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 Traditio wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
IMO... one of the two need to be random (shooting or charge). Otherwise we have the UGOIGO mechanic potentially bogging down as one faction shuffles back and forth and then charges without anything the other can do to utilize rapid fire or shorter ranged weapons.

Explain this?

I don't understand the reasoning for this idea.

Why would standard charge distances and standard shooting distances bog anything down or prevent the use of short to mid range weapons?

If you move 6 in the movement phase and 6 in the assault phase, I still have 12 inches on you with a boltgun.

Well, think about this:

I'm jump infantry, bikes, or cavalry. I move 12" during my movement phase, then 12" in my charge action. That's 25" [including the 1" CQC bubble], and I was outside your boltgun range at the start of this turn. M+D6 is even worse, because now I made it 26" to 31" to assault you.

It shouldn't be possible to assault across the board on turn 1, because as I said elsewhere, the game would be about seeing who gets first turn.

Seems fair enough. But if a unit does get to shoot, then the unit it targets is automatically pinned, so it can only shoot back, not move or charge. It stays pinned until one of the units is dead, or it spends a turn unpinning itself, during which it can neither move, shoot or charge. Either of the units can be shot at by outside units, but neither of them can be engaged in melee.
That seems about equal to being stuck in combat.

I love me my Assault armies but I'm not for dice rolling ranges as much as I am for declaring targets before measuring ranges. Show some talent before rolling dice.
Shooter in having an eye for distances.
Target in a bit of bluff work.
"You sure that's thirty-six inches? Looks a bit short to me."

My view is

I'm in a battle field full of ruins ECT, I'm in cover shooting down range the main things that are going to affect my shooting are my aim and cover , range would be much less of an issue as projectiles don't tend to just stop. And because I'm aiming I have a much better awareness of my range.

I'm in a battle field full of ruins I've been ducking in and out of cover making my way to the enemy, Im really close and decide to charge now its a desprate race to reach them before they bring there arms to bear ,I'm charging flat out my awareness of my surrouding are compromised,I have to run over difficult ground and I need to reach the enemy before he can get his full aim on me ,I've got wild shots being fired all over the place, will I make it in time .

That's why I think assaults should be random because there is so much more going on in a charge and more to go wrong, then taking shots at someone .

I do think that you should beable to move the roll you make even if you don't make it , this could be in a 90 arc to represent the chargers relising things have gone wrong and diving for cover ,or just closing the gap like pens would who cares if some boyz die I'm gonna get there soon

Rolling to charge is idiotic and should be gotten rid of, there shouldn't be a random mechanic for charging just as there shouldn't be for gun ranges- no self respect space marine or tyranid is going to trip.

I'll have to double check rules in historicals but I can't think of medieval wargames where charge distances are randomized.

Already been done. Its called pre 6th ed night fighting.
It was a cool rule, actually. Much better than spamming cover saves.

One of the older Editions had random range to see when it was night fighting..

That was always fun when the opponent couldn't see the hormagaunts that were gonna get charge the next turn

 Traditio wrote:
I think that the OP makes a good point:

If you're in favor of random assaults, then why not random shooting?

I'm in favor of making both non-random. Tie assault movements to the movement characteristic. Just make the assault move a regular move.

You have a movement characteristic of 6? That's how far you can assault.

because who wont random shooting are those playing heavy firing army (80% of actual wh40k army) so of course random charge yes (cause they care nothing to charge) but God oh no random shooting i risk to lost my match cause dice roll bad,,,,


Automatically Appended Next Post:
the game would be about seeing who gets first turn
not very different than now... get first turn fire 174363353 twin linked ab6 attacks and annihilate the opponent

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:Well, think about this:

I'm jump infantry, bikes, or cavalry. I move 12" during my movement phase, then 12" in my charge action. That's 25" [including the 1" CQC bubble], and I was outside your boltgun range at the start of this turn. M+D6 is even worse, because now I made it 26" to 31" to assault you.

It shouldn't be possible to assault across the board on turn 1, because as I said elsewhere, the game would be about seeing who gets first turn.

Your jump infantry, bikes and cavalry can ALREADY move 12" during the movement phase and then 12" in the charge action. I mean, you only have a 1/36 chance of that happening, but it's still a possibility.

And granted that this is a problem, why is the solution to this "let's randomize the charge distances"? That fixes literally nothing. It leaves extreme possibilities (2 inches or 12 inches respectively) open, all the while making it so that different unit types have, in principle, the exact same possible charge distances. You have a problem with the fact that your jet bikes might move 12 in the assault phase? Well, terminators already can. In the assault phase, a terminator can move exactly the same speed as a jet bike. In fact, it could well happen that a terminator moves 12 and your jetbike moves 2.

How does that possibly make sense?

At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves this simple question:

Do we want to play a dice game or a strategy game?

If you want to play a strategy game, then you should want as few dice rolls as possible.

If you want to play a dice game, then yes, shooting should be subject to the RNG. So should the selection of psychic powers. So should mysterious objectives. As little as possible should actually be left in the hands of the players themselves.

In fact, why don't we just stop playing 40k and start playing Yahtzee?

GodDamUser wrote:
One of the older Editions had random range to see when it was night fighting..

That was always fun when the opponent couldn't see the hormagaunts that were gonna get charge the next turn

Assuming by 'fun' you mean 'frustrating'... From my experience, most players just ignored the Night Fight rules. To be fair, in a lot of cases that was just because we forgot they were supposed to be in play, but they were fairly widely disliked at the time as being too fiddly for too little depth added to the game.

 insaniak wrote:
Assuming by 'fun' you mean 'frustrating'... From my experience, most players just ignored the Night Fight rules. To be fair, in a lot of cases that was just because we forgot they were supposed to be in play, but they were fairly widely disliked at the time as being too fiddly for too little depth added to the game.

Well yes Frustrating if you had guns in your army...

But for the CC duders was a barrel of laughs

Just jumping in here, I guess I'll add the following opinion.

I think it would be a fairly bad idea to (completely) randomize shooting ranges.

Ending my opinionated statement there, I also think you'll want the reasoning behind that.
I see a ranged attack as some form of attack, where a projectile, be this a ball of phlegm, a bullet, and energy bolt twice the width of a Space Marine chest, and whatever else creatures can mechanically or biologically let loose over a distance, is launched. Basically as somebody said in this thread before me, it is a function of the weapon (-like organ) used. It travels its path and then gravity takes it down, air resistance makes it waver beyond accuracy, its energy disperses too much to be a threat, etc. As such, I see the effective range of a ranged attack as a value set in stone. Most of the time.
Most of the time, as I stated I think its a bad idea to completely randomize ranged attacks. At the cost of speed during play, or bulking up the rules yet again, I could see a thrown attack with a random factor, for example. Not every olympic javelineer gets his of her javelin at the same range marker each and every time. There is a random effect from the angle of the throw, air drag on the javelin, the (slight) variances in strength behind the throw, whether or not the thrower has had a strong cup of morning coffee. I guess this might apply to other biological attacks to, thinking about it, such as a Tyranid spitting some venom, or a Nurgle Daemon vomiting filth over a distance.

This is quite the opposite from a charge, where the groudn is uneven, or there is a bit of tension within the squad that is about to charge (looking at you, my Orks and Berzerkers... ). Perhaps the charge falters because of suppressive fire (as I am inclined to believe a single shot in this game doesn't actually represent a single shot, just that one telling shot that matters). Warriors might hesitate because of the din of war around them, loud bangs, screams of the dying, that whiff of thick, greasy, black smoke passing by, all those things we, as the upper generals looking over our little plastic and resin mini's don't actually see and hear.

I went onto a lot more details about this in another thread, so feel free to read on there, but this sort of sums up why I think random charges are less of a bad idea than random shooting ranges.

Cheers.

 oldzoggy wrote:
There seems to be a lot of support for assault ranges to be post target randomized allowing seemingly sure charges to fail giving lucky players that seemingly impossible charge.
Would it also be a good thing if shooting units where allowed similar post target flails and lucky shots to shooting by randomizing the shooting distance of all weapons ?

BEST. idea. EVAH!
ahhem...
I see what you did there.
Very Socratic of you, to pull the truth out of people so sneakily like that, force the players to see behind the curtain, and ask themselves the hard questions.



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 Wyzilla wrote:
Rolling to charge is idiotic and should be gotten rid of, there shouldn't be a random mechanic for charging just as there shouldn't be for gun ranges- no self suspecting space marine or tyranid is going to trip.

Of course, this is right IMHO.
Why not take account of terrain to represent this likelihood, as in difficult = 1/2 charge distance, very difficult 1/4, and impassable = none at all?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Traditio wrote:
You have a problem with the fact that your jet bikes might move 12 in the assault phase? Well, terminators already can. In the assault phase, a terminator can move exactly the same speed as a jet bike. In fact, it could well happen that a terminator moves 12 and your jetbike moves 2.

How does that possibly make sense?

At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves this simple question:

Do we want to play a dice game or a strategy game?

If you want to play a strategy game, then you should want as few dice rolls as possible.

If you want to play a dice game, then yes, shooting should be subject to the RNG. So should the selection of psychic powers. So should mysterious objectives. As little as possible should actually be left in the hands of the players themselves.

In fact, why don't we just stop playing 40k and start playing Yahtzee?

This is a great example.
Termies running 12, jet bike stuck in an updraft failing at 2...
Perfect clarity on the trouble at hand.

My Mom taught us how to play Yahtzee. Good times, man, good times...
When I got a bit older, I moved to chess, but chess was too flat so mini war-games after RPGs was the natural extension.

Imagine all the time saved if we just painted dice?

 jeff white wrote:

Imagine all the time saved if we just painted dice?

Stop it! You're cracking me up!
But, guilty. Just to make the numbers on them more visible...

At the end of turn 5 in every game, it should be a requirement for both players to roll a dice- the player with the higher roll automatically the wins the game, and then both players must shake hands.

40K: The Way It's Meant to Be Played(tm).

 BlaxicanX wrote:
At the end of turn 5 in every game, it should be a requirement for both players to roll a dice- the player with the higher roll automatically the wins the game, and then both players must shake hands.

40K: The Way It's Meant to Be Played(tm).

And then the winner, of course, should cry: "YAHTZEE!"

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
I love me my Assault armies but I'm not for dice rolling ranges as much as I am for declaring targets before measuring ranges. Show some talent before rolling dice.
Shooter in having an eye for distances.
Target in a bit of bluff work.
"You sure that's thirty-six inches? Looks a bit short to me."

I'm blind in one eye so i physically can not do this

Get rid of close combat. It's stupid from a fluff perspective, it's a phase of the game where neither player actually gets to DO anything, let alone interact in any meaningful way and it sparks pages and pages and pages of stupid rants and bullgak whining, just axe the whole thing and we'll all be better off.

Bloodletters can throw their freakin' swords from now on for all i care.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Rolling to charge is idiotic and should be gotten rid of, there shouldn't be a random mechanic for charging just as there shouldn't be for gun ranges- no self suspecting space marine or tyranid is going to trip.

Anything can be made to trip. Perhaps the ground changed texture and was shifting dust where their foot landed instead of solid clay, perhaps a leg servo fails, perhaps they saw a mine or UXO and tripped at the last second to avoid setting it off, perhaps an overwatching soldier draws a bead on them and they duck/weave (slowing their advance) to throw them off. All while under stress pressure, in combat gear, and likely being actively shot at. Not an impossibility, however unglamerous.

Ultimately charge moves are supposed to be energetic dashes, not careful battlefield movement. The latter has set dictated ranges reflecting a careful and measured advance at a practiced combat pace. The former, including things like Run moves, is typically random, reflecting a hastier movement more prone to mishap.

 jeff white wrote:

This is a great example.
Termies running 12, jet bike stuck in an updraft failing at 2...
Perfect clarity on the trouble at hand.

Because the jetbike and the terminator already took their base movement in the movement phase, so the difference is much less than it looks based on charge range moves.

 Traditio wrote:


Your jump infantry, bikes and cavalry can ALREADY move 12" during the movement phase and then 12" in the charge action. I mean, you only have a 1/36 chance of that happening, but it's still a possibility.

And granted that this is a problem, why is the solution to this "let's randomize the charge distances"? That fixes literally nothing. It leaves extreme possibilities (2 inches or 12 inches respectively) open, all the while making it so that different unit types have, in principle, the exact same possible charge distances. You have a problem with the fact that your jet bikes might move 12 in the assault phase? Well, terminators already can. In the assault phase, a terminator can move exactly the same speed as a jet bike. In fact, it could well happen that a terminator moves 12 and your jetbike moves 2.

How does that possibly make sense?

At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves this simple question:

Do we want to play a dice game or a strategy game?

If you want to play a strategy game, then you should want as few dice rolls as possible.

If you want to play a dice game, then yes, shooting should be subject to the RNG. So should the selection of psychic powers. So should mysterious objectives. As little as possible should actually be left in the hands of the players themselves.

In fact, why don't we just stop playing 40k and start playing Yahtzee?

And, with regards to strategy versus dice, if we wanted a pure strategy game, we'd play chess. And chess is boring. There needs to be a balance of dice rolls and player decision making. And in this case, I think that randomized charges are good for the game.

First off, it makes the chances of reaching the enemy deployment zone on a turn 1 charge almost non-existent. The ability to reliably assault across the no-man's land on turn one would make the game even more about who can get the first turn than it already is. That's even more of a dice game than rolling 2d6 for charge range.
Second, it's a minor risk. 2d6 is fairly reliable and easy to work out the distribution for. But it's possible to take the gamble to turn the tide, or to play it safe if you have the advantage, adding an element of player decision making and risk assessment,
Third, units already get their move speed added to their assault distance: they moved in the movement phase, and are launching their charge from the end of that move.


Considering the first point, I can imagine two kinds of armies arising: an army that charges 25" on the first turn, and an army that sets up a gunline 26" from the front edge of the deployment zone. Either way, it's a first-to-go-probably-wins scenario.


