebook.
Aquillia lander? I think that's the thing on the IG fluff page in the BRB (188).
Also SoB use their faith in the emp. to create a invincible dropship through faith alone! Or they just all hold on tho the feet of their winged saints, either one .
Also, Imperial Guard's unique way of entering the table is in a huge landing craft like the ones on the cover of the 5th generation rulebook.
Aquillia lander? I think that's the thing on the IG fluff page in the BRB (188).
Also SoB use their faith in the emp. to create a invincible dropship through faith alone! Or they just all hold on tho the feet of their winged saints, either one .
The Aquila Lander is a shuttle for important people, not for entire Guard regiments. There are bigger shuttles.
And no, they don't. If they need to drop into battle I'd guess they'd make use of Guard equipment, though I've seen theories about Sisters having their own patterns of Storm Eagles and Stormravens.
Also, Imperial Guard's unique way of entering the table is in a huge landing craft like the ones on the cover of the 5th generation rulebook.
Aquillia lander? I think that's the thing on the IG fluff page in the BRB (188).
Also SoB use their faith in the emp. to create a invincible dropship through faith alone! Or they just all hold on tho the feet of their winged saints, either one .
The Aquila Lander is a shuttle for important people, not for entire Guard regiments. There are bigger shuttles.
And no, they don't. If they need to drop into battle I'd guess they'd make use of Guard equipment, though I've seen theories about Sisters having their own patterns of Storm Eagles and Stormravens.
So just to try to formalize this a bit,i would say the goals of the FOC system should be:
1) Allow players to play the army types and units they want
2) Encourage proper army compositon (my army should not be 2 5-man squads of firewarriors and 3 riptides)
3) Minimize spam and cheese (hopefully balance will make this a non-issue, but a backup layer of protection is never a bad idea)
The issue is that none of these goals exist independantly, at the very least proper balance and costing is going to play a role in each, so we run into the situation of by heading towards one goal, we move further from another, so we need to find a nice balance.
I'm worried the 2 common > 1 Specialist /// 2 specialist > 1 restricted is going to fail to meet goal 1, because if i want to take a terminator squad and a dreadnought, i have to take 12 other units before i can take them both. That's going to force me to either use some FOC changes i may not want to make it easier to get one of them, or use minimum squads to save as many points as possible so i can still afford them in anything but the largest games.
Having units be purchased in the slot fitting their battlefield role (FA, HS, Elites, etc) does a decent job of forcing a player to make decisions about which options would be best to bring to fill a certain role. This is subverted by poor balancing, often leading to one or two options that dominate a slot, but that's hardly the fault of the system, so i'm not sure the change to Common, Specialist, Restricted is warranted, especially when the "HQ makes this unit common" is functionally identical to the current system.
There is the issue that certain slots are often overcrowded, such as the heavy support slot for both tyranids and imperial guard, leading to either irksome limitations (Tyranids) or ways around the system (imperial guard vehicle squadrons), so i've been looking at ways to combine Fast Attack and Heavy Support into one "Support" slot that would include both groups, but there are concerns about moving away from goal 3.
---------------------
The system i've been thinking of is:
1 HQ unit unlocks 3 Formations
1 Formation =
1-2 troops units
0-2 support units
0-1 elite units
0-1 specialist units
---If a formation includes 1 troop unit and 1 support unit, they may take up to 1 elite unit
---If a formation includes 2 troop units, they may take up to 1 specialist unit (apothecary, techmarine, painboy, venomthrope, likely other units as well but these are the ones that come to mind)
---You may never take 2 of the same support units in a single formation (could have some nasty consequences for armies with few choices, so keep an eye on that)
This way, there is a restriction on certain groups of units, but it's nothing extreme or insurmountable, and also encourages proper army composition. The system encourages the player to maximize their use of a single formation, rather than investing the minimum amount in each formation necessary to get the unit they want, though that option is still available.
I feel that making a player feel like they are losing opportunities if they don't do something is a much better way of directing behavior than forcing them to fit a very strict set of rules or actively punishing them for doing what they want.
Depending on how any new deployment method works out, this system could also slot very nicely into those rules as well, as the player is already buying units in very distinct groups, and don't have to arbitrarily assign units into groups after they are done with the list.
There's also potential to do what GW dataslates have been doing, in that they introduce relatively fixed groups of units that could bend the rules of formations slightly, and include options or units that would typically be unavailable in a single formation, or offer a discount at the cost of a degree of customization.
-------------------
I would like something a bit more refined than "pick this HQ and these units become troops", because while the current system is decent, i feel like it has a lot of room for improvement, though I have no firm ideas on how to do this.
Maybe purchase FOC modifiers along the lines of Space Marine Chapter Tactics, so i could chose to play a reserve company and make assault marines troops, at the cost of no longer being able to purchase devastators. Maybe make it so picking the specific HQ just removes the consequences, rather than making it possible in the first place.
DUST warfare has an interesting army selection mechanic:
Each force can choose from 3 (+ additional in expansion) Platoon types.
A platoon consists of a command squad, 2-5 Core Units, and 1 support unit per 2 Core Units.
Each Core unit in a platoon is a selection from a set of options. For many of the platoons the core choices were varied, so that eg Core Units A+B could have Assault Marines, Tac Marines or Bikes, Core Units C+D could have Assault Marines, Vanguard Vets and Assault Terminators, and Core Unit E might be Assault Centurions. Support choices were things like Landspeeders, Scouts or Techmarines.
Then you'd have options for a Fire Support Platoon or Terminator Platoon.
A typical force ends up with 2-4 platoons of 2-4 units including support. The structure means that you can create a themed list but the amount of each is naturally limiting. The more basic units are available in many platoons, some of the dedicated ones are available only in particular platoons. It also means that you can potentially have a force of 2 Assault Platoons + 1 Firebase platoon, vs a force of 1 Assault, 1 Firebase, 1 Terminator, both composed of exactly the same units! Support elements are also similarly limited, which could let you have a platoon with great core choices but terrible support elements, vs a platoon with terrible support choices but great support.
If people want to spam the dedicated units (eg, have a Assault Centurion themed army) they would need to pay a 'tax' by taking extra Command elements and extra Core elements to get the 'good' units. It grows naturally as points increase, and it supports themed forces with 'ideal' distributions.
An example for the Tau Army:
Spoiler:
Firebase Platoon:
Command:
(One of, Compulsory) Cadre Fireblade, Ethereal, Darkstrider, Aun'shi, Fire Warrior Squad
Core Unit A:
(One of, Compulsory) Firewarriors, Kroot Carnivores
Core Unit B:
(One of, Compulsory) Firewarriors, Kroot Carnivores, Pathfinders
Core Unit C:
(One of) Firewarriors, Kroot Carnivores, Pathfinders, Gun Drones, Crisis Battlesuits
Core Unit D:
(One of) Firewarriors, Crisis Battlesuits, Broadside Battlesuits, Sniper Drones
Support Unit A:
(One of, 1 per 2 Core Units) Vespid Stingwings, Piranha Skimmers, Riptide Battlesuit, Devilfish Transport
Support Unit B:
(One of, 1 per 2 core units) Hammerhead Gunship, Skyray Gunship, Broadside Battlesuits, Devilfish Transport
Scout Platoon:
Command:
Commander, Shadowsun, Darkstrider, Stealth Suit Squad
Core Unit A
Stealth Suits, Pathfinders, Kroot
Core Unit B:
Stealth Suits, Pathfinders, Kroot
Core Unit C:
Fire Warriors, Pathfinders, Piranha Skimmers, Gun Drones, Vespids
Core Unit D:
Stealth Suits, Crisis Suits, Sniper Drones
Support Unit A:
Piranha Skimmers, Sunshark Bomber, Razorshark Fighter
Support Unit B
Piranha Skimmers, Devilfish Transport, Crisis Suits.
Farsight Enclaves Platoon:
Command
Farsight, Tau Commander, Member of the Eight
Core unit A:
Crisis Battlesuits
Core unit B
Crisis Battlesuits, Fire Warriors
Core Unit C
Crisis Battlesuits, Stealth Battlesuits, Fire Warriors, Broadside Battlesuits
Core Unit D
Crisis Battlesuits, Stealth Battlesuits, Riptide Battlesuit
Support Unit A
Hammerhead Gunship, Skyray Gunship, Sniper Drones
Support Unit B
Hammerhead Gunship, Broadside Battlesuits
Basically... any improvement I think of to 40k borrows from Dust Warfare. Improvements for Dust take a lot from 40k too - Dusts' Blast mechanic is pretty unbelievable, and it could benefit from specific skill tests rather than just 5+ for everything - but I think Dust plays a LOT like a modern version of 40k. Which is probably to be expected seeing as it was written by Andy Chambers.
Basically... any improvement I think of to 40k borrows from Dust Warfare. Improvements for Dust take a lot from 40k too - Dusts' Blast mechanic is pretty unbelievable, and it could benefit from specific skill tests rather than just 5+ for everything - but I think Dust plays a LOT like a modern version of 40k. Which is probably to be expected seeing as it was written by Andy Chambers.
I dunno, i think the mechanics behind that "success on a 5+" could create some interesting results for 40K. If the number of shots and BS of the model were consolidated into one value, so the way a model is shown to be a better shooter than another is that they just get more shots, it could create a cool situation where this models likelihood of hitting is not only higher, but their potential number of hits is also higher.
If my space marines fire rapid fire weapons 3 times, whereas a guardsman fires only once, then they're no longer just better shots, they have much higher potential damage output. This would lead to some really exciting moments, like a 5 man squad of space marines getting really lucky with rolls, and hitting almost all 15 of their shots, and annihilating a guard squad. There's problems here to be sure, but it is very interesting.
You're right, that could be pretty cool. A squad of 5 marines could conceivably take down a squad of 20 'gaunts in a single round of shooting .
The problem then is that you have a slightly unbelievable and tricky-to-implement mechanic where a Tac marine fires 3 shots with his bolter but a veteran fires 4 shots... but both still only fire 1 shot from a Missle Launcher.... Whaa? I think that would end up requiring a very large lookup table.
But then again, Dust implements armor classes by reducing the number of shots, so I suppose it's not that different. In Dust, a squad will fire eg 10 shots vs Armour 2, 5 shots vs Armour 3, 2 shots vs Armour 4. The difference is that each gun stays the same across all units.
You're right, that could be pretty cool. A squad of 5 marines could conceivably take down a squad of 20 'gaunts in a single round of shooting .
The problem then is that you have a slightly unbelievable and tricky-to-implement mechanic where a Tac marine fires 3 shots with his bolter but a veteran fires 4 shots... but both still only fire 1 shot from a Missle Launcher.... Whaa? I think that would end up requiring a very large lookup table.
The two methods don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive though. Maybe have it so that if a models BS is above a certain value, they may increase the number of shots by one. This way modifiers could adjust this value. If my marines are BS 5, then so long as their BS is not reduced from something like taking a double move then firing, they meet the BS5 threshold for increased Rate of fire. Sternguard on the other hand, at a BS of 6, could feel free to move as much as they'd like and still get the increased Rate of fire.
Alternatively, have it as a "firing mode" that a model could access, where they increase their shots at the cost of BS. I'm sure there are tons of ways to run this, but i like it as it's another vector with which is improve a models shooting ability besides just "better at hitting stuff".
Look at veteran guardsman and stormtroopers. While both should be better shooters than the rank and file, they could be expressed in two different ways. Veteran guardsmen would have an increased Rate of fire with Lasguns, as they have extensive experience with the weapon to fall back on, but stormtroopers could have a higher BS, demonstrating their superior training. Of course, a higher BS would typically correlate with more shots, and with different weapons for each, this example isn't exactly accurate of either unit, but the idea is exciting.
@Rav1n.
You may have miss understood what I was proposing, with proportional FoC with multiple thematic HQ's. Only completely counter theme units are Restricted.
If you pick a 'vanilla list' where Common units are current troops choices, all non troop choices can be taken as Specialized or Restricted.(3 non 'Troop' units for every 2 Troop units taken.)
As this mimics the current FoC maximums 6 troops and 9 non troops , and just makes the relationship proportional.(And allows it to extend to 8 and 12 for bigger armies!)
So to pick 2 terminator squads and a dreadnought , you need to field 2 tac squads.
If you want a more focused theme (where current Elite, Heavy Support and Fast Attack units are common.)
Eg 1st company heavy strike force, (Death wing.)Then you can expect more restriction on the Specialized and Restricted options! (Not many lightly armoured scouts would be used in a 1st company deep strike op, for example!)
To improve balance in the system more accurate PV cost on units , and more synergistic control in FoC is needed.
I am not saying this is the only way to do it .
But it is simple and allows a great deal of flexibility in the army composition, while maintaining the proportional structure found in an OOB system.
I know i have not explained it too well though...
Imagine one system that can cover all races army composition , all the old Klanz, Regiments, Craft World , Pantheons,etc.
My concept involves X "squads" with a restriction on the number of characters per squad and the number of armoured units (which includes tanks, planes, and a lot of the modern big Monstrous Creatures) per squad (usually you'll have one Dedicated Transport or light vehicle per squad, but for a Riptide or a Predator or the like you need to be in a larger game and you've got to have the minimum platoon requirements before you start taking the tanks) but depending on how big of a game you're playing/what characters are leading the squads you will have different limitations on what the squads can be, such that if you want an all-Terminator army or an all-Wraithguard army you just need to take the right leader characters.
variation on a theme
shooting
To Hit Modifiers: (all effects are cumulative if more than one applies)
Target behind light cover: -1 to rolled
Target behind medium cover -2 to rolled, example: behind a wall or in ruins:
Target behind fortifications -3 to roll (aegis etc)
Large Target: +1 to die roll.
Medium range The target is over half of the weapon’s range away. -1 to roll.
Maximum range -2 to roll
If firers ranged weapon skill (rws)+d6 minus cover minus range is greater than targets armour. Then target is hit, and takes one wound.
@AnomanderRake.
Is your system similar to the old Epic system of buying detachments from an OOB?
Or the system where you by 'companies' in blocks of units.And each 'company' allows a set number of support units?
Could you post a rough example please?
@loki (fellow old fart. )
If you are keeping the current BS system then the to hit modifiers make sense.
However, I would just keep it to;-
Soft cover.(Thing that just make units harder to see.)-1
Hard cover, (Things that offer physical protection and make the model /unit harder to see.)-2
Large target +1
Over half the weapons effective range, (over 18" only*) -1.
