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AlmightyWalrus wrote:

bmoleski wrote:I don't really think there is anything wrong with the way vehicles work in 5th edition. I think cover for vehicles needs to be less forgiving (just because half of a Land Raider is behind cover, I'm not half as likely to hit it? It's as big as a barn and half of a barn is still a huge ing target!!!!!!). I think vehicles should only get cover saves if they are 75% concealed.

Also, I don't mind the way vehicle explosions work in 5th. MEQ survives the explosions much more often but they tend to cost more (although not enough more IMO) so they should survive more. SM vehicles should cost more also. They are practically free compared to other codex's transports! If Mech Guard loses a transport, that squad is pretty much boned, but if Mech MEQ loses one, it's pretty much a negligible loss. However, if GW wants to make the game more realistic, everyone in the transport should die when it explodes. I don't care about power armor or terminator armor because shrapnel and fire aren't what kills people in an explosion. It's the pressure wave that kills people and armor has exactly no effect on that, so even terminators would be just as susceptible as a guardsman or an ork to an explosion.

Wait, how does armour not protect you from the pressure wave? I'm genuinely curious.

kinda like imploding under pressure maybe? i'm thinking submarines nd stuff...not that we have them in 40k, but you know pressure nd what not

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Wait, how does armour not protect you from the pressure wave? I'm genuinely curious.

Armor will protect you from penetrations, it will often transmit the full power of a blast however.

Same way a tank can be relatively intact after being hit by an HE shell but everyone inside is unconscious or dead from the concussion.

A blast concussion from a heavy ordnance weapon likely won't result in any penetration of a Space Marine's armor for instance, but every organ in his body may liquified (and nothing in SM fluff says anything about their organs really being reinforced in any way, just that they have backups of some). Happens quite often with blasts, people will appear externally relatively fine, but internally everything has been pulped such that when they do an Xray it looks like one big slushy mass instead of a collection of distinct, individual organs, and such blast concussion will transmit right through armor.

bmoleski wrote:I don't really think there is anything wrong with the way vehicles work in 5th edition. I think cover for vehicles needs to be less forgiving (just because half of a Land Raider is behind cover, I'm not half as likely to hit it? It's as big as a barn and half of a barn is still a huge ing target!!!!!!). I think vehicles should only get cover saves if they are 75% concealed.

Also, I don't mind the way vehicle explosions work in 5th. MEQ survives the explosions much more often but they tend to cost more (although not enough more IMO) so they should survive more. SM vehicles should cost more also. They are practically free compared to other codex's transports! If Mech Guard loses a transport, that squad is pretty much boned, but if Mech MEQ loses one, it's pretty much a negligible loss. However, if GW wants to make the game more realistic, everyone in the transport should die when it explodes. I don't care about power armor or terminator armor because shrapnel and fire aren't what kills people in an explosion. It's the pressure wave that kills people and armor has exactly no effect on that, so even terminators would be just as susceptible as a guardsman or an ork to an explosion.

There are fluff examples of Powe Armor and Terminators doing their thing in space and at ocean depths. I think that pressure problems are not as bad for them as you might hope.

Likewise, passengers and crew have been pulled alive from the wreckage of vehicles that exploded in real life as well. Not many, for sure, but enough that automatic death to all on board not entirely reasonable, especially in a game of superhumans, aliens, high technology and space magic.

Another thought on transports, at least Marine transports, do they hold too many? I can see 10 normal folks in a Chimera or Rhino, but 10 power armor clad Giants? No way! I think a Rhino should max out at 8 power armor models instead of 10.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Vaktathi, it used to be common practice to use blast weapons as anti-tank weapons, but that process died out over the last few decades. The reason is that newer armors were much more resistant to these type weapons than previous armor. A full body rigid suit of power armour could be made highly blast resistant.

Those with flexible or non full body armor like flak armor and carapace armor would have little or no defense though. So if you want an AP value for being in an exploding vehicle, I suggest 4. Or perhaps just make everyone reroll the successful save.

Seeing as both Grimaldus and Mephiston have clawed their way out of cathedral-sized buildings collapsing on them, I'm not too sure about the pressure argument.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Seeing as both Grimaldus and Mephiston have clawed their way out of cathedral-sized buildings collapsing on them, I'm not too sure about the pressure argument.

There's also the fact they can go into the deep sea's without much issue, not to mention that a terminator was stepped on by a titan, and still survived (Lucky invulnerable save!)

