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 vict0988 wrote:
When did plasma start being good against vehicles? It has to be 5th ed or earlier, where does the plasma = anti-infantry idea come from?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Klickor wrote:
You need about 31 lascannon shots to kill a t8 4++ knight. Not 20.

What gives it a 4++?

1 fluff
2 some of us have played since 2 or 3rd back when weapons actually had a clear purpose.
3 simply put plasma wasn't good against vehicals as it wasn't till 8th it got pushed to S8 for rediculous anti tank ability.
S7+D6, it couldn't touch AV14 and had a good chance of failure vrs even AV 12.
4 why ever wiuld anyone invent melta tech if plasma was actually supposed to be good against vehicals

Fundamentally a problem with the loose force-org / near-non-existent restrictions.

Make it a bit stronger, it becomes overwhelming if spammed. Make it a bit weaker, it's pointless to ever take 1 or 2 and not spam it.

The logical direction would be to make Knights or heavy tanks, etc.. stronger and more scary, but cap them at 1 per army or something along those lines.

GW is kinda doing it in a round-about way with Knights by making you seemingly take as many as you want, but largely requiring WL-traits / Relics for them to be "good", which is essentially a more restrictive force org for the "good variants" in disguise, but that system, as of now, doesn't really work for regular tanks, etc..

Maybe 9th will expand the system to things like Land Raiders, Repulsors, etc.., where you can take as many as you want (because people apparently hate restrictions), but only one or two can get upgrades to be actually worth it in a list.

I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.

BrianDavion wrote:
I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.

Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.

That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.

But that ain't making bank for gw.

Not Online!!! wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.

Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.

That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.

But that ain't making bank for gw.

yeah you try telling space marine players that their land raiders aren't usable in 40k anymore. or that Necrons can't use their monoliths.

Not Online!!! wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.

Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.

That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.

But that ain't making bank for gw.

And fliers as well pls

But yeah, I agree with some of the posts already made: Vehicles are in a strange place because the game itself did upscale. I also liked a lot of the things the old vehicle rules brought with them (stunned, destroyed weapons etc)

Klickor wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
When did plasma start being good against vehicles? It has to be 5th ed or earlier, where does the plasma = anti-infantry idea come from?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Klickor wrote:
You need about 31 lascannon shots to kill a t8 4++ knight. Not 20.

What gives it a 4++?

Plasma wasnt reliable enough to kill vehicles back in 4th/5th since they couldnt even glance av 14 and barely touch av 13. But they had ap 2 so they were the best weapons against terminators, space marines and other monsters. Plasma was ok only against stuff like rhinos. You got more shots/blast out of plasma than pure AT weapons and since AT weapons only did 1 shot/damage each they werent good against non tanks.
Missile launchers were better than plasma against tanks and infantry blobs but at the same time also much worse against 2+ save models. Hence plasma as the marine/light vehicle killer.

Umm you have both a warlord trait or relic and a stratagem for the knights. If a list only has a single knight or 2 you can expect it to have a 4++ in the shooting phase.

What AV13 units? The vast majority were AV 10-12 if not in front then in side armour and plasma was great at busting tanks. ML? With AP 3? Were you playing in a magical Land Raider meta?

Sure plasma could in the flanks be a threat but not that easy always. Lots of space marines in my meta so a ton of AV 13-14. And some necrons with their monoliths.

But if you had a mobile unit you would rather take a melta gun than a plasma gun for anti tank duty. Way better than plasma at cracking thanks even if it isnt the case now.

Unless a weapon had ap 1 or - the ap value didnt matter against vehicles so a ML with 48" range and str8 were ofc much better than a 36" str 7 plasma cannon with gets hot at killing tanks.

Ice_can wrote:

kingheff wrote:
Perhaps the addition of the armoured keyword to vehicles and the addition of the penetrating keyword to actual anti tank weapons could work?
Something along the lines of the armoured keyword ignoring the ap of weapons unless it has the penetrating keyword, which would apply to things like las cannon and plasma weapons but not anti infantry weapons like heavy bolters and assault cannons?

Plasma isn't an anti vehical weapon it's anti heavy infantry, it's one of the worst contributions to the very problem we are discussing.

