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Fisrst let me apologize for the length of this post,

Second let me say that not everything here is fully play tested, but all of it has had some table time.  I am sure there are holes, but I hope that the ensuing flame war will help me clean some up.

After each section I will add some comments, in blue.

Movement:

 

            Non-vehicle

o       Units continue to move 6”

o       Units that are slowed (by difficult terrain, ‘slow and purposeful, or by being suppressed [see below]) move a number of inches equal to the best of 2d6

o       Units that are slowed for multiple reasons, lose a die from the roll for each additional cause.  Example a slow and purposeful unit that is moving through difficult terrain will move only 1d6”

o       Units that are slowed sufficiently to have no dice are considered locked in place.

o       New movement option:  Repositioning, a unit may reposition itself by moving no more than half of the remaining models no more than half of the unit’ allowed movement.  After moving the unit can make a leadership test, if it passes, the unit is not considered to have moved for shooting purposes.

o       New movement option:  Sprinting, a unit may sprint in the movement phase, and move an additional 1d6”.  The unit cannot benefit from better than a 6+ cover save from terrain until its next turn.  The unit cannot shoot during the shooting phase.  Units with fleet gain a full 6” of movement, but cannot move again during the shooting phase.

 

       The basic premise here is to open up the range of movement, and to clarify a couple of odd situations that come up.  How fast does a slow and purposeful unit move through difficult terrain?  As for repositioning, it is a chance to get rid of the rather illogical rule that if any 1 guy moves they all are considered moving, it may make sense in a 5 man devastator squad, but for a 50 man conscripts squad, it doesn't.  Finally sprinting allows all armies to move a bit faster, and makes sure that certain armies (read gene stealers) are absolutely scary fast, and the cost of commiting during the shooting phase.

 

Vehicle:

o       Vehicles either move as non-vehicles (walkers) or move 12” or 24” for standard or fast vehicles.

o       When slowed by damage or terrain a vehicle rolls either 3d6 taking the best two for standard, or 3d6 taking the best two +12 inches for fast.

o       A vehicle slowed for multiple reasons must discard the highest die from the roll for determining distance.

o       If any two dice come up matching, the vehicle suffers a movement hit [see below]

 

Most of this grows out of the new vehicle system presented below, and to making the vehicle system less "different" from non vehicles. 

Shooting:

            Non-vehicle

o       Heavy weapons may fire when the unit moves, but have their number of shots reduced by 1 and the range reduced to half.

Hurray for the machine gunner running forward, firing willy-nilly from the hip

Vehicle

o       Vehicles no longer have an armor value, instead they have multiple toughness values (front side rear) equal to their current armor minus four

o       Vehicle arc with a toughness of 6 gain a 6+ cover save, toughness 7 is a 5+, 8 is 4+, 9 is 3+, and 10 is 2+.

o       Vehicles with an armor save of 3+ also gain a 6+ invulnerable save, while vehicles with a 2+ also gain a 5+ invulnerable save.

o       The above saves are simply guidelines for translation, and a lot of testing will be necessary to balance them.

o       Note: sniping weapons have no special effect on vehicles.  Lance weapons never need higher than a 4+ to wound a vehicle, and melta weapons under half range do 2 wounds (and roll twice for damage)

o       Normal vehicles begin play with 2 wounds; tanks begin with 3.

o       Whenever a vehicle is successfully wounded roll on the following table:

1.      Crew Shaken – moves as slowed and cannot shoot, or remain stationary and shoot as moving

2.      Crew Shaken

3.      Crew Stunned – Cannot move or shoot this turn

4.      Movement hit – The vehicles is permanently slowed, or if already slowed is immobilized, and if immobilized suffers from Weapon Destroyed

5.      Weapon Destroyed – the attacker chooses one weapon system to remove, if all S4 or better weapons are removed the tank suffers a movement hit instead

