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 frozenwastes wrote:
...the tweaking of the same rules set over and over while calling it a new edition...

Er... That's what a new edition is...

The problem with 40k isn't that the ruleset has stayed essentially the same for several editions. It's that they've used each new edition to change things for the sake of change instead of fixing the existing issues.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Do you think Tanks are modelled correctly under the current system - especially when compared to M. Creatures? Personally I don't but you might? Tanks tend to be used mostly when they are free like for Marines.

Yes, tanks are modelled much better than Monstrous Creatures in terms of realism and intuitiveness. Present system is not perfect - vehicles have too few Hull Points - but it is better than the MC model.

 Mr Morden wrote:

The AOS system is pretty much the same as the current system except:

1) You represent the armour of a given vehicle with a "armour save" rather than a completely different mechanic which serves no real purpose. This should also make vehicles more resilient to mid range weapons like the infamous Eldar jet bike cheese.
2) Damage table is subsumed into the profile so as you take hits, the vehicle, monster, dreadnought, whatever becomes less and less viable - this is tailored to each individual model and so results in different profiles. Some such as say Possessed Khorne vehicles might become less "shooty" but more "fighty" as they become damaged and hence enraged.
3) Less tracking of results that are usually irrelevant because you are trying to take away its wounds - often by glancing.

Vehicles are already resilient to mid range weapons if they have high enough AV. A Predator or Hammerhead doesn't care how many zillion Scatter Lasers you have. This is how it should be - it would be horribly lame if well-armoured vehicles could be whittled down by volume of fire from weak weapons. As for the frequent complaint that vehicles can be one-shotted - that is a tradeoff you need to accept if you use vehicles. It is how they work in real life. You don't see anyone killing M1A1 by shooting it with AK-47's hundreds of times, do you? But it can blow up from one anti-tank missile shot at it.

You do realise scatter lasers can kill both of those right?
They do have side and rear armour also.
Only a numpty would shoot the front armour :p

I do agree about small arms killing tanks though.
Just give tanks a 1+ save like in epic (1 doesn't auto fail) so only weapons with a rend can damage them.
I completely agree that an AK47 wouldn't pop a tank and that's how it should be.

But I do feel that tanks also shouldn't get taken out by a single shot so easily.
The land raider is currently the biggest joke in 40k.
250 points for something with poor shooting for it's cost, and can be instantly nailed by either S9-10 weapons, lance, melta etc.





Edit:
On the subject of force weapons.
I find it ironic that one works fine against a hive tyrant lol.
You'd think the shadow in the warp shuts it down.
Like when synapse used to confer EW :p

Backfire wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Do you think Tanks are modelled correctly under the current system - especially when compared to M. Creatures? Personally I don't but you might? Tanks tend to be used mostly when they are free like for Marines.

Yes, tanks are modelled much better than Monstrous Creatures in terms of realism and intuitiveness. Present system is not perfect - vehicles have too few Hull Points - but it is better than the MC model.

Honestly, I think the Hull Points are properly set, but only if we reverse the concepts of Glancing and Penetrating Hits. If the only effective way to get rid of Hull Points was to either be a Penetrating Hit or a Weapon designed to penetrate armor (AP: 1 or AP: 2), I think the Hull Points would be about right and properly represent how tough killing a Vehicle should be. Sadly, that is not how they are, so...

Backfire wrote:
Vehicles are already resilient to mid range weapons if they have high enough AV. A Predator or Hammerhead doesn't care how many zillion Scatter Lasers you have. This is how it should be - it would be horribly lame if well-armoured vehicles could be whittled down by volume of fire from weak weapons. As for the frequent complaint that vehicles can be one-shotted - that is a tradeoff you need to accept if you use vehicles. It is how they work in real life. You don't see anyone killing M1A1 by shooting it with AK-47's hundreds of times, do you? But it can blow up from one anti-tank missile shot at it.

And it's not like Force doesn't work against most Monstrous Creatures, after all. The only difference is that AT Weapons that can one-shot a Vehicle, both today and in days past, are far more prevalent than Force Weapons. It also doesn't help that most people would rather take the same route to killing Vehicles as they would Monstrous Creatures, i.e. bury them under the weight of lighter fire.

Tanks mechanism should remain as it is. Where the actual system fails is the low effect of AP against tank armour, with the consequence that a high enough strenght Weapon with a poor AP can destroy a tank only with volume of fire.

Rewriting rules adding a strong link between weapon AP and chances of stripping hull points, would fix the tanks issue.

High strenght combined with low AP would be the profile of AT weapons, opposing to mid-low strenght, high rate of fire profile suitable for anti infantry weapons.

The Deer Hunter wrote:


Rewriting rules adding a strong link between weapon AP and chances of stripping hull points, would fix the tanks issue.

