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To make vehicles much more useful, I'd change them to remove the Vehicle Armour values and just give them a single Toughness value and armour save. As well as being better it actually makes things simpler as you'll roll to wound and save the same way with everything now. Roughly speaking AV 10 = T6, 11 = 7 and so on. Glancing and Penetrating hits no longer apply.

Movement changed so that there's no Combat or Cruising speed, now everything goes 6", or 9" if it has the Fast type, all weapons can be fired at full BS after moving normally and no change to Flat Out.

Change the Hull Point/Wound values (can't think of a suitable name change for this characteristic to cover Infantry, Vehicles and MC's beyond Hit Points) on all vehicles to be higher, doubling their current HP value would be a good starting point.

Vehicle damage table changed to:

1-3: No effect
4: Snap Shooting next turn
5: Immobilised (2 Immobilised results no longer strip an extra hull point)
6. Weapon Destroyed
7+. Major Impact- This result strips an extra 2 HP, if these extra Hull points then reduce the vehicle to 0 HP it explodes.

AP 1 and 2 no longer has an effect on the damage table, instead special rules like Melta would give the +1 to the roll on the table. (As a side note, MC after losing half their wounds suffer a -1 to A, I and S to try and balance things up.)

As for weapons, I like the damage mechanic in Sigmar so a Lascannon or Dark Lance has Damage 3, stripping 3 wounds/hull points for each unsaved wound, whilst Scatter Lasers and Grav Cannons remain Damage 1.

This would require going through a lot of special rules and changing how they work since the mechanics they interact with would be removed, but it should make all vehicles much better as well as single shot, high strength weapons.

I had almost the exact same idea
[url]
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/697080.page[/url]

I would personally leave the bonuses for AP1 and AP2. I'd also make the following changes to your table:

A result of 7+ inflicts the Crash and Burn! result on flyer vehicles, and inflicts 2 Hull Points on n-n-flyer vehicles.

A result of 8+ inflicts the Crash and Burn! result on flyer vehicles, and inflicts an Explodes! result on non-flyer vehicles.

I would also put in the following as an additional rule for vehicle death:

When a non-flyer vehicle is reduced to zero Hull Points but does not suffer an Explodes! Result as a consequence of a Penetrating Hit, the vehicle’s controlling player rolls 2D6. On a result of an 11+, the vehicle suffers and Explodes! Result as described on the Vehicle Damage Table.

I definitely agree with the changes to movement. It makes no sense that a vehicle with sponsons on the sides has to fire at the same target (defeating the purpose of sponsons).

Not so sure about giving them a toughness value because while I can see the strength it also makes them vulnerable to poison and instant death, which then starts to get weird. The damage chart change looks nice though.

 Don Savik wrote:
I definitely agree with the changes to movement. It makes no sense that a vehicle with sponsons on the sides has to fire at the same target (defeating the purpose of sponsons).

Not so sure about giving them a toughness value because while I can see the strength it also makes them vulnerable to poison and instant death, which then starts to get weird. The damage chart change looks nice though.

It does not make them vulnerable to poison and instant death. Poison in particular specifically states that it has no effect on vehicles. The vehicle having a toughness value does not change it's classification as a vehicle. And T6 means no weapon in the game can double their t value to gain ID.

Yeah, Posion already says that it has no effect on the vehicle unit type, I'd just add that to the Instant Death and Fleshbane rules as well.

 IllumiNini wrote:
I would personally leave the bonuses for AP1 and AP2. I'd also make the following changes to your table:

A result of 7+ inflicts the Crash and Burn! result on flyer vehicles, and inflicts 2 Hull Points on n-n-flyer vehicles.

A result of 8+ inflicts the Crash and Burn! result on flyer vehicles, and inflicts an Explodes! result on non-flyer vehicles.

I would also put in the following as an additional rule for vehicle death:

When a non-flyer vehicle is reduced to zero Hull Points but does not suffer an Explodes! Result as a consequence of a Penetrating Hit, the vehicle’s controlling player rolls 2D6. On a result of an 11+, the vehicle suffers and Explodes! Result as described on the Vehicle Damage Table.

