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From a rules perspective, it makes sense: being able to place a unit anywhere on the board outside of 1" of enemy models is a very powerful tool to have.

But from a fluff perspective, it doesn't make sense, especially if you're playing Necrons. They don't use the warp and their machines are insanely advanced (what with being "masters of the physical universe" and stuff). I highly doubt that Deathmarks were teleporting into boulders during the War in Heaven or Night Scythes were accidentally landing on enemy troop formations or fortifications. This this can be applied to every species. Do drop pods and aircraft have no capacity to control themselves until they're within a certain distance of the planet? If teleportation is so extremely dangerous, why don't the many races simply launch teleport homers to the destination, then send out the troops?

Maybe it's because I find the Warp to be a wholly god-awful means of transportation, but I think that somewhere along the line someone (in-universe) thought, at least to themselves, "man, we should totally learn how to progress our technology to a point where we don't have to use a method of travel that routinely kill us."

Ever heard of the dark age of technology?

Well that was a long time ago were humans new how do stuff properly. Like not getting faced into rocks and stuff

For things like drop pods, etc. it is at least partially because they are supposed to be dodging incoming fire on the way down, as well as dealing with massive jaming.

For warp teleports the often do launch or plant teleport homing beacons. But the battles 40k tabletop typically supposed to represent are initial strikes, surprise attacks, etc. Situations where the ability to place a homer is not a given.

When it comes to the Necron...I think we just have to chalk it up to game balance.

I'd assume its because however advanced Necron technology is, its not perfect. If it was, they wouldn't have lost the War in Heaven.

Well, fluff usually breaks with rules and even design anyway...I mean...Necrons are considered to be the technologically most advanced race yet all of their vehicles are rather fragile and even have pilots...

LoneLictor wrote:I'd assume its because however advanced Necron technology is, its not perfect. If it was, they wouldn't have lost the War in Heaven.

Didn't they win, and with enough strength to rebel against the C'tan too? Isn't that why they're around and the Old Ones aren't?

If you think about the accuracy in meters, to which even the maximum deviation is, it's really not that bad.

LoneLictor wrote:I'd assume its because however advanced Necron technology is, its not perfect. If it was, they wouldn't have lost the War in Heaven.

... They won. Then they blew the C'tan into Shards. Even in the 3rd Ed codex, they were winning but that Enslaver plague kinda mucked everything up. Considering that was retconned, however, the Necrons defeated both the Old Ones and the C'tan.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:If you think about the accuracy in meters, to which even the maximum deviation is, it's really not that bad.

It's bad when you end up inside of a rock. Or an enemy unit, because just being there somehow kills you.

Sigvatr wrote:Well, fluff usually breaks with rules and even design anyway...I mean...Necrons are considered to be the technologically most advanced race yet all of their vehicles are rather fragile and even have pilots...

They probably worked better new.

It is the 40th millennium, so humanity had some time to progress with technology.
And mistakes happen, ever heard of "deep strike mishap" rolls?

Considering you hitting a spot within metres from orbit I'd say it's pretty accurate.

And you realize that the deep strike mishaps, fluff wise, are not all indicative of the crash or actual impact going wrong, right? You're trying to connect fluff to rules and that just is an exercise in futility.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:If you think about the accuracy in meters, to which even the maximum deviation is, it's really not that bad.

What this guy said, things are kind of relative. I mean if you were going from one side of a house to another side of a house than ya the stuff is kind of inaccurate. If you are on another continent? Sounds like you are simply plugging in an 8 digit grid coordiante and hoping you land correctly. When you are getting something thousands of miles away (read, in orbit around a planet) and you are trying to land it anywhere, you are not going to land it on a dime. Even more so if you physically cant see the object from your position and you are just trying to litterally disappear from one spot and reappear at another spot.

Galdos wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:If you think about the accuracy in meters, to which even the maximum deviation is, it's really not that bad.

What this guy said, things are kind of relative. I mean if you were going from one side of a house to another side of a house than ya the stuff is kind of inaccurate. If you are on another continent? Sounds like you are simply plugging in an 8 digit grid coordiante and hoping you land correctly. When you are getting something thousands of miles away (read, in orbit around a planet) and you are trying to land it anywhere, you are not going to land it on a dime. Even more so if you physically cant see the object from your position and you are just trying to litterally disappear from one spot and reappear at another spot.

We have bullets than can correct their trajectory mid-flight. Current day GPS is accurate down to a few meters, and they orbit tens of thousands of miles above the earth. We have satellites that take extremely high-resolution (even higher res if military) pictures. Hell, the CIA can pick out license plate numbers from satellites.

Besides, how hard would it be to mark a spot with a laser or radar designator from orbit? All the ship has to do is maintain geosynchronous orbit for the duration of the teleportation/drop, then move on. That's not even mentioning Jump Infantry, who have direct control over where they land, since they have presumably trained with their jump device for at least a year or two.

The equivilient would be when the CIA shoots those licence plates from orbit with a semi truck.

LoneLictor wrote:I'd assume its because however advanced Necron technology is, its not perfect. If it was, they wouldn't have lost the War in Heaven.

They didn't.

We have bullets than can correct their trajectory mid-flight. Current day GPS is accurate down to a few meters, and they orbit tens of thousands of miles above the earth. We have satellites that take extremely high-resolution (even higher res if military) pictures. Hell, the CIA can pick out license plate numbers from satellites.

Besides, how hard would it be to mark a spot with a laser or radar designator from orbit? All the ship has to do is maintain geosynchronous orbit for the duration of the teleportation/drop, then move on. That's not even mentioning Jump Infantry, who have direct control over where they land, since they have presumably trained with their jump device for at least a year or two.

