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That's an incomplete fix. Lascannons should be deadly to MCs as well. And Tau heavy rail guns. There are so many problems with the GW system.

Martel732 wrote:
That's an incomplete fix. Lascannons should be deadly to MCs as well. And Tau heavy rail guns. There are so many problems with the GW system.

And there always will be, unless we take small steps to a solution. Rewriting the whole system overnight causes just as many problems as there currently are. There are just too many sources of rules that need to be addressed.

Wraith knights cost 240, less expensive than a landraider, and way more than twice as durable. To add insult to injury riptides (5 wounds) are 180 base, or just slighly more than a kitted our predator.

Galef, M-1 Abrams is Americas primary battle tank, and it's a monster. I'll try not to get all fanboy about it, but without a doubt it's the best tank created in human history, fast, heavily armored, and sporting enough firepower to smoke any other tank in the world before they can say "Hey is that a...". It's much closer to a Tau hammerhead than a leman russ.

Another note about Glancing no causing HPs, but "crew shaken" instead: the only reason I would make a Glance do something is because so many rules in other books do something on a "Glancing" hit. If you make Glances do nothing, those rules become irrelevant.
----------
So in summary, here is what I would change:
a) Glances cause "crew stunned" instead of an HP. any Glances after the first in a phase will do "crew-stunned" instead.
b) I would make AP1 weapons only add +1 and AP2 do nothing to the Pen result. Having AP1 add +2 and AP2 add +1 is just silly.
c) Ordinance weapons cause D3+1 wounds

Yes, now we're getting somewhere!

Glancing hits cause crew shaken, and that's it.

AP:1 weapons add +1 to the vehicle damage chart and that's it. Now they have an advantage over AP:2 weapons. Maybe bring back AP:- weapons do -1 on the vehicle damage chart?

Ordiance weapons inflict D3 wounds to keep it really simple? Most of the time they'll inflict instant death, but now big monsters will fear the artillery too. This would make standard russes and demolishers worth it now!

@ Grimgold

The Challenger 2 says hello.

Grimgold wrote:
Wraith knights cost 240, less expensive than a landraider, and way more than twice as durable. To add insult to injury riptides (5 wounds) are 180 base, or just slighly more than a kitted our predator.

Galef, M-1 Abrams is Americas primary battle tank, and it's a monster. I'll try not to get all fanboy about it, but without a doubt it's the best tank created in human history, fast, heavily armored, and sporting enough firepower to smoke any other tank in the world before they can say "Hey is that a...". It's much closer to a Tau hammerhead than a leman russ.

The Leopard II might be more economical. It doesn't give it's crew cancer, and can snorkel, too. At any rate, they both make a mess of a T-Rex. The Hammerhead is one of the biggest jokes in the game because low ROF sucks now. Which is the opposite of real life. Of course.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
That's an incomplete fix. Lascannons should be deadly to MCs as well. And Tau heavy rail guns. There are so many problems with the GW system.

And there always will be, unless we take small steps to a solution. Rewriting the whole system overnight causes just as many problems as there currently are. There are just too many sources of rules that need to be addressed.

Burn them all. Now.

Grimgold wrote:
Wraith knights cost 240,

Pretty sure it's a fair bit more than that now.

It's less than 300 base. Criminal. Make me want to physically stomp every WK model I see. Which sucks because it's a sweet model, but I hate it because of the rules for it.

I'm not sure we should bring the WK into this discuss 1) because we all accept that it is underpriced and 2) because it is technically a GMC.

I agree that "tanks" and "walkers" should be on par with MCs, but we need to make sure any changes we make don't over-inflate how good regular vehicle become. Remember that most non-tanks/non-walkers are a good bit less than 100 pts

Got it. Here's a new damage chart:

1. Crew shaken
2. Crew stunned
3. Weapon Destroyed
4. Hull Damage (lose a hull point)
5. Immobilised
6. Wrecked
7+. Explodes

Roll on this when you equal or beat the armor. Glancing hits have a -2 penalty on this table. So now, whilst they might stun the vehicle or blow off a weapon, they'll only have a 25% chance of actually inflicting a wound on it. Meanwhile, I'd feel safer taking plasma weapons on a tank now.

AP:1 weapons have a +1 bonus on this chart, AP:- have a -1 penalty on it. And maybe armorbane can have a +1 bonus on the table as well as the extra D6 armour penetration. So now, the Vanquisher cannon can explode enemy tanks in a way a normal lascannon cannot.

