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 deviantduck wrote:
1. This is adjusted with points. SM live and die like they're supposed to. They just aren't worth 13 ppm anymore compared to a 4 ppm guardsman.
2. Don't like the windows in the terrain? Fill them in. Terrain is terrain is terrain. Make better stuff yourself. The ITC terrain rule is garbage as well. All terrain should be true LoS.
3. CP generated by a detachment should only be allowed to be used with Stratagems from that detachments factions. A Knight Castellan shouldn't be able to grind through 17pts of IG CP. Allies adds models sales which helps GW which lets them make cool new stuff. Allies aren't new. Allies add variety to games. Allies aren't going anywhere.

I agree with you in principle, it makes sense that two models that can see each other can shoot each other, but this doesn't make for fun games. Some level of abstraction is necessary, preferably something along the lines of not being able to draw LOS to an enemy behind area terrain. Otherwise the only terrain that matters is solid cubes, and that's boring.

I was thinking about it last night after watching a Kill Team bat rep and I think the solution to a lot of the game's problems are more shooting modifiers.

No, I don't mean army wide -1 nonsense, but rather things like if you're beyond half range on your weapon (we'll exclude pistols since they rarely reach out past 12", and many of which are even worse than that) you take a -1 for shooting. This would encourage more close range shooting and decrease turn one fire base dominance.

Kill Team's cover rules should likely be used as well. As long as a model is at least partially obscured (using TLoS) add another -1 to hit.

If we drop the army wide -1 abilities completely this would make movement and positioning important and decrease long range plasma pot shots leading to other weapons being more favorable in army lists.

Honestly the penalties to hit should be mechanic based (movement, psychic powers, ect. Basically it shouldn't be something you get 100% of the time just by existing, but rather has was to be counter played), not based on army traits.

6s should always hit in that case (they should even now imo)

 Billagio wrote:
6s should always hit in that case (they should even now imo)

I can agree with that as long as we stick with natural 6s for the rule. It'd fix Orks and reduce some of the other problems the game has, but I also feel that we should change the army rules to prevent the abuse of army rules that give a -1 to hit outside of 12" and instead give them a different rule. Perhaps +1 to their armour save if the don't move as they take cover? Or perhaps +6" on their guns as they take aim instead of moving? Or +1 shot for their weapons as they get into a better firing position instead of moving? I mean any of those could fit Alpha Legion and Raven Guard pretty well (and I'm sure the Raptors could get some use out of them since they're Raven Guard successors).

Blastaar wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:
1. This is adjusted with points. SM live and die like they're supposed to. They just aren't worth 13 ppm anymore compared to a 4 ppm guardsman.
2. Don't like the windows in the terrain? Fill them in. Terrain is terrain is terrain. Make better stuff yourself. The ITC terrain rule is garbage as well. All terrain should be true LoS.
3. CP generated by a detachment should only be allowed to be used with Stratagems from that detachments factions. A Knight Castellan shouldn't be able to grind through 17pts of IG CP. Allies adds models sales which helps GW which lets them make cool new stuff. Allies aren't new. Allies add variety to games. Allies aren't going anywhere.

I agree with you in principle, it makes sense that two models that can see each other can shoot each other, but this doesn't make for fun games. Some level of abstraction is necessary, preferably something along the lines of not being able to draw LOS to an enemy behind area terrain. Otherwise the only terrain that matters is solid cubes, and that's boring.

I don't understand. You want a wall with with windows that your guys can see through but not shoot through? If you can't target guys standing behind rubble whether it's a 1/4" tall or 6" tall, what's the difference? You might as well just use a flat piece of paper and make all terrain 2D.

I'm guessing they are talking about woods etc where by the time it's dense enough to block LOS it esentially becomes impassable as you can't place models. The current 40K rules don't really allow for the level of abstraction that is needed to make trees far enough appart to allow models to be placed.

There's already a modifier for firing over half range with standard troop weapons: you get half the shots.

Weapons designed for shooting long range typically have setup time, thus aren't penalized for shooting further, but are penalized for moving and shooting (heavy).

Weapons with short range have a hard cap on range instead of a falloff of half damage beyond (usually 12") - as in, Assault and Pistol.

I was referencing MEDGe- in MEDGe LOS can be drawn to units occupying forests, ruins, etc., but not through those kinds of features to units behind them, if that LOS passes between the two highest points of that feature. Assumption being those 3 trees represent a much denser grove than is practical to place on the table. One of many things that would make terrain more relevant for 40k.

catbarf wrote:
Having just returned from a ten-year hiatus, I'm really pleased to see that 8th Ed has gotten away from the rules bloat that made 5th unpleasant for me. Reintroducing special, army-specific rules that circumvent the base mechanics, like an arbitrary -1 reduction to AP, seems like a crutch solution that just resurrects that unneeded complexity.

If the problem is that high-AP weapons are readily available, forcing the use of invulnerable saves to make units truly durable, then I'd rather see reduction in AP values.

If, say, plasma guns were AP-1, lascannons AP-2, and meltaguns AP-3, they'd all still be noticeably superior to basic weaponry against 2+ and 3+ armor save enemies, without completely eliminating the benefit of that armor. That would be functionally equivalent to treating AP as 1 lower, but it would be a global solution for all armies.

This would simultaneously make invulnerable saves less valuable/necessary, since high-armor units would rarely benefit from them.

At the same time, though, some rebalancing would need to occur on high-volume weapons, since at the moment weapons that throw a lot of shots with moderate strength and -1 AP seem generally superior to the dedicated anti-tank weapons.

That said-

From a game design perspective, the interplay between toughness, wounds, armor save, and invulnerable save is rather opaque. Why does this unit have higher toughness, while this one has higher wounds, while this one has an invulnerable save? What does that represent?

If I were redesigning the 40k ruleset from scratch, I'd rather see it boiled down into two durability attributes- 'how hard is this unit to damage' (toughness), followed by 'how much damage can this unit take' (wounds). Then for weapons, S represents armor-piercing ability, while Dam represents how much damage the weapon is capable of inflicting. Simple, but without losing much granularity compared to the current system, where in practice high-S attacks tend to have high-AP as well.

But I suspect that the ship has already sailed on any radical redesign of that nature.

I am also a returning from long hiatus player.

This post made me think though... maybe changing the MEQ, TEQ statline is looking in the wrong place and opening a whole can of worms. Even messing with the heavy weapons stats seems like it might be too far. I wonder if the issue is just making the problematic heavy weapons cost more to take... So maybe plasma is too versatile a it's current point cost, so just increase the cost of taking a plasma gun (or whatever the issue is). Increasing the cost of these high AP or problematic weapons over the models can help in several ways:

1) It is just a point change so you don't need to add to the rules bloat.
2) It doesn't require you to lower the cost of MEQ/TEQ
3) It may have a side effect of making vehicles more balanced with infantry in an edition where a lot of vehicles sit in the "garage"

Flamephoenix182 wrote:

catbarf wrote:
Having just returned from a ten-year hiatus, I'm really pleased to see that 8th Ed has gotten away from the rules bloat that made 5th unpleasant for me. Reintroducing special, army-specific rules that circumvent the base mechanics, like an arbitrary -1 reduction to AP, seems like a crutch solution that just resurrects that unneeded complexity.

If the problem is that high-AP weapons are readily available, forcing the use of invulnerable saves to make units truly durable, then I'd rather see reduction in AP values.

If, say, plasma guns were AP-1, lascannons AP-2, and meltaguns AP-3, they'd all still be noticeably superior to basic weaponry against 2+ and 3+ armor save enemies, without completely eliminating the benefit of that armor. That would be functionally equivalent to treating AP as 1 lower, but it would be a global solution for all armies.

This would simultaneously make invulnerable saves less valuable/necessary, since high-armor units would rarely benefit from them.

At the same time, though, some rebalancing would need to occur on high-volume weapons, since at the moment weapons that throw a lot of shots with moderate strength and -1 AP seem generally superior to the dedicated anti-tank weapons.

That said-

From a game design perspective, the interplay between toughness, wounds, armor save, and invulnerable save is rather opaque. Why does this unit have higher toughness, while this one has higher wounds, while this one has an invulnerable save? What does that represent?

If I were redesigning the 40k ruleset from scratch, I'd rather see it boiled down into two durability attributes- 'how hard is this unit to damage' (toughness), followed by 'how much damage can this unit take' (wounds). Then for weapons, S represents armor-piercing ability, while Dam represents how much damage the weapon is capable of inflicting. Simple, but without losing much granularity compared to the current system, where in practice high-S attacks tend to have high-AP as well.

But I suspect that the ship has already sailed on any radical redesign of that nature.

I am also a returning from long hiatus player.

This post made me think though... maybe changing the MEQ, TEQ statline is looking in the wrong place and opening a whole can of worms. Even messing with the heavy weapons stats seems like it might be too far. I wonder if the issue is just making the problematic heavy weapons cost more to take... So maybe plasma is too versatile a it's current point cost, so just increase the cost of taking a plasma gun (or whatever the issue is). Increasing the cost of these high AP or problematic weapons over the models can help in several ways:

1) It is just a point change so you don't need to add to the rules bloat.
2) It doesn't require you to lower the cost of MEQ/TEQ
3) It may have a side effect of making vehicles more balanced with infantry in an edition where a lot of vehicles sit in the "garage"

The only ways to make MEQ more durable without also boosting GEQ durability is to up the price of GEQ, lower the price of MEQ, or give MEQ special rules to up their durability. If you simply up the cost of weapons with AP such as heavy bolters and assault cannons (which is what marines die to) then it also makes them worse at killing GEQ. This is why you don't see many people asking for the weapons themselves to change.

Aren't people also complaining that TEQ needs a buff, too?

That said, a nerf to Plas and other D:1/D:2 weapons but no change on D:6 or D:3+ weapons might actually effect a change that improves MEQ/TEQ more than vehicles and monsters.

I had a brain fart, i meant to say GEQ not TEQ.

I do think both sides of the equation need to change. Oddly, look at the KT base model prices (but not wargear) - they seem much more in line with what should be.

However, even with moderate price changes, to really make Marines feel like Marines, the firepower fix feels necessary, too.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I was thinking about it last night after watching a Kill Team bat rep and I think the solution to a lot of the game's problems are more shooting modifiers.

No, I don't mean army wide -1 nonsense, but rather things like if you're beyond half range on your weapon (we'll exclude pistols since they rarely reach out past 12", and many of which are even worse than that) you take a -1 for shooting. This would encourage more close range shooting and decrease turn one fire base dominance.

Kill Team's cover rules should likely be used as well. As long as a model is at least partially obscured (using TLoS) add another -1 to hit.

If we drop the army wide -1 abilities completely this would make movement and positioning important and decrease long range plasma pot shots leading to other weapons being more favorable in army lists.

Honestly the penalties to hit should be mechanic based (movement, psychic powers, ect. Basically it shouldn't be something you get 100% of the time just by existing, but rather has was to be counter played), not based on army traits.

I believe shooting without LOS (such as Tau SMS turrets) only hits on 6s in kill team, no modifiers. Which is another good change IMO.

As for -1 over half range, I would actually prefer if it was -1 to hit over 24" or something. That way pistols and assault weapons aren't unfairly hurt like they would otherwise be. On the other hand though, long range artillery should have penalties for firing too close, such as within 24".
And 6s should always hit.

Dandelion wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I was thinking about it last night after watching a Kill Team bat rep and I think the solution to a lot of the game's problems are more shooting modifiers.

No, I don't mean army wide -1 nonsense, but rather things like if you're beyond half range on your weapon (we'll exclude pistols since they rarely reach out past 12", and many of which are even worse than that) you take a -1 for shooting. This would encourage more close range shooting and decrease turn one fire base dominance.

Kill Team's cover rules should likely be used as well. As long as a model is at least partially obscured (using TLoS) add another -1 to hit.

If we drop the army wide -1 abilities completely this would make movement and positioning important and decrease long range plasma pot shots leading to other weapons being more favorable in army lists.

Honestly the penalties to hit should be mechanic based (movement, psychic powers, ect. Basically it shouldn't be something you get 100% of the time just by existing, but rather has was to be counter played), not based on army traits.

I believe shooting without LOS (such as Tau SMS turrets) only hits on 6s in kill team, no modifiers. Which is another good change IMO.

As for -1 over half range, I would actually prefer if it was -1 to hit over 24" or something. That way pistols and assault weapons aren't unfairly hurt like they would otherwise be. On the other hand though, long range artillery should have penalties for firing too close, such as within 24".
And 6s should always hit.

Yeah, minimum ranges should be a thing on the big guns again.

That said, basically we can sum it up a lot like this: if we're going to use WFB style AP, we should have WFB style shooting modifiers too. The game would be a lot more balanced between shooting and melee for it.

With some people talking about ideas such as combining Toughness and Armor and just having it a defense against Strength and AP, I think it would be simpler to do something else like give each unit a unit type that determines how easy it is to cause a wound using a simple table like this:

1 Always Fails
Chaff/Swarm 2+ Grots and Rippers
Light Infantry 3+ IG Troopers and Guardians
Medium Infantry 4+ Firewarriors and Ork Boyz (this one might be controversial though)
Heavy Infantry 5+ SM and Necrons
Super Heavy Infantry 6+ Terminators and Immortals

Vehicles and MCs would get a similar chart
Small Vehicles 4+ Land Speeders and Ork Buggies
Light Vehicles/MCs 5+ Most Transports
Medium Vehicles/MCs 6+ Predators and Carnifexes
Heavy Vehicles/MCs 7+ Landraider And Trigon
LoW 8+ Baneblade 8+ Baneblades and Titans

These rolls would be modified by the weapons that are attempting to wound on a Strength scale of +0 to +4.
0 would be most weapons
1 would probably be things like Heavy Bolters
2 would be ACs and Missile Launchers
3 would be Lascannons and Meltas
4 would generally be for things like Railguns and LoW scale anti-armor guns.
To be a little cheeky I might give Plasma a Str 1 but a Str 2 if overcharged.

Obviously it is just an example and would require revamping many other rules as well, but I think it would be a lot easier than trying to balance out Str+AP vs T+AS. Especially if you don't go to a d10 or 12.

The current system (separate T, save, S and AP) gives much more variety though. With so many units and weapons, many would end up being the same as each other.

Skaorn wrote:
With some people talking about ideas such as combining Toughness and Armor and just having it a defense against Strength and AP, I think it would be simpler to do something else like give each unit a unit type that determines how easy it is to cause a wound using a simple table like this:

1 Always Fails
Chaff/Swarm 2+ Grots and Rippers
Light Infantry 3+ IG Troopers and Guardians
Medium Infantry 4+ Firewarriors and Ork Boyz (this one might be controversial though)
Heavy Infantry 5+ SM and Necrons
Super Heavy Infantry 6+ Terminators and Immortals

Vehicles and MCs would get a similar chart
Small Vehicles 4+ Land Speeders and Ork Buggies
Light Vehicles/MCs 5+ Most Transports
Medium Vehicles/MCs 6+ Predators and Carnifexes
Heavy Vehicles/MCs 7+ Landraider And Trigon
LoW 8+ Baneblade 8+ Baneblades and Titans

These rolls would be modified by the weapons that are attempting to wound on a Strength scale of +0 to +4.
0 would be most weapons
1 would probably be things like Heavy Bolters
2 would be ACs and Missile Launchers
3 would be Lascannons and Meltas
4 would generally be for things like Railguns and LoW scale anti-armor guns.
To be a little cheeky I might give Plasma a Str 1 but a Str 2 if overcharged.

Obviously it is just an example and would require revamping many other rules as well, but I think it would be a lot easier than trying to balance out Str+AP vs T+AS. Especially if you don't go to a d10 or 12.

That looks less simple than SvT and dropping saves/Ap IMO. It's a somewhat more convoluted way of doing the same thing as T, with tables to consult or memorize, and without the benefit of tweaking toughness per unit.

Reading these fan attempts to fix the game really restores my faith in GW's rule writers.

Well, if you are in the crowd that wants to simplify the game by combining the Wound Roll and the Save Roll, you're already asking for a more simplified/samey game. GW removing initiative already showed that already as it took out a characteristic of different armies. I'm not necessarily a fan of taking away either of these elements from the game, really, because I don't feel the game needs that kind of simplification.

The problem is that if you go to a system of simple defense va weapon power you run into a lot of problems. If you just try to do a straight conversion using current stats probably won't go over well. A SM might have a defense of 8 (T4 + 4 for armor) while an IG Trooper might have a defense of (T3 + 2 for armor). Let's go with you need to beat the defense score and look at a Str 3 AP 0 Lasgun. It would need a 6 to wound SM and a 3+ to wound an IG. A Str 5 Pulse Rifle or Bolter Rifle (Str 4 AP 1) would need a 4+ to woundan SM and would auto wound an IG unless 1 always fails to wound. Obviously it gets worse as you get bigger numbers where you have defenses that shouldn't get beaten, and weapons that would more than double some defense scores. In order to pull a system like this off, you'd have to go with a system like WMH, which would be exhausting to convert to, and probably a bigger die.

What I listed above was the only way I could think of as a system that might work for the crowd who said they wanted combined Toughness and Armor and still keeps a d6. Personally I don't see the chart as something difficult to remember. Then again, I see it as likely to be used as going with a straight defense score for every unit. Sometimes writing something like my previous post up is about showing the problems of such systems (sameness with units, not everything can wound everything, etc).

Crimson wrote:Reading these fan attempts to fix the game really restores my faith in GW's rule writers.

How so? Because a shallow core that can't support what its own creators want to do with it is a better alternative? Because no-one but a GW rules developer could possibly have anything useful to contribute based on their experience playing a variety of games? Because the player's perspective doesn't matter?

Skaorn wrote:Well, if you are in the crowd that wants to simplify the game by combining the Wound Roll and the Save Roll, you're already asking for a more simplified/samey game. GW removing initiative already showed that already as it took out a characteristic of different armies. I'm not necessarily a fan of taking away either of these elements from the game, really, because I don't feel the game needs that kind of simplification.....

Not so! You are making the same mistake GW's rules writers do- looking at everything in a vacuum. Yes, I think saves are unnecessary- what is really added to the game by armor/invuln saves? Something to do on your opponent's turn? But as I said originally, I think there are better, more decision-based things that could be done in place of saves/ap. Make cover matter more, for one. A suppression system. Alternating Activation w/ more actions to choose from than move/shoot/charge. And so on. Not samey at all.

Blastaar wrote:

Crimson wrote:Reading these fan attempts to fix the game really restores my faith in GW's rule writers.

How so? Because a shallow core that can't support what its own creators want to do with it is a better alternative? Because no-one but a GW rules developer could possibly have anything useful to contribute based on their experience playing a variety of games? Because the player's perspective doesn't matter?

Because most of these suggestions are terrible. 40K has its flaws, certainly. But I'm pretty sure that it would be several magnitudes worse once Dakka was done 'fixing' it if these suggestions are anything to go by.

If you are going to remove armor saves, what are you going to replace it with? Armor saves are to give the unit a extra degree of resilance, so if they are out in the open they won't get instantly deleted.

That was a problem in 7th ed; everything died way too quickly because of the amount of D and AP2 weapons floating around, which is why they introduced the new armor mod system.

Plasma before would not grant any save to a 2+ armored model.
Now it reduces 2+ to 5+.

Armor also differenciates model. A Necron warrior has the same statline as an immortal, but a different save. Ditto for scouts and tac marines.

So if you remove armor saves, you have to replace it with another defensive measure that shows how well armored the model is.

You could just as easily claim that the wound roll is unnecessary; what does the wound roll add to the game? You could in theory just base everything on armor saves, and make weapons distinct from each other from RoF and armor save mods, as well as hit mods and special rules. Like, a bolter could be effective at short range, but at medium range it loses accuracy and at long range it loses accuracy and pen power.
If you think about it logically, the wound roll is more pointless than the armor stat. Why should I have to roll to wound with a lascannon? Its a lascannon. Anything not sufficiently armored gets vaporized. A grot should not have a 1/6 chance of somehow deflecting the bloody huge laser beam off of his honker of a nose.

Suppression is a nice idea. The game could use a mechanic like that. Earlier editions had pinning, which had the idea of suppression, but was never well implemented, and as such it was eventually dropped.

How would you make cover matter more? It already increases a unit's resilience, which is what cover is meant to do. I disagree with the notion that it doesn't help much against popular weapons. A marine in cover has 2+ save. Against plasma that becomes a 5+ save. Without cover it would have been a 6+ save. Chances of surviving a wound increased from 17% to 33%. That is not an insignificant increase.

Skaorn wrote:
Well, if you are in the crowd that wants to simplify the game by combining the Wound Roll and the Save Roll, you're already asking for a more simplified/samey game. GW removing initiative already showed that already as it took out a characteristic of different armies. I'm not necessarily a fan of taking away either of these elements from the game, really, because I don't feel the game needs that kind of simplification.

The problem is that if you go to a system of simple defense va weapon power you run into a lot of problems. If you just try to do a straight conversion using current stats probably won't go over well. A SM might have a defense of 8 (T4 + 4 for armor) while an IG Trooper might have a defense of (T3 + 2 for armor). Let's go with you need to beat the defense score and look at a Str 3 AP 0 Lasgun. It would need a 6 to wound SM and a 3+ to wound an IG. A Str 5 Pulse Rifle or Bolter Rifle (Str 4 AP 1) would need a 4+ to woundan SM and would auto wound an IG unless 1 always fails to wound. Obviously it gets worse as you get bigger numbers where you have defenses that shouldn't get beaten, and weapons that would more than double some defense scores. In order to pull a system like this off, you'd have to go with a system like WMH, which would be exhausting to convert to, and probably a bigger die.

What I listed above was the only way I could think of as a system that might work for the crowd who said they wanted combined Toughness and Armor and still keeps a d6. Personally I don't see the chart as something difficult to remember. Then again, I see it as likely to be used as going with a straight defense score for every unit. Sometimes writing something like my previous post up is about showing the problems of such systems (sameness with units, not everything can wound everything, etc).

Read Mantic's Kings of War rules. A fantastically strategic rules set but very smooth and intuitive. It removes the Save step completely.

@ Blastaar: You could be right. I certainly don't have the temperament. You have made me realize that I do like active defense over passive defense. I like the chance to get to do something other than just remove the number of models my opponent tells me too. If my suggestion above was serious, I probably would have kept invulnerable savesas is for special units and heroes still.

I will say that what I saw of Mantic's Suppression system, at least I think it was there's, I liked it better than 40K's moral system. You had a Nerve stat, you got shot at equal to your nerve stats and you got a penalty, if you got double your nerve then you fell back.

Blastaar wrote:

Crimson wrote:Reading these fan attempts to fix the game really restores my faith in GW's rule writers.

How so? Because a shallow core that can't support what its own creators want to do with it is a better alternative? Because no-one but a GW rules developer could possibly have anything useful to contribute based on their experience playing a variety of games? Because the player's perspective doesn't matter?

Because most of the ideas are terrible. I would have thought that would be fairly obvious from the context.

Blastaar wrote:

Crimson wrote:Reading these fan attempts to fix the game really restores my faith in GW's rule writers.

How so? Because a shallow core that can't support what its own creators want to do with it is a better alternative? Because no-one but a GW rules developer could possibly have anything useful to contribute based on their experience playing a variety of games? Because the player's perspective doesn't matter?

The first rule of Game Design is people on the internet will say horrible things about you and your work because they can. Learn to live with it.

Skaorn wrote:@ Blastaar: You could be right. I certainly don't have the temperament. You have made me realize that I do like active defense over passive defense. I like the chance to get to do something other than just remove the number of models my opponent tells me too. If my suggestion above was serious, I probably would have kept invulnerable savesas is for special units and heroes still.

I will say that what I saw of Mantic's Suppression system, at least I think it was there's, I liked it better than 40K's moral system. You had a Nerve stat, you got shot at equal to your nerve stats and you got a penalty, if you got double your nerve then you fell back.

Understood. It isn't that fun to do nothing but remove models while your opponent is moving, shooting, and hacking away at your troops. I don't think removing saves would work if IGOUGO stays. Switch to AA, though, and soon after you remove some guys it's your turn to do something.....

CthuluIsSpy wrote:If you are going to remove armor saves, what are you going to replace it with? Armor saves are to give the unit a extra degree of resilance, so if they are out in the open they won't get instantly deleted.

That was a problem in 7th ed; everything died way too quickly because of the amount of D and AP2 weapons floating around, which is why they introduced the new armor mod system.

Plasma before would not grant any save to a 2+ armored model.
Now it reduces 2+ to 5+.

Armor also differenciates model. A Necron warrior has the same statline as an immortal, but a different save. Ditto for scouts and tac marines.

So if you remove armor saves, you have to replace it with another defensive measure that shows how well armored the model is.

You could just as easily claim that the wound roll is unnecessary; what does the wound roll add to the game? You could in theory just base everything on armor saves, and make weapons distinct from each other from RoF and armor save mods, as well as hit mods and special rules. Like, a bolter could be effective at short range, but at medium range it loses accuracy and at long range it loses accuracy and pen power.
If you think about it logically, the wound roll is more pointless than the armor stat. Why should I have to roll to wound with a lascannon? Its a lascannon. Anything not sufficiently armored gets vaporized. A grot should not have a 1/6 chance of somehow deflecting the bloody huge laser beam off of his honker of a nose.

Suppression is a nice idea. The game could use a mechanic like that. Earlier editions had pinning, which had the idea of suppression, but was never well implemented, and as such it was eventually dropped.

How would you make cover matter more? It already increases a unit's resilience, which is what cover is meant to do. I disagree with the notion that it doesn't help much against popular weapons. A marine in cover has 2+ save. Against plasma that becomes a 5+ save. Without cover it would have been a 6+ save. Chances of surviving a wound increased from 17% to 33%. That is not an insignificant increase.

I think removing the to-wound roll in addition would be a step too far, reducing the number of variables that can make units interesting as well as making things die too easily. There needs to be a chance that an attack fails to damage something, however small. I would rather see durability increase myself, I am just skeptical that armor saves as standard is the best way to go about that. Wounding has also been less of a balance issue IMO than the save system which has tended to skew units' durability too much in both directions. Keeping invulns, in more limited quantities I can get behind, especially for units that have a strong thematic connection with them, like terminators. No-one wants to see those guys be unviable.

Doesn't it make sense in 40k, with all the weapons available, that being out in the open for most troops would be pretty lethal? Sure the dynamic could change, but it may be more interesting if troops are darting from one protected position to another much of the time.

My big issue with terrain is that it doesn't affect movement much, and I'd love to see some way of slowing enemy units down by leading them through "difficult terrain" as well as solving the issues with true LOS. Even a required % of the table that must be covered by terrain could help, the usual density in a game of 40k is definitely part of the problem. I find games are more fun the more you get to move your minis, and the more that movement matters.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

Crimson wrote:Reading these fan attempts to fix the game really restores my faith in GW's rule writers.

How so? Because a shallow core that can't support what its own creators want to do with it is a better alternative? Because no-one but a GW rules developer could possibly have anything useful to contribute based on their experience playing a variety of games? Because the player's perspective doesn't matter?

The first rule of Game Design is people on the internet will say horrible things about you and your work because they can. Learn to live with it.

Pretty sure that's the first rule of doing anytthing on the internet.

 Brother Castor wrote:
The current system (separate T, save, S and AP) gives much more variety though. With so many units and weapons, many would end up being the same as each other.

There might be variety, but a lot of it is basically just fluff. Sure, the exact numbers you need to roll at each step when shooting at an Ork Boy versus a Fire Warrior are different, and some weapons are marginally more effective against one than the other, but they both wind up more or less in the same functional category of 'infantry, tougher than a Guardsman, weaker than a Space Marine'. Generally the weapons that are optimal against one are optimal against the other as well. Variety for variety's sake is just complexity if it doesn't add anything meaningful.

I'm curious, how many of the people commenting in this thread have played Epic? That game has much simpler combat mechanics than 40K, including a lack of wound rolls, but it still preserves much of the flavor of the units it features. Its additional mechanics, like a much deeper command and control system, provide other means of differentiating armies and units from one another. In Epic, a force of Space Marines feels like an elite, disciplined unit, able to act and react at a high tempo. Conversely, a horde of Orks has brute force, but trying to coordinate them is like herding cats. I'd argue that despite the game's simpler mechanics, it has more meaningful variety than 40K does. If 40K had greater focus on C&C, suppression, alternating activation, range, LOS, and terrain, there would be lots of means of differentiating weapons and units without needing five stats governing offense and four stats governing defense. Lots of other games, both from GW and other companies, have done this, so it's not like we're in uncharted territory here.

This is all just idle chat. GW's probably not going to overhaul a system that has remained largely static since Rogue Trader.