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Things are a lot simpler than they used to be though - vehicles now have the same statlines and rules as infantry, and some of the Rogue Trader-era stats (I, Cl, Wp) have been removed. Rolling lots of dice, to me at least, is less of a problem than stratagems. I still wish they were just unit abilities (or not at all). I think 10th edition army and detachment rules would be fine on their own without stratagems.

Yes, but some of this simplicity was achieved by cutting gameplay and adding random, further distancing players from the result. For example templates, instead of being based on positioning, just add yet another step of dice rolling.

I actually liked templates.

 dreadblade wrote:
I actually liked templates.

I like templates as well, they give a fun visual to the game for specific weapons.
Can understand why some people need the change, but eh. GW are bad and didn’t adapt the rules that well into the way the system works.

Yes, I think templates were fine. A bit imprecise, I admit, but when I played wh40k it was almost exclusively at home with friends, so it was never much of a problem.

And for this tiny price of a little imprecision, templates provided both players with some interesting decisions and their effectiveness relied a lot on what players did.

Now it's just passively watching a number of hits generating itself with no player input whatsoever. One of the many changes in 8th that just sealed the deal of my leaving the game.

 dreadblade wrote:
I actually liked templates.

It allowed for more granular mechanics.

For differing tools, indeed for area denial etc. as seen as HH. Which then of course leads to more mechanical differences on how you engage the game and table and the opponent.

I liked flamer templates. They were straight forward. Blast markers slowed down the game.

Cyel wrote:
Having to perform it manually every single time would just detract from the game.

For you.

For you.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I liked flamer templates. They were straight forward. Blast markers slowed down the game.

The problem with blast templates was part of the whole conflict of whether the game is model-based or squad-based. When it was model-based, positioning troops to mitigate blast attacks was a necessary skill. Players who simply bunched them together got what happens when you do that in real life - the perfect target for a grenade or artillery strike.

Templates in 2nd had very clear rules about how they could be placed, which tied in with the rules about who could be hit as a point target. With 3rd, the model count went up, and so did the abstraction, and that was where template wars/sniping became a problem. The size of the game also meant that players had less time to spend on model position because they had so many troops to physically move. Then there was the constant churn over how LOS works and how to apply cover.

I can see why GW got rid of them: writing clear, coherent and stable rules was simply beyond their capability.

The other issue was as units got greater in model count, players would start to "conga line" them out more and more. Which steadily lost that feeling of a unified force and felt more like strings of models.

The new blast rules where it works based on total models in the unit rather than a template, does help mitigate positioning somewhat. It does take away some of the aspects of crafty movement though, which is a shame; but it does at least try to help deal with conga-line issues.

I think 10th's blast rules are fine. Certainly better than 9th's.

So, broken clock theory remains in tact.

 Overread wrote:
The other issue was as units got greater in model count, players would start to "conga line" them out more and more. Which steadily lost that feeling of a unified force and felt more like strings of models.

The new blast rules where it works based on total models in the unit rather than a template, does help mitigate positioning somewhat. It does take away some of the aspects of crafty movement though, which is a shame; but it does at least try to help deal with conga-line issues.

That’s a rather easy fix, you can have command from a leader model, that all other models must be within. This also means players can spread out a bit as they do not have to check coherence for each model in a unit.
And conga lines don’t really work.
People are just far too lenient on GW base rules, constantly we see they are good it’s what’s built on top.
But there base rules suck, so what’s built on top tends to just be a constant state of issues trying to deal with it.
The blast rules now just a fix to an issue they didn’t fix.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I'd be more sympathetic to this if A. I weren't usually in the position of my armies routinely being denied saves altogether, though admittedly this has gotten better in 10th, and B. Rolling saves actually involved some sort of interactivity with the game, rather than being a mechanic that the other player could just as easily resolve.

But they don't resolve it. You do. You are saving your men. You could have your opponent do everything, but part of the interactivity is the fact that you are the one making the effort to keep your guys alive.

"There's no 'effort' in rolling dice!"

It's not a struggle to roll dice, no, but this is an intangible thing - something you feel whilst playing - not a mechanics or rules-based thing. If you sat there and your opponent did everything including rolling armour saves for the things he's shooting at, the game would be remarkably passive when it was't your turn, and you might as well not be there. But you are there, and rolling saves is how you are involved when it's not your troops taking actions. It's the reason the game uses dice rather than set determined outcomes based upon specific inputs.

The game uses dice to inject randomness, not to give you agency. When I take saves I'm not choosing to go to ground or otherwise making any other decision that might actually save my men; I'm performing a mechanical function that my opponent, a bystander, or a computer could do as easily and with the same outcome. I want to command armies, to pit my tactical acumen against my opponent's, to make decisions that actually do save my men, and I want the system to quickly and elegantly resolve those interactions so we can get back to the meat of the experience. Rolling dice is part of the traditional wargame identity, but it's still only a means to an end.

In any case, the fact that serving as a random number generator is pretty much all you do in your opponent's turn (aside from the occasional stratagem) is more of an indictment of the game structure than a justification for its inclusion. The game is remarkably passive when it isn't your turn, even if it assigns you busywork to keep you from going off to make a sandwich. It's also pretty arbitrary that armor penetration is the mechanic chosen to do this in the first place- why not make a toughness save? Why not make a dodge save in lieu of roll to hit? Why is armor resolved after S-vs-T to begin with? It's just a legacy carryover from the RPG systems that 40K evolved out of. If it really were vitally important that the passive player get to participate in some part of the combat resolution sequence, they wouldn't pick a mechanic that for the first seven editions of the game was routinely circumvented altogether by AP and didn't apply to vehicles.

In prior editions I never felt like I was bored, or helpless, or not interacting with the game because I had a whole army of Sv5+ and my opponent had a whole army of AP5 (or AP-2) or better. I felt bored, helpless, and non-interactive because I was playing a game structured around thirty-minute periods of having no gameplay input while my opponent removes my models from the table, and being called upon to roll for toughness or whatever wouldn't have changed that.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
And at the risk of beating a dead horse: 40K doesn't do much with the to-hit roll, using it as a largely static filter to uniformly reduce damage. I'd wager that making to-hit into an opposed check against a how-hard-is-it-to-hit stat would add a lot more to the game than consolidating some of the current defensive stats would take away, while still reducing the amount of rolling overall.

I don't disagree with making a To Hit roll an opposed test like a Toughness check.

That way speed/size could be a defence to getting hit, and toughness a defence on whether that hit does anything. 40k currently lacks speed as a form of protection, or, as you keep bringing up, size as a weakness (the difficulties of hitting a Grot vs a Warlord Titan).

If its opposed, you can scale it. Unfortunately 8th-10th's scaling has been neutered with 6's always succeeding. If 6's always succeed then any test has a break point where rolling more dice is just better than using specialist tools. Therein lies the problem: Not that we need to roll lots of dice, but that the basic core mechanics give greater rewards for simply drowning your opponent in small, colourful numbered cubes.

Can you give me an examples of a case in 10th where just fishing for lots of 6s is better than having the right tools for the right job? The only example I can think of is lasguns hurting tanks, which while still technically possible (and something I dislike from a purely conceptual standpoint) is still nowhere near as effective as dedicated anti-tank weapons. And you could always just add a extra thresholds, where 3x their value is an auto-success and 1/3 their value is an auto-fail.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I liked flamer templates. They were straight forward. Blast markers slowed down the game.

Cyel wrote:
Having to perform it manually every single time would just detract from the game.

For you.

For you.

Well, if you made this comment about any other quote from my post you would be absolutely right! In general what we write here is our point of view or opinion.

With this specific sentence, though, you are incorrect.

It refers to video games that use RNG hiding the process in the background and making it invisible to the player, so that the player makes a decision and instantly sees the result without having to perform the calculation and number generation manually. It's true for almost every game, whether a strategy, an RPG or a looter shooter. MTG Arena shuffles your deck for you in a blink of an eye too.

Even Baldur's Gate3, which has a panel where you roll ad20 and can add buffs, uses it only in a limited number of specific occassions to help link the feel of the game to the original tabletop experience. Vast majority of "rolls" (for example all combat or exploration) are automated, instantenous and hidden from the player.

And you know what, it's not me who makes all these games. I wish I was that talented and productive!

So the opinion that it's better to make the process of random number generation necessary for the game to produce a result and progress instantenous and invisible in the background, so that players can concentrate on gameplay and not the menial task of calculating, randomising and consulting is not MY opinion. It seems to be the opinion of the entire video game industry.

And yeah, maybe YOU would like a, let's say, RPG game to stop every time you open a treasure chest, so that you can click on a virtual die to roll it, compare the result with the probability of finding loot and manually click a "found it!" or "nothing there!" button and then manually choose and scroll down an appropriate random loot table to find the number you rolled and click on the specific item. But I strongly believe you are one of maybe a handful video game players on the planet who would prefer RNG in games to work like this. Vast majority just wants to get the item and continue with actual gameplay and that's why games are made like this.

Cyel wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I liked flamer templates. They were straight forward. Blast markers slowed down the game.

Cyel wrote:
Having to perform it manually every single time would just detract from the game.

For you.

For you.

Well, if you made this comment about any other quote from my post you would be absolutely right! In general what we write here is our point of view or opinion.

With this specific sentence, though, you are incorrect.

It refers to video games that use RNG hiding the process in the background and making it invisible to the player, so that the player makes a decision and instantly sees the result without having to perform the calculation and number generation manually. It's true for almost every game, whether a strategy, an RPG or a looter shooter. MTG Arena shuffles your deck for you in a blink of an eye too.

Even Baldur's Gate3, which has a panel where you roll ad20 and can add buffs, uses it only in a limited number of specific occassions to help link the feel of the game to the original tabletop experience. Vast majority of "rolls" (for example all combat or exploration) are automated, instantenous and hidden from the player.

And you know what, it's not me who makes all these games. I wish I was that talented and productive!

So the opinion that it's better to make the process of random number generation necessary for the game to produce a result and progress instantenous and invisible in the background, so that players can concentrate on gameplay and not the menial task of calculating, randomising and consulting is not MY opinion. It seems to be the opinion of the entire video game industry.

And yeah, maybe YOU would like a, let's say, RPG game to stop every time you open a treasure chest, so that you can click on a virtual die to roll it, compare the result with the probability of finding loot and manually click a "found it!" or "nothing there!" button and then manually choose and scroll down an appropriate random loot table to find the number you rolled and click on the specific item. But I strongly believe you are one of maybe a handful video game players on the planet who would prefer RNG in games to work like this. Vast majority just wants to get the item and continue with actual gameplay and that's why games are made like this.

Who cares? We're playing & talking about 40k - the miniatures game as played on the table top. Not a PC game. If you want random numbers generated? You've got to pause for a moment & do it manually....

First - don't quote like this, it makes the thread incredibly messy.

Second - yes, it matters. If manual resolution was fun, video games would use it. But they don't. Because they can avoid it, they always do which kind of shows it's a good idea.

And yes, video game can make it invisible, tabletop game can't. So it's the designer's responsibility to make it as quick and unobtrusive as possible. Not, like in40k, make the non-interactive process of upkeep and resolution take 75% of the total time you spend at the table.

Cyel wrote:
First - don't quote like this, it makes the thread incredibly messy.

Second - yes, it matters. If manual resolution was fun, video games would use it. But they don't. Because they can avoid it, they always do which kind of shows it's a good idea.

And yes, video game can make it invisible, tabletop game can't. So it's the designer's responsibility to make it as quick and unobtrusive as possible. Not, like in40k, make the non-interactive process of upkeep and resolution take 75% of the total time you spend at the table.

It's not a fair comparison. You're not rolling dice purely to generate numbers, it's a physical tactile activity for both players.

A PC game and in this genre, it's entire selling point in some cases, is that tactile element isn't needed.

Clicking on the screen to get a number isn't the same as picking up a handful of cubes and rolling them. Wargaming is primarily a social tactile activity, stop comparing it to a primarily single player digital product.

Or are you going to approach fifa and suggest they conduct the world Cup using wtfever EA have cranked out this year to reduce VAR errors, reduce unwanted pitch conditions, hundreds of hours of training etc?

Fair point, ifyou see itlike that. Does it really add to the experience, though, that to determine if, say, a 45% chance of success action succeeds, you roll for 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds? Isn't the tactile element satisfied sufficiently by interacting with the models and terrain?

Some people like the feel of shuffling cards. I do. Still card games dont ask us to shuffle them three times for one minute each time, alternating between both players, to add to the experience. Once is enough, thank you. Even if I like the feel, I want to play the game not shuffle the deck for hours on end.

Dudeface wrote:
.

Clicking on the screen to get a number isn't the same as picking up a handful of cubes and rolling them.

For me, personally, it's exactly this. An equivalent of asking a younger brother to roll the dice for me or calling my wife so that she tells me the first number from 1 to 6 that comes to her mind. RNG away and get back to playing ASAP.

And social interaction at the table is for me much more interesting if we discuss decisions and options, not turn our minds off for the menial task that the game asks us to perform.

 catbarf wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
And at the risk of beating a dead horse: 40K doesn't do much with the to-hit roll, using it as a largely static filter to uniformly reduce damage. I'd wager that making to-hit into an opposed check against a how-hard-is-it-to-hit stat would add a lot more to the game than consolidating some of the current defensive stats would take away, while still reducing the amount of rolling overall.

I don't disagree with making a To Hit roll an opposed test like a Toughness check.

That way speed/size could be a defence to getting hit, and toughness a defence on whether that hit does anything. 40k currently lacks speed as a form of protection, or, as you keep bringing up, size as a weakness (the difficulties of hitting a Grot vs a Warlord Titan).

If its opposed, you can scale it. Unfortunately 8th-10th's scaling has been neutered with 6's always succeeding. If 6's always succeed then any test has a break point where rolling more dice is just better than using specialist tools. Therein lies the problem: Not that we need to roll lots of dice, but that the basic core mechanics give greater rewards for simply drowning your opponent in small, colourful numbered cubes.

Can you give me an examples of a case in 10th where just fishing for lots of 6s is better than having the right tools for the right job? The only example I can think of is lasguns hurting tanks, which while still technically possible (and something I dislike from a purely conceptual standpoint) is still nowhere near as effective as dedicated anti-tank weapons. And you could always just add a extra thresholds, where 3x their value is an auto-success and 1/3 their value is an auto-fail.

Not a perfect example, but in a game I played yesterday 2 5-man terminator squads and a 5-man intercessor squad brought my land raider from 14 to 5 wounds over 2 turns with nothing but their small arms and the occasional grenade. And that was with oath of moment only on the second of those turns. You could argue that's an issue with Oath, but I think it shows flaws with the system. Massed Intercessor spam is hard to deal with in general IMO, as the amount of shots they output, combined with the hardiness of the platform is hard to deal with, at least in my experience.

Considering prior to 8th-10 terminators could right up annoy a land raider with powefists even ripping off weapons or immobilizing it with glancing hits at best if they assaulted it, and those intercessors previous incarnation-the tac squad could not do GAK unless they brought along a melta gun or a las cannon those items could hypothetically could kill a land raider in a single shot....but then those are dedicated AT weapons made for such a job.

The current game design is not 40K in the classic sense IE Krieg spiel inspired Napoleonic tactical battle, it is an abstract resource juggling mechanic that uses miniatures as place holders. effectively a CCG with miniatures.

8th-10th volume fishing is a thing because even with a 2+ or a 3+ save enough shots even wounding on 6+ will get through. while "wounding" a heavy tank with infantry small arms is laughable psychologically to the players. it is a mechanic they put in the game as a "balance" mechanic.

from 8th ed onwards it has been an arms race between increased toughness and wounds to counter the massive increase in armor reduction/number of shots and damage weapons get in the game.

 aphyon wrote:

Spoiler:

Considering prior to 8th-10 terminators could right up annoy a land raider with powefists even ripping off weapons or immobilizing it with glancing hits at best if they assaulted it, and those intercessors previous incarnation-the tac squad could not do GAK unless they brought along a melta gun or a las cannon those items could hypothetically could kill a land raider in a single shot....but then those are dedicated AT weapons made for such a job.

The current game design is not 40K in the classic sense IE Krieg spiel inspired Napoleonic tactical battle, it is an abstract resource juggling mechanic that uses miniatures as place holders. effectively a CCG with miniatures.

very much this!!!!

Dudeface wrote:
Clicking on the screen to get a number isn't the same as picking up a handful of cubes and rolling them. Wargaming is primarily a social tactile activity, stop comparing it to a primarily single player digital product.

It's nostalgia, first and foremost, and for a lot of people a deliberate decision to unplug and have a purely analog experience with another human being.

But it's undeniable that the rise of computer games gutted the wargame market, and complex number-crunching experiences like Star Fleet Battles or Harpoon are now almost universally digital. Board games and wargames have gradually shifted away from that kind of experience and towards systems that play quickly, don't require an associate's degree to learn, and emphasize interacting with the other player(s) rather than tediously resolving the raw mechanics of the game.

I have a lot of fondness for the physical act of rolling dice, but when it takes an average of 62 fething dice across four separate rolls for a squad of Guardsmen to remove a single Marine from the table, my enthusiasm diminishes rapidly. When you make a decision and then roll to see what happens, it's exciting. When you make a decision and then roll and roll and roll and ultimately spend five times longer just resolving the decision than it took to make it, with three-quarters of those rolls just being 'roll to see how many dice you get to roll next', it feels like a chore.

 catbarf wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Clicking on the screen to get a number isn't the same as picking up a handful of cubes and rolling them. Wargaming is primarily a social tactile activity, stop comparing it to a primarily single player digital product.

It's nostalgia, first and foremost, and for a lot of people a deliberate decision to unplug and have a purely analog experience with another human being.

But it's undeniable that the rise of computer games gutted the wargame market, and complex number-crunching experiences like Star Fleet Battles or Harpoon are now almost universally digital. Board games and wargames have gradually shifted away from that kind of experience and towards systems that play quickly, don't require an associate's degree to learn, and emphasize interacting with the other player(s) rather than tediously resolving the raw mechanics of the game.

I have a lot of fondness for the physical act of rolling dice, but when it takes an average of 62 fething dice across four separate rolls for a squad of Guardsmen to remove a single Marine from the table, my enthusiasm diminishes rapidly. When you make a decision and then roll to see what happens, it's exciting. When you make a decision and then roll and roll and roll and ultimately spend five times longer just resolving the decision than it took to make it, with three-quarters of those rolls just being 'roll to see how many dice you get to roll next', it feels like a chore.

That's a completely valid stance, I won't deny GW could improve the relative dice to output ratio in a lot of ways, but it is still still part of the joy and the process as you say.

I think it isn't just dice-to-output in terms of the end result, but also each roll having tangible consequence that makes it feel worth the effort.

In 40K, a shot that missed, a shot that failed to wound, and a shot that got saved by armor all have the same significance: none. The steps in the attack resolution process have no effects on their own, they're all 'rolling to see if you get to roll', and it's easy for it all to feel like pointless rolling if it amounts to nothing.

In SST, if you make a hit but the target passes their save, they still have to flinch one model 1". The outcome of every attack is a miss, a flinch, or a kill.

So not only does SST have you do less rolling to reach the outcome, but each success in the sequence means something happens. Each roll matters beyond just being setup for the next roll.

I like rolling when it does stuff. I don't like rolling for the sake of rolling.

 catbarf wrote:
I think it isn't just dice-to-output in terms of the end result, but also each roll having tangible consequence that makes it feel worth the effort.

In 40K, a shot that missed, a shot that failed to wound, and a shot that got saved by armor all have the same significance: none. The steps in the attack resolution process have no effects on their own, they're all 'rolling to see if you get to roll', and it's easy for it all to feel like pointless rolling if it amounts to nothing.

The dice proliferation is another holdover from 40ks RPG/Platoon-level heritage. Through 2nd ed., even missed shots had consequences, such as guns jamming, overheating and of course templates that missed have to somewhere, etc. Some weapons also came with ammo supply restrictions (Whirlwind, Terminator Typhoons), and some weapons (generally Ork, some Chaos) you misfire in spectacular fashion.

But as the game scales up, a revision to the mechanics of shooting resolution becomes essential. It's kind of funny but an American Civil War boardgame had a complex dice mechanic that was originally done sequentially but one of the players contacted the designers and noted that there was no reason for that. Just use different color sets for the dice, throw them at once and apply the result.

The big difference is that (as noted) in GW's system you roll dice to find out how many dice to roll next.

Still, I'm pretty sure you could do a flow chart based on probability and cut the number of rolls. It would be less random, but I see that as a feature, not a bug.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Still, I'm pretty sure you could do a flow chart based on probability and cut the number of rolls. It would be less random, but I see that as a feature, not a bug.

You could, more or less. The to-hit, to-wound, and save rolls are all basically modifiers that go into a random number generator that determines the number of unsaved wounds that ultimately go through. So theoretically, you could have a table that basically mathhammers the average expected results and then the expected results for one standard of deviation in each direction and turn that into a d6 roll. Something like:

1 = average of one standard of deviation down.
2-5 = simple average.
6 = average one standard of deviation up.

Or something like that. But then, this assumes that you have a table that lists the values you'd need for every possible combination of to-hit values, to-wound values, and save values. Referencing something like that is arguably more tedious than just rolling the dice. Plus you'd lose out on things like special abilities that trigger on certain rolls. Also, there's a point at which you make the game so non-random you might be better off just not rolling dice and making attacks have flat results instead.

If we did the Apocolypse thing where every weapon just has a streamlined anti-big-stuff and anti-little-stuff stat, you could use something like the above d6 roll to quickly generate a number of saves the target has to make. So a squad of tactical marines might roll 1d6 for the whole squad (instead of a bunch of dice for individual attacks). A higher roll wound result in the enemy making more saves than a lower roll, and a lower roll might not cause any saves to be taken at all. Ex:

Bolter (against big stuff): Roll 1d6. 1-4 = 0 saves, 5-6 = 1 save.
Bolter (against small stuff): Roll 1d6. 1-2 = 1 saves, 3-4 = 2 saves, 5-6 = 3 saves.

So the upsides are that you:
* Spend less time resolving attacks (roll fewer dice).
* Can set a minimum number of saves against the squad's preferred target (no feels-bad flub rolls where your 40 bolter shots somehow manage to do 0 wounds to a squad of ork boys.)
* Can set a maximum amount of damage to a non-preferred target (improbably good rolls will never result in 10 lasguns one-shotting a land raider.)

Expanding on that idea, I'd probably give squads "blocks" (better name pending). The first clump of 5 dudes you take in a squad of scourges or devastators? That's a block. You want to add 5 more bodies? That's a second block. Want to give the first block some special weapons? Can do. On the table, each block makes its own attack. So the special weapon guys (who are assumed to all be packing the same gun in this hypothetical) would point their guns at a tank and unload with their heat lance/multimelta attack profile that generates lots of saves for big stuff but not many saves for little stuff. And then the second block (that's forced to use normal splinter carbines/bolters) would point their guns at the non-tank enemy off to the side. That way, you could handle splitfiring even with abstracted squads.

Still gets a little weird when talking about something like a 10-man tactical squad witha meltagun and multi-melta but otherwise packing bolters. I'd probably just give such units an "Anti-Tank Weaponry" upgrade that lets that causes them to inflict +1 saves on attack rolls of 4+. Something along those lines.

EDIT: And to clarify, you wouldn't lose individual models to attacks in this sytem. You'd lose blocks at a time. Individual blocks would have their own hitpoints. So maybe removing a block from a devastator squad would require that they fail 3 saves (lose 3 hitpoints). And once that threshold was reached, you'd pick up either the 5 bolter boys or the 5 special weapon guys+sergeant. The "block" containing those guys is destroyed.

 catbarf wrote:
I think it isn't just dice-to-output in terms of the end result, but also each roll having tangible consequence that makes it feel worth the effort.

In 40K, a shot that missed, a shot that failed to wound, and a shot that got saved by armor all have the same significance: none. The steps in the attack resolution process have no effects on their own, they're all 'rolling to see if you get to roll', and it's easy for it all to feel like pointless rolling if it amounts to nothing.

I'd argue it's less the fact that failed rolls do nothing and more the fact that so many rolls are completely static.

For example, a model's BS is a straight value. Certain targets may apply a modifier, but that too is fixed.

On the other hand, if there existed a penalty for being outside of half range (or a bonus for being within half range) then you could move closer to your target to try and improve your odds. Same goes for if you suffer a penalty for firing at an obscured target - you can move to a better spot, potentially putting your own unit at greater risk in the process.

Instead, with the sole exception of cover granting a bonus to a model's armour save, the positioning of models has almost no impact on how difficult it is to actually hit them.

Same goes for what you said earlier - there's no way to go to ground or take other defensive measures. So, while it might 'feel' better to roll saves, it would make no difference if your opponent just rolled them for you as there are no decisions to be made.

Part of that comes back to the LOS/cover rules.

If all you need to see to target a unit is the tip of a sword, and if all you need to get cover is to hide the tip of a sword, then the position of your troops doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot outside of whether they're in range for shooting/charging.

It's too easy to get LOS, and too easy to get cover. Movement/speed provides no level of protection unless it is artificially built into a unit's rules. Size and range offer no bonuses or penalties (except in very specific circumstances such as that new Marine detachment, or Meltas at half-range).

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Or something like that. But then, this assumes that you have a table that lists the values you'd need for every possible combination of to-hit values, to-wound values, and save values. Referencing something like that is arguably more tedious than just rolling the dice. Plus you'd lose out on things like special abilities that trigger on certain rolls. Also, there's a point at which you make the game so non-random you might be better off just not rolling dice and making attacks have flat results instead.

What I mean is grinding out the percentages and using them to create fire tables and then rolling a d6. We kind of touched on this earlier with the gunnery system of BFG. Instead of rolling a bucket of dice, count of the factors of each weapon type, and make one roll on the appropriate column.

This would require GW to revert to its older all or nothing system with vehicles, but to me that's a feature, not a bug.

I think you guys are conflating two different styles of resolution.

The Avalon Hill style CRT is where you total up your fire factors, cross reference against a D6 or 2D6 roll, and the table applies some deviation on the basis of that roll to spit out a result. You roll a single die (or maybe two) and that resolves the entire interaction.

Battlefleet Gothic's combat resolution is still a bucket of dice system, it just uses a table to skip the first roll in the sequence. Instead of starting at 12 firepower and determining that you need a 3+ to hit and then rolling, the table tells you to simply roll 8 dice against the target's armor and that's it.

This approach is a lot less constraining than the single-die CRT since it isn't limited to just 6 or 11 outcomes. It also makes it easy to incorporate modifiers that have you shift left or right on the table, which I find is easier to track than tallying up functionally-equivalent pluses and minuses to a die roll.

A 40K equivalent would be a system where you cross-reference 20 shots against having 'normal' ballistic skill, the table tells you that you get 10 dice to-wound, and start your rolling there. But with ballistic skill being such a skin-deep mechanic that it really does just amount to half as many hits as you have shots (plus or minus some randomization), you don't need a chart for that- if you wanted to streamline I think the more elegant approach would be to abstract out to-hit entirely.

Personally I would ditch the to-wound roll instead. It’s main purpose IMO is to reduce the effectiveness of small arms into big models. The addition of the damage stat and multiple wounds can already accomplish most of what the strength and toughness stat do. I would go the route of labeling weapons small arms and anti tank (and maybe something in between) and just disallow small arms to injure tanks or monsters.

Additionally, with the now boosted effectiveness of weapons (since you’re skipping a step), you could reduce the volume of dice needed for weapons to work. A lasgun could forego the rapid fire boost and instead have a close range to hit modifier, for example.