Mannahnin wrote:Yup. DA was the first codex with cheaper Rhinos. Before that Rhinos were 50pts base for every codex that got them, 5pts for Extra Armor, 3pts for Smoke Launchers, 1pt for a Searchlight. 58pts was humorously referred to as "factory standard" or "MSRP".

I still pay for my searchlights. . . Why must BA pay for searchlights when the bloody necrons get to induce night fighting on my turns!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Seeing as both Grimaldus and Mephiston have clawed their way out of cathedral-sized buildings collapsing on them, I'm not too sure about the pressure argument.

There's also the fact they can go into the deep sea's without much issue, not to mention that a terminator was stepped on by a titan, and still survived (Lucky invulnerable save!)

That termy had to make it sometime, that was just the perfect time.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Seeing as both Grimaldus and Mephiston have clawed their way out of cathedral-sized buildings collapsing on them, I'm not too sure about the pressure argument.

There's a big difference between a building collapse, being deep underwater, and a blast wave both in terms of speed, concentration, and pressure, and both characters have a fair bit of plot armor. Hell, Mephiston is portrayed in game as being tougher than a Daemon Prince borne of a Chaos Space Marine Lord.

Vaktathi, it used to be common practice to use blast weapons as anti-tank weapons, but that process died out over the last few decades. The reason is that newer armors were much more resistant to these type weapons than previous armor.

Typically these were HEAT weapons designed around shaped charges that relied on a jet of molten metal to penetrate the hull, which modern armor has become very adept at either disrupting the formation of said jet (ERA) or negating it's penetrative capabilities (Chobham). Hit a tank directly with a 100lb 155mm HE artillery shell (1.5-2x the mass of most 120mm shells) however and if you don't take the turret clean off of its ring the crew will likely require hospitalization if nothing else (such guns however generally are divisional level artillery and not typical AT guns). While not exactly a great modern example, in WW2 IS-2 tanks and especially ISU-152's would often engage Panther tanks quite effectively even though they couldn't penetrate the armor effectively at range but the sheer explosive power of their HE shell was enough to inflict severe concussive harm on the occupants or quite often tear the turret right off the turret ring and toss it a dozen meters from the hull.

A full body rigid suit of power armour could be made highly blast resistant.

To a degree yes, however the pressures experienced from say, a nearby cannon blast or grenade explosion that may be highly resistable are as nothing (literally several thousand times less powerful) next to the detonation of an enclosed vehicle and being inside said vehicle. Recognizable body parts are generally not recoverable from the latter.

Those with flexible or non full body armor like flak armor and carapace armor would have little or no defense though. So if you want an AP value for being in an exploding vehicle, I suggest 4. Or perhaps just make everyone reroll the successful save.

I'd be fine with the latter honestly, however the former would really just be far too MEQ-lenient and GEQ-punitive to be a good game mechanic, as exploding transports would be death to anything that wasn't a marine and marines already probably have too much "get out of jail free" cards in such areas.

Everyone debating on this topic seems to be coming from a non-tyranid and non-daemon perspective.

As a Tyranid player, my main issue is that I have very little shooting that is reliable against vehicles (Hive guard, T-fexes, Zoans), so we rely on assaulting them. I personally have no problem with the gun-vehicles. It's definetely transports and the fact that I probably am going to have to assault it to kill it that ruins the game for us.

Many of the ideas that have come up would be fine, but for an assault based army what we need is that units disembarking from a wrecked/exploded vehicle must pile into close combat with the unit that wrecked/exploded the vehicle.

We need a 160pt carnifex or 200 pt trygon to open vehicles. They assault a 35 pt rhino, and then get roflstomped by missles and melta the turn after. We make trades like that for 6 turns and lose...who would have guessed?

No tyranid player wants to be forced into using 9 hive guard every game...

Lysenis wrote:I still pay for my searchlights. . . Why must BA pay for searchlights when the bloody necrons get to induce night fighting on my turns!

All the xenos players feel sympathetic. It's much easier for us not having this option for a cost as huge as 1pt.
And inducing night fight on Necron turn only by Necron player would be much better mechanic.

Lysenis wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Yup. DA was the first codex with cheaper Rhinos. Before that Rhinos were 50pts base for every codex that got them, 5pts for Extra Armor, 3pts for Smoke Launchers, 1pt for a Searchlight. 58pts was humorously referred to as "factory standard" or "MSRP".

I still pay for my searchlights. . . Why must BA pay for searchlights when the bloody necrons get to induce night fighting on my turns!

Because Mat Ward. There was no real reason that anyone can come up with.

Macok wrote:

Lysenis wrote:I still pay for my searchlights. . . Why must BA pay for searchlights when the bloody necrons get to induce night fighting on my turns!

All the xenos players feel sympathetic. It's much easier for us not having this option for a cost as huge as 1pt.
And inducing night fight on Necron turn only by Necron player would be much better mechanic.

I see what your doing there. Most new xeno codices get Keen Senses so its not as dibilitating, I was responding to what Rhinos were in 4th ed where they still bought searchlights and Smoke.

As a Tyranid player, my main issue is that I have very little shooting that is reliable against vehicles (Hive guard, T-fexes, Zoans), so we rely on assaulting them. I personally have no problem with the gun-vehicles. It's definetely transports and the fact that I probably am going to have to assault it to kill it that ruins the game for us.

Assault based damage charts for MC's would be far nicer (Rip open the top, nom nom the nice innards as a 6 would be hilarious) , I find that one of my main issues when I use daemons (Barely) is actually hitting the damn things when trying to smack them on 6's with a Bloodthrister.

Vaktathi wrote:I'd be fine with the latter honestly, however the former would really just be far too MEQ-lenient and GEQ-punitive to be a good game mechanic, as exploding transports would be death to anything that wasn't a marine and marines already probably have too much "get out of jail free" cards in such areas.

Rerolling armour saves sounds reasonable enough, it threatens MEQ without completely wiping them like AP2 would and it gives you a reason to still take transports if you're marines. On the other hand it'd make GEQ take even more casualties.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I'd be fine with the latter honestly, however the former would really just be far too MEQ-lenient and GEQ-punitive to be a good game mechanic, as exploding transports would be death to anything that wasn't a marine and marines already probably have too much "get out of jail free" cards in such areas.

Rerolling armour saves sounds reasonable enough, it threatens MEQ without completely wiping them like AP2 would and it gives you a reason to still take transports if you're marines. On the other hand it'd make GEQ take even more casualties.

Still better than simply getting no saves while marines still get theirs, and I'm ok with explosions causing more damage, they really should be scarier to everything, passengers and those nearby.

Vaktathi wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I'd be fine with the latter honestly, however the former would really just be far too MEQ-lenient and GEQ-punitive to be a good game mechanic, as exploding transports would be death to anything that wasn't a marine and marines already probably have too much "get out of jail free" cards in such areas.

Rerolling armour saves sounds reasonable enough, it threatens MEQ without completely wiping them like AP2 would and it gives you a reason to still take transports if you're marines. On the other hand it'd make GEQ take even more casualties.

Still better than simply getting no saves while marines still get theirs, and I'm ok with explosions causing more damage, they really should be scarier to everything, passengers and those nearby.

I guess we are agreed then; rerolling successful saves it is! Now, to make GW accept our truth!

Lol, if only XD

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Jefffar wrote:That's the catch, ultimately. Either we wind up with transports being too inexpensive and dominating the game or we wind up with them being too expensive and certain lists become infeasible.

Now perhaps I am jaded to low cost transports as my army's transport generally costs more than the squad inside it (without upgrades on the transport I might add), but if an upgrade is a force multiplier, it should be such a small fraction of the squad in cost (ie Rhinos and razorbacks can be bought for the cost of less than 3 of the guys who ride in them).

Agreed, it's not the vehicle rules so much as it is the low price of transports in certain Codices. Try playing razorspam Black Templars and see if transports are so OP, for example.

Absolutely! Except that fixing the cost of transports takes several years as new codices are released. If you change the transport rules in the main rulebook to make them a bit less awesome, you can potentially solve the problem across the board in one fell swoop.

We can debate HOW to change them as much as we like and reasonably disagree, but a change to the core rules is a lot quicker and more efficient than the point cost fix. In the change from 4th to 5th they made transports much more durable and effective, and they simultaneously started making them cheaper in the codices, a trend which has continued. Doing both clearly was an overcompensation for them being a bit underpowered in 4th. Making their rules a little worse OR raising their prices a bit would both be good ways to make them more balanced. But tweaking the rules can be done in one shot.

Right, but cost isn't something that's strictly limited to points. Cost can also come in the form of risk, which is something that a core rule book can certainly address.

Ideally, there would never be points cost fixing in codices at all, but rather everything of the same class costing the same and then the core rules changing their use across the board.

Wait, how does armour not protect you from the pressure wave? I'm genuinely curious.

Try putting on a chain mail shirt and then see how it protects you from getting hit by a car, as opposed to a sword being swung much faster than the car is driving.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Seeing as both Grimaldus and Mephiston have clawed their way out of cathedral-sized buildings collapsing on them, I'm not too sure about the pressure argument.

IIRC Mephiston wasn't even wearing armor the first time a building collapsed on him...

AlmightyWalrus wrote:I guess we are agreed then; rerolling successful saves it is! Now, to make GW accept our truth!

I really like that solution. It's absurdly elegant and simple.

Jidmah wrote:

Wait, how does armour not protect you from the pressure wave? I'm genuinely curious.

Try putting on a chain mail shirt and then see how it protects you from getting hit by a car, as opposed to a sword being swung much faster than the car is driving.

You're mixing things up.
1) Speed doesn't matter that much, momentum and kinetic energy are the keys.
2) Flexible armor unsurprisingly isn't too good against protecting from large area impact hits. They work by dissipating impact from concentrated hits to larger area.
3) Rigid armor does help a lot against any impact hit. Basically reason for this is that kinetic energy that without armor would be used to deform your body to mush is used to propel you away from the impact instead and to deform either your armor or whatever drove over you, depending on relative toughnesses of the materials.
4) Non-rigid, non-sealed armour doesn't help that much against pressure waves. Which work completely differently from normal impact damage, as far as damage to humans is concerned.

Anyway, pressure waves are completely different animals. And fully sealed rigid armour, like power armour with helmet on, protects extremely well against them. There are good, internally consistent arguments for making exploding transports causing AP5. But you can't make internally consistent arguments about AP2 internal explosions without having the exploding vehicle also cause huge amount of damage to large radius while exploding.

As for building collapses go, you can't use them for any pressure related arguments. There are always large empty cavities inside the collapsed building, if person gets lucky enough he doesn't get hit by falling debris at all. And damage caused by collapsing building is basically all impact damage from the debris. The "pressure" is really only weight of rubble on someone, not pressure in sense of explosion.

Luide wrote:

Jidmah wrote:

Wait, how does armour not protect you from the pressure wave? I'm genuinely curious.

Try putting on a chain mail shirt and then see how it protects you from getting hit by a car, as opposed to a sword being swung much faster than the car is driving.

You're mixing things up.
1) Speed doesn't matter that much, momentum and kinetic energy are the keys.

Momentum is speed times mass, how does speed not matter?
The idea was comparing a bolter round (small area) against a blast wave (large area).

2) Flexible armor unsurprisingly isn't too good against protecting from large area impact hits. They work by dissipating impact from concentrated hits to larger area.
3) Rigid armor does help a lot against any impact hit. Basically reason for this is that kinetic energy that without armor would be used to deform your body to mush is used to propel you away from the impact instead and to deform either your armor or whatever drove over you, depending on relative toughnesses of the materials.

Wearing plate mail doesn't help against getting hit by a car, either. Unless power armor can absorb infinite amounts of kinetic energy, the marine would still be crushed. The blast is also going to knock you against some part of the vehicle, another marine or the ground, so getting hit by a car would be roughly equivalent. Not in physics, but in principle.

Luide wrote:
Anyway, pressure waves are completely different animals. And fully sealed rigid armour, like power armour with helmet on, protects extremely well against them. There are good, internally consistent arguments for making exploding transports causing AP5.

No there aren't.
Most of these threads seem to ignore the fact that eldar/guard can take transports as well. If vehicle explosions were AP 5 I'd lose 6-7 vets whenever a chimera exploded...yeah, no.

Jidmah wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Seeing as both Grimaldus and Mephiston have clawed their way out of cathedral-sized buildings collapsing on them, I'm not too sure about the pressure argument.

IIRC Mephiston wasn't even wearing armor the first time a building collapsed on him...

There was some (Like 21) people pulled form the wrecks of the twin towers so it is possible, just highly unlikely.

Joey wrote:

Luide wrote:
Anyway, pressure waves are completely different animals. And fully sealed rigid armour, like power armour with helmet on, protects extremely well against them. There are good, internally consistent arguments for making exploding transports causing AP5.

No there aren't.
Most of these threads seem to ignore the fact that eldar/guard can take transports as well. If vehicle explosions were AP 5 I'd lose 6-7 vets whenever a chimera exploded...yeah, no.

I meant internally consistent as far as fluff is concerned. Obviously, game mechanically either STR 3-5 or automatically wound on 3+/4+ with saves allowed is better, because cost of the armor is taken into account when pricing models and that cost must be brought down if units inside transports don't benefit from them.

Armor doesn't work against a lot of things, including dangerous terrain, a failed death or glory, sweeping advances and perils of the warp. So basically, all game rule-induced casualties except explosions.

Jidmah wrote:

2) Flexible armor unsurprisingly isn't too good against protecting from large area impact hits. They work by dissipating impact from concentrated hits to larger area.
3) Rigid armor does help a lot against any impact hit. Basically reason for this is that kinetic energy that without armor would be used to deform your body to mush is used to propel you away from the impact instead and to deform either your armor or whatever drove over you, depending on relative toughnesses of the materials.

Wearing plate mail doesn't help against getting hit by a car, either. Unless power armor can absorb infinite amounts of kinetic energy, the marine would still be crushed.

Plate mail is only partially rigid, and if you had one that was strong enough not to deform too much, it would be huge help. Bruises are lot better than massive internal damage and broken bones.
And by fluff, power armour can withstand huge amounts of kinetic energy. Point being, if the energy is not enough to deform/crush the armor, the person inside takes only marginal damage compared to the damage he'd be taken without armor.

And do consider realworld use of armour in cases like this: Motorcycle helmets provenly work and same goes for on-impacts stiffening materials that hugely change the amount of injuries one takes in crash or when one falls from motorcycle. Same goes for backplates, energy needed to deform armour even slightly is magnitudes more than energy needed to defom bones and flesh.

The blast is als

Jidmah wrote:o going to knock you against some part of the vehicle, another marine or the ground, so getting hit by a car would be roughly equivalent. Not in physics, but in principle.

Accelerations involved by blast knocking you into things would be far smaller actually. As long as the armour stays intact, damage caused is basically same as is caused by someone throwing the power armoured marine against a wall. And hitting ground is not that bad, it's generally pretty soft compared to armour so it would just deform and form a crater, dissipating majority of the energy there.

When you drive over someone in power armour, it's not comparable to driving over someone who is not in armor. It is comparable to driving over heavily armoured smaller vehicle, with the occupant strapped in place and cushioned against impacts.

Tl;DR:
For internal consistency, if transport explodes with enough power to kill all marines inside it, effect to outside should be minimum of "everyone within 6" takes S8 AP3" hit. Area of effect should probably be larger. Main point is that any argument that "realistically everyone inside would die" is not nearly as some people think it is.

Anyway, more important thing is to have good game design and balance. Deathtrap transports like in 2e and 4e were just plain bad design.

I'm mostly with Luide as far as the physics go; but I don't really care about them from a rules/game balance perspective. What's more important is the balance. One can always find a retroactive fluff justification.

-------

Presently transports are too cheap and too good, and this has led to their proliferation and the nickname "transporthammer" for 5th. IMO this is one of 5th's few flaws. Making explosions a bit more dangerous to power-armored occupants would be one good way to rein that in a bit. We don't want to screw over Eldar, DE, Guard and Orks, though, as they already take substantial casualties in explosions so there's already a downside for them.

Would it be too harsh to say that quite simply the whole unit should just die if the transport is blown up? I mean, the crews automatically die so why not the rest of them?

Digging in for infantry could also be introduced and be quite simple. An infantry unit decides in the movement phase not to move, which could allow them to dig in, giving them a 4+ cover save against enemy fire, still allowing them to shoot (although the turn they dig in they count as moving, so can't fire heavy weapons .etc.) and causes them to count as being in cover when assaulted. However, theis also means they can't assault while dug in, and move half the turn that they stop being dug in

@ Luide
While the physics aspect is very interesting, I wouldn't translate anything ever mentioned in the WH40k to science. Depending on whats more cinematic at the moment, the same weapon is described as uselessly plonking off power armor, where at other times the exact same weapon manages to kill some evil guy in tactical dreadnought armor. When Thrakka (supposedly weighting about 40 tons) steps on a nob out of bad temper, he is crushed to green paste, while Yarrik survived being repeatedly stomped into the marble floor of hive hades. Plot armor is strong with warhammer40k, especially with the IoM.

A battlewagon can easily kill a marine or a rhino by running it over with something that's basically a barrel with spikes. A flame thrower or even heavy flamer are much more likely to kill marines than fluff suggests. Even the weakest weapons have a decent chance of killing a marine, suggesting that power armor, from a game perspective, is in fact not completely protecting its wearer.

One guy said something earlier, why not make everyone take an armor savable wound.

no strength hit, you just get an armor save for an exploded vehicle.

GEK lose 2/3
MEQ lose 1/3
TEQ lose 1/6

sounds pretty simple