(*As applying to hit penalties on short range weapons like melta guns and pistols could be counter intuitive.)
I should probably elaborate on the specifics, though you may have to bear with me, this is sort of complicated and clunky right now.
Element: An Element consists of one or more models with the same statline, all equipped similarly, sometimes with an upgrade weapon. The individual Element rules will contain any restrictions. Example: Space Marine Tactical Element. 2-4 Space Marines in power armour with bolters, one may replace his bolter with a weapon from the Special Weapons list.
Squad: A Squad consists of a Squad-level Character (Sergeant, Exarch, Aspiring Champion) and one or more Elements. The individual Squad rules will contain any restrictions. Most Squads will come with the option to purchase a Dedicated Transport or a light support vehicle. Example: Space Marine Tactical Squad. Sergeant and Tactical Element plus 0-2 Tactical, Assault, or Devastator Elements. Elements in a Tactical Squad may not purchase mounts.
Platoon: A Platoon consists of a Platoon-level Character (Force Commander, Exalted Hero, Dracon), optional Advisers (lesser characters with special abilities) and one or more Squads. Some armies will restrict what Squads can be taken with which Platoon, many don't. A Platoon may also include an Armoured unit (Tanks, Artillery, Flyers, Monsters, the like) for every Squad.
Company: A Company consists of a Company-level Character (Captain, Chaos Lord, Farseer, Shas'el; note that if the game is above a certain points level this may become a Command Character (Chapter Master, senior Farseer, Shas'O, Guard General)), optional Advisers and an optional Command Squad, and one or more Platoons. For each Platoon a Company may purchase a Heavy Armoured unit (squads of Armoured units, Heavy Armour (Land Raiders, Monoliths, Storm Eagles, other big things)).
Conceptually this works a lot like 40k today but with a hierarchical system of unlocking advanced units not unlike Battlefleet Gothic and much more customizable Squads. A Space Marine Tactical Squad, for instance, requires a Sergeant and a Tactical Element, but it can have 0-2 of Tactical, Assault, and Devastator Elements so long as they're on foot, and it can purchase a Rhino, Razorback, or Drop Pod so long as all the models fit. Where a Tactical Squad in 40k today is 5-10 models with the option for one Special and one Heavy weapon plus whatever upgrades you put on the Sergeant this system creates a squad from 3-13 models with the option for one Special and up to two extra Special, Heavy, or close combat weapons plus whatever you want to put on the Sergeant.
If you are keeping the current BS system then the to hit modifiers make sense.
However, I would just keep it to;-
Soft cover.(Thing that just make units harder to see.)-1
Hard cover, (Things that offer physical protection and make the model /unit harder to see.)-2
Large target +1
Over half the weapons effective range, (over 18" only*) -1.
(*As applying to hit penalties on short range weapons like melta guns and pistols could be counter intuitive.)
Which is basically what I was thinking. Only put in -3 because of people whinging if aegis was nerfed.
If you are keeping the current BS system then the to hit modifiers make sense.
However, I would just keep it to;-
Soft cover.(Thing that just make units harder to see.)-1
Hard cover, (Things that offer physical protection and make the model /unit harder to see.)-2
Large target +1
Over half the weapons effective range, (over 18" only*) -1.
(*As applying to hit penalties on short range weapons like melta guns and pistols could be counter intuitive.)
Which is basically what I was thinking. Only put in -3 because of people whinging if aegis was nerfed.
I implemented a slightly different system; instead of modifiers to hit, models have a separate "Evasion" stat that BS is compared to when determining the roll to hit not unlike hitting in close combat. All forms of cover are incorporated in here; "sort" cover (trees, intervening models) is a +1 to Evasion, "hard" cover (fortifications, an ADL) is a +2 to Evasion, and Jink saves can provide from +1 to +4 as well; this makes it so you don't quite need dedicated AA weapons to attack Flyers to the same degree, capable ground units can hit them with ground weaponry on better than a 6.
@AnomanderRake.
IMO there are 2 basic ways to cover shooting.
A fixed base score with modifiers.(Either base it on the targets ability to not get shot!(As FoW, )Or base it on the shooters skill.)
If you want to use opposed values, do not use modifiers as well.(its too complicated.)I would just use opposed dice rolls.(And modifiers simply alter the number of dice rolled.)
That is why I proposed using a Stealth value.(The basic value opponent needs to hit the model at range.)With modifiers.(Cover etc adds to the stealth value .Short range etc adds to the dice roll score.)
Thanks for explaining you proposed FoC.
Basically you buy 'mini themes' that provide blocks of units you use to build the force.(if i understand it correctly?)
Detection range
If you can’t see it. You can’t shoot it. So your weapon can fire 72 inches. How far can you see? 24 inches that’s tough you need push someone forward to spot for you.
cover
Any soldier can tell you that concealment does not always provide cover, but cover always provides concealment. (e.g., shrubs aren't bulletproof, walls are.)
Shooting at something in cover is harder to hit, therefore "a unit shooting at a target in cover does so at a reduced skill level.
(all effects are cumulative if more than one applies)
To Hit Modifiers:
Target behind light cover: -1 to rolled
Target behind medium cover -2 to rolled, example: behind a wall or in ruins:
Large Target: +1 to die roll.
Medium range. the target is over 24 inches away. -1 to roll.
Maximum range -2 to roll
If firers ranged weapon skill (rws) - cover - range +d6 => toughness + armour target is hit, unit takes one wound.
Target profile
Spoiler:
Toughness, armour, and size can be rolled into 1 profile. I.E (TP). TP can then modified for range and cover
If you can’t see it. You can’t shoot it. So your weapon can fire 72 inches. How far can you see? 24 inches that’s tough you need push someone forward to spot for you....Gives scouts more reasons to be on the board. Makes things more realistic. Introduces the possibility of command vehicles...
Interesting idea, but 24" visibility is probably too short. And except for artillery, very few modern-day systems can outshoot their sensor range. It'd be weird if an M1 tank can see spot targets at its maximum range but a Leman Russ can't.
Any soldier can tell you that concealment does not always provide cover, but cover always provides concealment. (e.g., shrubs aren't bulletproof, walls are.)
Depends on the wall and what you're shooting at it. That's part of the reasons police officers fire hollowpoint rounds, so they don't go through the wall behind the suspect into the next room....
If you can’t see it. You can’t shoot it. So your weapon can fire 72 inches. How far can you see? 24 inches that’s tough you need push someone forward to spot for you.
i like this, it's basically what I've been toying with, except i said you can see 24", but anything outside 12" must be fired at with a reduced BS (BS is one lower than normal). If you have another unit within 24" of that same unit, you ignore the BS penalty.
Shooting at something in cover is harder to hit, therefore "a unit shooting at a target in cover does so at a reduced skill level.
(all effects are cumulative if more than one applies)
To Hit Modifiers:
Target behind light cover: -1 to rolled
Target behind medium cover -2 to rolled, example: behind a wall or in ruins:
Large Target: +1 to die roll.
Medium range. the target is over 24 inches away. -1 to roll.
Maximum range -2 to roll
If firers ranged weapon skill (rws) - cover - range +d6 => toughness + armour target is hit, unit takes one wound.
im against cover as modifiers, and against model size as to-hit modifiers, because it adds complexity in all the wrong places. If cover is a modifier, players with weakly armored units (GEQ) will almost never get to roll their saves, which means the player has less of a say in the fate of those models. Putting models down to immediately pick them up again isn't much fun, even if the models are supposed to die in droves. Keep cover a distinct save, and just let cover saves stack with armor saves so it doesn't overly favor one type of model over another.
Another mark against it, if I have a list of X number of potential modifiers, then I have to keep that list on hand to make sure im remembering them all, then do some math to add it all up and modify the value, which is not ideal.
You brought up a great Fog of war system, put model and unit sizes in there. Huge models 12" further than normal, massive models 18" further, etc. smaller models and units would require being closer to be seen. A 1 man Lictor would be nigh impossible to see with stealth, shrouding, and a micro-unit size of 1 model, but a screaming squad of 30 orks is not exactly hard to detect, even with the fog of war. Change stealth and shrouding to work with the fog of war too while you're at it, it makes more sense than providing or improving cover saves.
That equation is way too complex for new players to get into, which is a point the current resolution system has in its favor. It's nicely broken into steps by its nature. Also, consolidating toughness and armor into one value can streamline things, but at the cost of diversity and overall simplicity, because you have to come up with all sorts of strange systems to bring damage levels back down to current levels. Taking out that 3rd step in damage resolution has huge impacts.
@Lanrak: That's the general idea on the FOC, though I'm probably going to need to elaborate better in the rules document.
As for the modifiers-to-Evasion it lets me put a lot of different rules that otherwise have to be described separately under one roof, and it lets me distinguish between units in terms of how easy they are to shoot in a more granular manner. I'm going to need to do some testing to see how well it works but I don't think it's going to end up being too complicated for gameplay. To Rav1rn's concerns about giving the defending player something to do between the rewrite of AP/Sv (it's much harder to outright ignore armour saves) and the medic mechanic I don't think incorporating cover into Evasion and removing cover saves is going to be a serious problem. Differentiating Evasion even allows me to roughly simulate the fog of war system you guys are bringing up; an Ork or a Space Marine crunching through the rubble shooting a loud gun is going to be much easier to spot and therefore to hit than an Eldar Pathfinder crouching under a camo-cloak, therefore the Pathfinder has much higher base Evasion.
Evasion stats seem better to me than maximum ranges at which you can see things -- you may see something but not well enough to fire accurately, but then again hosing the area down should always be an option.
Also, "medic system"? I'd love to see your rules for that.
Rav1rn wrote: if I have a list of X number of potential modifiers, then I have to keep that list on hand to make sure im remembering them all, then do some math to add it all up and modify the value, which is not ideal.That equation is way too complex for new players to get into, which is a point the current resolution system has in its favor. It's nicely broken into steps by its nature. Also, consolidating toughness and armor into one value can streamline things, but at the cost of diversity and overall simplicity,
Which is why I thought of target profile, Size, toughness, and armour are constant, so can be rolled into one profile. when you fire you roll against that profile.
You brought up a great Fog of war system, put model and unit sizes in there. Huge models 12" further than normal, massive models 18" further, etc. smaller models and units would require being closer to be seen. A 1 man Lictor would be nigh impossible to see with stealth, shrouding, and a micro-unit size of 1 model, but a screaming squad of 30 orks is not exactly hard to detect, even with the fog of war.
and you think my system is complicated If I fire at a large target at distance, the range modifier and the size modifier cancel each other out. If I fire at small model only range modifier applies, so small models are harder to kill at range.
Change stealth and shrouding to work with the fog of war too while you're at it, it makes more sense than providing or improving cover saves.
agreed already working on it. Also working on suppression and intervention. Want to create a system that encourages
realism. and ability to upgrade models buy purchasing bionic eyes etc. Hardest part will be costing upgrades. need to work out system for that. Want it to be compatible with most 28-30 mm models, not just 40k
SisterSydney wrote: Evasion stats seem better to me than maximum ranges at which you can see things -- you may see something but not well enough to fire accurately, but then again hosing the area down should always be an option.
Also, "medic system"? I'd love to see your rules for that.
Medic and Tech units can remove d3 unsaved wounds from a single unit within 12" of the model at the end of the Combat phase before models are removed. Medics to this to non-vehicle models, Techs do this to vehicles; multiple repair units can't fix up a single unit in a turn. Holding onto the idea that most models are going to have multiple wounds (one to three for most infantry) you treat a squad as a single entity that takes wounds as a single entity, at the end of the combat phase you pull wounds with Medics/Techs and then remove models until the number of wounds on the squad gets below the wounds value of the guys in the squad.
If you can’t see it. You can’t shoot it. So your weapon can fire 72 inches. How far can you see? 24 inches that’s tough you need push someone forward to spot for you....Gives scouts more reasons to be on the board. Makes things more realistic. Introduces the possibility of command vehicles...
Interesting idea, but 24" visibility is probably too short. And except for artillery, very few modern-day systems can outshoot their sensor range. It'd be weird if an M1 tank can see spot targets at its maximum range but a Leman Russ can't.
Any soldier can tell you that concealment does not always provide cover, but cover always provides concealment. (e.g., shrubs aren't bulletproof, walls are.)
Depends on the wall and what you're shooting at it. That's part of the reasons police officers fire hollowpoint rounds, so they don't go through the wall behind the suspect into the next room....
Should auto cannons and lascannons shoot through hard cover then?
SisterSydney wrote: Arguably hard cover should be extra armour or Toughness, while the soft cover/concealment aspect should be a modifier to enemy to-hit rolls.
If a 7.62 gpmg can reduce a cinder block wall to rubble. Should an auto cannon or lascannon be able to destroy cover. I.E. remove from board.
SisterSydney wrote: Arguably hard cover should be extra armour or Toughness, while the soft cover/concealment aspect should be a modifier to enemy to-hit rolls.
The biggest issue with this is it slows the game down with arguments over what counts as what, plus when we're talking about .75-caliber fully-automatic armour-piercing rocket-propelled grenade launchers as the infantry small arm against which most things are measured arguing about what could actually stop a bullet starts to become very theoretical. I tried to roll the concerns together with "cover stops bullets" and "cover obscures target" both making it harder to connect a shot to the target.
SisterSydney wrote: Arguably hard cover should be extra armour or Toughness, while the soft cover/concealment aspect should be a modifier to enemy to-hit rolls.
The biggest issue with this is it slows the game down with arguments over what counts as what, plus when we're talking about .75-caliber fully-automatic armour-piercing rocket-propelled grenade launchers as the infantry small arm against which most things are measured arguing about what could actually stop a bullet starts to become very theoretical. I tried to roll the concerns together with "cover stops bullets" and "cover obscures target" both making it harder to connect a shot to the target.
Exactly what happens in real life, doesn't may for good gameplay.
so light cover makes it harder to fire at target -1
And hard cover makes it harder to fire at target plus offers physical protection -2
Hi folks.
I agree with Loki.
Good game design simplifies resolution but keeps the results intuitive and proportional.
Bad game design simplifies concepts , but complicates and/or abstracts the resolution.
So the first will reduce the amount of rules required to deliver the game play.
As 'fluff reasoning' can justify anything in a fictional game, it is best to focus on the game play requirements IMO.
SisterSydney wrote: Arguably hard cover should be extra armour or Toughness, while the soft cover/concealment aspect should be a modifier to enemy to-hit rolls.
