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 Tyran wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

1) Misuse of the 'Monster' type. Until late 5th, Monsters were generally decent but in no way overwhelming. They typically had 4 wounds at most, and generally had either a 3+ armour save or a 5+ invulnerable. Almost never did a monster get both. What's more, while some did have ranged attacks, they tended to be primarily melee-beasts, and so had to get within optimal range for plasma and meltaguns in order to be effective. Even the new, shiny Tyranid beasts that the 5th edition codex brought were still just 6 wounds with 3+ armour and no invulnerable saves.

Monsters were generally crap, with GK and Tau being the exception by being broken.

I think it was the combination of speed, 2+ armour, built-in Invulnerable save, and strong ranged weapons that did it. You could get shooty MCs in 4e (but they were slow and couldn't get an Inv), and fast MCs (but they were melee-focused), and armoured MCs (but they were slow and expensive), but the closest you could get to the whole package was a Flyrant with Warp Field, which was 1/army, only had a 6++, cost 150pts before guns, and the guns you could get were utter crap by comparison to anything you could put on a Riptide or a Dreadknight.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Do professional soldiers spend clips of ammunition firing at MBTs with their battle rifles?

Because I do it all the time in the game. Why? Because it's waaay more effective than it should be.

Professional soldiers also don't deliberately suicide into things in order to get points awarded at the start of the next battle turn. Nor do they take turns with the enemy moving, shooting, and fighting. Nor do they allow the enemy they are engaged with in hand-to-hand combat to back up while they stay rooted to the spot, so the enemy's friends can draw an easy bead on them.

If there was no cost to shooting at a tank with their battle rifles because it was a free action - no risk, unlimited ammo, no downside - you can bet they would.

The game is a game. It functions in abstractions. But you were the one who brought up the realism angle and argued it wasn't possible for small arms fire to harm tanks, which just isn't true.

yukishiro1 wrote:
...The game is a game. It functions in abstractions. But you were the one who brought up the realism angle and argued it wasn't possible for small arms fire to harm tanks, which just isn't true.

It isn't about realism, it's about verisimilitude. We've been trained by real life to expect small arms to be ineffective against tanks, so when you show us a rifleman shooting at a tank we're left thinking "Wait, what? Why is it a tank if you can't make it impervious to rifle fire?"

Suspension of disbelief is subjective, and people may interpret this differently, but I would observe that if other peoples' immersion is/isn't broken by something they're not "wrong" and you can't prove them wrong by arguing about it.

I didn't say that. If in his conception of reality rifles shouldn't be able to harm tanks that's a subjective opinion I'm not going to argue with except to say I disagree. But that is different than saying rifles can't harm tanks. That's just objectively wrong.

The reason people don't shoot rifles at tanks is because they don't want to die and there are better ways to fight a tank on foot, not because it's inherently impossible to damage a tank with a rifle. But because the game doesn't simulate any of those other ways and because game models don't care about dying, they will make different choices than real humans.

"It's not realistic" isn't a great argument at the best of times, but it's especially unconvincing when, well, it actually is realistic.

you're insane if you think a rifle is going to damage a modern main battle tank in any meaningful fashion.

there are reasons armor has to be wary of dismounted infantry in the real, and it has nothing to do with their rifles and everything to do with the explosives and anti-tank weapons they carry.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I didn't say that. If in his conception of reality rifles shouldn't be able to harm tanks that's a subjective opinion I'm not going to argue with except to say I disagree. But that is different than saying rifles can't harm tanks. That's just objectively wrong.

The reason people don't shoot rifles at tanks is because they don't want to die and there are better ways to fight a tank on foot, not because it's inherently impossible to damage a tank with a rifle. But because the game doesn't simulate any of those other ways and because game models don't care about dying, they will make different choices than real humans.

"It's not realistic" isn't a great argument at the best of times, but it's especially unconvincing when, well, it actually is realistic.

More importantly- Does small arms fire being able to damage tanks improve gameplay?

 gigasnail wrote:
you're insane if you think a rifle is going to damage a modern main battle tank in any meaningful fashion.

there are reasons armor has to be wary of dismounted infantry in the real, and it has nothing to do with their rifles and everything to do with the explosives and anti-tank weapons they carry.

