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So as I work on my Leviathan (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/268020.page) I grow frustrated with the 10 year old 3rd edition Vehicle Design Rules. And GW's suggestion in the Apoc book 'Make some %#@% up' does not please me either.

So it seems a good time to revisit the idea.

If you need to see how the rules work this site will help

http://www.ageofstrife.com/tools/vdr/

And the rules themselves are in Chapter Approved 2004 (cheap on ebay!)

Basically it's a few simple steps anyone can do on the back of an envelope

STEP 1 - ARMOR
Decide between AV 9 (civilian vehicle) and AV 14 (main battle tank) for the Front, Sides and Rear. Front armor is the cheapest, rear the most expensive.

Looking at your vehicles total armor you see if it's open topped or closed. You can make an open topped vehicle closed by paying points, or open a closed one and get a point reduction.

This is also where a superheavy would buy structure points.

STEP 2 - MOVEMENT

Again looking at total armor see what speeds you can get for your vehicle. Lightly armored fast vehicles are cheaper than heavily armored ones.

You could also skip this step for an immobile vehicle.

STEP 3 - KIL! KIL! KIL!

Add weapons, BS2-4 are available, the higher the BS, the more the weapon costs.
You can then add extras like gattling (d3 shots per normal shot), long barrel (+50% range) or mega (+1S, +1AP) but they increase the cost by a percentage.

STEP 4 - AND THE REST

Add carrying capability, deep strike etc.

It had its flaws, you could make tanks with 100 weapons,low end vehicles were pricey (my IG staff car costs 46 points!), you couldn't recreate some legal vehicles and worst of all it left out synergy. You could easily make some fast light open topped tanks to deliver your terminators and Black Templar squads into the heart of the enemy on turn one.

And of course now it is hopelessly out of date!

But it was also fun! And easy! So, so easy! Compared to other games where I've literally seen vehicle design rules with square roots in them (Heavy Gear looking at you) this was a quick and dirty little system for getting a reasonable price for a vehicle.

So, here's my list of issues to address...

1-Add Hull Point rules
2-Restrict number of weapons
3-Rejigger weapon and armor costs
4-Make turrets more expensive than sponsons and fixed weapons
5-Update weapon options


Any other major issues?

In the end you can always abuse it, like I said the worst thing I ever came up with was fast light vehicles to deliver marines, but in the end the check is always opponent's permission.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

But it was also fun! And easy! So, so easy! Compared to other games where I've literally seen vehicle design rules with square roots in them (Heavy Gear looking at you) this was a quick and dirty little system for getting a reasonable price for a vehicle.

In all fairness, in the Heavy Gear VCS you only need one or two square roots, the one I found in a brief scan being optional (a rule-of-thumb to calculate armor values from real-world armor thickness) and a cube root to calculate a default size. The plus side of the VCS is that it's based around converting existing vehicle specifications, so it has a leg up for translating existing vehicles over some older systems where you have direct speed/weight relations and such and have to fiddle with numbers to match real-world perfomance.

Or, to put it another way: if you wanted to convert a Rhino to Heavy Gear's older Tac.RPG system, you could use guidelines int he VCS to take the canon performance stats (speed, weapon load-out, etc.) and make a vehicle to fit. (Disclosure: migrating armor might be tougher for 40k as the armor tends to be such a leap from real-world tech. Not sure what the Rhino's armor would be in 'mm of steel' equivalency.)

I am unsure as to how plausible it would be to implement, but perhaps some weighting in points towards specific codices? For example, and open topped transport for marines would and should cost more than one for orks or dark eldar. Also, perhaps some weight for unique weapons, for a vehicle, in an army. For instance, 'lance' weapons in marine forces or 'melta' for orks.

I would think the best way to do the above would be to implement a point tax that's a percentage, round up to nearest multiple of 5 or something of the sort. So, when you create a vehicle that is outside of a force's 'type', you design it and automatically increase the price by X%. Multiple deviations incur multiple percentage penalties.

Costing it in a balanced fashion is always the difficulty; that's the part that made the old VDR not work and not be revisited. If you really, really, really want to make up your own vehicles, I'd advise starting from an existing chassis and making slight changes to the guns; the Imperium, the Eldar, the Dark Eldar, Tau, and Chaos all seem to operate off a small number of chassis with a lot of variants (five things on the Rhino chassis, God only knows how many Land Raider variants are still floating around, at least ten armaments on the Chimera hull, eight Russes, five things on the Falcon hull, et cetera).

I think, however, that a lot of people want to represent the variety shown in extended 40k canon... The weird stalk-tanks and other unusual war machines shown in various fiction pieces, etc.

