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Relative to model size, a sniper rifle should realistically have an effective range of several meters (not 36 inches!), to say nothing of artillery. But it obviously isn't feasible to play on such a large board, or to give some weapons infinite range. So I tend to assume that units are a lot more distant from one another than they appear, except while in engagement range. A 6'' troop movement, seemingly a dozen steps, might represent the ground covered in a minute or even several. By the same token, "buildings" are not necessarily lone buildings, but perhaps entire city blocks.

I think army sizes are also abstracted, with most armies (save perhaps for ultra-elites such as Space Marines and Custodes) being in fact several times more numerous than their model count.

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my view has always been that the part i'm in control of is only one small part of the army and battle. unless you're playing epic, it's simply just too small scale to be a full battle unless it's a minor skirmish

-Guardsman- wrote:

I think army sizes are also abstracted, with most armies (save perhaps for ultra-elites such as Space Marines and Custodes) being in fact several times more numerous than their model count.
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While I know that's tempting, I really advise against it It already takes 20 GEQs Rapid-Firing into a Marine with a Lasgun/Autogun to bring him down, and that's arguably more than it should be. If we start assuming each GEQ is 3 or 5 or whatever, it becomes plainly . . . eggregious, to be polite about it.

. . .


The abstraction I like is that both time and space on the tabletop are nonlinear.

Time and distance

They multiplied the number of Custodes needed for a battle from 1 or 2 to about 30.

You'll also notice in the game, no one carries any extra ammunition.
From Basilisks to Space Marines, no one can fire more than a couple shots.

Interestingly enough:

Back in 9th, we wanted to run our map based campaign with persistent maps, and the idea was that each territory would be represented by a persistent Onslaught sized table... But the kicker was that if you were playing a Combat Patrol game, you'd only use a Combat Patrol sized chunk of the map.

So theoretically, you could have 2 Combat Patrol games happenning on the same Onslaught sized table at the same time, splitting the board so that it covers two different tables...

In such a situation, flyers transporting units from one table to the other was cool, and artillery being able to fire from one table to the other was also and interesting mechanic.

You just gotta step outside the pick-up game paradigm if you want to explore potential like that.

I've always thought it odd that everyone doesn't understand that everything in these games is abstracted to some degree or the other.

I recall that GW mentioned that if the ranges were to scale you would need to play in a parking lot.

ccs wrote:
I've always thought it odd that everyone doesn't understand that everything in these games is abstracted to some degree or the other.

This. It is a game. It has a theme. It having a theme doesn't mean it is (or needs to be) anything like the reality of its setting.

Cyel wrote:

ccs wrote:
I've always thought it odd that everyone doesn't understand that everything in these games is abstracted to some degree or the other.

This. It is a game. It has a theme. It having a theme doesn't mean it is anything like the reality of its setting.

Sometimes the characters in the game are self aware of the abstractions. Look at BattleTech BattleMech Manual where there is running in-universe commentary on the ridiculously heavy computers and super short range of machine guns.

Biggest abstration? The table. If you are an infantryman with no sensor augmentations you have something called 'the empty battlefield' https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03071848708522822
In short for a variety of reasons - troops density, folds in the ground, slight rises, slight hollows, bits of obscuring stuff scattered around - you can't see much to shoot at. So our range issues and targeting is always going to be weird.

Cyel wrote:

ccs wrote:
I've always thought it odd that everyone doesn't understand that everything in these games is abstracted to some degree or the other.

This. It is a game. It has a theme. It having a theme doesn't mean it is (or needs to be) anything like the reality of its setting.

+1

Everything is abstract and not to the same degree. Furthermore as the game isn't based upon real world battle data there isn't even any real world correlation to draw to even get a handle on what the real numbers and such might be.
Even the scale is wonky - tanks and vehicles are smaller than they should be; buildings are insanely small and most are little more than a garden shed in size compared to the warriors on the battlefield and the tanks.

Ranges don't make any sense - unit numbers don't either. Marines and Eldar are clearly appearing in way greater numbers than they should whilst armies like Tyranids and Guard are appearing in way smaller numbers. Heroes and named characters should appear only once on the battlefield; meanwhile you've got artillery and close combat operating within striking distance of each other and lets not even try to cover supersonic aircraft!

None of it makes sense no matter how you draw it; if its 1:1 it's madness; if its variable then almost each unit has its own parameters to obey.


What the game sells is the same thing video games sell when you've got bases made up of garden sheds building troops and tanks and sending out small squads whilst nuclear weapons hit only tiny portions of the battlefield etc... It's an idea and a dream.

Tygre wrote:
I recall that GW mentioned that if the ranges were to scale you would need to play in a parking lot.

By comparison to other systems, though, range isn't necessarily to do with how far the shot goes, but how far away can the wielder hit anything at longer ranges.

Both Stargrunt and Horizon Wars have effectively infinite weapon ranges, but hits can only be scored at longer ranges with higher quality troops.

Definately agree that time and distance are strongly abstracted in 40k though.

The whole damage resolution system is abstracted. Number of dice does not correlate to shots fires, but the overall system is intended to provide a satisfying answer to the question "how likely is this unit to make their target combat ineffective in the arbitrary time period of the turn". So this leads to more user experience questions relating to speed of resolution, satisfaction of rolling physical dice and the feeling of invovlement on GW's attacker/defender actions during combat resolution.

Not served in any armed forces but my brother has and he says the thing that makes the least sense to him is the lack of suppression mechanics, and rather, just straight casualties.

He said that people under fire just will not advance from cover.

Obviously 40K having emotionless robots and superhumans in powered armour is gonna be different that way, but I think a suppressing effect from fire would still do a lot for the game. Blast Markers in Epic were a great way to represent that.

 Da Boss wrote:
Not served in any armed forces but my brother has and he says the thing that makes the least sense to him is the lack of suppression mechanics, and rather, just straight casualties.

He said that people under fire just will not advance from cover.

Obviously 40K having emotionless robots and superhumans in powered armour is gonna be different that way, but I think a suppressing effect from fire would still do a lot for the game. Blast Markers in Epic were a great way to represent that.

The lack general suppression mechanics isn't an abstraction. It's part of the over simplification/dumbing down of recent editions.
For such an abstraction all you have to do is look at RT - 7e & HH v1 & v2

Yeah but it’s a war game, with more emphasis on the game than the war. 2nd Edition overwatch just led to nothing moving. Stargrunt could devolve down to two squads facing off and pounding away at each other for turn after turn with nothing really happening, until someone lucked out once and then one side or the other would fold. It was quite realistic in those terms, but wasn’t very dynamic.

DIdn't one of the Battlefleet Gothic designers say something like 'the models are all out of whack' and that in reality, the tiny spec inside the base holding them up in the centre is the 'real representation' and each centimeter of range represents 10000 kilometres?

the-gentleman-ranker wrote:
DIdn't one of the Battlefleet Gothic designers say something like 'the models are all out of whack' and that in reality, the tiny spec inside the base holding them up in the centre is the 'real representation' and each centimeter of range represents 10000 kilometres?

Yes, which is why BFG measures all ranges to and from the center of the flight stem, and ships have to deliberately try to ram each other (at great difficulty) in order to collide. This abstraction works perfectly well for BFG because terrain follows the 'real' scale.

What gets weird in 40K (and many, many other wargames) is that if you take the model scale literally, a sniper rifle has a range of about a hundred yards. But if you take it non-literally and assume the troops are 'actually' far smaller, then the scale of terrain stops making any sense, since now the footprint of a shanty hut is approximately the size of a football field. And don't get me started on the relationship between the move rates of infantry and aircraft.

The designers made no attempt at realism or logical consistency- it's not worth your effort to try to do it for them.

Fact is most gamers don't care either. RTS games on PC are just the same with scale being insanely wonky. Starcraft has capital space battleships that lose to 8 marines on the ground and most RTS have training facilities that are as small as a garden shed and yet like a tardis inside.


Of course along the way you get some that aim to be more realistic and a little less abstract.

However unless you're going for full simulation, "games" have to abstract a lot of things to be fun. You can create tables and charts to emulate firing a single shot against a single target, but the number of variables gets very quickly inhibiting for real world play because you've so many elements to consider. Video games can do better though even then most don't try to go that deep. It's just not needed by gamers.

 Overread wrote:
However unless you're going for full simulation, "games" have to abstract a lot of things to be fun. You can create tables and charts to emulate firing a single shot against a single target, but the number of variables gets very quickly inhibiting for real world play because you've so many elements to consider. Video games can do better though even then most don't try to go that deep. It's just not needed by gamers.

There's still a pretty substantial difference between abstractions made for the sake of playability (we'll resolve this attack with a single die roll that takes into account pertinent conditions, rather than conduct an excruciatingly detailed simulation of the bullet's flight characteristics) versus abstractions that break from reality for the sake of gameplay outcome (a rifle has an in-scale range of fifty feet because we want fighting assault rifles with swords to work, and a jet fighter flies at about 30mph because we want to cram it into an infantry firefight).

Abstraction and realism are not opposites. Abstraction and simulation are opposites. You can have abstracted gameplay that still produces realistic outcomes, or simulationist mechanics that bear very little connection to reality.

 catbarf wrote:

the-gentleman-ranker wrote:
DIdn't one of the Battlefleet Gothic designers say something like 'the models are all out of whack' and that in reality, the tiny spec inside the base holding them up in the centre is the 'real representation' and each centimeter of range represents 10000 kilometres?

Yes, which is why BFG measures all ranges to and from the center of the flight stem, and ships have to deliberately try to ram each other (at great difficulty) in order to collide. This abstraction works perfectly well for BFG because terrain follows the 'real' scale.

What gets weird in 40K (and many, many other wargames) is that if you take the model scale literally, a sniper rifle has a range of about a hundred yards. But if you take it non-literally and assume the troops are 'actually' far smaller, then the scale of terrain stops making any sense, since now the footprint of a shanty hut is approximately the size of a football field. And don't get me started on the relationship between the move rates of infantry and aircraft.

The designers made no attempt at realism or logical consistency- it's not worth your effort to try to do it for them.

Don't quote me on this, but i heard a joke back in the day (might've been the 90's) that the 40k TT designers cribbed a napoleonic era boardgame and used it as the fundamental base of the TT board game and consequently, all the stats ended up whack because they got transliterated across with no regard for... scaling. (and apparently it was why ranged attacks were generally 1 at 'long range' to represent musketry and we got bolter/lasgun ranges of something silly like 50 yards

Fact is most gamers don't care either. RTS games on PC are just the same with scale being insanely wonky. Starcraft has capital space battleships that lose to 8 marines on the ground and most RTS have training facilities that are as small as a garden shed and yet like a tardis inside.


Of course along the way you get some that aim to be more realistic and a little less abstract.

However unless you're going for full simulation, "games" have to abstract a lot of things to be fun. You can create tables and charts to emulate firing a single shot against a single target, but the number of variables gets very quickly inhibiting for real world play because you've so many elements to consider. Video games can do better though even then most don't try to go that deep. It's just not needed by gamers to make a fun game that's engaging, fluid, and all.

We expect to use our imaginations to a degree.

It's been mentioned, but the footprints of buildings are very very much smaller than an actual building.

That said, I don't think much about 40k is necessarily highly abstracted. That's because 40k was never really a simulation of actual battle.

Rather, it's more like a re-creation of a pulp novel or comic book, which is a better description of the 40k universe anyway. If one stops trying to compare 40k to historical war and instead compares it to pulp comic combat it all makes allot more sense.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
They multiplied the number of Custodes needed for a battle from 1 or 2 to about 30.

You'll also notice in the game, no one carries any extra ammunition.
From Basilisks to Space Marines, no one can fire more than a couple shots.

In all honesty this is like one of the few things I think ISN'T abstracted haha, think about a space marine. in a typical 5 turn game firing twice per turn that's only 10 shots per marine. Even assuming they get charged every turn and you use an over watch stratagem each time that's only 20 shots per turn. In many depictions of the boltgun, it can hold 24 shots!

I dont know what is "widely understood as being abstracted", but what I personally consider abstracted about 40K? EVERYTHING. Its not a simulation, never has been. Its a dice game for toy soldiers in a made up space fantasy setting.

As for scales of things, this is what 1st edition of 40K had to say about the matter:

"
• SCALES

Warhammer 40,000 has been designed around
a ground scale of 1 tabletop inch = 2 metres of real
distance. Tabletop distances are expressed in inches
and imperial units within the rules. 'Real' distances
are expressed in metric measurements: so a target
10 inches distant on the tabletop is 20 metres away
in 'real' terms. There is no reason why you shouldn't
modify this scale to suit your own collection of
models and the size of your playing area.

Each model represents a single man, alien, vehicle,
building or whatever. Large groups of very small
creatures, such as thousands of locusts, can be
represented by a smaller number of models. In cases
such as this, one model can be regarded as
representing 100 creatures if they are appoximately
rat sized, or 1000 creatures if they are tiny insects.
So, 2 model rats = 200 individual rats; 2 model
locusts = 2000 individual locusts.

The ranges and effectiveness of weapons have
been calculated from the basis of individual weapons
firing a single shot or blast at a single target. Most
of the rules used for historical wargames assume
massed ranks of firers blasting away at a massed
target. For this reason, the ranges and effectiveness
of Warhammer 40,000 weapons may seem
comparatively low, but we believe that this is
reasonably accurate, and it does give a better game. "

It is clear from this text that a battle simulation was never the intent of 40K. The hint is that last word in my quoted section

The scale, main abstraction in 40k. Real battlefield is much bigger. We once try make a game with proper battlefield size considering miniatures scale and use 20 tables with pathways in between. Well, it was interesting experience,but to hard to play because of distances.

kabaakaba wrote:
The scale, main abstraction in 40k. Real battlefield is much bigger. We once try make a game with proper battlefield size considering miniatures scale and use 20 tables with pathways in between. Well, it was interesting experience,but to hard to play because of distances.

True, Ground Scale is perhaps the most compressed factor when it comes to wargaming. This is of course most true in open, outdoor layouts.

Interestingly, the denser terrain on the board, the less functional Ground-Scale compression exists. If there aren't any board-length fire lanes than the fact that ranges are so compressed might not be as much of an issue. Unless of course your ruleset lacks adequate rules for overwatch and fire suppression....