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I would like to preface this by saying that I love 40k, but I hate it as well. This game has the most epic, convoluted, and absolutely rich storyline of anything I've ever been curious enough to get into, but the tabletop itself is frustrating. I don't mean "Oh, I'm salty because I've lost a few games and I hate the game". I mean I'm more frustrated because this game is absolutely unbalanced and in order to win you have to choose specific races and formations and you can't take what you want because it might get slaughtered. It's just not fun to get wrecked as an Ork player, nor is it fun to auto-win when you play Eldar. I believe that skill and strategy should be the only things preventing you from winning the game, and if there's a way to blatanly exploit the game so you can automatically win or have a huge advantage over your opponent, then the game ceases to be fun.

I know that there are like, ten million rules in 40k. I have a bunch of the codexes but to be honest, I don't have them all nor do I care about some of the armies available. As a result, I only know the rules for my own armies and some general rules (I have to flip back and forth sometimes). What I was hoping to do was to get together with a few like-minded people and start up a project: create a sort of 7.5th Edition codex for 40k. It's necessary (now I know) to redesign the rules for 40k. For example, the turn structure sucks. Player 1 will always have an advantage over Player 2. You have no idea how many 1 turn games I've seen where players just build an army like a glass cannon and go for that first turn kill. It's ridiculous. There are more problems here like exploits and high costs and unnecessary rules and really complicated resolution methods, so we'll just trash the old system and work on a new one from the ground up. Don't worry, though- it actually might be easier than trying to fix the completely fethed up rulebook GW gave us and then testing it out to see if it works slightly better. By building it straight up we get to have control over what we fix and prevent problems from ever appearing.

This is a totally voluntary and free project- I don't expect to make money (obviously GW would excommunicate me out of everything I own) and its definitely not a job. I recognize we're all busy people so this will be handled like a videogame mod- it may take a while to finish, but we'll do things right and finally balance this game.

-------------------------------

Alright guys, here's what I've done so far. More rules and junk will come later in the form of a downloadable Word doc- I'll provide a link to a Dropbox so all of you can read them. They'll have different version numbers and junk so you can know what we're talking about when we say "according to the new rules", etc. Hope you like the new rules!

First up. Turn order.[/u][/b][/color]

A single turn will encompass gameplay for both players through a system of interwoven phases. Before, you had the running phase, the shooting phase, the buttering your toast phase, etc, but not anymore. I'm done with that. I don't particularly care for restricting players and I know that if you want to shoot before moving, you should get to. Therefore, I'm giving each and every unit in a player's army two actions per turn. Just two, but you can do a lot with those two. One action can consist of moving, shooting, whacking someone with your weapon in melee, setting up a heavy weapon, using a psychic power, etc. You can only do one of these actions per phase. So with that in mind, here's the actual turn order:

Command Phase: Psychic powers that affect unit movement or deployment happen here. Reinforcement happens here. Suppression and leadership morale tests happen here. I know it doesn't make much sense and its ambiguous, but we need this phase. Ignore it for now, but keep in mind its here.

Action Phase 1: Here you get to do anything you want, but only one action per phase. Player 1 goes through AP1 first, and then Player 2 goes through AP1.

Phase Resolution 1:[/b] All the actions you took during AP1 are resolved here. Did you shoot someone? Move somewhere? Did you call an Ork Warboss' mother dirty in a challenge? All the dice rolls and resolution stuff will be here in order to emulate things happening simultaneously. Two squads line up in their respective AP1 and shoot, and during this phase their combat plays out. That way nobody complains about how "he went first, of course he won" or "my units would have trounced yours if you hadn't gotten lucky and gone first". Enough of that. Actions get resolved [b]simultaneously.

Action Phase 2: Same as AP1.

Phase Resolution 2: Same as PR1.

End of Turn: Everyone take a breath, because now it's time to do this alllll over again.

That's it- your turn is no longer composed of 3/4 phases where you're locked into doing something you might not want. You get to do whatever you want, see it play out in front of you, and then the next turn rolls around. Period.

Stats:

Everyone is gonna be confused about what to call what, and since I haven't received any suggestions as to what to call the skills I'll invent my own. This is what we'll be using when we discuss stats. Not AP, not Assault, not any of the current 40k stats. We use these so that nobody gets confused and starts talking about rules that we're not using.

Melee: This stat gauges how awesome or crap your unit is at hitting stuff. A Guardsman will be weaksauce compared to a mighty morphin' Banshee. Scale of 1-10, 1 being the weakest.

Dexterity: Can your unit catch a sword with their own weapon and prevent their untimely demise? Well, this stat will tell you. This gauges how good your unit is at either dodging Melee strikes or at parrying them. A CSM is supposed to be good at parrying since he's a couple millennia old, and a Banshee is good at being annoying and darting all over the place, so expect both of these units' Dexterity to be high. This directly counters Melee, so if your Dex is higher than your opponent's Melee, your unit will either dodge the blow or catch it like the ninja it is. Scale of 1-10, 1 being the slowest.

Accuracy: Can your unit hit the broad side of barn? This stat obviously gauges that, so units like Grots will suck at it and units like literally anything the Tau have will be great at it. It will gauge if your shot lands the target or if you missed. Scale of 1-10, 1 meaning that you should turn your lasgun in and sacrifice your life for the Emperor.

Evade: Gauges if your unit can dance around enemy fire and not get hit. Banshees and fast units like the Harlequins will have an insane amount of Evasion, so don't expect to hit them that often as, say, an Ork Boy. This counters Accuracy, meaning that if your Evade is higher than their Accuracy, you stand a good chance of maintaining structural integrity of your body.

Armor Rating: Is your armor good, or should you have spent a bit more on not dying? This stat will show just how bad or good your unit's armor is. Grots will have low armor, but a Meganob will have an ungodly amount of it. Scale of 1-10, 1 being laughable.

Weapon Damage: How powerful your weapon is. Whether is a pitiful lasgun or a formidable Power Fist, Weapon Damage will go against your opponent's Armor Rating. If it's higher, your opponent had better get used to the new hole they have in their face. If your weapon is lower, you stand a very good chance of your weapon glancing off their armor. Should have brought a bigger gun. Range of 1-10, 1 being the worst damage.

Health: How healthy and hale is your unit before you send them off to their inevitable deaths? Units like Ogryns will have 2 or more Health, symbolizing the ungodly punishment they can take before dying, and Guardsmen will have one to symbolize the way they fold like wet tissue paper when they're shot at. If your enemy succeeds at a Weapon Damage roll versus your Armor Rating, one health is subtracted from your unit. No ifs or buts, its happens. Scale of 1-10, 1 being pretty normal for the average bear. 10 meaning you'd better have a lot of pointy sticks.

Range of Movement: How far your unit can move. Values can vary between units and different terrain types can affect your movement. I'll talk more about this later.

Weapon Range: This will be described along with whatever weapon you choose, next to the Weapon Damage of that weapon. It shows how far it can shoot. If its a melee weapon, it has no range. Why would you throw a Power Klaw?

Leadership/Morale: This shows how courageous your unit is. Is it cowardly, like a grot, or brave like a Terminator? This stat affects such things as squads taking casualties (take too many and you have to do an instant morale check. Fail and go into instant retreat.) and being under suppressive fire. If your unit isn't particularly courageous, expect to be suppressed for a long time. Scale of 1-10, 1 being a wuss, 10 being fearless and as such, immune to suppression and morale breakdowns.

AAAand that's it! Those are all the skills we'll be using because at this point we have a lot. Add any more and we risk turning into an RPG. On to the next thing on our list: Special rules.


I've decided on two things for ranged units. Right now they're pretty good if your weapon can do more than tickle your opponent, but not if you're a humble Guardsman. So what do we do help out the lasguns and the grot blasters of the world? We give them the ability to suppress and do concentrated fire. The first one is kind of complicated. Here's what's up:

Any unit that can shoot can also suppress. If you see your unit isn't doing jack to kill that squad of Ogryns charging at you, and you'd like to not die, why not suppress them? This will be a separate action, like shooting to kill or melee, which means that (per phase) you can either suppress or shoot to kill. If you choose to suppress, here's how it's resolved. You shoot normally and do an Accuracy roll. If you pass, your target goes on to make a Morale check. If it fails, great! You've succeeded and your target is now suppressed. What this process is meant to simulate is that your unit shoots at the enemy, right? Since there's a volley of fire coming at it, your target decides whether its brave enough to stand in front of it or dive for cover. If it chickens out, it becomes suppressed.

