Switch Theme:

Thoughts on a possible way to fix vehicles ... aka give vehicles a damn armour save  [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 gb
Regular Dakkanaut




I've been back into 40k for about a year now after having left in early 4th edition. I got back playing mostly skitarii and admech and as such except for the cheapest vehicles in the game, the chicken walker ironstriders, my main experience was with onager dune crawlers.

I love the onager, both model and rules wise. For what seems like a fair price it's well equipped with it's base weapon capable of doing serious damage to everything but air craft quite reliably when used right. While one of the weapon upgrades is a bit crap both the neutron laser and icarus array are perfect for what they're meant to do.

The onager also has the great benefit of while having mediocre all round armor (12) it's invun of 6+ can be increased to 4+ when you take 3 in a squadron which makes I'd say makes them about the right survivability in game.

Recently i dug out some ancient black templars and after getting some new upgrades went about trying some lists, being templars, land raiders, especially crusaders and redeemers, are really useful so in my first 2000pt game i broke out out of each filled with assault goodness and wasnt too worried when i ended up going 2nd ... just to watch a basic guard lascannon team get a lucky shot off, blow up my crusader so the 15 strong squad inside + warlord eat battle cannons and evaporate.

By the end of that shooting phase the redeemer was immobilized on 1 hull point too and as such useless ... at the start of my 1st turn i was playing a 1250pt game instead of 2000 because apparently the best tanks the elite forces of the imperium can field are made of tracing paper now.

Meanwhile my spindly little onager squadron would have a 50/50 chance to just shrug off that lascannon shot.

So i got to thinking ...



THE FIX

When we shoot stuff other than vehicles we usually make at least 3 rolls, to hit, to wound and to save.

When we shoot vehicles there are only 2 rolls, equivalent of to hit and to wound, the 3rd is just to see what happens.

Doesn't seem right does it?

The answer I've seen thrown around a lot is giving vehicles a toughness value ... forget that, having something as squishy as a gaunt, grot or human at one end of the scale and land raiders, monoliths and all that at the other is never going to work.

We already have 2 perfectly good rolls for vehicles, to hit as usual and then armour penetration which is effectively to wound. A save would effectively solve the problem. Make it effectively an invun because anything short of a titan weapon is still going to be resisted by the armour of most vehicles - even a lascannon or neutron laser would take some time to cut through a rhinos plating, never mind a land raider. I'd suggest making AP 1 &2 weapons instead reduce these saves by 2 &1 respectively.


My guess would be save 6+'s for small, light vehicles, such as skitarii ironstriders, sentinels, land speeders, venoms, vypers, warbuggys etc. (most flyers too, more on these later)

5+'s for Taurox's, Ravagers, Onagers, Goliaths, wave serpents, drop pods, killa kans, truks , war walkers etc. (heavy flyers go here, stormravens and the like)

4+'s for anything on a rhino or chimera chassis, tau & necron skimmers. Most walkers here too, normal dreadnoughts, deff dredds, forgefiends, defilers

3+'s are reserved for seriously resilient stuff - Land Raiders, Leman Russ's, knights, mork and gork -anauts, necron flying buildings, battlewagons

Except for FW i don't think anything should get a 2+ to keep the scale standard. There is an argument for necron obelisks/tesserects, lord of skulls and IG super heavies - baneblades and all the variants.


Thinking it through there are a few additions to even stuff out and make everything line up with the fluff.

Anything with a jink has the option to jink or take an armour save as is usual with cover saves.

Open topped vehicles always save on a 6+ to represent the shot flying through the gaps in a drop pod for example.

A second roll equivalent to feel no pain is introduced for some vehicles to represent their varying durability and design. Ork vehicles for example get a 2nd 5+ roll to represent their crazy design meaning having 3 wheels and an engine blown away barely slows them down. Rhinos get a 6+ because with their modular drive-train it doesn't matter if one motor is hit.

A system to negate this second roll would also be logical, for example a warbuggy that takes a direct hit from a thermal cannon isn't going to negate the hit. I believe this would be achieved by saying if an armour penetration roll is exceeded by a certain amount (3 sounds about right) then no 'second saves' are allowed to represent the vehicle being disintegrated by the most powerful weapons. Effectively this does what doubling a models toughness does to other unit types.