If a vehicle that's already immobilised is immobilised again, it loses a hull point instead. And if a weapon destroyed result is rolled when it doesn't have any weapons left, again it loses a hull point instead.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Got it. Here's a new damage chart:

1. Crew shaken
2. Crew stunned
3. Weapon Destroyed
4. Hull Damage (lose a hull point)
5. Immobilised
6. Wrecked
7+. Explodes

Roll on this when you equal or beat the armor. Glancing hits have a -2 penalty on this table. So now, whilst they might stun the vehicle or blow off a weapon, they'll only have a 25% chance of actually inflicting a wound on it. Meanwhile, I'd feel safer taking plasma weapons on a tank now.

AP:1 weapons have a +1 bonus on this chart, AP:- have a -1 penalty on it. And maybe armorbane can have a +1 bonus on the table as well as the extra D6 armour penetration. So now, the Vanquisher cannon can explode enemy tanks in a way a normal lascannon cannot.

If a vehicle that's already immobilised is immobilised again, it loses a hull point instead. And if a weapon destroyed result is rolled when it doesn't have any weapons left, again it loses a hull point instead.

I like this. It is very similar to the pre-hull point vehicle chart, but incorporates HPs nicely. You get an Exalt, sir

-

If I understand how this works, Lascannons, Brightlances, etc. would have to be changed to AP1 to be good dedicated tank-hunting weapons if AP2 gives no bonus on the chart. Otherwise the AP2 ranking is only good for kills TEQ's, and there are better weapons to do that than these single-shots.

 Grimgrub Dregdakka wrote:
If I understand how this works, Lascannons, Brightlances, etc. would have to be changed to AP1 to be good dedicated tank-hunting weapons if AP2 gives no bonus on the chart. Otherwise the AP2 ranking is only good for kills TEQ's, and there are better weapons to do that than these single-shots.

Also I am kind of glad nobody has brought up the ridiculous "Open Topped' rule. By itself that rule makes Open topped vehicles almost unplayable unless they have a 4+ jink save.

Since 40k's anti-vehicle weapons are all tied to vehicle rules, a while ago I came up with a basic conversion for MC's that are clearly vehicles into, you know, actual vehicles:

• Type becomes Vehicle (Walker). Jump Monstrous Creatures are Fast and ignore dangerous terrain unless they start/end their move within it. Models with Psyker have Psychic Pilot instead. If the vehicle design clearly has an exposed pilot then it's Open Topped.
  
• Front and Side Armour is equal to Toughness + 5, Rear Armour is equal to Toughness + 4 (max 14 in both cases).
  
• Wounds carry across as Hull Points (couldn't find a good method of conversion). For anything with 4 or more Hull Points the Explodes! damage result is D3 Hull Points, only causing an explosion if reduced to zero (though this should really be the default for all vehicles IMO).

This is really just a quick and dirty guideline for converting them, as most will need some discussion. Wounds to Hull Points is far from perfect for example, though a Nemesis Dreadknight does come out of it as a 12/12/11 HP 4 Open Topped, so it's got a pretty mixed durability that may not be an issue.


But yeah, I'd prefer no separate vehicle rules at all for simplicity, but that's a lot more work overall.

@ Galef

Thank you, much appreciated.

@ Grimgrub Dregdakka

Maybe the AP:2 and AP:1 bonuses can stay the same. AP:- should definitely be -1 though. And I think I have a way to make extra amour worth it. Here's a suggested table:

Glancing Hit: -2
AP - : -1
Extra Armor: -1
Open Topped: +1
AP 2: +1
AP 1: +2

Extra armor is now more universally useful. It doesn't just turn Stunned into Shaken. It lets you ignore Shaken all together, turns Immobilized into Hull Damage, and Explodes into Wrecked.

@ Haravikk

I'd rather have no separate vehicle rules either, but it is too big of a change. And I like what you've done with the MC to Vehicle conversion idea there.

Why should AP- have a negative effect?

Because it's terrible at penetrating armor. It wouldn't make too much a difference to living creatures who feel pain, but against vehicles they wouldn't be as effective.

Grimgold wrote:
First you got causality wrong on why high strength multishot weapons are coming into favor, it's not because they are awesome against vehicles (they are demonstrably not), it's because they are effective against MCs.