The biggest issue with this is it slows the game down with arguments over what counts as what, plus when we're talking about .75-caliber fully-automatic armour-piercing rocket-propelled grenade launchers as the infantry small arm against which most things are measured arguing about what could actually stop a bullet starts to become very theoretical. I tried to roll the concerns together with "cover stops bullets" and "cover obscures target" both making it harder to connect a shot to the target.
Exactly what happens in real life, doesn't may for good gameplay.
so light cover makes it harder to fire at target -1
And hard cover makes it harder to fire at target plus offers physical protection -2
We have come up with the exact same thing (adjusted for our different to-hit mechanics), though.
loki old fart wrote: If you can’t see it. You can’t shoot it. So your weapon can fire 72 inches. How far can you see? 24 inches that’s tough you need push someone forward to spot for you. Bit of a nerf to long range alpha strikes. Gives scouts more reasons to be on the board. Makes things more realistic.
This is not realistic at all. You can see much farther than you can accurately shoot. Leave weapon ranges alone. Let's pretend that Space Marines, Guardsmen, Fire Warriors, etc, are trained to use their weapon to its fullest potential. If you want Scouts to do more, give them homing beacons or let them help reduce artillery scatter.
Shooting at something in cover is harder to hit, therefore "a unit shooting at a target in cover does so at a reduced skill level.
(all effects are cumulative if more than one applies)
To Hit Modifiers:
Target behind light cover: -1 to rolled
Target behind medium cover -2 to rolled, example: behind a wall or in ruins:
Large Target: +1 to die roll.
Medium range. the target is over 24 inches away. -1 to roll.
Maximum range -2 to roll
If firers ranged weapon skill (rws) - cover - range +d6 => toughness + armour target is hit, unit takes one wound.
im against cover as modifiers, and against model size as to-hit modifiers, because it adds complexity in all the wrong places. If cover is a modifier, players with weakly armored units (GEQ) will almost never get to roll their saves, which means the player has less of a say in the fate of those models. Putting models down to immediately pick them up again isn't much fun, even if the models are supposed to die in droves. Keep cover a distinct save, and just let cover saves stack with armor saves so it doesn't overly favor one type of model over another.
Yikes. The answer is not 5 modifiers. Nor is it to stack armor and cover saves. This game needs less dice rolling, not more.
Lanrak wrote: @loki (fellow old fart. )
If you are keeping the current BS system then the to hit modifiers make sense.
Absolutely right. On a single D6, a -1 or -2 represents a significant obstacle to shooting.
A unit standing in tall grass is harder to see, hence the -1.
A unit standing behind rocks or ruins is harder to see and harder to penetrate, hence the -2. But leave it at that.
Weapon ranges are limiting enough. They don't need a modifier. Again, pretend the soldier is trained to use his weapon as well as it can be used. Let his BS decide if he hits something he has range and clear LOS to.
Also, LOS already makes it harder for larger models to avoid being hit. They don't need a modifier.
Trasvi wrote: To start with, the easiest thing is to simply give everyone a move stat of 6". Combat speed for vehicles is their move stat, Cruising speed is double their move stat. Everything going all right so far. Beasts/Cav/Bikes all get 12" obviously. That sorts out most things without changing balance at all.
Now pick out things with eg Fleet. This could translate to a +1" or +2" Move - or make your Run your full Move (or a fixed amount) instead of D6. Slow and Purposeful translates to -1/-2".
Moving through terrain halves your movement, rather than rolling dice.
Run moves probably remain at D6 for nearly all models, with speed modifications affecting move+assault rather than run,
Personally I dislike random charge distances also, and would make charges = the base movement stat plus 2" (or some fixed amount... +2 or +3 probably works best)
This would result in move/run/assault like so:
Infantry: 6/D6/8
Cavalry/Beasts/Bikes: 8/D6/10
Jump Pack: 12/D6/8, or 8/D6/10
Why nix random charge ranges but keep random run distance? Also, since Jump packs are automatically worked in to the unit's movement, can they still use the jump packs to assault and get Hammer of Wrath?
What about this? The trade off makes movement decisions much more tactically important.
Infantry can:
1. Remain stationary and fire at full BS. No charge, but Overwatch is at full BS.
2. Move up to 6" and fire snap shots (and Flame Templates), then charge 12".
3. Move up to 12" and fire nothing at all. Charge 6".
4. Fall back 2D6.
Jump Infantry can:
1. Remain stationary and fire at full BS. No charge, but Overwatch is at full BS.
2. Move up to 6" and fire snap shots (and Flame Templates), then charge 12" (With Hammer of Wrath.)
3. Move up to 12" and fire nothing at all. Charge 6".
4. Fall back 3D6.
Has anyone on this thread that's recommending stat line changes (Evasion stats, Movement stats, Toughness profiles, etc.) or dice other than D6 actually begun rewriting stat lines or reworking point values? That seems like the elephant in the room. We can talk rules until we're blue in the face, but until someone actually rewrites every stat line for every unit in every codex, it's all a moot point.
It would be better in many ways, but I would not use Initiative, but Leadership. Also I would not do everything in order as for certain army match-ups it would still turn into Your Turn My Turn and removes an interesting tactical choice.
There's a similar approach (so you get the realism and interesting variance between unit types) but which avoids the problems that come with it. Instead of strict initiative or leadership order, it's just regular I Go You Go but allow an interrupt based on the relevant score (Initiative in your case, Leadership in mine). This adds a whole new tactical aspect to the game with knowing that if you move init X (low score) first, you're giving your opponent a chance to squeeze in an extra move before you actually move it. (To be clear only one interrupt is allowed). And it reflects the real benefit of high leadership on a battlefield, This would increase the value of the relevant attribute and so some re-costing would be useful. It would also lead to more interesting differences and play-styles between otherwise similar armies. It also avoids the problem if high Initiative / Leadership trips being trapped into going sooner than is tactically desired which would be the opposite of how a better leader / troop should behave - as others have pointed out, going first can be a disadvantage.
It plays pretty quickly, also:
"I'm moving these Boyz, leadership 6"
"Marnius Calgar is interrupting"
Lets you bait your opponent into making mistakes also by moving their best troops when they shouldn't so you can get them to commit wrongly. It's a whole new aspect of tactical play for almost zero additional complication.
In my humble opinion, this is... absolutely brilliant. I would limit it to the Warlord (and the unit he is attached to, or perhaps a unit within 6"), but the concept is amazingly good.
It would show the leaders as truly leading.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mike94656 wrote: I like it simply for the back and forth. You get to be reactive to the other player. They move and shoot, you can counter, but instead of waiting for an entire army to move, you go unit by unit. Giving priority to faster units before slower.
It also leads to more tactical decisions in a game. Do you want to move unit Y first and charge those Eldar before they get away, or move unit X and seize those ruins before your opponent does.
^This is important too, and another reason for the change.
Thanks. I think even if the idea that changing one side goes then the other to a game of alternating units isn't universally regarded as necessary, it's certainly near the too of the list of things most people believe would improve things. So when I was thinking over ideas based on that and wanting different armies to actually play differently and capture realistically the different organizational abilities of different armies (quite frankly Space Marines who are a small hyper-elite force ought to have better command effects than, e.g. IG or orks), it seemed clear that Leadership should be that differentiator. Unfortunately it presented the case where it turned games back into one side goes, then the other. I mulled it over for a couple of days at the back of my mind as to how I could achieve this without that happening, and then realized allowing an interrupt did exactly that. I see it as DESIRABLE that in, e.g. SM vs. Orks, the SM get the chance to use their greater battlefield coordination, communications, etc., in a way that matters.
If you're interested in tactical play then attaching a high Leadership IC to a unit in regular WH40K makes them better, but has almost no tactical significance. But in this system, it's a serious decision.
Infantry can:
1. Remain stationary and fire at full BS. No charge, but Overwatch is at full BS.
2. Move up to 6" and fire snap shots (and Flame Templates), then charge 12".
3. Move up to 12" and fire nothing at all. Charge 6".
4. Fall back 2D6.
Jump Infantry can:
1. Remain stationary and fire at full BS. No charge, but Overwatch is at full BS.
2. Move up to 6" and fire snap shots (and Flame Templates), then charge 12" (With Hammer of Wrath.)
3. Move up to 12" and fire nothing at all. Charge 6".
4. Fall back 3D6.
Has anyone on this thread that's recommending stat line changes (Evasion stats, Movement stats, Toughness profiles, etc.) or dice other than D6 actually begun rewriting stat lines or reworking point values? That seems like the elephant in the room. We can talk rules until we're blue in the face, but until someone actually rewrites every stat line for every unit in every codex, it's all a moot point.
So assault is dead then? So a unit can move 6 inches lay x number of templates down (each covering 3-4 models)spare wounds going into wound pool, killing models not under the template, and then assault anything that survives. Not overpowered much.
SpaceNinjaJetPilot wrote: Has anyone on this thread that's recommending stat line changes (Evasion stats, Movement stats, Toughness profiles, etc.) or dice other than D6 actually begun rewriting stat lines or reworking point values? That seems like the elephant in the room. We can talk rules until we're blue in the face, but until someone actually rewrites every stat line for every unit in every codex, it's all a moot point.
I've got tentative statlines written for a fair number of things under my rules. First, the to-hit/to-wound table:
Target's Combat Skill/modified Reaction/Dur versus attacker's Combat Skill/Marksmanship/Str 5 higher: Impossible
3-4 higher: 6+
1-2 higher: 5+
Equivalent: 4+
1-2 lower: 3+
3-4 lower: 2+
5 lower: Automatic. If this is a to-wound roll the attacker's weapon gains Multiple Wounds (d3) on this shot.
Next, the stats in the statline:
Move: You can move this far and still attack with ranged weapons or double this distance as a charge move and only attack with melee weapons. Infantry range from 3 (for big lumbering things like Terminators and Wraithguard) to 7 (for quick, light things like Wyches and Hormagaunts), walkers usually move 6, rolling ground vehicles 6-8. Skimmers, Flyers, Jump Infantry, and Jetbikes move further.
Combat Skill: The rough equivalent of Weapon Skill. This governs close-range shooting (targets within 6") and melee weapons, all rolled together into "melee combat". This ranges from 2 (for a Tau junior soldier or a Grot) to 7 (a veteran Assault Marine or Aspect Warrior) amongst regular troops, characters can have a higher stat.
Marksmanship: The rough equivalent of Ballistic Skill. This governs longer-range firepower, usable when you're not in melee range. This ranges from 2 (for melee Orks) to 7 (a veteran Devastator or Aspect Warrior) amongst regular troops, characters can have a higher stat.
Strength: Raw brute force. Impacts the weapon Strength of most melee weapons. This ranges from 2 (Grots) to 6 (Terminators and Wraithguard) amongst regular troops, vehicles and monsters can push this past 10.
Durability: Works like Toughness. Exactly like Toughness, in point of fact. This ranges from 2 (Grots) to 6 (Terminators and Wraithguard) amongst regular troops, vehicles and monsters can push this past 10.
Reaction: Used to defend against ranged attacks and solve Difficult or Dangerous Terrain. This ranges from 0 (stationary objects and really big lumbering tanks like Baneblades and Land Raiders) to 6 (very fast Eldar infantry) base, but Skimmers, Flyers, and Jetbikes will have a lower base Reaction and a higher Reaction after the modifiers for moving.
Wounds: The number of unsaved wounds a model can take before going down. 1 is for cannon fodder (Grots, Gaunts), 2 is for almost all infantry, 3 is for big, tough infantry (Space Marines, mostly), 4 is for big things (Terminators, Battlesuits, Wraithguard), characters will have 4 and above. Vehicles will have at least 6.
Tenacity: Leadership. Roll against this to see if you piss yourself and run away screaming. This is a little flatter than in 40k today; non-elite infantry (Guardsmen, Orks, line Tau) will have a 7, elite infantry (Space Marines, most Eldar, Stormtroopers, Battlesuits) will have an 8, first-tier HQ can have a 9, and 2nd-tier HQ can have a 10.
Armour: Armour save. Unlike in 40k this is modified by the weapon rather than ignored by some and unaffected by the rest; values are 0+ (auto-succeed unless the other guy modifies you back to a 2+, this only appears on battle tanks), 1+ (auto-succeed unless the other guy modifies you back to a 2+, this is for skimmers, flyers, and Terminators), 2+ (power armour), 3+ (Aspect armour, carapace), 4+ (flak), and 5+ (improvised), pretty much nothing has a 6+ armour save.
Weapon Stats: These are also slightly different from 40k Range: Melee or a number. Melee weapons are only usable inside combat radius, weapons with a range are usable outside a combat radius. Most small arms will have a shooting profile and an assault profile. This is mostly unchanged from 40k.
Strength: An absolute number for guns and user or modified user for melee weapons. 3 is for really puny things (lasguns, the like), 4 and 5 are where most small arms fall, 6 and up is for heavy weapons. There are no Strength-multiplying melee weapons, they'll usually modify your Strength by up to +4.
Armour Penetration: The amount you reduce the target's armour save by. Very little has no number here (lasguns, shotguns, splinter weapons, that sort of thing), most heavier small arms (bolters, shuriken weapons, pulse weapons) will have a -1, machine-gun-equivalents (heavy bolters, shuriken cannons, burst cannons) will usually have a -2, -3 and above is mostly for heavy weapons. A very few guns (mostly lascannons and melta weapons) may have AP All, they ignore all armour saves.
Rate of Fire/Speed (still working on a name for this): The number of attacks you can make with a given weapon. Pistols and big, heavy close combat weapons are usually 1, most small arms and basic close combat weapons will have 2, really fast things can have 3 or 4, but it's a rare gun (and rarer close combat weapon) that can make more than 4 shots. Note that there's a -1 penalty to your CS/Marks for making multiple attacks and unless a weapon has the Selective Fire rule you're not allowed to voluntarily make fewer attacks.
