Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Planning for future things to build for city fight battle one thing I wanted came up was elevated roads! Anything to get 3rd dimension into play is good on my books and can also work as good line of sight blocking. I might have gone overboard with the plan(well it's still on drawing stage so I can tone down ) as I came up with idea of doing 12" wide 8" tall blocks. Tall enough to block LOS to a knight! To not make impassable wall each piece would have tunnel in the middle. I figured 5" wide on dead center ought to do that. It should be wide enough to get through with land raider. Width of the thing I figured 4" should be enough to drive a rhino/predator around. Due to tunnel knight would likely still be seen from the tunnel but at least he'll get good cover save. And between 2 gates there is 7" of solid wall.

So far so good. Figured bunch of those, T-corners, maybe ruined versions...And then I hit into a bit of a bummer. Maybe I would like tanks to be able to COME DOWN? For infantry I was thinking of doing ladders(1 per piece) as service ladder but tanks needs access ramp. So how steep would a) not look ridiculously steep b) be playable(to ensure tanks don't simply slide off though maybe I could put some rubble etc as slide protections).

Quick math(I hope I remembered my trigonometry!) tells me if I want 8" height then to get to level with 30 degrees would require 14" wide ramp. To get it into 20 degrees would require whopping 20 inches long ramp! That's getting rather long STRAIGHT line. And that's assuming reasonable angle isn't something like 15(30") or 10(45"!!!!) neither which are really feasible.

Now I could ease issue by having ramps make turn, some U-turns, some 90 degrees(think 2 ramps is def must, 3-4 better. Not always all in use though).

Other options would of course be reduce the height! Let knight be visible. Still getting cover save etc and smaller stuff are still hidden. 6" tall would mean 15" length for 22 degree angle.

Suggestions?

I can't give a precise angle, but it's time to bust out models and try it. If the model stays put, it's probably okay - anything more and it's probably not. However for large vehicles, it may need to be a long ramp. My current table I'm building has a lot of elevation change and luckily the 9-10" bridge spans I picked up seem to make it reasonable to get from one location to another.

Are vehicles supposed to go up and down in universe? If not, you could shorten the ramps by making them stairs /thus giving you the full 45° to work with) with two or three landings along the way (enough to put a 40-50mm base on, for instance). The stairs will conveniently be wide enough to fit a vehicle and between the stairs and the landings tracked vehicles (and likely wheeled ones) shouldn't have trouble staying in place.

It depends on the model.

most box like tanks should be fine on a decent incline but a top heavy model like jump pack units may have quite a lot of problems.

alternative idea is to use a textured grip tape as a road surface

Best model to test ramps with? Tyranid Gargoyles. They are nice and tp heavy with those clear plastic flight stands. You will know exactly what kind of a pain in the ass it will be when they are toppling over/sliding about.

I would like to suggest that you don't actually want vehicles climbing up and down ramps during a game. Have an elevated road reach from board edge to board edge and you can deploy vehicles there or drive them on from reserves.

Consider that within the scale and timeframe of a game that they are committed there as fire support with the tradeoffs of being harder to assault while being unable to grab objectives etc.

A proper ramp for a proper overpass is going to be more than 12 inches long and therefore require two turns of movement for most vehicles. That's not fun to do in game, as driving up ramps will likely block your line of sight and you won't get to fire.

Infantry can climb ladders and use grapnel hooks etc to reposition in one turn and jump troops and skimmers will be able to get up with no penalty.

 Geifer wrote:
Are vehicles supposed to go up and down in universe? If not, you could shorten the ramps by making them stairs /thus giving you the full 45° to work with) with two or three landings along the way (enough to put a 40-50mm base on, for instance). The stairs will conveniently be wide enough to fit a vehicle and between the stairs and the landings tracked vehicles (and likely wheeled ones) shouldn't have trouble staying in place.

Alas I want it to be fairly realistic looking and steps would be too immersion breaking. When I go to highway it sure never is stepped one

 Lance845 wrote:
Best model to test ramps with? Tyranid Gargoyles. They are nice and tp heavy with those clear plastic flight stands. You will know exactly what kind of a pain in the ass it will be when they are toppling over/sliding about.

Luckily no gargoyles in 30k to worry about so I'm safe from that trouble!

I made some tests with sicarran and land raider and ugh yeah it's going to have to be rather long to get to 8" height. Think I'll reduce planned height to 6". I'm not fixated on knight being LOS blocked and this will give him good cover save anyway(HH rules so no 8th ed 5% of vehicle showing up yet no bonus whatsoever oddities). Due to tunnels complete LOS blocking would be hard to get ANYWAY.

This still leads to rather long so I think I'll do looping solution...Somehow. Doing that without making silly seams can be bit tricky though the road making kit I was planning to use has some sort of plaster and of course local hardware shop has more of that. Use that to create even surface. Think that should work.

Need to buy more foamcore boards though. This is going to eat a lot and I only have 2 sheets and on weekend planning to build couple more buildings as well.

You could also put some pegs or peg holes on the ramp to hold the model up if stuck on it.

it will probably need replacing over time but it should work like a tire stop.

Generally, heavy vehicles don't go up and down levels in buildings unless said building is designed specifically for them to do so. I.E. parking garages.

Leave the tanks on the ground outside. Going in and clearing buildings is what infantry is for.

 Vulcan wrote:
Generally, heavy vehicles don't go up and down levels in buildings unless said building is designed specifically for them to do so. I.E. parking garages.

Leave the tanks on the ground outside. Going in and clearing buildings is what infantry is for.

These aren't buildings though but roads on high. Much like in say Tokyo has. Now albeit I don't know would tanks actually use those in combat but I would think they would. Quick way to move around. Especially if ground is all rubled up.

Infantry isn't really going to go inside these things. They are going to be solid apart from tunnels that go through. More like walls but rather than rampart up it's highway.

Concrete boat launches might be a good thing to replicate. They have a texture to make sure a heavy load can be hauled even when all the wheels are wet.

Simple strips and bumps on the ramp can make all the difference when it comes to sliding.

I do not know how funn this will be to play with. Flying units can generally just land on in, giving them a huge advntage.

I also do not think it will block LOS the way you one. One turret over an edge and you can se below the ramp.

 Niiai wrote:
I do not know how funn this will be to play with. Flying units can generally just land on in, giving them a huge advntage.

I also do not think it will block LOS the way you one. One turret over an edge and you can se below the ramp.

Well for advantage that can be factored in forces. We don't do "pick X points and let play" games. We play custom scenarios where forces are made to fit scenario and sizes are adjusted in terms of scenario(the harder objectives you need to archieve the more stuff you get!) and terrain(so if terrain is one that favours certain units...Well you get less stuff. Imagine adding X% point tax to the unit though since we don't use points to make armies that's not accurate term). So for example few weeks ago we had sons of horus assaulting toward imperial lines. River that blocked lots of movement(and apart from jetbikes and Horus led terminators nothing sons of horus we have that get past river just like that. It's bridges or don't cross) and main objective was BEHIND imperial lines that was actually mix&match of 3 different forces(blood angels, solar auxilia and even small amount of custodians) which itself was handy advantage so sons of horus got notable upgun in terms of forces. (came down to wire whether sons of horus won or drew. Initial bad luck in dice rolling plus some errors by imperials cost chance of winning)

And yeah turret can be seen though angle encourages tanks to go elsewhere(no predator is NOT going to shoot 80 degree BELOW) and the main LOS blocking feature isn't so much highway itself(which is fairly open yes but due to sideways provides at least 5+ if not 4+ cover save from stuff below) but the solid wall highway is based. Apart from tunnels but that still leaves 7" gap between tunnels. Now albeit I haven't built it but I doubt 7" wide ~4" deep 6" tall blocks won't have effect on LOS(especially as tiny slice of gun isn't going to give you LOS anyway in our games. You need more than that to be visible)

Now entirely possible this won't be most useful terrain pieces I will make but at least balance is least of my concerns. Making it look decent without being unplayable(ramp is too steep so model can't stay but still long enough even vehicle can't move up in one move!) or unfeasible(no matter how I look 40" long ramp isn't sensible. It's almost length of whole board and my room simply doesn't fit bigger table!) is bigger worry.