Switch Theme:

A return to armor facings for vehicles.  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


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.




Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 OldMate wrote:
I hope you appreciate how dangerous attacking a tank's tracks with a hand weapon is.


Exactly. It should be like it was in previous editions, you auto-hit a stationary tank but a moving tank is only hit on 6s. And TBH trying to hit and failing should have a chance of instant death as you slip and get crushed under the tracks.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Basically, yes. You could theoretically invent or adjust a bunch of anti-tank options for each codex. But if you have to do all that to keep invulnerable tanks from breaking the game, maybe just give up on the invulnerable tanks.


I don't see why you need to invent anything. Who cares if kroot have no anti-tank and fire warriors have only limited anti-tank, you have heavy support slots full of railguns and elites with fusion guns. Why does every unit need to be capable of killing tanks?

Wyldhunt wrote:
We ran into a similar problem (though not quite as extreme) in 6th when flyers and anti-air weapons became a thing. Did you take flakk missiles on your devastators? Feels bad when your opponent has no flyers meaning you wasted the points. Did you field an anti-air tank? Feels bad that you didn't field that other unit you really wanted to take instead.


IMO that's not really a comparable situation. AA units in 6th-7th had two major problems: most of them were actually pretty bad at killing flyers, and flyers were still a fairly rare unit type. If you wanted to do more than possibly annoy a flyer you had to commit heavily to overcome poor stat lines with sheer volume of fire, and then once you built your anti-flyer list you weren't all that likely to encounter enough relevant flyers to make it worth it. Tanks are way more common than 6th edition flyers and anti-tank weapons are way more effective at killing them. I'm perfectly fine with dedicated anti-tank units being a tool you're expected to bring in a game that is full of tanks and tank-equivalent monsters.

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in mx
Towering Hierophant Bio-Titan




Mexico

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Exactly. It should be like it was in previous editions, you auto-hit a stationary tank but a moving tank is only hit on 6s. And TBH trying to hit and failing should have a chance of instant death as you slip and get crushed under the tracks.

That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.

Also the crushing death by tracks only really applies to light infantry, it doesn't apply to things like Terminators or Carnifexes.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/07 14:20:01


 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





CadianSgtBob wrote:

IMO that's not really a comparable situation. AA units in 6th-7th had two major problems: most of them were actually pretty bad at killing flyers, and flyers were still a fairly rare unit type. If you wanted to do more than possibly annoy a flyer you had to commit heavily to overcome poor stat lines with sheer volume of fire, and then once you built your anti-flyer list you weren't all that likely to encounter enough relevant flyers to make it worth it. Tanks are way more common than 6th edition flyers and anti-tank weapons are way more effective at killing them.

Fair points. The comparison is a little shaky.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Basically, yes. You could theoretically invent or adjust a bunch of anti-tank options for each codex. But if you have to do all that to keep invulnerable tanks from breaking the game, maybe just give up on the invulnerable tanks.


I don't see why you need to invent anything. Who cares if kroot have no anti-tank and fire warriors have only limited anti-tank, you have heavy support slots full of railguns and elites with fusion guns. Why does every unit need to be capable of killing tanks?
...
I'm perfectly fine with dedicated anti-tank units being a tool you're expected to bring in a game that is full of tanks and tank-equivalent monsters.

The problems arise when you don't have enough anti-tank for whatever list your opponent is bringing. And generally, people don't know what their opponent's list will be ahead of time. Trying to break it down into digestible points:

* It's not much fun when enemy units are invulnerable. Ask people how they felt about invisible death stars back in the day. The core engagement of 40k is our dudes attacking each other. Not my dudes taking a one-sided beating from your dudes.

* To avoid enemy vehicles feeling invulnerable (assuming we bring back AV), you have to bring X amount of anti-tank.

* The value of X varies based on how much of your opponent's army is made up of tanks, how hard those tanks are to kill, etc.

* The possibility that my opponent will bring a skew list where their army contains a lot of tanks exists. Such lists would set the value of X very high.

* I can't really change how much anti-tank I have outside of list creation. So I basically have to guess what the value of X will be when writing my list. In order to avoid having less than X anti-tank, I will be more likely to take anti-tank options over options that don't threaten tanks. This is where the kroot vs fire warriors point comes in. If I take the kroot instead of the fire warriors, I risk not reaching my anti-tank quota of X and having a frustrating game because of it. Because of this, list diversity is hurt, and units that would be fine in the current system become never-takes or rarely-takes because they don't contribute towards X. This has happened before.

* Bonus point: sometimes it's fun to run a themed army list, but not all themes lend themselves to having a lot of anti-tank. In the current rules, such a theme army might struggle against enemy tanks, but they'd still be allowed to fight/interact/play the game. If we make tanks immune to non-anti-tank, our theme army is much more likely to result in an unenjoyable game due to non-interactivity.

 OldMate wrote:
I hope you appreciate how dangerous attacking a tank's tracks with a hand weapon is.


Exactly. It should be like it was in previous editions, you auto-hit a stationary tank but a moving tank is only hit on 6s. And TBH trying to hit and failing should have a chance of instant death as you slip and get crushed under the tracks.

Not sure that would improve the game experience. Unless you have a mechanic encouraging you to hold completely still, people would just move their tanks at least 0.01" every movement phase to become semi-invulnerable to melee. And unless you let enemy units opt out of attacking, this would increase tank melee lethality by quite a bit which would then need to cost points.

(That said, I don't hate the idea of giving tanks a "tank shock" melee weapon that can only be used on the charge. It wouldn't have to be all that impressive, but upping the melee lethality of tanks when they intentionally drive into the enemy lines seems like an appropriate way to model vehicular splatter kills. )




ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in us
Hurr! Ogryn Bone 'Ead!





Wyldhunt wrote:
CadianSgtBob wrote:
 OldMate wrote:
I hope you appreciate how dangerous attacking a tank's tracks with a hand weapon is.


Exactly. It should be like it was in previous editions, you auto-hit a stationary tank but a moving tank is only hit on 6s. And TBH trying to hit and failing should have a chance of instant death as you slip and get crushed under the tracks.

Not sure that would improve the game experience. Unless you have a mechanic encouraging you to hold completely still, people would just move their tanks at least 0.01" every movement phase to become semi-invulnerable to melee. And unless you let enemy units opt out of attacking, this would increase tank melee lethality by quite a bit which would then need to cost points.

(That said, I don't hate the idea of giving tanks a "tank shock" melee weapon that can only be used on the charge. It wouldn't have to be all that impressive, but upping the melee lethality of tanks when they intentionally drive into the enemy lines seems like an appropriate way to model vehicular splatter kills. )

IIRC the way it worked in 5e was a bit more granular:
0" movement = auto-hit
0" >=6" movement = hit on 4+
6+" movement = hit on 6+
And if you moved, you likely couldn't fire some/all of your weapons.
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 Tyran wrote:
That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.


Yep. Bring guns or risk getting crushed. Tanks also shouldn't be locked in combat by infantry units, if a tank gets surrounded by infantry it just drives over them like they don't even exist and continues fighting.

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

CadianSgtBob wrote:
 Tyran wrote:
That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.


