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.

I started pulling older editions of 40k out to ponder some of my core-rules rewrites I've started over the years in light of the history of the game, and was struck by some of the similarities between Rogue Trader and some of the vehicle rules I thought I'd made up.

Basic ideas thus far is that there's one movement phase and one combat phase; units become "readied" or "exhausted" by doing things in the movement phase, then in the combat phase players alternate "readied" units first, then units with no markers, then "exhausted" units (taking "charging" vs. "other" vs. "strikes last" from the 8e combat phase and the "readied" v. "other" from the Kill-Team Shooting phase, then combining them into one phase).

Terrain and line of sight would be defined along the lines of 4e; units have "height" and the actual LOS determination is done by determining if there are "taller" terrain peices in the way in two dimensions to avoid any true-line-of-sight arguments and leaning down in search of laser pointers.

I'm still waffling on how necessary vehicle armour facing is in the real world. The basic function of armour facings is punishing vehicles that try to run forwards without proper support by allowing the other player to get easier side shots; I've seen people suggest 180-degree arcs, but you could get a similar effect by giving vehicles some kind of durability bonus at longer range.

Also still throwing around ideas about damage, damage reduction, invulnerable saves, weapon accuracy modifiers, and consolidating different weapon profiles, and planning to appropriate the cost-per-stat formulae from RT just to see what'll happen.

I too miss armour facings, but I can also agree that it's very difficult to dictate the front arc of a waveserpent, or a necron flier. boxy vehicles ALA orks, marines, guard etc are easy to do.

A 180° arc would be a way to do it. perhaps couples with a limiting range, thus accomplishing your idea of a diminishing attack at longer range. If you can get in rear arc and within 12", its easier to hurt the tank. this would also make arguments less frequent, as the arcs are easier to establish at close range - if it doesn't matter out of 12", then ideal.

180 is pretty generous, and not all armor should get it.

I am sitting thinking, and I have an idea, too. Create a generic strategem called "Incoming". (1 command point.) (Use at the start of an enemy fire phase, before he assigns targets of any models)
That strategem lets you turn the tank to face one (1) chosen opponent, and at that time you must designate that opponent, and you are in cover against them no matter what, because you put your best armor forward. At no point would this stack with actual cover, and at no point would it let you go below a 2+ actual armor.

Viola. People would never have to "worry" about the fields of fire, but you would add back in the effect of it -- if the enemy strategic command spends the command point worth of time and attention to identify the worst threat in advance, and reface to block it. Flavor, without totally screwing the game up, and it could give things like the poor baneblade class a chance against those massive gun platforms on turn 1 defensing.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
180 is pretty generous, and not all armor should get it.

I am sitting thinking, and I have an idea, too. Create a generic strategem called "Incoming". (1 command point.) (Use at the start of an enemy fire phase, before he assigns targets of any models)
That strategem lets you turn the tank to face one (1) chosen opponent, and at that time you must designate that opponent, and you are in cover against them no matter what, because you put your best armor forward. At no point would this stack with actual cover, and at no point would it let you go below a 2+ actual armor.

Viola. People would never have to "worry" about the fields of fire, but you would add back in the effect of it -- if the enemy strategic command spends the command point worth of time and attention to identify the worst threat in advance, and reface to block it. Flavor, without totally screwing the game up, and it could give things like the poor baneblade class a chance against those massive gun platforms on turn 1 defensing.

That's an interesting concept, though it is less than effective when you consider multiple clumped AT weapons (EG mek guns - each is an individual unit). it would seem wrong that you get the bonus vs one unit but not the one right next to them. I will confess that I'm struggling to see an alternative which would run as smoothly as your suggestion though.

I think that it would also work with firing arcs being reinstated as well (the repulsor has a rear-facing stubber, which shoots forwards? I'll model my ork guns inside the vehicles, as long as they're there it's wysiwyg...). turn to face a threat, but then someone runs in behind into CC, avoiding the firing arcs = tactics.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
An alternative would be to add an "armoured prow" rule which gives +1T when attacked from the front to specific vehicles - Vindicators spring to mind. This would be the old fashioned vehicle facings, but it can be isolated to rectangular vehicles. New vehicles with the rule will dictate what is considered the front corners.

