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I have been thinking about mortars.

They should be the backbone of a heavy weapons team instead of a somewhat odd choice.
They seem to not be as versatile or useful as they are in real life.

First:
As discussed in the Mortar smoke rounds thread there should be smoke rounds available, rules to be sorted out separately.

Second:
Choice of rounds to be made available, some to be free some that you need to pay extra points to take.

Illumination:
Free choice:
A parachute flare that when fired illuminates a large area until the start of the players next shooting phase.
Negates night fighting rules (downside is that it works both ways).

WP/incendiary:
Free choice:
Fires as normal but the template does the same damage as a flamer template would do. (was probably more useful back when flamers could ignite models).

Laser guided anti armour:
Costs for a HWS to take 1 round (like a HK missile).
Certain models on the board (to be discussed here) can choose to "paint" a target instead of shooting, painting would be done as per shooting, using BS.
Once painted, any mortar team in range could fire a laser guided anti-armour round and have it be a guaranteed hit on the painted target.
If the "painter" fails his "to hit" roll no laser guided mortars may be fired.
The anti-armour round hits like a Krak missile or Melta bomb (discuss) but against the rear armour value to simulate a top armour hit.

Poison gas rounds:
Must be bought.
Fires as normal but the template is poisoned.
On double 1s on the scatter dice the round detonates in the tube and the template is placed on the HWS instead.

Special rules:
Blob teams together, mortar teams would be able to blob together to do larger barrages than 3 and resist breaking.
Either blob together or have a value on a single mortar team so that you can add more tubes to a normal HWS.
Works both ways since you can't fire at as many targets.

Bracketing fire:
Should a mortar team fire at the same target two turns in a row, in the second turn they can re-roll the scatter die, the 2d6 or both - once.
In the third turn shooting at the same target you get a guaranteed hit.
This only applies if the target hasn't moved.
Bit more realistic, as mortar teams fire at a target they can adjust their aim until they are bang on and "fire for effect".
Very useful if the first round of shooting pins the enemy.

Pre-arranged fire zones:
In certain defensive scenarios and at a cost point per pre-arranged co-ordinate a player may designate fire zones.
During the game you can choose to target the pre-arranged zones and only roll 1d6 with your scatter die.
This is to simulate the defending team digging in and allocating kill-zones in preparation for the assault.
The only issue is that for it to work you wouldn't want you opponent to know where the kill zones are.
Perhaps tell a third party your choices or take cell phone pictures of them before the game starts.

What do we think?

I love it.
The laser guided shells are good but top armor is always represented by the side AV value
The poison rounds should be 3+ and not explode in the tube
The incendiary rounds should be S5 AP4 ignores cover
The illumination rounds are a cool mechanic, but who really uses Night Fighting anyway?
Overall, it represents a much more realistic approach to futuristic mortars

And it also makes them more viable!
I especially love the bracketing fire rule.

Top and bottom are generally side armor, for the Tank mortar.

OK seems fair, call it side armour for the laser mortars, they'd be tricky to keep from being too strong though.
If you lased a Rhino in T1 even a small force of IG could get 9 guaranteed hits on the side armour.

How much should a round cost?

Which minis should be allowed to lase a target?
Veterans?
Sgts?
Officers?
Storm troopers?
Master of Ordinance?
Tech priest?


@ Config2

Thank you.

I like your idea on the incendiary round, heavy flamer rules isn't too overpowered.

Illumination is free so it's there if you need it...

Poison rounds should present a danger to the people using them, they are quite dangerous in real life.
OK on the 3+ though since it is an explosive chemical weapon, the poison rules are pretty good already and since it isn't close combat there is no need to worry about comparative strength and re-rolls.

Any ideas on a threat that doesn't involve the shell going off in the tube?

@forruner_mercy

Thank you.

Shouldn't be too overpowered though since if you get hit in a turn you could just move.
I imagine it would be brilliant if you targeted a couple of objectives you wouldn't get to in T3 and hammered them to give you the improved rolls in the last turn.

Or just started pounding a bottleneck in T1 so that any model that has to stop in it gets smashed, area denial.


I had another idea.
Why can't the Guard fire into close combat with template weapons?
Given the brutality and the often alluded to similarities to WWII era soviet tactics it would seem to be something we should be able to do.

Charge the enemy with some conscripts to hold them up and then drop a load of HE and WP on them, cook them up.

Even if it is a bit much for the hard hearted commissar to order such a thing I've never understood why chaos can't.
Seems right up their street?


Also, shouldn't we be able to take the ordinance weapons cheaper but not in an armoured vehicle?
Like towed artillery.
You can have one for each (non skimmer) piece of self propelled armour you have, it is towed onto the field and is deployed within 4" of the starting position of it towing vehicle.
It would be immobile on the battlefield for the duration of the game and served by a troop of 5 guards.

Not sure about basilisk but griffon should definitely be able to be towed.

More big guns is always good.

awesome rules but how can there be laser guided mortar rounds???

They already exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM395_Precision_Guided_Mortar_Munition

It is a two part system.

One part is a laser that has a specific frequency and has a coded pulse built into the beam.
A soldier equipped with this laser acquires a target and centres it in the sights.
He then radios the mortar team who fire a round in the general direction of the enemy.
When the round reaches its apogee the soldier with the designator activates the laser (this is known as lasing even though to lase is not a verb. a laser is not something that lases it is an acronym for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation).
The Mortar round looks down, "sees" the point of reflected laser light and guides itself onto the light.

BOOM!

Laser guided mortar.

Currently it is only available in 120mm but in the future the technology will allow this to be made smaller.


Interestingly there are also heat seeking mortar rounds that reach apogee and then "look" for hot things and guide themselves down onto the heat source passively.


I suppose the game mechanic for that would be as follows:
1. Select heat seeker.
2. Fire as normal.
3. Do not scatter.
4. Roll 2d6.
5. Identify all valid targets in the 2d6 radius.
Valid targets include anything hot:
Vehicles.
Wrecked vehicles.
Units that have been attacked with flamers/melta/plasma weapons this turn.
Units that have fired flamers/melta weapons this turn.
Units that contain a Plasma gun that has "got hot" that turn (how much would that suck? Your gun blows up in your hand, you somehow survive and then a mortar lands right in your lap. Brilliant.
The Eldar Avatar
Probably more I can't think about.
6. Randomly select one of the valid targets.
7. Hit it, no cover saves.


Is quite clever actually, not too overpowered and if the 2d6 roll is a large number you could hit targets that are already dead or your own guys.


There are also GPS rounds.
Of course they rely on on the Global Positioning Satellite system which the planets of the empire do not have.
However, if you allow that ships in orbit can create a similar effect or that the empire has an equivalent system then you could include them in play too.

To use GPS rounds you need a super accurate reading for the position you want to hit.
You can do that two ways.

1. Gather the data before the battle, this fits in with the "pre-arranged fire zones" rules.
2. Triangulate the position on the fly.
For that you need two minis equipped with accurate GPS positioning equipment and radios (forward controllers).
They both give range and bearing to target (using bs, cover saves apply, armour saves do not) and then calculate the position of the target.
If one of the forward controllers fails to "hit" the target then you cannot fire the mortar at all.
Mortar fires and hits with no cover save, armour saves do apply.
Can't target anything going faster than 6" a turn.

Had another idea for mortars too that is mentioned above.
Forward controllers:
Expensive characters, part of the HQ like tech priests and are embedded into units, can be independent and have stealth but probably not a good idea.
Must target the same thing as the unit.
Equipped with a voxcaster and 1 ccw.

During play can "control" any ordinance weapon or mortar that also has a voxcaster.

Gives 2 advantages:
1. Can use "bracketing fire" rules on targets moving at up to 6" per turn.
2. when controlling barrage weapons the first template is placed as normal with the scatter dice but the subsequent barrage templates can be placed by the player in any position that touches an existing template.
Yes. You can "walk" fire onto a target you have missed with the scatter dice.
Might be too powerful though.
What do we think?

I love the heat-seeking mortar rounds. One change though - as it is, it's pretty easy to hit your target automatically. For IG, it's going to be rare that you'd have something up close and personal with an enemy vehicle you're trying to drop an anti-tank mortar round onto. I think you should roll 2D6 to scatter as usual, and THEN roll your 2D6 seeker range centered on the new scattered location. Otherwise the seeker round is almost always an "auto-hit" weapon, instead of a "usually hits but sometimes ends up tracking our own troops to hilarious effect" weapon.

Good idea.
However.
A 2d6 scatter with a 2d6 thermal seek range is a potential 24" scatter.

You could hit your own mortar team, units behind you, all sorts.

I think that would be hilarious but some wouldn't.

Yeah good call. That's very unlikely but it's not really the outcome we're going for...

What if the heat seeker radius wasn't variable? If it was fixed at 6", your target would be inside the seeker area most of the time (by my math, you'd hit or scatter 6" or less ~60% of the time). Your target point still has to be 18" from your own units to guarantee you can avoid friendly fire, but I think that's a good trade-off for such a powerful weapon. Make it S8 AP1 side armor, and it hits whichever of the following is closest to the center:

- Vehicles
- Wrecked vehicles
- Avatar
- Daemons (come on, you're made of warp energy!)
- Artillery (barrels/tubes get hot)

I think it gets tricky when you're talking about essentially sniping special/heavy weapons, or even keeping track of who has fired at what. Much as I like the idea, it's probably better to just target the unit closest to the center if none of the above units are in the seeker area.

I will ponder this along with the smoke round rules in my sleep tonight.

Maybe a laser guided rocket, because from what you are describing you want a much more Javelin Missile effect. Mortars are more barrage reign death from above, not accurate laser-guided shots. Although the ideas of a forward spotter would support mortar fire better. As for everything else I love all of it! I've always wished mortars had more versatility.

Much of these rules were in the old RT book long ago, lotsa peeps thought that all this stuff took up to much time in a game. Smoke rounds was one of those that was spammed alot to give an attacking force cover in an advance movement. Illumination rounds would be cool in a night fighting game, and yes I play them alot. Laser Guided stuff will more likely goto the Toa in the new codex for sure. It was a rule back in the old RT rules that anyone could use laser targeters. But keep it up, the more talk about it maybe GW peeps might change a rule lol.

I would take away auto hit on third turn, alot can go wrong even after an enemy is locked on to. Also make illumination rounds be fired anywhere, after nightfighting check and then make it remove nightfighting of any unit wishing to fire at a unit within 24" of the final position of the blast template. Would be cooler and less self destructive that way.

Disreguard my first post, seeing as there is so much info to get through here im gonna try to get a grasp

QUESTIONS:

Illumination round:
-do you have to roll to hit?
-is it a large blast, a small blast, or a variable radius?
-how long does the illumination last for?
-how far away can you fire the illumination round?

Incendiary
-is it a blast weapon or heavy 1 weapon?
-is it pinning?
-if its a blast weapon then it should probably cost more then the regualr frag rounds.

Poison
-poison 3+ sounds a little strong what about 4+?
-is it pinning?
-drop the tube explosion, i think it would be better to have a weaker poison then a strong draw back that could kill the crew but thats my humble opnion (maybe able to purchase stronger poison round at the cost of it exploding?)

Smoke:
-whats the effect?

Laser-Guided anti armour:
-what is the roll to hit with the marker?
-I believe the shell should just be an anti armour shell( 48" Str 6 AP 4 heavy 1 barrage ) and the laser system should be an entire different system.

I have so many more questions but this will do for now.