Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
The variety of solutions to cover (and the need for special rules) highlight the problems with the core system. Indeed, that's why GW always has to paper over something with special rules.

But wargaming started out as a simulation, a training and planning aid that allowed you to test options and had rules to try to reflect the constraints of reality. The more you alter the way rules interact with reality, the weirder things get.

Which is where we are.

Cover and armor saves loom large in this discussion because they're actually easy to understand and equally easy to break. GW is all over the place on it and the game see-saws with whatever take they try. Oddly, they used to have a pretty decent understanding of how it should work.

When we look at cover (which in GW speak also includes concealment), it's primary purpose is to obscure the target, thereby making it harder to it. It can also protect people hiding behind it from harm.

The easiest way to do this in a GW d6 universe is a negative to hit modifier. It provides a consistent benefit (a universal tactical rule, if you will) to all troops, regardless of how much armor they are wearing.

Using cover to boost armor is also reasonable, because incoming fire that hits it will lose energy. Obviously, it's better to be in power armor than a t-shirt, but it's beneficial either way.

The old AP system had many problems, but the biggest was that it was at odds with reality. A marine in a sandbagged trench is just better protected than one standing on a tennis court. Period. The issue we're having is that GW can't figure out which form of combat should be dominant. Are the weapons of the 41st millennium smooth-bores designed for an opening volley followed by a charge or are they capable of sweeping the battlefield?

It can go either way, and the core tension in the game is that GW cannot pin down where they want that equilibrium point to be, that is to say where the center point is on a line between melee and missile combat.

What GW has done instead is create a scatter diagram with both an x and y axis and every army had a different place on it. There's a center on the chart, but it's meaningless because all the dots keep shifting from edition to edition (and even within them).

Tsagualsa wrote:
Imho the solution via a to-hit-modifier is superior on all counts, because it checks all of the following boxes:

- It is always better for you to be in cover than not to be in cover
- 'Squishier' units benefit relatively more from cover than 'harder' units, because cover prevents a percentage of hits, and any given hit has greater potential to hurt 'squishies'
- Specialized weapons (auto-hit, fixed-hit etc.) and troops (Veterans with high to-hit probabilities, snipers etc.) can be used to mitigate and overcome cover
- Unlike a solution that works via AP or Strength, this opens up another axis along which weapons and units can be differentiated: weapons that are good against armour are not automatically also good against cover etc.

Of course, some of that could be solved in a different way, by weapon traits, keywords etc., and there are edge cases where it kind of breaks down, but that's the gist of it as i see it.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Removing USRs was the best and most wasted opportunity for adding a depth to the game that would have been phenomenal.

lol, no.

lol, yes.


People complain all the damn time about the "lore inconsistencies" and crap like that for weirdness. Things like the Phobos Infiltrators blocking Deep Strike from Daemons or the Webway tended to be griped about...or the whole nonsense about people crying about weapons ignoring invulnerable saves of Daemons or the like.

That's not an automatic result of USRs, that results from implementing USRs in a half-assed and dumb way. If you put actual effort to it nothing prevents you from having e.g. keywords and variables attached to USRs, and then have stuff like 'Ignore invulnerable saves [Warp]' or 'Feel no pain [4+]' whatever.

Tsagualsa wrote:
Imho the solution via a to-hit-modifier is superior on all counts, because it checks all of the following boxes:

- It is always better for you to be in cover than not to be in cover
- 'Squishier' units benefit relatively more from cover than 'harder' units, because cover prevents a percentage of hits, and any given hit has greater potential to hurt 'squishies'
- Specialized weapons (auto-hit, fixed-hit etc.) and troops (Veterans with high to-hit probabilities, snipers etc.) can be used to mitigate and overcome cover
- Unlike a solution that works via AP or Strength, this opens up another axis along which weapons and units can be differentiated: weapons that are good against armour are not automatically also good against cover etc.

Of course, some of that could be solved in a different way, by weapon traits, keywords etc., and there are edge cases where it kind of breaks down, but that's the gist of it as i see it.

Spoletta wrote:
Yeah that's pretty much the idea.

A bolter againt a guardman in light cover would wound on 4+, or 5+ in heavy cover.

Marines trying to bolter each other in heavy cover would spend the game doing that if one does not take the initiative (wound on 6+)

 catbarf wrote:

But it does create significantly different outcomes depending on what the firing platform looks like, and circles back to the omnipresent issue of this game being unable to handle stacking modifiers without breaking wide open because there are lots of ways to get penalties and basically no ways to get bonuses. I'd be okay with representing cover as a to-hit penalty in a system where range, crossfire, spotting, etc could apply other modifiers, giving you a way to work around the problem. As it stands, GW has to come up with inelegant solutions like a flat modifier cap of -1 to stop stacked penalties from rendering BS4+ armies obsolete.

Which is why, frankly, I think I'd just prefer cover be a separate save that can be taken in addition to armor saves. Benefits everyone equally, can be impactful without breaking any armies, and makes cover-ignoring weapons more relevant.

 Vankraken wrote:
The superior solution is to let cover grant a separate save (like FNP) as it applies damage mitigation equally. Being in heavy cover giving 50% damage mitigation (4+ save) gets applied just the same to a Terminator as it does a Grot. You don't get the weird math issues of going from a 3+ to a 2+ save doubling the effective amount of protection while going from nothing to a 6+ gives a very tiny bump in durability.

To hit mods screw over Orks because a single down tick makes their effective shooting cut in half, all or nothing (imo the next best option due to it's sorta rock paper scissors tactical gameplay) has odd situations like Marines being equally vulnerable to lasguns when in ruins or out in the open, while the current add to armor system overly benefits heavy armor and makes AP effectively ignore cover against light armored enemies.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Removing USRs was the best and most wasted opportunity for adding a depth to the game that would have been phenomenal.

I love how you are always on the side of the things that are the worst ideas.

"Points are bad!"
"USRs are bad!"
"PLASMA GUNS!!!"

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
The superior solution is to let cover grant a separate save (like FNP) as it applies damage mitigation equally. Being in heavy cover giving 50% damage mitigation (4+ save) gets applied just the same to a Terminator as it does a Grot. You don't get the weird math issues of going from a 3+ to a 2+ save doubling the effective amount of protection while going from nothing to a 6+ gives a very tiny bump in durability.

To hit mods screw over Orks because a single down tick makes their effective shooting cut in half, all or nothing (imo the next best option due to it's sorta rock paper scissors tactical gameplay) has odd situations like Marines being equally vulnerable to lasguns when in ruins or out in the open, while the current add to armor system overly benefits heavy armor and makes AP effectively ignore cover against light armored enemies.

The downside of creating a separate cover save roll is that it can vastly increase the dice rolling in a game that already involved too much of it. Roll to hit, roll for cover, roll to wound, roll save. Geez that's a lot of work.

The Orks are a problem because GW can't decide what to do with them due to the limited design space conferred by d6 shooting dice. They lowered their BS in 3rd, but then gave them extra dice and re-rolls to make up for it. No idea how they work now, but as I said, there's nothing to stop GW from adding positive modifiers for certain situations.

For example, Orks could everywhere and always use fragmenting ammo (they love them splodey things!). Low AP, but +1 to hit against models in cover.

Spoletta wrote:
I feel that people sometimes forget that this game has a 2 step wounding process.
Yes a cover save based on armor bonus is bound to have issues since applying it to a 3+ or a 7+ has wildly different effects...

So why not having it affect Strength?
Keyword: Cover(x)
Attacks with ranged weapons against units in cover of this terrain element resolve as if their strength was x lower.

Done, now it is a nice bonus for both T3, T4 and T5 profiles, which are the typical profiles you expect to find in cover.
At the same time it can be exploited in a tank fight to give some more survivability against enemy anti tank weapons (-2S does a lot to mess up S7 8 and 9 weapons). Makes strength values of 10, 11 and 12 more important because they can punch a vehicle through concrete.
Still makes it so that a wall does not protect a guardman from a lascannon.