I'd argue that things like terminators, and to a lesser extent marines, are as well armoured as many vehicles but that's kind of by the by.
I was just thinking about weapons with high ap being better at vehicle hunting and picked plasma as a random example.

As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.

Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.

That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.

Not quite sure on the problem - because the scenario described sounds incredibly like 7th to me.

I mean I guess if you hate plasma etc shooting vehicles - fine. But the old "some games this tank is invincible, other times it gets nuked by the first lascannon shot" wasn't exactly compelling. Vehicles as a rule were not considered good as a result.

I realise some liked the dynamic immobilised, weapon blown off etc rules - but in terms of balance they were not good and just made monstrous creatures much better (points etc depending - Nidzilla tended to be crap because the rules were crap, flying hive tyrant spam aside.)

In terms of the game - the problem is they hand out massive damage, then they hand out massive protection, then they have to up damage again. Your humble lascannon, which had some punch back in the index, looks a bit outdated. Unless it has countless rerolls.

 Galas wrote:
As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.

Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.

That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.

Maybe there is something I'm not seeing, but isn't a 4++ basically the same as giving something twice the wounds? What would change, if you give them more wounds while removing an invulnerable save?

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
I think if they were able to bring back the damage chart for vehicles it would make them far more interesting. Shaking and stunning a tank was a valid tactic to neuter a tank for a turn while you had other things to do.

It was also thematic as hell, an immobilised tank in the middle of a densely packed board, weapons getting destroyed as it gets whittled down, that was cool. Now tanks are just lifted from the table and don't become terrain if they get destroyed.

I like it as is.

The biggest problem was that the old system was that it did not apply to monsters like Tyranids, Wratih knights or most annoyingly fake ones like Riptides. Havinig the same system apply - you can just as easily blow weapon limbs or legs of a monster as damage tracks etc on a vehicle - may have helped 6th/7th a huge amount.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
I think if they were able to bring back the damage chart for vehicles it would make them far more interesting. Shaking and stunning a tank was a valid tactic to neuter a tank for a turn while you had other things to do.

It was also thematic as hell, an immobilised tank in the middle of a densely packed board, weapons getting destroyed as it gets whittled down, that was cool. Now tanks are just lifted from the table and don't become terrain if they get destroyed.

It was also one of the reasons they didn't get used.. Because one just loves their investment being easily stunlocked turn after turn while MC's didn't have that problem at all.

It was also why nobody liked when Artillery fire could kill a transport and every unit inside at once.

However most MC's were Toughness 6, so could be hurt by every weapon in the game. Sure they couldn't be locked down or have their weapons damaged, but T6 ³+ save with 4-6 wounds didn't get you very far. A Carnifex surrounded by Guardsmen armed with lasguns could be shot to death, where as an Ork Truck in the same situation wouldn't even get is paint scratched. Plus every anti vehicle weapon could hurt MC's, where as anti MC weapons couldn't hurt vehicles (poison).

I understand the complaint on the surface, but dig a little deeper and it has some serious flaws.

GW made the mistake of adding hull points taken away with glancing hits. This made strength 6-7 very good at taking out medium vehicles.

GW handles it very bad, and still have.

Waaaghbert wrote:

 Galas wrote:
As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.

Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.

That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.

Maybe there is something I'm not seeing, but isn't a 4++ basically the same as giving something twice the wounds? What would change, if you give them more wounds while removing an invulnerable save?

Low damage weapons that have low ap would be half as good while high ap weapons that ignore all armor save would be twice as good compared to now. So an ap 4-5 d6 gun would be about the same if you removed the 4++ but an ap 1-2 d1-2 would be really bad against tanks. Too many wounds for them to chew through.

If you also make d6 weapons d3+3 or 2d3 or flat 3+ they would be the preferable anti tank weapon unlike now. Perhaps add another 1-2 damage so a single shot melta that needs to be close is d6+3 or so if tanks have more wounds on average.

BrianDavion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.

Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.

That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.

But that ain't making bank for gw.

yeah you try telling space marine players that their land raiders aren't usable in 40k anymore. or that Necrons can't use their monoliths.

Monoliths are a heavy choice, not LoW. You're thinking of Obelisks and Vaults.
Are Land Raiders LoW? That's just weird.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.

Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.

That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.

Only if you get rid of variable damage and up the damage values.

