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I had a phonecall with my buddy and we brewed up some ideas reflecting on tank warfare as such and the way it could be implemented in 40k without causing too much fuzz or extra rules.
Antitank weaponry is made to disable a tank by either detonating fuel or ammunitions or by killing the crew by shrapnel leaving the tank rather intact and repairable.
We came up with the following hypothetical ruleset:

1. Each hull point represents a crew member and a vehicle has a designated number of them. Basically, each crewmember enables the vehicle to operate 1 weapon or to drive the vehicle. The crewmembers have armour related to their basic trooper type i.e. a imperial guardsman would have a 5+ armour, a tau fire warrior would have a 4+ and space marines would have a 3+ armour. This will be important later.
2. If a shot beats armour, we need to consider whether it is a glancing hit or a penetrating hit. This is important, as this modifies the result on the following chart:

Roll a d6
1-2 Crew shaken. The vehicle is struck and reverberates with the force of the hit. The driver struggles to retain control while the gunners have a hard time to hit. The vehicle can only do snapshots and considers open terrain as hindering terrain and the latter as dangerous terrain
3-4 Damage to crew. Shrapnel flies through the vehicle wounding the crew. For each crewmember make an armour save. If you fail, lose a hull point i.e. a crewmember. If a vehicle loses its last crewmember it is considered a wreck. Damaging the crew leads to impairing the vehicle's ability to fight. This makes IG tanks hard to penetrate but IF you do so then the result will be more grave than a hit on a space marine tank.
5: Mechanical damage. Roll again. 1-3 the vehicle is immobilized (if a flyer/skimmer it may crash). 4-6 the vehicle has one of its weapons (systems) destroyed. Apply the other result if not appropriate. If a vehicles has no operating weapons and is immobilized then it is considered a wreck.
6: Internal explosion. The vehicle is destroyed and considered a wreck. The crew is considered perished (unless stated otherwise) and/or unable to leave the wreck. Passengers are wounded and must make an armour save and can leave the wreck next turn.
7+: Vehicle explodes. The vehicle is destroyed and removed/replaced by a crater. The crew is considered perished. Passengers are wounded and must make an armour save are pinned and must bail out. Models in d6 Inch are wounded on a 4+

The following roll-on-chart modifications are true:
+1 if the vehicle is open
+1 for AP 2 weaponry
+2 for AP 1 weaponry
-2 for a glancing hit

Each crew usually has the relevant stats of a basic trooper
So a space marine would have 1 wound and a 3+ armour save.
There are vehicles in the universe that may be more reliant or not.

For example:
Space Marine Rhino
Armour is 11/11/10
Crew is 2 members and usually enough to fire and move
Weapons: 1 Storm bolter
Special rules:
Repair - After end of turn roll a d6. On a 6+ the vehicle recovers from a "immobilized" result. Passengers/Crew with a servo-arm add +1 to this roll.
Space Marine Vehicle - The driver is usually hard-wired via servo-armour interface to the tank. This enables the driver to fire a weapon and drive the vehicle.

IG Leman Russ Battle Tank
Armour is 14/12/10
Crew: 5
Weapons: Battle Cannon, hull-mounted heavy bolter. Can upgrade to laser, sponson weapons...yadda yadda
Now run a simulation.
Both vehicles are hit. The IG tank is harder to crack open but once this is done there is a 1 out of 3 chance the crew will be harmed. You fail a 5+ save quite often and so the LR is impaired in terms of battleworthyness. The fact it has many weapon systems, it will be more resiliant to result 5

Compare to the Rhino.
The Rhino is cracked more often. The Crew however survives more hits keeping the tank battleworty because of their superior armour.

You could also have the following rule for Eldar runestones/ SM machine spirits.
Counts as 1 crew member. Has 1 wound and a 2+ armour save.

GW has proven to release games where you keep track of something on a sheet of paper. Necromunda does this with keeping the flesh wounds. Battlefleet Gothic does this the entire game for all ships and noone complains about it. So why complain about it here? Even by placing a die next to the vehicle you could tell how many guys are alive.

Same works fine for walkers.

IG Sentinel
Armour 10/10/10
Crew 1 Guardsman (5+ sv)
Weapons: 1 Multilaser
Rules:
Scout, Flanking, Walker, Open - keep in mind that a walker can still move and fire up to 2 weapons as per rules

SM Dreadnaught
Armour 12/12/10
Crew 1 Senex Antiquus (2+ sv - heck he lies in an armoured sarcophagus)
Weapons: yadda yadda
Rules: Walker
can be upgraded to venerable dreadnaught (gets an additional wound and BS/WS 5. Limit of 1 per detachment).

Necron Monolith
Armour 14/14/14
Crew: 1 control matrix (2+ sv, 3W)
Yadda Yadda

If a model has multiple wounds the crewmember retains full operability unless killed. Necron Models tend to have few or automatic crew. Eldar have few and fragile and able to fire more weapons or sth, IG tends to have many crew but fragile
So basically, glancing hits do not peel a vehicle down any longer but impair the vehicles fighting ability for a turn or permanently. It also may or may not keep vehicles in play longer because of their crew.

I would not like to enforce those rules but suggest playtesting them and would be glad about feedback. Also I would like to have profound comments and arguments here. Feel free to post them.
If you do not like them, do not use these experimental rules and do not bother telling everyone that you do not like them without a valid reason.

Have fun - Doc

I like this idea, but with one change - only one type of crew per vehicle. No "3 space marines with 3+ and one machine spirit with 2+. That just leads to paperwork - if its only 3 space marines then you can simply put a vehicle equiv of wound counters next to it (I'd use small fires/smoke that magnetize to the vehicle myself)

We thought about this concern of yours as well but came to the conclusion that models like Sgt. Cronos/Obadia Schfeer/Tank Ace Pask can and will be represented as well. If it has a machine spirit then roll for each crew member and use a die with another color. You do this in mixed units as well so why bother here? You only need a small paper where you cross out killed crew easily done with word or similar progs. You do this only once and then you are happy.

I don't really see why the machine spirit needs to be accounted for in the first place, I think this system would work fine with it just acting as a crew member that cannot be killed, and add in a caveat that after all crew are slain, the vehicle may still be operational, but the next hull point lost or whatever destroys it. It would make sense fluff wise as well, because so long as the tank is even slightly functional, the machine spirit should be able to run it without crew.

Try looking into some new vehicle upgrades that would work well in this system, such as some sort of upgrade that absorbs the first wound dealt to crew in a turn, or the option to buy a machine spirit/runes tone for vehicles. Seems like there's a lot of exciting possibilities that this system could bring to the game to bring vehicles away from being just metal boxes.

Well, i could think of some.

Improved suspensions - Vehicle does not treat open terrain as hindering when shaken and may reroll any to-hit of a snapshot .

Machine Spirit/Runestone - counts as additional crewmember that cannot be killed normally. However, if the vehicle has no living crew anymore then another result of 3 or 4 will destroy the vehicle on a 4+. Tanks only

Crew escape hatch. If vehicle is destroyed crewmembers survive on 5+ and may bail out if you have the proper models. These count as single unit that cannot score. The opponent still gets the points for the kill. Those troopers are armed with a "standard" pistol and a handweapon.

Additional crewmember: Vehicle has an extra crew member. Tanks only. Not for SM armies as there are too few marines in a chapter to neglect codex astartes. Because of obvious reasons, a dreadnought would not have such a thing either ^^

Reactive Armour: 6+ save vs. glancing hits

Armoured Crew compartment: failed crew armour saves are negated on 6+ (or 5+, whatever)

Full of Promethium rule - +1 on the result roll (Vehicle has big tanks of volatile stuff like LR redeemer or hellhound)

Space Marine Vehicle rule - the driver is hardwired to the vehicle and may fire one additional weapon.

Cronus' it will not die rule - vehicle recoveres from a mechanical damage on a result of 6+. Does not revive crew. Cronos can fulfil the role of 2 crewmembers.

I like it, apart from the fact that crew have an armour save. It feels like Marines get a buff simply because they can, especially when things like the machine spirit are factored in. It rustles my jimmies slightly.

Apart from that, I like it. I just dislike Marines getting this 3+ to ignore a result because Marines.

Instead, I'd look at it as something along the lines of each penetrating hit causes one crew death. Once all the crew are slain, the vehicle counts as wrecked. Obviously the table would have to be jiggled about a bit, but you understand the intention.

Of course that's just how I'd run it. It's probably all fine as is.

Well, Space Marines get it because "super-human body and autoreactive power armour while the IG guardsman only has a flak jacket. I mean, bearing a servo armour removes the "Open" penalty from certain vehicles - they are less vulnerable that way. And take into account, that the SM vehicles are somewhat "softer" than their Guard counterparts. I consider the shrapnel blast as "grenade-like explosion in highly confined space". Usually I would have to forbid guard to take a save at all but wrecking a LR on 3 results? Heck no, so i need to take armour into account. And SM have better armour but less crewmen. A Predator would have probably 3 crew while the Leman Russ would have 5. I guess it is fluffy and balanced in a certain way. But maybe someone tests it and has fun with that. That is the main reason i wrote that.
Making it "one penetrating hit = -1 crew" would bring up the status quo minus glancing hits again. I want it to evolve into another direction, although.

Dr.Desastro wrote:
We thought about this concern of yours as well but came to the conclusion that models like Sgt. Cronos/Obadia Schfeer/Tank Ace Pask can and will be represented as well. If it has a machine spirit then roll for each crew member and use a die with another color. You do this in mixed units as well so why bother here? You only need a small paper where you cross out killed crew easily done with word or similar progs. You do this only once and then you are happy.

Mixed model units have, as implied in the name, multiple models on the table. When a different model is slain, its model is removed. You might think a piece of paper next to every vehicle is ok, but for some (possibly most) players, its paperwork that they don't want to bother with.

Highly recommend something like Rav1rn's "Machine Spirit... just acting as a crew member that cannot be killed". Characters can be represented as a special crew member with the same armour save, a special rule, and being the last crew member to be removed. Then you can just say, "That Leman Russ has four crew and Pask" and you know as long as theres one crew left it gets Pask's rule.

Paperwork is a bad thing. If you can achieve the same result or similar without keeping tabs, its always better.

How would this apply to Possessed vehicles? Single wound would be a serious nerf i think.

I would be tempted to move mechanical damage to lower on the chart, and Damage to crew higher.

Either that or make that result 1 crew member takes an armor save. I think having half the chart potentially result in killing the vehicle on a unlucky roll is too much.

Furthermore, autowounding embarked units makes transports far too dangerous.

So I take an ork battlewagon and it dies with 20 boyz on it. statistically almost 17 die. Way too big a deathtoll. No poorly armored armies would ever run transports at that rate.

Also if an AP 1 weapon hits a tank 5/6 results can result in the death of the vehicle, and half of those results in the death of a good ammount of the squad.

It is a cool and fluffy idea, but I think that it makes vehicles much less usefull and is a huge buff to marines as they can use transports with much less to fear.

Hmm...wasn't that the same as before? Either way you could say it is "passengers are wounded on a 4+ and may armour save"

And what you say is that if one weapon dedicated to blow away something protected by up to 200mm of armour hits something like a pickup which is a bit better than a civilian vehicle - it would be not reasonable to be blown up in 5/6 cases? Well it IS toast then. That is AP1 hitting an open Armour 10 vehicle. Even a tank is far from being invulnerable. Results of 3 or 4 were not intended to harm passengers but only crew.

Also I do not know what this SM buff thing" is all about. They have less crew, less armour and mostly crappier weapons than other armies for lots of points. The only thing they have is that their standard joe has armour 3. Same is true for chaos, same is true for Necrons. Eldar have evading stuff and Tau have armour of 4+. Poor ork looted tanks have at least armour 14 and more crew. My system works with armour protecting the crew - period. And i consider the army's standard guy as reference. Makes SM tanks a bit more durable and nerfs IG Tank spam a bit. Eldar still have a lot of punch but must use evasion or their toys break.

btw those rules are somewhat better than 2nd ed rules where all crew and passengers died if even the tracks were blown off. So they get autohits so what? Models next to explosions are hit as well and they may do armour saves. You do not expect riding a vehicle and come out unscathed after it gets blown up under your behinds.

To the former poster:
possessed means that the vehicle is operated by a daemonic essence instead of living crew. Positive thing is that it most likely will ignore shaken results. Also it may fire all weapons maybe. It could have 3 wounds with a daemonic 4+ save representing that damaging wards/hosts/warp scripture will rupture the vehicle's bindings to the warp.

The reason it makes space marines stronger is if you are auto wounding ever model Space marines have fewer models and Better saves.

SO I destroy a rhino and an ork truck. Both With 10 Models embarked

In the current system 5 marines get wounded and 1-2 die, and 5 orks get wounded and 4-5 die. So you have 8-9 marines left and 5-6 Orks.

In your system, you end up with 10 Wounded marines 3 who likely die and 10 wounded orks 8 who likely die. So 7 marines get out and 2 orks.

IT also completely ignores tougness, so I have 5 Striking scorpions and 5 Wraith Guard embarked in vehicles. The Wraith Guard get killed exactly the same as Striking scorpions...when they don't by most other effects in game.

The whole point is that you often don't get out unscathed, but in your system some squads get entirely murdered by their tank dying.

I really don't understand why not just use S4 hits as we already do. YOu quote 2nd ed, and in that case people did not really use vehicles as much.

Yeah, as an Ork player, I can promise you that the battlewagon would never be seen again on any board with rules like that

Hmm...I seemed to have overseen sth. - I apologize.

Let's do it like that:
Passengers take a S4 hit and may do armour saves if the vehicle is destroyed. They are not affected by result 3 and 4 on the chart. This should be more balanced then and takes the passengers' toughness into account.
I hope the rest of the suggestions are sound nevertheless.
In regards to orks another tweak might need to be applied.
The number of crew hits on vehicles must be limited - maybe a d3+penetration modifier i.e. ap2 weapons wound +1 crew, AP1 even +2, open vehicles get a +1 as well as the crew sits exposed. Still, this favours armies with good armour values a bit but i think what use is it when said battlewaggon loses all of its crew after a single hit because you will not pass enough 6+ saves. Also I do not know, whether the new rules would change vehicle point values as SM tanks will become more durable - which is the question - there are the same number of results eliminating the vehicle at once. Just the peeling damage from glancing hits is missing now. Instead, each "structure point" lost means a crewmember is dead and a weapon cannot be fired as a result, weakening the vehicle.

tried to collect the changes here:

1. Each hull point represents a crew member and a vehicle has a designated number of them. Basically, each crewmember enables the vehicle to operate 1 weapon or to drive the vehicle. The crewmembers have armour related to their basic trooper type i.e. a imperial guardsman would have a 5+ armour, a tau fire warrior would have a 4+ and space marines would have a 3+ armour. This will be important later.
2. If a shot beats armour, we need to consider whether it is a glancing hit or a penetrating hit. This is important, as this modifies the result on the following chart:

Roll a d6
1-2 Crew shaken. The vehicle is struck and reverberates with the force of the hit. The driver struggles to retain control while the gunners have a hard time to hit. The vehicle can only do snapshots and considers open terrain as hindering terrain and the latter as dangerous terrain
3-4 Damage to crew. Shrapnel flies through the vehicle wounding d3 crewmembers. Add +1 for a AP 2 weapon and +2 for a AP1 weapon. Add +1 for open vehicles. Subtract 2 from roll if glancing hit. You wound at least one crewmember For each crewmember make an armour save. If you fail, lose a hull point i.e. a crewmember. If a vehicle loses its last crewmember it is considered a wreck. Damaging the crew leads to impairing the vehicle's ability to fight. This makes IG tanks hard to penetrate but IF you do so then the result will be more grave than a hit on a space marine tank.
5: Mechanical damage. Roll again. 1-3 the vehicle is immobilized (if a flyer/skimmer it may crash). 4-6 the vehicle has one of its weapons (systems) destroyed. Apply the other result if not appropriate. If a vehicles has no operating weapons and is immobilized then it is considered a wreck.
6: Internal explosion. The vehicle is destroyed and considered a wreck. The crew is considered perished (unless stated otherwise) and/or unable to leave the wreck. Passengers take a S4 hit and must make an armour save and can leave the wreck next turn.
7+: Vehicle explodes. The vehicle is destroyed and removed/replaced by a crater. The crew is considered perished. Passengers take a S4 hit each and must make an armour save, are pinned and must bail out. Models in d6 Inch around wreck are wounded on a 4+

The following roll-on-chart modifications are true:
+1 if the vehicle is open
+1 for AP 2 weaponry
+2 for AP 1 weaponry
-2 for a glancing hit

Each crew usually has the relevant stats of a basic trooper
So a space marine would have 1 wound and a 3+ armour save.
There are vehicles in the universe that may be more reliant or not.

For example:
Space Marine Rhino
Armour is 11/11/10
Crew: 2
Crew wears servo armour (3+)
Weapons: 1 Storm bolter
Special rules:
Repair - After end of turn roll a d6. On a 6+ the vehicle recovers from a "immobilized" result. Passengers/Crew with a servo-arm add +1 to this roll.
Space Marine Vehicle - The driver is usually hard-wired via servo-armour interface to the tank. This enables the driver to fire a weapon and drive the vehicle.

You just need to be aware of actual fluff with certain vehicles.

A land raider may have multiple weapon systems, but it has one driver, and one gunner, which sort of balances the crew Armour save compared to a Russ which 'may' have 4, not sure though so you will need to track down the fluff again to confirm. A pred also only has 2 crew. And christ, Thunderhawks, again only 2 crew (maybe 3, or 2 marines and servitors)

Also, has the rhino always had 2 crew? Really? I thought it was just a one guy thing, seems a bit expensive/waste of resources to put 2 marines in such a soft shell that 1 could do himself really, a single marine is totally capable of multi-tasking to drive a rhino and fire a storm bolter.

I really like the idea of 6 = wreck instead of explosion. I want my battles littered with wreckage, and the fact that it blocks LoS is just an added bonus

I thought about something like this earlier but my version was a lot more simple, a vehicle can't explode unless it has = or < it's half maximum hp ( not sure if I worded it right). As an example, if a Land raider is at 3 HP and someone rolls a pen hit it wouldn't explode, it would just be immobolised but if it had 2 hit points or less then on a 6 it would explode

(been a long time since I've posted. Wow)
I like the idea for the system and like 90% of the execution. Most impressive for off the cuff. It does have major balance issues when you take into account things like Dark Eldar and Ork vehicles. Easy fix? only use these rules with armies that wont inherently benefit over one another. So Orks vs. Orks, Marines vs Chaos. etc To fix the 'paperwork' side you could use these as alternate rules for straight tank battles where each side gets like 5-7 actual tanks and no squads, as you shift the time spent in game to set up and maneuver infantry to jotting down a quick note on a card.

Also like the 7+ result. It was something I brought up before this semester started and removed me from 40k for a bit Glad to hear other people considering it.

I've been saying tanks should have wounds like wraith lords for years....

Dr.Desastro wrote:

Poor ork looted tanks have at least armour 14.

I WISH.

My fault - i thought of a looted Leman Russ and that baby has front 14 - it is nerfed?! Oh well...
I could look up my old 2nd ed. Ultramarine Codex for the SM vehicles. I think on the datafaxes was something about how many crew they had.

Ok new problem, how would walkers operate under these rules? Because the way theyre currently laid out, they essentially have 3 destroyed results, because they only have 1 crew. Dreadnoughts and sentinels dont need any more nerfs than they've already had, and even the dreadnoughts 2+ Doesn't mean much when they can lose their only crewman as a result of 1/3 glances, never mind penetrations.

Dr.Desastro wrote:
My fault - i thought of a looted Leman Russ and that baby has front 14 - it is nerfed?! Oh well...
I could look up my old 2nd ed. Ultramarine Codex for the SM vehicles. I think on the datafaxes was something about how many crew they had.

Its so nerfed its from a old codex.

Well Dreadnaughts were planned to have 2 wounds at a 2+ save. We are talking of a near-dead hero-level marine in a coffin made of adamantium and plasteel. Give the venerable dread a 3rd wound. So you do not kill the dread often by killing the marine but by result 6 or peeling off its weaponry. Armour of 12 will mean that he will check more often than another vehicle but the marine inside should be safe quite well. For the sentinel, well - there we encounter the real first problem. And my solution is: none.
It IS an open topped vehicle operated by a single guardsman. It provides cover against most small calibre ammunition but to count this one as really armoured is way too much. Let's face it: i play IG as well and field Sentinels often. When they face some serious fire then they are toast. From the fluff you would only need to throw a mere frag grenade into the open-topped Sentinel or a sniper to make it stop.
Scout sentinels really need to work with cover saves or they are dead. On the other hand they are damned cheap.
Last resort: The crew gets a S4 hit everytime result 3 is rolled. This would make ork and IG vehicles more resiliant against this particular damage but on the other hand, necrons and space marines would get a boost as 50% of those wounds are void. Let us face it: A sentinel is a guy in a flak jacket entering a battlefield in a thing barely better armoured than a civilian car.