It's not worth arguing with someone who's simply wrong. 15 seconds of googling would show you that modern small arms fire can indeed damage tanks in various ways. Are you going to blow a hole straight through the armor? No, of course not. But the game functions in abstractions. You can think of a lasgun that takes a wound off a tank as hitting a comms array, damaging a tread, going through a view portal, striking a chink in the armor that had already been damaged by something else, damaging an externally mounted sponson weapon, etc etc.




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Blastaar wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
I didn't say that. If in his conception of reality rifles shouldn't be able to harm tanks that's a subjective opinion I'm not going to argue with except to say I disagree. But that is different than saying rifles can't harm tanks. That's just objectively wrong.

The reason people don't shoot rifles at tanks is because they don't want to die and there are better ways to fight a tank on foot, not because it's inherently impossible to damage a tank with a rifle. But because the game doesn't simulate any of those other ways and because game models don't care about dying, they will make different choices than real humans.

"It's not realistic" isn't a great argument at the best of times, but it's especially unconvincing when, well, it actually is realistic.

More importantly- Does small arms fire being able to damage tanks improve gameplay?

Definitely. "It's not realistic" is usually a bad argument in a game where armies take turns moving, shooting, and assaulting one another with perfect decorum.

But it's especially bad when the argument for realism isn't even actually realistic.

 Tyran wrote:

The armor system was crap because it made vehicles into an entirely different game and was specially glaring when compared to monsters.

The armor system was good with average 3rd-5th edition firepower. Then GW started to increase rate of fire and some killyness in combat in any faction and suddenly vehicles became paper things. Regular units could use redundancy, invuln, FNP but not vehicles. This in addition to the already existing mechanics that let vehicles lose their weapons, become immobilized, not be able to fire, etc... made vehicles worthless.

It's not the fact that a few monsters were way harder to kill than vehicles, it's the fact that any TAC list could kill several vehicles in one turn with average shooting at some point. If monsters didn't exist in 7th vehicles would still have been too squishy.

8th edition changes were needed, the only other solution would have been to reduce killyness from any faction by a lot, like 60/70% probably. But too many people love super buffed dudes or mega killy things, more than resilient things so this solution was impossible to impose.

In 3rd and 5th editions, which I still play sometimes, vehicles work well with the old AV system and there's a lot of them in my lists.

I do think the biggest 40k faultline is between people who thought 5th was the greatest edition ever and want to go back there, and people who think 5th sucked and don't want to touch it with a barge poll.

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's not worth arguing with someone who's simply wrong. 15 seconds of googling would show you that modern small arms fire can indeed damage tanks in various ways. Are you going to blow a hole straight through the armor? No, of course not. But the game functions in abstractions. You can think of a lasgun that takes a wound off a tank as hitting a comms array, damaging a tread, going through a view portal, striking a chink in the armor that had already been damaged by something else, damaging an externally mounted sponson weapon, etc etc.

So, things that could maybe be covered by a Glancing Hit in the old system, but don't actually make the next lascannon hit more likely to mission-kill the entire vehicle, and which would likely never actually destroy the vehicle. Those random little pinging rifle hits also, despite supposedly achieving mission-degradation damage, have exactly zero effect on the target vehicle until it reaches half its hit points. A hit point system that can be substantially degraded by rifle fire is just not a very good representation of how tanks operate.

Also, it looks like 15 seconds of Google gave you an idea of what Hollywood thinks infantry can do to WW2-era tanks, not what they actually could do, let alone to modern MBTs. An Abrams does not have open vision slits nor can it be detreaded or de-commed by rifle fire. I know 40K is closer to Hollywood-WW2 than to modern reality, but just saying.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Oh I'm aware that the Lascannon is valuable. But in your example 9-man squad the Bolters wind up averaging more damage than the Lascannon, absolutely illustrating my point.

The point you should be aware of is that those models who did "more" cost 144 points. The Lascannon TAC cost 33 points and did 72% of the damage for 23% of the cost.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:


If I am interested in killing units (rather than points efficiency) with my small arms, the better choice is to shoot them at tanks. That's fething hilarious.

This was a solved problem in 40k in 1999.

Then do it. Take all Intercessors versus all dreads and vehicles. Let us know how it goes.

Tyel wrote:
I do think the biggest 40k faultline is between people who thought 5th was the greatest edition ever and want to go back there, and people who think 5th sucked and don't want to touch it with a barge poll.