When suppressed, units have half Range of Movement and take a -2 to Accuracy, meaning that assault units can't move as fast as normal and shooty units are essentially firing blindly from cover. However, all's not terrible for the suppressed units. Since they've technically gone to ground and dived behind cover, they get a +1 to Evade. That doesn't prevent your melee units from getting in there and roughing them up, though.

Remember the Command Phase? Yeah, at the beginning of every turn you roll for Morale for every suppressed unit you have. If you fail, they stay suppressed. But if you succeed, they automatically snap out of it and aren't suppressed anymore. Another thing to keep in mind is that the unit suppressing cannot do anything other than move, but they cannot move farther from their target than their weapon range will allow. What this means is that if you have an IG Guardsmen squad suppressing some Ork Boys, and there are 15' between you, you can move away from them. Lets say that the lasgun's range is 30. That means that the Guardsmen can only move 15', because they're still suppressing the Orks. If the Guardsmen move out of weapon range so that they're not in range of the Orks, they stop suppressing the Orks and the Ork BOys immediately stop being suppressed. The same happens if the Guardsmen decide to take another action, like shooting or setting up a heavy weapon. It immediately diverts the squad's attention to the new action and the suppression order is cancelled.

Alright, that was long. On to concentrated fire, an easier topic.

Guardsmen (I love IG, sue me) have terrible weapons, the lasguns. Not terrible as in good, but terrible as in "we could play laser tag with these". Therefore, I give you weak players another weapon in your arsenal: concentrated fire. Unlike suppressive fire, this actually kills things. Do you see that Nob over there? Yeah. Using your combat training, you order your Guardsmen to shoot and concentrate their fire at a single target- the Nob. This limits the number of attacks they can make to one quarter (If you had 10 Guardsmen, you can only make 2 of these shots since 10 divided by 4 is 2.5 and I'm rounding down because this is the grimdark future) but it exponentially does more damage. Concentrated fire gives you a +2 to Weapon Damage since instead of only one lasgun shooting ineffectively at the Nob now you have ten of them shooting at the same spot. So remember kids- if you're weak but you have friends, gang up on the big guys! Concentrated fire is just like Suppressive fire in that its a separate action. Your Guardsmen can do Concentrated fire on Action Phase 1, and then Suppress the survivors on Action Phase 2. Just like that, your puny humans are fixed and now serve a deep tactical function in the battlefield.

Last thing (there are more but this is a summary so whatever). You can shoot into assault.

*Cue hundreds of outraged voices*

Let's be honest. If you're a soldier in the 41st millennium, you shoot to kill. You might also value killing an enemy over saving an ally. Be it as it may, you're a fething trained soldier. Act like it and shoot into that mob of allied soldiers and bad guys duking it out.

A unit can shoot into assault, but will take a -2 to Accuracy (a -2 might be too much, so I'll test it and see if a -1 is needed). A critical failure (rolling a one) means you hit your friends and damage calculation ensues as if you had hit an enemy. Hahaha, guess that's why you don't shoot into assault!

Anyways, that's that. I'll take suggestions and more ideas for new rules that build upon these, and I'll change what I've already written if you convince me that something sucks or is unbalanced or whatever. Remember, I'm here to make this easy, fun, and balanced.

IMPORTANT EDIT: If you're trying to follow the conversation, skip the first page. I edited to post to reflect what I learned and the progress I've made, so reading some of the posts below might be confusing. Just skip to the last page or something.

Good luck sir. Maybe you'll have more success than the other people that have attempted it.

You could give yourself a huge head start by building off of zagman's errata:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/648525.page

I thought he was doing well but it's been like 9 months since he posted anything on the entire forum, but I'm sure he'd be happy if someone picked up his work and ran with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also my general suggestions are:
-remove pregame randomness
-remove instances of time-wasting. (Overwatch, moving a unit in multiple phases, snap shots etc.)
-look at fixing the schizophrenic rules between shooting and assault. The balance should be somewhere in the realm that armies should be encouraged to have at least a counter-assault unit somewhere. No army, no matter how shooty, should be getting out of a game with no casualties.
-kill formations at least for now. An extra force multiplier just makes things even more complicated and unbalanced. Everyone should have tax units (that is, units that score better by being troops, but are a little less functional per point than non-troops.) "Pacific rim armies" shouldn't be a thing.

I'm on dakka quite a bit. I have a lot of experience with the game, both casually and competitive. If you pm me with stuff I can weigh in on it. I support anyone who plays the game trying to fix it.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Good luck sir. Maybe you'll have more success than the other people that have attempted it.

You could give yourself a huge head start by building off of zagman's errata:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/648525.page

I thought he was doing well but it's been like 9 months since he posted anything on the entire forum, but I'm sure he'd be happy if someone picked up his work and ran with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also my general suggestions are:
-remove pregame randomness
-remove instances of time-wasting. (Overwatch, moving a unit in multiple phases, snap shots etc.)
-look at fixing the schizophrenic rules between shooting and assault. The balance should be somewhere in the realm that armies should be encouraged to have at least a counter-assault unit somewhere. No army, no matter how shooty, should be getting out of a game with no casualties.
-kill formations at least for now. An extra force multiplier just makes things even more complicated and unbalanced. Everyone should have tax units. "Pacific rim armies" shouldn't be a thing.

I'm on dakka quite a bit. I have a lot of experience with the game, both casually and competitive. If you pm me with stuff I can weigh in on it. I support anyone who plays the game trying to fix it.

Oh boy, this will take a while to read lol. Could you explain your suggestions? I agree with the formations being overpowered but what do you mean by the rest?

And yeah, I definitely will. I'll need all the help I can get and, while I may not be able to update every single thing and make the game completely fair, at least getting rid of the crappier rules and balancing unit costs for the most played armies will be my goals for now.

Are you trying to recreate 40k or just straight start from scratch?

I suggest figuring out what is the core concepts of 40k and working up from there in the most simplest way possible

look at multiple editions and figure out the good, bad and ugly and amalgamate what you like.

Oh and prepare to write in legalize

edit: thinking,
core mechanics
movement
unit type
guns
melee
psychic.

after that add in the specifics and special rules that only mess with the core rule.

 Desubot wrote:
Are you trying to recreate 40k or just straight start from scratch?

I suggest figuring out what is the core concepts of 40k and working up from there in the most simplest way possible

look at multiple editions and figure out the good, bad and ugly and amalgamate what you like.

Oh and prepare to write in legalize

edit: thinking,
core mechanics
movement
unit type
guns
melee
psychic.

after that add in the specifics and special rules that only mess with the core rule.

To be honest, that would be a huuuuge undertaking. Like I said, I'd mostly be getting rid of the worst rules and fixing costs so that armies are more balanced. I'll do more if I can, but I'd need people to help me out and it will take a while. I do know that I'd like to fix the worst armies right now- Orks, IG, CSM. By fixing them, players that own those armies will be able to use whatever they want instead of only a certain army build or whatever to even be remotely competitive.

I see. personally i would rather see all the big competitive armies get toned down instead. i personally would rather see the cheese levels come down from salty parmesan to a mellow mozzarella

Id take a look at all the rules being abused by tourny players first.

big things to fix is how allies work (mostly id get rid of any sort of Battle brother except for very specific situations like inquisition and harly)

fix how psychic powers work or balance them

remove decision and unlimited formations.

and stuff like that.

Imho thats at least what i would do.

 urbanknight4 wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Good luck sir. Maybe you'll have more success than the other people that have attempted it.

You could give yourself a huge head start by building off of zagman's errata:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/648525.page

I thought he was doing well but it's been like 9 months since he posted anything on the entire forum, but I'm sure he'd be happy if someone picked up his work and ran with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also my general suggestions are:
-remove pregame randomness
-remove instances of time-wasting. (Overwatch, moving a unit in multiple phases, snap shots etc.)
-look at fixing the schizophrenic rules between shooting and assault. The balance should be somewhere in the realm that armies should be encouraged to have at least a counter-assault unit somewhere. No army, no matter how shooty, should be getting out of a game with no casualties.
-kill formations at least for now. An extra force multiplier just makes things even more complicated and unbalanced. Everyone should have tax units. "Pacific rim armies" shouldn't be a thing.

I'm on dakka quite a bit. I have a lot of experience with the game, both casually and competitive. If you pm me with stuff I can weigh in on it. I support anyone who plays the game trying to fix it.

Oh boy, this will take a while to read lol. Could you explain your suggestions? I agree with the formations being overpowered but what do you mean by the rest?