No, mid-strength multishot weapons are both better and more reliable at dealing with the vast majority of vehicles (which have AV12 or worse on the sides) then traditional anti-tank weapons. Even against higher armour it's better to be hoping for glances with your multi-shot gun than hoping for a destroyed result on your single shot gun. The damage chart simply doesn't favour trying to get a destroyed result with single shot weapons vs. peeling off hull points with 3-4-5 shot guns. When those guns (mid-strength multi-shot) are also better at killing MCs, infantry, etc. then we have a whole class of weapons that is redundant.

Grimgold wrote:
Which brings me to my point, vehicles are bad in comparison to MCs, and they are competing for the same slots/points on your army list. Your answer is to effectively raise all vehicles armor by 1, and get rid of the damage chart, in an effort to bring them up to monstrous creatures.

No, I didn't propose either of those things. I proposed a change that would make high strength low-ap weapons more effective against vehicles and mid-strength multi-shot guns worse.

That leaves us with a class of weapon that's effective against vehicles and a class of weapon that's effective against MCs and good infantry.

I had a think and, what about this change:

1. Crew Shaken
2. Crew Stunned
3. Weapon Destroyed
4. Immobilized
5. Hull Damage (lose a hull point)
6. Wrecked
7+. Explodes

Modifiers:
-2 if Glancing Hit
-1 if attack is AP -
- 1 if vehicle has extra armor
+ 1 if armor penetration score is 17+ (so more reason to use melta and armorbane weaponary)
+ 1 if attack is AP:2
+2 if attack is AP:1

The result cannot be lower than 1. If an immobilized vehicle suffers another immobilized result it suffers hull damage instead. And if a vehicle suffers a weapon destroyed result and it has no weapons (left), it also suffers hull damage instead.

With this change, it is now largely impossible to destroy a vehicle with Glancing Hits unless you're using a proper anti tank weapon. And no longer will a vehicle destroy itself just by using plasma weaponry. But if you're using a melta or armorbane weapon against a vehicle and you manage to score a ridiculously high armor penetration result, now that will be rewarded. Oh, and hopefully Extra Armour will be a worthwhile upgrade now.

One other suggestion: when rolling against an open topped vehicle, you gain +1 to your armor penetration score and that's it. No other bonuses. So now, lasguns can damage a AV:10 open topped vehicle, but not by much due to their -3 penalty for the Damage Chart (-1 for being AV -, and -2 because they can only score a glancing hit). So they'll destroy a weapon (probably by killing the operator rather than damaging the weapon) at best.

If you want to kill a Land Raider then you'll need to break out the big guns, literally.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
6. Wrecked
7+. Explodes

I think we should move away from instant Wrecked/Explodes results personally. I think a vehicle should only be Wrecked if it has zero Hull Points remaining, meanwhile the Explodes result should actually be renamed Magazine/Fuel Explosion, inflicting D3 Hull Points, and only dealing area damage if the vehicle is reduced to zero Hull Points as a result. I'd also say that hull points should only be lost on penetrating hits and weapon destroyed/immobilised results, with Hull Damage coming before weapon/engine damage. I actually also liked the old fire damage which could be neat to see again, leaving us with:

1-2. Crew Shaken (0 HP damage on glance)
3. Crew Stunned (0 HP damage on glance)
4. Hull Damage (1 HP damage)
5. Weapon Destroyed (1 HP damage)
6. Immobilised (1 HP damage)
7. On fire (1 HP damage now, add fire counter, roll D6 for each counter at start of turn, on 4+ suffer another HP in damage, otherwise discard).
8+. Magazine/Fuel Explosion (D3 HP damage, explodes/crashes if reduced to 0 HP)

So both 7 and 8 will inflict extra damage, the difference is in how immediate that damage will be.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Grimgold wrote:
First you got causality wrong on why high strength multishot weapons are coming into favor, it's not because they are awesome against vehicles (they are demonstrably not), it's because they are effective against MCs.

No, mid-strength multishot weapons are both better and more reliable at dealing with the vast majority of vehicles (which have AV12 or worse on the sides) then traditional anti-tank weapons. Even against higher armour it's better to be hoping for glances with your multi-shot gun than hoping for a destroyed result on your single shot gun. The damage chart simply doesn't favour trying to get a destroyed result with single shot weapons vs. peeling off hull points with 3-4-5 shot guns. When those guns (mid-strength multi-shot) are also better at killing MCs, infantry, etc. then we have a whole class of weapons that is redundant.

