Switch Theme:

Toughness vs armor  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
  • No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
  • Times and dates in your local timezone.
  • Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
  • Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
  • Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.




Made in us
Hellacious Havoc




Bay Area

Is there a table comparison for Toughness to armor? Is T6 equal to a certain armor in the sense of % getting through to next step. To actually making armor save?

   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

No. Because Strength (or, more to the point, wound rolls) has variance.

S3 wounds T6 1/6th of the time.
S12 wounds it 5/6ths of the time.
Twin-Linked messes with the math too.

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in us
Bounding Dark Angels Assault Marine





 IwinUlose wrote:
Is there a table comparison for Toughness to armor? Is T6 equal to a certain armor in the sense of % getting through to next step. To actually making armor save?



Can you explain what you have in mind? There's probably a way to use a spreadsheet to work out the percentages but knowing what you are trying to study with it would help work out how to actually study it.
   
Made in us
Monster-Slaying Daemonhunter





 IwinUlose wrote:
Is there a table comparison for Toughness to armor? Is T6 equal to a certain armor in the sense of % getting through to next step. To actually making armor save?



Like AV to T/Sv?

Not really.

For a few examples:
Leman Russ: AV14 -> AV14 HP3 -> T8 Sv3+ W12 -> T11 Sv2+ W13
Land Raider: AV14 -> AV14 HP4 -> T8 Sv2+ W16 -> T12 Sv2+ W16
Hammerhead: AV13 -> AV13 HP3 -> T7 Sv3+ W13 -> T10 Sv3+ W14
Wave Serpent: AV12 -> AV12 HP3 -> T7 Sv3+ W13 -> T9 Sv3+ W13
Rhino: AV11 -> AV11 HP3 -> T7 Sv3+ W10 -> T9 Sv3+ W10
Raider: AV10/OT -> AV10/OT HP3 -> T5 Sv4+ W10 -> T8 Sv4+ W10

Apart from the obvious that there's a big difference between a Predator, Wave Serpent, and Rhino that 8th made all the same defensively, this doesn't really well line up with the former probabilities that would have made them equivalent.

The math to estimate the expected number of trials N to get X successes with probability P is N = X / P

In 5th Edition, before hull points were added, a vehicle was killed by:
A Penetrating Hit followed by a 33% to destroy
A Penetrating or Glancing Hit that results in a 33% chance of getting Immobilized or Weapon Destroyed, destroying all weapons and immobilized, and then scoring 1 additional hit.
Explosion/Wrecked dominates these odds by a huge margin to the point that destroying a vehicle by destroying all components+1 can be more or less ignored, resulting in an expected number of hits to kill = 1/(P_Pen*.33)

In 7th Edition, before AV went away:
A Penetrating Hit, with a 7+ on the die required to destroy with AP2 adding +1 and AP1 adding +2
A Penetrating or Glancing hit always removes a hull point, with 3 or 4 hull points for most vehicles.
Hull Point loss dominates these odds for all weapons other than Meltaguns (which are more equally likely), resulting in an expected number of hits to kill that can be generally approximated as = HP/(P_Glance)

In 8th and 10th edition:
A Wounding Hit, a Failed Save, and then Damage vs. Wounds.
expected number of hits to kill is (W/Mean_Damage)/(P_Wound*P_FailSave)


For the Lascannon vs. a Leman Russ, for example, that goes:
5th: Pen 17%, Kill 33% // Glance+ 33%, Immobilize/Weapon 33%, Components 1/5+ ---- Expected hits to kill: 18
7th: Pen 17%, Kill 17% // Glance+ 33%, Damage 1/3 ---- Expected hits to kill: 9
8th: Wound 66%, Fail Save 83%, Damage 3.5/12 ---- Expected hits to kill: 6
8th: Wound 66%, Fail Save 66%, Damage 4.5/13 ---- Expected hits to kill: 7
   
Made in eu
Frenzied Berserker Terminator




Southampton, UK

Don't see how you can make any useful comparison between the two when toughness is compared with the strength of the attack, and the save is modified by the AP of the attack, and those two characteristics are independent.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/08/13 09:59:12


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




 IwinUlose wrote:
Is there a table comparison for Toughness to armor? Is T6 equal to a certain armor in the sense of % getting through to next step. To actually making armor save?

Not really. Toughness is related to Strength and armour to AP, so the variables each deals with is different and independent. There are sometimes weapons that hit a sweet spot for dealing with certain enemy types but the variables are too numerous to make a useful table. For example, Doomstalkers have a brilliant gun for killing Gravis marines, with lots of shots, Blast, S12, AP-3 and D3 so they wound on 2s, reduce saves to 5+ at best and kill a model with each failed save. Other weapons may have better stats in one area and worse in others which massively changes their effectiveness into different targets.

That said, there's usually some correlation between S and AP. Higher Strength weapons usually have better AP than lower Strength ones. It's an area I think GW could massively improve. I'd like to see much more variance in the number of shots, S, AP and Damage of weapons. At the moment S, AP and D all tend to go up fairly linearly and the number of attacks tends to drop as the other numbers go up. There's a lot of room for more variety if GW would actually think about it.
   
 
Forum Index » 40K General Discussion
Go to: