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leopard wrote:
worst bit with templates is how so few would roll the flipping scatter die close to the template and all the resulting arguments over the angle

especially given there is a seriously easy solution, print a clock face on the template, the "12" position goes directly at the firing unit, now roll a D12...

but that wouldn't use the holy d6 STC, so it's clearly not a viable solution!

nekooni wrote:

leopard wrote:
worst bit with templates is how so few would roll the flipping scatter die close to the template and all the resulting arguments over the angle

especially given there is a seriously easy solution, print a clock face on the template, the "12" position goes directly at the firing unit, now roll a D12...

but that wouldn't use the holy d6 STC, so it's clearly not a viable solution!

IIRC the 1st Edition of Space Marine had printed card templates that did the same with a D6

of course these days it would have to be a custom D13 or D5 with a chance to have a "FUN" misfire or similar

People really overplay the negatives of a d6.

Games almost always have just 2 test conditions, pass and fail. Regardless what dice you are using, you're only looking for a pass or fail.

IMO larger dice are used to make people feel like there's greater depth than there actually is.

Many games have degree of success systems to expand beyond pass or fail.

 Hellebore wrote:
People really overplay the negatives of a d6.

Games almost always have just 2 test conditions, pass and fail. Regardless what dice you are using, you're only looking for a pass or fail.

IMO larger dice are used to make people feel like there's greater depth than there actually is.

larger dice offer more granularity. Having a D12 as the hit roll would allow profiles to be more diverse as BS could range from 2 to 12, and would reduce the impact of modifiers, also allowing them to be more diverse - e.g. dense woods give +2, light woods +1. Not having that range is the primary negative of sticking to D6. And Rihgu pointed out another consequence - you have more space for degrees of success, and while it doesn't make sense for every system and every kind of roll, it is added design space that could be used.

nekooni wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
People really overplay the negatives of a d6.

Games almost always have just 2 test conditions, pass and fail. Regardless what dice you are using, you're only looking for a pass or fail.

IMO larger dice are used to make people feel like there's greater depth than there actually is.

larger dice offer more granularity. Having a D12 as the hit roll would allow profiles to be more diverse as BS could range from 2 to 12, and would reduce the impact of modifiers, also allowing them to be more diverse - e.g. dense woods give +2, light woods +1. Not having that range is the primary negative of sticking to D6. And Rihgu pointed out another consequence - you have more space for degrees of success, and while it doesn't make sense for every system and every kind of roll, it is added design space that could be used.

In practice it doesn't work. An 8% chance to succeed is so small that in a wargame it becomes a waste of time.

Just because you technically have more granularity doesn't mean it provides a practical use.

 Hellebore wrote:

nekooni wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
People really overplay the negatives of a d6.

Games almost always have just 2 test conditions, pass and fail. Regardless what dice you are using, you're only looking for a pass or fail.

IMO larger dice are used to make people feel like there's greater depth than there actually is.

larger dice offer more granularity. Having a D12 as the hit roll would allow profiles to be more diverse as BS could range from 2 to 12, and would reduce the impact of modifiers, also allowing them to be more diverse - e.g. dense woods give +2, light woods +1. Not having that range is the primary negative of sticking to D6. And Rihgu pointed out another consequence - you have more space for degrees of success, and while it doesn't make sense for every system and every kind of roll, it is added design space that could be used.

In practice it doesn't work. An 8% chance to succeed is so small that in a wargame it becomes a waste of time.

Just because you technically have more granularity doesn't mean it provides a practical use.

It does make a meaningful difference but more importantly it allows for things like dice rolls modifiers without everything becoming completely out of wack. See the stacking minus go hit modifiers in 8th where Eldar became impossible to hit for Orks or how cover adding to armor saves ends up with MEQs having double the effective durability due to going from 3+ to 2+ armor compared to (again Orks) going from a 6+ to a 5+ save being a vastly smaller increase in durability.

Modern 40k has to have all these limits cludged onto the modifiers (can only result in a +1, can't have a save go above 3+ from cover, stuff like that) because of how only having 6 faces on a die makes it difficult to have modifiers not become highly problematic.