Yep. Bring guns or risk getting crushed. Tanks also shouldn't be locked in combat by infantry units, if a tank gets surrounded by infantry it just drives over them like they don't even exist and continues fighting.
Yeah, because a Rhino can run over a Centurion like nothing.

Gameplay matters-more than what’s “realistic”.
Especially given how unrealistic the majority of 40k is.

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

Wyldhunt wrote:
* The possibility that my opponent will bring a skew list where their army contains a lot of tanks exists. Such lists would set the value of X very high.


And here's the root of the problem: the ability to bring skew lists. If you get rid of knights as an independent faction, go back to the 5th edition FOC, remove vehicle squadrons, and go back to only troops being able to score objectives you force more balanced TAC lists. Even if you can theoretically figure out a way to bring nothing but vehicles (probably in a small game where the FOC isn't as restrictive) you'll still lose every game because you can't score VP. And a more realistic tank-heavy list is going to have 3-4 true tanks at most, the rest of the list is going to be light tanks and transports that are much easier to kill without the strongest anti-tank weapons.

* Bonus point: sometimes it's fun to run a themed army list, but not all themes lend themselves to having a lot of anti-tank. In the current rules, such a theme army might struggle against enemy tanks, but they'd still be allowed to fight/interact/play the game. If we make tanks immune to non-anti-tank, our theme army is much more likely to result in an unenjoyable game due to non-interactivity.


I don't think this is true in any meaningful way. The ability to wound anything on a 6 is maybe psychologically reassuring to some people but in reality a "thematic" list with no anti-tank threats is just going to get wiped off the table by a tank-heavy skew list. You might plink off a few wounds before getting tabled but it's not going to make any real difference in the final outcome.

Not sure that would improve the game experience. Unless you have a mechanic encouraging you to hold completely still, people would just move their tanks at least 0.01" every movement phase to become semi-invulnerable to melee.


This would probably be necessary, going back to the concept of movement speeds that existed at the time. Vehicles could only fire one weapon (plus low-strength "defensive weapons") if they moved and no weapons if they moved more than half speed. Fast vehicles counted as being one movement step less for shooting purposes. So moving was a tradeoff between defense and offense.

And unless you let enemy units opt out of attacking, this would increase tank melee lethality by quite a bit which would then need to cost points.


I would be happy to get rid of tank melee entirely. Bring back an ability like tank shock, where in the movement phase you can smash into a bunch of infantry and force them to fall back out of the way, but otherwise tanks don't have an engagement range or make melee attacks. If you don't wish to attack the tank you can just decline to do so.

(Obviously tanks with actual melee weapons would have rules for using them.)

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in mx
Towering Hierophant Bio-Titan




Mexico

CadianSgtBob wrote:
  Tyran wrote:
That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.


Yep. Bring guns or risk getting crushed. Tanks also shouldn't be locked in combat by infantry units, if a tank gets surrounded by infantry it just drives over them like they don't even exist and continues fighting.
You are aware that there are factions like Daemons that barely have guns, right?

In fact I'm pretty sure Space Marines ripping apart tanks in melee is a part of the lore, and the same goes for all the walkers and monsters in the game. A tank getting surrounded by an Ork mob or a Tyranid swarm is usually a very dead tank (Tyranids in particular are known to immobilize tanks by throwing their bodies into the internal parts of the tracks).

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2022/07/07 20:21:18


 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 JNAProductions wrote:
Yeah, because a Rhino can run over a Centurion like nothing.


Yep. That centurion can be killed by small arms fire, run over him with a tank and it's going to be like those videos of tanks crushing cars.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Tyran wrote:
You are aware that there are factions like Daemons that barely have guns, right?


One faction, singular. And it's a faction that never should have been made into a separate faction for exactly this reason. Demons made a lot of sense as summoned units in a chaos marine and cultist army, where they were thematically appropriate and their limited set of abilities was not a problem. Making them an independent faction created too many redundant units and an army with too many holes, in addition to not really fitting the aesthetic theme of 40k. Correct this mistake and the one faction that barely has guns is no longer a problem.

In fact I'm pretty sure Space Marines ripping apart tanks in melee is a part of the lore, and the same goes for all the walkers and monsters in the game. A tank getting surrounded by an Ork mob or a Tyranid swarm is usually a very dead tank (Tyranids in particular are known to immobilize tanks by throwing their bodies into the internal parts of the tracks).


This is a major lore failure then, if that's the version that is well known. In reality a tank surrounded by a mob of light infantry is going to have a bunch of light infantry remains to hose off and no damage, unless the tank just sits there allowing itself to be hit. I'm not sure you realize just how little a 50+ ton armored vehicle is even going to be slowed down by driving over light infantry, but the driver is barely going to notice the bump and it's a spectacularly bad idea to get anywhere near a moving tank without a tank of your own.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/07 20:26:11


THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Towering Hierophant Bio-Titan




Mexico

CadianSgtBob wrote:

One faction, singular. And it's a faction that never should have been made into a separate faction for exactly this reason. Demons made a lot of sense as summoned units in a chaos marine and cultist army, where they were thematically appropriate and their limited set of abilities was not a problem. Making them an independent faction created too many redundant units and an army with too many holes, in addition to not really fitting the aesthetic theme of 40k. Correct this mistake and the one faction that barely has guns is no longer a problem.

This is a major lore failure then, if that's the version that is well known. In reality a tank surrounded by a mob of light infantry is going to have a bunch of light infantry remains to hose off and no damage, unless the tank just sits there allowing itself to be hit. I'm not sure you realize just how little a 50+ ton armored vehicle is even going to be slowed down by driving over light infantry, but the driver is barely going to notice the bump and it's a spectacularly bad idea to get anywhere near a moving tank without a tank of your own.


And I'm not sure you realize we are not talking about real life but a fantasy in space setting in which everyone (except the Imperial Guard) is different degrees of super-human bioengineered monstrosities if not outright magic. A tank may have no issues running over a human mob, but a Space Marine, Daemon, Ork, Eldar, or Tyranid is just going to jump over it, rip the hatches off and kill the guys inside.

And that's assuming we are just talking about infantry and not monsters like Dreadnoughts, Greater Daemons, Wraithlords or Carnifexes which can just throw the tank around like a toy, because again fantasy in space setting that only occasionally cares about physics (which BTW kinda helps 40k tanks, because 40k tank design utterly sucks).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/07 20:46:35


 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

“The lore is wrong! That’s not how physics work,” is not the argument you think it is.

And, not that you care, but I play Daemons. I like them as a faction-without needing to take Marines. (I do mix them, usually-but I shouldn’t be forced to.)

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 Tyran wrote:
And I'm not sure you realize we are not talking about real life but a fantasy in space setting in which everyone (except the Imperial Guard) is different degrees of super-human bioengineered monstrosities if not outright magic. A tank may have no issues running over a human mob, but a Space Marine, Daemon, Ork, Eldar, or Tyranid is just going to jump over it, rip the hatches off and kill the guys inside.