I agree fully

4th/5th was glorious - but nostalgia does bring it out

yukishiro1 wrote:
I didn't say that. If in his conception of reality rifles shouldn't be able to harm tanks that's a subjective opinion I'm not going to argue with except to say I disagree. But that is different than saying rifles can't harm tanks. That's just objectively wrong.

The reason people don't shoot rifles at tanks is because they don't want to die and there are better ways to fight a tank on foot, not because it's inherently impossible to damage a tank with a rifle. But because the game doesn't simulate any of those other ways and because game models don't care about dying, they will make different choices than real humans.

"It's not realistic" isn't a great argument at the best of times, but it's especially unconvincing when, well, it actually is realistic.

So by your own admission, infantry spraying lots of bullets at a tank is NOT realistic, even if you could potentially damage optics, etc. However, the game encourages me to do it because as has been shown, the effective Anti-Armor fire from a squads basic weapons is actually more than that of the dedicated anti-armor weapon the specialist carries. You think that's modeled well in game terms?




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 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Oh I'm aware that the Lascannon is valuable. But in your example 9-man squad the Bolters wind up averaging more damage than the Lascannon, absolutely illustrating my point.

The point you should be aware of is that those models who did "more" cost 144 points. The Lascannon TAC cost 33 points and did 72% of the damage for 23% of the cost.

Don't care. Once on the table I'm not comparing points, I'm looking at ways to remove threats. The small arms are averaging more damage to the vehicle than the dedicated anti-armor weapon.


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yukishiro1 wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

More importantly- Does small arms fire being able to damage tanks improve gameplay?

Definitely.

Why?

Right now? Too early to tell, as it’s only Oldstartes that got one.

 catbarf wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's not worth arguing with someone who's simply wrong. 15 seconds of googling would show you that modern small arms fire can indeed damage tanks in various ways. Are you going to blow a hole straight through the armor? No, of course not. But the game functions in abstractions. You can think of a lasgun that takes a wound off a tank as hitting a comms array, damaging a tread, going through a view portal, striking a chink in the armor that had already been damaged by something else, damaging an externally mounted sponson weapon, etc etc.

So, things that could maybe be covered by a Glancing Hit in the old system, but don't actually make the next lascannon hit more likely to mission-kill the entire vehicle, and which would likely never actually destroy the vehicle. Those random little pinging rifle hits also, despite supposedly achieving mission-degradation damage, have exactly zero effect on the target vehicle until it reaches half its hit points. A hit point system that can be substantially degraded by rifle fire is just not a very good representation of how tanks operate.

Also, it looks like 15 seconds of Google gave you an idea of what Hollywood thinks infantry can do to WW2-era tanks, not what they actually could do, let alone to modern MBTs. An Abrams does not have open vision slits nor can it be detreaded or de-commed by rifle fire. I know 40K is closer to Hollywood-WW2 than to modern reality, but just saying.

Just to clarify their is also terminology called mission/soft kill and terminal/hard kill, (think that's the corrext verbiage but it's been a while)

Massed assualt rifle and HMG fire did achive mission kills on challenger and Abrams tanks in Iraq. What they didn't achieve was terminal/hard kill aka the vehicle was usually still operating just was no longer considered to be combat effective.

40k doesn't make ant distinction between those.

I would definitely agree that vehicals do feel excessively vulnerable to small arms with rerolls and +1's due to GW sticking to D6's and not really rebaselining the stats like thet should have done at the start of 8th but that's the design teams issue not so much a realism issue.

 catbarf wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's not worth arguing with someone who's simply wrong. 15 seconds of googling would show you that modern small arms fire can indeed damage tanks in various ways. Are you going to blow a hole straight through the armor? No, of course not. But the game functions in abstractions. You can think of a lasgun that takes a wound off a tank as hitting a comms array, damaging a tread, going through a view portal, striking a chink in the armor that had already been damaged by something else, damaging an externally mounted sponson weapon, etc etc.

So, things that could maybe be covered by a Glancing Hit in the old system, but don't actually make the next lascannon hit more likely to mission-kill the entire vehicle, and which would likely never actually destroy the vehicle. Those random little pinging rifle hits also, despite supposedly achieving mission-degradation damage, have exactly zero effect on the target vehicle until it reaches half its hit points. A hit point system that can be substantially degraded by rifle fire is just not a very good representation of how tanks operate.

Also, it looks like 15 seconds of Google gave you an idea of what Hollywood thinks infantry can do to WW2-era tanks, not what they actually could do, let alone to modern MBTs. An Abrams does not have open vision slits nor can it be detreaded or de-commed by rifle fire. I know 40K is closer to Hollywood-WW2 than to modern reality, but just saying.

I'll take your word on the Abrams (I don't think it's entirely correct, but it doesn't matter), but 40k vehicles do have vision slits, they do have exposed treads, and they do have exposed comm arrays. I'm not interested in arguing about it with people who throw around accusations about just watching Hollywood movies. The fact is that rifle fire can damage the sorts of tanks you see portrayed in 40k. If someone wants to disagree with that I'm not going to argue with them, it's as pointless as arguing with someone who insists 2+2=5. The internet gives everyone the tools they need to see that just isn't right, and if they want to believe it anyway, I'm not going to waste time arguing about it.

The reason they just plink off a wound is because the game is an abstraction. If you want to go back to vehicle damage tables and glancing hits that's one argument, but it's got nothing to do with the debate as to whether lasguns should be able to harm tanks within the damage system we have now. Right now, the only way to simulate a las gun hitting a tread or going through a vision slit or taking out a comms array is to count that as a wound. Just like falling back in this game happens with one side calmly moving backwards while the unit they were just fighting hand to hand stands there rooted to the spot, unable to do anything at all as they're blown off the table.

Tyel wrote:
I do think the biggest 40k faultline is between people who thought 5th was the greatest edition ever and want to go back there, and people who think 5th sucked and don't want to touch it with a barge poll.

What about the ones that don't make much of distinction between 3rd/4th/5th/6th?

yukishiro1 wrote:
The reason they just plink off a wound is because the game is an abstraction. If you want to go back to vehicle damage tables and glancing hits that's one argument, but it's got nothing to do with the debate as to whether lasguns should be able to harm tanks within the damage system we have now. Right now, the only way to simulate a las gun hitting a tread or going through a vision slit or taking out a comms array is to count that as a wound. Just like falling back in this game happens with one side calmly moving backwards while the unit they were just fighting hand to hand stands there rooted to the spot, unable to do anything at all as they're blown off the table.

Yes, just plinking off a wound is an abstraction of damage- but since the whole point of abstractions is to simplify complex concepts into playable game terms, having basic infantrymen be unable to harm vehicles and thereby forced to disengage is a far better abstraction of reality than encouraging them to stand their ground and volley fire at MBTs.

If the game actually models the infinitesimally-low likelihood of a rifle actually doing something substantial to a vehicle, and keeps that separate and distinct from mission-kill damage inflicted by anti-tank fire, thus directly incentivizing infantry not to stick around due to the negligible chance that they'll accomplish anything useful, then that's fine. If it doesn't, then the best way to abstractly represent the fact that rifle-armed infantry have a snowball's chance in hell of harming a tank is to make those rifles simply not work against tanks.

Good abstraction is writing rules that accomplish the desired effect without having to tediously model it.

Bad abstraction is writing rules that have unrealistic/undesirable side effects as a result of their simplicity.

 Insectum7 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
I didn't say that. If in his conception of reality rifles shouldn't be able to harm tanks that's a subjective opinion I'm not going to argue with except to say I disagree. But that is different than saying rifles can't harm tanks. That's just objectively wrong.

The reason people don't shoot rifles at tanks is because they don't want to die and there are better ways to fight a tank on foot, not because it's inherently impossible to damage a tank with a rifle. But because the game doesn't simulate any of those other ways and because game models don't care about dying, they will make different choices than real humans.

"It's not realistic" isn't a great argument at the best of times, but it's especially unconvincing when, well, it actually is realistic.

So by your own admission, infantry spraying lots of bullets at a tank is NOT realistic, even if you could potentially damage optics, etc. However, the game encourages me to do it because as has been shown, the effective Anti-Armor fire from a squads basic weapons is actually more than that of the dedicated anti-armor weapon the specialist carries. You think that's modeled well in game terms?

Do you think that falling back is well modeled in the game? It's far harder for me to believe that someone you are engaged in hand to hand combat with simply lets you walk backwards calmly, standing there with a dumb look on their face while your friends blow them off the earth.