One way to add more granularity is with stacking rolls such as if you have your armor save and then you got another roll afterwards for cover (like with Feel No Pain). A Marine getting a 3+ save and a sort of 5+ cover save on top would decrease casualties by 33% instead of going from a 3+ to a 2+ which results in 50% casualty reduction while the same thing for an Ork boy with a 6+ save and 5+ cover still gets a 33% casualty reduction from a 5+ cover save even if the armor save is still just a lousy 6+ armor save. Thing is that GW is scared to having more dice rolls and would rather throw out it's cake and eat it neither.

BTW stuff like the old "all or nothing" AP system was better suited for a d6 system 40k uses instead trying to make +/- modifiers work.

 Hellebore wrote:

nekooni wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
People really overplay the negatives of a d6.

Games almost always have just 2 test conditions, pass and fail. Regardless what dice you are using, you're only looking for a pass or fail.

IMO larger dice are used to make people feel like there's greater depth than there actually is.

larger dice offer more granularity. Having a D12 as the hit roll would allow profiles to be more diverse as BS could range from 2 to 12, and would reduce the impact of modifiers, also allowing them to be more diverse - e.g. dense woods give +2, light woods +1. Not having that range is the primary negative of sticking to D6. And Rihgu pointed out another consequence - you have more space for degrees of success, and while it doesn't make sense for every system and every kind of roll, it is added design space that could be used.

In practice it doesn't work. An 8% chance to succeed is so small that in a wargame it becomes a waste of time.

Just because you technically have more granularity doesn't mean it provides a practical use.

Pretty much, units not hitting on a 4+ on a d12 would likely be considered "bad" and that's what people would be wanting all the time.

nekooni wrote:
larger dice offer more granularity. Having a D12 as the hit roll would allow profiles to be more diverse as BS could range from 2 to 12, and would reduce the impact of modifiers, also allowing them to be more diverse - e.g. dense woods give +2, light woods +1. Not having that range is the primary negative of sticking to D6. And Rihgu pointed out another consequence - you have more space for degrees of success, and while it doesn't make sense for every system and every kind of roll, it is added design space that could be used.

I will never accept that the thing 40K needs is more granularity when it A. doesn't have mechanics or modifiers for really obvious things like target size, evasion, or range, and B. already involves rolling way more dice than comparable systems with multiple redundant checks that provide individual levers for adjustment. Switching to bigger dice would be a kludge for bad mechanics.

The whole reason Eldar stacking negative to-hit penalties broke the game was because there was absolutely nothing you could do about it, no way to accrue bonuses in your favor to offset the penalties, and the to-hit mechanic the game uses is a coarse system not designed to elegantly handle modifiers. They could make to-hit an opposed check like Strength vs Toughness currently is and then they'd have plenty of scope for adjusting BS, representing size/evasion as a new stat, and stacking bonuses and penalties without immediately veering into auto-success and auto-fail. There are other ways to handle it, that's just one example of a system that already exists within 40K.

Hitting 8% more often than the other guy is not a particularly impactful, relevant, meaningful level of granularity for this scale of wargame. The issue isn't insufficient granularity, it's inability to handle modifiers. Switching to larger dice while keeping the mechanics intact would just reduce the impact of modifiers to conceal the underlying problems. Rolling a D6 like five times to resolve a basic attack already affords plenty of design space, they just need to use it better.

Handling modifiers can be an issue - but I feel the core problem is that "stats" is a quasi-RP effect that doesn't actually matter to the game. (The fact people get upset that Meltas wound on 4s and 5s versus 3s and 4s indicates this - but doesn't matter that much.)

Because these stats just produce formulas. Stripped of the RP, 100 points of stuff has to roughly equal 100 points of other stuff for the game to be balanced.

So you can have a unit which hits on 2s and wounds on 2s. And you can have a unit which hits on 5s and wounds on 5s. But if they are the same points, they need to do roughly the same amount of damage. With some allowance for units being faster, tougher or having other benefits etc etc.

So we end up with 5/6*5/6*Sv*X Attacks=K wounds vs 1/3*1/3*Sv*Y Attacks=K wounds. The second unit can't "be worse" - it just ends up having to roll KFC buckets of dice to make up the difference. If it is just worse, then you have imbalance and no one should take said unit.

A D12 system where Marines are BS3+, Eldar are 4+, Necrons are 5+ etc wouldn't change anything as you then have to reverse engineer it backwards so the shooting units are respectively useful. In the system its just noise.

You could completely re-write 40k - which I think is where the suggestions of various active threads get you to. But 40k being a 5 turn IGOUGO system where damage output isn't hugely impacted by board-state circumstances like terrain, psychology or pin markers etc (as against special rules, stratagems etc) makes far more difference than it being D6 rather than D12 or D100.

going to a D12 is the same in effect as a D6 with "+/- 0.5" modifiers allowed

also its a circular arguement that its not needed as the level of granularity isn't there in the rules, when its not there because a D6 doesn't allow it, a D12 wouldn't be perfect but it would be good.

However GW won't move from a d6 so it hardly matters that there are a whole slew of alternative ways to do the same thing, all with pros & cons

The biggest issue (in this context) GW and any game has, is when you use the X+ value of the dice directly as a stat. THAT more than anything else is what limits your range. Of course a D6 looks crap when your BS options are 2+, 3+, 4+,. 5+ and maybe 6+. 4 options is not a lot.

But when those 4 values are measures of success rather than literal stats, the issue disappears. People might consider a comparison chart old fashioned, but it created an endless spread by using relative differences to generate a % chance of success, rather than a static, 'you are always 66% good'.

I will always prefer a relative value over a static one for this reason. And because it scales between better units.

leopard wrote:going to a D12 is the same in effect as a D6 with "+/- 0.5" modifiers allowed

also its a circular arguement that its not needed as the level of granularity isn't there in the rules, when its not there because a D6 doesn't allow it, a D12 wouldn't be perfect but it would be good.

However GW won't move from a d6 so it hardly matters that there are a whole slew of alternative ways to do the same thing, all with pros & cons

There's a hypothetical version of 40k that uses d12s, lots of modifiers, and works well. But you would really have to pack in lots of easy, intuitive access to to-hit modifiers for it to matter. I'm picturing bringing in things like +1 to hit when you hold still, -1 to hit a target that advanced, -1 to hit targets beyond X" away unless your weapon has a 'long-ranged" rule, +1 to hit when cross-firing, etc. I think that game could be fun, but I also think you'd be looking at a very large rework to make all those sources of modifiers play well and not just feel like too much to remember.

Hellebore wrote:The biggest issue (in this context) GW and any game has, is when you use the X+ value of the dice directly as a stat. THAT more than anything else is what limits your range. Of course a D6 looks crap when your BS options are 2+, 3+, 4+,. 5+ and maybe 6+. 4 options is not a lot.

But when those 4 values are measures of success rather than literal stats, the issue disappears. People might consider a comparison chart old fashioned, but it created an endless spread by using relative differences to generate a % chance of success, rather than a static, 'you are always 66% good'.

I will always prefer a relative value over a static one for this reason. And because it scales between better units.

Stat comparisons have a lot of merit, but things like the S-vs-T chart we currently have and the WS-vs-WS chart of yester-year did have a couple weird quirks of their own. Mainly that, in those charts, you can increase a stat without it mattering. For instance, going from Strength 4 to 5 in10th edition is great when you're playing against marines or orks, but if you're facing guardsmen, almost nothing in their codex cares about the extra pip of strength. So if you invested in +1 strength as a subfaction choice or have it baked in as an army rule or whatever, you've functionally wasted your subfaction choice or wasted however many points they upcharged your unit for having that ability baked in.

GW's stat comparisons are problematic because they want big numbers.

Their comparison rules are based on 1-10 scale rules and changed the comparison to require doubling to work then tacked on 10+ stats, thereby expanding the required numbers to make it valuable and also undervaluing numbers at the same time.

If you're designing the game to have +1S as an option, then you should also be scaling its cost based on its relative value, which is less now the game requires a logarithmic relationship to change pips.


IMO they should have just shifted all stats down 1 and stayed in a 1-10.

Grots and ratlings S/T`1, humans S/T2, marines 3 etc.

have s vs t go

= 4+

< by1 5+
< by2 6+
< by3 6+ +1 save
< by4+ 6+ +2 save
< by5+ impossible

or

= 4+
> by1 3+
> by2 2+
> by3 auto
> by4+ auto +1 damage

or something like that.