And then get stabbed to death by some normal humans with pointy bits of metal and wood clubs. Sorry, but the whole superman marine thing is not backed up by lore or game mechanics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 JNAProductions wrote:
“The lore is wrong! That’s not how physics work,” is not the argument you think it is.


In your opinion. In my opinion it's a great argument and some bits of lore need to change.

And, not that you care, but I play Daemons. I like them as a faction-without needing to take Marines. (I do mix them, usually-but I shouldn’t be forced to.)


I don't really care. I accept that some people may be unhappy with a necessary change for the greater good of the game. Every change always has people who don't like it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/07 21:15:50


THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in au
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot







 Tyran wrote:
CadianSgtBob wrote:
  Tyran wrote:
That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.


Yep. Bring guns or risk getting crushed. Tanks also shouldn't be locked in combat by infantry units, if a tank gets surrounded by infantry it just drives over them like they don't even exist and continues fighting.
You are aware that there are factions like Daemons that barely have guns, right?

In fact I'm pretty sure Space Marines ripping apart tanks in melee is a part of the lore, and the same goes for all the walkers and monsters in the game. A tank getting surrounded by an Ork mob or a Tyranid swarm is usually a very dead tank (Tyranids in particular are known to immobilize tanks by throwing their bodies into the internal parts of the tracks).

The issue is at the moment is that tanks get destroyed very easily.
Demons and nids have plenty of medium and large monsters that can take on a tank, why bemoan that their infantry can't? Besides nuds swarming and immobilising a tank by throwing vast numbers into the literal meat grinder sounds like a tactic ill suited to tabletop play. If you ad an immbolisination mechanic yeah sure, but you'd still be tasking your bigger creature to dealing with the then static bunker.

Tanks are covered in armour. Could besaid in a basic sense they are made out of the stuff. Armour stops catastrophic damage being rendered to the vehicle and to the crew. They are also pretty robust item. To knock a tank out you need to deliver exsplosive force into the crew compartment, kill all crew members or set fire to the fuel or ammo. Everything else is going to immobilise it or be highly inefficent. And if the thing is imobilised its still an amoured box. Its still a bunker that can shoot. What is more what is whacking armour with hand weapons going to do? If a russ was made that flimsy you'd think that autocannon fire would shred straight through the vehicle from the front and sides. If a marine or ork can remove buckled plates of armour with their hands battle cannon shells should blow through intact plates with ease and explode within the vehicle essentially oneshotting it. But marines and orks get bombs, krak grenades, mrlta bombs, rokkit llaunchers, missile launchers, and las cannons, why the heck should they be able to melee swarm a vehicle as well? What woulf it actually achieve without things like AT grenades that should be pretty common.

   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





CadianSgtBob wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
* The possibility that my opponent will bring a skew list where their army contains a lot of tanks exists. Such lists would set the value of X very high.

And here's the root of the problem: the ability to bring skew lists. If you get rid of knights as an independent faction, go back to the 5th edition FOC, remove vehicle squadrons, and go back to only troops being able to score objectives you force more balanced TAC lists. Even if you can theoretically figure out a way to bring nothing but vehicles (probably in a small game where the FOC isn't as restrictive) you'll still lose every game because you can't score VP. And a more realistic tank-heavy list is going to have 3-4 true tanks at most, the rest of the list is going to be light tanks and transports that are much easier to kill without the strongest anti-tank weapons.

Respectfully, I see a few problems here.
1. The FOC had problems of its own. In addition to being less fluffy for some armies, requiring a greater troop tax of some armies than others, and failing to support certain army themes without extra rules, it also didn't prevent people from taking skew lists.
2. Only scoring with troops also created problems. It compounded the troop tax issue and rewarded armies with cheap or durable troops. If your troops weren't cheap or powerful enough to be worth spamming, games often devolved into seeing whether or not you could keep your troops alive long enough for end game scoring which in turn meant that your troops often ended up hiding all game rather than contributing.
3. I'd argue that the current game actually encourages "balanced TAC" lists pretty well and that making the rules reward tank spam and make troops worse at killing tanks would actually result in more skewed (and less diverse) list building.

I don't mean this as an attack, but it kind of seems like you've got your nostalgia goggles on or that the armies you like to play happened to do really well under the 5th edition rules.

* Bonus point: sometimes it's fun to run a themed army list, but not all themes lend themselves to having a lot of anti-tank. In the current rules, such a theme army might struggle against enemy tanks, but they'd still be allowed to fight/interact/play the game. If we make tanks immune to non-anti-tank, our theme army is much more likely to result in an unenjoyable game due to non-interactivity.


I don't think this is true in any meaningful way. The ability to wound anything on a 6 is maybe psychologically reassuring to some people but in reality a "thematic" list with no anti-tank threats is just going to get wiped off the table by a tank-heavy skew list. You might plink off a few wounds before getting tabled but it's not going to make any real difference in the final outcome.

I'd argue that the psychological factor is a meaningful one given that it can directly impact the player's perceived game experience. To clarify, I'm also not necessarily talking about a list with "no anti-tank threats," as you put it. Just a list whose theme encourages taking fewer units that contribute towards X. If I want to run a thematic striking scorpions shrine list, for instance, I might want to field three squads of striking scorpions. Which in 5e terms would be heresy because it would mean I wasn't fielding my mandatory fire dragon squads.

And unless you let enemy units opt out of attacking, this would increase tank melee lethality by quite a bit which would then need to cost points.

I would be happy to get rid of tank melee entirely. Bring back an ability like tank shock, where in the movement phase you can smash into a bunch of infantry and force them to fall back out of the way, but otherwise tanks don't have an engagement range or make melee attacks. If you don't wish to attack the tank you can just decline to do so.

(Obviously tanks with actual melee weapons would have rules for using them.)

See, I remember the tank shock rules being the 40k equivalent of D&D 3.5's grappling rules. Which is to say that they were convoluted, confusing, generally people avoided using them to save everyone the headache. Between this and the points above, I'm guessing you played an imperial army (probably IG) in 5th edition, Bob?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
CadianSgtBob wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
 JNAProductions wrote:
“The lore is wrong! That’s not how physics work,” is not the argument you think it is.


In your opinion. In my opinion it's a great argument and some bits of lore need to change.

And, not that you care, but I play Daemons. I like them as a faction-without needing to take Marines. (I do mix them, usually-but I shouldn’t be forced to.)


I don't really care. I accept that some people may be unhappy with a necessary change for the greater good of the game. Every change always has people who don't like it.

May have to agree to disagree here. As I understand it, your desired changes in this thread seem like they would (re)introduce a lot of problems without much upside beyond satisfying your personal beliefs on how tanks ought to behave when being wailed on by super soldiers and aliens.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 OldMate wrote:
What is more what is whacking armour with hand weapons going to do? If a russ was made that flimsy you'd think that autocannon fire would shred straight through the vehicle from the front and sides. If a marine or ork can remove buckled plates of armour with their hands battle cannon shells should blow through intact plates with ease and explode within the vehicle essentially oneshotting it. But marines and orks get bombs, krak grenades, mrlta bombs, rokkit llaunchers, missile launchers, and las cannons, why the heck should they be able to melee swarm a vehicle as well? What woulf it actually achieve without things like AT grenades that should be pretty common.