6.      Additional Damage: The vehicle takes another wound, roll again.

 

o       When the vehicle is reduced to 0 wounds, roll catastrophic damage: 1-3 destroyed in place, 4-5 explodes 1d6” wounds on a 4+, 6 explodes 6” wounds on a 4+ rending.

o       Ordnance adds 1 to the die roll on each table, and treats 7 as 6

Okay, so this is the big change.  I have heard most of the arguments before.  Making tanks too much like monstrous creatures, or liking the lucky 1 in 36 opening shot that hulls a land raider on the first turn [that is a krak missile that nees a 6 to glance and a 6 to destroy] but realistically the goal is to pull vehicles closer into the main stream.  Personally I advocate making a similar group of changes to monstrous creatures...

 

Assault:

Non-vehicle

o       The double strength go last, and power weapon special abilities are separated, so that either can be denied.  Example a power fist could be used as either a power weapon or a power fist in a turn, but not both.  Additional abilities (such as the thunder hammer) are always attached to the double strength go last function.

Okay, so this is just me wanting a terminator to understand that even a "love tap" from a power fist is deadly, and not always have to dedicate himself to getting a death grip on every target.

Vehicle

o       Vehicles (non-walkers) are assigned a strength value equal to half their current frontal armor (rounded down).

o       During the movement phase a vehicle may move into contact with an enemy unit, and declare a ram.  Moving into a non-vehicle unit is resolved exactly as a tank shock is currently; tank shock rules are replaced.

o       Alternatively, the tank may attempt to defend itself when assaulted.

o       The vehicle gains 1 attack against each model in base-to-base contact, or each model moved aside.  If a rammed unit chooses to stand and fight, the vehicle hits automatically, otherwise attacks will only hit on a 5+, against other vehicles, the to hit number is determined by target speed as normal.

o       Vehicle rams are simultaneous to the targets (possible) counter attack, and vehicle defensive attacks are initiative 1.

o       Vehicle attacks are rending; tank attacks are power weapons.

o       Vehicles that moved 6” or more during a ram add 1 to their strength.

o       When one vehicle rams another, the target vehicle will automatically get one attack back, which will automatically hit, and will have a +2S.

Ugh, even as I wrote it I know this would be hard to read.  Basically a tank gets an attack against everything it hits, or everything that comes to close.  In the end, a land raider could ram a rhino, and need a 3+ to damage it, while only risking return damage on a 6+...  This is where I think monstrous creatures should also be tacked on, the thought of a carnifex just bowling over a whole ten man squad (getting extra attacks) is appropriate

 

Morale:

            Non-Vehicle

o       Whenever a unit comes under fire it must pass a leadership test or become suppressed.  If a unit receives fire from multiple sources in one turn, they receive a –1 leadership modifier for each attacking unit over one.

o       Suppressed units are slowed [see movement]

o       Fearless units are immune to being suppressed.

o       If a unit must make a leadership test for taking 25% casualties, and passes they are automatically considered suppressed, unless they passed by rolling a 2.

o       Units that are suppressed take a –1 leadership for all morale purposes.

o       Suppressed units may recover at the beginning of their turn by passing a leadership test.  Suppressed units that received no fire from the enemy in the previous turn recover automatically.

Finally suppression fire.  The ability to deliberately try and slow some units down by shooting at them.  It makes sense, people tend to keep their head down when the bullets are a flying.  For the record, yes space marines would reover automatically from being suprressed at the beginning of their turn, so you won't slow them much.

All together the rules are designed to make 40k more fluid on the table top, and give more tactical options during a game.  Las guns against chaos marines are usually useless, but if they can be suprressed, they may not reach assault range this turn, etc.

Oh well, bash away.

First thoughts....
I get the impression that these rules would bring a fair bit of realism into games which is not always bad.
I also think that these new rules would slow down the game incredibly, even a 1vs1 1000pt battle.

However I also like the sound of a couple of your ideas, but with a twist.
There has been many a time where a squad with a single heavy weapon has suffered losses and its members are disarrayed in an unorganised formation which is no good for effective firing or from being assualted. Perhaps instead of having a rule where you can move x inch's and roll leadership to see if counts as not moved ... ... Why not simply say that all squads can consolidate 1inch in any direction which exception to heavy members and/or sergeant and count as being stationary.