Sample Statlines (I'm sticking to Marines, Guard, and Eldar for the time being but I have stats for more things)
Space Marines
Scout: Move 5, CS 4, Marks 4, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 4, W 2, Ten 7, Arm 3+
Tactical Marine: Move 4, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 5, Dur 5, Rea 3, W 3, Ten 8, Arm 2+
Tactical Veteran: Move 4, CS 6, Marks 6, Str 5, Dur 5, Rea 3, W 3, Ten 8, Arm 2+
Tactical Terminator: Move 3, CS 6, Marks 6, Str 6, Dur 6, Rea 3, W 4, Ten 8, Arm 1+
Tactical Sergeant : Move 4, CS 6, Marks 6, Str 5, Dur 5, Rea 3, W 4, Ten 8, Arm 2+
Force Commander: Move 4, CS 7, Marks 7, Str 5, Dur 5, Rea 4, W 5, Ten 9, Arm 2+
Captain: Move 4, CS 8, Marks 8, Str 5, Dur 5, Rea 4, W 6, Ten 10, Arm 1+* (*Artificer Armour)
Chapter Master: Move 4, CS 9, Marks 9, Str 5, Dur 5, Rea 4, W 8, Ten 10, Arm 1+* (*Artificer Armour)
Rhino: Move 6, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 8, Dur 8, Rea 1, W 8, Ten 8, Arm 1+
Land Speeder: Move 9, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 6, Dur 7, Rea 2, W 6, Ten 8, Arm 1+
Predator: Move 6, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 9, Dur 10, Rea 1, W 10, Ten 8, Arm 0+
Land Raider: Move 5, CS 6, Marks 6, Str 11, Dur 12, Rea 0, W 12, Ten 9, Arm 0+
Space Marine Weapons
Combat Blade: R Melee, S User, AP -, ROF 2
Chainsword: R Melee, S +1, AP -1, ROF 3
Power Weapon: R Melee, S +2, AP -3, ROF 2
Power Fist: R Melee, S +6, AP All, ROF 1, Unwieldy
Bolt Pistol: R 12", S 4, AP -1, ROF 1/R melee, S 4, AP -1, ROF 1
Bolter: R 24", S 5, AP -1, ROF 2, Selective Fire/R melee, S 5, AP -1, ROF 2, *Unwieldy (*Unwieldy melee weapons cause their user to fight at -1 Combat Skill since they're not designed to be fired in close combat or are otherwise slow and unusual)
Storm Bolter: R 24", S 5, AP -1, ROF 2, Flurry/R melee, S 5, AP -1, ROF 2, *Flurry, Unwieldy (*Flurry weapons don't take the multiple shots penalty)
Heavy Bolter: R 36", S 6, AP -2, ROF 3, *Heavy (*Heavy weapons can never be fired in melee and can't be fired after making a half move unless you've got the Stable rule (which is mostly on vehicles))
Flamer: R Template, S 5, AP -1, ROF 1/R melee/Template, S 5, AP -1, ROF 1, Unwieldy (Template weapons work like they do in 40k, but you still use the template in melee)
Meltagun: R 12", S 8, AP -5, ROF 1, *Haywire 4+/R Melee, S 8, AP -5, ROF 1, *Haywire 4+, Unwieldy (*Haywire weapons never require worse than their listed value to wound a vehicle and cause Multiple Wounds (d3) to vehicles on a 6 to wound)
Plasma Gun: R 24", S 7, AP -4, ROF 2, Selective Fire, *Overheat/R Melee, S 7, AP -4, ROF 2, Unwieldy, *Overheat (*Overheat weapons inflict a single hit on their user at their S and AP if you roll a 1 to hit)
Lascannon: R 48", S 12, AP All, ROF 1, Heavy, Haywire 3+
Guard
Conscript: M 5, CS 2, Marks 3, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 3, W 1, Ten 6, Arm 5+
Trooper: M 5, CS 3, Marks 4, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 3, W 2, Ten 7, Arm 4+
Veteran: M 5, CS 4, Marks 5, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 3, W 2, Ten 8, Arm 4+
Veteran Sergeant: M 5, CS 4, Marks 5, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 3, W 4, Ten 8, Arm 4+
Stormtrooper: M 6, CS 4, Marks 5, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 4, W 3, Ten 8, Arm 3+
Stormtrooper Sergeant: M 6, CS 5, Marks 6, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 4, W 4, Ten 8, Arm 3+
Lieutenant: M 5, CS 5, Marks 6, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 3, W 5, Ten 9, Arm 3+
Senior Officer: M 5, CS 6, Marks 7, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 4, W 6, Ten 10, Arm 3+
Stormtrooper Lieutenant: M 6, CS 6, Marks 7, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 5, W 6, Ten 9, Arm 3+
Sentinel: M 6, CS 3, Marks 4, Str 5, Dur 7, Rea 1, W 6, Ten 8, Arm 1+
Chimera: M 6, CS 3, Marks 4, Str 7, Dur 8, Rea 1, W 7, Ten 8, Arm 1+
Russ: M 5, CS 3, Marks 4, Str 8, Dur 10, Rea 0, W 10, Ten 8, Arm 0+
Guard Weapons
Laspistol: R 12", S 3, AP -, ROF 1/R Melee, S 3, AP -, ROF 1
Lasgun: R 24", S 3, AP -, ROF 2, Selective Fire/R Melee, S 3, AP -, ROF 2, Unwieldy
Lasgun Bayonet: R Melee, S +2, AP -1, ROF 1
Combat Shotgun: R 18", S 4, AP -1, ROF 1/R Melee, S 4, AP -1, ROF 1
Autocannon: R 48", S 8, AP -3, ROF 2, Heavy
Eldar
Guardian: M 6, CS 4, Marks 4, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 4, W 2, Ten 7, Arm 4+
Veteran Guardian: M 6, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 5, W 2, Ten 8, Arm 4+
Aspect Warrior: M 6, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 5, W 3, Ten 8, Arm 3+
Veteran Aspect Warrior: M 6, CS 6, Marks 6, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 5, W 3, Ten 8, Arm 3+
Warlock: M 6, CS 6, Marks 6, Str 3, Dur 3, Rea 5, W 4, Ten 8, Arm 4+
Junior Farseer: M 6, CS 6, Marks 7, Str 3, Dur 4, Rea 5, W 5, Ten 9, Arm 4+
Farseer: M 6, CS 7, Marks 8, Str 3, Dur 5, Rea 5, W 6, Ten 10, Arm 4+
Exarch: M 6, CS 7, Marks 7, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 5, W 4, Ten 8, Arm 3+
Xentarch: M 6, CS 8, Marks 8, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 6, W 5, Ten 9, Arm 2+
Autarch: M 6, CS 9, Marks 9, Str 4, Dur 4, Rea 6, W 6, Ten 10, Arm 2+
War Walker: M 8, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 5, Dur 7, Rea 3, W 6, Ten 8, Arm 1+
Wave Serpent: M 10, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 7, Dur 7, Rea 3, W 8, Ten 8, Arm 1+
Fire Prism: M 10, CS 5, Marks 5, Str 8, Dur 8, Rea 3, W 10, Ten 8, Arm 1+
Eldar Weapons
Monosword: R Melee, Str +1, AP -2, ROF 3
Shuriken Pistol: R 12", Str 5, AP -1, ROF 1
Shuriken Catapult: R 18", Str 5, AP -1, ROF 2, Flurry
Shuriken Cannon: R 24", Str 6, AP -1, ROF 4, Flurry, Heavy
Bright Lance: R 36", Str 8, AP All, Heavy, Haywire 3+
I don't have points costs written up yet (mostly because I haven't settled what everything does yet) but that's a good sampling of a variety of people. If people want to see stats for more things just ask.
On another tangent, I've been trying to alter the IGOUGO system without reinventing the wheel. How about:
Side A - moves
Side A - shoots
Side B - moves OR shoots with a successful Leadership test for each unit
Side A - assaults
This cleans up a bit of the IGOUGO abuse without hamstringing the current player's turn too much. It also reduces the need for Overwatch in any of its forms, while adding value for high Leadership stats. Just a thought.
So assault is dead then? So a unit can move 6 inches lay x number of templates down (each covering 3-4 models)spare wounds going into wound pool, killing models not under the template, and then assault anything that survives. Not overpowered much.
Way I see it, assault was dead long before I got here.
Full BS Overwatch makes sense for a stationary unit. A unit that holds its position and sacrifices movement is going to be set up to deliver withering fire. And anyone who charges a unit that is set up for that is going to rue the day.
Meanwhile, it seems stupid to penalize flame weapons, which would be great at shooting on the move, the same way you'd penalize other ranged weapons that wouldn't be.
But if you think that's too powerful, just go with the template overwatch rules: D3 hits. And, in my 40K reboot, only models under the template would be wounded by it.
SpaceNinjaJetPilot wrote: @AnomanderRake: That's pretty impressive. I'm looking forward to seeing it develop. Have you been able to test much of this yet?
So assault is dead then? So a unit can move 6 inches lay x number of templates down (each covering 3-4 models)spare wounds going into wound pool, killing models not under the template, and then assault anything that survives. Not overpowered much.
Way I see it, assault was dead long before I got here.
Full BS Overwatch makes sense for a stationary unit. A unit that holds its position and sacrifices movement is going to be set up to deliver withering fire. And anyone who charges a unit that is set up for that is going to rue the day.
Meanwhile, it seems stupid to penalize flame weapons, which would be great at shooting on the move, the same way you'd penalize other ranged weapons that wouldn't be.
But if you think that's too powerful, just go with the template overwatch rules: D3 hits. And, in my 40K reboot, only models under the template would be wounded by it.
I my mind overwatch would pin/suppress against leadership, fearless like khorne berzerkers, large mob of orks etc would ignore it.
SpaceNinjaJetPilot wrote: @AnomanderRake: That's pretty impressive. I'm looking forward to seeing it develop. Have you been able to test much of this yet?
A bit. I initially had set up a system where attacks were on 2d6 and I rolled armour save into Durability, but the first proved unscalable and the second destroyed too much granularity between units. I'm planning to post a development thread when I have working copies of the rules to let people mess around with it.
I was playing X-wing at my flgs yesterday and when I was done turned around to watch some 40k and was stuck pondering the two both in active memory. While I absolutely abhor planned actions unless they are unavoidable, it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, the pilot skill system and two phase resolution might work. Someone may have brought it up already but if not there is that slim possibility.
I my mind overwatch would pin/suppress against leadership, fearless like khorne berzerkers, large mob of orks etc would ignore it.
Yes! I completely agree that Overwatch should pin/suppress. I think that's a real missed opportunity. Most people on this thread want to break up the "I do all my stuff, then you do all your stuff" routine that leaves the 2nd player twiddling his thumbs. They've offered alternative turn sequences, "activation phases," etc., because it would be better if players could somehow interfere with their opponents plans before they happen. Not just stand there and get shot at, then charged, etc.
I'm personally a fan of an "I move, you move, I shoot, you shoot, I charge, you charge" turn sequence, but I'd also like to expand Overwatch. I'd make it an attack that units could use once per turn, either during their opponent's Movement phase OR Assault phase. They can try to suppress a unit before it moves, or hold on to it and try to suppress a unit that assaults them.
The turn sequence would go something like this:
Players Roll for Deployment and 1st turn.
Roll-Off 1D6 + Warlord’s Initiative. High roll wins.
Player 1 Movement Phase
Player 1 declares which units will move.
Player 2 units that are able, attempt any Suppressing Fire (Overwatch) attacks. Player 1 rolls necessary Leadership tests. Suppressed units cannot move. Fearless units cannot be suppressed.
Player 1 rolls any Difficult terrain tests and completes movements.
Player 2 Movement Phase
Player 2 declares which units will move.
Player 1 units that are able attempt any Suppressing Fire (Overwatch) attacks. Player 2 rolls necessary Leadership tests. Suppressed units cannot move. Fearless units cannot be suppressed.
Player 2 rolls any Difficult terrain tests and completes movements.
Player 1 Shooting Phase
Able units declare targets.
Roll to hit, wound, etc.
Allocate wounds and remove casualties. Leadership tests for Suppression.
Player 2 Shooting Phase
Able units declare targets.
Roll to hit, wound, etc.
Allocate wounds and remove casualties. Leadership tests for Suppression.
Player 1 Assault Phase
Able units declare charge.
Player 2 units that did not attempt Suppressive Fire attempt Overwatch.
Player 1 moves models into base to base contact.
Attacks are completed in descending Initiative order, followed by 3” pile-in move.
Player 2 Assault Phase
Able units declare charge.
Player 1 units that did not attempt Suppressive Fire attempt Overwatch.
Player 2 moves models into base to bast contact.
Attacks are completed in descending Initiative order, followed by 3” pile-in move.
Roll-Off 1D6+ Warlord’s Initiative. Highest roll becomes Player 1 for next turn.
Player 1 Movement Phase.
Player 1 declares which units will move. Leadership test to break any units out of Close Combat. (Another thing I'd let units attempt.)
Player 2 units that are able attempt any Suppressive Fire attacks. Suppressed units cannot move.
Player 1 completes movement.
I don't know that the turn order needs to be quite that complex, and rolling off based on your Warlord's Initiative seems like a fast track to making some Codexes strictly better than others. I set up the turn order such that you've got:
Player 1 Move
Player 2 Reaction Attacks
Player 1 Attacks
Player 2 Move
Player 1 Reaction Attacks
Player 2 Attacks
I incorporated a more sophisticated Pinning mechanic directly into attacks such that you can still interrupt the other guy's cunning plans by locking down one of his scary units right before it tries to do something, I haven't done a lot of testing on it but I like how straightforward it is.
Hi all.
I think that playing 40k makes you look for complicated rules solutions.Because 40k is so over complicated!
I agree with AnomanderRake.
IF we are go with alternating phases, this lets us get good interaction, and simulates overwatch /reactions in a straight forward way.
Its just the current 40K turn with the pieces moved around. I was told by somebody people are playing a better game with that change and little else:
Lanrak wrote: @ SpaceNinjaJetPilot.
Yes you can make a better rule set than 6th ed 40k, simply by using an alternating phase game turn , and clearing out the inane amount of special rules.In fact lots of people have proposed this type of thing since 4th ed!
The only real difference is that players have the option to try Overwatch in their opponent's movement phase.
I think Suppression is something that is ignored way too much in 40K. In a real fight, suppressing your enemy, restricting his movement, and denying him the ability to act is paramount. (And I'm speaking from experience.) The most basic tactic drilled in to a soldier is to establish fire superiority and suppress your enemy, while your comrades maneuver on him.
It's not just a Battle Drill. It's "Battle Drill #1."
Surely if written out in detail, your turn sequence would be longer than this, right?
Player 2 Move
Player 1 Reaction Attacks
Player 2 Attacks
Oh yeah. Each "Attacks" can be replaced with "Subphase 1: All guys who can attack, attack. Attack sequence: Roll to hit, roll to wound, roll save, sometimes roll Ward. Place Pinning markers and Wound markers. Subphase 2: Leadership. Defending player removes Wound counters with all Medic and Tech units, removes Pinning markers with all Command units. Subphase 3: Resolution. Remove models and equalize Wound counters, roll Tenacity."
The biggest advantage to my system over yours is each unit can potentially attack in two phases per game turn instead of potentially four, which means there's a lot less to keep track of between phases. I think the philosophical difference here is that you're putting pieces on top of the current 40k system while I'm building a new one mostly from the ground up, which means yours is probably going to end up more complicated however you slice it; it's up to the observer to make a value judgement on the subject.
AnomanderRake wrote: The biggest advantage to my system over yours is each unit can potentially attack in two phases per game turn instead of potentially four, which means there's a lot less to keep track of between phases.
A unit can attack in:
Their shooting phase.
Their Assault phase.
They can fire Overwatch in ONE of their opponent's phases. (Either Movement or Assault)
More than your system, yes, but only by one. I don't think you can say outright that my system is more complicated. How are these "wound counters" removed exactly? Or equalized? And how are "pinning markers" removed? "Tenacity is what your models use instead of Leadership, yet this roll isn't done in the Leadership sub phase, but in another one entirely.
The biggest advantage to your system is that you're rewriting all the stat lines, which could bring armies back into balance, but the stats you're using are hardly simplified. Just different. One or more are probably more complicated. You're not reducing the number of rolls made during combat, etc.
Philosophically, you're right. I disagree that I'm "putting pieces on top of 40K," but I am working inside its frame. If anything, I'm stripping as many things away as I can from 40K (like 75% of the USRs) to streamline it. My game would still be40K. It'll be familiar to current players. Yours will be "AnomanderRake's Wargame," but yes, its up to the observer.
Player red moves unit A into cover
Player orange moves unit A into cover
B moves to cover
B moves to cover
c runs to cover
c moves to cover
Attack phase
B decides to assault A which overwatches suppressing B
B decides to shoot A
C assaults A who's already overwatching and gets into base to base contact
C moves to better position, to attack C next turn
Remove Centurions destroy the STC...
Remove Riptides destroy the STC....
Remove Lord of Skulls destroy the STC....
Redraw up allies table...
Retconn the Necron - Blood Angels connection to be a misreported incident and the Inquisition cover it up.
No Allies of convenience.
Bring back non-aligned Renegade Space Marine chapters - Soul Drinkers, Badab Wars etc.
Bring back Squats.
Bring in a Warhammer 29k - Unification Wars - Fight as Thunder Warriors etc on Terra.
Bring in a Warhammer 35k storyline - The Goge Vandire Heresy / The Reign of Blood / Age of Apostasy. As this was an internal battle, release plastic Sisters of battle, Brothers of Battle (as men at arms could serve in the Ecclesiarch at this time) reboot the Agents, Arbites , sisters, inquisitors, Inquisitor troops, Sisters of Silence, Custodes etc etc .
Streamline/ simplify the rules, but introduce modifiers for various upgrades.
Bring in a basic Plastic boxed sets, with separate upgrade sprues to stop the endless releasing of the same models with slight differences. E.g you pay £20 for 10 Plastic Orks, then £10 for an Evil Sunz upgrade sprue, Deff Skulls or whatever.
Make the Orks fun again, chop up the retain network, into bigger regional stores, Allow Click and Collect for FW at GW Stores to save on the (Frankly astonishing) 12% Shipping and handling fee!
AnomanderRake wrote: The biggest advantage to my system over yours is each unit can potentially attack in two phases per game turn instead of potentially four, which means there's a lot less to keep track of between phases.
A unit can attack in:
Their shooting phase.
Their Assault phase.
They can fire Overwatch in ONE of their opponent's phases. (Either Movement or Assault)
More than your system, yes, but only by one. I don't think you can say outright that my system is more complicated. How are these "wound counters" removed exactly? Or equalized? And how are "pinning markers" removed? "Tenacity is what your models use instead of Leadership, yet this roll isn't done in the Leadership sub phase, but in another one entirely.
The biggest advantage to your system is that you're rewriting all the stat lines, which could bring armies back into balance, but the stats you're using are hardly simplified. Just different. One or more are probably more complicated. You're not reducing the number of rolls made during combat, etc.
Philosophically, you're right. I disagree that I'm "putting pieces on top of 40K," but I am working inside its frame. If anything, I'm stripping as many things away as I can from 40K (like 75% of the USRs) to streamline it. My game would still be40K. It'll be familiar to current players. Yours will be "AnomanderRake's Wargame," but yes, its up to the observer.
It's not apparent from your earlier turn order document that you've set up the Assault phase such that only one person attacks; sorry if I confused that with 40k wherein both people fight in every Assault phase.
I'm taking the opposite approach as to USRs; I'm trying to strip down army-specific rules such that armies are differentiated less by what sneaky way they have to break the rules and more by what combinations of things within the rules they can pull off; it's a little more like WHFB in terms of limiting access to unique unreplicable rules in favour of a pool of common rules, made abstract enough and implemented in enough combinations with just a few unique rules left in to leave each army with a distinct character. I'm not decreasing the number of rolls made, no, because I tried that and I found that cutting down from 216 possibilities on three dice to 36 possibilities on two dice cuts a lot of the granularity between units out of the game and I didn't want to do that. The biggest streamlining element here is the fact that I threw out almost the entirety of the Assault phase rules; I tried to make melee and ranged combat use the same rules as much as possible in an attempt to make things move faster by only requiring players to know/reference one set of rules instead of two.
What makes 40k40k is debatable, if you go back and read the Rogue Trader rules I'm not sure I've changed the rules that much more than it's changed on its own over six editions of revision. In the sense that I'm binding myself to the spirit of the game and the lore of the universe I do think this is still 40k, if I were writing my own game there would be a lot of changes I'd make to this.
Details on the rules:
Elements are subgroups of squads, you get to pick out an element to attack. Once you resolve the attack you don't pull models right away, you leave dice of two different colours down for wounds and pinning markers and move along until you've finished all attacks. Medic and Tech units (Apothecaries and Techpriests, for instance) get to pull a number of wound markers off of non-vehicle (Medic) or vehicle (Tech) units. You can't fix up a unit with multiple Medic/Tech units in a turn and they can only remove counters from one unit each. Command units do the same thing with Pinning markers. Once you've done that you pull the closest model to the attackers along with a number of Wound counters equal to his Wounds value (most models have 1-3 Wounds, characters, vehicles, and really tough things can have 4 or more) and repeat until you don't have enough Wound counters to remove another guy; those counters carry over from turn to turn, overkill wounds are discarded. Once you've done that count up the remaining Pinning markers and take a Tenacity test with the number of Pinning markers as a penalty for the unit, if they fail bad things happen. I don't understand your issue with not doing this in the Leadership sub-phase, by the way; this is the Leadership sub-phase, I just renamed the stat because the name GW gave it didn't make a lot of sense to me.
I don't know yet how well this is going to scale since I haven't tested games larger than fifteen or twenty models right now; it's entirely possible that I'm going to need to cut the idea of treating Elements separately in larger games (currently they have to stick close together but they attack and are attacked as separate entities) and use them as a construct of the army list only. Visually distinguishing rules-wise identical Elements could easily become a nightmare if you didn't paint the edges of the bases in different colours or some such other sneaky trick.
I'm not trying to suggest one approach is superior to the other, and I'm sorry if I come across that way; I'm just trying to talk about how I solved the problem in the current draft of my rules.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
mwnciboo wrote: Remove Centurions destroy the STC...
Remove Riptides destroy the STC....
Remove Lord of Skulls destroy the STC....
Redraw up allies table...
Retconn the Necron - Blood Angels connection to be a misreported incident and the Inquisition cover it up.
No Allies of convenience.
Bring back non-aligned Renegade Space Marine chapters - Soul Drinkers, Badab Wars etc.
Bring back Squats.
Bring in a Warhammer 29k - Unification Wars - Fight as Thunder Warriors etc on Terra.
Bring in a Warhammer 35k storyline - The Goge Vandire Heresy / The Reign of Blood / Age of Apostasy. As this was an internal battle, release plastic Sisters of battle, Brothers of Battle (as men at arms could serve in the Ecclesiarch at this time) reboot the Agents, Arbites , sisters, inquisitors, Inquisitor troops, Sisters of Silence, Custodes etc etc .
Streamline/ simplify the rules, but introduce modifiers for various upgrades.
Bring in a basic Plastic boxed sets, with separate upgrade sprues to stop the endless releasing of the same models with slight differences. E.g you pay £20 for 10 Plastic Orks, then £10 for an Evil Sunz upgrade sprue, Deff Skulls or whatever.
Make the Orks fun again, chop up the retain network, into bigger regional stores, Allow Click and Collect for FW at GW Stores to save on the (Frankly astonishing) 12% Shipping and handling fee!
Riptides are conceptually a reasonable idea, they were implemented in an imbalanced manner in an imbalanced Codex.
Centurions and the Lord of Skulls, however, look dumb and add very little gameplay-wise.
I can't speak to most of the fluff discussion; I could go out and write a comprehensive 40k story bible without any of the silly bits, but that'd be vastly more subjective, harder to defend myself on, and even more work than rewriting the rules. The Allies table is more of a fluff thing than a rules thing; I do agree that some changes need to be made, but the easiest solution would be to declare it an optional scenario special rule not recommended for competitive play instead of a universal right. Ruleswise there's no reason you couldn't take the Space Marines Codex and declare it to represent a renegade Chapter, it's been done before.
The Age of Apostasy would be expansion rules/campaign rules/variant army lists in the style of an Imperial Armour main series book rather than implemented in the core rules, I don't know that we've got enough fluff written on the subject for the M.29 campaign idea.
As for Squats I honestly don't think they fit with the tone of the game very well; they were sort of silly. The Demiurg haven't been seen much but wouldn't be a bad place to go for a "space dwarf" army, though.
I can't do anything about the marketing/pricing/distribution decisions unless I get someone who's a lot better at 3d modeling than me and somehow avoid getting sued to the Eastern Fringe and back for putting 40k dudes up on Shapeways.
"Streamline/ simplify the rules, but introduce modifiers for various upgrades.": This is the thing we can do more about but if your suggestion is this vague we don't know what to do with it. "Streamline/ simplify" how? What sort of upgrades?
And finally I'm trying to come up with a living ruleset that I can update in real time as I get feedback such that nobody ends up with an unplayable two-edition-old Codex, so hopefully I'll be able to make the Orks fun to play.
AnomanderRake wrote: It's not apparent from your earlier turn order document that you've set up the Assault phase such that only one person attacks; sorry if I confused that with 40k wherein both people fight in every Assault phase.
Okay, I see what happened there. I was focusing on the word "attack:"
AnomanderRake wrote: The biggest advantage to my system over yours is each unit can potentially attack in two phases per game turn instead of potentially four,
Yes, both units fight in the assault phase, I've just always considered the attack to come from the unit assaulting.
Details on the rules:
Elements are subgroups of squads, you get to pick out an element to attack. Once you resolve the attack you don't pull models right away, you leave dice of two different colours down for wounds and pinning markers and move along until you've finished all attacks. Medic and Tech units (Apothecaries and Techpriests, for instance) get to pull a number of wound markers off of non-vehicle (Medic) or vehicle (Tech) units. You can't fix up a unit with multiple Medic/Tech units in a turn and they can only remove counters from one unit each. Command units do the same thing with Pinning markers. Once you've done that you pull the closest model to the attackers along with a number of Wound counters equal to his Wounds value (most models have 1-3 Wounds, characters, vehicles, and really tough things can have 4 or more) and repeat until you don't have enough Wound counters to remove another guy; those counters carry over from turn to turn, overkill wounds are discarded. Once you've done that count up the remaining Pinning markers and take a Tenacity test with the number of Pinning markers as a penalty for the unit, if they fail bad things happen.
So my mob of 30 Ork Boys doesn't attack a squad, but one part of a squad? Or does a part of my mob attack a part of a squad? Either way, it sounds like a lot of markers.
Oh yeah. Each "Attacks" can be replaced with "Subphase 1: All guys who can attack, attack. Attack sequence: Roll to hit, roll to wound, roll save, sometimes roll Ward. Place Pinning markers and Wound markers. Subphase 2: Leadership. Defending player removes Wound counters with all Medic and Tech units, removes Pinning markers with all Command units. Subphase 3: Resolution. Remove models and equalize Wound counters, roll Tenacity."
In your description, you make the Tenacity roll in the "Resolution" sub-phase and not in the "Leadership" sub-phase. It's not that big a deal, of course, its just confusing.
The biggest streamlining element here is the fact that I threw out almost the entirety of the Assault phase rules; I tried to make melee and ranged combat use the same rules as much as possible in an attempt to make things move faster by only requiring players to know/reference one set of rules instead of two.
This idea is exciting, though. I'm curious to see how the tests go.
I do think this is still 40k, if I were writing my own game there would be a lot of changes I'd make to this.
Well, geez. Now I'm curious what that game would be like.
mwnciboo wrote: Remove Centurions destroy the STC... Oh yes ..
Remove Riptides destroy the STC .Make them require other unit to spot for them. (so more points needed). spotter dead unit can't shoot 48 inch range Remove Lord of Skulls destroy the STC. definitely Redraw up allies table...scrap it
Retconn the Necron - Blood Angels connection to be a misreported incident and the Inquisition cover it up. indeed
No Allies of convenience.
Bring back non-aligned Renegade Space Marine chapters - Soul Drinkers, Badab Wars etc.
Bring back Squats. yes and gene stealers
Bring in a Warhammer 29k - Unification Wars - Fight as Thunder Warriors etc on Terra. yes please
Bring in a Warhammer 35k storyline - The Goge Vandire Heresy / The Reign of Blood / Age of Apostasy. As this was an internal battle, release plastic Sisters of battle, Brothers of Battle (as men at arms could serve in the Ecclesiarch at this time) reboot the Agents, Arbites , sisters, inquisitors, Inquisitor troops, Sisters of Silence, Custodes etc etc . also a yes
Streamline/ simplify the rules, but introduce modifiers for various upgrades. good idea we are working on that
Bring in a basic Plastic boxed sets, with separate upgrade sprues to stop the endless releasing of the same models with slight differences. E.g you pay £20 for 10 Plastic Orks, then £10 for an Evil Sunz upgrade sprue, Deff Skulls or whatever.
