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It's not that the vehicles are too small as such. It's that the humans are about twice as wide as they should be relative to their height. Which throws off a whole bunch of other scaling.

Reemule wrote:
I use to hate on the short ranges in 40K. but over time and having played some other games, I do think the game would be better with much shorter ranges on weapons. If you have played warmahordes, an exceptionally long ranged weapon that there might be very very few of is 16 inches. In general long range is about 12 inches. Most guns shoot 10 inches. Pistols are sometimes 4 to 8 inches. Different games, different scales, but it worked better than I think the table top range of many of the guns in 40K.

Its not so much the weapon ranges in relation to the models, that I can easily cope with, that 32mm base marine is actually a lot smaller, the base is a 'zone of control' sort of thing and job done, ruins are actually just a representation, makes a lot of sense given the way the game works.

my issue is the range of weapons relative to movement, when you have things able to move in a turn further than the bullets they can fire you start to hit problems

leopard wrote:
my issue is the range of weapons relative to movement, when you have things able to move in a turn further than the bullets they can fire you start to hit problems

I hadn't actually thought of that, but it makes a lot of sense. Very interesting to think about when it comes to 40K. Sub-infantry speed projectiles.

SG

 Overread wrote:
I think if you want a more true-scale game you want something like Dropzone or Dropfleet - both of which are truescale and have sensible ranges for futuristic weapons.

The game where some heavy weapons have a range of a couple of city blocks, skyscrapers have a frontage of only two or three times the length of a tank and infantry can’t exchange rifle fire across the street? DZC also has a model scale/ground scale discrepancy. The distortion added by bases is magnified with smaller scales.

I accept all of what has been said so fair in relation to model scale and the practicalities of gaming. It obviously all comes down to only having a table top sized zone to play out a battle that should probably play out over several miles in equivalent scale. As a result vehicles, weapon ranges and all sorts of other things have to shrink/change proportinately.

All wargaming is an obvious abstraction for practicality, I just tend to prefer games that edge a little closer to 'realism' than standard 40k. To me for example it feels allot more satisfying to have two small squads of guys engage accross the area of a tabletop (kill team and especialy infinity) than two entire strike forces doing the same in the same area.

I still love 40k, I just prefer to stick to a few more 'accurately' scaled models and the fluff. 40k is still one of my favorite fictional settings by far.
In terms of vehicles there are several I realy like such as most walkers (esp dreadnoughts) and the IG valkyrie; a transport which seems appropriately scaled and is not completely covered in weapons (but still apropriately 'blocky' in the imperial sense but not to the extent of being a flying brick like some other imperial flyers).

40k, as in the 28mm scale game, worked best as a skirmish game, a small firefight between a handful of models on each side.

what we have now is what the 1st edition of Space Marine did better, as noted above to do this sort of thing what you need is space, which usually means smaller models to allow a practical table top represent a larger area.

consider how decent naval combat games do it, the "ship", as in the model, is a marker, shows position and heading, but its considered to be a point (I gather BFG did this as well), now you can a nice model representing something that should be a lot smaller, now your speeds and ranges work.

so, how could you fold that back into 40k?

well assume a model represents either several, or is just an indication of roughly where the model is - now to manage that you need an abstract line of sight system, and a way to determine where the model is.

say you can "see" all of the base you have a clear shot, part of it an obstructed one etc - now the models size no longer matters, so you let them move through each other. all you are left with is the miss match between weapon ranges and movement.

now in 40k to correct that you would need to reduce the rate of movement significantly, providing more chances to fire - which would have to be countered by making weapons fire a lot less accurate (to keep the overall effect the same, but with more chances to fire)