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Da Butcha, I'm just concerned that having too many cover features might lead to confusion and rules inflation.

I think the soft/hard cover option accounts for the concealment vs cover armor issue. An alternate option could be cover conferring a fnp, so while it would help against light arms, the lascannon is going to shoot right through that wall.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:
I do like the idea of taking Cover in addition to Save (Invun still being and either/or choice) as a mechanic, the problem is that point costs have been based on that very much not being the case. I'm not sure what sort of proportionate increase would be required to reflect the increased survivability of heavier infantry.
.

I know (groans) I worked out that allowing a 4+ cover save in addition to armour would result in: 10 Chaos marines rapid firing bolters bolters at 1 terminator behind wall (4+) =a 5.5% chance of a kill.
Which brings me to another realisation, with shooting being potentially less effective it will skew the game in favor of close combat.

For this reason, I'm leaning towards a system using BS penalties, from what other posters have pinted out, it seem less severe.

If we apply logic, (dangerous I know because 40k rules are not anywhere near logic land.)

Cover just makes the target harder to see.
Therefore JUST makes the target harder to hit.(BS -1)

Hard cover actually increases the protection level of the target.This could be represented by an additional -1 to BS .
This would represent the hard cover deflecting projectiles away from the intended target.(Rather than add to the armor save/FNP, etc.)

Chemical weapons (flame/acid ) ignore all cover.

Blast weapons roll a (extra ) D6 for scatter , to show how hard the unit in cover is to 'range in' on accurately.

Thanks for the ideas and discussion on this. Gave me plenty of food for thought and a few headaches too!

Based largely on what Lanrak and Ashiraya suggested, I've put together the following to test in my gaming group:

Insignificant cover -0 BS This encompasses razorwire, spikes, mesh fence, rough ground, very low vegetation or barriers -say ankle height walls and shrubs.
Light cover -1BS Fences, hedges, light vegetation, very long grass, crop fields, open forest, piles of corpses, large rocks, craters, tents, sheds, corrugated iron and other "lightweight buildings" Basically anything which could conceal a crouching average human size figure and /or provide a light barrier against projectiles and shrapnel.
Heavy cover - Large trees, dense forest or other vegetation, wreckage, wooden stockades, sandbag barriers, trenches, earthen embankments, graveyards, very deep craters, boulders, concrete or stone walls and parapets, thick metal barriers, mantlets, fortress walls, bunkers, aegis defence lines. Basically anything which a standing human sized figure can conceal himself in and/or would provide heavy protection against projectiles and shrapnel. I realise the flaw in a sandbag barrier providing as much protection as a a reinforced fortress wall, but I'm trying to keep it relatively simple, so have to draw the line somwhere

Bunkers, aegis lines and other cover you pay for will no doubt need some additional benefits as befits them, but as I haven't used them yet, I'll leave suggestions on them to those of you that know better.)

Go to ground provides an additional -1BS.
Units with stealth count no cover as light, and light cover as heavy.
Jinking: Anything firing at a unit that opts to jink suffers a -2BS penalty.

As per usual a 6 always hits, so in even in the unlikely situation where a unit had stealth, jinks and is in hard cover, they're still going to be hit on 6's.


I decided not to go with a BS penalty for blast weapons because playtsting with a battle cannon usign various scatter penalties
a) Using low penalties it scattered too little to make a difference
b) if heavier penalty was applied it sometimes scattered a silly distance, with consequences to both sides
c) The main problem was that without an invul save of any kind, WHATEVER IT DID land on was decimated.

As several posters pointed blast weapons are already powerful, so with the results of those tests, the last thing I want to do is improve upon their power. Decided the best thing to do for blast weapons was to roll fo scatter and retain invul cover saves against them exactly as per the rulebook (except for ignoring "insignificant" cover as listed above). The exception being, models that have a viable armour save agaisnt the weapon can add a bonus of -1 on their invulnerable save instead, (assuiming of course that they do not want to take their armour save).
Example 1: a frag missile hits a guardsman in a forest. He would normally get a 5+ invul save against the blast for being in the forest. However his flak armour is viable too, so he gets a bonus of -1 on the invul save, bringing it to 4+ instead of 5+.
Example 2: a battlecannon shell hits a marine in a forest. He would normally get a 5+ invul save against the blast for being in the forest. His armour save is 3+, but the battlecannon is AP3, so his armour is negated. He gets his 5+ invulnerable save as standard, no bonus.

I know, its a hybridisation of rules & It's a bit messy, but I actually think it might work! As usual, any thuoughts for improving on this appreciated. Thanks again!

How will you handle mixed cover in a unit? As it's effecting the BS of the firer, it can no longer be on a model by model basis. Majority cover? 50% of models are obscured, and so the entire unit is counted as obscured?

 McGibs wrote:
How will you handle mixed cover in a unit? As it's effecting the BS of the firer, it can no longer be on a model by model basis. Majority cover? 50% of models are obscured, and so the entire unit is counted as obscured?

May I suggest you just work out the cover individually on the closest models before shots are fired? so if the three closest are in light cover, you shoot three shots at a time until the closest has a different modifier and so on.

 McGibs wrote:
How will you handle mixed cover in a unit? As it's effecting the BS of the firer, it can no longer be on a model by model basis. Majority cover? 50% of models are obscured, and so the entire unit is counted as obscured?

To be perfectly honest I think this question highlights one of the biggest flaws in the current 40k system- squad based shooting. It's a problem of scale, where you have individual troopers on the field, in individual locations but they act as single models. It's no coincidence that to hit mods went out the door when the game escalated to squad shooting.

Why is it so hard just to apply a BS modifier to JUST the models in cover?
Eg an ork mob has 6 models in the open and 4 in light cover.