Make the Orks fun again, ORKS is always fun
chop up the retain network, into bigger regional stores, Allow Click and Collect for FW at GW Stores to save on the (Frankly astonishing) 12% Shipping and handling fee!
AnomanderRake wrote: It's not apparent from your earlier turn order document that you've set up the Assault phase such that only one person attacks; sorry if I confused that with 40k wherein both people fight in every Assault phase.
Okay, I see what happened there. I was focusing on the word "attack:"
AnomanderRake wrote: The biggest advantage to my system over yours is each unit can potentially attack in two phases per game turn instead of potentially four,
Yes, both units fight in the assault phase, I've just always considered the attack to come from the unit assaulting.
So correct me if I'm wrong but it's looking like there are now five possible places in your turn order where a given player's guys can get pulled off the table because of enemy shooting/close combat? Own shooting, own melee, enemy move reaction, enemy shoot reaction, enemy melee?
Details on the rules:
Elements are subgroups of squads, you get to pick out an element to attack. Once you resolve the attack you don't pull models right away, you leave dice of two different colours down for wounds and pinning markers and move along until you've finished all attacks. Medic and Tech units (Apothecaries and Techpriests, for instance) get to pull a number of wound markers off of non-vehicle (Medic) or vehicle (Tech) units. You can't fix up a unit with multiple Medic/Tech units in a turn and they can only remove counters from one unit each. Command units do the same thing with Pinning markers. Once you've done that you pull the closest model to the attackers along with a number of Wound counters equal to his Wounds value (most models have 1-3 Wounds, characters, vehicles, and really tough things can have 4 or more) and repeat until you don't have enough Wound counters to remove another guy; those counters carry over from turn to turn, overkill wounds are discarded. Once you've done that count up the remaining Pinning markers and take a Tenacity test with the number of Pinning markers as a penalty for the unit, if they fail bad things happen.
So my mob of 30 Ork Boys doesn't attack a squad, but one part of a squad? Or does a part of my mob attack a part of a squad? Either way, it sounds like a lot of markers.
It does indeed. Elements are mostly an organizational tool right now and a way to run smaller games (declare "each element runs around on its own" and run one or maybe two squads). Each squad is usually going to be composed of two to three Elements of two to ten guys with a squad leader and any Independent Characters treated as separate Elements that can't be targeted by most attacks, so you'd be able to direct your Orks' attacks into three different Elements if you wanted to or you could focus down one Element and kill it very dead. I haven't done a lot of testing on this to see how much it adds over treating squads as individual entities, it may well not survive the next edit.
Oh yeah. Each "Attacks" can be replaced with "Subphase 1: All guys who can attack, attack. Attack sequence: Roll to hit, roll to wound, roll save, sometimes roll Ward. Place Pinning markers and Wound markers. Subphase 2: Leadership. Defending player removes Wound counters with all Medic and Tech units, removes Pinning markers with all Command units. Subphase 3: Resolution. Remove models and equalize Wound counters, roll Tenacity."
In your description, you make the Tenacity roll in the "Resolution" sub-phase and not in the "Leadership" sub-phase. It's not that big a deal, of course, its just confusing.
This is a completely new turn procedure. There is no Leadership sub-phase.
The biggest streamlining element here is the fact that I threw out almost the entirety of the Assault phase rules; I tried to make melee and ranged combat use the same rules as much as possible in an attempt to make things move faster by only requiring players to know/reference one set of rules instead of two.
This idea is exciting, though. I'm curious to see how the tests go.
Me too.
I do think this is still 40k, if I were writing my own game there would be a lot of changes I'd make to this.
Well, geez. Now I'm curious what that game would be like.
The biggest barrier to me actually writing it is not being very good at translating my idea of what a unit should look like into a 3d model I can send to Shapeways. It's much harder sci-fi than 40k but I don't have many details worked out.
AnomanderRake wrote: So correct me if I'm wrong but it's looking like there are now five possible places in your turn order where a given player's guys can get pulled off the table because of enemy shooting/close combat? Own shooting, own melee, enemy move reaction, enemy shoot reaction, enemy melee?
I guess so! A player can lose models in:
His own movement phase. (Overwatch)
The enemy's shooting phase.
His own assault phase. (Overwatch)
His own assault phase. (Melee)
The enemy's assault phase. (Melee)
And even worse, if I move a single unit that's in range of 2, 3, 5, or 10 enemy units that can fire Overwatch... May I present... Bloodbath 40,000!
So I'll wrap Overwatch into my SuppressionUSR. I'm much more interested in Overwatch as a tactical deterrent rather than an actual attack. No BS 1 shooting, no wound rolls, armor saves or casualties. Units that have a weapon with the Suppression special rule may fire Overwatch as dictated in the turn sequence. If the weapon hits, it forces a Leadership test. If that fails, the unit cannot move or assault.
That way, a player only loses models in:
the enemy's shooting phase and
the assault phase, (I'm combining them. Whether its yours or the enemy's, a unit only fights close combat once a turn, right?)
but suppressing fire plays an active role in deterring movement.
Hi Loki.
I was interested in writing a new rule set.
As discussing how to improve current rules seemed to have taken over , I felt there was very little I could contribute.
Because the only sort of game you can get from WHFB skirmish rules is a good skirmish rule set for 40k.(Eg 2nd ed developed properly.)
And as there are loads of much better skirmish rule sets out there , I can not see the point.
To get a good modern battle game rules set from current 40k rules, you need to make major changes.
And this would mean even more over complication to an already over complicated rule set.
I would prefer to start from scratch , to keep the rules straight forward and elegant, while generating complex and engaging game play.
it is possible to play great games of 40k , with other rule sets!
So I would prefer to start from scratch to get rid of 25 years of FORCED backwards compatibility to WHFB
I think developing a 'tiered rule' set, is the only way to cover the current range of gamers requirements .
EG Small simple skirmish B&P intro.
More detailed skirmish game players can advance to at thier own pace .
Simple battle game for those who have bigger model collections.
More detailed battle game for those that want it.
I would like to write the new rule set in a way that allows the rules to grow with the players , in the direction they want to go.
Unfortunately game mechanics and resolution methods from 1970s Napoleonic rule set are just no where near good enough.
As there is another thread for' 8th ed 40k '
Would it be ok if new rules were discussed in this thread, and 'improvements' were discussed in the other thread?
My development has in no way ceased but in absence of more questions I've gotten the central principles of my rules out here and gotten feedback on the subject. I can put forth questions/make remarks on how I'm implementing specific rules in various Codexes if you'd like.
I am planning on starting a new thread where I can post .pdfs of the rules and ask for feedback when I get far enough that I've got presentable core rules and one or two presentable Codexes, though.
This thread has flourished way beyond anything I imagined when I started it, because of great contributions from lots of people. If anything, there's now too much good stuff to wrap your head around. And my intention was never to come up with a new ruleset -- you really can't do that decently online by committee (trust me, I've tried) but to brainstorm ideas that people can then pick and choose from in their individual efforts.
SisterSydney wrote: This thread has flourished way beyond anything I imagined when I started it, because of great contributions from lots of people. If anything, there's now too much good stuff to wrap your head around. And my intention was never to come up with a new ruleset -- you really can't do that decently online by committee (trust me, I've tried) but to brainstorm ideas that people can then pick and choose from in their individual efforts.
Which is what I've been doing Hows yours going ?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Suggestion People keep saying use dawn of war, as inspiration.
I suggest company of heroes. instead.
Lanrak wrote: @AnomanderRake.
The best way to find the solution for 40k war game rules is look at war game rules , not 40k!
I dug through a lot of sci-fi skirmish game rules when putting this together and didn't find one I liked; the big problem with using other wargames for inspiration is that 40k's got a much broader variety of units and a wider power distribution between individual units than anything else I've ever seen. In that respect I did have to take a look at Dawn of War quite a bit, the DoW2 core and Chaos Rising campaigns were fantastic in their handling of asymmetric warfare and in making your guys function distinctly depending on their gear.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lanrak wrote: @Loki.
DoW and CoH are practically the same game with different skins and stats dont you agree?
The statement doesn't mean a lot; The Witcher 1 and Neverwinter Nights are practically the same game with different skins and stats, but nobody would argue they're similar enough to be used interchangeably. Company of Heroes does certain things in a manner I'd like to incorporate into 40k more, particularly their implementation of specialist infantry (snipers, mortars, flamers), but Dawn of War actually tells us more about the 40k universe and its armies and how you get them to interact in a plausible way. Not to mention the DoW2 campaign is one of the best stories starring Space Marines I've ever seen (though I haven't gotten into the Horus Heresy books yet so that may change).
A minimum board size! I routinely play Necrons, who all have a range that on average is 24" for almost everything. And I play I.G.
I would LOVE to use Basilisks (I don't because of minimum-range inaccuracy shenanigans), but my opponent refuses to play on a board bigger than 2ft X 4ft, because he thinks it would make infantry "slow and useless". I have an inkling ( just a thought) that that is exactly the reason why transports exist (especially his rage-inducing Night Scythes). He also says it would make his small-ranged weapons a disadvantage, and that most people play on that sort of size board. This usually results in me screaming , but he doesn't listen.
Also, Shooting with Blast & Large Blast weapons. I think this scattering rule is massively inaccurate. GW seems to think that, because it explodes, the weapons designer must believe that any degree of accuracy is not needed, and therefore it has none. The Scattering rule would be good, if it rolled only one D6, or if vehicles had BS 5 or up just for Blast weapons. Anyone else agree?
Four by six for 1500-2500, four by four for most smaller games, and four by eight+ for Apocalypse. Bigger boards give the person with more long-ranged weapons and skimmers a massive advantage, smaller boards mean you can't keep away from one of the armies that's going to chop your face off if you get near it. Your friend's insistence on two by four boards means you can't do long-edge deployment with a 24" no-man's-land and weapon range becomes almost irrelevant. Tell your friend that he's correct in that infantry are slow, incorrect in that they're useless, incorrect in that short-range weapons aren't useful (the aforementioned Night Scythes, for one thing), most people play on a board three times the size, and that if he's worried about the Guard blasting him to death at extreme range the solution is more terrain and more transports, not shutting himself into a sardine can with them.
As for the blast weapons the scatter system makes much more sense for barrage weapons than direct-fire weapons like frag missiles and Battle Cannons; I'm thinking if you've got direct-fire ordnance you roll to hit against the guy you're planting the template on (for purposes of Evasion) and scatter 1d6 with no BS reduction to scatter if it misses rather than plant the marker and scatter. This makes blasts more reliable, rewards high Ballistic Skill, and removes the silliness of high-Strength barrage weapons being very good at downing Skimmers.
Barrage weapons would roll to hit like normal blast weapons, but you only get the roll to hit if you've got a designated spotter with the correct specialized gear who can see your target, if you don't have that it's scattering every shot.
Lanrak wrote: @Loki.
DoW and CoH are practically the same game with different skins and stats dont you agree?
Not really they play very different.
If you play as germans, The 88 is a riptide equivalent. The pill boxes suppress troops, unless they have an officer with them.(suppressed against leadership?).
Lanrak wrote: @Loki.
DoW and CoH are practically the same game with different skins and stats dont you agree?
Not really they play very different.
If you play as germans, The 88 is a riptide equivalent. The pill boxes suppress troops, unless they have an officer with them.(suppressed against leadership?).
That's sort of where I got the general usage of command models (sergeants, force commanders, captains, the like) in my implementation of characters; all character models have one (in some cases two) "Archetype(s)" that gives them some base function:
Command models remove Pinning markers from units before they roll Morale tests. They also sometimes grant additional benefits to nearby friendly models and units in their command radius (their squad for squad leaders, 12" for independent characters, entire army for the Warlord) can use their Ld.. Examples: Space Marine Sergeants, Dark Eldar Sybarites, Tau Shas'ui.
Medic models remove Wound markers from non-vehicle models before models are removed from the board. They don't usually have anything extra. Examples: Space Marine Apothecaries, Guard Medics.
Tech models remove Wound markers from vehicles in the same manner as Medics. They have some wacky wargear but usually little else. Examples: Space Marine Techmarines, Eldar Bonesingers.
Psykers generate Warp Charge that can be used to activate psychic powers and certain equipment. Examples: Space Marine Librarians, Tyranid Zoanthropes.
Champions are beatsticks, they have no special effects on their own (though I'm considering giving them a challenge mechanic) and are usually advisers taken alongside higher-ranking characters rather than leaders. Examples: Space Marine Champion, Grey Knight Brotherhood Champion.
Scouts unlock alternate deployment trickery for their unit. Examples: Space Marine Scout Sergeant, Eldar Pathfinder.
The intent here is to try and make Sergeants do more than merely provide an extra wargear item or two and an extra Ld point and balancewise to permit alternate squad leaders (imitate the Red Scorpions with Apothecaries as Sergeants or the Iron Hands with Techmarine Sergeants, for instance, or give Eldar Warlocks (who are psykers but can choose to generate less Warp Charge to be Commanders, Medics, Techs, Champions, or Scouts too) the ability to be flexible as a leader unit) by making it a tradeoff in more ways than merely points.
AnomanderRake wrote: Hero tank crew. Available on certain specific tanks with restrictions on which slots it's there for.
It drives close to any friendly tank, and they get a bonus.
Aura of authority, any unit within 6" of (insert name here) has a bonus to xx.
Under my rules it's just a tank with the Command archetype (usually, some people (SM Dreadnaughts, some Eldar vehicles, and GK stuff) can have Psyker vehicles too).
AnomanderRake wrote: Hero tank crew. Available on certain specific tanks with restrictions on which slots it's there for.
It drives close to any friendly tank, and they get a bonus.
Aura of authority, any unit within 6" of (insert name here) has a bonus to xx.
Under my rules it's just a tank with the Command archetype (usually, some people (SM Dreadnaughts, some Eldar vehicles, and GK stuff) can have Psyker vehicles too).
And you could make it so special tank commanders other than longstrike are actully worth their points.
I'm consolidating a bunch of digital Codex concepts and a few other things that I don't feel like I can expand into entire armies easily into a set of rules resembling the old WHFB Dogs of War system wherein you've got a formation you can take alongside certain other armies; so far I've got the Inquisition, the Adeptus Arbites, the Deathwatch, the Legion of the Damned, and Eldar Harlequins. Anyone have any other suggestions for small forces that appear across multiple armies that could be implemented in this manner? (No Genestealer Cult, that'd be a variant in the Tyranid book allowing them to take PDF platoons, not its own list)
AnomanderRake wrote: Hero tank crew. Available on certain specific tanks with restrictions on which slots it's there for.
