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Nurglitch wrote:Voodoo Boyz: It certainly seems significant where Necrons are concerned, given the Gauss and Disruption Field rules. Likewise the fact that it is possible to destroy a vehicle through cumulative Weapon Destroyed and Immobilized results beyond crashing skimmers (those without special Eldar and Tau upgrades...) certainly seems significant where it's not unreasonable for a vehicle to sustain large numbers of glancing hits such as Monoliths, Land Raiders, and like vehicles facing bolters and whatnot.

Perhaps my reading of what you were posting is wrong, but you were saying that the calculations posted about "destroying" a vehicle were not correct because they were not accounting for the percentage chance that a vehicle can be killed through a successive amount of Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized results.

My counterpoint to this is that given the amount of Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized results it takes to actually destroy many vehicles, this is a very insignificant percentage chance when you want to talk about killing a vehicle. This is extraordinarily true for when a Vehicle is behind 4+ Cover or even has the 5+ Obscured save.

Lets just say an AV14 Tank has a 5+ Cover save, and you want to destroy it with a long ranged anti-tank gun, that's say S9 AP2, being fired by a Space Marine.

1 Shot x 2/3 chance to hit x 1/3 chance to glance or penetrate (since the Immobilized/Weapon Destroyed result is a constant chance regardless of glancing or penetrating) = .22

Now lets look at cover and the damage results.

.22 x 2/3 chance that the shot is not blocked by the 5+ Cover x 1/3 chance to roll Weapon Destroyed or Immobilized = .049

Now that's one shot, and from that shot you have a roughly 5% chance to get either a Weapon Destroyed or Immobilized result.

And now, in order to destroy a tank with 3 Weapons, you must get that result 5 times, in total, to upgrade it to Destroyed.

No matter how you slice it, that's a lot of glances or penetrating hits (assuming you don't destroy it first), in an entire game, to pull that off. Which is why it's something that really doesn't factor into the rough calculations being performed that exist only to give us a rough, but pretty good idea of what the chances are to kill a tank at long range.

Given the factors being shown here, that it is extremely hard to actually *kill* a tank at long range, especially when it's in cover.

This changes drastically when using AP1 weapons, or weapons that ignore cover saves (CC attacks), and weapons that make it easy to penetrate higher armor values (high base S or Melta Weapons).

This is the kind of conclusions that are being drawn from this thread, and it's the whole point of the math being done. Your objection about not counting the "destroyed through cumulative results" isn't really a valid objection because the chance of that happening in a 6 turn game is exceedingly small.

You have a point about Necrons, but that's not exactly the focus of this thread. In fact Necrons and Vehicles, using their current rules, is worth it's own thread for analysis.

Tau will be the Anti-tank kings in 5th Edition, with AP1 Railguns and Markerlights that can ignore cover and can improve BS.

Voodoo Boyz wrote:Perhaps my reading of what you were posting is wrong, but you were saying that the calculations posted about "destroying" a vehicle were not correct because they were not accounting for the percentage chance that a vehicle can be killed through a successive amount of Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized results.

Yes, your reading was wrong. I was saying that just citing the likelihood of destroying a vehicle in a single hit abstracted away important information such as the likelihood that a vehicle might be destroyed by accumulated damage.

Voodoo Boyz wrote:My counterpoint to this is that given the amount of Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized results it takes to actually destroy many vehicles, this is a very insignificant percentage chance when you want to talk about killing a vehicle. This is extraordinarily true for when a Vehicle is behind 4+ Cover or even has the 5+ Obscured save.

If you know that the likelihood of cumulative damage destroying a vehicle is insignificant, then please show how the likelihood as a percentage is insignificant, and explain how the demonstration proves that insignificance. It seems to me that refusing to show the work because it would be insignificant begs the question about whether it is insignificant. In particular I'd like to know how a 5% chance each of five hits destroying a vehicle is insignificant while whatever the chance of one hit destroying a vehicle is not.

It seems to me that in order to have a pretty good idea, as opposed to a kind of good or simply bad idea of what it takes to kill a tank at long range is to show how you slice it. After all it seems to me that maneuvering to deny a vehicle the cover save, where possible, will have a significant effect that requires quantification.