If vehicles have 15-20 wounds on average and heavy weapons are only dealing D6, no one will still take heavy weapons because of how unreliable and expensive they are.
Lascannons need to deal like a flat 8 damage or something if vehicle wounds are increased. Hell, they should deal like 5-6 damage now, or deal like 5+D3 damage or something.

It's hilarious the difference in design choices from the start of 8th, to now.

Hi, I'm a Baneblade! I'm the super heavy tank of the Imperial Guard, essentially a Titan. I have guns that can one shot Knights and drop a Titan to it's lowest bracket. I've got almost 30 wounds. I cost about 600pts depending on the variant, and fill a Lord of War slot.

Hi, I'm a Repulsor Executioner! I can drop a Baneblade to it's lowest bracket, am tougher to kill than a Baneblade when IH, Fly, am harder to charge, and can transport guys! I cost about 300 points, and fill a Heavy Support slot.

I know this will never happen, but I wish they would make the Baneblade T9 or 10. It wouldn't do much against massed low S shooting, but it would make it harder for actual Anti-tank units to hurt it.

I like the ideas from people suggesting increasing vehicles' toughness, wounds, and save, and then correspondingly increasing the strength, AP, and damage (e.g. to 3D3 or 2D6 damage) of anti-tank weapons and power fists etc. This would be the iterative solution that doesn't radically change anything about the core gameplay mechanics, but makes anti-tank weapons feel like they actually have a role again. It would also lessen the utility of those S7 D2 weapons. and allow the removal of all the invulnerable and FNP saves on vehicles. Frankly I think most of the infantry that have these rules need to lose them too. The game already has adequate design space to describe tough units with toughness, wounds, and saving throw for the most part.

I also think there's a lot of wisdom embedded in this observation:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Fundamentally a problem with the loose force-org / near-non-existent restrictions.

Make it a bit stronger, it becomes overwhelming if spammed. Make it a bit weaker, it's pointless to ever take 1 or 2 and not spam it.

I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.

You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

If you do that then there's still no point in heavy weapons. Why pay for a lascannon if you can just focus down a rhino with a squad of infantry. Remember that the game has a bunch of stratagems and abilities now that increase fire rate, like shooting twice or generating extra hits. Such abilities benefit weak, high rate of rate weapons instead of heavy weapons, and you bet that in the case of vehicles getting a wounds reduction + FNP, those will still be the go to source of anti-vehicle damage because of how efficient they are compared to dedicated anti-tank weapons.

If you want to make vehicles feel like vehicles and give AT weapons a purpose, you need to make small arms and auto-cannon equivalents less efficient. Which means increasing toughness or wounds, not decreasing them.

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

It just adds randomness and additional dice rolling while also removing the option for additional flavour. I dont mind Death Guard having a 6+++ as they are the FNP posterboys but if on a vehicle it shouldnt be because without it it wouldnt be playable. I kinda like the 5++ against mortal wounds some vehicles have in the psychic phase. But your suggestion wouldnt work with that.

I think the game is random as it is and we dont need d6 weapons be even more swingy.

Ice_can wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.

You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.

Yeah in theory it works; after all, who would waste a turn focusing down a vehicle? The problem though is that there are so many force multipliers and such huge piles of dice being cast that focusing down vehicles is actually more likely than one would think, especially with D2 weapons, which should really be more for anti-infantry, light vehicles and monsters, not tanks

Ice_can wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.

You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.

Also how many of those dice can I re-roll.

The old AV system was elegant and worked. It helped give weapons a clear role, now it is less clear what role weapons are meant to take.

The apoc weapons system seems nice. Weapons have an anti-personnel and anti-tank stat, and some are better at one than others. Maybe one can adapt that system over in normal 40k, like you still have your strength and damage stats, but there's also an anti-vehicle, anti-infantry and anti-monster keyword, and if the weapon doesn't have the right keyword when targeting a certain unit, then it suffers a debuff. Like, -1 to wound or something.

Of course, this would mean that lasguns can't touch T6 and bolters can't touch T8 as you can't wound on a 7+, but that's fine, it should be like that.

Tougness doesn't really matter in 8th, as a lasgun treats a Trukk, a rhino and a monolith and a titan the same. Yeah sure, it may not be efficient, but its still weird and awkward game design. What's the point of having such a wide range of stats, if in most cases they don't really mean anything? You might as well reduce everything to 1-6.