Making an 'unbreakable' VDR is surprisingly tough. GW's worked surprisingly well, I thought, although I do remember hearing of some exploits like making 'gun bunkers' with no/minimal movement, armor, and a single big gun.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Costing it in a balanced fashion is always the difficulty; that's the part that made the old VDR not work and not be revisited. If you really, really, really want to make up your own vehicles, I'd advise starting from an existing chassis and making slight changes to the guns; the Imperium, the Eldar, the Dark Eldar, Tau, and Chaos all seem to operate off a small number of chassis with a lot of variants (five things on the Rhino chassis, God only knows how many Land Raider variants are still floating around, at least ten armaments on the Chimera hull, eight Russes, five things on the Falcon hull, et cetera).

I think coming up with point costs for chassis, with weapon slots, and then costs for additional weapon slots, armor, hull points and speed.

So if you wanted an IG heavy close support walker, you'd start with a sentinel (AV12/10/10, 1 weapon) and add armor, a hull point and some side armor. Then you'd pay for the additional weapon slot and guns.
I'd do the base vehicle upgrades as a % increase, and weapon cost has flat points (based on BS for guns and S and A for melee).

-Matt

Sure, it's funny to come up with some over-gunned abomination, but the real fun is in making the cheapest vehicle. For example, you might laugh at an AV 9/9/9 immobile open-topped 'vehicle' with a single pulse rifle, but it's only 5 points. They're significantly less funny when you bring hundreds of them and cover the entire table in vehicles.

Unfortunately this is a fundamental problem with the rules, so making an exploit-free update isn't possible. If you remove things like reducing the cost for making it immobile you over-cost weaker vehicles and effectively remove them from the game. Unless it reduces the point cost you're never going to see anyone make an immobile VDR vehicle because it's a pure drawback. On the other hand, if you keep those modifiers you leave open the exploits, where you stack a bunch of drawbacks on a vehicle to reduce the point cost, but don't really care about the drawbacks. Even ignoring blatant abuses like the 5-point pulse rifle turret you still have things like putting the immobile rule on a Basilisk that never moves anyway and getting a free point reduction.

So in the end you can't just use an automatic system, at best the VDR calculator can give you an approximate starting point for an experienced player to adjust the point costs to make it balanced. You'll still need that experienced player to do things like look at each final result and make the point reduction for being immobile greater for a vehicle that might care about it than for a vehicle where it doesn't matter.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
1-Add Hull Point rules

This should be easy. Since virtually every vehicle gets 3 HP, just assume a default of 3 HP unless it's a very light vehicle (2 HP) or a very large vehicle (4 HP).

 Peregrine wrote:
Sure, it's funny to come up with some over-gunned abomination, but the real fun is in making the cheapest vehicle. For example, you might laugh at an AV 9/9/9 immobile open-topped 'vehicle' with a single pulse rifle, but it's only 5 points. They're significantly less funny when you bring hundreds of them and cover the entire table in vehicles.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
1-Add Hull Point rules

This should be easy. Since virtually every vehicle gets 3 HP, just assume a default of 3 HP unless it's a very light vehicle (2 HP) or a very large vehicle (4 HP).

I'd go with default is 3, or 2 if the vehicle can be taken in squadrons.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I'd go with default is 3, or 2 if the vehicle can be taken in squadrons.

Except there's the counter-example of Leman Russes, Hellhounds, etc. Squadroning doesn't necessarily mean 2 HP, it's based on vehicle size. It's purely coincidence that many of the squadronable vehicles are also light vehicles with 2 HP.

To start off the ultimate check and balance on this is they're all opponent's permission. Players can and should rebalance points or even reject legal but game breaking ideas (ie Deathwing terminators in fast open trucks).

My thought on hull points was small vehicles get 2, medium 3, large 4. S/M/L affects how much armor you can buy, how many troops you can carry and how much different movement costs.

I'm liking the idea of a couple of generic hulls for each faction. This would allow people to make varients without breaking the bank and offer a discount for modifying rather than building from scratch.

For IG it would a Chimera, Basilisk, scout sentinel, armored sentinel and Russ hull (and maybe baneblade too).

I'd also throw in 'staff car', 'troop truck', 'defense turret' and 'construction vehicle' as well. Maybe throw those open to all factions?

So the new to do list:

1-Add Hull Point rules
2-Restrict number of weapons
3-Rejigger weapon and armor costs
4-Make turrets more expensive than sponsons and fixed weapons
5-Update weapon options
6-Offer generic 'hulls' at a discount
7-Update special abilities to include new features like scout

Was wondering about this in my head from time to time. Just because I like dreaming up weird stuff and all. Surprised it ever actually existed in print though.

Quick side track (kind of). Because the game uses "True Line of Sight" and it already has some established 'standard' sizes that span across everything. (like Tau piranhas and Marine land speeders are close I think. Predators and like devilfish hulls are a bit different though. etc etc blah blah) Would this system have a guide line as to the over all footprint of a vehicle like square inches occupied on board, or more curiously a minimum profile in square inches that has to be visible from any given angle?

Way out there I know. Completely unnecessary to even write in maybe, but I was curious.

The original set had guidelines, to be a small vehicle it should be the size of a buggy or land speeder, medium was rhino size, large was landraider, warmachines had to be bigger than a land raider.

Not quite a square inches rule but it was there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So here's how I see this shaking out:

STEP 0 - Vision

What do what this tank to be? Will it be fun for you and your opponents? Will it fit the army? Will it look cool?

STEP 1 - HULL

Choose size, this will affect cost of engines, closed top etc. It will also determine 2, 3 or 4 hull points.

Buy armor from AV 9 (civilian vehicle) and AV 14 (main battle tank) for the Front, Sides and Rear. Front armor is the cheapest, rear the most expensive.

Choose open or closed top.

Buy structure points for a superheavy.

There will also be some generic hulls for each army.

STEP 2 - MOVEMENT

Looking at total armor and size to see what speeds you can get for your vehicle. Lightly armored fast vehicles are cheaper than heavily armored ones.

You could also skip this step for an immobile vehicle.

STEP 3 - Weapons

Add weapons, BS2-4 are available, the higher the BS, the more the weapon costs.

You can then add extras like gattling (d3 shots per normal shot), long barrel (+50% range) or mega (+1S, +1AP) but they increase the cost by a percentage. As will turrets.

Limited to 1 weapon per hull point.

STEP 4 - EXTRAS

Add carrying capability, deep strike etc. Cost is affected by size and what it can transport.

What does the carriage special rule do? It's not a normal 40k rule that I remember.

 ENOZONE wrote:
What does the carriage special rule do? It's not a normal 40k rule that I remember.

VDR had a couple of rules that never made it into the main rules.

Carriage IIRC let them tow immobile vehicles (ie field artillery) or pulled immobilized vehicles out of the way.

But isn't that tow line?

Wasn't carriage the other half of the equation, one vehicle had the tow hook, the other (the gun) was on a carriage so it could be towed, as opposed to being always immobile.

 Jackmojo wrote:
Wasn't carriage the other half of the equation, one vehicle had the tow hook, the other (the gun) was on a carriage so it could be towed, as opposed to being always immobile.

Bingo!

My bad. You could give an immobile gun 'carriage' so a mobile tank with 'tow hook' could move it. Totally useless rule, it took a turn to limber and unlimber a gun so use it just once and you've lost 1/3 of the game.

If we look at a Rhino for now.

HP: 3.
Armour: 11/11/10
Weapon: Storm bolter
Transport capacity: 10

Cost 35

If you dropped the Transport capacity it would cost about 10 points.

That's a good place to start.

So I'm starting the armor and hull section, let's see how this goes.
I'll be tracking how much an Ork Trukk (10/10/10 fast, open topped), a Rhino (11/11/10 tank), Land Raider (14/14/14 tank) and Leviathan (14/14/12 superheavy) each cost.


Decide size:

Small vehicles have a maximum armor value of 11 on any side, a maximum of 32 points total AV (F+S+R armor),
2 Hull Points
May have 2 weapons. They may not carry ordinence.
They are open-topped by default.
They should be around the size of land speeder, sentinel or buggy.

Medium Vehicles have a maximum armor value of 13 on any side, a maximum of 35 points of AV
3 Hull Points
3 weapons
They are closed topped by default.
They should be around the size of a rhino, chimera or trukk.

Large vehicles have a maximum AV of 14, 42 total (which allows for 14/14/14).
4 hull points
4 weapons
Closed top
Should be around the size of Land Raiders, Monoliths or Battlewagons

Superheavies (including all Warmachines and Titans) have a maximum AV of 14, 42 total
5+ hull points
One secondary weapon per hull point and one primary weapon (ordinence or mega weapons) per 3 hull points
Closed top
Should be around the size of a Baneblade or Macharius

Note-I'm dropping the idea of structure points since hull points seem to replace them

Buy armor
Front
9 (-10 points)
10 (-5 points)
11 (0 points)
12 (5 points)
13 (10 points)
14 (20 points)

Side
9 (-5 points)
10 (0 points)
11 (5 points)
12 (10 points)
13 (20 points)
14 (30 points)

Rear
9 (-5 points)
10 (0 points)
11 (10 points)
12 (20 points)
13 (30 points)
14 (40 points)

Small vehicles pay 10 points to become closed topped
Medium and Large vehicles gain 10 points if open topped
Superheavies start with 4 Hull Points and pay 25 points per additional hull point.
Any vehicle may sell back ONE hull point for 10 points. This simulates a vehicle like a flier which is large but vulnerable to glancing hits.

Note - so far a Land Raider costs 90 points, a Rhino 15 and a Trukk is at -5 points. The Leviathan with 18 hull points (formerly 6 structure points) is 420, 70 for the armor+350 for the hull points