I'd forgotten about Crash and Burn, that would have to be added in as well. I don't see the point for an 8+ result on a D6 though.

One of the biggest problems with vehicles currently is that whilst they are far more vulnrable to high rate of fire, high AP weapons like Scatter Lasers and Twin Linked Devourers (something that armour saves would help mitigate against), they are still far too susceptable to being one shotted by high strength low AP weapons. I think reducing the chances of that would be good and leave the chances of a 7+ to the really nasty anti vehicle weapons like Melta's.

 Imateria wrote:

 IllumiNini wrote:

Spoiler:

I would personally leave the bonuses for AP1 and AP2. I'd also make the following changes to your table:

A result of 7+ inflicts the Crash and Burn! result on flyer vehicles, and inflicts 2 Hull Points on n-n-flyer vehicles.

A result of 8+ inflicts the Crash and Burn! result on flyer vehicles, and inflicts an Explodes! result on non-flyer vehicles.

I would also put in the following as an additional rule for vehicle death:

When a non-flyer vehicle is reduced to zero Hull Points but does not suffer an Explodes! Result as a consequence of a Penetrating Hit, the vehicle’s controlling player rolls 2D6. On a result of an 11+, the vehicle suffers and Explodes! Result as described on the Vehicle Damage Table.

I don't see the point for an 8+ result on a D6 though.

One of the biggest problems with vehicles currently is that whilst they are far more vulnrable to high rate of fire, high AP weapons like Scatter Lasers and Twin Linked Devourers (something that armour saves would help mitigate against), they are still far too susceptable to being one shotted by high strength low AP weapons. I think reducing the chances of that would be good and leave the chances of a 7+ to the really nasty anti vehicle weapons like Melta's.

The point of introducing the the 8+ Result as I suggested it is to limit the ability of AP2 Weapons to cause Explodes! results to the following two scenarios:

-- Rolling a 6 on the VDT when shooting an Open-Topped Vehicle.
-- Exploding a wrecked vehicle by means of the other rule I suggested.

I think that AP2 should still be able to explode a vehicle, but as it currently stands, AP2 has a 1 in 6 chance of exploding a non-Open Topped Vehicle and a 1 in 3 chance of exploding an Open Topped Vehicle (which is too much if you ask me).

With my proposed changes, it only has a 1 in 12 chance of exploding a non-Open Topped Vehicle and a 17 in 72 chance of exploding an Open-Topped Vehicle, which is lower than it currently is while maintaining the ability to cause the Explodes! result. And if we remove my suggested rule with regards to wrecked vehicles exploding, those probabilities drop to 0% Chance and a 5 in 72 Chance respectively (but these probabilities are unfairly low).

As for leaving the 7+ Result (regardless of whether it changes from what it is in the 7E BRB) to "Things Like Melta", I feel like I'd need a complete, comprehensive list of Special Rules capable of achieving the result before I could get behind this concept,

 Lance845 wrote:
And T6 means no weapon in the game can double their t value to gain ID.

There's for example this weapon called "force weapon" that causes ID regardless of your T.

Of course that can be considered good thing as well but one needs to keep in mind there ARE weapons that just need to cause wound to cause ID.

Now albeit land raiders would seem to be T10 so librarian ain't killing one in a hurry ID or not but still.

BTW what about front/side/rear?

BTW if AV gets changed to T and save and glance/pene no longer apply why is there vechile damage table chart? Is this "one or other" proposition?

There's a very good reason that we quit using sponsons in real life. It's better to have one gun that delivers one-shot kills.

While replacing AV with a toughness value isn't a bad thing, you don't want a situation where heavy bolters, and other weapons that aren't supposed to be a threat to armour, can rattle a tank to death.

I firmly believe that dispensing with the whole Hull Point / hit point thing is essential. It's reminiscent of computer games where vehicles have a "health bar" and have to be whittled to death with concentrated fire.

I'd rather see vehicles get saves, but keep hull points.

Without that, you get the situation you had in 5e, where expensive tanks suck because they tend to die instantly to single lucky shots (which still happens), and cheap tanks are hell to deal with because they keep on doing their thing until you get that lucky one hit kill.

That sounds paradoxical, but it's psychological: when a 250-point tank blows up from one mook with a lascannon, it feels like you got robbed, and when a 35-point tank sticks around through a dozen penetrating hits because luck was on your side, it's memorable. I daresay we don't really want cheap ObSec Razorspam to rule the roost, which is a risk if you take away hull points.

But, with hull points, you get what we have now: medium-strength, high-ROF weapons rattle tanks to death. And no, removing glancing hits doesn't change that very much - S6/7 guns will sand transports to death with penetrating hits. (Though it would make AV12 a bit more valuable). I think a fair compromise is giving vehicles a Toughness value and an armor save, plus somewhat more Wounds/Hit Points than they currently have Hull Points - think about it, how many heavy bolters do you need to reliably kill a Carnifex? That's about what you'd be looking at to drop a Venom with those kind of sand-cannons (T6/3+/W4). Rhinos would be tougher. Ghost Arks tougher still.

(For the record, that's 36 heavy bolter hits needed to reliably kill a Carnifex, assuming no rerolls to wound or Rending due to psychic shenanigans.)


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tneva82 wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
And T6 means no weapon in the game can double their t value to gain ID.

There's for example this weapon called "force weapon" that causes ID regardless of your T.

Of course that can be considered good thing as well but one needs to keep in mind there ARE weapons that just need to cause wound to cause ID.

Now albeit land raiders would seem to be T10 so librarian ain't killing one in a hurry ID or not but still.

BTW what about front/side/rear?

BTW if AV gets changed to T and save and glance/pene no longer apply why is there vechile damage table chart? Is this "one or other" proposition?

You might be able to deal with the front/side/rear distinction by saying that vehicles have -1 to their armor save from the side, and -1T as well from the rear. But I'd just as soon dispense with facings. They make fluff/realism sense, but we don't bother with them on infantry or MCs despite places where it makes fluff sense. Might as well have one less thing to track.

On my version of this toughness is a flat value based on the highest av on the vehicle. A tanks a tank. The armor saves change on the facings.

jade_angel wrote:
I'd rather see vehicles get saves, but keep hull points.

Without that, you get the situation you had in 5e, where expensive tanks suck because they tend to die instantly to single lucky shots (which still happens), and cheap tanks are hell to deal with because they keep on doing their thing until you get that lucky one hit kill.

That sounds paradoxical, but it's psychological: when a 250-point tank blows up from one mook with a lascannon,

But that is a realistic representation of anti-tank weapon's effects on tanks. A single lucky hit with a weapon of adequate power can take out the heaviest tank. Or you can lash RPGs into the side of a tank and just immobolise it or damage something non-essential. That was always the risk with vehicles. Immunity to small arms, but all that investment can go up in smoke with a single hit, whereas a squad of infantry aren't immune to anything but they can take casualties and still effectively operate, and as such are a steadier investment of points.

I agree that there was an issue with unrealistic survivability, particularly in the case of lighter vehicles like razorkbacks and chimeras, but I think the solution is to be clever with the damage table. Bolt action does this well. If you immobilise a vehicle twice, it's destroyed. Building on this you could say if all a vehicles weapons are knocked out and its immobilised, it's destroyed. Or for every damage result on the penetrating hit table, you add +1 damage to future penetrating hit rolls. Or have a "catches fire result". I think this is a much better way of doing things than giving vehicles a silly health bar...which always reminds me of playing Command and Conquer!

P.S. Another excellent idea from Bolt Action is the Massive Damage rule
"If an ant-tank gun penetrates an armoured target by a total of 3 or greater than the minimum score required, then the player rolls twice on the damage results chart and both results apply..."

Yeah, it is realistic - while the health bar effect is not. I'll concede that point. What I'm not certain about is whether the realism is a good thing or not from a gameplay perspective.

We already have a problem, internal-balance-wise, where folks don't like taking high-cost tanks that aren't superheavies, simply because they can be evaporated in one lucky shot. Though there's *also* a problem where high-ROF spamcannons are super-popular, because they're the answer to everything.

I don't think it's possible to fully square that circle while also maintaining realistic effects. Either we end up in a situation mirroring real life where offense outstrips defense, everything's a glass cannon and alpha strikes rule the day - and I don't think that makes for very fun gameplay - or we end up with vehicles looking more like MCs do now, which is unrealistic. I favor the unrealistic approach, because while it's kind of silly to have tanks getting rattled to death by autocannons, it makes for more engaging, interactive gameplay than "one shot, one kill, unless it goes *donk*". That said, the problem right now is that MCs and big infantry nearly always get armor saves, while vehicles usually don't have saves (and when they do, they're usually much less reliable - 5+ invuln versus 3+ armor, say). This is part of why most of the vehicles people like right now are either cheap (can afford to lose it), Skimmers (can get a decent save on demand) or Super-Heavy (can be rattled but are immune to one-shots without D).

 thegreatchimp wrote:
While replacing AV with a toughness value isn't a bad thing, you don't want a situation where heavy bolters, and other weapons that aren't supposed to be a threat to armour, can rattle a tank to death.

And with this system, you still wouldn't. If, as given in the OP, AV10 = T6, AV11 = T7, AV12 = T8, AV13 = T9, and I guess AV14 = T10. Look at Heavy Bolters, per your example: S5. As it is now, S5 on AV10 needs a 5 to glance. S5 on T6 needs a 5 to wound. 6 to glance AV11, and hey, look, 6 to wound T7. Only downside is that it could now wound AV12 (T8) on a 6 as well. And that really scales the same for any weapon. Lascannon at S9, auto glances AV10 but would need a 2 to wound T6. 5 to glance AV14, needs a 5 to wound T10. So it makes some vehicles slightly more vulnerable to S5, but it also makes certain values just a bit sturdier since they can't be auto-glanced (only really applies to AV10 and 11, since S9 and S10 auto glance them).

So all in all, vehicles keep more or less the same sturdiness they had, but getting rid of the AV system eliminates some math and simplifies things. AV doesn't seem complicated when you're used to it, but for the life of me I couldn't remember how vehicles worked for several games when I first started. It does get a little weird when you consider vehicles with multiple facings (most of them), where choosing how you present your vehicle to the enemy, trying to get around to their rear facings, etc. actually plays a decent strategic role in the game, and I'm not sure I'd like to see that taken out.

 KharnsRightHand wrote:

 thegreatchimp wrote:
While replacing AV with a toughness value isn't a bad thing, you don't want a situation where heavy bolters, and other weapons that aren't supposed to be a threat to armour, can rattle a tank to death.

And with this system, you still wouldn't. If, as given in the OP, AV10 = T6, AV11 = T7, AV12 = T8, AV13 = T9, and I guess AV14 = T10. Look at Heavy Bolters, per your example: S5. As it is now, S5 on AV10 needs a 5 to glance. S5 on T6 needs a 5 to wound. 6 to glance AV11, and hey, look, 6 to wound T7. Only downside is that it could now wound AV12 (T8) on a 6 as well. And that really scales the same for any weapon. Lascannon at S9, auto glances AV10 but would need a 2 to wound T6. 5 to glance AV14, needs a 5 to wound T10. So it makes some vehicles slightly more vulnerable to S5, but it also makes certain values just a bit sturdier since they can't be auto-glanced (only really applies to AV10 and 11, since S9 and S10 auto glance them).

