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Currently it's a blanket 6's to hit for anything without skyfire - so orks are equally as good at shooting a supersonic jet as a stationary ground target; while space marines are so much better at shooting stationary targets, firing at a flyer is a waste.

Introduce skyfire into the mix - an objective for example that relays targeting information directly to the brains of those nearby allowing them to target aircraft at their full ballistic skill; suddenly the space marine can be lethal to any aircraft that come in range while the ork doesn't get anything like the benefit that the marine does.

I beleive this is because we should use a different means of calculating ballistic capability against flyers as well as changing how some common rules work that affect it.
We treat the result of the dice as the deciding result but i think we should instead use the dice roll result as part of a cumulative effect.

So, intending this to replace the 'to hit' section of the shooting phase against/from flyers/FMC's ....

When shooting at a flyer/swooping FMC from the ground, the number required to get a hit is 12 or more.
You roll a D6 and add your ballistic skill to the result along with any modifiers.

Skyfire adds +3.
Interceptor adds +2 and does the normal 'shoot at oncoming reserves' thing.
If the flyer has the supersonic rule add a -1

Flyers use the same rules for shooting at 'normal' ground targets (anything that is not a flyer, swooping FMC, gargantuan creature or superheavy walker)
When shooting at other flyers and swooping FMC's, all flyers and swooping FMC's have skyfire and interceptor rules and ignore the supersonic modifier.
Strafing run allows flyers to use normal 'to hit' rules against ground targets.
All flyers can use the normal 'to hit' rules against super heavy walkers and gargantuan creatures.
Blast templates fired by a flyer at the ground roll for scatter like normal but scatter the full unmodified distance.
Flamer templates are placed at any point along the fliers line movement in line with it's movement - then roll 2D6 and move the template that many inches forward along the line of movement (this may take the template beyond where the flyer has ended up itself)

So then an ork boy with skyfire and interceptor (somehow..) would hit a supersonic flyer on 6's and a non-supersonic flyer on 5+; a killa kan on a skyfire nexus would hit a non-supersonic flyer on 6's and a dakkajet would hit another flyer on a 5+.

And a space marine on a skyfire nexus hits supersonic aircraft on a 5+, a mortis dread hits a supersonic flyer on a 4+ and non-supersonic on a 3+.

Anyone notice anything which throws a spanner in the works? any hilarious comparisons (then and now style) it throws up i haven't thought of?

edit for spelling.
edit for additions

So you have to be BS 6 to even try to hit fliers on the ground (7 if super sonic), which is increasing the toughness of a flyer dramatically. The only way you can hit something is if you have skyfire, which reduces the amount of things that can shoot at it. Ork tracktor cannons, our dedicated AA, can only snapfire at supersonic, and hit like regular orks (those are grots behind there) against normal fliers. Another main AA weapons that are used are fliers themselves. A ballistic skill 4 flier would be ballistic skill 3, and IG fliers would be ballistic skill 2. Combine this with jink and flyers become harder than a wraithknight to kill. Fliers are fine as is, and really this complicates things too much.

As for boys hitting the same as marines, basically the guys on the ground are randomly shooting their weapon up into the air in grim hopes that it will actually hit something (which is what orks do anyways.)

 ZanyZombie wrote:
So you have to be BS 6 to even try to hit fliers on the ground (7 if super sonic), which is increasing the toughness of a flyer dramatically.

To be fair, a flyer has to be BS 6 to hit a ground target and there are no BS 6 flyers. So the flyer is impossible to kill without skyfire, but it's a useless paperweight that can only shoot at other flyers.

My change to skyfire would be for it to halve BS instead of snapshots.

Skyfire weapons shooting ground targets would also strike at half BS.

Finally Flyers would always hit vehicles in their side armor like barrage weapons.

Marines would be marginally better at hitting Flyers than Orks, but massed fire would still be a better option against them.

 J3f wrote:
My change to skyfire would be for it to halve BS instead of snapshots.

Skyfire weapons shooting ground targets would also strike at half BS.

Finally Flyers would always hit vehicles in their side armor like barrage weapons.

Marines would be marginally better at hitting Flyers than Orks, but massed fire would still be a better option against them.

This will maybe make flyers more usefull and make it esier to deal wih flyers at the same time. Most of the armies would hit them on 5+ (because you are allway rounding to the bigger number in WH40K so 3/2 would be 2 anyway) instead of 6+ it is 3 times more probable to hit them. Now Devastators, Centurions, Crisis suits, Heave Weapon Teams, etc would be mildly effective against flyers.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ZanyZombie wrote:
So you have to be BS 6 to even try to hit fliers on the ground (7 if super sonic), which is increasing the toughness of a flyer dramatically.

To be fair, a flyer has to be BS 6 to hit a ground target and there are no BS 6 flyers. So the flyer is impossible to kill without skyfire, but it's a useless paperweight that can only shoot at other flyers.

Hey dude, spot on - my thinking was it would give a real benefit to having the 'hover mode' or 'strafing run' rules.

I just realized that i havent accounted for blast or template weapons yet, ooops....

 SirDonlad wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 ZanyZombie wrote:
So you have to be BS 6 to even try to hit fliers on the ground (7 if super sonic), which is increasing the toughness of a flyer dramatically.

To be fair, a flyer has to be BS 6 to hit a ground target and there are no BS 6 flyers. So the flyer is impossible to kill without skyfire, but it's a useless paperweight that can only shoot at other flyers.

Hey dude, spot on - my thinking was it would give a real benefit to having the 'hover mode' or 'strafing run' rules.

I just realized that i havent accounted for blast or template weapons yet, ooops....

Massive price cut for 90% of the fliers in the game when?