There is an argument that vehicles should have different saves depending on armour facing, i like the idea but fear it would add extra hassle to an already bloated ruleset. We do however already need to judge armour facing so it could be easily applied.
The best example of this would be siege vehicles such as vindicators. rock grinders, ironclad dreadnoughts and leman russ demolishers. Vehicles could either have different saves for all facings or have a siege vehicle rule for example that would increase the basic save just on the front facing.
This would also work well for baneblades and other super heavies.

To keep things balanced vehicles that currently have an invun should increase their base save by 1. This keeps the utility of things like 3 onagers in a unit or a knights directional ion shield.

Overall the intention is a system to keep vehicles balanced in their current power but increase their overall survivability and make them line up with fluff again.
I just want to see land raiders and russes at tournaments again... and give armies a way to get into melee without dying - i'm looking at you orks!

I have a load more additions but this is already way too long, i think i have a quite well thought out plan so any questions or comments are welcome.
Just don't start the whole 'here's a reason why my scout sentinels should have a 2+ save' it's just a rough categorization.



SOME MATH-HAMMER

This whole idea started when i was browsing my grey knights codex and it hit me how dreadknights and dreadnoughts should really be the same damn thing.

I started comparing venerable dreadnoughts to a dreadknight with a ranged weapon. Both usually cost 150-160 pts depending on upgrades (yes both can cost much more but as a baseline) both have very similar stat lines in those attributes they share. In melee which is where both really belong they function basically identically while attacking but in defense the dreadknight is far more durable when at least fluff wise it should be equal or the weaker of the two. I think most people will agree with me in saying dreadknights are currently amongst some of the most efficient and powerful units for their points cost in the game.
Taking some scenarios to see what happens under the usual methods and my vehicle save method, when vehicles are hit by ranged weapons assume side armour:

A dreadknight gets hit by a lascannon, it wounds on a 2+, the dreadknight gets a 5++ base. 7/10 time it will take 1 wound out of its 4 and suffer no permanent effects.

A dreadnought gets hit by a lascannon, it glances on a 3+, the dreadnought gets no save. 65% of the time it will take 1 hull point out of its 3. However 50% of its time it will both lose a hull point and suffer damage that negates its effectiveness, 25% of the time it is serious damage that makes the dreadnought near useless, 8% of the time the dreadnought explodes instantly.

Under my system ...

A dreadnought gets hit by a lascannon, it glances on a 3+, the dreadnought gets a 4+ save due to the AP2 lascannon reducing the dreds save by 1.

33% of the time it will lose 1 hull point out of three. 25% of the time it will lose a hull point and take lasting effects, 13% it takes serious damage and 4% of the time it dies instantly.

I think the 2nd is much more realistic and balancing.

Grey Knights - 3500pts
SKitarii - 4000pts
Ad mech - 2000pts
Imperial Knights - 1000pts
Black Templars - 3200pts
Genestealer cults - 1750 
   
Made in gb
Focused Fire Warrior





I may sound like a stuck record but I think the best fix is to simply go back to the 5th edition damage table. It's easier to do modular damage and get one-hit-kills but it's harder to glance vehicles to death. This makes high-strength weapons more important.
As for your rules, the armour penetration roll already represents the vehicle's ability to withstand penetrations. What exactly is stopping the projectile once it's inside the vehicle? You could argue that having more crew etc allows the vehicle to survive more than one penetration, but the number of crew in a vehicle is somewhich which can vary depending on the fluff rather than it being as simple as "bigger vehicles have more crew".

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/03/01 19:46:43


Tau Empire
Orks
Exiled Cadre
LatD 
   
Made in us
Gore-Soaked Lunatic Witchhunter







A bigger issue with adding saves is you're not going to do much to the mid-Strength spam approach that tends to dominate anti-armour this edition, and you're going to neuter things like lascannons that don't really need the nerf. And the fact that a vehicle can get randomly one-shotted in the first place is a much bigger reason why Monstrous Creatures are better than which one has a save.

Personally I'd rather turn the damage table into something like how War of the Ring handled large monsters, where you're rolling 1d6 on one big table that might go out to 10-12, but many results on the table give the vehicle persistent 'damage counters' that add to subsequent rolls on the table. You keep the sense of progress as you damage the vehicle, but you don't have the nice convenient fixed 'I glance this X times and it's out' value, and potentially you make vehicles more vulnerable to lighter weapons as they get battered and chunks torn off.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/01 19:56:01


Balanced Game: Noun. A game in which all options and choices are worth using.
Homebrew oldhammer project: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790996.page#10896267
Meridian: Necromunda-based 40k skirmish: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/795374.page 
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






 AnomanderRake wrote:
A bigger issue with adding saves is you're not going to do much to the mid-Strength spam approach that tends to dominate anti-armour this edition, and you're going to neuter things like lascannons that don't really need the nerf. And the fact that a vehicle can get randomly one-shotted in the first place is a much bigger reason why Monstrous Creatures are better than which one has a save.

Personally I'd rather turn the damage table into something like how War of the Ring handled large monsters, where you're rolling 1d6 on one big table that might go out to 10-12, but many results on the table give the vehicle persistent 'damage counters' that add to subsequent rolls on the table. You keep the sense of progress as you damage the vehicle, but you don't have the nice convenient fixed 'I glance this X times and it's out' value, and potentially you make vehicles more vulnerable to lighter weapons as they get battered and chunks torn off.


So you want a random table to roll on that creates book keeping to simulate the vehicle getting battered and chunks torn off instead of a bunch of hull points that get removed to simulate the vehicle getting battered and chunks torn off?


Oh and to the OP. I don't think you have done the comparative math to compare T value to AV. It's more or less a direct translation from one to the other with 2 exceptions. With T a weapon 1 step weaker can wound on a 6+ but can never auto wound. With AV a Str 9 shot vs AV 10 auto wounds on a roll of 1 and pens on a 2+.

The biggest weakness of vehicles compared to everything else in the game is the slow (or fast) degradation of the vehicle due to the vehicle damage table. Get rid of it. It's extra book keeping just to give vehicles vulnerabilities that every other unit type in the game does not have.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/01 20:36:56



These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in gb
Regular Dakkanaut




SDFarsight wrote:I may sound like a stuck record but I think the best fix is to simply go back to the 5th edition damage table. It's easier to do modular damage and get one-hit-kills but it's harder to glance vehicles to death. This makes high-strength weapons more important.


The last thing we need is it to be easier to do one hit kills.


SDFarsight wrote: As for your rules, the armour penetration roll already represents the vehicle's ability to withstand penetrations. What exactly is stopping the projectile once it's inside the vehicle? You could argue that having more crew etc allows the vehicle to survive more than one penetration, but the number of crew in a vehicle is somewhich which can vary depending on the fluff rather than it being as simple as "bigger vehicles have more crew".


There's two issues, the logical one is many vehicles such as rhinos are designed with many redundant systems, a neutron laser could potentially shoot a hole straight through it in some places and while it may destroy a motor or two the vehicle could still operate almost normally.

The other problem is as far as 40k rules go we do things the wrong way with shooting everything except vehicles already, i agree logically you should roll to hit, then take saves, then roll to wound but it seems better to keep things simple. Ultimatley i was trying to make gameplay function and keep it fluffy as a second priority.


AnomanderRake wrote:A bigger issue with adding saves is you're not going to do much to the mid-Strength spam approach that tends to dominate anti-armour this edition, and you're going to neuter things like lascannons that don't really need the nerf. And the fact that a vehicle can get randomly one-shotted in the first place is a much bigger reason why Monstrous Creatures are better than which one has a save.

Personally I'd rather turn the damage table into something like how War of the Ring handled large monsters, where you're rolling 1d6 on one big table that might go out to 10-12, but many results on the table give the vehicle persistent 'damage counters' that add to subsequent rolls on the table. You keep the sense of progress as you damage the vehicle, but you don't have the nice convenient fixed 'I glance this X times and it's out' value, and potentially you make vehicles more vulnerable to lighter weapons as they get battered and chunks torn off.