Orks can have reinforced rams to achieve this, as they used to. It would also give +1T in the turn they charge (as the charge will be hitting the front).

The secondary concern with armour facings is that I do want to bring back vehicle fire arcs, because vehicles today feel too much like static turrets that just sort of sit around and thoomp anything that enters their line of sight; you don't have to do anything to get shots off except screen against the other guy walking up and poking you. Require people to plan ahead and point their tank where they're going to need it, or be penalized for needing to rotate.

I definitely want to lock fire arcs to an abstract 'direction' like in Bolt Action or X-Wing rather than needing to draw out specific diagrams for every model like in 7e; if armour facings are 180-degree arcs weapon fire arcs should be 180-degree arcs as well (though I could theoretically use 180-degree 'side arcs' instead of just front/back). 90-degree quadrants divided by the center of the vehicle's faces would effectively be the same as 180-degree arcs; there's no good reason for your left front and right front to have different defensive values.

I'm also wondering if some of the weirder excesses of 8e's line of sight system ("I point my turret out the window and draw LOS sideways from the tip!") might be curbed by requiring LOS to be drawn from/to the center of a model rather than any point on it or some ill-defined "hull"?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On stratagems: I'm probably going to build something more like Kill Team's system where 'commanders' generate CP/turn rather than detachments giving CP at the start of the game, and use a smaller pool of stratagems, just to avoid the situation where 8e stratagems are rendered unbalanced by people blowing through five or six on one do-or-die smash-captain rush. Your commanders should stick around and command, not serve as suicide tank mine troops.

On weapon types: I'm trying to go with four: Assault, Rapid, Heavy, and Ordnance. Assault encompasses pistols and grenades as well as most of the things that would be 'assault' weapons these days and can be used both at range and in melee, Rapid are weapons that can be fired on the move but get better if you stand still, Heavy are weapons that infantry can't move and fire but vehicles can, and Ordnance are weapons that even vehicles can't move and fire freely.

Then I go back and replace the restrictions on firing grenades/pistols/other types of weapons together with the old 7e-and-older rule where your infantryman can attack with only one weapon, because it's quicker, easier, and requires fewer weapon types to support. Vehicles/monsters will still be able to fire as many guns as they like, and for these purposes things like Crisis Suits just get classed as vehicles.

As a concept, I like fire arcs but I see 2 problems with it :

- IIRC some options were never used because of it. I'm thinking of the LRBT most expensive sponsons.

- It seems to me GW never gave it a real though when designing its vehicles, they just wanted thing that looked cool. Fire arcs create a real imbalance between pivoting turret mounted guns and the others.

So imo it would require an elegant solution that I can't think of.

About armor facing, I really miss it, but it has to be dead simple. I like your 180° but not really the 12'' idea. A rocket or laser to the rear should be more effective, no matter what. I think short range AA weapons should have their own rule for added punch, kinda like the melta "role 2 dices" rule.

I also lie your distinction between heavy and ordinance weapons, but instead of preventing to shoot it, I'd stick with a -1 to hit. That's more for a gameplay reason than "realism" : do we really want to reward not moving models when the whole armor facing thing is an incentive to move ? IMO preventing shooting is too much of an incentive to build static castles, which as a player I tend to find boring.

If fire arcs are always defined as either 180 degrees or 360 degrees the balance considerations are more manageable than when you have to worry about a bunch of different fire arcs. I might be able to skip over pricing weapons differently depending on what kind of fire arc they come on just because there are very few weapons available in both turrets and sponsons.

Will think about heavy/ordnance to-hit modifers. Any implementation other than can't-shoot-at-all has disproportionate effect on some armies; -1 to hit is a lot worse for armies with lower BS, snap shots out of 6e/7e are a lot worse for armies with higher BS. I'm also looking at doing cover as a to-hit modifier like in Necromunda/Kill-Team, and stacking to-hit penalties exacerbates the problem for lower-BS armies.