No infantry should be higher than T5 and anything T6 or more is a vehicle.

T1 - grot
T2 - human
T3 - marine
T4 - warboss
T5 - ? special uber things

T6 - landspeeder
T7 - rhino
T8 - land raider
T9 - baneblade
T10 - titans

They stupidly went up instead of going back to the bottom of the stat profile, and IMO they did that because they were coming off the back of Instant Death, so T1 and 2 were terrible because of the logarithm.

remove that, use T1, go back to 1 damage, only increase damage if its from high strength weapons or special rules and keep everything under 10.

people need to get doubling out of their heads, it added more problems than it solved. ID looked like someone's clever idea they couldn't let go of.

just having a special rule applied to attacks that did 2 damage instead of ID would have avoided a lot of mechanics issues.


The current game has set itself up to forever chase the logarithm...

Yeah. I think I pretty much agree with all that, Hellebore.

I know there were a lot of people pushing in 8th/9th to use stats above 10 more often, but the end goal there was basically just to let some weapons wound rhinos on 2s and land raiders on 3s.

Condensing the stats probably gets you the same result without creating the weird "gaps" where an extra pip of strength or whatever doesn't matter.

I don't think it would be as big a problem if it were possible to be in a situation where your attacks were simply incapable of wounding something.

I always thought "Feels Bad" was when your opponent was getting screwed by the rules/RNG(Dice) and not by your skill.

Removing always fails on 1s and always succeed on 6s would increase the available results based on stats from 4x4 =16 to 6x6 = 36. That is more than doubling it without having to change the type of dice we use or completely changing every stat and modifier in the game.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I don't think it would be as big a problem if it were possible to be in a situation where your attacks were simply incapable of wounding something.

^^^^ this

there is no way an infantry side arm, laspistol or similar should be able to harm a knight, or even a decent tank. if it could there basically would be no tanks/knights as they wouldn't last long enough to be worthwhile.

I wondered some years back on a D12 based system, numbers 0-9 to use as if it were a D10 thats nicer to roll, but then with a "Critical Success" and "Critical Failure" side - the intention was to roll them in pairs as a D100 to reflect an entire unit - one "fail" side and you missed, two being an actual critical failure, same with success

then some weapons on a success yes they hit, but short of a critical did nothing (aka sidearms v a tank), others would get a critical on one success depending on the target, or other task

a way to have that rare fluke happening something other than one time in six

 Hellebore wrote:
GW's stat comparisons are problematic because they want big numbers.

Their comparison rules are based on 1-10 scale rules and changed the comparison to require doubling to work then tacked on 10+ stats, thereby expanding the required numbers to make it valuable and also undervaluing numbers at the same time.

If you're designing the game to have +1S as an option, then you should also be scaling its cost based on its relative value, which is less now the game requires a logarithmic relationship to change pips.


IMO they should have just shifted all stats down 1 and stayed in a 1-10.

Grots and ratlings S/T`1, humans S/T2, marines 3 etc.

have s vs t go

= 4+

< by1 5+
< by2 6+
< by3 6+ +1 save
< by4+ 6+ +2 save
< by5+ impossible

or

= 4+
> by1 3+
> by2 2+
> by3 auto
> by4+ auto +1 damage

or something like that.

No infantry should be higher than T5 and anything T6 or more is a vehicle.

T1 - grot
T2 - human
T3 - marine
T4 - warboss
T5 - ? special uber things

T6 - landspeeder
T7 - rhino
T8 - land raider
T9 - baneblade
T10 - titans

They stupidly went up instead of going back to the bottom of the stat profile, and IMO they did that because they were coming off the back of Instant Death, so T1 and 2 were terrible because of the logarithm.

remove that, use T1, go back to 1 damage, only increase damage if its from high strength weapons or special rules and keep everything under 10.

people need to get doubling out of their heads, it added more problems than it solved. ID looked like someone's clever idea they couldn't let go of.

just having a special rule applied to attacks that did 2 damage instead of ID would have avoided a lot of mechanics issues.


The current game has set itself up to forever chase the logarithm...