Honestly i think some vehicles need thier AV's especially rear armour tweaked to make them less vulnerable to strength 4/5 especially, i agree lascannons and the like aren't the weapons that need the change most i just used them as easy examples, the AP modifiers to save do give them additional bit. At least the system dramatically reduces chances of getting an explodes! result and fluff wise i like a very small chance to represent a perfect shot breaching a reactor or fuel tank etc.

I'd like a system that did cumulative damage with progressive effects and weakness but the games too bloated as is, more bookeeping is definitley the wrong way to go. I was aiming for the smallest change that gave the biggest advancement.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Lance845 wrote:


Oh and to the OP. I don't think you have done the comparative math to compare T value to AV. It's more or less a direct translation from one to the other with 2 exceptions. With T a weapon 1 step weaker can wound on a 6+ but can never auto wound. With AV a Str 9 shot vs AV 10 auto wounds on a roll of 1 and pens on a 2+.

The biggest weakness of vehicles compared to everything else in the game is the slow (or fast) degradation of the vehicle due to the vehicle damage table. Get rid of it. It's extra book keeping just to give vehicles vulnerabilities that every other unit type in the game does not have.


I think that's ultimately because the two scales are misaligned. The simple answer would be making it so theres no such thing as automatic pens, you always roll for armour pen and if the results a 1 it's an automatic glance (if a weapon with the armourbane/melta special rule rolls a one it isn't added to the total)

I think the chance your vehicle can suffer long term effects is a necessary rule but the chances of such damage are currently much too high. It would be cool to have MC's and characters gets less effective as they lose wounds too like in heralds of ruin campaigns but i agree it's too much book keeping.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/01 21:08:38


Grey Knights - 3500pts
SKitarii - 4000pts
Ad mech - 2000pts
Imperial Knights - 1000pts
Black Templars - 3200pts
Genestealer cults - 1750 
   
Made in gb
Battleship Captain





Bristol (UK)

 Lance845 wrote:
 AnomanderRake wrote:
A bigger issue with adding saves is you're not going to do much to the mid-Strength spam approach that tends to dominate anti-armour this edition, and you're going to neuter things like lascannons that don't really need the nerf. And the fact that a vehicle can get randomly one-shotted in the first place is a much bigger reason why Monstrous Creatures are better than which one has a save.

Personally I'd rather turn the damage table into something like how War of the Ring handled large monsters, where you're rolling 1d6 on one big table that might go out to 10-12, but many results on the table give the vehicle persistent 'damage counters' that add to subsequent rolls on the table. You keep the sense of progress as you damage the vehicle, but you don't have the nice convenient fixed 'I glance this X times and it's out' value, and potentially you make vehicles more vulnerable to lighter weapons as they get battered and chunks torn off.


So you want a random table to roll on that creates book keeping to simulate the vehicle getting battered and chunks torn off instead of a bunch of hull points that get removed to simulate the vehicle getting battered and chunks torn off?


Oh and to the OP. I don't think you have done the comparative math to compare T value to AV. It's more or less a direct translation from one to the other with 2 exceptions. With T a weapon 1 step weaker can wound on a 6+ but can never auto wound. With AV a Str 9 shot vs AV 10 auto wounds on a roll of 1 and pens on a 2+.

The biggest weakness of vehicles compared to everything else in the game is the slow (or fast) degradation of the vehicle due to the vehicle damage table. Get rid of it. It's extra book keeping just to give vehicles vulnerabilities that every other unit type in the game does not have.

Armour facings are also a big thing, more so on short ranged weapons.
Your monstrous creature can go whereever it wants and always get's it's fully toughness value.
If anything gets around the sides of my MBT it instantly drops 2 toughness, around the rear or in melee and it drops 3 toughness.
   
Made in gb
Focused Fire Warrior





Kataklysmic wrote:
SDFarsight wrote:I may sound like a stuck record but I think the best fix is to simply go back to the 5th edition damage table. It's easier to do modular damage and get one-hit-kills but it's harder to glance vehicles to death. This makes high-strength weapons more important.


The last thing we need is it to be easier to do one hit kills.


The main problem is mid-strength spam rather than things like Battle Cannons. It feels lazy and unfluffy to move your tank in a position which makes it vulnerable to a Battle Cannon hit because you know that it'll only take 1HP off the tank. Armoured warfare should be about the all-or-nothing nature of ensuring that your armour isn't penetrated; yet instead tanks are running from massed glances.