Grenades are in a mechanically weird place right now, but I've always interpreted melee vs tanks to include their use. When imperial infantry charge a tank in 40k and take some wounds off of it, I interpret that to be the result of them lobbing grenades into its path or wedging explosives into its treads, turrets, and any other fragile-looking bits. They're not pistol whipping metal plates, but the might be shooting into fire points or shooting bolt pistols at access hatches. S4 models might be manually bending gun barrels to prevent weapons from firing or cause misfires that harm the crew.

Basically, I picture something like this, but with super powers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-ThGB8mP5M

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/07/07 23:44:06



ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in mx
Towering Hierophant Bio-Titan




Mexico

 OldMate wrote:

The issue is at the moment is that tanks get destroyed very easily.
Demons and nids have plenty of medium and large monsters that can take on a tank, why bemoan that their infantry can't? Besides nuds swarming and immobilising a tank by throwing vast numbers into the literal meat grinder sounds like a tactic ill suited to tabletop play. If you ad an immbolisination mechanic yeah sure, but you'd still be tasking your bigger creature to dealing with the then static bunker.

Tanks are covered in armour. Could besaid in a basic sense they are made out of the stuff. Armour stops catastrophic damage being rendered to the vehicle and to the crew. They are also pretty robust item. To knock a tank out you need to deliver exsplosive force into the crew compartment, kill all crew members or set fire to the fuel or ammo. Everything else is going to immobilise it or be highly inefficent. And if the thing is imobilised its still an amoured box. Its still a bunker that can shoot. What is more what is whacking armour with hand weapons going to do? If a russ was made that flimsy you'd think that autocannon fire would shred straight through the vehicle from the front and sides. If a marine or ork can remove buckled plates of armour with their hands battle cannon shells should blow through intact plates with ease and explode within the vehicle essentially oneshotting it. But marines and orks get bombs, krak grenades, mrlta bombs, rokkit llaunchers, missile launchers, and las cannons, why the heck should they be able to melee swarm a vehicle as well? What woulf it actually achieve without things like AT grenades that should be pretty common.

Tanks are covered in armor, but most of that armor is usually concentrated on the front facing of the vehicle. In fact that kinda is the whole point of this thread.

I mean, even during 5th it wasn't impossible for a horde unit to glance a vehicle in melee as long as the horde unit in question had S4 and the vehicle in question had a rear armor value of 10 (most tanks had rear AV of 10).

IIRC GW even noted that the "melee always targets rear" was to represent ripping hatches off and other weak points, and to be blunt 40k tanks are full of weak points like sponsons and hull mounted weapons (really if we really want tank armor realism, there should be a rule that sponsons and hull weapons reduce the armor of the side they are mounted on).

Also my issue with Bob's argument was making tanks 6s to be hit in melee, which is silly.

If a Space Marine player spent the points in power fists or thunder hammers, they should get to wreck a tank if they managed to get into melee with it.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2022/07/08 00:27:34


 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 Tyran wrote:
Also my issue with Bob's argument was making tanks 6s to be hit in melee, which is silly.

If a Space Marine player spent the points in power fists or thunder hammers, they should get to wreck a tank if they managed to get into melee with it.


Why? It worked just fine in previous editions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote:
Respectfully, I see a few problems here.
1. The FOC had problems of its own. In addition to being less fluffy for some armies, requiring a greater troop tax of some armies than others, and failing to support certain army themes without extra rules, it also didn't prevent people from taking skew lists.
2. Only scoring with troops also created problems. It compounded the troop tax issue and rewarded armies with cheap or durable troops. If your troops weren't cheap or powerful enough to be worth spamming, games often devolved into seeing whether or not you could keep your troops alive long enough for end game scoring which in turn meant that your troops often ended up hiding all game rather than contributing.
3. I'd argue that the current game actually encourages "balanced TAC" lists pretty well and that making the rules reward tank spam and make troops worse at killing tanks would actually result in more skewed (and less diverse) list building.


1) Was it perfect? Maybe not. But it was certainly better than the "ignore slot limits, take whatever you like" that followed it. And it did a lot to minimize the ability to take skew lists, especially if you also remove vehicle squadrons from all but the lightest of vehicles (Sentinels, Piranhas, etc).

2) That's a balance issue with certain troops units, not the concept of only troops scoring. I'd be fine with balance adjustments to the individual units to fix this. And the progressive scoring system of 9th edition's standard missions eliminates the "hide your token troops until the end" problem since you have to get out and score VP as aggressively as possible.

3) By coincidence, maybe, not by design. GW sometimes manages to have a meta where there's enough diversity in powerful units that you are encouraged to take a somewhat diverse range of stuff. But when there's a single obvious winner you get stuff like Tau crisis spam, Tyranid MC spam, etc, and there's nothing stopping you from going all-in on a heavily skewed list concept. It's just too easy to get more detachment slots to bring more copies of the thing you want to spam. Contrast that with a proper FOC and no vehicle squadrons, where true tanks would only be available in your heavy support slots. That's a maximum of three AV13-14 tanks, maybe 4-5 if you have a HQ tank commander option and you burn both your HQ slots on it.

I'd argue that the psychological factor is a meaningful one given that it can directly impact the player's perceived game experience. To clarify, I'm also not necessarily talking about a list with "no anti-tank threats," as you put it. Just a list whose theme encourages taking fewer units that contribute towards X. If I want to run a thematic striking scorpions shrine list, for instance, I might want to field three squads of striking scorpions. Which in 5e terms would be heresy because it would mean I wasn't fielding my mandatory fire dragon squads.


Why are you limited to fire dragons? You have plenty of other units that can kill tanks, or at least should be able to kill tanks. Why not take a trio of Fire Prisms and arm your Wave Serpents with lances, if you don't want to spend any of your elite slots on anti-tank units? The only lists that would really suffer here would be deliberate stupidity like "I took nothing but basic guardsmen with lasguns lol", and do we really care about the psychological factor with lists that are deliberately made to be non-functional?

See, I remember the tank shock rules being the 40k equivalent of D&D 3.5's grappling rules. Which is to say that they were convoluted, confusing, generally people avoided using them to save everyone the headache. Between this and the points above, I'm guessing you played an imperial army (probably IG) in 5th edition, Bob?


I played guard, yeah, but I don't remember tank shock being all that complicated. And I'm certainly not committed to that particular set of rules, I just think that something like it would be a better mechanic than the weird melee mechanic tanks currently have.

May have to agree to disagree here. As I understand it, your desired changes in this thread seem like they would (re)introduce a lot of problems without much upside beyond satisfying your personal beliefs on how tanks ought to behave when being wailed on by super soldiers and aliens.


Yes, my changes are because I want to see the rules match the fluff. I'm not sure why this is a bad thing?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/07/08 02:17:21


THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in mx
Towering Hierophant Bio-Titan




Mexico

CadianSgtBob wrote:
 Tyran wrote:
Also my issue with Bob's argument was making tanks 6s to be hit in melee, which is silly.

If a Space Marine player spent the points in power fists or thunder hammers, they should get to wreck a tank if they managed to get into melee with it.