Mahu: There's a good point. AP1 weapons are extra-deathy in the '5th edition' rules going around.

You know Nuglitch, it is only an ad hominem if I attack you personally, instead of your idea. Since I attacked your idea that he should use an essay form, which wouldn't be appropriate for statistical analysis paper, I am in the clear. And of course, I never directly called you a pompous intellectual, I simply implied it heavily, an implication that you so happily walked into with a false accusation of commission of the Ad Hominem fallacy.

Thanks for playing.

If you are trying to wow us with your rhetorical abilities, messing with a bunch of wargamers, who are of the highest IQ percentiles of many hobbies is a very bad idea. I am getting a Bachelors in philosophy, as my secondary bachelors. A lot of the posters have bachelors or above. We aren't dumb kids you can browbeat with technical jargon. This is a forum, we aren't attempting to construct rigorous papers on the subject of 40k, we are just posting our thoughts and ideas we come up with in our spare time. Really, if you wanted to make a real deal about the opening post, the lack of confirmatory mathematics is a much bigger issue than some minor formatting complaint.

DarkHellion: Okay, so you didn't openly call me a "pompous intellectual" but simply implied it to make me look stupid... That's an ad hominem.

And yes, my complaint was about showing one's work like you would in a paper, showing the "confirmatory mathematics" so to speak. But you'd know that having read my posts.

Off-topic: If you need a hand proof-reading any papers I have a Master's in Philosophy and I'm working on my PhD.

What this means to me is that vehicles are actually worse off in 5th ed than 4th ed.

Sure it may not die as easily, but your kept from shooting just as often and you can't move as far. Add to the fact that since vehicles are no longer scoring unit, who cares if you kill it or not. As long as you get any damage result on it once, its probably good enough to forget for the rest of the turn and move on. Thus again, increasing its survivabilty, but not really helping much either.

One slightly constructive comment/request. Could you do the calculations for the lethality of powerfist attacks on vehicles. With 5th edition emphasizing troop heavy lists I think there will be a marked increase in troops being able to use powerfists on vehicles. Of particular interest would be the lethality of powerfists vs. dreadnoughts in 5th edition.

Nurglitch wrote:

Voodoo Boyz wrote:Perhaps my reading of what you were posting is wrong, but you were saying that the calculations posted about "destroying" a vehicle were not correct because they were not accounting for the percentage chance that a vehicle can be killed through a successive amount of Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized results.

Yes, your reading was wrong. I was saying that just citing the likelihood of destroying a vehicle in a single hit abstracted away important information such as the likelihood that a vehicle might be destroyed by accumulated damage.

So for the crumbs of percentages of this likelihood, you are accusing of misinformation people who are postings actually pretty correct arguments. Why on hell abstracting these tiny probabilities from calculations would be hiding important information?

Voodoo Boyz wrote:My counterpoint to this is that given the amount of Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized results it takes to actually destroy many vehicles, this is a very insignificant percentage chance when you want to talk about killing a vehicle. This is extraordinarily true for when a Vehicle is behind 4+ Cover or even has the 5+ Obscured save.

If you know that the likelihood of cumulative damage destroying a vehicle is insignificant, then please show how the likelihood as a percentage is insignificant, and explain how the demonstration proves that insignificance. It seems to me that refusing to show the work because it would be insignificant begs the question about whether it is insignificant. In particular I'd like to know how a 5% chance each of five hits destroying a vehicle is insignificant while whatever the chance of one hit destroying a vehicle is not.

That's amazing! First you state Voodoo boyz is wrong, by the only argument of
"It certainly seems significant where Necrons are concerned, given the Gauss and Disruption Field rules." (...)
In the same time, making a confusion between actual glances (that could destroy directly) and cumulative damage.
Then, unable to estimate the pertinence of your own arguments, likelihood of cumulative damage destruction significance, you're asking others to show it for you. So actually you are just posting verbiage.

