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So, I recently acquired a rather nice 1:48 scale DeHavilland Sea Vixen kit, and after looking up the plane online, found that it's rather unusual (and kind of awesome). The crew may be a bit small, but I wanted to stat something up to use it in 40k games!

What do you think?

Squall Fighter.........................................180 points
BS 3 FA 12 SA 12 RA 10 HP 3

Type: Flier
Armament:
- Four Firestreak Missiles
- Two Missile Launchers
Special Rules: Night Vision.
Options:
- May take a rack of 6 Bombs: +30 points
- May exchange Bombs and Firestreak Missiles for a single Red Top: +30 points
- May exchange up to 4 Firestreak Missiles for Bullpup Rockets: Free
- May exchange four Firestreak Missiles for four Multiple Rocket Pods: +20 points

Firestreak Missile:
Range 120' S7 AP 4, Heavy 1, Heat-seeker, Ignores Cover, One Use Only, Armourbane

Heat-Seeker: If the firer is within the target flier's rear arc, the Firestreak may always be fired at full BS even if snap-fired. Any Glancing Hits from a Heat-Seeker automatically cause an Immobilised/Velocity Locked result as if Penetrating, and Flying Monstrous Creatures must take a Grounding Test at -2 strength.

Bullpup Rocket:
Range 120', S7 AP 4, Heavy 1, Blast, One Use Only, Ignores Cover, Armourbane

Red Top:
Range: Bomb S10 AP1 Heavy 1, Blast d6+3", Ordnance Barrage

Pic, please

Looks good and pretty fairly priced. The only think you need to change is the heat seeker rule concerning monstrous creatures since a grounded test is always succesful ona 3+ so the minus strenght is of no consequence. Maybe change it to fails grounded test on a 1-3 instead. Always getting an immobolised result is pretty good, maybe do it like the dark angels and allow the player to change any weapon destroyed results to immobilised/velocity locked. AV 12 is also pretty high for a fighter, the AV12 fliers are the CAS and assault transports that are required to fly very close to enemy not the fighters whose best protection is high speed and manouverability.

OK< now fot the rules, AV 12 front/side flyer with four armourbane and ignore cover flakk missiles plus regular ML make it the bane of other flyers and tanks.

Red top is ridiculously overpowered with average radius of 6.5" even if it takes off all the rockets - it is much more favorable to drop one OP bomb before enemy even have the chance to shoot Interceptor, than having two volleys of two missiles.

Bullpup rockets are weird. They have the same stats as regular missiles but with blast - i cannon imagine the missiles of the same size could be AOE without losing some strength, AP and Armourbane.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, i googled the image of DeHavilland Sea Vixen.
It doesn't look like AV12, not even AV11 - sure it's armored, but not to the level of Thunderbolt. It looks more like old (non-Voss-pattern) Lightning with backward-mounted wings and weird tail, and Lightning is AV10 round.

Well the missiles do loose the targeting systems ao they could pack some more explosives, but armourbane on a missile is usually not achieved through explosive power but rather with kinetic penetrators so blast and armourbane doesn't realy work together.

 Dantioch wrote:
Well the missiles do loose the targeting systems ao they could pack some more explosives, but armourbane on a missile is usually not achieved through explosive power but rather with kinetic penetrators so blast and armourbane doesn't realy work together.

That doesn't make any less overpowered.

Flyer needs to be AV11/10/10 at most, unless you make some serious concessions to firepower in order to upgrade durability.

Compare it to the Thunderbolt, which is AV11/11/10, but with not even close to the firepower your flyer has.

The missiles need to be toned down a lot; I recommend you stick to using existing pieces of wargear for flyers. Check IA: Aeronautica. I'll be back later with the rules for all the missiles used with Imperial fighters, but none of them are remotely as powerful as yours.

Why such a long range and high AP for the missiles?

You left out Vectored Dancer, Stealth and It Will Not Die. The bomb isn't good enough; add instant death and double the blast size.
Oh, are we not just piling on special rules?

Seriously, AV12 is a flying brick; aka Storm Raven and Thunderhawk.
Bring down the AV, tone down the weapons.

-Matt

missile launchers are incredibly unweildy for fliers. There really isnt a good way to reload them mid-flight. Switch those to autocannons instead to make more sense as a fighter.

Ignores cover is a bit much on the missiles. Planes can always avoid missiles or use 40k's flares/chaff . Also, Heat-seaker is a special rule in FW already. It allows reroll to hit vs any flier.

If its a flier, its not AV12 unless its specifically built to handle hits. The vendetta/vulture were originally AV11 and were balanced for such (which is why they are OP now). This thing should be AV11/11/10 at best.

The red top is fine, the d6+3" is the diameter, not the radius. 5" blasts are large blasts in FW's system.

If its a bomber, compare to the new nightshroud necron bomber. 225 point for S10 AP1 large blasts and a TL tessla cannon. It has to have something less than than, and i would go with 1 less armor to justify the 25 less points and the higher diameter blast offsets the lack of 2ndary weapon.

