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6th edition is heavy on the shooty and light on the choppy. Could the next edition restore balance and improve the importance of mobility by decreasing the range of most weapons in the game?

Of course in real life a tank can shoot over a mile, but it's a little silly in 40k when units have weapons that can cover the entire battlefield. I would prefer a rule set where moving out of range is a viable tactic. Would heavy weapons be more balanced at 36" instead of 48"? Rapid fire at 18" instead of 24"?

Keep in mind that these might reflect effective range rather than actual range.

The issue with this assumption is that assault troops don't get into assault because they get wiped by short-ranged shooting, not because they get beaten up by long-ranged fire. Dropping rapid-fire weapon range to 9/18" wouldn't change the fact that it's nigh-impossible to avoid the other guy getting one round of shooting off plus Overwatch before you're in.

The issues facing assault today are threefold:

Ineffective delivery mechanisms. There are almost no easy ways with transports, Deep Strike, or jump infantry/bikes to make it into melee without taking a fair bit of fire on the way in. Solution: Bring back the 5e Space Marines' assault-from-Deep-Strike mechanic that used to come on Vanguard Vets in a more widespread fashion (sacrifice shooting on landing to make a disordered charge on landing, declare before you roll the scatter dice, high risk/high reward trick).

Immensely expensive fragile assault troops. There's no point in dumping fifty or sixty points into a kitted out Vanguard Veteran or even sixteen points into a Howling Banshee if they're going to up and die to AP2 spam before making it anywhere near charge range due to the first problem listed here. Solution: Drop the price on pretty much all assault troops.

Nerfed access to AP2 melee, buffed access to AP2 ranged. Time was all power weapons were flat Ignores Armour, now you need an Unwieldy weapon or a Monstrous Creature to have AP2; it's faster, easier, much more cost-effective, and all-round better to go get one of the many, many long-ranged AP2 guns that are the norm on new big terrifying units and blow people up that way instead if the other guy's Terminators or Riptides are annoying you. Solution: Restrict AP2 blast weapons to small blasts and Gets Hot weapons, bring back power weapons ignoring all armour.

 AnomanderRake wrote:


Nerfed access to AP2 melee, buffed access to AP2 ranged. Time was all power weapons were flat Ignores Armour, now you need an Unwieldy weapon or a Monstrous Creature to have AP2; it's faster, easier, much more cost-effective, and all-round better to go get one of the many, many long-ranged AP2 guns that are the norm on new big terrifying units and blow people up that way instead if the other guy's Terminators or Riptides are annoying you. Solution: Restrict AP2 blast weapons to small blasts and Gets Hot weapons, bring back power weapons ignoring all armour.

Certainly there is too much AP2 in the range catagory. The riptide's ion cannon is just kind of silly, best weapon ever.
I like power weapons being the way they are, with different APs, the thing is that flat ignores armor was worth 15 points, AP3 is not worth 15 points, +1strength, AP2 and unwieldy isnt worth 15 points, and 2+ strength AP2 isnt worth 15 points. Power weapons and troops that carry them should have gotten cheaper when they got nerfed. C:SM honor guard got a lot cheaper, with their 2+ saves and power weapons, and still suck.

I wouldn't say having weapons shooting across the board is silly, "silly" is weapons shooting then having their shots magically disappear into thin air after a certain distance. A lot of games including assault manage to work fine with that, maybe the problem lies with trying more terrain if the focus is on shooting?

For me it changed when you started pulling form the front. and no more from reserves or non assault vehicle charges.

If regular vehicles like the rhino would let you charge with a disordered charge penalty, im sure a bit of the complaints would go away.

I'd allow units coming in from reserves to perform one action - shoot, run or disordered assault. they're coming in without a clue what's going on, some pansies will instinctively stop and shoot, orkses should get stuck in then start asking whether they were allies or not.

same perhaps for non-assault vehicles - disordered charge, if you don't shoot first. Personally I'd like to see a simple option:

rhinos can have either:
top hatch as 2 fire points
or
assault ramp.

that way assault works, but it loses any chance of working as a mobile firing platform. the vehicle has a role, either you can charge out of it or you can shoot out of it, without the penalty for open-topped which gives both.

 doc1234 wrote:
I wouldn't say having weapons shooting across the board is silly, "silly" is weapons shooting then having their shots magically disappear into thin air after a certain distance. A lot of games including assault manage to work fine with that, maybe the problem lies with trying more terrain if the focus is on shooting?

the cover system in general and no 'to hit' modifiers are stupid.

A gun remains 100% effective up to it's range and then just drops off.