And yeah, I definitely will. I'll need all the help I can get and, while I may not be able to update every single thing and make the game completely fair, at least getting rid of the crappier rules and balancing unit costs for the most played armies will be my goals for now.

-pregame randomness: rolling for powers, gifts, warlord traits etc before every game. Note that after you make them not-random, you have to go back and make the bad choices good and the best choices merely good as well. You might be well served by removing a good number of them to simplify.

-time wasting silliness: bolter marines firing overwatch, a mob of 30 ork boys moving and then running in the shooting phase, making you move 30 models twice in a turn. Jet pack assault phase moves also fit here.

-the schizo between shooting and assault rules: A "shooty" unit could deep strike, infiltrate, outflank, or disembark from a standard vehicle and make shooting attacks with no downside. Depending on their firepower and abilities, some of them can easily wipe 1 or more units off the board with no response from the enemy, from significant range away. Effects that cause a shooting unit to be unable to shoot still allow them to "partially shoot" via snapshots.

Assault units (outside some specific formations) are disallowed from attacking if they infiltrate, outflank, get out of a standard transport, even if it was wrecked in the opponent's turn, deep strike, or arrive from reserve in any fashion. They must get to melee range (obviously,) which means they typically cannot deal damage until a later turn unless the opponent is perfectly willing to bring he battle to a melee as well. Once an assault unit attacks, enemies are given a free chance to take snap shots as well as attack in melee against them. Special assault weapons also tend to cost more than ranged weapons with the same statistics. (For example, a multi-melta is 24" s8 ap1 melta, and a marine holding one is 24 points. A marine holding a power fist for one s8 ap2 attack in melee is 39 points.) Any effect that disallows an assault flat out disallows it, period.

Now it's not all bad. Assault units could theoretically sweep the shooting unit after a failed morale test, and if the stars align right, they could be safe from a turn of shooting and finish their combat on the opponent's turn. But there's a very clear difference between the two due to how the core rules work.

 Desubot wrote:
I see. personally i would rather see all the big competitive armies get toned down instead. i personally would rather see the cheese levels come down from salty parmesan to a mellow mozzarella

Id take a look at all the rules being abused by tourny players first.

big things to fix is how allies work (mostly id get rid of any sort of Battle brother except for very specific situations like inquisition and harly)

fix how psychic powers work or balance them

remove decision and unlimited formations.

and stuff like that.

Imho thats at least what i would do.

That is very true, cheese is annoying. I'm not too familiar with all the top competitive armies since I play mostly what I like, so could you tell me some exploits you know? Like, what needs fixing? If it's nothing too bad then I can just fix it at once like, say, a really OP unit being too cheap. And man, that's the second person today that says to get rid of formations. I've only looked at AdMech formations and while they seemed pretty powerful, I thought it was only because they were new and untested. How bad are they?

 urbanknight4 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
I see. personally i would rather see all the big competitive armies get toned down instead. i personally would rather see the cheese levels come down from salty parmesan to a mellow mozzarella

Id take a look at all the rules being abused by tourny players first.

big things to fix is how allies work (mostly id get rid of any sort of Battle brother except for very specific situations like inquisition and harly)

fix how psychic powers work or balance them

remove decision and unlimited formations.

and stuff like that.

Imho thats at least what i would do.

That is very true, cheese is annoying. I'm not too familiar with all the top competitive armies since I play mostly what I like, so could you tell me some exploits you know? Like, what needs fixing? If it's nothing too bad then I can just fix it at once like, say, a really OP unit being too cheap. And man, that's the second person today that says to get rid of formations. I've only looked at AdMech formations and while they seemed pretty powerful, I thought it was only because they were new and untested. How bad are they?

To put it bluntly, formations dialed it up to 11. Some of them allow your army to have 500 or more points worth of free stuff, or global buffs like +1 RP MTC and relentless on an entire necron army. The recent iron hands formation enables you to easily obtain a monstrous character with 2+ armor, 3+ invuln, and 2+ feel no pain. ( and by comparison to other things that are around nowadays, that guy isn't even that bad.)

As for specific units, Eldar have the highest unit quality in the game, trouncing even the other top tier armies abusing their most powerful formations. (As a point of humor, the Las Vegas open this year ended in an eldar vs eldar match in the finals, if that tells you anything.)
Their warp spiders, wind rider bikes, wraithknights, wraithguard, D-cannons, and psychic powers all work together to hold up their codex as the best single book in the land. Necrons are a little below them, but boast their canoptek wraiths and spyders as their champions, while their big formation boosts their army up enough to fight for the top.

Another major issue is that several marine codices can work together to make a nigh invincible unit that has unparalleled speed, being able to abuse one of a couple new psychic powers to assault from ludicrous distances. Although the unit would lose significant power by having formations vanish, as their psychic might comes from the librarius conclave formation, they can still be workable. The power units involved other than the psykers are the thunderwolf characters who bring in pet wolves as spare wounds, and a ravenguard command squad, who have a re-rollable jink save and bring fnp to the giant unit with their apothecary, as well as hit and run.

Any army can abuse psychic powers, invis being one of the key ones. If you have a guaranteed invisibility and a good target for it, you have a top army.

Daemons can get 2+ rerollable invulnerable saves on virtually any tzeentch unit, mostly thanks to the grimoire of true names, but they also have powers to mess with their saves as well.

Grav cannons from the imperials are a bit over the top, and reinforce the situation that units that pay for high armor such as honor guard or terminators, are actively wasting points.

And lastly, and also relevant to the previous, some armies have ludicrously durable monstrous or gargantuan creatures for very competitive prices. The tyranid flyrant virtually carries their codex on his back (the rest of his codex needs some help though,) the aforementioned eldar wraithknight, the tau stormsurge and riptides, including variants...These are all models that are only barely kept in check by the existence of imperial grav weaponry.

There's a lot wrong with the game at the moment, but the above things are the ones that you will see stand out at the peak of cheddar mountain.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

I know that some people from Dakka have been talking about Warmachine and HORDES and whatever whenever the rules question pops up. The crux of the issue with them is that WM feels balanced and every unit can do something to counter another. Counters might be something to introduce here, kind of like the triangle of war: Spears beat cavalry, cavalry beat archers, and archers beat spears. In this sense, we can format our army however we want and still win if we know what we're doing. Battles shouldn't be "pick the best possible army you can that will destroy whatever you throw at it". It should be more like, you choose whatever you like in a way that works for you and then fight with that. Of course, any player should keep in mind that they should always be cautious and keep some counters in their army- that's why the English didn't just pack longbowmen at the Battle of Crecy, they also brought fully armored knights on foot to fight whoever came to harass their archers.

Is there a way we could implement these counters in 40k? You mention that there are a ton of issues with monstrous creatures, junk saves on jetbikes, and cheap units. If we raise the cost for obviously exploitable units and create counters for the rest (for example, making snipers actually good at killing monsters), would that fix things?

On a side note, I'd like anyone who's reading this thread and is interested in helping out to PM me and see what we can do. So far I'd like to start with the most obvious pitfalls of the codexes, create a kind of hotfix for the game while we work on each individual codex. I'm not a rules lawyer either, so I'd need someone to tell me all the problems who's really good with rules. I can't fix the rules if I don't know them all!

@urbanknight4.
What exactly are you trying to achieve?

If you just want to proof read and edit the rules to make them easier ro under stand and to improve the over all game balance.This is already done in the various tournament packs.AFAIK.

If you want to actually arrive at a rule set that is playable directly from the rules as written.Then you do HAVE to tr write the rules starting from scratch.

Define what game play you want to end up with.
Select the best game mechanics and resolution methods to deliver the intended game play.

The current 40k rule set is a monumental mess.Lots of people fail to grasp how far the GW sales department have subverted the actual rules development.

If you look at the actual core rules in 40k they ONLY cover standard infantry in the open.

Everything else needs additional rules, or special rules of some sort.

When a rule set has more exceptions to the core rules, than it has core rules ,its is time to start again!

In short using the stats, resolution methods , and game mechanics from a Napoleonic game.(WHFB,) to try to cover the massive diversity of units found in a large scifi battle game like 40k 3rd to 7th ed.Is doomed to fail.

The ONLY way to make 40k actually playable is not by reverse engineering the horrible mess that is 40k 7th ed.But by actually writing a new rule set from scratch.

Lanrak wrote:
@urbanknight4.
What exactly are you trying to achieve?

If you just want to proof read and edit the rules to make them easier ro under stand and to improve the over all game balance.This is already done in the various tournament packs.AFAIK.

If you want to actually arrive at a rule set that is playable directly from the rules as written.Then you do HAVE to tr write the rules starting from scratch.

Define what game play you want to end up with.
Select the best game mechanics and resolution methods to deliver the intended game play.

The current 40k rule set is a monumental mess.Lots of people fail to grasp how far the GW sales department have subverted the actual rules development.

If you look at the actual core rules in 40k they ONLY cover standard infantry in the open.

Everything else needs additional rules, or special rules of some sort.

When a rule set has more exceptions to the core rules, than it has core rules ,its is time to start again!

In short using the stats, resolution methods , and game mechanics from a Napoleonic game.(WHFB,) to try to cover the massive diversity of units found in a large scifi battle game like 40k 3rd to 7th ed.Is doomed to fail.

The ONLY way to make 40k actually playable is not by reverse engineering the horrible mess that is 40k 7th ed.But by actually writing a new rule set from scratch.

Hm... starting from scratch sounds really labor intensive and complex. I would definitely like a more fluid, intuitive, and ultimately easier to learn system, but designing a system like that that would be competitive and balanced and still encompass all the existing models sounds like something that'll take time and people.

I know for sure that things need to be simpler. The fact that I have to be intimately familiar with the army codexes of the armies I'm facing if I hope to have any hope of making sure my opponent isnt cheating or even understanding what his units do says a lot about the complexity of 40k right now. I hate asking my opponents for explanations and even though its perfectly acceptable to do so, it slows the game down even more. What I'm thinking of is having the more important and basic rules in the main rulebook, and then the individual army codexes would have more in-depth information and unit prices. I don't know what to think about the "Codexes beat rulebook, supplements beat codexes" line, but it makes sense because the rulebook cannot plan for literally everything, I suppsoe.

I also know that I would like a system of counters. Just like in Fire Emblem there is a system of counters, in here there should be something like that to encourage strategic gameplay. Oh, so your brought a melee heavy army? I brought a ranged heavy army. But to counter that, you could add walkers or skimmers or tanks or something that would smash into my ranged units like a battering ram. Of course, that was a very simplified example but you see where I'm going. No longer will Necron warriors be able to blow up Rhinos, nor will a super-slow melee unit be able to transverse a bullet-hell to clobber the shooters.

I'm going to need the help of everyone who's interested in this, then. Rules are complex to fix since you have to not only make sure the fix isn't OP, you have to make sure it fits in with the rest of the rules. Building a new set of rules is another headache entirely. The good thing is that by the end, we'll have a system that not only works, it rewards creative and strategic players over those that simply burn a couple hundred bucks on whatever the meta is.

@urbanknight4.

Writing new core rules is MUCH simpler than trying to reverse engineer 18 years of poor game development that just added complication to a compromised rule set.

IF 40k could be fixed with a few tweeks, then the team of professional game devs at GW towers should have done in the last 18 years.
Instead they asked several times to re-write the 40k rules to suit the new battle game size.

What sort of game play do you want to end up with?

A modern company level battle game , with an equal focus on mobility fire power and assault?

A massive reduction in the complication in the rules and a increase in tactical depth , from more in game decision making?

Direct representation for stats , and ONE other resolution method?
(Rather than the SIX resolution methods 40k currently uses. That STILL needs seperate rules for vehicles , and MORE THAN EIGHTY special rules !)

I could discuss some basic options with you if you like?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hi again.
The problem is there is so much wrong with the current rules , you have to find ways of addressing massive imbalance in the core rules , before you could possibly get the
level of balance close enough for fun random pick up games.(That can be attained by new players quickly and easily.)

Lets list the things that are in the core rules that make game balance impossible when combined like they are in 40k.

The game turn.
Alternating game turns, only work well when opposing forces maneuver into weapons range.
Because most 40k unit are in weapon range in turn 1 , we get the imbalance caused by Alpha strike.

How much is that unit worth,when it could get destroyed before it even takes its first move?

Adding LOS blocking terrain can mitigate this a bit, but them cramps the units into a even smaller playing space!

If you want to keep the alternating game turn , play the game of 7th ed 40k outside!(Like some did with Apocalypse games.)

Or more practically use a more interactive game turn to reduce player down time, and the chance of alpha strike being such a game breaker.
And replace shooting resolution with some thing more scalable and practical.

And on the subject of shooting.

The massive imbalance between shooting and assault.

In WHFB most units were mainly armed with close combat weapons , and ranged attacks were used in a supporting role.
Looking at the WHFB stat line we can see this quite clearly.
M.WS.BS.S.T.W.I.A.LD.Sve.

That is 4 stats dedicated to close combat resolution,with movement rates providing the the meat and potatoes of the tactical maneuver into close combat range that drove the game play of WHFB.

Shooting only has one dedicated stat BS.As most of the targets in WHFB are large blocks of troops.(Representing squadrons of cavalry and batalions of infantry, 100s to 1000s of soldiers in each block .So hitting a massed rank formation is all about the skill of the shooter.
A simple +1 or -1 to denote slighty easier to hit or harder to hit , covers the variation for this SUPPORTING combat resolution in WHFB.

In 40k the majority of units are armed with ranged and close combat weapons.Shooting and close combat should be equally important and dealt with in similar ways IMO.
Shooting in 40k is a flat to hit roll based on the shooter.

Close combat in 40k is an opposed roll, taking the enemy skill into account.

So shooting has the massive advantage over close combat.(No manuever to get into base to base combat, and no opponents skill modifying the chance to hit.)
Added to the fact that BOTH type of attack are competing for the same limited function of killing stuff.

If shooting included a simple suppression mechanic, to control enemy movement, (naturally occurring and proportional pinning.)

Then shooting and assault would have different tactical functions.(As well as killing stuff obviously.)

Multiple resolution methods for combat resolution.
WHFB , was based on the old Napoleonic type combat resolution methods that were popular back in the 1970-1980s.

Unfortunately, even though being complicated this set of resolution methods can not cope with the massive range in species , and technology found on the 40k battle field.

So using one resolution method for all combat resoluiton that covers the wider range of species and tech is preferable , to 6 resolution methods that do not.

Ill stop there as It would takes a few pages the cover everything wrong with 40k rules, from a technical point of view.

Lanrak wrote:

Here's what I picture 40k to be: yes, there are ranged units and there's a huge amount of them, but assault has to be important. Vehicles have to be important. Transports specially- you can't just ignore the tactical importance of transports in a game like this. It completely undermines the effectiveness of assault troops if the transport they're using is blown up before they can even get to their target. Skimmers and jetbikes could act as shock cavalry, get a charge bonus and have stronger frontal armor but weaker side armor so that prolonged melee hurts them. Maybe assault troops could get a movement bonus so that it reflects their need to run towards their targets.

All of this doesn't mean much, though. With all the options and content 40k has, its hard to tell what kind of game it could be if its balanced. I liked the squad-based mechanics of 40k because it makes things personal, and the ideal game would have strategy and thought along with the squads you choose. I want to make it so that you could theoretically win with any army setup as long as its not stupid and has counters on it (For example, an only assault army would definitely get slaughtered by the Tau). This game would have to have a strong rulebook with a grand majority of the basic rules in it, but still make it easy to understand the game if you're a new player. I want to implement intuitive rules that make sense no matter what army you're playing. I'm not sure what kind of game specifically I should be running, though. Would you run down the basic ideas you had with me?

For example, the Fallout combat system makes sense for ranged combat. In order to gauge whether a shot lands, you look at the shooter's Perception. If his roll fails, the shot misses. If it lands, it goes to the target's Agility to see if the target is agile enough to evade the shot. If its agility is high enough, the target moves out of the way (but stays in the same place on the tabletop) and the shot whizzes past. If its agility is lower than the ballistics of the shooter, the target is hit and the next roll is for armor. If the shot is too weak to penetrate the target's armor, it dissipates harmlessly and causes no damage. If it makes it through, the shot then resolves for damage against the target's vitality, which subtracts health from the target.

That seemed complicated and it's gonna be a nightmare to make three different decisions for every shot fired on a tabletop if we keep the system intact, but it makes more sense than using ballistics skill and then using whatever roll is best for saves while the target stays there, taking the shot. This also makes ranged attacks have a reduced success margin- if your shots can now be evaded and armor always plays a part in ballistics, you'll kill less people with a volley because their armor is actually working.

That wasn't the greatest example, but I hope you know what I mean. 40k combat is kinda weird in that you have to choose a save and the AP system is kind of confusing. Weapons should have a strength rating, armor should have a defensive rating, and the only thing the characters provide will be ballistics to determine ranged accuracy and agility to move out of the way. Weapon strength is directly related to armor rating- if it's higher, the shot does damage. If it's too low, the armor absorbs the shock. That's a lot more simpler than the inverted AP system.

I like your suppression idea, it makes perfect sense. Maybe even if the shots don't make it through armor, it can roll for a suppression fire? This would cut a unit's speed by half of something, I dunno. There has to be a balance so that ranged units can't just shoot volleys after volleys and effectively make assault troops useless through suppression or straight up ranged damage. One thing I thought of was concentrated fire for elite units or units with combat training. The whole unit trades in their individual ranged shots and instead shoots a single high power shot that simulates the entire squad firing at one target. This would make Guardsmen actually viable at killing things and make other disciplined troops more effective at taking down stuff.

What are these resolution options? I don't quite understand what you mean by that. How would you reduce it to just one?

Also, what do you think about the counter system? So far I've thought of this:

Ranged units beat: melee units from far away, anti-tank units, other ranged units.
Melee units beat: ranged units in CC, anti-tank units, cavalry in prolonged CC, and armor in CC.
Cavalry units (like jetbikes and AdMech Dragoons) beat: ranged units, melee units, anti-armor units.
Armor units (like Leman Russ tanks and Rhinos) beat: ranged units, melee units from far away, cavalry.
Anti-armor units (like Tankbustas) beat: armor and heavy units (like Mega Nobs)

Not sure what to do with this counter chart yet. I want to give each class an inherent advantage over the classes it beats but I'll need to think about it. If you need me to explain anything, ask away!

@urbanknight.
Sorry about the late reply.(I had to bring some work home with me over the week end to get it finished in time for an audit.)

I think you have some good ideas for concepts that would fit well in a new rule set for 40k.

However, if we are to do a complete re-write of 40k rules, we need to make sure we do not get blinded by all the 'chrome', or deafened by the 'fizz' from the 'kool aide'.

So as with any project we need to 'focus on function first.'

The function of a rule set, is to inform the players how the game is played. (If I want to read a inspiring story Ill by a novel. )

And so the first thing is to decide on the scale and scope of the game play.

Here are some simple questions to help define the game play we want to end up with, in the new rules.

Is the game competitive or co-operative?

In a competitive game players have opposed objectives.(Eg they want to reach their objectives while preventing their opponent from reaching theirs.)
All the war games I have played over the last 30 odd years have all been competitive.

Co-operative is where the players work together to reach a common objective, eg the players beat the game , not each other.

Communicating properly with each other and not being a 'gakker'/'asshat' about things , is considered to be a pre requisite of all games.
(It does not excuse , and should not be used as an excuse for poor game development. )

As we have established 40k rules are a competitive war game.Then we have 3 basic game play types , that are used to base all war games on.

1)Ancient warfare, with the focus on mobility and close combat.With shooting used in a supporting role.(EG all warfare from 500BC to 1900AD, and fantasy war games using similar units of big block of infantry /cavalry in close formation.)

2) Naval warfare, with the focus on mobility and fire power,.With close combat being used in a supporting role.(Boarding actions on crippled vessels,etc.)

3) Modern warfare , with equal focus on mobility fire power and assault.(Mobility to take objectives, fire power to control enemy movement. and assault to contest objectives.

Simple exercise.Pick 1500 pts worth of stuff from an army in 40k.Now put it on a table and look at it.What does it closest resemble?(You can just imagine it if you like.)

Does it look like the massed formations of 'ancient warfare'.Large block of 100s of infantry and cavalry in close formation?

Does it look like the naval formations found in 'ship combat'?Large heavily armoured units, with long range guns, found at sea or in space?

Does it look like the squads of skirmishing infantry,with armoured vehicles , artillery ,and air support , found in modern warfare?

For the game size.(My approximate definitions in model numbers)
A battalion sized game , has 2 to 4 companies a side, (100 infantry or 12 vehicles in a company.)

A company sized game is one where an all infantry horde army has about 100 to 120 models ,(Approximately a size of an infantry company.)

A platoon sized game has about 30 models aside.

A Squad sized game has about a dozen models a side.

I believe that a 40k rule set written for the game play of 40k should be a competitive, modern ,company level ,war game.Do you agree?

If you, do we can look at game mechanics, (that determine how players interact.)
And resolution methods, how the in game interaction is resolved.

A quick note on resolution methods.
Lots of game released recently have used 'direct representation' as their main and some times only resolution method.

EG
Distance in inches/cm for weapons max range and units max move.
The number of dice rolled.
The score on a dice required for success.

All war games use direct representation resolution as it is the easiest ones to learn and remember. And then add on more resolution methods if required.

The current 40k rules have inherited lots of resolution methods from its WHFB backward compatibility.

1)Stat subtracted from 7 for shooting to hit.

2)Stat vs Stat on a chart for close combat to hit.

3)Stat vs stat for on a different chart non vehicle damage.

4)Stat cancels out function if less than opposed Stat.(Armour Saves and AP.)

5)Roll under stat on 2 D6 for LD.

Then we have different resolution for vehicles

7)Stat + D6 vs stat , for vehicle armour.

8)D6 roll on chart for vehicle damage.
AND on top of this we have over eighty special rules!

The vast range of units and abilities can not be covered with just direct representation .The variation in species and technology is too vast.

However, using opposed stats in a single table with an extended range of results for a D6 .OR using opposed stats directly , with the D6 as the random factor of success.

Could cover all combat resolution with one simple method.

To hit at range, shooting skill vs Stealth skill.
To hit in assault, Assault skill vs agility skill
To make armour save, targets Armour value vs weapon hits AP value
To damage weapons damage value vs target resilience.

Ill give examples of each method , after we agree on what game play and basic game mechanics we should use.

@all.
Well as no one seems to think a 40k war game rule set should be co-operative ,or based on naval warfare or ancient warfare.(Apart from GW, plc. )

And we have a size for the intended game.(I would like to leave out the 'big toys' from 6th and 7th ed, for now.We can add them back in after we get the core units of infantry vehicles and M/Cs working how they should first.)

We have established the scale and scope for the new game play.

Now on to game mechanics.
The alternating turn sequence ,(IGO/UGO.)Only really works with games that include a couple of turns or more of tactical maneuver into effective weapons range.

As the combatants are usually within effective weapons range after one turn in 40k, a more interactive game turn is a better fit!

Alternating phases is the least disruptive and easiest game turn to move to for existing 40k players in my experience.As the phases stay the same but the order becomes interleaved.
EG.
A move,
B moves
A shoots
B Shoots
A assaults
B assaults

(Ill put back a pyschic phase if we need one.I am not convinced we do.)

Players can alternate going first, or roll off, or use tactical ratings to decide, etc.
Also if we leave resolution until both players have made attacks in each shooting /assault phase, We can simulate simultaneous activation, with the minimum of fuss.

I know lots of people want to use alternating unit activation, but this has met critisism from people wanting to take actions with armies not single units one at a time.
And it still allows one unit to perform multiple actions while the opponent watches/removes casualties.Which some players think is just as unfair as letting an army take multiple actions while they watch.
And with the massive range of unit sizes and types in 40k, from Deathstars to MSU .It is perceived to be an source of balance issues by some current 40k players.

As I would like the new war game rules to appeal to new players,by being straight forward as possible.And to be perceived as free from obvious imbalance causing issues as possible.And appeal to veteran players because it has a lot of tactical depth.

I would like to use this simple alternating phase game turn to start with.

I also think a more intuitive way to resolve damage would be..
Roll to hit.
Roll to save.
Roll to damage.
I would like this to apply to ALL units, in a similar way.(To get rid of the multiple resolution methods in 40k 7th ed, and obvious balance issues between unit types.)

I would like to keep the 3 stage damage resolution for several reasons, it adds character and subtle differences between units.And it allows us to implement a very simple but effective suppression system to shooting.

Ill stop there for any comments or questions people may have....

You can always make psychic powers phase based. so all shooting would be in the shooting phase, most buffs and debuffs at movement and such.

based on something like a LD check + psyker level to meet a number or what not. instead of psychic pools. which would benefit having higher lv psykers. which i never understood in current 40k.

edit: roll to hit roll to save and roll to damage is the current system anyway isnt it?

@Lanrak
You wrote a lot lol. I'll get back at you as I process what you said and formulate what I think about it, mate. Right now I'm in finals week so my replies might be a bit slow. You have some excellent ideas and hey- even getting rid of the different resolution methods and replacing them with a single one where stat goes vs stat will make the game infinitely easier and intuitive for new players to more easily get involved. I know that not even I know all the charts and equivalents and whatever. It's much too complicated and it complicated the game needlessly.

And great idea with the interwoven phases to make the turn more interactive. I have yet to completely explore that idea but at face value it sounds fantastic!

@Desubot
Could you explain what you mean by that? I though to just put the Psychic phase, the assault, and shooting all in one phase- the action phase. You'd move and then use your action whether its to shoot a bolter, attack a unit within melee range, or use a psychic power. For salvo and heavy weapons, they'd simply not move in order to fire during the action phase. What do you think?

Pre 6th (?) edition psychic powers happens at different phases depending on what it was. some powers activated in combat, some in shooting (so they can shoot)

instead of having a separate phase for all Psychic powers as we do now.

 Desubot wrote:
Pre 6th (?) edition psychic powers happens at different phases depending on what it was. some powers activated in combat, some in shooting (so they can shoot)

instead of having a separate phase for all Psychic powers as we do now.

That's interesting. If it's a combat power, it'll activate in the combat phase. If it debuffs movement or whatever, it happens elsewhere. I like that, it makes more sense and it gives psychics a more special role in the army since they can do a myriad of things. Instead of having your power take effect next turn, your librarian or whatever can activate it when he's supposed to and then have it directly affect the target unit in the next phase.

Why was the psychic phase introduced if the 6th edition had a good system?

I've always preferred the idea of interleaved turns, and love how they work in games that are designed around them.

In fact, I've been considering what the game would be like if there was no such thing as turn phases, but instead in each unit's turn it can either move, charge, shoot or fight (if you're in close combat). You'd need to double or triple the number of turns, and some units like vehicles might be able to move and shoot as a single action (either that or their move and shoot actions would just be more significant), but the basic idea is that everything becomes a discrete action, you have to choose between moving and shooting or moving every turn to get to a target faster etc. It eliminates the clunky running mechanic, and also removes the need for reactionary mechanics, i.e- Overwatch, since in your turn you just shoot the combat unit that's heading towards you instead, or move away if you prefer.

I was also picturing it as working along the lines that each pair of unit activations is done by Initiative, so if player A has the unit with the highest Initiative, they take an action with it, then their opponent takes an action with their highest unit, then you work it out again. This means that while Eldar wouldn't move faster as such, they could get in first a lot more of the time which seems appropriate, it becomes especially interesting in armies with mixed Initiatives such as Tyranids where some monsters have low Initiative, but others are higher, so you might get to act first in each pairing till your highest Initiative units have all acted for that turn. If one side has more units than the other then you still end up waiting at the end, but that's just more incentive to wipe stuff out completely faster rather than just wounding everything

This of course would be an even more significant departure, and needs to be balanced by things like Heavy weapons requiring a reload action before they can fire again (so you can only fire lighter weapons every turn), but would fire more shots or something.

@Deusbot.
Excellent suggestion for psychic power integration and implementation in the new rules.

I thought 40k still used ' roll to hit', 'roll to wound,' roll to save'?(I have not played any 7th ed 40k games.So I am not sure. )

Anyhow rolling to save before rolling to wound/damage, makes more sense from a sequencing point of view.And allows a simple suppression mechanic to be used.

@urbanknight.
No worries mate.I would rather take it slowly and get it a good as we can.



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@Haravikk.
I have a game turn mechanic for the advanced rules that follows what you are proposing.(I think).

Command Phase.

Primary Action Phase.

Secondary Action Phase.

End of turn phase.

Players place an order counter (representing 2 actions), face down next to their each of their units in the command phase.

Then players alternate taking the first action of the order counters in the primary action phase.

Then players alternate taking the second action of the order counters in secondary action phase.

The 6 order counters cover the combinations of actions , move shoot, ready and assault. I have found this game turn is only really suited to more experienced players. So for the new rules I would like to stick to the simpler alternating phase game turn.

Anyhow,If we are happy with the simple alternating phase game turn , outlined in my previous post.

I would like to cover some simple ideas for mobility.

ALL units get a Mobility stat.
This is expressed as the maximum distance the unit can move when taking a move action.(In inches.)And a Letter showing HOW the unit moves.
(L)Legs, (W)Wheels, (T)Tracks , (H) Hover.

EG
SM Bike W 12"
LemanRuss T 6"
Dreadnought L 6"
Land Speeder H 12"

Terrain effects the different mobility types in different ways. The terrain chart shows how terrain types effect the various mobility types.

ALL Movement is taken in the movement phase!

In the movement phase a unit can..

a)Move up to its mobility value, and shoot in the shooting phase.

b)Move over its its mobility value, up to double its mobility value , and not shoot in the shooting phase.

c) NOT move, and shoot all weapons to full effect in the shooting phase.

d )Charge up to double it mobility value , into base to base/ hull contact with enemy unit.And fight a round of close combat with the enemy unit it charged in the assault phase.

This is an attempt to speed up play by removing all random movement,(pointless dice rolling,) and completing all movement in the movement phase.

 Haravikk wrote:
I've always preferred the idea of interleaved turns, and love how they work in games that are designed around them.

In fact, I've been considering what the game would be like if there was no such thing as turn phases, but instead in each unit's turn it can either move, charge, shoot or fight (if you're in close combat). You'd need to double or triple the number of turns, and some units like vehicles might be able to move and shoot as a single action (either that or their move and shoot actions would just be more significant), but the basic idea is that everything becomes a discrete action, you have to choose between moving and shooting or moving every turn to get to a target faster etc. It eliminates the clunky running mechanic, and also removes the need for reactionary mechanics, i.e- Overwatch, since in your turn you just shoot the combat unit that's heading towards you instead, or move away if you prefer.

I was also picturing it as working along the lines that each pair of unit activations is done by Initiative, so if player A has the unit with the highest Initiative, they take an action with it, then their opponent takes an action with their highest unit, then you work it out again. This means that while Eldar wouldn't move faster as such, they could get in first a lot more of the time which seems appropriate, it becomes especially interesting in armies with mixed Initiatives such as Tyranids where some monsters have low Initiative, but others are higher, so you might get to act first in each pairing till your highest Initiative units have all acted for that turn. If one side has more units than the other then you still end up waiting at the end, but that's just more incentive to wipe stuff out completely faster rather than just wounding everything

This of course would be an even more significant departure, and needs to be balanced by things like Heavy weapons requiring a reload action before they can fire again (so you can only fire lighter weapons every turn), but would fire more shots or something.

For this to work, we need smaller army sizes. What we're trying to do is reduce bloat and down time for players- nobody wants to be playing against that guy with the ten million guardsmen as he moves them all in a turn. So by doing this system, we get the players in an interactive scenario. However, entire turns might take too long if we do interwoven turns between units if we have a ton of units. I don't like setting restricitons for anything, so is there a way that this would work? If not, like I said, how will we fix this issue?

@Lanrak
To answer your question about the game size, I'm partial to platoon size. This way we make players think more about what they're bringing to the table and we can introduce a more comprehensive and interesting upgrade system so that each unit feels unique. I feel that this is the advantage 40k has over Fantasy- smaller unit sizes and smaller armies overall lead to a less cluttered game with a more personal feel. You want each squad to perform their function, kind of like chess. Maybe 10 squads of 6/7 units each? That way we don't have too any models at once and you can blow through a turn pretty fast- it only takes 6 movement phases for your army, 6 for your opponent. With our layered turn mechanic it'll feel faster and not boring to watch since players will be engaged, and it'll feel indeed like a chess match. And yes, modern warfare lol. Ancient obviously wouldn't work here and Naval doesn't work either.

Here are the stats I'd like for the average unit (infantry). Obviously a different approach will be needed for vehicles and the like.

For Movement:

Initiative will be used to figure out who will go first in a turn sequence, much like in Dungeons and Dragons. The quickest units will have higher initiative. Scale of 1-10 (or 20?), 1 being the slowest.
Speed is the range of movement allowed per turn, measured in inches.

For Assault:

Strength will be used for assault and melee. Scale of 1-10, 1 being the weakest.
Defense will be used to defend against Strength. If Defense is higher than Strength, the attack is negated. Scale of 1-10, 1 being the weakest.