Remind that any modelisation have to include some approximations when you try to have an acceptable view of the situation. Taking out not so significant things or worthless details is not a problem. But, as I feel you need an example, let's show that you are annoying us with non-significant things :

Suppose now a favorable case : the target is a Predator with a single turret (due to lack of points for sponsons)
You need only to cumulate 3 damages to take him down.
Firer : SM minidevs with Laser cannon , V5 rules.
P(direct destruction) = 7.4%
P(1 damage) = 11.1%
3 minidevs are firing : P(destruction by cumulative damage) = P(1 damage)^3 = 0.137%

Is that making an "important information abstraction" ?
0.137 % vs 7.4% is negligible, don't even talking about the probability of direct destruction by 3 shots instead of only one !
Cumulative damage makes sense for the fire of entire platoons, it's irrelevant when talking about a little dices of heavy weapons.


Must I repeat that the subject of the thread is Changes in vehicle resilience from 4th to 5th Edition. ?
Must I repeat that about damaged weapons & immobilization :

Ravajaxe wrote:Anyway, will the probability of such damage change?
No : there is still a single immobilize and a single Weapon damage in tables, whatever the edition and penetration result.
With cover save? Apply a 2/3 or 1/2 factor, that's it!
No need to go further, the real changes are there : in Tank direct destruction !

Why derail the topic with these negligible details, that above all will remain pretty unchanged?
So Nurglitch please stay off my topic if you don't plan to make any relevant contribution.

Jayden63 wrote:What this means to me is that vehicles are actually worse off in 5th ed than 4th ed.

Sure it may not die as easily, but your kept from shooting just as often and you can't move as far. Add to the fact that since vehicles are no longer scoring unit, who cares if you kill it or not. As long as you get any damage result on it once, its probably good enough to forget for the rest of the turn and move on. Thus again, increasing its survivabilty, but not really helping much either.

I think you would make a tactical mistake here. Sure you would'nt think like that after a few battles. I don't tried the PDF rules, but it's obvious for me that you cannot ignore a tank that is threatening your troops. If you play orks, will you ignore a Leman-Russ or Whirlwind or Hammerhead that can wipe out many boyz a turn, aiming all his guns on the path of your boyz ?

Arcoslippy wrote:One slightly constructive comment/request. Could you do the calculations for the lethality of powerfist attacks on vehicles. With 5th edition emphasizing troop heavy lists I think there will be a marked increase in troops being able to use powerfists on vehicles. Of particular interest would be the lethality of powerfists vs. dreadnoughts in 5th edition.

Did not interested about fists so far, but that could make sense... Will try

Nurglitch wrote:
Off-topic: If you need a hand proof-reading any papers I have a Master's in Philosophy and I'm working on my PhD.

Let me know when you get your McPhD in Burger Flipping when it comes time to pay back your student loans =)

Close combat has the potential to be the key for antivehicle work. If most vehicles are parked IN terrain and playing pillbox especially.

Autohit a vehicle that hasn't moved (or force it to move and take dangerous terrain checks)
Ignore cover saves in assault
Continued assault during the enemy turn on vehicles that are immobilized, stunned, or just don't move away
Terrain to hide in should the vehicle survive the assault

Another win for assault in 5th ed rumors.

Ravajaxe wrote:

Jayden63 wrote:What this means to me is that vehicles are actually worse off in 5th ed than 4th ed.

Sure it may not die as easily, but your kept from shooting just as often and you can't move as far. Add to the fact that since vehicles are no longer scoring unit, who cares if you kill it or not. As long as you get any damage result on it once, its probably good enough to forget for the rest of the turn and move on. Thus again, increasing its survivabilty, but not really helping much either.

I think you would make a tactical mistake here. Sure you would'nt think like that after a few battles. I don't tried the PDF rules, but it's obvious for me that you cannot ignore a tank that is threatening your troops. If you play orks, will you ignore a Leman-Russ or Whirlwind or Hammerhead that can wipe out many boyz a turn, aiming all his guns on the path of your boyz ?

jayden is right on this one. the fact that vehicles don't score means that a weapon destroyed is nearly as good as a kill on most tanks. a russ without a battlecannon is a last priority target. this is even more true when you consider that the lack of move and shoot makes spending points on sponson weapons less attractive. the only vehicles that actually seem to be getting a boost are transports.