Why? It worked just fine in previous editions.


The way you phrased it? No.
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 Tyran wrote:

The way you phrased it? No.


Why not? Plenty of tanks were killed in melee back then. Are you afraid that you won't get guaranteed kills just because you made a successful charge?

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

CadianSgtBob wrote:
 Tyran wrote:

The way you phrased it? No.


Why not? Plenty of tanks were killed in melee back then. Are you afraid that you won't get guaranteed kills just because you made a successful charge?
If a Sentinel has 2 Hull Points (or whatever you want to call it) and AV 10, you'd need 18 attacks with a S8 Powerfist to kill it.

Does that seem reasonable? That a 5-man squad of Vanguard Veterans, all armed with Powerfists, would on average FAIL to kill a single Sentinel in close combat?

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in mx
Towering Hierophant Bio-Titan




Mexico

CadianSgtBob wrote:
 Tyran wrote:

The way you phrased it? No.


Why not? Plenty of tanks were killed in melee back then. Are you afraid that you won't get guaranteed kills just because you made a successful charge?

I mean, the way it worked in previous editions wasn't how you phrased it. A tank needed to go at its max speed (and thus be unable to fire weapons) to need 6s to be hit.
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 Tyran wrote:
I mean, the way it worked in previous editions wasn't how you phrased it. A tank needed to go at its max speed (and thus be unable to fire weapons) to need 6s to be hit.


I'm probably thinking of Tau/Eldar then, where all of the tanks were either fast or counted as fast for shooting purposes. Although moving tanks were definitely not hit as easily as stationary ones.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 JNAProductions wrote:
If a Sentinel has 2 Hull Points (or whatever you want to call it) and AV 10, you'd need 18 attacks with a S8 Powerfist to kill it.

Does that seem reasonable? That a 5-man squad of Vanguard Veterans, all armed with Powerfists, would on average FAIL to kill a single Sentinel in close combat?


15 attacks, you mean. Hitting on 6s, glancing on a 2+, possibly fewer attacks if you roll that wrecked or explodes result. And walkers fought with normal WS back then (and fought back), so for a 2 HP conventional vehicle you're talking about something more like a Piranha. And yeah, I think it's fair that it's really hard to do anything to a skimmer as it flashes past at 100mph. You get only a fleeting moment to attack it and if your swing isn't perfect you miss by a mile.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/07/08 02:46:35


THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

CadianSgtBob wrote:
 Tyran wrote:
I mean, the way it worked in previous editions wasn't how you phrased it. A tank needed to go at its max speed (and thus be unable to fire weapons) to need 6s to be hit.


I'm probably thinking of Tau/Eldar then, where all of the tanks were either fast or counted as fast for shooting purposes. Although moving tanks were definitely not hit as easily as stationary ones.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 JNAProductions wrote:
If a Sentinel has 2 Hull Points (or whatever you want to call it) and AV 10, you'd need 18 attacks with a S8 Powerfist to kill it.

Does that seem reasonable? That a 5-man squad of Vanguard Veterans, all armed with Powerfists, would on average FAIL to kill a single Sentinel in close combat?


15 attacks, you mean. Hitting on 6s, glancing on a 2+, possibly fewer attacks if you roll that wrecked or explodes result. And walkers fought with normal WS back then (and fought back), so for a 2 HP conventional vehicle you're talking about something more like a Piranha. And yeah, I think it's fair that it's really hard to do anything to a skimmer as it flashes past at 100mph. You get only a fleeting moment to attack it and if your swing isn't perfect you miss by a mile.
I did indeed goof the math-I was thinking of a 3+, so that'd be AV 11.

But that's an entire Vanguard Veteran Squad, armed with Power Fists, to kill a 2 HP vehicle.
135 points of melee antitank to kill a flimsy little speeder.

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 JNAProductions wrote:
But that's an entire Vanguard Veteran Squad, armed with Power Fists, to kill a 2 HP vehicle.
135 points of melee antitank to kill a flimsy little speeder.


I'm still not sure why this is a problem. It's not that the "flimsy little speeder" is durable, it's that it's flying around at 100mph and troops on foot have little hope of managing to hit it. That seems entirely accurate to the fluff.

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

CadianSgtBob wrote:
 JNAProductions wrote:
But that's an entire Vanguard Veteran Squad, armed with Power Fists, to kill a 2 HP vehicle.
135 points of melee antitank to kill a flimsy little speeder.


I'm still not sure why this is a problem. It's not that the "flimsy little speeder" is durable, it's that it's flying around at 100mph and troops on foot have little hope of managing to hit it. That seems entirely accurate to the fluff.
A Piranha moves 16".

That's slightly faster than a Space Marine Bike-but it doesn't have the 6" auto-advance rule, meaning it's slower than a bike going all out, usually.

Should a Bike that advances (for 20" of movement) also only be hit on 6s in close combat?

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

 JNAProductions wrote:
A Piranha moves 16".


In game mechanics. In the fluff it has a top speed of 100mph and, unlike the bike, it can fly so it doesn't have to slow down for rough terrain. IMO this is one of these issues with 40k not being proper 28mm scale, the Piranha should be significantly faster than the bikes in rule terms.

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





CadianSgtBob wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote:
Respectfully, I see a few problems here.
1. The FOC had problems of its own. In addition to being less fluffy for some armies, requiring a greater troop tax of some armies than others, and failing to support certain army themes without extra rules, it also didn't prevent people from taking skew lists.
2. Only scoring with troops also created problems. It compounded the troop tax issue and rewarded armies with cheap or durable troops. If your troops weren't cheap or powerful enough to be worth spamming, games often devolved into seeing whether or not you could keep your troops alive long enough for end game scoring which in turn meant that your troops often ended up hiding all game rather than contributing.
3. I'd argue that the current game actually encourages "balanced TAC" lists pretty well and that making the rules reward tank spam and make troops worse at killing tanks would actually result in more skewed (and less diverse) list building.


1) Was it perfect? Maybe not. But it was certainly better than the "ignore slot limits, take whatever you like" that followed it. And it did a lot to minimize the ability to take skew lists, especially if you also remove vehicle squadrons from all but the lightest of vehicles (Sentinels, Piranhas, etc).

I feel like the rule of three has done a lot more to cut down on spam than the FOC ever did. Especially given how arbitrary battlefield roles are. So even ignoring vehicle squadrons, you had 5e IG putting hellhounds/devildogs/banewolves into FA, various artillery or russes into HS, and then giving chimeras to everyone else. Marines were in a similar position and could even field vehicular HQs (Bjorn, I think that tank upgrade guy, etc.). And of course 'nids could stick MCs into their HQ, Elite, HS, and Troop (tervigon) slots. So from where I stand, the FOC didn't really do any of the good you mentioned but it did come with extra problems.

2) That's a balance issue with certain troops units, not the concept of only troops scoring. I'd be fine with balance adjustments to the individual units to fix this. And the progressive scoring system of 9th edition's standard missions eliminates the "hide your token troops until the end" problem since you have to get out and score VP as aggressively as possible.