Worse Invulns, more wounds if you need more survivability, and up the deadliness of AT weapons (as in, I'd love it if Melta did 2d6W in half range) when used ideally.

When GW wants to scale durability on hard targets they should be skewing W, T, and Sv.

When GW wants to make something super-agile/hard-to-hit, it should be -1-to-hit.

When GW wants to make something supernaturally indifferent (forcefields, only partial existence, etc), *that* - and only that - should be invulns. Almost exclusively on smaller nonvehicle models.

This would help bring back a little more difference between "anti-tank" weapons and others; anti-tank can be low ROF, but extremely high D weapons, which would be worthless against hordes. And, importantly, anti-infantry weapons (D1 or even some D2) would be a lot weaker against vehicles. So "hulling out" vehicles with high-rof low-power shots is less viable.

Bharring wrote:
Worse Invulns, more wounds if you need more survivability, and up the deadliness of AT weapons (as in, I'd love it if Melta did 2d6W in half range) when used ideally.

When GW wants to scale durability on hard targets they should be skewing W, T, and Sv.

When GW wants to make something super-agile/hard-to-hit, it should be -1-to-hit.

When GW wants to make something supernaturally indifferent (forcefields, only partial existence, etc), *that* - and only that - should be invulns. Almost exclusively on smaller nonvehicle models.

This would help bring back a little more difference between "anti-tank" weapons and others; anti-tank can be low ROF, but extremely high D weapons, which would be worthless against hordes. And, importantly, anti-infantry weapons (D1 or even some D2) would be a lot weaker against vehicles. So "hulling out" vehicles with high-rof low-power shots is less viable.

I think some of the effects eg ion shields could be represented by + armour save modifiers.

Ideally I would like armour saves on a D12 but that's not happening before 9th and probably not until 10th more realistically.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.

Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.

That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.

But that ain't making bank for gw.

yeah you try telling space marine players that their land raiders aren't usable in 40k anymore. or that Necrons can't use their monoliths.

Monoliths are a heavy choice, not LoW. You're thinking of Obelisks and Vaults.
Are Land Raiders LoW? That's just weird.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.

Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.

That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.

Only if you get rid of variable damage and up the damage values.

If vehicles have 15-20 wounds on average and heavy weapons are only dealing D6, no one will still take heavy weapons because of how unreliable and expensive they are.
Lascannons need to deal like a flat 8 damage or something if vehicle wounds are increased. Hell, they should deal like 5-6 damage now, or deal like 5+D3 damage or something.

high flat damage on AT weapons would be a good thing in general.
A big part of why actual AT weapons are so unattractive right now is because of the often d6 damage. d6 damage is actually 3.5 damage and has to compete against weapons that do 2 or 3 damage but have more shots.
Lascannons would be a lot more attractive as AT weapons is they did a flat 5 damage for example.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
The apoc weapons system seems nice. Weapons have an anti-personnel and anti-tank stat, and some are better at one than others. Maybe one can adapt that system over in normal 40k, like you still have your strength and damage stats, but there's also an anti-vehicle, anti-infantry and anti-monster keyword, and if the weapon doesn't have the right keyword when targeting a certain unit, then it suffers a debuff. Like, -1 to wound or something.

Of course, this would mean that lasguns can't touch T6 and bolters can't touch T8 as you can't wound on a 7+, but that's fine, it should be like that.

Tougness doesn't really matter in 8th, as a lasgun treats a Trukk, a rhino and a monolith and a titan the same. Yeah sure, it may not be efficient, but its still weird and awkward game design. What's the point of having such a wide range of stats, if in most cases they don't really mean anything? You might as well reduce everything to 1-6.

The problem with translating that directly to 40k is because apoc also gets rid of the "each model has at least one wound' system in 40k.

A lascannon has a 9+ to wound infantry and a 5+ to wound tanks, because a lascannon will kill ONE guardsman, but in apocalypse, all guardsmen in a squad have only 2 wounds between them. In general, 5 models = 1 wound in apoc, until you get into the heavier types of infantry like terminators.

So guns effectiveness is based less on number of shots vs number of models like 40k and more on the wounding stat. a heavy bolter fires only a single shot, but has a chance to wound a whole squad, representing it gunning down 5 guardsmen.