Nurglitch wrote:

Voodoo Boyz wrote:Perhaps my reading of what you were posting is wrong, but you were saying that the calculations posted about "destroying" a vehicle were not correct because they were not accounting for the percentage chance that a vehicle can be killed through a successive amount of Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized results.

Yes, your reading was wrong. I was saying that just citing the likelihood of destroying a vehicle in a single hit abstracted away important information such as the likelihood that a vehicle might be destroyed by accumulated damage.

You're missing my point, I think, because you're misreading the statistics I posted.

The point is that the likelihood that a vehicle might be destroyed by accumulated damage is exceptionally small. As in, less than 1% small.

In particular I'd like to know how a 5% chance each of five hits destroying a vehicle is insignificant while whatever the chance of one hit destroying a vehicle is not.

It seems to me that in order to have a pretty good idea, as opposed to a kind of good or simply bad idea of what it takes to kill a tank at long range is to show how you slice it. After all it seems to me that maneuvering to deny a vehicle the cover save, where possible, will have a significant effect that requires quantification.

You read the statistics wrong.

It was a 5% chance for a single shot to produce a single Weapon Destroyed or an Immobilized Result.

In order to achieve what you're talking about (Destroying a vehicle through cumulative damage), you must perform the above feat at a minimum of 5 times consecutively for a vehicle that has 3 weapons. It's not a 5% chance of each five hits destroying a vehicle, it's much smaller than that since it has to be performed cumulatively.

I've not done this level of Statistics since my sophomore year of college, but since it's cumulative, the chances of it are very small. If someone doesn't post it by tomorrow (and I know we've got some posters here who do use stats like this far more regularly than I do), then I'll try and find the formula. I do know that it's a very small number, in any case, because it's cumulative 5 times over at a minimum (depending on the tank loadout). If you can't even see that, by merely looking at the percentages involved, then please by all means, show me where I've messed up.

@jfrazzel:

Tanks are going to be very much more resilient, especially to shooting. Since Cover saves will negate a good amount of shooting that actually manages to hit and glance/penetrate the AV value of the tank in question.

Consider a Leman Russ in the middle of a Forest (4+ Cover). The forest is big enough to give the tank the cover save, so it's not easy to "maneuver to get a shot" where it doesn't have cover. Thus, every shot that does manage to hit, then glance/pen AV14, has to let the other player fail a 4+ cover save. That's 50% of all your successful shots, gone. And then you get to roll on much more forgiving damage tables.

No, close range Meltaguns with an easy way to beat any armor bar the Monolith, with AP1 to help on the damage charts, and in multiples for a squad (to get past the cover save), then you're looking at some solid numbers to down the tank. At long range with S8 or S9 without AP1, I see it being very hard to actually KILL the thing.

And actually killing it is important in 1/3 of all missions where you get kill points for the tank.

In 2/3 of the missions, you could be happy just keeping say, a Leman Russ, from shooting all game, but it's going to be hard to do that to 3 Russes, in cover, each turn. Since all you need is a glance and you're looking at a 5/6 chance that it's not shooting back at you.

That's why we have Tankshock and Ramming! See that battlecannonless russ over there? It's slamming your precious transports away with full-speed-armor-14-front-driving-in-your-face goodness.

Just a sidenote.

Greets
Schepp himself

For having a masters in Philosophy, you sure don't understand the difference between an Insult, which is what me thinking you are an overly technical intellectual prick, and an Ad Hominem, which is the use of an insult in place of a logical argument. I wish I was working towards a masters that allowed me to easily confuse basic terminology, and misuse it as technical jargon on a webboard. Oh, wait, I am getting a degree in a hard science as well.

Ravajaxe wrote:So for the crumbs of percentages of this likelihood, you are accusing of misinformation people who are postings actually pretty correct arguments. Why on hell abstracting these tiny probabilities from calculations would be hiding important information?