It drives close to any friendly tank, and they get a bonus.
Aura of authority, any unit within 6" of (insert name here) has a bonus to xx.
Under my rules it's just a tank with the Command archetype (usually, some people (SM Dreadnaughts, some Eldar vehicles, and GK stuff) can have Psyker vehicles too).
And you could make it so special tank commanders other than longstrike are actully worth their points.
Absolutely. Still fuzzy on whether/how Special Characters are going to be included (the plan at the moment is to take a big Relic arsenal and the power to purchase some additional special rule so you've got more variety/customization in the standard characters) but Hero Tank Commanders are absolutely going to be playable and worthwhile.
loki old fart wrote: Have you seen those event cards from necromunda?
They were a good idea, should bring them back
They're not a bad idea but they're also mostly reliant on campaign rules (give people extra territories, more XP, that sort of thing), I'll consider it if I get around to writing a campaign system to work on top of this.
I've been trying to figure out a way to make sergeant models act more like leaders instead of just slightly improved Melee beat sticks, but couldn't really find a solution i liked.
So what if these sergeants played into the suppression system by clearing suppression tokens?
So my 10 man squad of tactical marines is being led by a veteran sergeant (leader 3), and take a lot of enemy fire, killing 3 marines and giving them 8 suppression tokens, suppressing the squad. At the beginning of the squads next activation, the sergeant removes 3 suppression tokens, leaving them with 5, less than the remaining number of models in the squad, and un-suppressing the unit.
This neatly solves some problems I had with my suppression system, namely that the number of suppression tokens a unit could receive would often combine with losses suffered to make even elite, high morale units be easily suppressed.
It also addresses how these tokens are cleared, as my previous plan, just having all tokens reset at the beginning of a new game turn, felt like a place-holder more than anything else.
It also leads to some interesting new ways of approaching target priority, because if I can do some sort of precision shot, I have to choose between killing the special and heavy weapons doing the most damage, or killing the sergeant, making my return fire that much more effective.
In the case of the sergeant dying, I'd probably say normal models can clear 1 token per activation, because they are at least capable of leading the squad to a degree.
Though this could potentially leave units in a perpetual state of suppression, even after the enemy has stopped shooting at them... Maybe say suppression only lasts so long as the enemy has fired at you within the last game turn?
There's still the issue of how to handle small, super-elite units, like terminator squads, as under current rules they can be suppressed fairly easily...
Alternatively you could say these leader models would allow the unit to ignore a certain number of tokens each turn, which I might turn to if it appears that the rate tokens are added stays too high. This would leave the issue of how are tokens removed, but I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.
Rav1rn wrote: Been a while since anyone posted anything.
I've been trying to figure out a way to make sergeant models act more like leaders instead of just slightly improved Melee beat sticks, but couldn't really find a solution i liked.
So what if these sergeants played into the suppression system by clearing suppression tokens?
So my 10 man squad of tactical marines is being led by a veteran sergeant (leader 3), and take a lot of enemy fire, killing 3 marines and giving them 8 suppression tokens, suppressing the squad. At the beginning of the squads next activation, the sergeant removes 3 suppression tokens, leaving them with 5, less than the remaining number of models in the squad, and un-suppressing the unit.
This neatly solves some problems I had with my suppression system, namely that the number of suppression tokens a unit could receive would often combine with losses suffered to make even elite, high morale units be easily suppressed.
It also addresses how these tokens are cleared, as my previous plan, just having all tokens reset at the beginning of a new game turn, felt like a place-holder more than anything else.
It also leads to some interesting new ways of approaching target priority, because if I can do some sort of precision shot, I have to choose between killing the special and heavy weapons doing the most damage, or killing the sergeant, making my return fire that much more effective.
In the case of the sergeant dying, I'd probably say normal models can clear 1 token per activation, because they are at least capable of leading the squad to a degree.
Though this could potentially leave units in a perpetual state of suppression, even after the enemy has stopped shooting at them... Maybe say suppression only lasts so long as the enemy has fired at you within the last game turn?
There's still the issue of how to handle small, super-elite units, like terminator squads, as under current rules they can be suppressed fairly easily...
Alternatively you could say these leader models would allow the unit to ignore a certain number of tokens each turn, which I might turn to if it appears that the rate tokens are added stays too high. This would leave the issue of how are tokens removed, but I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.
reasonable enough.
The way I;m doing it is. When hits exceed leadership unit is suppressed, and suppressed units automatically go to ground. If the opposing player tries to suppress again, they're already gone to ground, so get a cover save. which is usually enough to unsuppress them.
My solution to this issue is similar; models of the Command archetype pull Pinning markers off of units and provide their Ld to units in their command radius. As to things that would be hard to suppress there are Stubborn models that take morale tests on their unmodified Tenacity regardless of the number of Pinning markers on them and Fearless units that auto-pass Morale tests. I did stick with resetting Pinning markers at the start of the turn as well, and you do need at least a Sergeant to pull Pinning markers before making morale tests.
I decided to make unit leaders,(sergeants etc,) actually lead the unit by making them the focus of the unit interaction.
They decide the level of unit coherency , (measured from the unit leader.)
So better leaders allow more tactical flexibility in placement of models.(They can spread out more.)
All target selection is carried out from the unit leader model, to represent them directing the units fire.(Limited splitting of fire , weapon dependent.)
I view suppression as something that happens when weight of fire exceeds unit confidence.(As previously explained.)
I think suppression should be s in effect untill the unit is rallied.(pass a morale test.)
This way well trained units rally quickly, poorly trained units are harder to rally.
if you decide if the unit becomes suppressed based on leadership, then some units may be impossible to suppress.(Not just difficult to suppress.)
Which can put artificial blocks in the process.(Like using separate cover saves rather than a to hit modifier, for example.)
Instead of random charge distances and Overwatch, we’ve implemented a Reaction Phase before each Assault Phase. After the initial player moves and shoots, the opposing player is allowed to either move OR shoot. Movement is D6” (2D6 choosing the higher die for skimmers, jetbikes and jump infantry), and shooting is done with a –1 BS modifier. No heavy, barrage or ordnance weapons may shoot and templates use the scatter die: a hit and the flamer is placed where desired, otherwise the template follows the direction of the arrow. If it touches a friendly model it may not fire.
This allows defending units the chance to move out of harm’s way or shoot at their attackers before getting assaulted. It adds a variable charge distance, but only as an option for the defending player if moving back. It maintains the superiority of units with a higher ballistic skill and negates the need for an Overwatch mechanic.
To prevent some in-game shenanigans, a moving unit may contact the enemy in range during its Movement Phase and forgo its shooting, locking the enemy unit in combat until the Assault Phase. This denies the enemy its reaction move (vehicles exempted).
On a side note, we now use a suppression mechanic where a unit that passes a Morale test is suppressed (it may only move its next turn, and not toward the nearest enemy unit) if its test result is over its Leadership minus the number of enemy units firing at it. For example, a unit with Leadership 8 passes a morale check with a roll of 7, but since 2 enemy units fired at it becomes suppressed (Ld 8 – 2 units firing = 6 or less the unit is not suppressed). The more units firing at a target the more likely that unit will be suppressed.
All those vehicle designs are now made sensible while still retaining the general aesthetics of each faction and allowing some room for nuttiness and gunboatery.
40k's tech level is also made definitively superior to ours on all levels. So it becomes even more impressive the modern networking, fire control, and precision guidance of the guard is overpowered by the Orks because datz fer gitz see?
@amantia.
the only problem with including any type of fire to effect the suppression any type of unit.
Is low powered weapons can effect highly armoured targets, in a counter intuitive way.
That is why I wanted to use the failed armour save , to result in the target being suppressed.
If a weapon hit beats a models armour save it becomes suppressed.(Even if it does not result in loss of wounds/structure points.)
If over half the models in a unit become suppressed , the unit becomes suppressed.
The unit has to pass a morale test to rally , and return to normal level of operation.
This makes suppression a natural part of damage resolution, and scales well and is intuitive.(IMO.)
I would simply expand on Kill Teams. Keep games in the 500-750 range. Skirmish like rules. looser restrictions on squad cohesion. Maybe 4" rather then 2".
Run smaller games with specific objectives or even map setup: Take generator so planets shielding drops and we can begin assault, run the Hells Highway gauntlet, assassinate a warlord...whatever. Its better the the generalized point system we have now. "I won cause I blew up a drop pod and got a point"- Well big whoop-d-do!
Run campaigns introducing experience for units, injuries results for squad members, supplies, similar to what is done with Morheim. Necromunda, and Bloodbowl. You build your army list to last for several games earning experience and taking casualties so some may be understrength for a battle but have bonuses based on experience. End of battle you roll for casualties and see what happens.
Phydox wrote: I would simply expand on Kill Teams. Keep games in the 500-750 range. Skirmish like rules. looser restrictions on squad cohesion. Maybe 4" rather then 2".
Run smaller games with specific objectives or even map setup: Take generator so planets shielding drops and we can begin assault, run the Hells Highway gauntlet, assassinate a warlord...whatever. Its better the the generalized point system we have now. "I won cause I blew up a drop pod and got a point"- Well big whoop-d-do!
Run campaigns introducing experience for units, injuries results for squad members, supplies, similar to what is done with Morheim. Necromunda, and Bloodbowl. You build your army list to last for several games earning experience and taking casualties so some may be understrength for a battle but have bonuses based on experience. End of battle you roll for casualties and see what happens.
Smaller games are all well and good, but if it's possible to get a set of rules that can remain functional at a variety of game scales that would be a better solution. 40k as-is starts to break down at the low points values from the FOC, squad size minimums, and the degree to which individual die rolls can mess up expensive units, it starts to break down at the high points values because the inefficiencies make the whole thing go really, really slowly.
Specific objectives, map setup, and whatnot are all great points; one of the issues with 40k today is that the core rules include six missions that cater to specific sorts of army builds and the utility of a unit is highly dependent on how well it can handle those missions. More varied and narrative-focused objectives along the lines of the ones we had for unique scenarios back in 4e would be nice, Apocalypse-style points for holding objectives over the course of the game rather than just at the end for hold-objectives missions, victory points dependent on the cost of the unit instead of kill points per squad, and more benefits to holding objectives would all be big steps in the right direction.
Experience for units works on the very small scale but it doesn't work very well at all if you're planning to have armies; I looked more to the ideas in the now-defunct GW Lord of the Rings mini-campaign rules, the Battlefleet Gothic campaign rules, and a 4e-era precursor to Mighty Empires in terms of a campaign system. Basically speaking you've got a small force to start out with based on a set of points restrictions (I use several kinds of points values to judge the size of an army), and winning battles/controlling territory grants increases to your points limit in various ways; units will usually have an upgrade track of sorts (I still need to work out how Necrons (who are trapped in unchanging robotic bodies with unchanging minds) and Tyranids (who don't do veterancy/promotions in the same way as anyone else) fit into this model), depending on the army this is usually two to three steps (Scout to Space Marine to Veteran, or Aspect Warrior to Veteran Aspect Warrior, or Chaos Marine to Chosen, et cetera). Characters progress up the tiers as the army grows as well, all of this is limited by a unit doing something worthy of promotion (a unit earning a certain number of 'experience' from making their points back in a given battle, most likely, or a character passing an experience threshold and also doing something dramatic and awesome). Most of this is an afterthought to be reserved for an expansion, unfortunately, need to get some actual Codexes done first.
@AnomanderRake.
if you want a mutable upgrade system, then make the upgrades to weapons and equipment in the skirmish game.
Then for larger battle game allow the force commander to upgrade units for more elite /specialist versions.
The basic idea of 'credits to spend' on the force works across both of these formats.
Just change the name of the 'credits' to fit the force,to add the 40k chrome...
Lanrak wrote: @AnomanderRake.
if you want a mutable upgrade system, then make the upgrades to weapons and equipment in the skirmish game.
Then for larger battle game allow the force commander to upgrade units for more elite /specialist versions.
The suggestion of upgradeable guys in the vein of Necromunda is where I take issue; moving each guy individually and tracking each guy's XP/upgrades individually works fine for games where you don't have to deal with more than about twenty models but when you get into larger games having differentiated statlines for everyone would be a challenge.
Xx_ZLOBENIA_xX wrote: ....my opponent refuses to play on a board bigger than 2ft X 4ft....
What.
Isn't 4' by 6' the norm and 4' by 4' considered a little cramped?
4 x 4 appears to be the standard in GW stores. At least in Australia and France, anyway.
Also, he didn't say 4 x 4, he said 2 x 4...which is absurd. I advise finding a new opponent.
But yes, I agree that larger tables would be nice. Is there an actual rule though, saying that 6 x 4 is the max? I thought that size was due to convenience than an actual rule (6 x 4 is approximately the size of a dining table, iirc)
Xx_ZLOBENIA_xX wrote: ....my opponent refuses to play on a board bigger than 2ft X 4ft....
What.
Isn't 4' by 6' the norm and 4' by 4' considered a little cramped?
4 x 4 appears to be the standard in GW stores. At least in Australia and France, anyway.
Also, he didn't say 4 x 4, he said 2 x 4...which is absurd. I advise finding a new opponent.
But yes, I agree that larger tables would be nice. Is there an actual rule though, saying that 6 x 4 is the max? I thought that size was due to convenience than an actual rule (6 x 4 is approximately the size of a dining table, iirc)
No actual rule to avoid limiting people who want to try and play on non-rectangular surfaces, but convention dictates 4x4 as the absolute minimum (Kill Team up through 1,000-1,250), 6x4 as standard (1,250-2,500), and going up as needed for Apocalypse.
@ Lanrak - I disagree with your assessment that suppression should come from failed wounds alone. That's what the Morale test is for in the first place, and is done only after 25% casualties have been achieved anyway. Additional units adding their fire simply discomfits the enemy by creating crossfires, which suppress the unit already suffering serious casualties.
On a side note, we limited our number of reaction moves to 1 per 500 points in the army which will speed up the game a bit too.
Odd, been lurking awhile here again and just realized no one has really brought up the 'fluff' as it were. Now that I think on it I might be tempted to hire writers to write a new canon based on the current but shined up a bit somehow. We did go into this with the premise of 'rebooting' the game. That would certainly do it. Since I haven't really made a claim to what I'd do. I'm making this my official statement on the issue. Cheers
All codex books released simo. Playtesting for balance before release. No useless units. Make assaults and shooting on par with one another, put vehicles on par with troops. All of this via point cost/ benifit analysis and rules to enforce a balance.