The Sm squad needs 3+ to hit orks in the open and 4+ to hit orks in cover.

Hits are applies to the models in the open first.
And remaining hits are applied to models in cover, IF any hits roll high enough.

If the Sm player rolled 6,5,4,4,3,3,2,2,1.
Thats 6 hits, these are all applied to the orks in the open , there are not any left over hits to apply to the orks in cover.

If the Sm player rolled, 6,6,5,5,4,4,3,3,2.
That is 8 hits. the 3hits over 3+ are applied to the models in the open.And any remaining hits of 4+ are applied to the orks in cover.

if the Sm player only rolled 3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2.
All 8 hits would be applied to the orks in the open, as no shots rolled high enough to hit the orks in cover.

Focus firing would be fine, it could work the exact same way as it does in the rulebook, excpet . Instead of declaring "I'm focus firing on your orks with 5+ or worse cover save, you would instead say say. "I'm targeting your orks that have soft / -1BS cover or lesser, (in other words wounds can't be allocated to any in hard / -2BS cover).

I see the issue with regular shooting.

Lanrak's method would be the simplest, but imo it woud be too advantageous to the shooter, because he's getting the choice of allocating all those dice rolls, and is bound to find sufficiently high rolls to take out the most protected models, and then put the weaker rolls on the ones in the open. I feat being able to pick and choose like that would result in a heightened number of hits.

I think blood guard has it right: Allocate shots to the closest until they are all hit, then those further away. It means rolling the dice in small groups, but I don't mind doing that...others might, I don't know.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kojiro wrote:

 McGibs wrote:
How will you handle mixed cover in a unit? As it's effecting the BS of the firer, it can no longer be on a model by model basis. Majority cover? 50% of models are obscured, and so the entire unit is counted as obscured?

To be perfectly honest I think this question highlights one of the biggest flaws in the current 40k system- squad based shooting. It's a problem of scale, where you have individual troopers on the field, in individual locations but they act as single models. It's no coincidence that to hit mods went out the door when the game escalated to squad shooting.

Very true. The rules of 1st and 2nd edition are very much suited to skirmishes of under 30 models a side. It came to a head when large armies were fielded in 2nd ed. Such Impressively detailed rules added fun, but resulteded in very long game times. Close combat between squads with mixed melee weapons was particularely slow. Since 3rd ed the rules were drastically shifted towards full scale battles. Overall I like the change, but it was invetable that some good rules were shafted.

The only thing that was shifted towards full scale battles since 3rd ed has been the model count.
GW had a good battle rule set,(Epic Space Marine.)

But rather than add detail to the Epic rules to scale them up from 6m to 28mm.
GW chopped lumps out of the 28mm skirmish rules , then had to add in patches to cover all the holes in the game play.

This is why the 40k rule set is so over complicated .Years of adding to a core rule set that can not cope with the expanding game play requirements.
So the devs just add layer upon layer of extra rules, and the whole game play gets lost in a quagmire of ' well we though it would be ok at the time...'

I see you point about favoring the shooter, with my suggested method.
How about the firer chooses which models he wants to target before they roll to hit?
Eg 'Ill roll 6 attack dice on the 6 models in the open first, then 4 attack dice on the models in cover.'

I would agree, but only if your'e willing to make the change to all shooting, otherwise being i cover is better to the shooter then if you were in open ground, getting to allocate hits as opposed to the first model. (say you have a 10 maring tac squad, 3 and the sergeant in a crater the rest in the open, what your'e suggesting is that if the remaining 6 marines are n the front, you can shoot through and get the character without having to hit the marines in front.)

Yeah, that is problematic. I think focus fire gives enough options for target selection, with a fair penalty to balance it, so for for "regular" shooting, peraonally I'm just going to try the suggestion of resolving hit rolls in batches to the nearest model and when they're all hit, move to the next nearest.

So to break it down for regular shooting vs unit in mixed cover:
I'm firing 10 bolter marines against a squad of 10 guardsmen. In order of proximity to the shooters ae 1) 4 guardsmen in the open 2 )1 plasma gunner in heavy cover. 3) 5 guardsmen in heavy cover.
i have 10 bolter shots. II roll 4 dice against target 1) needing 3s to hit. I get 3 out of 4 hits. I roll another dice, hitting the last guardman in the open. I can now move onto the plasma gunner. I roll dice against him one at a time, needing 5s to hit. My third roll hits him. My remaining 2 dice rolls are fired at the next closest targer, the 5 guardmen in cover. (5+ to hit). I score 1 hit.
I think its important that more than 1 hit can't be allocated to a model unless every model in the squad has already been hit. If every model in the squad is hit, then remaining hit rolls are repeated as above.

That's pretty balanced imo. It allows players to put their more valuable units further back, and ther'e always the option of focus fire and precision shots to deal with that dug in plasma gunner. The only pain in the ass with this is keeping track of how many hits were scored on the different elelments of the squad, because obviously all those batches of hits need to be roll to wound and save seperately too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lanrak wrote:

This is why the 40k rule set is so over complicated .Years of adding to a core rule set that can not cope with the expanding game play requirements.
So the devs just add layer upon layer of extra rules, and the whole game play gets lost in a quagmire of ' well we though it would be ok at the time...'
'

I'm happy enough with most of the rules, like the way they've introduced keywords for abilities, instead of every special unit having individual rules with reams of text. The power weapons in particular are nicely balanced compared to what they used to be, with some just plain better than others.

But there is the odd rule which beggars belief -like the subject of this thread. Also another one that gets me is running, giving a random D6 movement bonus - what a crock of gak! A penalty of half or andom D6 is fair enough if the run is through difficult terrain, but regular running across a road? The guardmen did cover that in basic training, right? Its as a previous poster pointed out, certain aspects of 40k are like an arcade game.