Take a chill-pill, Francis. For one thing it seems that by allowing cumulative damage to destroy vehicles is significant because of how the damage table in 5th edition works. There are plenty of weapons like Gauss weapons and Venom Cannons that will be able to whittle vehicles away and so it seems important to judge how vehicles will fare against these weapons.

Longshot wrote:Let me know when you get your McPhD in Burger Flipping when it comes time to pay back your student loans =)

I never needed student loans. Yay, working your way through college!

Ravajaxe wrote:That's amazing! First you state Voodoo boyz is wrong, by the only argument of
"It certainly seems significant where Necrons are concerned, given the Gauss and Disruption Field rules." (...)
In the same time, making a confusion between actual glances (that could destroy directly) and cumulative damage.
Then, unable to estimate the pertinence of your own arguments, likelihood of cumulative damage destruction significance, you're asking others to show it for you. So actually you are just posting verbiage.

I know you aren't fluent in English, but could you please make sense so I can understand what you're saying?

Voodoo Boyz wrote:You're missing my point, I think, because you're misreading the statistics I posted.

The point is that the likelihood that a vehicle might be destroyed by accumulated damage is exceptionally small. As in, less than 1% small.

Okay, so what determines the significance of each decimal place? Where only hundreds of dice are being rolled a 0.01% chance of something happening seems significant.

Voodoo Boyz wrote:You read the statistics wrong.

It was a 5% chance for a single shot to produce a single Weapon Destroyed or an Immobilized Result.

Sorry, but a 5% chance for a single shot to produce a single Weapon Destroyed or Immobilized Result means that there is a 5% chance for each shot to do that, right? So since it must be shown that each obtains consecutively, I'd like to know how a 5% chance each of five glancing hits (Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized result) destroying a vehicle is insignificant while whatever the chance of one hit destroying a vehicle is not. I am aware that it multiplies out to make what appears to be a very small number, but it strikes me like areas and volume. 10" cubed is tiny compared to 10" square, and both look small beside 10" long. If destroying a vehicle in a single hit is like calculating the scale of a single dimensional object, and destroying a vehicle in five hits is like calculating the scale of a five dimensional object, then a scale that makes a single dimensional object insignificant may not be commensurate with one that makes five dimensional objects insignificant.

It's not that you've messed up, I'm just trying to figure out why destroying a vehicle in five glancing hits is so much more difficult than destroying a vehicle in a single penetrating hit that it is not even worth considering. After all, it seems reasonable that penetrating hits that do not destroy vehicles and instead cause Damage results will make it easier to gradually nibble away at vehicles as is done to monstrous creatures.

DarkHellion wrote:For having a masters in Philosophy, you sure don't understand the difference between an Insult, which is what me thinking you are an overly technical intellectual prick, and an Ad Hominem, which is the use of an insult in place of a logical argument. I wish I was working towards a masters that allowed me to easily confuse basic terminology, and misuse it as technical jargon on a webboard. Oh, wait, I am getting a degree in a hard science as well.

Oh, well, if you say so. After all, you are the expert.

Nurglitch wrote:

Voodoo Boyz wrote:You're missing my point, I think, because you're misreading the statistics I posted.

The point is that the likelihood that a vehicle might be destroyed by accumulated damage is exceptionally small. As in, less than 1% small.

Okay, so what determines the significance of each decimal place? Where only hundreds of dice are being rolled a 0.01% chance of something happening seems significant.

If I can show that something will only happen in .01% of games, then it's something I shouldn't base my army around in order to achieved the desired effect, ie. to kill tanks.

The possibility is so remote, even when rolling 100's of dice, that it's not significant enough to effect determining which weapons are good for which job.

Nurglitch wrote:

Voodoo Boyz wrote:You read the statistics wrong.

It was a 5% chance for a single shot to produce a single Weapon Destroyed or an Immobilized Result.