Honestly i think its not that OP. AP4 on armorbane really only means you are getting minor pens, and on one-shot missiles thats pretty balanced. 200 points for the 4 multiple rocket pods is actually quite appealing though, as thats a lot of firepower on a flier. I wolud add strafing run if it takes the rocket pods to make the switch more appealing since most people wont take S4 over S7 armorbane.

The AV was a guess based on the Vulture, etc - I'm fine with dropping it to eleven or even ten if people think that's more appropriate.

I made a slight error - I wrote Red Top, but meant Red Beard.
The Red Beard is based off the Deathstrike Missile - it's basically the same, but with a slightly larger blast radius. Since the Red Beard is a literal nuclear weapon, I didn't think that was unreasonable, but if you think it needs to be dearer that's another thing entirely. ^^; I also forgot to note that the Red Beard is still One Use Only.

Dantioch;
Hm, I thought Grounded was a strength test. I'll change that, then.

Mezmerro;
Games Workshop define blast markers by diameter, not radius. It's 4"-9", not 8"-19"!

Zephoid;
The Missile Launchers represent the Microcell 2-inch rocket packs on the Sea Vixen, which carry several rockets each. Since they're not designed to fire all at once, Macross style, you'll never get through twenty six rockets in a single six-turn battle, so just having them as two missile launchers makes perfect sense to me, since krak missiles are also unguided. Frag mode represents firing a couple of 2" rockets and getting near misses. However, what you say is true - the Sea Vixen was from an era that had decided guns on fighters were obsolete, which has since been noted as a mistake. In the spirit of keeping with the original plane, I'll be leaving them as-is (although in general terms, you are right)

The Firestreaks stats were based off the Hunter missiles from the new Marine codex. The Firestreak was a rear-aspect fire-and-forget missile, hence only having special rules when striking against rear armour... I'll admit that the Velocity Locked result is more in line with a Sidewinder's fragmentation mechanic though. The Bullpups were based on the idea that they're basically the same size warhead but optimised for hunting ground targets by replacing the guidance systems with a secondary fragmentation charge - they're still better against vehicles than infantry, so the blast is unlikely to catch a second model.

As for Rocket Pods, the main reason they're more attractive than the Firestreaks is that Rocket Pods aren't One Use Only.

HawaiiMatt;
Why on earth would it have Vector Dancer? It's maneuverable, but it's not a matter-surfing VTOL like the Vulture. Seriously, it's an all-weather interceptor designed for night fighting, is Night Vision really overpowered?

You think the Firestreaks are broken? The Space Marine Hunter has the same thing, except it doesn't have to be shot at the rear armour, gets to keep rerolling to hit every turn until it succeeds, can be fired as many times as it likes and is only seventy points. Go be sarcastic somewhere else if you don't have anything more constructive to say than "You gave it rules, it's overpowered!"

Anyway, with all of these comments considered, the revised Squall is as follows;

Squall Fighter.........................................200 points
BS 3 FA 11 SA 10 RA 10 HP 3

Type: Flier
Armament:
- Four Firestreak Missiles
- Four Bombs
- Two Missile Launchers
Special Rules: Night Vision.
Options:
- Apocalypse Only: May exchange Bombs and Firestreak Missiles for a single Red Beard: +50 points
- May exchange up to 4 Firestreak Missiles for Bullpup Rockets: Free
- May exchange up to 4 Firestreak Missiles for Red Top Missiles: +10 points
- May exchange two Firestreak Missiles for two Multiple Rocket Pods: +20 points
- May exchange four Firestreak Missiles for four Multiple Rocket Pods: +30 points

Firestreak Missile:
Range 120' S7 AP 4, Heavy 1, RAFF, Ignores Cover, One Use Only, Armourbane

RAFF: If the firer is within the target flier's rear arc, the Firestreak may always be fired at full BS even if snap-fired.

Red Top Missile:
Range 120', S7 AP4, Heavy 1, Heat Seeker, One Use Only, Ignores Cover, Armourbane
Heat Seeker: Rerolls to Hit vs Fliers.

Bullpup Rocket:
Range 120', S7 AP 4, Heavy 1, Blast, One Use Only, Ignores Cover

Red Beard:
Range: Bomb S10 AP1 Heavy 1, Blast 2d6+3", Ordnance Barrage, One Use Only.


The reason it's cheaper to exchange the second pair of Firestreaks for MRPs is that by giving up all four Firestreaks, you're basically reducing your anti-air capacity to slightly less than an eighty point Devastator squad, rather than being one of the best AA platforms available to Imperials.

Honestly, there's no reason why you shouldn't use the existing flyer weaponry, both for simplicity and balance.

Things like the Hellstrike or Hellfury missiles, or MRPs. It makes infinitely easier for your opponent, as its the same weaponry used on many other flyers.