It's not so much a problem with specific troops as a problem with the concept of troops in the first place. GW has been wildly inconsistent with what is and is not a troop. Sometimes they're seemingly intentionally cost-ineffective (read: underpowered) units that you have to take as a troops tax. Sometimes they're among the most lethal or durable or cheap units in your codex. So mechanically, what constitutes a troop is all over the place, and narratively, GW only sometimes supports the idea that troops are whatever your subfaction fields the most of. So you end up with winners and losers when you make troops mandatory.

Progressive scoring would avoid making troops hide all game, but it would swap it out with troops getting hunted down immediately so that the winner just becomes whoever scores highest before all their troops die. So again, this ends up favoring cheap or durable troops over squishy or just generally meh troops. Tbf, these problems exist in 40k already, but making FOCs mandatory makes the problems worse.


3) By coincidence, maybe, not by design. GW sometimes manages to have a meta where there's enough diversity in powerful units that you are encouraged to take a somewhat diverse range of stuff. But when there's a single obvious winner you get stuff like Tau crisis spam, Tyranid MC spam, etc, and there's nothing stopping you from going all-in on a heavily skewed list concept. It's just too easy to get more detachment slots to bring more copies of the thing you want to spam. Contrast that with a proper FOC and no vehicle squadrons, where true tanks would only be available in your heavy support slots. That's a maximum of three AV13-14 tanks, maybe 4-5 if you have a HQ tank commander option and you burn both your HQ slots on it.

I think if you're going to bank on a "proper FOC", you probably have to start by defining what units would hypothetically go where. Because historically, units have ended up in some unusual force org slots. AV12 didn't keep dreadnaughts ought of the Elites slot or devil dogs out of the FA slot. Also, I'm less worried about the especially high AV units (AV13-14) and more worried about the AV11+ in general; the units that would be immune to bolters, shurikens, splinters, shootas, etc. In 5e, I could consistently kill a land raider or a couple of battle wagons. What created an issue were the hordes of AV 11-12 tanks that I wasn't allowed to interact with.

But if we're talking list diversity, I definitely don't think of 5e (or 6e or 7e) as glowing examples. Even in editions where formations weren't a thing, many factions tended to be very monobuild.

Why are you limited to fire dragons? You have plenty of other units that can kill tanks, or at least should be able to kill tanks. Why not take a trio of Fire Prisms and arm your Wave Serpents with lances, if you don't want to spend any of your elite slots on anti-tank units? The only lists that would really suffer here would be deliberate stupidity like "I took nothing but basic guardsmen with lasguns lol", and do we really care about the psychological factor with lists that are deliberately made to be non-functional?


At the risk of derailing us into eldar-specific territory...
Spoiler:
Eldar guardians (and thus eldar vehicles) hit on 4+ in 5e, and many of the platforms that could take multiple anti-tank weapons twin-linked those guns. So if you wanted to take a bright lance, you were looking at...
...A guardian squad that ended up being about 100 points for a single BS3 (hit on a 4+) shot or
....a falcon that would spend the whole game stun-locked and/or turbo boosting so that it could land its cargo of dire avengers on an objective on turns 5 or 6 where it would then pray that the game ended. (See: DAVU falcon). Also hits on a 4+. Or
...A war walker squad that wasn't terrible for its cost, but was also AV10 and open-topped and still hit on a 4+. So they'd probably do some decent damage for a turn or two, and then the squad would be dead.
... A wraith lord. Whose bright lances became a single twin-linked shot if you took two of them, so you usually went with a lance and a missile launcher. Not a terrible unit really, but we're talking something like 120ish points (iirc) for two shots that needed a spirit sight babysitter. Also, the wraithlord was T8 (pretty solid), but W3, so they tended to die pretty quickly to missile launchers and lascannons due to the all-or-nothing AP system.
...A wave serpent. Expensive, and fired a single twin-linked lance shot, and wasn't all that durable if you were moving slowly enough to shoot with it. So you tended to spend half the moving flat out to give them a 4+ cover save in an effort to deliver their expensive passengers.
... Oh. Or a vyper. Which was basically a less cost-effective war walker because you only got one anti-tank gun.

Fire prisms were okay, but they were still only hitting every other turn, and the ease with which you could shake/stun a vehicle meant that they tended to spend a lot of the game not shooting. Wraithguard were pretty good anti-tank, but they were also slow, expensive, were a good target for high-strength/good AP weapons, and putting a half-sized squad into a transport (they took up two seats) meant you were putting even more eggs into a very expensive basket. A squad of 5 was something like 200 points after you added in the spiritseer that kept them from freezing up. A squad of 10 (walking across the table) was something like 400 points. You could also field a seer council (to the irritation of everyone you played) who also ended up being something like 300 or 400 points but were crazy durable for the time and could reliably take on pretty much anything. Seer council was one of the spammy monobuild options.

And then you had fire dragons. Who were very killy for their cost, couldn't be stun-locked, and could be hidden in one of those transports that wanted to spend all game flying in circles to avoid being killed. You would drop the dragons off. They would obliterate the one tank you were allowed to point them at. Your opponent would freak out. And then the dragon unit would promptly be declared a priority target and die. So you basically got to kill one enemy tank per fire dragon unit each game, and then you were praying that your bright lances and wych blades could pick up their slack.

tldr; eldar were an expensive, elite army who only had a couple of reliable anti-tank options. So in an edition where parking lots were common, list diversity took a back seat to spamming the decent anti-tank units. And what you're proposing seems like it would be a return to that.


Yes, my changes are because I want to see the rules match the fluff. I'm not sure why this is a bad thing?

Not sure I'd use the word "bad." The problem is that you seem to want the rules to match your very specific interpretation of the fluff (which seems to ignore established canon). And you want to match that fluff interpretation so badly that you seem to be willing to make the game worse (as a game) to do so.


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

He also wants to ignore the fluff when it doesn't match what he views as realisitc.

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

Wyldhunt wrote:
I feel like the rule of three has done a lot more to cut down on spam than the FOC ever did. Especially given how arbitrary battlefield roles are. So even ignoring vehicle squadrons, you had 5e IG putting hellhounds/devildogs/banewolves into FA, various artillery or russes into HS, and then giving chimeras to everyone else. Marines were in a similar position and could even field vehicular HQs (Bjorn, I think that tank upgrade guy, etc.). And of course 'nids could stick MCs into their HQ, Elite, HS, and Troop (tervigon) slots. So from where I stand, the FOC didn't really do any of the good you mentioned but it did come with extra problems.


IMO the problem with Ro3 alone is that there are too many things that escape it. I can take three LRBTs in heavy support (or nine if we still allow squadrons) but then also three Basilisks, three Medusas, three Hydras, three Baneblades, etc. Space marines can take three each of the Gladiator variants (which for some reason aren't a single datasheet), three each of the two Predator variants, three each of the Land raider variants, and three each of the Repulsor variants. A space marine army is going to be way beyond 2000 points before they even come close to running out of different tanks to take. But with a hard limit of three heavy support slots and no vehicle squadrons you get three of those tanks, period, no matter what combination you try to take them in.