Sorry, but a 5% chance for a single shot to produce a single Weapon Destroyed or Immobilized Result means that there is a 5% chance for each shot to do that, right? So since it must be shown that each obtains consecutively, I'd like to know how a 5% chance each of five glancing hits (Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized result) destroying a vehicle is insignificant while whatever the chance of one hit destroying a vehicle is not. I am aware that it multiplies out to make what appears to be a very small number, but it strikes me like areas and volume. 10" cubed is tiny compared to 10" square, and both look small beside 10" long. If destroying a vehicle in a single hit is like calculating the scale of a single dimensional object, and destroying a vehicle in five hits is like calculating the scale of a five dimensional object, then a scale that makes a single dimensional object insignificant may not be commensurate with one that makes five dimensional objects insignificant.

I don't care what it strikes you as. I've shown that the number is so small that in application on the table top it is something that will only come up very, very rarely (being less than 1% of the time).

And if it rarely happens, it means I'm not going to count on it happening to achieve what I want. In fact if it's much more likely that I can achieved the desired result (killing the vehicle) by using other methods, far more reliably, then I will use those methods (Melta's, AP1 weapons, CC attacks) over what is being analyzed and shown to produce a much lower success rate.

Nurglitch wrote:It's not that you've messed up, I'm just trying to figure out why destroying a vehicle in five glancing hits is so much more difficult than destroying a vehicle in a single penetrating hit that it is not even worth considering. After all, it seems reasonable that penetrating hits that do not destroy vehicles and instead cause Damage results will make it easier to gradually nibble away at vehicles as is done to monstrous creatures.

I've bolded the key part. Once I've shown that the chances of doing this are going to be far less than 1% of the time (which if my guess is right, it is), then it's ceased to be something that I can rely on coming up in a game with enough regularity that it will net me what I want, a dead vehicle.

This is nothing like killing an MC other than the fact that you're gradually doing damage. The chances of this are extremely remote, much less than 1% which is in contrast to actually putting a wound on a MC.

So now that I've shown this, and proven though analysis that in 5th edition using long range non AP1 weapons to kill tanks is going to be far less effective than doing so now is, we can move on to the notion that:

1.) In 5th Edition vehicles are going to be more resilient than 4th Edition.
2.) In order to reliably kill vehicles in 5th Edition, you will want to use Melta, AP1, or certain CC attacks.

At this point, you've derailed this conversation enough.

I've shown that the chances of what you were clamoring about are so small that they rarely will ever come up in a normal game, that they can be effectively ignored for the purposes of reliably killing a vehicle. This does nothing to address's the topic at hand which has to do with the changes to vehicle resilience in 5th Edition, and with that, what it takes to destroy tanks in 5th.

ok, i'll do the numbers on my warriors killing a predator or similar tank. cause why not? you can't get a % to kill per hit because you have to immobilize it and blow off all it's weapons, so i'll do average hits needed for a kill.

1/6 glance, 1/3 cause relevant damage. 5 damaging results are needed to get a kill. thus you need 90 hits on average, which is 135 shots fired at BS4.

needless to say my approach to any vehicle with more than AV 10 (which immortals can pen) will be to shake them and move on, much as i do with falcons now.

I'd say once you've done 6 hits on the gauss weapons so that their shots are d6-6=perpetually 0, it's safe and fair to call them destroyed.

Pray you're not so unlucky as to get 7 weapon destroyed or immobilized results before you get a destroyed one, though!

I like the analysis you are doing here. I don't know about other armies, but I have a hard time whipping out 5 relevant shots on a single tank in one turn, unless I stick both Exorcists and maybe a dominion squad on the bugger, and roll well. I would much rather just see simply what the chances of killing the thing are, so I know reasonably how much fire power I need to point at each enemy tank to deal with it.

From the looks of things, the answer is "A fair amount, but not more than previously for the girls" since they all have AP1 anti-tank. It just makes Monoliths slightly more difficult to kill, since I can no longer Pen with meltas or Exorcist missiles.

Nurglitch, I might suggest a more humble approach to your posts. I can see being interested in how cumlative damage affects chances to kill (indeed I had thought about it at an earlier time) but your tone in asking for it was a lot less like "Hey, could you run the numbers with this information baked in for me? I would appreciate it!" than "Your work is worthless if it doesn't contain this information, so you had better do it." That's not going to be taken well, no matter how easy going the interlocutor. Though I agree that if I were going to turn in a paper or lab report on the subject, I would be remiss in not stating "I don't think this possibility is significant, and here is why."