This would mean that the heavies would remain where they are for shooting whilst their members can get into a better position, and because one model cannot move from its position if wanting to shoot heavy, this rule cannot be used to sneakily move your heavies closer to the enemy.

The thing bout vehicles having toughness and wounds is a great idea and covered by many poeple in the past. trouble is its implimation and making sure that its as fair as it was using armour values. A Tank IS monsterous! in my opinion.

I know you made other points but these are ones I could easily comment on.

nothing in the game should be toughness 10 with a 2+/5+ save, not even landraiders (or leman russes). these rules are ridiculous

Please take this to be my most civil way of putting this, having not played with these rules myself, but the ones for assault blow. Ramming gets the thumbs down from me - it's bad enough we have scale-distorted minis blocking los IMHO. The powerfist rule nerfs most people's idea of a tactical squad - one with a bit of shooting and a bit of assault capability - by emasculating the squad fist. If you feel people need an encouragement to take different options than assault cannons on their Terminators, then ban assault cannons. Each screws with realism and game balance WORSE than the pre-existing rules - which I might soften by adding that though I would never use them, I have never used them and thus haven't had the opportunity to see how they work out.

The shooting rules get a meh from me - frankly I'd do it the other way around and give infantry an AV,* though there doesn't seem to be anything particularly bad about your interpretation in terms of game balance.

The morale and movement rules each look interesting, however, and lack any nits large enough at which to warrant a picking IMHO. I think they would be particularly appropriate for use with the WWII 40k-based system floating around out there.

*tangentially I'd probably do it along the lines of GEQ = AV7, carapace = AV8, MEQ = AV9, MEQ biker = AV10, Terminator = AV12, proper-sized monstrous creature = AV13; a roll to penetrate a model with a W characteristic counts as a roll to wound, a glance or better inflicts a wound, didn't get as far as thinking over ID, probable points reductions or invulnerability.

First, having played with many of these rules, I haven't seen the game slow down much, a few minutes because of the extra leadership tests, but that is it.

The main advantage of suprresion is to make steel coffins, I mean rhinos and the like, useful again.  Troops in transports are immune to suppression, the tank needs to be destroyed to slow them down.  So yeah, the rhino rush is still gone in its old form, no charging on turn 2, but now troops in transports charge on turn 3, while troops on foot charge on turn 4.

As for why to not say 1" consolidation, but not leaders or heavies is because the main purpose is for heavy weapons teams to actually be allowed to move at least a little during the game.  Also, there have been a few references in the "fluff level" of the rules that say that heavy weapons can move around in a squad.  Specifically it is a justification for when a heavy weapon model is not removed  as a casualty, because somebody else picked up his kit.

I am not sure how giving the power fist the option to be used as either a power fist or a power weapon emasculates anything.  Choosing between S4 go now, S8 go later is sometimes a tough choice, other times it is a no brainer.  For example against genestealers, you are going last anyway, might as well be strength 8.  But against a squad of chaos termies who only have power weapons, going last can be devastating.

As for going all AV, instead of all T is a matter of opinion.  Historically, all the way down into most of the specialist games, GW has rrelied on the S/T combo.  The current AV system is a much simplified version of the 2nd edition system which had armor valuse ranging from 10 to 25, and a las cannon rolled 9+3d6.

Mathematically, by subtracting 4 from the armor value you get a very very close approximation of the same results.  The discrepancy comes from the fact that for T=S+2 or T=S+3 a 6+ will wound, and because a 1 never wounds.  Normally S9 weapon needs a 5 or 6 to damage an AV 14, or a S9 needs a 5 or 6 to wound T10.  S9 vs armor 10 always does damage, S9 vs T6 wounds on a 2+.