Do you think it's well modeled that a grot standing on an objective controls it against a full squad of terminators (unless they're grey knight or custodes terminators...)?

Do you think it's well modeled that the vehicle shooting in combat rules makes it smart to charge a tank with grots just to tie it up? Do you think it's well modeled that said tank can fire its lascannons at said grots while they are literally crawling all over the tank, far too close to actually be shot at with a weapon like a lascannon?

Do you think it's well modeled that units start the game within easy shooting distance of one another? What have they been doing before T1? Just chillin' until someone gives the signal that it's ok to start shooting?

We could come up with literally dozens of other examples of the way the game is modeled that are much more problematic from a perspective of realism than a lasgun occasionally being able to plink a wound off a vehicle.

The game is an abstraction. I think it works just fine that a squad of guardsmen shooting continuously at a tank an entire 5 game could plink off half its wounds. That doesn't strike me as vaguely unreasonable.

But again, then we're not getting into what's realistic, we're getting into your opinions of how the game should play. You think a lasgun shouldn't be able to harm a tank not because it is impossible in reality but because you think the chance is low enough that it should be modeled in game as impossible. That's a very different argument. It's the opposite of an argument from realism - it's an argument that we should disregard realism in favor of modeling what is probable rather than what is possible.


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 catbarf wrote:
having basic infantrymen be unable to harm vehicles and thereby forced to disengage is a far better abstraction of reality than encouraging them to stand their ground and volley fire at MBTs.

Disagree completely, but that's a disagreement over how the game should work that has nothing to do with reality. It is the opposite of a "this is unrealistic!" argument. It's a "yes this can happen in reality but even though it is possible in reality I want to make it completely impossible in the game because I think that makes the game work better."

Moving past the lasguns for just now, what about the Salamader Flamer Agressors that wound Tanks 50% of the time, that doesn't seem janky and some proper WTF moment to you?

I would say the issue isn't that they can it's that they can do so too easily.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Disagree completely

Then, I dunno, educate yourself on the basic history of antitank warfare. Rifle fire stopped being relevant circa 1917.

yukishiro1 wrote:
, but that's a disagreement over how the game should work that has nothing to do with reality. It is the opposite of a "this is unrealistic!" argument. It's a "yes this can happen in reality but even though it is possible in reality I want to make it completely impossible in the game because I think that makes the game work better."

No, this is absolutely still a disagreement over realism, you are just hyper-focusing on the possibility that a rifle can damage a tank and then making the mental somersault to 'and therefore it's better if a lasgun can get a MBT 1/12 closer to complete destruction'.

The reality of warfare is that infantry don't engage tanks with their basic rifles, even if there is a remote, extreme, tiny possibility that it might do something. There are two ways to represent this in-game:

1. Design for simulation, and let infantry take their shot, with a 0.001% chance of it inflicting a non-disabling hit on the target, such that any halfway competent player will not attempt to volley fire into tanks. This will earn you completely justified criticism from those that argue that it slows down the game for negligible effect.
2. Design for effect, accept the conceit that while technically possible it is not realistic for infantry to attempt to disable an AFV with rifles, and do not allow rifle fire to harm tanks.

Your position- that because it is remotely possible in reality for a rifle to inflict minor damage on a WW2-era tank, every rifle shot that hits one should have a 1/18 chance of dealing non-negligible damage- is neither realistic in its simulation (way too significant damage) nor realistic in its effects (Guardsmen are incentivized to stand and shoot, rather than scatter or bring AT weapons to bear).

Here's another abstraction: Most units cannot shoot in melee.

Is it physically impossible for the plasma gunner to engage a tank a kilometer away while a crazed berserkers tries to cave his skull in with an axe? No.

Is it a realistic abstraction to say that said plasma gunner is almost certainly going to be too preoccupied with dealing with said berserker to worry about shooting a tank way off in the distance? Absolutely.

We're still talking about realism, and it's still unrealistic for infantry to deal non-negligible damage to tanks. From a wargame perspective, we care far more about the realism of how units behave and what kind of damage they can inflict than rivet-counting simulation for its own sake, let alone the unrealism of translating winning-the-lottery unlikelihoods into common gameplay occurrences.