We have, they have....

What we have today is, at times, not comparable to what the Imperium has in 40K. We have much nicer computers... they have the ability to make you into a super-human behemoth. We have a fancy Stealth Bomber... they have giant fething starships that travel across the galaxy in a matter of weeks.

The Imperium is more advanced than M2 Earth, but not in every way. Much has been lost, never to be regained. The Imperium's teleportarium technology is nearly-lost, with it working more by luck and chance than by design or comprehension. That is why it's less than accurate.

Since it's traveling via the Warp, we can also only guess if a laser Markerlight would make any difference.

All teleport homers do is produce a signal that Terminators can lock onto. whatever system they use could be calibrated to accept a "markerlight"ed target as that signal. Heck, ships could mini-pod homers down to the planets surface.

I wondered this too, my necrons should only roll 1 D6 for scatter, or at least the death marks....and monolith, I cant tell you how many times I've lost my mightly mono because it was Dawn of war and it scattered into something, oh, wait, I can, 100% of the times I've played Dawn of war, its mishapped and either died or been in a lonely corner somewhere

The problem is that the metagame has produced all this teleportation and deep striking, lol. In the older editions of the game, you could count on your fingers the number of units capable of deep striking, lol. The mechanics have carried over, but the tactic has become almost necessary for some units.

I think players have forgotten how to play a traditional wargame, and deep striking has become a requirement for some armies.

McNinja wrote:All teleport homers do is produce a signal that Terminators can lock onto. whatever system they use could be calibrated to accept a "markerlight"ed target as that signal. Heck, ships could mini-pod homers down to the planets surface.

Yes... and this is assuming that whatever system we're talking about here that is calibrated to lock onto a markerlight is a) properly calibrated, b) its Machine-Spirit appropriately appeased, c) works on a degree of accuracy closer than tens of meters (or hundreds or whatever) under optimum conditions, which is not guaranteed, d) isn't somehow slightly damaged or malfunctional in a way that can be detected, and repaired, by human beings.

Let's say that all Teleportariums in the Imperium work with a "Beam-U-There 5000" targeting computer, which is based off of the schematics recovered from the remains of a long-lost STC. The Mechanicus had to "patch in" a few things to make it functional at all. These patches make it operational, but they screw up the accuracy and reliability of the Teleport by an exponential degree. Without the Beam-U-There, though, the Teleportarium won't work. The Mechanicus can find no other way to make it work except these cobbled-together patches. Thus, all Teleportariums in the Imperium are... rather inaccurate.

I'm not entirely sure how you appease a machine spirit... Do you pray at it? I'm sure the rudimentary AI will know exactly what's going on and will then act better because of that.

Anyway, I get the beam-u-there example, though I thought STCs contained the full schematics for whatever it had on it. Either way, if markerlighting the surface wouldn't work, then mini-podding homers and beacons down would work better.

You appease a Machine Spirit by whatever means the AdMech tells you. Might involved incense, prayers, a particularly pleasant variety of machine-oil, perhaps cleaning out between the keys with a silk brush, who knows?

And, yes, while an intact STC would have all the complete files and details... I don't believe an entire, complete STC has ever been recovered, just parts of one, or examples of things it could make (blueprints for a single item, for example), so if our Beam-U-There is built off an incomplete STC template, then it's going to be buggy.

And, sure, you could micro-pod something onto the battlefield... and you might as well attach a sign on it with a flashing arrow that says "Target Artillery Here, Troops Inbound".

With the small amount of scale scatter distance 12" represents, I'd say that drop pods and such are representated by the rules as damn near surgical in application.

As to making better tech? you are missing the whole pont of the 40k setting.

People worship machines and say prayers to them in the assumption that if they don't the spirit inside will become angry and not work.

It is a setting of superstition and ceremonial rigidness when it comes to tech.

It is a fundamentalcharacteristic of the setting.

if you want high tech sillyness you could always go play infinity...

Just look at it this way those who play an Imperium army. The Void Dragon is saying, "screw you!" everytime you scatter into terrain, a unit, too far away to do anything effective, right into the perfect place for your opponent to blow you to hell

@CT GAMER- only the humans have given into ridiculous superstition. Every other species in the galaxy has a firm grasp on how their tech works, inclusing the Orks, and their tech only works because they want it too.

Warhammer 40k is set in a dystopian future where everything wants you to die. It isn't about being dumb, no matter how much sense the dumb makes in-universe. If there's one thing I hate about the IoM, it's that the admech is so blindingly incompetent and dumb.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:The equivilient would be when the CIA shoots those licence plates from orbit with a semi truck.

How did you know we did that?

Another thing to keep in mind is that both factions fleets are likely in orbit and blasting away at each other while their troops are fighting it out on the planet's surface. A deep strike mishap could be the drop pod getting intercepted by fighters, or a teleporter signal getting jammed by the enemy ships, etc.

Dark Age technology, e.g people so old they dont even know what helmets are for.

Thats why all the sergents and commanders dont wear them :3

Of course you pray to the beam-u-there 5000 (named after it's date of manufacture) to make it work. Kids these days have no respect for technology. Heathens.

Sigvatr wrote:Well, fluff usually breaks with rules and even design anyway...I mean...Necrons are considered to be the technologically most advanced race yet all of their vehicles are rather fragile and even have pilots...

Obviously this is because Orks are the most technologically advanced race.


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McNinja wrote:the Orks [...] their tech only works because they want it too.

It works with no orks present at all.