Your proposal is to make more weapons more effective against tanks? Do you not realize that the problem with tanks right now is that they are massively too fragile in comparison to MC's and bike type infantry?

AP already strongly effects vehicles, making them even weaker against ap makes sense if you're writing a book or a story, but in a game design needs to consider whether the end result is playable crunch. 40k has made too much effort for the rules to match the fluff recently, and IMO thats been a problem because its madly unbalanced things for everyone and a lot of players are left holding short sticks.

 davou wrote:

The Deer Hunter wrote:


Rewriting rules adding a strong link between weapon AP and chances of stripping hull points, would fix the tanks issue.

Your proposal is to make more weapons more effective against tanks? Do you not realize that the problem with tanks right now is that they are massively too fragile in comparison to MC's and bike type infantry?

AP already strongly effects vehicles, making them even weaker against ap makes sense if you're writing a book or a story, but in a game design needs to consider whether the end result is playable crunch. 40k has made too much effort for the rules to match the fluff recently, and IMO thats been a problem because its madly unbalanced things for everyone and a lot of players are left holding short sticks.

I agree with you.
What I mean is that stripping hps should depends on AP once you get a pen or a glancing hit.. If you don't have a low AP value you should not be able to do real damage to a tank.

This way less weapons would be effective against tanks. Hope I make my thought clearer.

The Deer Hunter wrote:
I agree with you.
What I mean is that stripping hps should depends on AP once you get a pen or a glancing hit.. If you don't have a low AP value you should not be able to do real damage to a tank.

This way less weapons would be effective against tanks. Hope I make my thought clearer.

If you mean no real damage to the structural integrity of the tank, then yes, but things outside the hull can be damaged by non-penetrating weapons. Most weapons really are not well armored if they need to traverse rapidly.

From an AoS perspective, that would almost require Mortal Wounds (or similar) in order to do any damage to Vehicles.

 Charistoph wrote:

The Deer Hunter wrote:
I agree with you.
What I mean is that stripping hps should depends on AP once you get a pen or a glancing hit.. If you don't have a low AP value you should not be able to do real damage to a tank.

This way less weapons would be effective against tanks. Hope I make my thought clearer.

If you mean no real damage to the structural integrity of the tank, then yes, but things outside the hull can be damaged by non-penetrating weapons. Most weapons really are not well armored if they need to traverse rapidly.

From an AoS perspective, that would almost require Mortal Wounds (or similar) in order to do any damage to Vehicles.

The idea is that the game needs a clear separation between anti tank and anti infantry weapons. As long as weapons like grav or scatter laser are good against both infantry and tanks, players don't make choices. A good for all unit/weapon brings the game into spam and no brain lands, and this is never a good thing.

Backfire wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Do you think Tanks are modelled correctly under the current system - especially when compared to M. Creatures? Personally I don't but you might? Tanks tend to be used mostly when they are free like for Marines.

Yes, tanks are modelled much better than Monstrous Creatures in terms of realism and intuitiveness. Present system is not perfect - vehicles have too few Hull Points - but it is better than the MC model.

 Mr Morden wrote:

The AOS system is pretty much the same as the current system except:

1) You represent the armour of a given vehicle with a "armour save" rather than a completely different mechanic which serves no real purpose. This should also make vehicles more resilient to mid range weapons like the infamous Eldar jet bike cheese.
2) Damage table is subsumed into the profile so as you take hits, the vehicle, monster, dreadnought, whatever becomes less and less viable - this is tailored to each individual model and so results in different profiles. Some such as say Possessed Khorne vehicles might become less "shooty" but more "fighty" as they become damaged and hence enraged.
3) Less tracking of results that are usually irrelevant because you are trying to take away its wounds - often by glancing.

Vehicles are already resilient to mid range weapons if they have high enough AV. A Predator or Hammerhead doesn't care how many zillion Scatter Lasers you have. This is how it should be - it would be horribly lame if well-armoured vehicles could be whittled down by volume of fire from weak weapons. As for the frequent complaint that vehicles can be one-shotted - that is a tradeoff you need to accept if you use vehicles. It is how they work in real life. You don't see anyone killing M1A1 by shooting it with AK-47's hundreds of times, do you? But it can blow up from one anti-tank missile shot at it.

Disagree. in "real life" - Monsters would loose limbs, weapons etc but currently they do not degrade their capabilities until they just die.

The Deer Hunter wrote:
The idea is that the game needs a clear separation between anti tank and anti infantry weapons. As long as weapons like grav or scatter laser are good against both infantry and tanks, players don't make choices. A good for all unit/weapon brings the game into spam and no brain lands, and this is never a good thing.

I completely agree. Good against all comers weapons need to be few and far between, not common as muck. And Grav weaponry needs to be tweaked to be quite useless against small targets so that it's no longer a no brainer.

