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Smoke Screen on vehicles: -1 to hit on anything within 6", ANYTHING  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in us
Morally-Flexible Malleus Hearing Whispers




I feel like if you move a rhino up, and have it pop smoke, it should create a massive field of "light cover" where anything friend or foe is -1 to hit (Ever tried to find a target in a smoke haze?). I know this would make smoke broken, so I think we remove it as a ability for vehicles, and make it a strat, for 1CP.

Thoughts?
   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

Orks have a similar strats but only works for friendly SPEED FREAKS units within 6'' and it costs 2CPs. Of course it's -1 to hit only against ranged attacks.

So in order to make this Smoke Screen fair it needs to be more expensive than 1CP or to affect only a selected array of friendly models.

 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





To provide more context, the current Smoke stratagem that marines have and the aeldari equivalents cost 1CP (2 for the older books) and provide only the vehicle itself -1 to being hit.

So between that and the ork strat that costs 2CP to only impact certain vehicles and bikes... A stratagem that does the same thing for any (marine?) unit within a rather large bubble should probably cost something like 3CP. Honestly, maybe even more. If you build a list around this, you're potentially giving a -1 aura to basically your whole army.

What's your main goal here? We can probably throw some limitations onto your basic idea to give it a lower CP cost.


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
Morally-Flexible Malleus Hearing Whispers




I guess my goal here was realism. A cloud of thick smoke is not cover, it's concealment, for both inside and outside. Thats why tanks still use it today. Because by a squad of tanks or even HMMWV use it still today, it creates a giant obscuring cloud. Now the defeater for a smoke screen is to just fire as much and as fast as possible into the smoke, and hope you hit something. Because it usually precipitates a charge.

What if that was the modifier? Before a charge is called, pay 2CP to make your charging units -1 to hit in overwatch?
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka






FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I guess my goal here was realism. A cloud of thick smoke is not cover, it's concealment, for both inside and outside. Thats why tanks still use it today. Because by a squad of tanks or even HMMWV use it still today, it creates a giant obscuring cloud. Now the defeater for a smoke screen is to just fire as much and as fast as possible into the smoke, and hope you hit something.

Well, the smoke stratagem currently used by marines and sisters seems like it represents this fairly well. It grants the targeted unit a -1 to being hit (so it acts as dense terrain that's hard to shoot through rather than "light cover" in the 40k sense that boost armor saves). Having an extra point of AP doesn't help against this particular defense, but pumping lots of extra shots into the target does. The only thing that doesn't seem to be represented from this quoted portion is the idea of the smoke cloud being large enough to other units.

The challenge with your first pitch is that an aura of that size with that potent an effect has to be pretty costly to avoid being too powerful. So as an alternative, maybe you could try one of the following tweaks (not both) to the existing version of the Smoke stratagem:
* Add the option to spend an additional CP when a vehicle benefitting from the Smoke strat is destroyed. If you do, all units forced to disembark by the vehicle's destruction are at -1 to hit for the rest of the round.
* Add the option to have spend X additional CP when you first use the stratagem. For each extra CP spent, you may extend the benefits of the stratagem to one additional unit within 6" of the first target.

The first option basically makes the passengers less tempting targets thus making both the rhino and the stratagem more valuable for keeping those units alive. The second option lets you protect multiple units with smoke, but you have to pay a CP cost proportionate to the number of units benefitting from that protection.

Area of Effect (aura) rules are hard to price and balance in general because it's hard to predict how they'll scale. This was a big problem last edition when you had entire marine armies circling up around a few buff aura characters to optimize their offense, and it's probably one of the main reasons we've seen some auras turn into targeted buffs this edition.

What if that was the modifier? Before a charge is called, pay 2CP to make your charging units -1 to hit in overwatch?

I don't love that approach. Because it makes the smoke more valuable for melee armies than shooty armies and because "overwatch" modifiers kind of sort of aren't a thing (except when they are). A simpler implementation of this might be to introduce a stratagem similar to the following:


SMOKE GRENADE - 1CP (Might be too cheap?)
Use this stratagem during the Charge phase. Select an enemy unit within 18" of a SMOKE VEHICLE. That unit may not Overwatch this turn.



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
Dakka Veteran





No. It’s really simple. Where you see smoke you just unload your automatic weapons into the smoke. Aimed well placed shots usually aren’t what gets people in big battles. It’s just VOLUME of fire being directed into an area. You put enough rounds into an area where you know the enemy is and you’re going to kill people.

Smoke would be a magnet for incoming rounds.
   
Made in us
Gore-Soaked Lunatic Witchhunter







warpedpig wrote:
No. It’s really simple. Where you see smoke you just unload your automatic weapons into the smoke. Aimed well placed shots usually aren’t what gets people in big battles. It’s just VOLUME of fire being directed into an area. You put enough rounds into an area where you know the enemy is and you’re going to kill people.

Smoke would be a magnet for incoming rounds.


If you're talking about realism smoke in real life is much, much bigger than the thing in the smoke, and spraying automatic weapons fire into the smoke randomly isn't likely to do much to the armored vehicle using the smoke for cover because your weapon that's capable of meaningfully damaging it isn't the machine gun you can spray randomly, it's the ATGM you're carrying, like, four reloads for, or the tank's main gun that you're firing every 3-5 seconds.

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Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Kind of doesn’t work as well as one might think. Firing off automatic weapons into the smoke by dozens of troops. Volume of fire you’re still gonna hit targets. I doubt smoke would help. It’s more of a magnet for fire
   
 
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