Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Were there not cutaways that show that the engines in Chimeras are dual powerplants in the middle of the track sections?

If anything, I'd say that 40k vehicles err on the side of too large rather than small. I haven't seen too many Primaris next to their vehicles. The poor crew and passengers get packed like sardines inside a military vehicle. I think the main issue is the heroic scale warping only some of the proportions of the models while staying at the... ~28ish scale and the fact that the power armour makes models even thicker. The M113, real life's Rhino, holds 2 crew and something like 10-11 passengers and I think is even proportionally smaller than the Rhino when compared to the RL humans it carries. 10 marines might be a bit much, but I could see 8 or so passengers fitting in there. And for game purposes, it's just easier to round it up to 10.

The interior bit of the rhino kit might be a bit smaller and laid out a bit "incorrectly," too. But I definitely think there's space in the vehicle for almost 10 passengers. (And maybe, just maybe, marine crewmen shouldn't be wearing full power armour).

I will concede that the 1ksons do look too tall and thick for their transport. But that might just be the hats. 32mm bases these days also make everyone look just that much bigger, too, aha.

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
Let's say this is a Rhino with some space marine:

Spoiler:

and this is an actual infantry fighting vehicle able to carry up to 9 men (a crew of 3 plus a squad of 6):

Drawn your own conclusion…

See, it's easy to draw a different conclusion with different models and different photos. Humans don't walk around on bases, aren't "heroically proportioned" and don't wear big hats. Also the TSons are big compared to the Tactical Marines that the Rhino was scaled to originally. I popped off some bases and took a few shots, and in my army they're much more reasonably scaled.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I popped off some bases and took a few shots,

Thank you for your service.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The Land Raider is already as tall as a building. If we're assuming Trueborn are 7 ft tall, a Land Raider is like 16 feet high, which is f****** enourmous.

Like, this is what I get if I measure a Rhino out:

Which is interesting when you consider that it is basically a slightly modified M113 APC with dimensions of 4.86m x 2.69m x 2.5m.

It is rated for 2 crew and 11 passengers, but those passengers were like Catachans in terms of kit instead of either the Cadian body armor to say nothing about the power armor of the Astartes.

 Charistoph wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Spoiler:

The Land Raider is already as tall as a building. If we're assuming Trueborn are 7 ft tall, a Land Raider is like 16 feet high, which is f****** enourmous.

Like, this is what I get if I measure a Rhino out:

Which is interesting when you consider that it is basically a slightly modified M113 APC with dimensions of 4.86m x 2.69m x 2.5m.

It is rated for 2 crew and 11 passengers, but those passengers were like Catachans in terms of kit instead of either the Cadian body armor to say nothing about the power armor of the Astartes.

Right, so a Rhino is 1 crewman and 10 passengers, and Power Armor is big. The Rhinos got an extra 2.5m of length though, so there's some extra room in comparison to the M113. So then you get to deal with multiple directions of slop to go in to try and get things to fit. If you keep Astartes at 7 ft in armor it helps. If you accept that most depictions of them are heroically proportioned it helps. If you accept that the Rhino isn't exactly to scale it helps, etc.

But if you're looking at fully enclosing 10 Space Marines in all their heroic bulk into the Rhino as the model is designed 1:1, you get problems.
This is one of the reasons why I've always liked the running boards and handholds on the sides of the Mk1 Rhino. I imagine much of the time Marines are dismounted from the Rhino to begin with, and when they travel for distance a couple of them ride on the sides to leave space in the interior and to act as extra lookouts. Plus it just fits the Rogue Trader aesthetic much better, imo.

There's a reason why I put running boards and handholds on all my Rhino chassis. I've yet to model some Marines hanging onto the sides, but I'm planning to do it at some point.

 Altruizine wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I popped off some bases and took a few shots,

Thank you for your service.

I've always thought the Monoliths was scaled down from the depictions of them in the lore.

I agree that the Dark Eldar vehicles have excellent scaling. I love that they cling to Raiders and Venoms like an evil knife-eared version of GorkaMorka.

 Blndmage wrote:
I've always thought the Monoliths was scaled down from the depictions of them in the lore.

I mean. . . I dunno They're effing enourmous if you measure them out. Hehe, I guess the new one is smaller than the old one though. The old model is like a 4-5 story building tall.

 Insectum7 wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
Let's say this is a Rhino with some space marine:

Spoiler:

and this is an actual infantry fighting vehicle able to carry up to 9 men (a crew of 3 plus a squad of 6):

Drawn your own conclusion…

See, it's easy to draw a different conclusion with different models and different photos. Humans don't walk around on bases, aren't "heroically proportioned" and don't wear big hats. Also the TSons are big compared to the Tactical Marines that the Rhino was scaled to originally. I popped off some bases and took a few shots, and in my army they're much more reasonably scaled.
[…]

What a moment! I don't have any base on my feet? Oh my God, I didn't realize that!
Joking a side, to understand if a vehicle is in the right scale, we must also know (at least approximatively) its interior dimensions: how many room does the engine occupies and the turret and the gas tank?
For example the M2 Bradley (the vehicle in the image posted by you and me) can't carry more than 6 infantry men (plus a crew of 3), even if it is 6,55 metres long, 3,6 metres wide and 3 metres high. So considering the space marines not only are larger than a regular human, but they also wear the power armour (which makes they even bigger), it is hard think that a Rhino could carry more than four space marines (three if one of them carries a heavy weapon). How many marines can a Rhino carry?
The image beneath shows the interior of the M2 Bradley and like you can see the room for the passengers is more or less one third of its external dimensions.

a Rhino is the right size

for the original sized Marine models that were made at the same time

yet the infantry models changed a lot over time while vehicles stayed the same

another problem is that there is no real scale within the GW range
vehicles are ~1/48, vehicle weapons 1/35 to 1/48


vehicles in 40k that were designed at the same time as the infantry, scale well, eg Dark Eldar and Tau
those that are older than the infantry models scale badly

For the sake of comparison with Insectum's post- here's my Land Raider, which happens to be on a base next to some modern Plague Marines and Blightlord Termies.





Looking at that, I firmly believe the bases (or general lack thereof on some vehicles) are throwing people off. Even with the modern figures, everything being on the same level makes it look a bit more in scale in your head, though not perfect by any means.

EDIT- Some more, so before anyone can say I purposely chose minis mid stride (most BLTs are though), or took it at an angle. Here's two more from side on with some static PMs and some (even chonkier than BLTs) static Deathshroud.

Regarding the M2, the turret eats up a lot of internal volume that passengers could be in (compare a LAV3 with the 25mm turret and a Stryker). So it makes sense that the Rhino holds 10 while the Razorback holds 6. Still, the internal layout of 40K vehicles is something I just accept through the willing suspension of disbelief. How does it look from the outside? That's all that matters.

@Insectum

Nice models BTW! Also good points about bases throwing off perspective.

Base or no base, 10 marines are not fitting in a rhino. It looks bad in the games I am playing and that's what I care about. It bugs me. I'm not saying this is some great or widespread problem that must be dealt with, just that personally the large number of vehicles that cannot reasonably fit anywhere close to their supposed number of occupants is an irritant.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Base or no base, 10 marines are not fitting in a rhino. It looks bad in the games I am playing and that's what I care about. It bugs me. I'm not saying this is some great or widespread problem that must be dealt with, just that personally the large number of vehicles that cannot reasonably fit anywhere close to their supposed number of occupants is an irritant.

[MODE_OT_ON]
This is why I think W40k should adopt the 1/100 scale: in this way the miniatures could be enough great to be played individually and the vehicles could be built in a more coherent scale, but still usable on a reasonably large table.
Obviously GW should still produce larger miniature skirmish games and collectors.
[MODE_OT_OFF]

If GW were to redo the rhino and land raider kit and scaled them up by I don't know....25%, to maybe better represent their transport capability. Would they become unwieldy on a gaming table with reasonable amounts of terrain?

There is one significant factor people are ignoring in the vehicle scale discussion - PRICE! Sure, GW could make a Repulsor big enough to fit ten Primaris marines...but how much would it cost, and how many people would be willing to pay that? Not very many, I’d guess.

Tiberias wrote:
If GW were to redo the rhino and land raider kit and scaled them up by I don't know....25%, to maybe better represent their transport capability. Would they become unwieldy on a gaming table with reasonable amounts of terrain?

Width becomes an issue. Highly lethal games like 40k often require tables where infantry can move from cover to cover in one move (especially with high-mobility guns and accurate barrage weapons), and if your vehicles are so wide they require open streets wider than an infantry unit's movement to cross you'll either see vehicles fall out of use (since you can't move them on tables with usable cover) or infantry fall out of use (since if they leave the spot where you deployed them they die too fast). If GW took a step back from pumping offense in every book and tried to rebalance things so that getting caught in line of sight/out of cover wasn't always an instant death sentence you might have more luck.

 totalfailure wrote:
There is one significant factor people are ignoring in the vehicle scale discussion - PRICE! Sure, GW could make a Repulsor big enough to fit ten Primaris marines...but how much would it cost, and how many people would be willing to pay that? Not very many, I’d guess.

Well that depends.
The extra plastic would be literally pennies (if that) on the cost of model
GW's prices come from pretty well everywhere but raw material. So a larger model doesnt need to be more expensive.
Now could GW resist using it as justification to bump up the price? That's another question.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
...GW's prices come from pretty well everywhere but raw material. So a larger model doesnt need to be more expensive...

Sort of. Extra plastic is negligible, but if you make the extra plastic big enough that you need an extra sprue then you have the design/tooling costs of an entire extra set of molds, plus the logistical considerations of making the assembly line a step bigger. It's not 1:1, certainly, and it doesn't really depend on the amount of plastic, but making a model bigger can increase the design costs.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
If GW were to redo the rhino and land raider kit and scaled them up by I don't know....25%, to maybe better represent their transport capability. Would they become unwieldy on a gaming table with reasonable amounts of terrain?

Width becomes an issue. Highly lethal games like 40k often require tables where infantry can move from cover to cover in one move (especially with high-mobility guns and accurate barrage weapons), and if your vehicles are so wide they require open streets wider than an infantry unit's movement to cross you'll either see vehicles fall out of use (since you can't move them on tables with usable cover) or infantry fall out of use (since if they leave the spot where you deployed them they die too fast). If GW took a step back from pumping offense in every book and tried to rebalance things so that getting caught in line of sight/out of cover wasn't always an instant death sentence you might have more luck.

this started to be a problem with GW changing from 25mm to 32mm standard base size

which is strange as 40k started to be a smaller skirmish sized game, with smaller models, and is now a company sized game, on a smaller board with larger models

but I would rather see all models in the right scale and just play 500-1000 points on 48*72" instead of oversized infantry with too small transport because otherwise 2000 points don't fit 44*60"

 kodos wrote:
...but I would rather see all models in the right scale and just play 500-1000 points on 48*72" instead of oversized infantry with too small transport because otherwise 2000 points don't fit 44*60"

Great! GW seems to disagree, though. Maybe try a skirmish format or Oldhammer with older smaller minis/3d-printed vehicles to the correct scale.

old Marines with current Rhinos work for that part
and rule wise, Warpath does the job very well

and that GW disagrees, well GW also thinks that 10 model skirmish game rules work very well for armies with 100+ models

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Base or no base, 10 marines are not fitting in a rhino. It looks bad in the games I am playing and that's what I care about. It bugs me. I'm not saying this is some great or widespread problem that must be dealt with, just that personally the large number of vehicles that cannot reasonably fit anywhere close to their supposed number of occupants is an irritant.

You ever see an M113? That thing can fit thirteen people. Two crew, eleven passengers. It's basically a human-scale Rhino. And yet look how small it is compared to the dudes riding on it:



I've seen mockups of Rhinos containing the full allotment of Marines. It's doable- provided they have the same hunched-up, sardines-in-a-can, clown car posture that is necessary to fit an entire squad in a real APC.

I think there's a legitimate case to be made that a vehicle should look like the right size to the average observer, given that the overwhelming majority of wargamers haven't experienced the joys of armored personnel carriers, but objectively speaking I think the Rhino is physically plausible.

Did you ever be inside an M113?
I did, so I can say it can carry eleven men, but they are average human beings (so not large like the astartes), they wear regular army clothes (so no power armour) and they don't have back pack (he power armour can't work without it, if I'm not wrong), so we can't do a direct comparison among the actual military vehicles and the space marines ones.
Do you can put ten space marines in a Rhino?
Maybe yes, but there is enough room inside the vehicles to contain the troops, the crew, the mechanical and the weapon systems? The troops have enough room for a quick exit from the vehicle? In fact the M113 was substituted by the larger M2 Bradly, which can carry only 3+6 men, while the M113 could carry 2+11 men.

P.S. Let's be frank: I'm not saying the Rhino isn't in a good scale; also because a bigger vehicle would be cumbersome on the table. I'm saying it is in the perfect scale to carry up to 6/7 marines: a crew of 2 and a squad of 4/5, no more.

EDIT: I have corrected the last two questions and added the post scriptum.

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
Did you ever be inside an M113?
I did, so I can say it can carry eleven men, but they are average human beings (so not large like the astartes), they wear regular army clothes (so no power armour) and they don't have back pack (he power armour can't work without it, if I'm not wrong), so we can't do a direct comparison among the actual military vehicles and the space marines ones.
Do you can put ten space marines in a Rhino?
Maybe yes, but how much room remains inside the vehicles? It is enough for the crew, the mechanical and the weapon system?

Many ages ago (3rd ed? 4th ed?) there was a Golden Demon winning entry where the guy positioned all 10 of the Marines (sans bases of course) in the rhinos trop compartment. So I'm going to say yes.
I forget if it was an old or new rhino sculpt. But all 10 marines were in there.

I don’t really think the scale difference is that bad for 40k vehicles more with some of the scale for parts on them. Which I think throws off a lot more when I think about it as a whole.

Would be happy to see the rhino and it’s kits go up like 5/10% or so.
And more bases on tanks is welcome now that a lot are already on them, it breaks my heart when people drag a mini along a table without a base :( even if it’s just the underside.

It's a wargame played with plastic miniatures that has some scale abstractions to make gameplay easier, nevermind that it takes place some 38,000 in the future. Vehicle scale issues don't particularly bother me.

ccs wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
Did you ever be inside an M113?
I did, so I can say it can carry eleven men, but they are average human beings (so not large like the astartes), they wear regular army clothes (so no power armour) and they don't have back pack (he power armour can't work without it, if I'm not wrong), so we can't do a direct comparison among the actual military vehicles and the space marines ones.
Do you can put ten space marines in a Rhino?
Maybe yes, but how much room remains inside the vehicles? It is enough for the crew, the mechanical and the weapon system?

Many ages ago (3rd ed? 4th ed?) there was a Golden Demon winning entry where the guy positioned all 10 of the Marines (sans bases of course) in the rhinos trop compartment. So I'm going to say yes.
I forget if it was an old or new rhino sculpt. But all 10 marines were in there.

I'd love to see that model.

 Insectum7 wrote:

ccs wrote:
Many ages ago (3rd ed? 4th ed?) there was a Golden Demon winning entry where the guy positioned all 10 of the Marines (sans bases of course) in the rhinos trop compartment. So I'm going to say yes.
I forget if it was an old or new rhino sculpt. But all 10 marines were in there.

I'd love to see that model.

1988 golden demon 3rd place perhaps...