Actually I think they didnt go far enough. Vehicles/Tanks should have gone up even higher, the weapons designed to attack them as well - which would then get a negative to hit anything smaller than a vehicle/monster. So Land Raiders are T20, Lascannon are S20 and only hit Infantry/Mounted etc on "Overwatch" level accuracy.

Breton wrote:

Actually I think they didnt go far enough. Vehicles/Tanks should have gone up even higher, the weapons designed to attack them as well - which would then get a negative to hit anything smaller than a vehicle/monster. So Land Raiders are T20, Lascannon are S20 and only hit Infantry/Mounted etc on "Overwatch" level accuracy.

Wouldn't that just make land raiders really non-interactive for most of your opponent's army? Plus, making it so that anti-tank weapons can't really interact with anything except tanks. So you go from having weapons that are various levels of efficient against a variety to basically making them all but unusable if you face, say, a horde army. Not to mention it seems a little unfluffy for something like a meltagun to be so inaccurate against a living target. (Assuming meltaguns are still anti-tank in this scenario.)

Also, would everything still wound on 6s in this scenario? If so, you end up weirdly incentivizing people to deal with land raiders with lasguns rather than, say, battle cannons. If not, then you're really doubling down on the non-interactivity by making most of the weapons in the game literally unable to damage the land raider.

I feel like I'm missing something here?

 catbarf wrote:

nekooni wrote:
larger dice offer more granularity. Having a D12 as the hit roll would allow profiles to be more diverse as BS could range from 2 to 12, and would reduce the impact of modifiers, also allowing them to be more diverse - e.g. dense woods give +2, light woods +1. Not having that range is the primary negative of sticking to D6. And Rihgu pointed out another consequence - you have more space for degrees of success, and while it doesn't make sense for every system and every kind of roll, it is added design space that could be used.

I will never accept that the thing 40K needs is more granularity when it A. doesn't have mechanics or modifiers for really obvious things like target size, evasion, or range, and B. already involves rolling way more dice than comparable systems with multiple redundant checks that provide individual levers for adjustment. Switching to bigger dice would be a kludge for bad mechanics.

In 40k we dont have these "obvious" modifiers because the design space on a D6 is so small, so we don't want to go to a D12 where it would be possible, because we don't have these modifiers right now? Is that what you're trying to say? I'm a bit confused to be honest.

Hitting 8% more often than the other guy is not a particularly impactful, relevant, meaningful level of granularity for this scale of wargame. The issue isn't insufficient granularity, it's inability to handle modifiers. Switching to larger dice while keeping the mechanics intact would just reduce the impact of modifiers to conceal the underlying problems. Rolling a D6 like five times to resolve a basic attack already affords plenty of design space, they just need to use it better.

Yeah, hitting 8% more often is exactly half as impactful as hitting 16% more, that's true. And again - having a D12 would allow for more diverse modifiers without immediately running out of "space" and having to rely on caps like "cannot be modified by more than +1/-1". The 'impactful' steps are still possible by simply giving a +2 modifier.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Breton wrote:

Actually I think they didnt go far enough. Vehicles/Tanks should have gone up even higher, the weapons designed to attack them as well - which would then get a negative to hit anything smaller than a vehicle/monster. So Land Raiders are T20, Lascannon are S20 and only hit Infantry/Mounted etc on "Overwatch" level accuracy.

Wouldn't that just make land raiders really non-interactive for most of your opponent's army? Plus, making it so that anti-tank weapons can't really interact with anything except tanks. So you go from having weapons that are various levels of efficient against a variety to basically making them all but unusable if you face, say, a horde army. Not to mention it seems a little unfluffy for something like a meltagun to be so inaccurate against a living target. (Assuming meltaguns are still anti-tank in this scenario.)

Also, would everything still wound on 6s in this scenario? If so, you end up weirdly incentivizing people to deal with land raiders with lasguns rather than, say, battle cannons. If not, then you're really doubling down on the non-interactivity by making most of the weapons in the game literally unable to damage the land raider.

I feel like I'm missing something here?