That's not my position. Please stop wasting everyone's time with straw men; it is the laziest way to argue. My position is that "realism" shouldn't determine how games work, especially not games based on UGOIGO where someone can fall out of combat with your unit and your unit has to just stand there and take their friends' shots straight to the face because they can move while you can't. I think infantry guns should be able to plink the odd wound off a tank for gameplay reasons, not realism reasons. I was only addressing realism to refute the objectively false statement made by someone else that it isn't possible for small arms fire to harm tanks. It is possible. There are documented cases of infantry fire disabling tanks as recently as the Iraq war. That's objective reality. So if you want to say "the chances are so small we should make it impossible in the game even though it's possible in reality" that fine - I disagree with the argument, but it's a subjective disagreement; what isn't fine is to say "it is physically impossible in reality," because that just isn't true.

The reality of warfare is that infantry squads don't sit on objectives if they know with 100% certainty they will be killed next turn in order to get the VPs this turn.

The reality of warfare is that infantry doesn't charge a tank, guaranteeing their deaths, in order to force it to shoot its lascannons at the squad next turn instead of at the nearby tank. And the reality of warfare is that the nearby tank will still be able to shoot at that tank, whether it has grots crawling on it or not.

The reality of warfare...we can go on and on.

If you made it so guardsmen couldn't shoot tanks, nothing at all would change in the game except they, well, wouldn't shoot at tanks. The guard squad isn't going to "scatter" (because it literally can't according to the game rules), it isn't going to withdraw. It's just going to sit there (or, more likely, charge the tank in combat to tie it up, another thing that is deeply unrealistic). It wouldn't model reality any better, and it wouldn't improve gameplay either. Allowing them some chance to do damage at least models the possibility that a squad in that situation will find something creative to do that can have some impact on the engagement.

modern tanks have 6" of ballistic glass over the 'vision slits', and you're not going to be damaging tracks or whatever you're going on about with small arms fire. just stop.

yukishiro1 wrote:
That's not my position. Please stop wasting everyone's time with straw men; it is the laziest way to argue. My position is that "realism" shouldn't determine how games work, especially not games based on UGOIGO where someone can fall out of combat with your unit and your unit has to just stand there and take their friends' shots straight to the face because they can move while you can't. I think infantry guns should be able to plink the odd wound off a tank for gameplay reasons, not realism reasons. I was only addressing realism to refute the objectively false statement made by someone else that it isn't possible for small arms fire to harm tanks. It is possible. There are documented cases of infantry fire disabling tanks as recently as the Iraq war. That's objective reality. So if you want to say "the chances are so small we should make it impossible in the game even though it's possible in reality" that fine - I disagree with the argument, but it's a subjective disagreement; what isn't fine is to say "it is physically impossible in reality," because that just isn't true.

The reality of warfare is that infantry squads don't sit on objectives if they know with 100% certainty they will be killed next turn in order to get the VPs this turn.

The reality of warfare is that infantry doesn't charge a tank, guaranteeing their deaths, in order to force it to shoot its lascannons at the squad next turn instead of at the nearby tank. And the reality of warfare is that the nearby tank will still be able to shoot at that tank, whether it has grots crawling on it or not.

The reality of warfare...we can go on and on.

If you made it so guardsmen couldn't shoot tanks, nothing at all would change in the game except they, well, wouldn't shoot at tanks. The guard squad isn't going to "scatter" (because it literally can't according to the game rules), it isn't going to withdraw. It's just going to sit there (or, more likely, charge the tank in combat to tie it up, another thing that is deeply unrealistic). It wouldn't model reality any better, and it wouldn't improve gameplay either. Allowing them some chance to do damage at least models the possibility that a squad in that situation will find something creative to do that can have some impact on the engagement.

Dare to die corps, Order 227 , gallipoli the turks beeing Made aware by attatürk that they are Sent to die to Stop the advance...
And you are talking about a universe were ideological fanaticism is actually the rule rather then the exception.

yukishiro1 wrote:
what isn't fine is to say "it is physically impossible in reality," because that just isn't true.

We've gotten away from the core of the argument, but I'll stand by this one: it is physically impossible, in reality, for rifle fire alone to damage, let alone mission-kill a modern MBT. Does not happen. Has never happened. If a wargame is attempting to model the reality of infantry combat, it is bad design to allow infantry fire to disable tanks, or even 'soften them up' for anti-tank fire. I would like you to cite your claim of MBTs being disabled by rifle fire in the Iraq War, because I suspect you have grossly misread or misremembered whatever you saw.