For Ranged Combat:

Ballistics will be used for shooting prowess, and will represent the accuracy of a shot. Scale of 1-10, 1 being fethed up accuracy.
Evade will be used to avoid ranged attacks. If Agility is higher than Ballistics, the shot not only misses and the target evades the shot. Range of 1-10, 1 being the clumsiest.

For Damage Calculation:

Weapon Strength refers to the damaging potential of the weapon wielded. Scale of 1-10, 1 being the weakest.
Armor refers to the actual armor on a model and will be used against WS in case of an attack. If Armor is higher than WS, the attack dissipates across the armor and inflicts no damage on the model. Scale of 1-10, 1 being the flimsiest armor.
Health will simply replace Wounds. If a ranged attack surpasses a target's Evade and the ranged weapon does more damage than the armor can handle, 1 is subtracted from the total Health count of the model. If a melee attack surpasses a target's Defense and does more damage than the target's armor can bear, 1 is subtracted from the Health count. At 0 Health, a model is removed.

I'm not sure what to do with stuff like Invulnerability and Cover saves. I was thinking of a system where cover would add points to a unit's Evade count and Invulnerability would simply be rolled like usual (2+ invuln would mean a roll of 2+ would shrug off an attack), but adding even one or two points to the Evade count might make cover too OP. What's preventing players from using an artillery barrage to make craters and then camp in them to set up killzones for their enemy to wander into? I wouldn't want to encourage this kind of entrenched warfare, so maybe we could raise all the stats to a 20 point cap instead of 10 so that the bonus of a cover save is mitigated and doesn't make a unit completely broken?

Anyways, what do you guys think? I feel like with this system people will truly take into account the stats of their units and weapon upgrades will feel much better. You'd only give units high in Ballistics a good ranged weapon and units high in Strength get a good melee weapon. Units that are tanky and have a ton of Defense will be given the great armor so they can bullet sponge, and the ones with high Evade can go "crater-hopping" and play guerilla tactics with the enemy.

Edit: I think giving Assault troops the ability to double run and assault is a good one, it makes them faster and it gives them viability. However, I haven't completely put it into context so it may make some units broken. How do we make Assault troops viable while making sure they don't break the game by dashing across the battlefield?

Edit #2: The Initiative stat is there only because there is an assumption that the turn order will be per unit. For example: Player 1's fastest unit goes fist in action phase 1. Player 2's fastest unit goes into action phase 1. Then, Player 1's second fastest unit goes into action phase 1, and the turn order keeps on interweaving until all units have taken their action. Then, action phase 2 starts, the same process happens, and the turn ends. Like I said before, in a game with a ton of units this might be slow and tedious (Might, I'm not sure if it really will) so we have to figure out if that's what we're going for and if so, how to make the game faster. Whether by limiting army size or whatever, but we'll see.

@urbanknight.
Just a bit of clarification on the points you raised.

A platoon sized game is usually 20 to 60 infantry a side.(Sort of 2nd ed size games.)
A HQ and 2 to 5 units .Each unit can be 5 to 10 soldiers, 3 bikes/buggies , or a tank for example.

If you prefer a platoon sized skirmish scifi game, there are lots to pick from!
Beyond The Gates Of Antaries, (by Rick Priestly ) Warpath Fire fight, Infinity, Urban War,Tomorrows War, StarGrunt II, No Limits, Fast And Dirty. etc.

There are that many quality scifi skirmish rule sets currently available, its propbably easier to convert the one you like best to use 40k models in.

A Company level game usually has a HQ unit and 5 to 10 units, on each side.

If you are wanting to use about 10 units a side , then this is a company level game.

I have some ideas to speed up the interaction and movement of units, so we can use more units without it slowing the game down as much as the current 40k rules do.
Also increasing the level of tactical options will allow units to perform more in game functions , and therefore allow different play styles to be generated without 'special snow flake rules'.

Initiative...

In alternating phases,with simultaneous resolution modeling,Initiative is redundant.
Who hits what is decided by the opposing skills , not arbitrary scheduling of made up skill to counter a non interactive game turn.(This will be come clearer as we progress through the new resolution methods.

Speed = distance moved over time, as turn = non defined fixed period of time , speed is reduced to max distance in inches.

Assault rolling to hit
To hit in assault =Assault skill.(Value 1 to 10)
To avoid being hit in assault = Dodge skill .(Value 1 to 10)

Ranged attacks rolling to hit.
To hit at range = Shooting skill (Value 1 to 10) .
To not be hit at range =Evade skill.(Value 1 to 10)

(Here we replace the scheduling function of Initiative, with the immediate opposed skill.
Inititive does not decide who swings first, but who is likely to get hit first.

EG ork Initiative 2 runs as a Eldar banshee Initiative 6 .
The Ork flails wildly as the Edar Banshee elegantly and deftly doges out the way of the brutish attacks.
The Eldar banshee dispacthes the Ork with one well exectuted swing of her sword as the ork thunders past ...
The ork swung first several times probably, but missed.The Banshee landed the first blow however.

Adding these opposed skill also helps distinguish between the units better.IMO.

Armour Save rolls.
Weapons have an AP( value of 1 to 10.)
Armour has an AV (value of 1 to 10.)

1 being the weakest, 10 being the best. These values are compared on a 'universal resolution chart' and apply to ALL units.

Having values from 1 to 10 allows us to cover all the units in the game, where as 2+ to 6+ armour saves only gives HALF the range of values.

Here is the universal resolution chart we are currently using for play test.(We have tried extending the range of the D6 a bit , to see how it goes.

A/O 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1....,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7.n,n
2....3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.7.n.
3....3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.7.
4....2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.
5....2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.
6....1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.
7....1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.
8....d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5
9....d.d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4
10..d.d.d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.

7= halve number of 6s rolled = number of successes.
n= no effect what so ever.
d= automatic success that denies any special abilities of the opponent.

Ill stop there for comments and questions.
(Ill cover damage rolls later.)

Lanrak wrote:
@urbanknight.
Just a bit of clarification on the points you raised.

A platoon sized game is usually 20 to 60 infantry a side.(Sort of 2nd ed size games.)
A HQ and 2 to 5 units .Each unit can be 5 to 10 soldiers, 3 bikes/buggies , or a tank for example.

If you prefer a platoon sized skirmish scifi game, there are lots to pick from!
Beyond The Gates Of Antaries, (by Rick Priestly ) Warpath Fire fight, Infinity, Urban War,Tomorrows War, StarGrunt II, No Limits, Fast And Dirty. etc.

There are that many quality scifi skirmish rule sets currently available, its propbably easier to convert the one you like best to use 40k models in.

A Company level game usually has a HQ unit and 5 to 10 units, on each side.

If you are wanting to use about 10 units a side , then this is a company level game.

I'll check those games out, but yeah, 10+ units sounds fair and small enough. I was thinking Armageddon for some reason lol

I have some ideas to speed up the interaction and movement of units, so we can use more units without it slowing the game down as much as the current 40k rules do.
Also increasing the level of tactical options will allow units to perform more in game functions , and therefore allow different play styles to be generated without 'special snow flake rules'.

Initiative...

In alternating phases,with simultaneous resolution modeling,Initiative is redundant.

What do you mean by redundant? That doesn't make sense- initiative resolves which unit the player is allowed to move per phase sequence. For clarity, let's define a few terms and then I'll finish my point.

Phase: Command Phase, Action Phase 1, Action Phase 2, etc. These are all phases.
Turn: All the phases. C Phase, A Phase 1, A Phase 2, and End Phase are the four parts of a turn. Both players have to finish their respective phases for the turn to be over.
Phase Sequence: Let's say you and I are on A Phase 1. We both have five units. That means that I move one unit in A Phase 1, then you move one unit in A Phase 1. The Phase Sequence goes back to me, and I move my next unit. This goes on until my 5 units have gone and your 5 units have gone. Once all 10 units have participated in A Phase 1, A Phase 2 begins and the Phase Sequence happens again.

This is the reason why Initiative is important. It gives a clear advantage to fast armies, but it also adds a counterbalance: Since they're not all moving at once but one unit at a time, you can counter them with your own fast units.

Now.

It just occurred to me that perhaps a player would see more tactical advantage in moving a dreadnought instead of a skimmer to counter a jetbike. By initiative rules, he technically has to move the skimmer first, which sets up a restriction for him and makes him conform to a certain strategy. In that case, I'd be alright for Initiative to be stricken, but you keep on using it to show who gets hit?