Keep up the good work Ravajaxe! I was considering getting some land raiders and a handful of Rhinos for the girls, and this is making that idea seem better and better!

I like the analysis you are doing here. I don't know about other armies, but I have a hard time whipping out 5 relevant shots on a single tank in one turn.

My tau on the other hand can throw two str 10 shots, 25 str 7 shots, and 11 str 6 shots a turn at someone, and can usually throw it at the same someone if i am so inclinded. That doesn't include whatever str 5 shots I managed to get behind you.

I have glanced many a falcon to death by getting cumulative weapon destroyed results. And that is just as hard.

It can be done, and for some armies is not insignificant.
Necrons are hosed though. But hey, now you have one more reason to fire the template from the lith.

cypher wrote:
My tau on the other hand can throw two str 10 shots, 25 str 7 shots, and 11 str 6 shots a turn at someone, and can usually throw it at the same someone if i am so inclinded. That doesn't include whatever str 5 shots I managed to get behind you.

I have glanced many a falcon to death by getting cumulative weapon destroyed results. And that is just as hard.

It can be done, and for some armies is not insignificant.
Necrons are hosed though. But hey, now you have one more reason to fire the template from the lith.

Quite impressive firepower...

Anyway, you're right, damage (weapons & immobilize) are definitely not insignificant, on absolute point of view. Plus, they are welcome if basically you want to get this speedy-rhino stopped or that big calibre shut up. You can be patient, accumulate damage in order to destroy a tank too, after all, if there aren't other interesting in your guns LoS. Until now, destroying a Falcon have been so hard, that when damage occur it is a good result.

On a relative point of view, if there is a significant possibility to destroy directly a tank, its probability prevails on step-by-step destruction probabilities. By significant, I mean penetrating on a or 1 chance crashing a skimmer : that's enough. Likelihood of cumulating 3 damages is just tiny, compared to the same shots having a chance of neat destruction.

Except Holofields, they put some mess here : you can forget Str 6 guns in Falcon shooting purposes. The means used to take him down will change. Remember it will suffer pen' hits in 5Ed : this means much deadly damage rolls, but less frequent due to 5+ Cover save.



Oh by the way, a detail that could irritate ever more Falcon-hatred people, as vehicles will now benefit of true cover saves. It is the Farseer psy-power giving cover saves re-rolls : that may turn Eldar opponents into Madboyz !

It won't be that bad in terms of Falcons. Get some Meltas close and you'll get stuff through. Or use Markerlights to remove the cover save. Or use CC attacks, Meltabombs, etc.

The point is that with "Run" and the amount of close range weapons that will present a very credible threat to the Falcon, the days of it delivering Harlies with certainty are pretty much over. It not scoring anymore also help a ton too.

cypher wrote:

I like the analysis you are doing here. I don't know about other armies, but I have a hard time whipping out 5 relevant shots on a single tank in one turn.

My tau on the other hand can throw two str 10 shots, 25 str 7 shots, and 11 str 6 shots a turn at someone, and can usually throw it at the same someone if i am so inclinded. That doesn't include whatever str 5 shots I managed to get behind you.

I have glanced many a falcon to death by getting cumulative weapon destroyed results. And that is just as hard.

It can be done, and for some armies is not insignificant.
Necrons are hosed though. But hey, now you have one more reason to fire the template from the lith.

Now that you mention it, Tau and Necrons might be the two armies that are best helped by cumlative glances, Necrons with their demi-rend gauss, and Tau with their plethora of Str 5 and 6 weapons.

Imperials, on the other hand, are a little lacking in anything between Str4 and Str8.

It might well be worth running numbers on Necron Warrior units and Tau Firewarriors, both at full strength, shooting at say Rhinos and what have you. That could show some interesting things.

Great work, Ravajaxe!

Would you mind please adding an "If Fortuned" condition to skimmer analyses? If the SMF benefit is still declared to be a save in the finished rules, we're likely to see 1 or 2 skimmer sunder Fortune in every mech Eldar army, especially on turn one (the "Farseer Starting Flag" treatment).