Leaving reality aside, as far as a game is concerned, the mechanics that allow lasguns to harm tanks are one example of a 'soft' damage system that de-emphasizes differences between unit classes and reinforces jack-of-all-trades weapons. The mechanisms for wounding and damaging vehicles lead to unintuitive outcomes that detract from the feeling of realism (verisimilitude) of the experience.

Random example: Stalker Bolt Rifles wound light vehicles on 5s, reduce them to a 5+ save by default, and inflict 2 damage. When played as Imperial Fists, on the first turn these weapons are reducing vehicles to 6+ saves for 3 damage apiece. Back when Iron Hands were dominating the meta, a runner-up was an Imperial Fists gunline with tons of Stalker Bolt Rifles that could actually take out tanks wholesale- something likely not intended by designers who pictured the SBR as a long-range anti-heavy-infantry weapon.

We're now seeing a similar problem with Heavy Bolters vs Autocannons. Since they both apparently do 2 damage and have the same AP, the rate of fire and strength are distinguishing factors- but the wounding system means the Heavy Bolters are just as likely to cause damage to tanks, but have 50% more shots.

I've never seen lasguns shoot a tank to death from full health. But the fact that it is possible points to a greater design problem than lasguns alone. I will absolutely argue that the gameplay benefits of being able to take whatever you want and still be able to meaningfully hurt tanks are outweighed by the detriment to verisimilitude that comes from Heavy Bolters now being legitimately able to plink tanks to death.

I don't see how your complaint about higher strength, higher AP weapons relates to the complaint that a lasgun can plink a wound off a tank. This is what it always comes back to: when people try to cite the gameplay damage caused by the fact that a lasgun can damage a tank, they always fall back on something else entirely.

It's complaining about the wrong thing. If you want to complain about stalker bolt rifles or heavy bolters complain about those; neither will be fixed by making lasguns completely unable to hurt tanks.

"Your unit simply can't harm mine in any way at all" is a feels bad moment. Feels bad moments are bad for a game. If someone's firing lasguns at your tanks you're already winning that trade and should be happy enough to be winning the trade, not complaining because they might have the nerve to actually plink a wound off for their efforts before being gunned down.

yukishiro1 wrote:
..."Your unit simply can't harm mine in any way at all" is a feels bad moment...

And my Titan getting shanked to death by a squad of dudes with knives isn't a feels-bad moment?


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yukishiro1 wrote:
...It wouldn't model reality any better, and it wouldn't improve gameplay either...

I'd argue that it would improve gameplay significantly if you had to take a broad spread of weapons to handle different kinds of targets instead of finding the one thing that's efficient against the most possible targets and spamming it.

I think the only way to deal with it is to give each weapon a stat vs infantry, and one vs tanks or monsters.

This would help with weapons feeling different, would remove the problem of lasguns or combat blades doing wounds to titans, while not invalidating the need for one or the other type of guns. We would not longer have the problems of plasma being better then melta at killing tanks, or sniper bolters being a threat to vehicles. At the same time a lascanon could do 12 damage to a single dude per squad, killing some really dead .

Karol wrote:
I think the only way to deal with it is to give each weapon a stat vs infantry, and one vs tanks or monsters.

This seems like it would achieve the exact same thing as simply having different profiles for infantry and tanks/monsters, yet would require vastly more effort and take up far more space. .

 AnomanderRake wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
..."Your unit simply can't harm mine in any way at all" is a feels bad moment...

And my Titan getting shanked to death by a squad of dudes with knives isn't a feels-bad moment?

Your knight (we're going to assume knight here, because the 40k rules aren't designed for and don't actually work for real titans; getting shanked by dudes is hardly the biggest of their problems) doesn't get shanked to death by a squad of dudes with knives, though. It just doesn't. It might have a wound or two taken off it, but that's it. It wouldn't die even if you just let them shank it all game without doing anything in return. If it got shanked to death it was because something else took off the first 22ish wounds, and if your titan is that close to death, it actually really doesn't become particularly unbelievable that the last little bit could be taken out by a guy with a knife, because at that point it's going to have massive holes blown all over it. Maybe one guy crawls up the battered hull and knifes the pilot because he's exposed? Maybe someone cuts through a critical cable that's been exposed? Etc etc.

So I think you kinda made my point for me.