This may be a bit out there, but one of the major complaints i hear about swarm armies is that they take forever to move, and tend to die in droves, so would it make sense to consolidate several models onto one base in the vein of Swarm or Team models?
We have an entire subset of units that are either ignored or downplayed simply because using them is not an enjoyable experience, and if an element of a game isn't fun to use, then we have a serious problem.
The prospect of moving 30 model units is a lot less daunting when there's only 6 bases to move. Assuming the bases were designed properly, It would also make sense thematically for these squads to be more difficult to place into cover, as there's really no way to easily hide a 50 man squad of infantry well.
It also subtly speaks volumes about the role these models play in the grand scheme of things, that they are so disposable and weak that they aren't even worth recognizing individually, and that they are only noticeable in large numbers.
IT would be interesting to have guardsmen squads have long, straight bases befitting their very rigid structure, while less organized swarms like Ork Boyz, Gaunts, and Gargoyles could have more amorphous bases to demonstrate their nature.
I'm not sure if the best route would be slotted movement trays similar to fantasy or simply 5 or so models on one large base, but I think it would make playing these large units more enjoyable, and potentially more practical for tournament games with time limits.
Not to mention it could make many of the notorious models more stable due to the larger base area, I'm looking at you Hormagaunts.
The potential to do some elaborate basing terrain has me itching to try this out. I have access to some 3D printers, I might churn out a couple prototypes and grab some gaunts and see how it goes.
@Rav1n.
That is why I suggested using coherency from the unit leader , rather than model to model.(It is less fiddley and speeds up model movement.)
The only problem with multiple model bases for hoards is the casualty removal considerations.(You can only base some up in multiples and some need to be in singles.)
@Rav1n.
That is why I suggested using coherency from the unit leader , rather than model to model.(It is less fiddley and speeds up model movement.)
The only problem with multiple model bases for hoards is the casualty removal considerations.(You can only base some up in multiples and some need to be in singles.)
I agree with measuring coherency to the leader, it works well, but it doesn't help the fact that moving 20-30 models and then ensuring all of them are in coherency is an annoying action to perform. Models can fall or shift, and it's just a long, tiresome process. I believe that large squads are often less preferable for tournaments because of this factor, and any factor that isn't fun is bad for casual play.
There's also the issue that some squads, particularly Tyranid's like gaunts and gargoyles, lack leader units, so they would need another system to address them anyways.
As for casualty removals, you could just treat them similarly to an unusually large Multi-wound model. Hordes often die so fast that removing them 5 at a time would probably be beneficial, with stray wounds being counted on another "swarm" to tell you how many models are left in it for the purposes of firing and generating attacks.
Combine this with fixed unit-size purchases instead of PPM for your typical models, some more intuitive wound allocation rules, and I think it would be a pretty solid system. If you can only purchase these models in batches of 10/20/30 or only by groups of 5, then there's no problem with "odd man out" situations.
You likely wouldn't even need to change how blast and template weapons affect them, as each individual model is present and targetable, just without their singular base.
@Rav1n.
That is why I suggested using coherency from the unit leader , rather than model to model.(It is less fiddley and speeds up model movement.)
The only problem with multiple model bases for hoards is the casualty removal considerations.(You can only base some up in multiples and some need to be in singles.)
I agree with measuring coherency to the leader, it works well, but it doesn't help the fact that moving 20-30 models and then ensuring all of them are in coherency is an annoying action to perform. Models can fall or shift, and it's just a long, tiresome process. I believe that large squads are often less preferable for tournaments because of this factor, and any factor that isn't fun is bad for casual play.
There's also the issue that some squads, particularly Tyranid's like gaunts and gargoyles, lack leader units, so they would need another system to address them anyways.
As for casualty removals, you could just treat them similarly to an unusually large Multi-wound model. Hordes often die so fast that removing them 5 at a time would probably be beneficial, with stray wounds being counted on another "swarm" to tell you how many models are left in it for the purposes of firing and generating attacks.
Combine this with fixed unit-size purchases instead of PPM for your typical models, some more intuitive wound allocation rules, and I think it would be a pretty solid system. If you can only purchase these models in batches of 10/20/30 or only by groups of 5, then there's no problem with "odd man out" situations.
You likely wouldn't even need to change how blast and template weapons affect them, as each individual model is present and targetable, just without their singular base.
I'm not sure about the idea of units coming in blocks on the same base; it ties you overmuch to predefined unit spacing, makes you more vulnerable to blast/template weapons, and makes it harder to move within terrain. Keeping everything within coherency of the leader is a better idea; as to units with no leaders I've been trying to rectify that issue, Tyranids are going to have small Synapse creatures (usually a Warrior or a Zoanthrope) as the character for Gaunt squads in the manner of the Dawn of War 2 campaign (Necrons are the other army I'm going to need to insert characters into squads for, low-tier Lords/Crypteks as squad leaders is the likely answer).
IMO you do not have to have a different model for the unit leader.
If we assume we have a particular gaunt that has the 'hive node connection' with the 'hive mind'.This creature becomes the control nid in the unit.(Acts as a point of communication.)
EG is the focus of the units action/decisions making , like a seargent/boss.
The unit leader can have the same profile and equipment as the unit, (maybe just a alight asthetic difference perhaps.)
So rather than the hive mind controlling 30 individual gaunts,it just tells one what to do and that one organizes the rest of the unit.
(To be closer to the command systems of other armies, without breaking the fluff too much.)
So what effect does killing that controlling Gaunt have? The same as killing a human sergeant? Or none at all because the Hive Mind immediately switches to another nodal 'nid without an interruption in service (self-healing network!)? Or something in between?
I've always thought the turns should be reactive phases , meaning Player 1 Moves , Player 2 moves, Player 1 Shoots Player 2 Shoots Player 1 Assaults, Player 2 Assaults.
With a alternating of players going first in each phase.
Player 1 has 4 units ABCD
Player 2 has 4 units EFGH
Player one Moves A
Player two moves E
Player One moves C
Player 2 elects to not move any more models
Shooting
Player 1 was the last person to have an action he goes second.
Player 2 shoots E
Player 1 Shoots A
Player 2 Shoots D
Player 1 Declines to shoot
Player 2 Shoots F G
Assault
Player 1 now goes first in assault phase Assaults A
Player 2 Assaults D
Player 1 Assaults B
Player 2 Declines
Player One Assaults the Rest of his units
Next Movement Player 2 Begins the Phase as Player One was last to declare an assault
It would also make it possible to use actions that interrupt actions and special abilities that make sense.
SisterSydney wrote: So what effect does killing that controlling Gaunt have? The same as killing a human sergeant? Or none at all because the Hive Mind immediately switches to another nodal 'nid without an interruption in service (self-healing network!)? Or something in between?
I did Warriors as leader units for Gaunts for that exact reason; the character is removed last unless he's killed in a challenge or by a sniper; a unit that's lost its character uses their own unmodified Ld and can't remove Pinning markers unless an Independent Character with the Command rule does.
That's pretty brutal....a leaderless unit is likely to get Pinned and stay Pinned forever, isn't it?
Also, Hollismason: your idea makes sense to me, but a lot of people find unit-by-unit alternation (i.e. I move one unit, you move one unit, you move another unit, etc.) burdensome. I'd be happy to reopen that discussion because I'm not convinced, though.
@ Sister Sydney.
In respect to gaunt leaders being killed I was going to use both of the reactions you suggested.(Spooky!)
IF the unit is in synapse range , the unit leader is replaced with another gaunt selected by by the hive mind .
IF the unit is out of the synapse range the unit is automatically suppressed,and has to take any morale tests on base morale stats of the gaunts.(Until a Synapse creature comes in to synapse range of the unit .)
SisterSydney wrote: That's pretty brutal....a leaderless unit is likely to get Pinned and stay Pinned forever, isn't it?
Also, Hollismason: your idea makes sense to me, but a lot of people find unit-by-unit alternation (i.e. I move one unit, you move one unit, you move another unit, etc.) burdensome. I'd be happy to reopen that discussion because I'm not convinced, though.
It allows for more tactical decisions and also prevents an army by being waylaid. It is a little more difficult to track as you have to put a counter by the units that have moved that turn. It also allows for interrupt actions such as Over Watch etc..
SisterSydney wrote: That's pretty brutal....a leaderless unit is likely to get Pinned and stay Pinned forever, isn't it?
It is unless it's hanging out near an Independent Character (which are more accessible under my rules), but it's also pretty difficult to take out a squad's Sergeant before taking out the squad.
Also, Hollismason: your idea makes sense to me, but a lot of people find unit-by-unit alternation (i.e. I move one unit, you move one unit, you move another unit, etc.) burdensome. I'd be happy to reopen that discussion because I'm not convinced, though.
It's fairly cumbersome and gives a significant advantage to the person who has fewer units, yes.
Wait, advantage to the person with fewer units or the person with more units?
It probably depends on how you implement unit-by-unit alternation. If we simply go "I move one of mine, you move one of yours, I move one of mine," etc. until both players have moved (or fired or assaulted with) everything, then the person with fewer units gets all his guys done first. Then the person with units left over gets a whole bunch of moves in a row to which the person with fewer units doesn't get to react.
So that seems like a big advantage for the person with MORE units.
If you add a way for the player with fewer units to "pass" -- which lets them choose when the guy with more units gets multiple turns in a row, and how many -- that would balance things better.
No completed list, just a massive seething sea of often incompatible ideas -- which is all I was aiming for when I started the thread (actually I was expecting a nice pool of ideas, not the mighty flood that came). Some individual participants have written or are writing their own rules, though.
And d6 vs d10 vs d20 vs dwhatever is really one of the smallest issues here. We're talking about entirely new mechanics, new turn sequences , in some case re-starting every single unit in every codex....
I have always thought of how the turn sequence could be improved fairly. You can't just alternate because that favors multiple small units and hoard armies, and you cant go by initiative because that just favors Eldar.
However, I would think that a system that blends the two would be ok? For movement and shooting anyway.
How about:
At the start of each movement phase, count the number of units each player has, counting Dedicated Transports and Units as 1 unit.
The player with the least units gets the difference in unit numbers gets that many "pass points" where he can elect to not select a Unit to move but also not surrender the rest of the movement turn.Basically it is a "free turn" to allow reactionary tactics against an enemy with greater numbers. A player with no pass points remaining cannot do this and MUST select a unit.
Next, the unit with the highest initiative (counting the highest in the unit to account for leadership) will be moved by the owning player, or they may utilize a pass point to skip that movement action. Note that in this system vehicles would either have a core rule set initiative or a individual statistic.
If two or more units tie for the same initiative and are owned by the same player, that player simply chooses one. If both players own units of the same initiative, they dice off at the start of the movement phase to determine who moves the first unit.
Once this unit has been moved, the next player may move one of his units with the highest initiative score, declare that a unit will not move that turn (aka, they pick a unit to "Move 0" and they can't pick it to move in response to an enemy movement that turn) or they may utilize a pass point to skip that movement action without picking a unit.
This continues back and forth until all units have been moved. If the player with the least amount of units does not utilize all of their Pass Points and moves all their units before the player without, then the remaining player will simply move (or elect to not move that specific unit) the rest of their units in initiative order.
Players may at any time before moving a unit declare that they will elect to move no more units for the turn. If they do, then the remaining player simply moves their units in initiative order one at a time until they finish or also elect to not move any more units.
Shooting would also follow the same turn structure, though you would only count units that can shoot (or not, depending on how the balance works out, not worked that out yet)
Assault would either follow the same pattern of alternating which combat to do between players (of course Player 2 can't pick a combat already resolved) or, if that is untenable simply dice off each assault round then alternate picking fights, which I think might be a better solution.
Thoughts? Am I just rehashing tired old arguments? Complex for the sake of complexity? Should We drop the initiative portion all together and simply dice off to see who starts but keeping the "pass points" concept? Now that I think about it the initative bit is convoluted and reminds me of the horrible IG Orders system where it has to be highest rank to lowest. I'll rewrite in a second xD
^^ Ignore that guff
How about:
At the start of each movement phase, count the number of units each player has, counting Dedicated Transports and Units as 1 unit.
The player with the least units gets the difference in unit numbers gets that many "pass points" where he can elect to not select a Unit to move but also not surrender the rest of the movement turn.Basically it is a "free turn" to allow reactionary tactics against an enemy with greater numbers. A player with no pass points remaining cannot do this and MUST select a unit.
Each player dices off (and adds their Army's Strategy Rating, defined in their codex, to the roll. < Maybe?) The winner of this roll decides if they wish to move first or second.
Next, player who is moving first selects a unit to move or may utilize a pass point. If a player has no pass points or does not wish to use one, they must still select a unit, though they may elect to not move it. It will not be able to be selected later on in the turn to move however. It has, in effect, "Moved 0cm".
Once this unit has been moved, the next player may move one of his units, declare that a unit will not move that turn (aka, they pick a unit to "Move 0" and they can't pick it to move in response to an enemy movement that turn) or they may utilize a pass point to skip that movement action without picking a unit.
This continues back and forth until all units have been moved. If the player with the least amount of units does not utilize all of their Pass Points and moves all their units before the player without, then the remaining player will simply move (or elect to not move that specific unit) the rest of their units in any order.
Players may at any time before moving a unit declare that they will elect to move no more units for the turn. If they do, then the remaining player simply moves their units in any order one at a time until they finish or also elect to not move any more units.
Shooting would also follow the same turn structure, though you would only count units that can shoot for the purpose of pass points (or not, depending on how the balance works out, not worked that out yet)
Assault would either follow the same pattern of alternating which combat to do between players (of course Player 2 can't pick a combat already resolved) or, if that is untenable simply dice off (and adds their Army's Strategy Rating, defined in their codex, to the roll. < Maybe?) each assault round then alternate picking fights, which I think might be a better solution.
Thoughts? Am I just rehashing tired old arguments? Complex for the sake of complexity? Should We drop the initiative portion all together and simply dice off to see who starts but keeping the "pass points" concept?
)
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Or they just all hold on tho the feet of their winged saints, either one .
Either way, it sounds like a lot of markers.
rage-inducing Night Scythes). He also says it would make his small-ranged weapons a disadvantage, and that most people play on that sort of size board. This usually results in me screaming 