Who hits what is decided by the opposing skills , not arbitrary scheduling of made up skill to counter a non interactive game turn.(This will be come clearer as we progress through the new resolution methods.

Speed = distance moved over time, as turn = non defined fixed period of time , speed is reduced to max distance in inches.

Assault rolling to hit
To hit in assault =Assault skill.(Value 1 to 10)
To avoid being hit in assault = Dodge skill .(Value 1 to 10)

Ranged attacks rolling to hit.
To hit at range = Shooting skill (Value 1 to 10) .
To not be hit at range =Evade skill.(Value 1 to 10)

(Here we replace the scheduling function of Initiative, with the immediate opposed skill.
Inititive does not decide who swings first, but who is likely to get hit first.

EG ork Initiative 2 runs as a Eldar banshee Initiative 6 .
The Ork flails wildly as the Edar Banshee elegantly and deftly doges out the way of the brutish attacks.
The Eldar banshee dispacthes the Ork with one well exectuted swing of her sword as the ork thunders past ...
The ork swung first several times probably, but missed.The Banshee landed the first blow however.

It would make more sense if the Banshee were to attack first. If she has higher Initiative and in the fluff she's obviously faster, why is she just standing there letting an Ork swing at her? There's a chance his hit will connect, so it would make more rational sense for her to attack first. This way, Assault is dictated by the fastest units- while they may not pack a punch like the heavier units, they get to strike first. Or we could also make a roll chart for initiative or something so heavy units dont always go last and have a chance to strike first (something to represent ambushes and fierceness of the model or something. Maybe this particular Ork Boy took the Banshee by surprise, whatever. What do you think?

Adding these opposed skill also helps distinguish between the units better.IMO.

Armour Save rolls.
Weapons have an AP( value of 1 to 10.)
Armour has an AV (value of 1 to 10.)

1 being the weakest, 10 being the best. These values are compared on a 'universal resolution chart' and apply to ALL units.

Having values from 1 to 10 allows us to cover all the units in the game, where as 2+ to 6+ armour saves only gives HALF the range of values.

No disagreements here. What did you think about cover saves? Do they add to the armor count or what? And what about Invulnerability?

Here is the universal resolution chart we are currently using for play test.(We have tried extending the range of the D6 a bit , to see how it goes.

A/O 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1....,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7.n,n
2....3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.7.n.
3....3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.7.
4....2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.
5....2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.
6....1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.
7....1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.
8....d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5
9....d.d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4
10..d.d.d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.

7= halve number of 6s rolled = number of successes.

I don't understand this. What do you mean, halve the number of 6's?

n= no effect what so ever.
d= automatic success that denies any special abilities of the opponent.

Ill stop there for comments and questions.
(Ill cover damage rolls later.)

Comments in bold and yellow. The chart is a good idea, and a company game is alright. I hadn't thought about the actual numbers. I'd like you to explain the suppression mechanic you wanted to add to this. Subtracting from Ballistics or movement range might be the result of a suppression action.

And here are the stat names that I'd like to use, just so that we don't use interchangeables and get confused. Because we want players to be immersed and have the game be as easy and newbie friendly as possible, using words that have different initials is best when designing stat names because the codexes themselves will use just the initials per unit. Like so:

Strength will be used as the skill to hit in melee.
Defense will be used to counter Strength.
Ballistics will be used for ranged attacks and the accuracy of a shot.
Evasion will be used to counter Ballistics.
Initiative will be used to see who attacks first in melee (but we'll see about that)
Armor Rating will dictate how much armor a unit has.
Weapon Damage will show how powerful the weapon the unit is holding is. It is countered by AR.

And so we have our unique set of initials: S, D, B, E, I, AR, and WD. RoM could also stand for Range of Movement and will show how much a unit can move per standard move action. Give me all your questions and comments lol

The game turn.
I only mentioned the 'open phase' game turn as a advanced rules option.(As Haravikk was suggesting something along those lines.)

But for the simple new rules, I was hoping to stay with the basic alternating phases.

A moves all units
B moves all units

A shoots with all units
B shoots with all units
(Resolve effects of shooting after both sides have made attacks.)

A assaults with all units
B assaults with all units
(Resolve effects of assault after both sides have made attacks.)

Obviously players may only move shoot and assault with units as dictated by the rules.
Allowing BOTH sides to make attacks before the damage is resolved ,reflects the fast messy and brutal nature of modern war.

As this game turn models SIMULTANEOUS ACTIONS, The order individual models swing their swords or pull the trigger,is not a concern any more.
Who is hit is decided by the opposed skills of the combatants.

Initiative is a 'hang over' from ancient warfare(WHFB) where blocks of troops slowly line up in an orderly fashion and take turns hitting each other.
It has NO PLACE in modern battle war game.(IMO.)

I was trying to illustrate how ancient warfare where models are in close formation do not have the room to doge out of the way.So to simplify the combat ancient war games structure the fighting into striking order based on initiative.

Where as with loose skirmishing formations as found in modern warfare , more agile fighters have room to dodge the swings of less agile opponents.

Getting 7+ on a D6.
Example A unit of 10 soldiers with BS of 3 try to hit a target with Evasion skill of 8 in light cover.(+1 to evasion skill) for a total Evasion value of 9.

The attacking player rolls 10 dice .And rolls 4 natural 6s. The number of 6 rolled is halved, to count as only 2 hits.

*The old way to roll a 7+ on a D6 was to roll a 6 and then re roll a 4+.Halving the number of 6s rolled achieves the same statistical result but removes the second dice roll.

Naming conventions.
Can you give me the reasons for picking the names you listed for the new stats?I am happy to use new stat names in the new rules.But some of the ones you listed do not seem that intuitive.

Just a recap post for everyone who might be reading this extremely wordy thread; here's what we've proposed so far for the new rules:

-The new rules will get rid of individual player turns, instead interweaving phases between players. For example, Player 1 will move all his units in the movement phase, and then Player 2 will move his units. After that, the shooting phase begins and the players will resume the sequence until the turn is over.

This will make turns more engaging and interesting for players since counterattacks and deeper strategy will be necessary to succeed when your opponent can shoot you back right after you're done. The whole starter/advanced turn sequence is a deeper discussion that we'll delve into later.

-The psychic phase is no more! We're throwing back all the way to 6th edition where psychic powers manifested themselves as needed and in the phase they needed to be used. This also creates more synergy with the interwoven turns. For example, you have a psychic unit that can slow down enemies. Instead of having your unit risk death after the shooting and assault phases to use it's power (and the power won't even activate till next turn anyways since it affects movement), your unit can cast it during it's movement phase and have it immediately affect the enemy.

The multiple resolution systems will be gone, replaced by a stat vs stat mechanic. I dunno about you guys, but the whole "to hit" "to wound" and "to...etc" charts were always off putting for me. Too many charts with different mechanics and different resolutions. By establishing a stat system of 1-10, 1 being the lowest, and comparing both stats to influence rolls we can simplify the game, use a standard in resolution, and keep the dice rolling mechanic.

More things will show up, I haven't covered everything since we're just now starting, but those are the big ideas we're floating so far!

Lanrak, mate, I'll get back to you in a bit. I have a final tomorrow so after I'm done I'll address your post

You know if you are going to do this properly you will have to spend a lot of time on it and if the end result is going to be better than a commerical product like 40k then you really ought to do this is a commercial product as well. You need to sell the finished product. That way more people will have an opportunity to enjoy what you have created and you will have had your sacrifices in time compensated too. Everyone's a winner. And since you are now deciding to go for a 'from the ground up' total fresh write up rather than just patching 40k then you needn't worry about stepping on Games Workshop's IP. They might even buy the rights to it in the end so it could still end up as a 40k rules set.

I am interested enough in this project to post here because I am also writing a fresh rule set for a fantasy game. A lot of the ideas you and Lanrak have for interleaved player turns and such I have in my game as well. I'm aiming for my game to be published eventually. I'd like to be a part of this project too but only if it is going to be a commercial project.

Another thing to consider is that voluntary projects with no hope for reward don't have great staying power, once the initial enthusiasm wears thin and some problems develop people lose interest and drop it.

If your going to do intiative and have it meaningfull then Highest intiative moves last and shoots first ..giving it the greatest advantage(the higher initiative gets to pick where the fight will be)

morfydd wrote:
If your going to do intiative and have it meaningfull then Highest intiative moves last and shoots first ..giving it the greatest advantage(the higher initiative gets to pick where the fight will be)

If you are doing that then you probably should have the option to use them later as going first isnt always the best option.