Grimgold wrote:
Which brings me to my point, vehicles are bad in comparison to MCs, and they are competing for the same slots/points on your army list. Your answer is to effectively raise all vehicles armor by 1, and get rid of the damage chart, in an effort to bring them up to monstrous creatures.

No, I didn't propose either of those things. I proposed a change that would make high strength low-ap weapons more effective against vehicles and mid-strength multi-shot guns worse.

That leaves us with a class of weapon that's effective against vehicles and a class of weapon that's effective against MCs and good infantry.

Not even against rhinos is a high strength multi shot weapon better than a multi melta, when I said demonstrably, that meant I had already done the math.

rhino av 11
vs
Scatter laser
vs
multimelta

scatter laser st 6 heavy 4, 4 shots bs 4, 2.66 hits
1/3 glance and or pen without an extra hull point, .88 hull points per round of shooting.

MultiMelta st 8 melta ap 1, 1 shot at bs 4, .66 hits
24 in 36 chance to glance or pen and do a single hull point of damage (.66 HP), 1 in 36 chance to miss, 11 in 36 chance to pen and destroy vehicle effectively doing 3 hull points(.91 HP),
for a total of 1.57 hull points/hit with a .66 chance of hitting = 1.04 hull points per round.

So even against arguably the weakest vehicle armor one will regularly encounter, a scatt laser is not as good as a MM, It's just math. So why are tables everywhere flooded with such weapons? One, because outside of certain factions like crons, vehicles aren't played very often (my prior post talks a bit about that). Two, it takes Volume of fire to take down MCs, and GMCs, something multimeltas and las cannons can't manage. Finally, anti-tank heavies are also being replaced by D weapons (an abomination made necessary by the leak of Armageddon rules/models into 40k), and grav in space marine armies.

Everybody is just going off of gut feel in this thread, nobody is looking at the math.

Scatterlaser has 12" extra range, so its doing damage for a turn that the MM is doing nothing. Scatterlaser wins.

Just lower point cost to vehicles that lack jinking as they seem to be the ones that no one likes


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haravikk wrote:
Since 40k's anti-vehicle weapons are all tied to vehicle rules, a while ago I came up with a basic conversion for MC's that are clearly vehicles into, you know, actual vehicles:

• Type becomes Vehicle (Walker). Jump Monstrous Creatures are Fast and ignore dangerous terrain unless they start/end their move within it. Models with Psyker have Psychic Pilot instead. If the vehicle design clearly has an exposed pilot then it's Open Topped.
  
• Front and Side Armour is equal to Toughness + 5, Rear Armour is equal to Toughness + 4 (max 14 in both cases).
  
• Wounds carry across as Hull Points (couldn't find a good method of conversion). For anything with 4 or more Hull Points the Explodes! damage result is D3 Hull Points, only causing an explosion if reduced to zero (though this should really be the default for all vehicles IMO).

This is really just a quick and dirty guideline for converting them, as most will need some discussion. Wounds to Hull Points is far from perfect for example, though a Nemesis Dreadknight does come out of it as a 12/12/11 HP 4 Open Topped, so it's got a pretty mixed durability that may not be an issue.


But yeah, I'd prefer no separate vehicle rules at all for simplicity, but that's a lot more work overall.

This just adds more models to the don't get played pile. As vehicles die to fast if they are less than AV 13. Your Dreadknight will most likely die turn one or two tops and the storm surge becomes a over costed rhino with guns it gets to fire at best one turn.

Oldmike wrote:

 Haravikk wrote:
This is really just a quick and dirty guideline for converting them, as most will need some discussion. Wounds to Hull Points is far from perfect for example, though a Nemesis Dreadknight does come out of it as a 12/12/11 HP 4 Open Topped, so it's got a pretty mixed durability that may not be an issue.

This just adds more models to the don't get played pile. As vehicles die to fast if they are less than AV 13. Your Dreadknight will most likely die turn one or two tops and the storm surge becomes a over costed rhino with guns it gets to fire at best one turn.

I've kept the most relevant part of my quote; I'd assume this would be combined with some of the other suggestions in this thread to make vehicles more viable, such as damage table changes/restoration of damage table for glances.