SDFarsight wrote: As for your rules, the armour penetration roll already represents the vehicle's ability to withstand penetrations. What exactly is stopping the projectile once it's inside the vehicle? You could argue that having more crew etc allows the vehicle to survive more than one penetration, but the number of crew in a vehicle is somewhich which can vary depending on the fluff rather than it being as simple as "bigger vehicles have more crew".


There's two issues, the logical one is many vehicles such as rhinos are designed with many redundant systems, a neutron laser could potentially shoot a hole straight through it in some places and while it may destroy a motor or two the vehicle could still operate almost normally.

The other problem is as far as 40k rules go we do things the wrong way with shooting everything except vehicles already, i agree logically you should roll to hit, then take saves, then roll to wound but it seems better to keep things simple. Ultimatley i was trying to make gameplay function and keep it fluffy as a second priority.


I wasn't talking about which order the saves should be rolled, I meant that the vehicle damage table is (or at least should be) the equilivant of making rolls to wound and thus you don't need an additional save.

Tau Empire
Orks
Exiled Cadre
LatD 
   
Made in ch
Regular Dakkanaut




My thoughts:

- Whenever a tank or walker is shot at, always consider as you are facing him toward it s front armour

- Remove the tank damage table or add a damage table for characters and monstrous creatures too.

   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

 Lance845 wrote:


So you want a random table to roll on that creates book keeping to simulate the vehicle getting battered and chunks torn off instead of a bunch of hull points that get removed to simulate the vehicle getting battered and chunks torn off?


I like the damage table and rather than removing it I'd create something similar for multiwounds high toughness units, like MCs. GMC should be treated like Super Heavies but if riptides, tyranids and daemons MCs could be killed by a single lucky shot like vehicles it would nice IMHO.

Giving armours to vehicles doensn't resolve much, most of the weapons that can hurt vehicles have high AP. They would only get more resilient against glancings, screwing that armies that don't have high strenght weapons unless they bring non competitive units, like harlequins.

The only way to fix vehicles IMHO it's to cut a lot of way too powerful weapons, like the D ones and giving appropriate points cost to the super effective shooty units that are clearly undercosted. Then limiting the grav and melta weapons in order to make their spam impossible.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/03/09 08:56:28


 
   
Made in au
Ancient Space Wolves Venerable Dreadnought






 Blackie wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:


So you want a random table to roll on that creates book keeping to simulate the vehicle getting battered and chunks torn off instead of a bunch of hull points that get removed to simulate the vehicle getting battered and chunks torn off?


I like the damage table and rather than removing it I'd create something similar for multiwounds high toughness units, like MCs. GMC should be treated like Super Heavies but if riptides, tyranids and daemons MCs could be killed by a single lucky shot like vehicles it would nice IMHO.

Giving armours to vehicles it doensn't resolve much, most of the weapons that can hurt vehicles have high AP. They would only get more resilient against glancings, screwing that armies that don't have high strenght weapons unless they bring non competitive units, like harlequins.

The only way to fix vehicles IMHO it's to cut a lot of way too powerful weapons, like the D ones and giving appropriate points cost to the super effective shooty units that are clearly undercosted. Then limiting the grav and melta weapons in order to make their spam impossible.


Most of those are dedicated anti-tank weapons like Krak Missiles and Melta.
Think about the meta change when Scatterlasers get laughed off by 90% of vehicles, your Green Tide would become threatening again.

I don't break the rules but I'll bend them as far as they'll go. 
   
Made in us
Deathwing Terminator with Assault Cannon






vehicles with +12 armor seem like they're at a good place. They are often "countered" by having to invest more or less same amount of points for that extra AT weapon set (i.e. Leman russ and 4 LC dev squad)

what really needs some touch up are the light vehicles, especially walkers. MC's and walkers take up same battle role and yet walkers often get nullified with single round of shooting. One of the reasons why riptides are so scary is that theyre monsterous creatures that are essentially as durable as a landraider yet shoot like a walker.

   
 
Forum Index » 40K Proposed Rules
Go to: