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I've seen that it comes a time in many a 40k player's life when they will attempt to change the game to make it more enjoyable but instead make it worse instead. I've decided that my time has come for that, so here are the main ideas around what I'm working on

Major Changes:
-Alternate Activation (To improve/provide more Tactical Gameplay)
--Morale done at the end of the battle round
--When a transport activates so does the unit inside
--Limited Actions possible?

-HQs (Speed up game time and decrease the idea of blobs, blobs are lame)
--Generate CPs instead of reroll bubbles

-Detachments
--No idea what to do here, going back to the original detachment feels like it limits options, but the current system is balanced around CP.

-Deepstrike (To encourage units with fast movement, tactical thinking)
--Deepstrike must be placed by homers at the end of the movement phase, and in the next turn DS can happen within 9” of those.

-Charge/Advance (Limit the randomness given by charging/advancing)
--Double your movement

-Blast Weapons (No D6 shots for everything that makes weapons very finicky)
--Based on target squad size


I've got some ideas on what to do with the factions, such as making loyalist factions like IG/LSM more uniform like their legion counter parts, and making chaos more mismatched to better provide a difference between the two sides. I also want to scale down the killiness in the game, and I know some of the rule changes may invalidate certain models people have (Like SM squads with 10 bolters), but let's be honest, no one is going to play these anyway. What are your thoughts on the rules? Are there any other interesting rules that could be added or changed?

It's hard to offer any hard feedback without more specifics, but a lot of what you're pitching here sounds generally agreeable.

 Sir Heckington wrote:


Major Changes:
-Alternate Activation (To improve/provide more Tactical Gameplay)
--Morale done at the end of the battle round
--When a transport activates so does the unit inside
--Limited Actions possible?

Some interesting stuff here. Alternating activations are a popular but fiddly idea. Assuming you'd do something similar to Kill Team's AA system, the wonky part becomes the player with fewer, more expensive units unloading more of his offense more quickly. My two squads of dark reapers that make up about 680 points of my army can unload a ton of offense in just a couple of activations. Something like devastators or MSU kabalites in venoms would take several times as many activations to finish a similar number of points worth of shooting.Or imagine a imperial knights army finishing all of its shooting after just a few activations.

So with that in mind, I feel like AA might work best in either...
A.) Smaller games where there's less disparity between the number of units each player has or...
B.) In a system where you somehow activate roughly equal portions of your army. Like, imagine if each player took turns activating up to 25% of their total points worth of units instead of going one unit at a time. Obviously this is a nightmare for bookkeeping. Maybe tie it to detachments somehow? Activate one detachment at a time, and put a percentile limit on how much of your army can be in a given detachment?

Doing morale at the end of the battle round is interesting. What's your goal with that? Let a player use more of their models before some of them run away, but also leave units more susceptible to morale due to have multiple turns worth of (mostly melee) casualties to test against? Or is this just a natural extension of alternating activations?

Activating a transport at the same time as its passengers seems problematic. For one thing, we can currently put multiple units in a transport. So do I get to activate my banshees, avengers, 2 characters, and the serpent they were inside of all at once? For another, this potentially adds to the "percentage of army activated per activation" problem. Letting everything activate individually just seems cleaner.

If by limited actions you mean, "Pick two of the following: move, shoot, psychic, and fight," then you're going to run into lots of weird complications as well as dramatically lowering the value of certain unit traits/wargear. Most melee units with pistols, for instance, will not generally pop off their pistol shots instead of moving and stabbing.

-HQs (Speed up game time and decrease the idea of blobs, blobs are lame)
--Generate CPs instead of reroll bubbles

An interesting direction. Something like that would be very fitting for a company commander or autarch, for instance. I don't think you necessarily need to get rid of all bubbles entirely though. That said, you'll have different challenges to design around with this setup. For instance, my autarch is more expensive than a company commander. Do you just factor in the CP they generate as part of their base cost?

-Detachments
--No idea what to do here, going back to the original detachment feels like it limits options, but the current system is balanced around CP.

Well, assuming you believe that pretty much any combination of units within a faction is a reasonable army to see on the tabletop, detachments without a CP connection don't really serve a purpose. So either get rid of them or rework them if you can find a use for them. In fact, scratch that last part. Don't feel compelled to "find a use for them." Come up with mechanics that benefit the gaming experience. If those mechanics happen to resemble detachments, maybe consider recycling the term.

But again, that assumes that you consider most combinations of units to be valid army compositions. Would you consider my all eldar jetbikes all the time army valid? My all imperial knights army? My army with no HQs? If not, why not? What constraints do you want to see put in place for either mechanical or lore reasons? (Keeping in mind that the game currently allows/encourages a wide variety of fluff.)

-Deepstrike (To encourage units with fast movement, tactical thinking)
--Deepstrike must be placed by homers at the end of the movement phase, and in the next turn DS can happen within 9” of those.

Sounds interesting but also makes me arch an eyebrow. You're effectively adding an action and unit tax onto deepstriking as well as adding a risk that the homers won't be placed at all (because their bearers died) or that they'll become useless as a mob of pox walkers or ork boys simply cover a 9"+ area surrounding the beacon. You're sort of kind of describing the aeldari webway gate fortification, and it's basically unplayable right now because of how easily it can be shut down.

-Charge/Advance (Limit the randomness given by charging/advancing)
--Double your movement

I've kicked this idea around. Perhaps being able to charge my shining spears ~30" without stratagem or psychic power support is a bit much? There are arguments for and against keeping charge range random as well.

-Blast Weapons (No D6 shots for everything that makes weapons very finicky)
--Based on target squad size

Full agreement on this one.

Some interesting stuff here. Alternating activations are a popular but fiddly idea. Assuming you'd do something similar to Kill Team's AA system, the wonky part becomes the player with fewer, more expensive units unloading more of his offense more quickly. My two squads of dark reapers that make up about 680 points of my army can unload a ton of offense in just a couple of activations. Something like devastators or MSU kabalites in venoms would take several times as many activations to finish a similar number of points worth of shooting.Or imagine a imperial knights army finishing all of its shooting after just a few activations.

So with that in mind, I feel like AA might work best in either...
A.) Smaller games where there's less disparity between the number of units each player has or...
B.) In a system where you somehow activate roughly equal portions of your army. Like, imagine if each player took turns activating up to 25% of their total points worth of units instead of going one unit at a time. Obviously this is a nightmare for bookkeeping. Maybe tie it to detachments somehow? Activate one detachment at a time, and put a percentile limit on how much of your army can be in a given detachment?

Doing morale at the end of the battle round is interesting. What's your goal with that? Let a player use more of their models before some of them run away, but also leave units more susceptible to morale due to have multiple turns worth of (mostly melee) casualties to test against? Or is this just a natural extension of alternating activations?

Activating a transport at the same time as its passengers seems problematic. For one thing, we can currently put multiple units in a transport. So do I get to activate my banshees, avengers, 2 characters, and the serpent they were inside of all at once? For another, this potentially adds to the "percentage of army activated per activation" problem. Letting everything activate individually just seems cleaner.

If by limited actions you mean, "Pick two of the following: move, shoot, psychic, and fight," then you're going to run into lots of weird complications as well as dramatically lowering the value of certain unit traits/wargear. Most melee units with pistols, for instance, will not generally pop off their pistol shots instead of moving and stabbing.

So, the biggest thing I've been thinking is yes, either Detachments or something like how Bolt Action handles it, with the dice bag. I think both might be things to try, and the detachment is something I've been thinking about as more specific detachments built around units themselves, although I'm not sure 100% how to tackle it. Morale at the end of the battleround is the extension of AA there, although it does bring up some interesting points. Yeah, I do see that with limited actions, something to consider.

An interesting direction. Something like that would be very fitting for a company commander or autarch, for instance. I don't think you necessarily need to get rid of all bubbles entirely though. That said, you'll have different challenges to design around with this setup. For instance, my autarch is more expensive than a company commander. Do you just factor in the CP they generate as part of their base cost?

I'd say yes, CP would be something factored in to the cost, although I do think some bubbles can stay, I'd like to in general discourage bubbling. Perhaps with the detachment idea from above, AA could apply to a detachment and a buff could be applied from an HQ onto that, for example a detachment might be a biker wing and have a Biker HQ and 2-3 Biker Squads, the HQ gets to apply his buff to all those squads. Just food for thought.

Well, assuming you believe that pretty much any combination of units within a faction is a reasonable army to see on the tabletop, detachments without a CP connection don't really serve a purpose. So either get rid of them or rework them if you can find a use for them. In fact, scratch that last part. Don't feel compelled to "find a use for them." Come up with mechanics that benefit the gaming experience. If those mechanics happen to resemble detachments, maybe consider recycling the term.