That said, I'd much rather see people not using MC "vehicles" than having to play against "vehicles" using rules that make no sense whatsoever and completely contradict various important parts of the game, so in that respect converting MC's to vehicles as-is (and exactly as written) serves my needs perfectly

If vehicles move to a T and W system, the whole game will need to change, otherwise virtually every weapon in the game will destroy a Leman Russ Demolisher and there will be little to no distinction between different vehicles. A Lord of War will only be harder to kill than a tank because it has more Wounds, not better armour. Lascannons will become uber-death weapons, meaning power gamers, which the majority of people seem to be, will simply give everyone heavy weapons then moan there are too many heavy weapons dominating the game and have yet another reason to bitch ceaselessly about the GW and 40K.

 NoPoet wrote:
If vehicles move to a T and W system, the whole game will need to change, otherwise virtually every weapon in the game will destroy a Leman Russ Demolisher and there will be little to no distinction between different vehicles. A Lord of War will only be harder to kill than a tank because it has more Wounds, not better armour. Lascannons will become uber-death weapons, meaning power gamers, which the majority of people seem to be, will simply give everyone heavy weapons then moan there are too many heavy weapons dominating the game and have yet another reason to bitch ceaselessly about the GW and 40K.

I'd be inclined to disagree: most systems proposed would have AV14 translating to T9 or T10. T9 outright ignores anything below S6. Usually, translated vehicles wind up with more Wounds than they had HP, and really tough vehicles could get various mechanics like invulnerable saves or Feel No Pain. Also, if you remove Explodes!, lascannons arguably become less deadly to vehicles than they currently are - yes, that hit will almost certainly cause some damage, but you won't auto-die (unless it's a T4 vehicle, which I think is unlikely. Even AV10 probably translates to T5-T6).

Yeah that's what I imagined to be the case. I imagined that a Land Raider would be Toughness 10 with a 2+ armour save and something like six wounds for example.

But switching vehicles to toughness, wounds and armour saves would require the whole game to be rewritten.

Give vehicles a saving throw vs glancing, call it a day.

Either set a flat saving throw (3/4+) or release a list with each vehicle and its saving throw.

Stomp wrote:
Give vehicles a saving throw vs glancing, call it a day.

Either set a flat saving throw (3/4+) or release a list with each vehicle and its saving throw.

But most weapons that can damage vehicles have an ap so low you probably won't get a save against it. It's different when the vehicle has fixed wounds, and can therefore take a few hits, but when one penetration hit can wreck you and you can't get a save due to AP you might as well not have the save.

 Future War Cultist wrote:

Stomp wrote:
Give vehicles a saving throw vs glancing, call it a day.

Either set a flat saving throw (3/4+) or release a list with each vehicle and its saving throw.

But most weapons that can damage vehicles have an ap so low you probably won't get a save against it. It's different when the vehicle has fixed wounds, and can therefore take a few hits, but when one penetration hit can wreck you and you can't get a save due to AP you might as well not have the save.

I don't think the aim is to add protection against anti-tank weapons (since those are supposed to hurt tanks after all), but rather to give protection against borderline stuff that people spam in order to glance vehicles to death. Gauss weapons, anything with enough Strength to glance etc. Concentrated fire with stuff designed to hurt vehicles absolutely should still hurt vehicles.

Vehicles/AV in 40k has one basic problem.

It uses a complete different mechanic like everything else. The problem is not that it has no save, but that S+D6 VS AV = glancing hit = removing 1 HP makes it impossible to balance weapons for both mechanics.

So either tanks are to hard or wo weak in this game because you cannot change the weapons that are balanced for non-AV mechanics


First you need to bring Vehicles back in line.

They get AV instead of Toughness+Armour, but the “to wound roll” need to be the same like for Toughness ( because they have no save, they are more difficult to wound to balance this) and they have wounds like every other model in the game

S VS AV (S9 VS AV10 = 5+ to wound)

Now we have the problem that we have no S14 weapons in the game to wound a Land Raider.
GW once said, let’s roll an additional D6 for all weapons to compensate.
But now we make it a little bit more elegant and in line with the available weapons stats and mechanics.

Against AV we add a flat 7 to the Strength and subtract the AP value. A Melter has S8+7-1 = 14 and wound a Land Raider on 4+, an autocannon S11 and wounds a Rhino on 4+.
Special Anti Tank rules (melter, armour bane etc) add +X to the weapons strength against AV (armour bane +1, melter +2 etc) so that a melter in short range has S16 and wound a Land Raider on 2+.


Something that has nothing to do with Vehicles but the game in general:
And to make make single shot Anti Tank weapons like Lasercannons and Melter more deadly (like they should be), they remove always 2 Wounds instead of 1 from any model.