Grav needs to go away there is almost nothing it doesn't kill quickly you can't kill with bolters.

Also there is a difference between good and useless.
Good against everything should be rare. this goes both ways tough. Good defence against everything but the hardest counter should also be rare.
Useless/ impossible should be rare to the point of non-existence except in highly specialised cases. It may be fluffy according to some but models (almost all of them) dying fast is not a bad thing.

I don't mind my vehicles dying to glancing hits. I mind them dying to 3 of them.

either you have a clear rock/paper/scissor (infantry/tanks/flyers) system or an everything can kill everything system

if you go for the secound, every army would need to have the same level of armoury (scatter laser on fast moving troops for everyone)

if you go for the first this needs to be on a unit level and not army level (and no mixed units that acts as all 3 while some factions only have access to rock and nothing more)

Rock/paper/siccors runs into the practical issue of owning representative models/options.



Also if there is a clear issue with one unit remove that unit/option. Don't buff everything else for one outlier. That's how you end up with ooc powercreep.

Earth127 wrote:
Rock/paper/siccors runs into the practical issue of owning representative models/options.



Also if there is a clear issue with one unit remove that unit/option. Don't buff everything else for one outlier. That's how you end up with ooc powercreep.

People needing to own models is not a problem for the company that provides them

Earth127 wrote:
Rock/paper/siccors runs into the practical issue of owning representative models/options.



Also if there is a clear issue with one unit remove that unit/option. Don't buff everything else for one outlier. That's how you end up with ooc powercreep.

the conclusion that rock/paper/scissors ends in powercreep is interesting

if only melter weapons would be able to kill tanks, and every army would have access to it, there would be no problem.

the problem would appear if you do it in GW style and just give 50% of the factions melter and one faction get an melter weapon that akso kills flyer and infantry

just because GW is not able to write rules does not mean that the basic idea is bad

 kodos wrote:
if only melter weapons would be able to kill tanks, and every army would have access to it, there would be no problem.

Want to bet? GW would just then set up a few armies able to spam them while another army would have only one dedicated unit in a contested slot and only 1-2 in Formations, while another army would have it only as a Psyker Power or a Relic.

 Charistoph wrote:

 kodos wrote:
if only melter weapons would be able to kill tanks, and every army would have access to it, there would be no problem.

Want to bet? GW would just then set up a few armies able to spam them while another army would have only one dedicated unit in a contested slot and only 1-2 in Formations, while another army would have it only as a Psyker Power or a Relic.

this is the reason why I think they will mess up 8th anyway
no matter what design they will choose, they won't stick with it for long and 8th will only be good as long as not many new codex books are out

 kodos wrote:

Earth127 wrote:
Rock/paper/siccors runs into the practical issue of owning representative models/options.



Also if there is a clear issue with one unit remove that unit/option. Don't buff everything else for one outlier. That's how you end up with ooc powercreep.

the conclusion that rock/paper/scissors ends in powercreep is interesting

if only melter weapons would be able to kill tanks, and every army would have access to it, there would be no problem.

the problem would appear if you do it in GW style and just give 50% of the factions melter and one faction get an melter weapon that akso kills flyer and infantry

just because GW is not able to write rules does not mean that the basic idea is bad

I was responding to your point about scatter lasers everywhere not the rock paper scissors idea as a whole.

Gw ability to mess up balance at every lvl can destroy any system they try so no point bringing that up.

I don't like the rock/paper/sissors because it means you can lose in the list building/alpha strike phase and then the game stops being fun. If this happens when you play like every week you'll get over it. But for people with busy schedules, bad acces to gaming space/ no FLGS that can be a major issue.

I'll requote myself here a bit: There is no real problem with vehicles being glanced to death, there is a problem when this happens way too fast.
Land raiders are a special case since they massive durability vs firepower but that is by design. For your average not mobile bunker tank tough yeah let it take a 250 lasgun shots to kill on average. When was the last time you faced a guard player who could say that 125 guys shooting at 1 tank to kill it was worthwile?

I'd like a balance like starcraft: sure there are counters to marines but bring enough marines/ undersupport the counters and the terrans still win.

I don't like the rock/paper/sissors because it means you can lose in the list building/alpha strike phase

of course, if you don't take anti aircraft guns but your opponent a lot of flyers you lose
if the faction rules are good, taking a balanced list that can deal with everything will be the way to go, while an extreme list will always have problems with counter lists

I don't have a problem with extreme lists running into isssues with counterlists. I have a problem with balanced lists feeling like there's 80% dead weight vs a more extreme list.

Earth127 wrote:
I don't have a problem with extreme lists running into isssues with counterlists. I have a problem with balanced lists feeling like there's 80% dead weight vs a more extreme list.

But that's the whole point.