Looking at your questions I'd guess the main thing you're missing is that not only am I OK with Land Raiders "Non-interactive" if my opponent doesn't take anti-tank, I'm in favor of it. That said I think most infantry - especially "Battle Line" level stuff (Not necessarily down the line, but its a start for the ballpark) should have some sort of close range high danger option for anti-tank. Likewise I want anti-tank weapons to be fairly "non-interactive" with non-tanks. I don't want people rhino sniping - or whatever the gimmick of the week is - characters with a lascannon. There should be some weapons that are distinctly anti-infantry, some that are distinctly anti-tank, and some hybrid that will cover heavy infantry and/or light vehicles well and can be stretched to tanks in a pinch. I'm not a fan of all-purpose super-guns that can be used on almost everything.

For not interactivity to work we need more strick army restrictions, you cannot have an entire army be entirely non-interactive with most common weapons and units.

That also means that the issue isn't really Land Raiders, but transports. A Land Raider being non-interactive to most weapons make sense, a Rhino doesn't.

Also lore wise, a dedicated Tank should be in an entirely different weight class from an APC in terms of resilience.

 Tyran wrote:
For not interactivity to work we need more strick army restrictions, you cannot have an entire army be entirely non-interactive with most common weapons and units.

That also means that the issue isn't really Land Raiders, but transports. A Land Raider being non-interactive to most weapons make sense, a Rhino doesn't.

Also lore wise, a dedicated Tank should be in an entirely different weight class from an APC in terms of resilience.

I liked vehicles being immune to weaker weapons in old editions too, and you definitely need to restrict how many of those you can take. In fact, I think I'd like it if the rules dissuade skew armies in general. Having your army trampled by an all-infantry horde is just as fun as having your army's attacks bounce off of a tank column's armour. Those rock/paper/scissors matches that are won or lost in the listbuilding phase are definite feelsbad experiences.

But I don't think you can meaningfully restrict skew/spam without essentially deleting knights as a faction, and I don't see gw doing that.

I've once tried AoS. The most feels bad rule was some high elf character, that could force your hero to attack him. But he would often be put outside of reach. So you have to fight him - you can't fight him, because you can't reach - you can't fight anything else. THAT was feelsbad.

 Tyran wrote:
For not interactivity to work we need more strick army restrictions, you cannot have an entire army be entirely non-interactive with most common weapons and units.

That also means that the issue isn't really Land Raiders, but transports. A Land Raider being non-interactive to most weapons make sense, a Rhino doesn't.

Also lore wise, a dedicated Tank should be in an entirely different weight class from an APC in terms of resilience.

This did used to be the case. Most APCs could be damaged or even destroyed by the majority of small arms or anti-personnel weapons with sufficient weight-of-fire, although the attacking troops might have to manoeuvre to hit side or rear armour. Even full tanks were generally vulnerable to the same on rear armour. The Land Raider and Monolith were unusual in having no weak sides, but they were also very expensive.

On the other hand, most tanks ignored the majority of anti-personnel weaponry to their front and side facings. Weaponry suited to targeting light vehicles might be able to damage with difficulty. A Land Raider ignored all weapons of S7 and below, but for the aformentioned high cost.

Personally I think this worked, especially when it was fairly easy to have a smattering of grenades around that would give a tank a bad day if it had to hold ground close to enemies.

 Tyran wrote:
For not interactivity to work we need more strick army restrictions, you cannot have an entire army be entirely non-interactive with most common weapons and units.

That also means that the issue isn't really Land Raiders, but transports. A Land Raider being non-interactive to most weapons make sense, a Rhino doesn't.

Also lore wise, a dedicated Tank should be in an entirely different weight class from an APC in terms of resilience.

That's why it was about Land Raiders not Rhinos. Rhinos should be a tier above Speeders, and a tier below Predators, which should be a tier below Land Raiders, which themselves should (probably/maybe) be a tier below Knights/etc due to shields - though I'm not opposed to Land Raiders/Monoliths/Super Heavies (the biggest baddest monsters/vehicles in each faction) being on par with knights.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:

Personally I think this worked, especially when it was fairly easy to have a smattering of grenades around that would give a tank a bad day if it had to hold ground close to enemies.

That's why I pointed out the "Battle Line" type troops that may or may not actually be Battle Line should have a short range high danger option for tanks.

 Haighus wrote:

This did used to be the case. Most APCs could be damaged or even destroyed by the majority of small arms or anti-personnel weapons with sufficient weight-of-fire, although the attacking troops might have to manoeuvre to hit side or rear armour.

Depended on the edition. It was borderline impossible to destroy an APC in 5th with small arms because of the nerfs to glancing hits. Other editions were better in that respect but I have seen people complain it was too easy.

So YMMV.

 Hellebore wrote:

IMO they should have just shifted all stats down 1 and stayed in a 1-10.

Grots and ratlings S/T`1, humans S/T2, marines 3 etc.

have s vs t go

= 4+

< by1 5+
< by2 6+
< by3 6+ +1 save
< by4+ 6+ +2 save
< by5+ impossible

or

= 4+
> by1 3+
> by2 2+
> by3 auto
> by4+ auto +1 damage

or something like that.

No infantry should be higher than T5 and anything T6 or more is a vehicle.

T1 - grot
T2 - human
T3 - marine
T4 - warboss
T5 - ? special uber things

T6 - landspeeder
T7 - rhino
T8 - land raider
T9 - baneblade
T10 - titans

I would move Land Raiders to T9 and put Predators as T8.

Moreover I would also move Titans to above T10. They are so ridiculusly out of 40k's standard scope that considering them into the rules basically means reducing your design space.

So T10 would be for everyone's biggest non-Titan stuff (Dominus Knights, Baneblades, Tesseract Vaults, Hierodules).

 Tyran wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

This did used to be the case. Most APCs could be damaged or even destroyed by the majority of small arms or anti-personnel weapons with sufficient weight-of-fire, although the attacking troops might have to manoeuvre to hit side or rear armour.

Depended on the edition. It was borderline impossible to destroy an APC in 5th with small arms because of the nerfs to glancing hits. Other editions were better in that respect but I have seen people complain it was too easy.

So YMMV.

Part of the problem was that it was kind of both. I started playing in 5th. The game seemed to understand that making a rhino or chimera immune to most of the weapons in the game was a bad idea, so they gave most vehicles rear armor 10. But the thing is, you weren't generally "maneuvering" to get at rear armor 10. Any vehicle that wanted to hang back and shoot would just stick its butt against the table edge or some BLOS terrain so you couldn't actually shoot its rear. The only times you were likely to be shooting at rear armor were if you had landed a good deepstrike or if an enemy vehicle or if the enemy vehicle was disposable enough to park itself right in front of your front lines.

I largely agree with Tyran. Before you can propose making vehicles immune to huge parts of the enemy army, you have to propose a way to prevent skew lists from being a thing.
In practice, rear armor was less of a vulnerability to be exploited by shooting and more of a way to hurt vehicles in melee. So the counterplay was basically, "Okay, strength 4 and better can hurt vehicles if they charge." So vehicles were "immune" to small arms fire, but in the shooting phase, basically. But this still sort of sucked for S3 armies. Marines had their choice of stunning a vehicle by punching it or whipping out the strength 6 krak grenades, so every unit in the marine codex functionally had a way of hurting vehicles. But S3 armies didn't.

There should be some weapons that are distinctly anti-infantry, some that are distinctly anti-tank, and some hybrid that will cover heavy infantry and/or light vehicles well and can be stretched to tanks in a pinch. I'm not a fan of all-purpose super-guns that can be used on almost everything.

Can we agree that this is already the state of things, though? A scatter laser (lots of strength 5, AP-, D1 attacks) is pretty efficient at killing guardsmen but would take forever to kill a chimera. A lascannon won't kill off a squad of guardsmen even if it shoots at them all game, but it's pretty good at killing that chimera. Plasma guns are less good at killing guardsmen than scatter lasers and less good at killing chimeras than lascannons, but they're not terrible at either.

Is the issue that you don't think weapons are already capable of being specialized, or is it that you just don't like lasguns hurting chimeras for (valid) fluff reasons? Because those are different conversations.

Also, I don't love the argument of, "Oh, just take anti-tank in all your units so that the tanks are interactive after all." That approach invalidates the other options in the slots those anti-tank weapons occupy. That is, you'll never field a flamer because you're too worried you might need the meltagun to deal with tanks. After all, your bolters can already deal with infantry.