A thought: One level of Marksmanship in Infinity allows units to shoot fewer shots with a to-hit bonus; maybe if units that fire multiple shots have the option of firing one shot at a fixed to-hit value instead of firing all their shots it'd make the penalty-stacking problem less serious.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On twin-linked weapons: One of the things that annoys me most about 8e is the proliferation of re-rolls; in 4e you needed to roll three dice when trying to kill something (hit roll/wound roll/save roll), now it's more normal than not to need to roll 5-6 (hit/hit reroll/wound/wound reroll/save/FNP). That rules out moving back to the 7e and earlier implementation of giving twin-linked weapons to-hit rerolls, but I also don't like the general proliferation of firepower that turns the game into a brutal slaughter where one army gets wiped on turn 3-4 more often than not (and sometimes earlier).

So while pondering this I thought I might try and do a general-purpose implementation of the combi-weapon rule as "double-mounted weapons"; when you have a double-weapon mount you can fire one, or you can fire both and take a -1 penalty to hit.

I like the idea of having a "Marksmanship" skill or ability which allows a model to fire a single shot, providing it doesn't move, which ignores all "to hit" modifiers. EG a space marine with a bolter can instead elect to shoot 1 shot which hits on an unmodified roll of a 3+, provided he doesn't move.

-1 to hit with heavy weapons when they move was, to my eyes, a bad option. It disproportionately rewards some units (-1 to hit, so i'll throw a +1 and a reroll and blah-blah-blah and basically ignore that). I liked it when you simply couldn't fire heavy weapons when moving, but vehicles & monsters could. it made sense! it made you make decisions!

Imagine knights where to fire their main gun, they had to stand still! this edition is way too focussed on letting everything do anything and it's driven a lot of the tactics out of the game. back when moving, facings, firing arcs etc. mattered, it was a lot harder to pull off the move you wanted. if you hid from the lascannon, you did - it didn't just walk a few steps, and then fire as well as before because his commander told him to!

[/rant]

not convinced of firing arcs always being 180°, it wouldn't make sense for a basilisk! I would prefer the old fire arcs, and allow vehicles to pivot in the shooting phase (so that no-one is screwed over by their movement). no pivoting after you start shooting though!

SO ... so many ideas I want to put into this.
1. gaurdsman special weapons to include melee options. Gaurdsman heavy weapons to include "storm shield" as a choice. Result? I might have a 6 man SWS with 3 power axes in it, or a six man squad with 3 normal gaurd and three chainsword and pistol gaurd, as anti-horde melee. A regular infantry squad, veteran squad or a heavy weapon squad or a command squad could have a single stormshields in it (up to 3 in the heavy weapons squad) basically, giving the gaurd a few infantry units that can still die to most anything, but are going to play very different if you can soak a couple battlecannon shots before starting to die! I think it would be pretty cool.

2. On invuln shields -- degraded peformance against the most powerful weapons.
Invuln shields get degraded by overwhelmning firepower like this. If your weapon is double the toughness of the enemy? -1 to the invuln, minimum of 6++.
A strength 3 crusader (a t3 gaurd melee machine) invuln shield being shot by an anti-titan weapon of strength would still function pretty effectively -- but shift up to 4 rather than three. A bunch of heavy bolter shots? still 3 cause 5 is less than twice 3.

A marine captain in terminator armor's 5 up shield would still degrade when shot by the main gun of a shadowsword, but would NOT degrade to plasma fire, or melta fire. A marine captain in rather less resilient power armor, generic, who somehow happened to have a shield? would degrade.

Lots of low power weapons have ap. They wouldn't much get changed by this, but the real powerful weapons would get back a bit of their effectiveness, to take into account stuff like "we turned your half of the continent into a pile of ash, why won't your 1 hp gaurdsman DIE???"

3. A strategem every army can use to drop a weapon of interst or device of interest.
This means when a model dies that had a weapon you liked, or a device (my relic! GET IT) ... the sword of omens, whatever, you spend a CP and say "Loot on the field, boys!"
At the very end of the phase where it died, you place a token where that model died, and that becomes whatever item of equipment you wanted to save from it.
If its a weapon someone can just pick up and use? ANY army can pick it up starting next turn. Orcs grots might suddenly be holding an imperial gaurd rocket launcher. A tau fire warrior team might come into possession of the infamous teeth of terra and decide they are a melee threat after all.
Whatever happens, though, the side that picks it up (by winning it as one would hold an objective but through both one of your AND one of your opponents turns) would also get one victory point, removing the token from the board and putting that new looted item into the unit that held the objective. (So it would usually go to troops cause objective secured, right? Maybe)

I would imagine players would try very cleverly to use this where the enemy was not all that close, so they could scoop it up, but I could also imagine they would use it offensively.

"I just shot your thunderhammer guy, I play LOOT ON THE FIELD and his hammer is this token. I will be taking it next turn!" etc etc.

This would lead to hilarity, I think, including statements like "who the hell gave that demon prince a storm shield?" or "is that orc punching people with an eviscerator sword?" or even "catachan with thunderhammer punches predator, film at 11" Or perhaps "wow, did that grot just use a dark eldar gun?"

The "loot it in the field" stratagem would be difficult to police, I feel, as there are probably a lot of cases where it would make no sense or cause problems - EG looting an obliterators guns, or a power klaw (hardwired to the owner, who had his arm cut off to fit it!), or suddenly having the SSAG picked up by a BS2+ rerolling 1's spehs mehreen character...

I grant you that it would be fun to steal each others wargear as the game goes on, and would be a good option for free-play, but it would be very difficult to balance in matched play.

 some bloke wrote:
I too miss armour facings, but I can also agree that it's very difficult to dictate the front arc of a waveserpent, or a necron flier. boxy vehicles ALA orks, marines, guard etc are easy to do.

A 180° arc would be a way to do it. perhaps couples with a limiting range, thus accomplishing your idea of a diminishing attack at longer range. If you can get in rear arc and within 12", its easier to hurt the tank. this would also make arguments less frequent, as the arcs are easier to establish at close range - if it doesn't matter out of 12", then ideal.

If the units came on square bases it would not be an issue. It would also not be an issue if GW could've provided guides for those more bizarre vehicles.

However, the truth of the matter is that the vehicle rules themselves always did vehicles in. The only edition they seemed to be good was 5th and we all know how TOO durable some of them were for the price.

 some bloke wrote:
I like the idea of having a "Marksmanship" skill or ability which allows a model to fire a single shot, providing it doesn't move, which ignores all "to hit" modifiers. EG a space marine with a bolter can instead elect to shoot 1 shot which hits on an unmodified roll of a 3+, provided he doesn't move.

-1 to hit with heavy weapons when they move was, to my eyes, a bad option. It disproportionately rewards some units (-1 to hit, so i'll throw a +1 and a reroll and blah-blah-blah and basically ignore that). I liked it when you simply couldn't fire heavy weapons when moving, but vehicles & monsters could. it made sense! it made you make decisions!

Imagine knights where to fire their main gun, they had to stand still! this edition is way too focussed on letting everything do anything and it's driven a lot of the tactics out of the game. back when moving, facings, firing arcs etc. mattered, it was a lot harder to pull off the move you wanted. if you hid from the lascannon, you did - it didn't just walk a few steps, and then fire as well as before because his commander told him to!

[/rant]

not convinced of firing arcs always being 180°, it wouldn't make sense for a basilisk! I would prefer the old fire arcs, and allow vehicles to pivot in the shooting phase (so that no-one is screwed over by their movement). no pivoting after you start shooting though!

Eh? You want to put tactics back in the game and not let everyone do all the things they want every turn without having prepared for it, but you want vehicles to be able to pivot freely?

A lot of the issues with firing arks comes from the models themselves not being designed with firing arks in mind for balance purposes. For example, the Ghost/Doomsday ark for Necrons has it's gauss arrays on it's sides making them into a broadside boat for tactics. Even though most of the time you can only fire with one of the arrays you still pay for both. Which is made all the worse by the Doomsday arks main gun pointing in yet another direction from the arrays.

So how are you supposed to deal with that? The models are not built in a way to accommodate those types of rules and keep them useful. So don't do them.

I would bring back comparative WS and apply it to BS as well.

The current X+ system unnecessarily constrains the possible outcomes and differences between units.

A bloodthirster's WS2+ is not the same as a warboss' WS2+.

Also, BS should be opposed, so it's also not an X+ value.


I would change them both to the following:

Melee Combat: value of 1-x

Firefight: value of 1-x

When making an MC roll, compare to opponent's MC. Use the to wound rules to determine if you hit or not.

When making a FF roll, compare to opponent's FF. Use the to wound rules to determine if you hit or not.

FF represents skill in taking up firing positions, shooting, hiding, etc.

Units with High Initiative (in the old rules) would gain a bonus when they are attacked to represent them being harder to hit.

ie hormagaunts might be FF 2 (as it represents both defence and attack, even units without ranged weapons would have a value). If targeted their FF might increase to 4.

A bloodthirster might be MC 15, a Warboss might be MC 7 and so on.

Do NOT use the Wounding chart for hitting.

It makes a difference of one point (say, a Guardsmen's WS3 vs. a Marine's WS4) double your chances of hitting relative to your opponent, since you're one higher (hit on a 3+) and they're one lower (hits you on a 5+).

 JNAProductions wrote:
Do NOT use the Wounding chart for hitting.

It makes a difference of one point (say, a Guardsmen's WS3 vs. a Marine's WS4) double your chances of hitting relative to your opponent, since you're one higher (hit on a 3+) and they're one lower (hits you on a 5+).

That's been a pretty standard method right up to 8th ed...

But I'd be happy with a slight mod:

Melee attacks hit on a 4+.
If your WS is higher than the target's, you hit on a 3+
If your WS is half or less your opponent, you hit on a 5+
If your WS is more than double your target's, 2+

That is a bit less extreme.

Hellebore wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Do NOT use the Wounding chart for hitting.

It makes a difference of one point (say, a Guardsmen's WS3 vs. a Marine's WS4) double your chances of hitting relative to your opponent, since you're one higher (hit on a 3+) and they're one lower (hits you on a 5+).

That's been a pretty standard method right up to 8th ed...

But I'd be happy with a slight mod:

Melee attacks hit on a 4+.
If your WS is higher than the target's, you hit on a 3+
If your WS is half or less your opponent, you hit on a 5+
If your WS is more than double your target's, 2+

That is a bit less extreme.

No it wasn't. If you were one higher, YOU hit on a 3+, but they didn't hit on a 5+.

That chart looks fine, though.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Hellebore wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Do NOT use the Wounding chart for hitting.

It makes a difference of one point (say, a Guardsmen's WS3 vs. a Marine's WS4) double your chances of hitting relative to your opponent, since you're one higher (hit on a 3+) and they're one lower (hits you on a 5+).

That's been a pretty standard method right up to 8th ed...

But I'd be happy with a slight mod:

Melee attacks hit on a 4+.
If your WS is higher than the target's, you hit on a 3+
If your WS is half or less your opponent, you hit on a 5+
If your WS is more than double your target's, 2+

That is a bit less extreme.

No it wasn't. If you were one higher, YOU hit on a 3+, but they didn't hit on a 5+.

That chart looks fine, though.

You're right and ironically, I've pretty much just reframed the original 3rd ed WS vs WS table. It works out identically.

I just think we should apply it to shooting as well.

I'd be okay with opposed weapon skills making a comeback. The key thing would just be to keep the formula for what you need to hit easy to remember. I remember a lot of new players being intimidated and frustrated by having to reference the old WS to-hit chart in previous editions.

An alternative I've pitched in the past is to simply give more units a -1 or -2 to-hit in melee rule. Create the "Duelist" and "Dueling Legend" keywords. Units with Duelist impose a -1 to-hit. Units with Dueling Legend impose a -2 instead. The assumption here being that the difference in melee skill level between most units in the game were reasonably well represented by their X+ weapon skills but that very specific units might have enough melee finesse/talent to be more survivable in melee.

So for instance, orks and vanguard vets could both probably keep hitting on guardsmen on 3s, but orks should maybe take a to-hit penalty against vanguard vets because vets are better trained and actually bother to parry and block. Orks, despite being the same WS should not impose such a to-hit penalty because they're generally not very adept at fighting defensively.

I kind of like the concept of giving models an "Evasion" stat that gets compared to BS to determine what you need to hit with ranged attacks. It feels like this is basically what a bunch of aeldari barrel roll strats and stealth rules are missing in general. Plus, it gives you more design space to make speedy units feel more or less agile. A necron ghost ark might be pretty fast, for instance, but it's probably easier to hit than, say, a drukhari raider.

The difficulty with attack stat v. defense stat is that you do need the table. Warmachine made it a lot easier by making the rolls die roll + attack stat v. defense stat, but Warmachine also used 2d6 or 3d6 for a lot of rolls so they could have a much greater range of stats.