But again, that assumes that you consider most combinations of units to be valid army compositions. Would you consider my all eldar jetbikes all the time army valid? My all imperial knights army? My army with no HQs? If not, why not? What constraints do you want to see put in place for either mechanical or lore reasons? (Keeping in mind that the game currently allows/encourages a wide variety of fluff.)

I wish to be very open on army building, I think it allows for more varied armies in general. And I think restrictions like that could almost be done away with entirely with Obsec and CP being generated by HQs if you are incentivized to take them in the first place. Perhaps instead of forcing someone to take something, it may be better to simply recommend it.

Sounds interesting but also makes me arch an eyebrow. You're effectively adding an action and unit tax onto deepstriking as well as adding a risk that the homers won't be placed at all (because their bearers died) or that they'll become useless as a mob of pox walkers or ork boys simply cover a 9"+ area surrounding the beacon. You're sort of kind of describing the aeldari webway gate fortification, and it's basically unplayable right now because of how easily it can be shut down.

That is true, however I'm erring on the side that Deepstriking is too easy to maneuver right now. Although you might be right that this would make it too risky, I just want to avoid it being a "I point melta gun there!" without any sort of work or effort to achieve that. I was going to let beacons ignore the 9" thing, however this is 100% the most iffy thing I have.

I've kicked this idea around. Perhaps being able to charge my shining spears ~30" without stratagem or psychic power support is a bit much? There are arguments for and against keeping charge range random as well.

I 100% wouldn't let you both charge and advance, but there should be a value to bringing those fast moving units that can dig into that melee, perhaps it would make people deploy not on their front line a bit more to avoid that, although it may also be a bit much. The funny thing is this is coming from a Tau player, I just think the reliability to get into melee is a bit low.

It's hard to offer any hard feedback without more specifics, but a lot of what you're pitching here sounds generally agreeable.

That is fair, currently I'm going over every faction in general and getting an idea or sense of what I want them to be/play, give a bit of defining to the factions of the game before I jump into actually making units and rules.

AA has its benefits and its pitfalls, and it will be interesting in how you resolve some situations;

- if a unit is charged before it activates, does it fight back?
- if a different unit then charged the original charging unit and wipes it out, thereby removing the "engaged in combat-ness of the first unit, when it subsequently activates, will it be able to move, shoot etc (and have essentially had a free round of fighting)?

IE unit A1 charges unit A2, unit A1 fights, unit A2 fights, then unit B2 charges unit A1, killing it, then unit A2 activates - is it restricted?

Will you be redesigning charge & fall back to make sense? will it work with AA?

For balancing, do you think that titanic units should be broken up into multiple activations? perhaps have a new rule "Main Weapon System" for powerful guns on titanic units, meaning the gun must be activated separately to the rest of the vehicle. This will prevent a baneblade from wreaking all sorts of havoc in it's first activation.

Limiting actions is a good idea - in the maelstrom of battle, I can't see a single dude managing to move, run, manifest a psychic power, shoot a gun, charge, fight, consolidate, in the same timespan as a different dude fires 2 shots from a rapidfire weapon. Perhaps put an "Actions" stat on the statline, dictating the amount of things a unit can do. Artillery would be one action (move or shoot, can't run as that is move + run).

HQ's generating CP is the best idea for HQ's, make them useful and some sort of leadership!

Detachments stem from the force organisation chart, which existed to stop spam. 1-2 HQ, 2-6 troops, 0-3 elites, 0-3 FA, 0-3 HS. and that was your lot. go build a balanced army. this is the basis for it, and what you should build on - stopping someone just bringing everything that they want to "because it will win".

I like the idea of a homer system for deepstriking, but perhaps have it that deepstrikers can be placed within 9" of the enemy if they are within 9" of a model with a beacon. this would make the armies synergise with themselves a lot more. though I imagine being a scout biker racing across the field with drop pods raining down around you, it could be a little bit horrifically traumatizing.

Blast weapons being based on squad size is a bit of a grey area for me, I do like the idea that a single model doesn't get as much damage as a squad, but I also dislike the idea that a blast does an exact amount of hits. I have voiced my suggestions for direct hits & blasts being separate on another thread, but to summarise, I would have a single, powerful shot (actually being hit by the rocket) and a blast, weaker than the current blasts (being caught in the explosion) which are both rolled together, using different coloured dice, for example.