You have on average about 30-40% dead weight vs a more extreme list, and you gain the advantage of fairing equivalently against pretty much any list.

It's risk vs reward. Nobody forced you to take a "balanced" list which by nature is "middle of the road" in everything.

There isn't a single strategy game out there which favors a "balanced" list, SC2 for example relies on intelligence + skew, maybe the missing part in 40k is intelligence or interaction in list building.

Earth127 wrote:
I don't have a problem with extreme lists running into isssues with counterlists. I have a problem with balanced lists feeling like there's 80% dead weight vs a more extreme list.

it would be only dead weight if the only possible way of winning a game would be killing all enemy models
and even than, if those 80% are the stuff the extreme list has problems to kill, it is not dead weight.


but that is a reason why most games have different victory conditions that are not just "killing"

The problem with the whole rock/paper/scissor comparison is that it is all to basic for a game like 40k. Saying you bring a mostly rock list vs a rock/paper/scissor list one would assume that the rock would invalidate the scissors while struggling vs the paper and things would balance out, but the game is not like that. You have different unit types but those units can carry different weapons. So while you may have an all rock list, you can have rock/paper/scissor weapons on your rocks meaning that while all your weapons can hurt something in your opponent's list only on third of there weapons can hurt your list.

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
The problem with the whole rock/paper/scissor comparison is that it is all to basic for a game like 40k. Saying you bring a mostly rock list vs a rock/paper/scissor list one would assume that the rock would invalidate the scissors while struggling vs the paper and things would balance out, but the game is not like that. You have different unit types but those units can carry different weapons. So while you may have an all rock list, you can have rock/paper/scissor weapons on your rocks meaning that while all your weapons can hurt something in your opponent's list only on third of there weapons can hurt your list.

So maybe rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock (hail Sam Kass!)?

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
The problem with the whole rock/paper/scissor comparison is that it is all to basic for a game like 40k. Saying you bring a mostly rock list vs a rock/paper/scissor list one would assume that the rock would invalidate the scissors while struggling vs the paper and things would balance out, but the game is not like that. You have different unit types but those units can carry different weapons. So while you may have an all rock list, you can have rock/paper/scissor weapons on your rocks meaning that while all your weapons can hurt something in your opponent's list only on third of there weapons can hurt your list.

Unless your opponent has a paper list with all rock weapons, in which case you get destroyed for banking everything on rock defense.

No matter the comparison, it's pointless because skew lists are the name of the strategy game.

Easier to balance if you ask me is to forget pure rock/paper/siccors and create soft counters rather than hard ones.

Also while kill-point games aren't the default they do make for the easiest pick up games.
Maelstrom makes mobility/msu much more powerfull
altar of war objectives favor obsec wich is not equally given to all armies
And both of them can cause serious arguments about objectives/terrain placement. Kill points usually makes for the better pick up game with a relative stranger and little pre-game discussion in my experience.

this is the sad thing about this edition
killing is never the best way to set up a game, but if it is the best you get....

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
The problem with the whole rock/paper/scissor comparison is that it is all to basic for a game like 40k.

of course this is more complex than just that 3 options

but you go either that way that Anti-Infantry weapons cannot kill tanks, while Anti-Tank weapon cannot kill infantry units
or 1 weapon can kill everything no matter what it is, (S10 AP1 large blast template, and every basic warrior has one, but than of course it is not that simple, the same as a rock/paper/scissor system is not that simple)

the easy fix for me to make the game more fun is... only play maelstrom mission games preferring tactical supremecy games. less paper rock scissors matters. ok, you brought 2 imperial knights and a few units, now you need to get to objectives to score and do dmg vs just trying to table an opponent. you would be surprised how much a balancing act this forces into a game when your group agrees to it. many more troops taken, less deathstar wulfen with librarian conclave attached etc. because sure they can get a point but they need to take multiple points.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
the easy fix for me to make the game more fun is... only play maelstrom mission games preferring tactical supremecy games. less paper rock scissors matters. ok, you brought 2 imperial knights and a few units, now you need to get to objectives to score and do dmg vs just trying to table an opponent. you would be surprised how much a balancing act this forces into a game when your group agrees to it. many more troops taken, less deathstar wulfen with librarian conclave attached etc. because sure they can get a point but they need to take multiple points.

When the guys at ITC (I think it was them? might have been a different tournament circuit...) starting using those combined Eternal War/Maelstrom missions for their tournaments, me and my gaming group tried them out and really liked the combo. Having the regular and maelstrom objectives mixed as a sort of primary/secondary mission system really made things more dynamic and interesting, without having to completely rely on the randomness of the maelstrom missions. We still like to use the regular Maelstrom objectives, so we forego the changed objectives table that ITC uses (they have like 6 very generic ones rather than the d66), but it's more or less the same otherwise, I highly recommend trying it out.