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Cover saves in 40k have always annoyed me in that they are a save in place of your armor, and you just take whichever save is best. This usually means that infantry units in light armor benefit greatly from being obscured or in some woods/ruins, while mech infantry like Space Marines receive far less benefit, unless it is a high AP round. I feel that cover would negate the same kinds and amount of shots reaching both units, so both units should benefit from cover equally.

The only ways I can see implementing this would to make cover saves an additional save you get before rolling your armor (probably reducing the average value), or having cover modify your to-hit roll for shooting. Like, light/medium/heavy cover modifies your target to-hit roll by adding +1/+2/+3 to it, to a minimum or maximum amount.

Ideas?

 evildrspock wrote:
Cover saves in 40k have always annoyed me in that they are a save in place of your armor, and you just take whichever save is best. This usually means that infantry units in light armor benefit greatly from being obscured or in some woods/ruins, while mech infantry like Space Marines receive far less benefit, unless it is a high AP round. I feel that cover would negate the same kinds and amount of shots reaching both units, so both units should benefit from cover equally.

The only ways I can see implementing this would to make cover saves an additional save you get before rolling your armor (probably reducing the average value), or having cover modify your to-hit roll for shooting. Like, light/medium/heavy cover modifies your target to-hit roll by adding +1/+2/+3 to it, to a minimum or maximum amount.

Ideas?

This has been posted several times and I will say the same thing I did last time. No, It bones the Orks to hard for me to ever support it.

The problem with cover saves being a to-hit modifier is that it doesn't apply equally. Armies that traditionally have good BS are also those that have better armor saves and weapons with lower AP. A hit to BS is less of a problem with those with higher BS than those with a lower one, for example a -2 to BS4 would mean you would be missing half of hour normal shots, which is equivalent of a +4 cover save, while -2 to BS3 would be missing 66% of normals shots, which would be the same as a +3 cover save. And this is before considering that the saves are now stacking.

Lets compare spass mahreens in light terrain (assuming that +6 and +5 cover is -1 BS) vs Imperial guard in light terrain

Currently:
Space marines, 10 bolter shots, BS 4 (6.6 hits), str 4 vs t 3 (4.44 wounds), AP 5 no armor save, +5 cover (2.96 dead guardsmen)
Imperial Guard, 10 lasgun shots, BS 3 (5 hits), str 3 vs t 4 (1.66 wounds), Ap - +3 armor save (0.55 dead marines)

with to-hit mods
Space Marines, 10 bolter shots at BS 3 (5 hits), str 4 vs t 3 (3.33 wounds), no save at all (3.33 dead guard)
Imperial guard, 10 lasgun shots at BS 2 (3.33), str 3 vs t 4 (1.11 wounds), +3 armor save (0.37 dead marines)

Now obviously this isn't very impressive looking, but that's STILL a decrease for the guardsmen.

there's other things that make this wonky: units with Jinx are even tougher, blast weapons basically ignore cover because a minus to their BS is pointless, and orks effectively have thier shooting cut in half (and that's only assuming BS 1 is the minimum).

With a D6 system in place this causes too much imbalance.

If it were a D20 system then it would be fine, as Infinity has shown

My houserules make stealth and shrouded a negative to hit (-1 and -2 respectively) it really changes the game but doesn't invalidate non specialist units using cover for their benefit.

Everyone's points are well taken, I see how it doesn't remove an equal portion of shots from all units. I was just thinking of how games like Battletech handle cover as a modifier to your to-hit rolls, and it worked well there, but they use 2d6. I guess the only fair way to do it would be to add an additional save and maybe reduce each level of cover by one point, but then it makes the game even longer, so that's probably not the best choice either.

Yeah its harder to factor in those rules and the dice having more sides because it would significantly slow the game down.

Imagine trying to roll 2D6 cover saves for a green tide