Regarding the charge moves and advancing being double movement, have you considered putting the charge moves as part of the movement? if most units can either move-shoot or move-charge, then it would speed the game up a lot. I think it would work without AA as well. so you basically declare a charge, resolve overwatch, then move double your move into them. Alternatively, go back to 6" charges.

You will probably have to adjust overwatch (particularly for flamers) as if someone charges at you, they will be in range at some point. perhaps;

Overwatch - shoot them as they charge you, at -2 to hit. if you are not in range before they move, it is at -3 to hit, to a max of 6+.

thus allowing all guns to overwatch, and flamers become king again.

There is also the discussion about making overwatch an action, which allows you to react to the opponents turn. This would be a really good thing to integrate into AA. after the opponent moves, any units with an "overwatch" token may discard it to shoot at them, if they choose."

then some fancy units can have ways to generate overwatch tokens, EG tau suits can get one when they hit & run (showing my age here) if they have an upgrade - making them really flexible, and allowing them to put in more damage output than most other units.

I would like to have ramming back - all vehicles should do damage when they charge. it's a freaking truck, and it just hit you. Perhaps a toughness comparison (if you're tougher than the trukk, you don't care if it hits you!). Perhaps like the S vs T chart, but T vs T, same values, D3 hits at -2 AP on a charge. Then ramp up the ramming hits on things like deffrollas.

In fact, you could introduce "impact hits", like in fantasy, that mechanic could work really well, and is easily integrated into the "vehicle" or "Monster" rules.

Scaling down killiness is a good idea, as it should be a tactical game and less of an "I killed half your army, you can play now" game, though it will already be countered a lot by the AA system. Will you do this by adjusting the "to wound" system? or by improving saves somehow?

All in all, it's a good approach I think.

I think charges just being like advancing would be fine. Take the movement plus D6.

Or do what kill team does and you charge in the movement phase but also move that amount

 some bloke wrote:
AA has its benefits and its pitfalls, and it will be interesting in how you resolve some situations;

- if a unit is charged before it activates, does it fight back?
- if a different unit then charged the original charging unit and wipes it out, thereby removing the "engaged in combat-ness of the first unit, when it subsequently activates, will it be able to move, shoot etc (and have essentially had a free round of fighting)?

IE unit A1 charges unit A2, unit A1 fights, unit A2 fights, then unit B2 charges unit A1, killing it, then unit A2 activates - is it restricted?

Will you be redesigning charge & fall back to make sense? will it work with AA?

My assumption would be that he'd steal the Kill Team AA system. So charging would happen as part of the movement phase (reduces opportunities for the enemy to back away). Units that get charged would be unable to Fall Back in that (shared) movement phase. If you're doing alternating activations within a phase rather than having a unit do its entire turn , most of your questions get cleaned up right away.

For balancing, do you think that titanic units should be broken up into multiple activations? perhaps have a new rule "Main Weapon System" for powerful guns on titanic units, meaning the gun must be activated separately to the rest of the vehicle. This will prevent a baneblade from wreaking all sorts of havoc in it's first activation.

I like that. Alternatively, have all super heavy models basically have a separate turn that happens after each shared normal turn. So everthing other than titanic models would have a normal turn, and then the titanic models would have their own movement, shooting, etc. Makes them feel more bulky and lumbering than their smaller counterparts and provides some built-in drawbacks. Slightly more time-consuming though.

Limiting actions is a good idea - in the maelstrom of battle, I can't see a single dude managing to move, run, manifest a psychic power, shoot a gun, charge, fight, consolidate, in the same timespan as a different dude fires 2 shots from a rapidfire weapon. Perhaps put an "Actions" stat on the statline, dictating the amount of things a unit can do. Artillery would be one action (move or shoot, can't run as that is move + run).

The thing about limiting actions like that is that you either have to recost or screw over any unit that can do something useful in more phases than it has actions. Consider a librarian. Or better yet, a librarian in terminator armor. He wants to move. He wants to shoot that storm bolter. He wants to cast psychic powers. He wants to chop stuff up in melee. Currently, he's paying to be able to do all that in a single turn. Give him only 3 actions, and he'll never use his gun. Give him only 2 actions, and he's either not moving or not fighting that turn.

As for being able to move, shoot, cast, and stab, well, just look at your average Overwatch character. And then remember that we're talking about action movie characters who know gun-fu and can multi-task with their alien/superhuman brains. That goes double for the space elves who basically live in bullet time.