So all in all, vehicles keep more or less the same sturdiness they had, but getting rid of the AV system eliminates some math and simplifies things. AV doesn't seem complicated when you're used to it, but for the life of me I couldn't remember how vehicles worked for several games when I first started. It does get a little weird when you consider vehicles with multiple facings (most of them), where choosing how you present your vehicle to the enemy, trying to get around to their rear facings, etc. actually plays a decent strategic role in the game, and I'm not sure I'd like to see that taken out.

I see what you mean...not as problematic as I'd thought.

Agreed, it's essential that vehicles retain different defensive valuesfor front, side and rear respectively.


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jade_angel wrote:
Yeah, it is realistic - while the health bar effect is not. I'll concede that point. What I'm not certain about is whether the realism is a good thing or not from a gameplay perspective.

I see where you'e coming from. I'm defiantely in the "reallistic" camp myself, but no reason why you can't have both fun and realism. I've never played bolt action, just poured over the rulebook and read player reviews -those vehicle rules I mentioned seem far better to me than anything I've seen in 7 editions of 40k

I rather like how Bolt Action handles tanks too. That said, one thing Bolt Action doesn't have - but 40k notably does - is giant war machines notable in story for their ability to take a lickin' and keep on tickin', and extremely powerful heroes who can take tanks apart with hand-held weapons. (And that's without addressing actual daemons and giant Tyranid beasties, or mechanical things that GW can't agree on how to classify.)

Those make it pretty hard to have a consistent set of rules that covers all of them while maintaining any level of realism - in large part because the superpowered heroes very much are not realistic to begin with. Bolt Action's rules would break down fairly badly if you had infantry that were supposed to be almost tank-level hard to kill (Terminators, Centurions, Broadsides), vehicles barely tougher than a soldier (Scout Sentinels, War Walkers) and giant hulking monsters (Daemon Prince, Carnifex) all sharing the battlefield at the same time. 40k has to accommodate that very scenario - and I don't think that it's possible to do that in a way that preserves all of realism, fun gameplay and the kind of unit diversity that 40k is known for. It's the triangle of balance between those three that creates the sticking point. Bolt Action is realistic and fun because it doesn't have much unit diversity. I could be wrong, but my read so far is that 40k would do best at maintaining unit diversity and fun by sacrificing realism where needed.

In a game of GEQ-versus-GEQ, supported by tanks, maybe with the odd MEQ making an appearance, it would work well. Heck, even in a game more like 30k, where it's mainly MEQ-vs-MEQ supported by weird tanks, with the odd TEQ and GEQ thrown in, it can work.

I'm of the opinion to give vehicles a Toughness and an Armor save, double HP and get rid of the vehicle damage table. You don't see the game worrying about Monstrous creatures taking an arrow to the knee and getting immobilized or having a weapon blown off.

As for side/rear hits, that can simply be a -1/-2 penalty for shots from side/rear respectively - if you want to bother with that aspect as all (again, it doesn't come up with MC's, and I don't imagine anyone would want to ADD it to them).

Of course, I also think that weapons with STR 7-8 should do D3 wounds to a target (no spill-over), STR 9-10 should do D6 wounds (and D doing 2D6).

 Stormonu wrote:
I'm of the opinion to give vehicles a Toughness and an Armor save, double HP and get rid of the vehicle damage table. You don't see the game worrying about Monstrous creatures taking an arrow to the knee and getting immobilized or having a weapon blown off.

As for side/rear hits, that can simply be a -1/-2 penalty for shots from side/rear respectively - if you want to bother with that aspect as all (again, it doesn't come up with MC's, and I don't imagine anyone would want to ADD it to them).

Of course, I also think that weapons with STR 7-8 should do D3 wounds to a target (no spill-over), STR 9-10 should do D6 wounds (and D doing 2D6).

I'm ok with the vehicle damage table staying just not being as punishing as it currently is. I don't think damage output should be done on a more case by case basis than a flat rate against strength, multi shot Autocannons and the like stripping multiple wounds per unsaved hit would become overly powerful, nor do I particularly like the idea of all weapons being random damage as there's too much randam dice rolling in the game already.