Wehrkind wrote:

Now that you mention it, Tau and Necrons might be the two armies that are best helped by cumlative glances, Necrons with their demi-rend gauss, and Tau with their plethora of Str 5 and 6 weapons.

Imperials, on the other hand, are a little lacking in anything between Str4 and Str8.

It might well be worth running numbers on Necron Warrior units and Tau Firewarriors, both at full strength, shooting at say Rhinos and what have you. That could show some interesting things.

well, if by "best helped" you mean that necrons are at least capable of getting kills through accumulated damage then yes. although for tau it's dependent on shooting AV 11, and of course most armies can glance 10. the odds aren't very good though. a full 20 man warrior squad that gets off one round of shooting at 12"+ range and then another at rapid fire has slightly better than even odds of killing or immobilizing a rhino. of course, that won't actually happen. you'll get one round of shooting and if it's in rapid fire range you're already too late.

Jayden63 wrote:What this means to me is that vehicles are actually worse off in 5th ed than 4th ed.

Sure it may not die as easily, but your kept from shooting just as often and you can't move as far. Add to the fact that since vehicles are no longer scoring unit, who cares if you kill it or not. As long as you get any damage result on it once, its probably good enough to forget for the rest of the turn and move on. Thus again, increasing its survivabilty, but not really helping much either.

What are the specifics of the rumored "can't move as far" ? Skimmer, ground vehicles, all, and what exactly is the change?

If you are correct and the rumors come true, then yes this is the big factor. If GW doesn't actually change movement (however) then...what's the difference REALLY?

Well, fwiw I can give you some real world examples.

The changes to the rules vs vehicles is meaningful only if you keep in mind the following basics:

Skimmers will always be moving fast (except Tau and DE, who will sit after being stunned) and so will always benefit from the 5+ cover save.

With the changes to 'obscurement' I think you will see alot of Tau Hammerheads sitting on their ass and taking that 5+ cover save for free. After all, if they can hit you from anywhere on the board anyway, why move?

DE and Eldar don't really have that range to do this, and so they generally don't try.

I've played quite a few games with the DE and Eldar, and about half a dozen with my Tau.

My DE are very vulnerable, but it's very satisfying when a lascannon hits you and you make that save.

With the Eldar, if you sit in bunker mode (farseers casting fortune on the tri-bunker) you can really annoy the piss outta people. You do need to sit behind terrain, and have a hardy unit to keep your farseers in, but if there's enough 4+ cover to protect 2 falcons and a prism (or any combination thereof, the prisms do appear to be more viable for this tactic) it's damn near impossible to drop 'em. Now granted, that's a huge chunk of your army keeping your tri-bunker alive, but if it won't die...who cares? It's not like you can ignore the damage they do.
Especially true with the prisms always hitting, and the scatter being greatly reduced.

Tau don't have the same kind of survivability, but if they hit you and you don't save...yeah, that sucks. What makes it better is, if you get markerlighted, if two hammerheads are shooting at you and one misses, you just burn the anti-coversave on the one that hit.

On a minor point, any Eldar that can bring along crack shot...should. Being able to ignore cover saves is very handy indeed. Alot of the new tactics revolve around getting yourself a cover save while negating that of the enemy (if possible). Faster you are, easier it is to do esp versus imperial based opponents. Sadly, most of them find cover and park themselves in it and never move.

Stelek wrote:Now granted, that's a huge chunk of your army keeping your tri-bunker alive, but if it won't die...who cares?

One word: Eldrad. Definitely the best option for keeping skimmers in cover alive, while keeping KPs low and a third power (Guide, probably) on deck, plus Runes, etc. If both SMF becoming a save and Kill Points make it into the final rules, there's no longer any reason to take two foot Farseers instead of Eldrad.

If both SMF becoming a save and Kill Points make it into the final rules, there's no longer any reason to take two foot Farseers instead of Eldrad.

Was there ever any reason to do that? I wasn't aware.

There is now a reason to take a foot Farseer in addition to Eldrad, however. Tri-Fortune was never really useful before, but now it can be.