Detachments stem from the force organisation chart, which existed to stop spam. 1-2 HQ, 2-6 troops, 0-3 elites, 0-3 FA, 0-3 HS. and that was your lot. go build a balanced army. this is the basis for it, and what you should build on - stopping someone just bringing everything that they want to "because it will win".

Eh. You're working with some questionable assumptions there. The idea back in the day was to prevent people from spamming their best units, true enough. But that impacts different armies differently. Remember 7th edition scat bikes? Those were troops as well as the best dakka in the eldar codex. And consider that some armies can take points efficient options in many force org slots while others have their best options tied up in one or two slots. So from a balance perspective, the classic force org chart didn't accomplish much.

From a fluff angle, the force org chart straight up prevents some very fluffy armies that 40k seems to want to encourage these days. If you're playing Death Wing, you should be able to take all terminators. If you're playing Saim-Hann, you should be able to play all jetbikes. So to my mind, nothing about the force-org chart innately promotes either balance or thematic armies.

Blast weapons being based on squad size is a bit of a grey area for me, I do like the idea that a single model doesn't get as much damage as a squad, but I also dislike the idea that a blast does an exact amount of hits. I have voiced my suggestions for direct hits & blasts being separate on another thread, but to summarise, I would have a single, powerful shot (actually being hit by the rocket) and a blast, weaker than the current blasts (being caught in the explosion) which are both rolled together, using different coloured dice, for example.

Have squad size increase the number of shots, not hits. A vindicator's cannon should be more likely to hit more dudes in a large squad (represented by giving it +1 shot per 5 models or whatever), but the possibility of missing with any or all of those shots still exists.

Regarding the charge moves and advancing being double movement, have you considered putting the charge moves as part of the movement? if most units can either move-shoot or move-charge, then it would speed the game up a lot. I think it would work without AA as well. so you basically declare a charge, resolve overwatch, then move double your move into them.

Agreed. That's basically how Kill Team does it. Though I think there's an argument for more or less removing Overwatch. But I ranted about that enough in a semi-recent thread, so I won't do so again here.

You will probably have to adjust overwatch (particularly for flamers) as if someone charges at you, they will be in range at some point. perhaps;

Overwatch - shoot them as they charge you, at -2 to hit. if you are not in range before they move, it is at -3 to hit, to a max of 6+.

thus allowing all guns to overwatch, and flamers become king again.

That would actually make flamers slightly less useful by comparison than they are now because it would introduce situations where non-flamers could hits on 5's or even 4's.

I would like to have ramming back - all vehicles should do damage when they charge. it's a freaking truck, and it just hit you. Perhaps a toughness comparison (if you're tougher than the trukk, you don't care if it hits you!). Perhaps like the S vs T chart, but T vs T, same values, D3 hits at -2 AP on a charge. Then ramp up the ramming hits on things like deffrollas.

This is basically accomplished with the current rules by just giving vehicles the same Strength as their Toughness, no? Although I suppose your method includes auto-hits. I don't think I like auto hits from vehicles. My transhuman super soldiers and wuxia-fast eldar can probably jump out of the way.

In fact, you could introduce "impact hits", like in fantasy, that mechanic could work really well, and is easily integrated into the "vehicle" or "Monster" rules.

They could hit the enemy like a hammer. A wrathful hammer. A hammer of wrath you might say.

Scaling down killiness is a good idea, as it should be a tactical game and less of an "I killed half your army, you can play now" game, though it will already be countered a lot by the AA system. Will you do this by adjusting the "to wound" system? or by improving saves somehow?

All in all, it's a good approach I think.

Agreed that AA would help out with the lethality. I don't mind losing units so long as I get to use most of them before they die!

AA has its benefits and its pitfalls, and it will be interesting in how you resolve some situations;

- if a unit is charged before it activates, does it fight back?
- if a different unit then charged the original charging unit and wipes it out, thereby removing the "engaged in combat-ness of the first unit, when it subsequently activates, will it be able to move, shoot etc (and have essentially had a free round of fighting)?

I would say that every unit gets to fight back one time, even if they already had activated, but only once. I'd say once a unit is engaged in melee, it can only do a limited number of things even if it escapes melee.

Will you be redesigning charge & fall back to make sense? will it work with AA?

I think it will, when a unit activated it can charge or fall back depending on it's situation.

For balancing, do you think that titanic units should be broken up into multiple activations? perhaps have a new rule "Main Weapon System" for powerful guns on titanic units, meaning the gun must be activated separately to the rest of the vehicle. This will prevent a baneblade from wreaking all sorts of havoc in it's first activation.

Personally? I'd say remove titanic vehicles in their entirety, but I know many people like them so I would probably do something like that.

Limiting actions is a good idea - in the maelstrom of battle, I can't see a single dude managing to move, run, manifest a psychic power, shoot a gun, charge, fight, consolidate, in the same timespan as a different dude fires 2 shots from a rapidfire weapon. Perhaps put an "Actions" stat on the statline, dictating the amount of things a unit can do. Artillery would be one action (move or shoot, can't run as that is move + run).

That's something I've considered, it also would provide room to distinct veterans from normal guys more, as they could get more 'actions'.

Detachments stem from the force organisation chart, which existed to stop spam. 1-2 HQ, 2-6 troops, 0-3 elites, 0-3 FA, 0-3 HS. and that was your lot. go build a balanced army. this is the basis for it, and what you should build on - stopping someone just bringing everything that they want to "because it will win".

I'd much rather have Army Specific Org Charts that could provide for more fluff armies and still leave things open, I'm still playing around the idea of alot more smaller detachments that the HQ in gives it's bonus too.

I like the idea of a homer system for deepstriking, but perhaps have it that deepstrikers can be placed within 9" of the enemy if they are within 9" of a model with a beacon. this would make the armies synergise with themselves a lot more. though I imagine being a scout biker racing across the field with drop pods raining down around you, it could be a little bit horrifically traumatizing.

Horrifically Traumatizing is the name of the game!

Blast weapons being based on squad size is a bit of a grey area for me, I do like the idea that a single model doesn't get as much damage as a squad, but I also dislike the idea that a blast does an exact amount of hits. I have voiced my suggestions for direct hits & blasts being separate on another thread, but to summarise, I would have a single, powerful shot (actually being hit by the rocket) and a blast, weaker than the current blasts (being caught in the explosion) which are both rolled together, using different coloured dice, for example.

I'm still not a fan of random rolls for that sort of thing, you still have to roll to hit anyway, it makes blast weapons far to finicky imo, but both of those things could be combined.

Regarding the charge moves and advancing being double movement, have you considered putting the charge moves as part of the movement? if most units can either move-shoot or move-charge, then it would speed the game up a lot. I think it would work without AA as well. so you basically declare a charge, resolve overwatch, then move double your move into them. Alternatively, go back to 6" charges.

Well yes, ideally I would, but I'd also probably see the idea of 'phases' removed from the game.

You will probably have to adjust overwatch (particularly for flamers) as if someone charges at you, they will be in range at some point. perhaps;

Overwatch - shoot them as they charge you, at -2 to hit. if you are not in range before they move, it is at -3 to hit, to a max of 6+.

thus allowing all guns to overwatch, and flamers become king again.

There is also the discussion about making overwatch an action, which allows you to react to the opponents turn. This would be a really good thing to integrate into AA. after the opponent moves, any units with an "overwatch" token may discard it to shoot at them, if they choose."

then some fancy units can have ways to generate overwatch tokens, EG tau suits can get one when they hit & run (showing my age here) if they have an upgrade - making them really flexible, and allowing them to put in more damage output than most other units.

Yep, I really enjoy the overwatch tokens idea, especially with AA, gives some thought to activating your big units or your guys you want to overwatch.

I would like to have ramming back - all vehicles should do damage when they charge. it's a freaking truck, and it just hit you. Perhaps a toughness comparison (if you're tougher than the trukk, you don't care if it hits you!). Perhaps like the S vs T chart, but T vs T, same values, D3 hits at -2 AP on a charge. Then ramp up the ramming hits on things like deffrollas.

In fact, you could introduce "impact hits", like in fantasy, that mechanic could work really well, and is easily integrated into the "vehicle" or "Monster" rules.

Not sure on this, but I'll have to look more into ramming, it's an interesting concept for sure.

Scaling down killiness is a good idea, as it should be a tactical game and less of an "I killed half your army, you can play now" game, though it will already be countered a lot by the AA system. Will you do this by adjusting the "to wound" system? or by improving saves somehow?

I'd say toning down AP, but it's an issue that many things need to be considered for, one I haven't quite decided yet on.