And yeah, you'll have stuff outside of heavy support. But if you stick to proper slot discipline it's much less of an issue. A whole bunch of Chimeras on the table isn't a big deal when they're all side AV 10 and require the purchase of an infantry squad to unlock.

It's not so much a problem with specific troops as a problem with the concept of troops in the first place. GW has been wildly inconsistent with what is and is not a troop. Sometimes they're seemingly intentionally cost-ineffective (read: underpowered) units that you have to take as a troops tax. Sometimes they're among the most lethal or durable or cheap units in your codex. So mechanically, what constitutes a troop is all over the place, and narratively, GW only sometimes supports the idea that troops are whatever your subfaction fields the most of. So you end up with winners and losers when you make troops mandatory.


Or we could fix the issue with troops balance so there aren't winners and losers to that degree. Make all troops reasonably balanced in point efficiency terms but always basic infantry with few special rules so that if you want to have any chance of winning you need a healthy investment in basic guardsmen/tactical marines/fire warriors/etc.

I think if you're going to bank on a "proper FOC", you probably have to start by defining what units would hypothetically go where. Because historically, units have ended up in some unusual force org slots. AV12 didn't keep dreadnaughts ought of the Elites slot or devil dogs out of the FA slot. Also, I'm less worried about the especially high AV units (AV13-14) and more worried about the AV11+ in general; the units that would be immune to bolters, shurikens, splinters, shootas, etc. In 5e, I could consistently kill a land raider or a couple of battle wagons. What created an issue were the hordes of AV 11-12 tanks that I wasn't allowed to interact with.


Is AV 11-12 really that much of a problem? Yes, you ignore bolters but you don't ignore autocannons, missile launchers, scatter lasers, etc. I don't care if basic rifles are unable to kill vehicles, the interactivity issue was when you had a bunch of AV 13-14 that only a few specialized weapons could effectively attack and even a lot of supposed anti-tank weapons couldn't even roll dice against it. If true tanks and their AV 13-14 are limited then the only lists that will have a major interactivity problem are the deliberately non-functional ones like "lol, Tau with no ranged weapons". And I don't think any system should ever worry about handling deliberately stupid choices.

tldr; eldar were an expensive, elite army who only had a couple of reliable anti-tank options. So in an edition where parking lots were common, list diversity took a back seat to spamming the decent anti-tank units. And what you're proposing seems like it would be a return to that.


Sure, but those are all unit-specific problems. There's no inherent rule that says a Falcon has to be an ineffective anti-tank unit. It has a lance and a pulse laser, two weapons that are thematically appropriate for killing tanks. We're talking about borrowing some concepts from 5th edition, not returning every unit to its exact 5th edition performance.

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





CadianSgtBob wrote:

IMO the problem with Ro3 alone is that there are too many things that escape it. I can take three LRBTs in heavy support (or nine if we still allow squadrons) but then also three Basilisks, three Medusas, three Hydras, three Baneblades, etc. Space marines can take three each of the Gladiator variants (which for some reason aren't a single datasheet), three each of the two Predator variants, three each of the Land raider variants, and three each of the Repulsor variants. A space marine army is going to be way beyond 2000 points before they even come close to running out of different tanks to take. But with a hard limit of three heavy support slots and no vehicle squadrons you get three of those tanks, period, no matter what combination you try to take them in.

Tbf, that's really mostly an IG/marine problem, and all those loophole units could absolutely stand to be reduced down a handful of datasheets. My dark lance ravager isn't a separate unit from my disintegrator ravager, for instance.

And yeah, you'll have stuff outside of heavy support. But if you stick to proper slot discipline it's much less of an issue. A whole bunch of Chimeras on the table isn't a big deal when they're all side AV 10 and require the purchase of an infantry squad to unlock.

I'd be willing to see what the revised force org role breakdown would look like, but I feel like there's a good chance that any such breakdown is going to run into its own issues. Example: Fluffy Saim-hann lists want to field guardian jetbikes, shining spears, and vypers all in one list with the the guardians making up the bulk of their army. FOC has 3 FA slots. All of those units probably make sense in the FA slot. The current system at least lets the Saim-Hann player field 3 squads of each of those units even if he's probably paying an Outrider tax to do so.

It's not so much a problem with specific troops as a problem with the concept of troops in the first place. GW has been wildly inconsistent with what is and is not a troop. Sometimes they're seemingly intentionally cost-ineffective (read: underpowered) units that you have to take as a troops tax. Sometimes they're among the most lethal or durable or cheap units in your codex. So mechanically, what constitutes a troop is all over the place, and narratively, GW only sometimes supports the idea that troops are whatever your subfaction fields the most of. So you end up with winners and losers when you make troops mandatory.


Or we could fix the issue with troops balance so there aren't winners and losers to that degree. Make all troops reasonably balanced in point efficiency terms but always basic infantry with few special rules so that if you want to have any chance of winning you need a healthy investment in basic guardsmen/tactical marines/fire warriors/etc.

This has been discussed in depth in threads dedicated to the topic, but basically, what you're describing doesn't really work. You've got custodes and harlequins whose troops are the equivalent of other factions' elites or even HQs. You've got tactical marines who are basically distinguished from devastators by the fact that they have worse weapon options and are thus just plain worse. You've got the entire eldar troop section that has generally been seen as a tax with the possible exception of right this moment when the army is riding a new codex high. (But even there, you'd probably rather take avengers over guardians if you still had the option, and rangers are kind of barely holding on by virtue of being cheap, easy to hide, and good at scoring points.)

Terminators are elites in one book, but better-and-also-psychic terminators are troops in another. And those troop terminators are apparently filling the same battlefield role as rangers, guardsmen, and (until recently) ripper swarms. So you can't really categorize troops based on their qualities, and you can't really balance some troops internally without overhauling what they are because "what they are" is "a worse version of a different unit that doesn't satisfy a troop tax."


Is AV 11-12 really that much of a problem? Yes, you ignore bolters but you don't ignore autocannons, missile launchers, scatter lasers, etc. I don't care if basic rifles are unable to kill vehicles, the interactivity issue was when you had a bunch of AV 13-14 that only a few specialized weapons could effectively attack and even a lot of supposed anti-tank weapons couldn't even roll dice against it.

If I field a vanilla list with a bit of everything and the army across from me is a wall of AV11+, then none of my S4 or worse weapons are allowed to interact with that wall. They can finish off the troop tax and HQ tax units once the transports are popped, but they can't meaningfully engage with 95% of my opponent's army. That's how things were in 5th edition, and it sucked if you weren't the guy playing the parking lot. >_>

tldr; eldar were an expensive, elite army who only had a couple of reliable anti-tank options. So in an edition where parking lots were common, list diversity took a back seat to spamming the decent anti-tank units. And what you're proposing seems like it would be a return to that.


Sure, but those are all unit-specific problems. There's no inherent rule that says a Falcon has to be an ineffective anti-tank unit. It has a lance and a pulse laser, two weapons that are thematically appropriate for killing tanks. We're talking about borrowing some concepts from 5th edition, not returning every unit to its exact 5th edition performance.

That's true, but the eldar-specific woes were meant to illustrate the broader point that encouraging a parking lot meta means that you punish people for taking non-anti-tank options. If you can take a flamer or a meltagun, you'll always take the meltagun and leave the flamer at home. If you're an eldar player, you'll leave the striking scorpions and banshees on the shelf because you need more dragons to pop tanks. If you're a 'cron player, you'll just mentally edit tesla carbines out of your 'dex because you'll need gauss to glance tanks to death.

You're writing a 2,000 point list. X represents the amount of anti-tank you'll need comfortably play against a parking lot. To reach X, you'll need to spend Y% of your points on anti-tank, Z% of your points on your mandatory HQ and troop tax (which might not be contributing towards X if your troops don't do anti-tank), and then you 100-Y-Z is how many points are left over to take units that don't do anti-tank but you want to field anyway.

So for a given army what do you think the value of Y is if you're facing a hard skew parking lot list? For that same army, what is the cheapest combination of mandatory HQ and troops you can take? (The HQ and troops may or may not count towards X). The remaining points are what you can spend on hormagaunts or kroot or what have you. In the current system, every unit in your army contributes towards X because everything can hurt a tank. Some units contribute less towards X than others, but it all goes towards X. In your system, only units that can hurt tanks count towards X.

In the past, GW tried to balance this out by making vehicles die relatively easily to weapons that contributed towards X. So you had the Hull Point system where glancing hits plinked vehicles to death (and parking lot players hated it). You had editions where a single meltagun shot had pretty good chances of blowing up a leman russ, but your opponent was basically only allowed to interact with your army using his meltaguns (and people hated it especially if their army didn't have meltaguns.) In 8th, GW said, "Okay, yeah. It sort of sucks when half your army can't hurt your opponent's wall of tanks. Let's allow everything to hurt everything, but anti-infantry guns will only take out a small sliver of a tank's health." That's basically what we've stuck with, and I personally prefer that to the other systems we've had in the past. Yes, the power sword that can cut through a terminator is able to hurt a russ'; just don't expect to whittle your way to the engine block in a hurry.


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Cadia

Wyldhunt wrote:
Tbf, that's really mostly an IG/marine problem, and all those loophole units could absolutely stand to be reduced down a handful of datasheets. My dark lance ravager isn't a separate unit from my disintegrator ravager, for instance.


It's a pretty much everything but Eldar and their AV12-only problem. Tau can take four Hammerheads and three Sky Rays, orks have three each of three different Battlewagons, Tyranids have a ton of different heavy support monsters. Are all those units good currently? Of course not. But if they ever are and you want a skew list there are a lot of options for taking nothing but tanks and making Ro3 irrelevant.

I'd be willing to see what the revised force org role breakdown would look like, but I feel like there's a good chance that any such breakdown is going to run into its own issues. Example: Fluffy Saim-hann lists want to field guardian jetbikes, shining spears, and vypers all in one list with the the guardians making up the bulk of their army. FOC has 3 FA slots. All of those units probably make sense in the FA slot. The current system at least lets the Saim-Hann player field 3 squads of each of those units even if he's probably paying an Outrider tax to do so.


Obviously this is all hypothetical and I'm not really familiar with the exact list of units that is acceptable for the theme, but IMO a variant army list giving guardian jetbikes as troops at the expense of being able to take certain other units (and possibly other balancing factors) would probably be the best way to handle it. Or maybe each phoenix lord could take a no-slot command squad of their specific unit. But for most of the game the FOC is a pretty straightforward solution as-is.

This has been discussed in depth in threads dedicated to the topic, but basically, what you're describing doesn't really work.


It hasn't worked but that doesn't mean it can't work. Yes, some factions have troops that are equivalent to the elites in other factions but they should still be the basic infantry relative to their own faction. And those factions should pay an appropriate price for the scoring buff on their upgraded troops. Or maybe you do a bit of re-balancing to the units, simplifying the elite troops a bit and giving other units in the codex some better tools to compensate.

(And TBH gold marines should just be removed from the game. As a concept they're broken and putting them into the game required some major retcons that took away too much of what made them interesting.)

If I field a vanilla list with a bit of everything and the army across from me is a wall of AV11+, then none of my S4 or worse weapons are allowed to interact with that wall. They can finish off the troop tax and HQ tax units once the transports are popped, but they can't meaningfully engage with 95% of my opponent's army. That's how things were in 5th edition, and it sucked if you weren't the guy playing the parking lot. >_>


If 95% of your opponent's army is a wall of AV11+ then you put troops on objectives and automatically win because those AV11+ boxes can't score anything. More realistically a wall of AV 11+ is going to be 50-60% of your opponent's list, and each time you kill one of those light tanks with your anti-tank weapons you get a nice pile of targets for your lower-strength stuff.

That's true, but the eldar-specific woes were meant to illustrate the broader point that encouraging a parking lot meta means that you punish people for taking non-anti-tank options. If you can take a flamer or a meltagun, you'll always take the meltagun and leave the flamer at home. If you're an eldar player, you'll leave the striking scorpions and banshees on the shelf because you need more dragons to pop tanks. If you're a 'cron player, you'll just mentally edit tesla carbines out of your 'dex because you'll need gauss to glance tanks to death.


But that's only if you allow the extreme skew lists. If heavy support, where your actual tanks are taken, is capped at three models period and you need basic infantry to score objectives then you absolutely need those other options. Every list will have lots of infantry targets (or auto-lose), and even the vehicle-heavy lists will have primarily AV10-11 targets where your mid-strength weapons are relevant.

The problem with one-dimensional weapon choices is in the exact opposite situation: with the removal of AV you effectively combine anti-tank weapons with anti-MEQ weapons and take plasma guns on everything. High volume of fire mid-strength weapons are the ideal tool for pretty much everything. Melta is irrelevant because plasma does the same damage but divided over two shots for better anti-MEQ, vanquisher cannons are just battle cannons but worse, railguns didn't become relevant until GW added mortal wounds to kill multiple infantry models with one shot, Manticores went from being a specialist anti-tank weapon that sucked against marines to a generalist "kill every target type" balance mistake, etc. With the AV mechanic restored you regain the design space to have mid-strength marine killers that aren't great against vehicles and high-strength tank killers with AP 4 or worse so they don't effortlessly kill elite infantry.
,
In 8th, GW said, "Okay, yeah. It sort of sucks when half your army can't hurt your opponent's wall of tanks. Let's allow everything to hurt everything, but anti-infantry guns will only take out a small sliver of a tank's health." That's basically what we've stuck with, and I personally prefer that to the other systems we've had in the past. Yes, the power sword that can cut through a terminator is able to hurt a russ'; just don't expect to whittle your way to the engine block in a hurry.


But I don't really see the value here. The lists that will struggle with a FOC-limited game with AV, deliberately stupid lists with no anti-tank threats in a game with tanks, will still auto-lose in standard 9th edition games. Does it really matter if a comedy Tau list with no ranged weapons can theoretically plink away a couple of wounds before getting tabled 100-0? Or a list with nothing but conscripts and lasguns? At some point you just have to say no, that's not a competently built list and I don't care if the person playing it feels bad before they lose.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/07/08 07:48:18


THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
 
Forum Index » 40K Proposed Rules
Go to: