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I've never realised this, it seems so obvious now you have both said it. Face palm!

 vipoid wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, it's not like most of the actual AA weapons in the game are particularly amazing, especially after they mutilated the Hydra. Flakk missiles are expensive and limited in availability, Hunter/Stalker tanks aren't exactly auto-includes, etc.

The best AA is still another flyer in most cases.

Kangodo wrote:
That is mostly because the average AA-gun is useless if your opponent has no fliers.

Which is poor game design. Snapshots is an awful mechanic - especially when applied to an entire class of vehicles.

Also, why is speed represented by snapshots when it comes to fliers, whilst everything else gets a cover save for moving fast?

Anyway, with regard to Flakk missiles, I don't understand why missile launchers couldn't just come standard with them. I mean, it's not like missile launchers are good weapons at the moment, so this would have been a nice boost. But, no, of course not.

This.

All they need to do to fix Flyers is allow them to be hit at normal BS, then A) count them as automatically jinking without the penalty to shooting, and B) count them as Shrouded. "Hits" would still depend on your Ballistic Skill, while only 1/6 of those hits would actually stick.

Then fix AA guns by making "Skyfire" ignore the "Shrouded" rule for Flyers. They still get the 4+ coversave because they're moving fast, but it's vastly degraded in effectiveness. Or just make it so you can't jink AA fire.

I don't have a problem with tesla generating extra hits on snap shots. Its clearly what it was designed to do. I have a problem with them generating 3 hits on a roll of 6. Thats the BS part. It should just have been an additional hit. Not two.

Serpent shields are just all sorts of wronge. I could understand it if it was a one time use weapon with a range of 18 or so inches. I think that would be a fluffy and wouldn't be a game breaking option.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, it's not like most of the actual AA weapons in the game are particularly amazing, especially after they mutilated the Hydra. Flakk missiles are expensive and limited in availability, Hunter/Stalker tanks aren't exactly auto-includes, etc.

The best AA is still another flyer in most cases.

Kangodo wrote:
That is mostly because the average AA-gun is useless if your opponent has no fliers.

Which is poor game design. Snapshots is an awful mechanic - especially when applied to an entire class of vehicles.

Also, why is speed represented by snapshots when it comes to fliers, whilst everything else gets a cover save for moving fast?

Anyway, with regard to Flakk missiles, I don't understand why missile launchers couldn't just come standard with them. I mean, it's not like missile launchers are good weapons at the moment, so this would have been a nice boost. But, no, of course not.

This.

All they need to do to fix Flyers is allow them to be hit at normal BS, then A) count them as automatically jinking without the penalty to shooting, and B) count them as Shrouded. "Hits" would still depend on your Ballistic Skill, while only 1/6 of those hits would actually stick.

Then fix AA guns by making "Skyfire" ignore the "Shrouded" rule for Flyers. They still get the 4+ coversave because they're moving fast, but it's vastly degraded in effectiveness. Or just make it so you can't jink AA fire.

Problem with this is ignores cover. Suddenly every guard infantry with a heavy/special weapon becomes a potential AA unit, Wave Serpents become AA, Tau need less laser pointers to make anything AA, etc.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

All they need to do to fix Flyers is allow them to be hit at normal BS, then A) count them as automatically jinking without the penalty to shooting, and B) count them as Shrouded. "Hits" would still depend on your Ballistic Skill, while only 1/6 of those hits would actually stick.

Then fix AA guns by making "Skyfire" ignore the "Shrouded" rule for Flyers. They still get the 4+ coversave because they're moving fast, but it's vastly degraded in effectiveness. Or just make it so you can't jink AA fire.

I think that's a great idea.

 SilverDevilfish wrote:

Problem with this is ignores cover. Suddenly every guard infantry with a heavy/special weapon becomes a potential AA unit, Wave Serpents become AA, Tau need less laser pointers to make anything AA, etc.

Good.

Fliers shouldn't be virtually immune to most weapons in the game.

Most fliers do pay for it though.

To be honest, if "tesla" is changed to match "shock", I'm not sold on the fact annibarges will need any price change.

I mean, it will make their jink actually matter, and as their "flaw" is that a single pen is fatal (either direct kill, or the reduction to AV11 makes the follow up easy), making them unable to both jink and fire well is good.
After all, if it jinks, it took a "hit" in the form of lowered accuracy, even if not taking real damage.
If they don't jink, they risk imminent death.

The problem right now, is that the nature of TL tesla weaponry means they don't actually lose much firepower when jinking, so they can always jink without a serious cost.
A non-jink shot lands average of 42/36 hits pre shot (yes, more hits than shots) while a jinked one scores 31/36 hits pre shot. that's a mere about 26% decrease in firepower for a 4+ save. (50% chance to ignore any damage) the main gun will still score about 3.44 hits (compared to the normal 4.66)

With "shock" it drops the jink shots to hit a mere 7/36 shots that's a massive 83% drop in firepower, virtually rendered useless for a turn for the same defense the main gun will score an average of only 0.77 hits. an actual price paid for safty.




As for flyers and the lack of anti-air.
I think its not a bad thing, its actually resembling real life a bit.
Its hard to take down jets without jets of your own, therefor aerial superiority gives an edge to whoever secures it by giving him weapon platforms the enemy can do little about, but in general said aerial platforms are far more expensive to produce and train for than a similar level of ground platfom of similar firepower.
It creates a minigame of ruling the skies. there are pros and cons of the direction, but as long we keep air based weaponry more expensive compared to ground weaponry it can work out.
Requires proper balance between the cost of air superiorty and it's value, but its possible to create a good mini-meta that way.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Most fliers do pay for it though.

Some do.

I wouldn't object to some fliers being made cheaper after such a change, but I just don't think their current rules make sense - either from a fluff or a gameplay perspective.

I mean, how high are they? They're implied to be travelling very high, yet this apparently has no effect on the range of weapons shooting at them. Even pistols can apparently fire normally at fliers... so they can't be that high. And, if it's just speed, then why don't they use the existing speed mechanic (i.e. cover saves). It can't be because they travel faster than other units, because Jetbikes can flat out 36", yet still receive no snap-shot mechanic. Likewise, why can't a flying MC charge a flier? If it's the speed aspect, then I'll once again bring you back to jetbikes - which can be charged normally regardless of how fast they're moving.

And, in a game, it's just bad design to have so many layers of protection on a model.
- First you have the flier rules, which mean that most weapons only hit them on 6s.
- then you have Jink, which can give them a cover save against any particularly threatening hits.
- And then they're vehicles - so ignore a slew of weapons, and are difficult to even scratch with many others (AV10 fliers aren't as bad, but once you get to AV12 it's just ludicrous).

What's worse is how these rules interact - in that most weapons that are effective against vehicles tend to have relatively few shots - so the better they are at penetrating, the worse they tend to be at actually hitting.

These are not good rules.

Oh I agree. And I think the above suggestion that nuggz made isa good one too. I just think many fliers would then need a points ddeduction. A raven for example would be nowhere near worth 200pts unupgraded if you could hit it normally and it just had a 2+ cover save.
Another side effect as mentioned above is that it would make serpents even better, which only Morgoth and RAWRAI in the entire dakka population seem to think should ever happen. Making serpents better would be the main sticking point against this change.
It would also make Sicarans with tank hunter INSANE against flyers.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Oh I agree. And I think the above suggestion that nuggz made isa good one too. I just think many fliers would then need a points ddeduction. A raven for example would be nowhere near worth 200pts unupgraded if you could hit it normally and it just had a 2+ cover save.

I'd be fine with a point deduction for some/all fliers as a result of the changes.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Another side effect as mentioned above is that it would make serpents even better, which only Morgoth and RAWRAI in the entire dakka population seem to think should ever happen. Making serpents better would be the main sticking point against this change.

That would be an unfortunate consequence, but serpents are OP anyway. It's better to have good core rules and suffer an OP unit for a while, then to have bad rules just for the sake of not making an OP unit worse. Just hope the serpent is redesigned more sensibly next time around.

Yeh I see your point. Better rules on everything trumps worse rules on one thing.

 BoomWolf wrote:
To be honest, if "tesla" is changed to match "shock", I'm not sold on the fact annibarges will need any price change.

I mean, it will make their jink actually matter, and as their "flaw" is that a single pen is fatal (either direct kill, or the reduction to AV11 makes the follow up easy), making them unable to both jink and fire well is good.
After all, if it jinks, it took a "hit" in the form of lowered accuracy, even if not taking real damage.
If they don't jink, they risk imminent death.

The problem right now, is that the nature of TL tesla weaponry means they don't actually lose much firepower when jinking, so they can always jink without a serious cost.
A non-jink shot lands average of 42/36 hits pre shot (yes, more hits than shots) while a jinked one scores 31/36 hits pre shot. that's a mere about 26% decrease in firepower for a 4+ save. (50% chance to ignore any damage) the main gun will still score about 3.44 hits (compared to the normal 4.66)

With "shock" it drops the jink shots to hit a mere 7/36 shots that's a massive 83% drop in firepower, virtually rendered useless for a turn for the same defense the main gun will score an average of only 0.77 hits. an actual price paid for safty.

I mean, this is all very true, the issue I have with nerfing Tesla, is they need to give us another reliable form of firepower then. Because unlike Tau, Eldar, or Space Marines, or most other books, honestly, we have very lackluster shooting IMHO. We have Warriors, which have Bolt Guns that can kill vehicles, sure. Than we have Immortals, with S5 guns with two different effects. Also nice. Other than that, we have almost no S6 shooting, and very few, and I mean very few things can take anything of high strength, which is the opposite of most other codexes. Tesla Destructors are our main form of mid-high strength shooting, and while I'm not disagreeing that maybe they should nerf it, but we also need something to compensate. Not just paying 90 points for virtually nothing if you keep shooting at it.