Finally, with regards to the fact that you can roll a 12, it won't happen. That's because the chance of it actually happening is low enough that, combined with the deterrent for trying, risk assessment says that you shouldn't. And when you do roll a 12, it doesn't matter, because you actually needed a 6. Reliably is different from able to, and affects the strategy.

Terrible idea. Doesn't work as an approximate simulation for real life conditions, would slow down the game and there wouldn't be enough differentiation between phases.

Three good reasons why this is a bad idea. Boooo!

I like how shooting is done in SWA. The distance is fixed but you can screw up your gun with unlucky ammo rolls.

It's an idea that works well in Doom: The Boardgame, Descent, Descent 2nd edition and Imperial Assault (and probably Gears of War and the new Doom game), although all of those games have unique dice with different special symbols.

I'll talk about Doom, since I'm most familiar, but it applies to the rest, too. There are various different-coloured D6 (doom uses red, green, blue and yellow) all with different combinations of symbols - bullets for ammo, bullet holes for damage and numerals for range, as well as some of the dice having a big "X" meaning missed. The red die is high damage, low range, high chance of expending ammo and has a Miss. Blue is long range, lower damage, and the yellow and green are somewhere in between (IIRC, yellow also has a Miss). You roll the dice for a particular attack, then add up the various symbols. For each bullet rolled, discard an ammo token. Each bullet hole causes a Wound, and you add up the total range values. If the total is less than the range to the target, the shot misses.

I'm sure a similar system could be built into 40k, but since the very people arguing "for" random ranges are the ones who don't want the fog of war to apply in the assault and movement phases, I don't think they're serious about wanting it in the shooting phase too.

The other option would be to get rid of weapon ranges altogether and give weapons to-hit mods for range bands (say, -1 to hit for each range band above the first; pistols have 6" range bands, basic weapons 12", heavy weapons 24" with appropriate variations for flamers, sniper rifles and melta weapons), but then you'd need much more terrain on the table.

I think that would be entirely fair. This would account for wind conditions, dud shells, an unusually highly skilled or shaky-handed marksman, or other factors. Just as I'm sure random charge distance is meant to represent leg cramps, bursts of adrenaline, units tripping as they attempt to cross rocky ground, etc.

After all, shooting is already random - look at the number of shots you get out of a weapon. The weapon profile abstraction simulates the rate of fire of the weapon, multiplied of course by the number of times people try to run at you that turn! So if I'm just gunning people down with my Heavy Bolter, it fires 3 shots per turn, but then if someone's running at me, it fires 6 or 9 shots. This is to faithfully represent how in war, guns generally tend to increase their maximum rate of fire when people are closer to you with pointed sticks or bananas.

War is essentially random, and I think to fully and accurately simulate it, everything should be random. It's the only faithful way to achieve what 40k sets out to depict: A wholly accurate representation of the realities of armed conflict between power armored space men and other, pointier power armored space men, as well as some other people that nobody can remember or really care about.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
I love me my Assault armies but I'm not for dice rolling ranges as much as I am for declaring targets before measuring ranges. Show some talent before rolling dice.
Shooter in having an eye for distances.
Target in a bit of bluff work.
"You sure that's thirty-six inches? Looks a bit short to me."

I'm blind in one eye so i physically can not do this

I would think a lack of depth perception would only affect judging distances head-on. Looking at it left to right shouldn't be affected.

 Hollow wrote:
would slow down the game

It might actually fasten the turn. Lets assume that you want to shoot with 10 units and do not like risky shots and only shoot when you have at least 70% chance of a successful shot.
This will on average result in ~ 30% -> 3 unsuccessful shooting attacks by units including to hit to wound, wound allocations, saves and possible moral tests.
It seems to me that these 10 extra die rolls are more than compensated by the units not shooting. The numbers are even more favorable if the player chooses to take more risks.

I don't think random shooting ranges goes far enough! TARGETS should be random too! Roll the scatter die to see which enemy unit is to be targeted!

In fact, all movement should be in a random direction and distance. Let that fog of war become pea soup. Great fun! I've read before on Daka that random = tactical, so this would be the ultimate test of one's generalship, right?

You ever roll a 1 to hit hit with a las cannon? Or hit 5 shots out of 36 bs 4 pulse rounds? Ever roll a 6 with a snap shot or do extremely good to hit with ork shooting?

Shooting is random yo, and has a lot more to modify it than assault.

Yes you need a roll to hit. But unless you are playing things like mindlocked gun servitors you do not need to roll if you are allowed to shoot this turn with that unit.

GodDamUser wrote:
One of the older Editions had random range to see when it was night fighting..

That was always fun when the opponent couldn't see the hormagaunts that were gonna get charge the next turn

That was present in 4th edition. Grey Knights were pretty fun back then.