 

I have been running the numbers a lot, and I would agree that maybe a 2+/5+ is too much for a land raider with 3 wounds.  Like I said it would be a rough guideline, not a hard and fast guideline, because with all the special rules on a monolith, 2+/5+ is really appropriate.  So maybe a land raider is 2+/6+, and only a monolith 2+/5+.  On the flip side, these vehicles are now threatened by more weapons, specifically S7 weapons have a chance to wound a T10, but no chance against an AV14.  Plasma pistols anyone? 

 

As a player of most sides (I own and play all armies except orks and dark eldar, and I have opponents who represent every army) I am not trying to whine that tanks break too easy because my glorious tank armies get swatted all the time.  I am not trying to not whining that carnifxes are too hard to kill (unless someone takes three all with regen).  I am trying to bring vehicles inline with the main rules, and get rid of the last vestiges of the old and ugly vehicle system from 2nd edition.  It will make teaching the game easier, and get more people to play.

 

"I am not sure how giving the power fist the option to be used as either a power fist or a power weapon emasculates anything."

My bad. I was reading it in your original post as "either you can get S8, OR you can have a power weapon." Either I read wrong or you fixed it, either way it's moot. Still don't like ramming - Kursk was ONE battle, guy. Some sort of close-in attack for certain vehicles would have some real-life antecedents - the States had armoured bulldozers in Gulf I - in which they were used to literally bury entrenched Iraqis alive - and as far as I know the IDF still uses them for punitive expedition in the West Bank.

I also sort of prefer the all AV system because it removes the "garden hose or anti-tank missile" kind of protection - in the eloquent words of one dakkaite's sig - effect one gets from the T/SV system. Frankly, I don't have any problem with giving stuff like grenade launchers a bit of a boost while making ordinary caliber small arms completely useless against Mega-Armur and the like - try shooting an RGP1 at an Abrams - but as you note, it is a matter of opinion as distortions are inevitable either way. Streamlining it all one way or the other does get a thumbs up from me though - actually it would make representing softskinned vehicles intuitive from the codex-writer's point of view, as they'd just get T, W and SV according to the number and type of crew.

The "steel coffins" effect is probably not a bad thing - having been doing more modern and WWII gaming than sci-fi lately, BMPs, Hummers and the like actually ARE pretty useless in terms of absorbing fire - in 'nam f'rinstance, US mech inf rode on TOP of their APCs as that was actually safer than being inside them in the event of an NVA RPG striking the vehicle - so this IMHO represents a serendipitous (if i can spell) injection of pseudo-realism into the system. Why not have troops in transports be affected by suppression? If you can hear .33 slugs ricocheting off the access point, are you really going to be so willing to hop out of it?

Ahh, to clarify, the concept was to say power weapon and "double strength go last" are two seperate and stacking effects, of which you could ignore either. Kind of like a force weapon is a power weapon, and has the ability to rip out a creatures soul kicking and screaming which is optional. As opposed to it is either S8 or S4 Powerweapon, which it is now apparent to me the way you took it

Personally, as a long time 2nd ed player, i miss save mods... perhaps so many and so varied a selection of save mods was unnucessary, but save mods were better... but like i said, aside from 1s never wounding, and getting an extra chance to wound on a 6 (for T=S+3), AV and T are pretty much the same. It also makes teaching the system easier

Finally, the idea was that foot infantry could possibly be suppressed, while vehicles could not. You make a good point about having disembarking be subject to suppression though... how to add that without being to complicated...

I like the vehicle rules. The saves aren't too much IMHO, because any weapon with high strength is likely to be AP2 or AP1 anyways. So that Land Raider or Russ will only be getting its 2+ save vs Autocannons, Missile Launchers, Missile Pods etc. A Lascannon/Railgun/Plasma/Melta/Fusion/Lance will only get a 5+ invulnerable save, which I think is quite reasonable.

As for ramming, the fact that a unit can move out of the way and only get hit on a 5+ is reasonable enough protection. I would rule that skimmers only hit infantry on a 6+ though (tit for tat, really).

-> about making suppression work on transported units: just add the phrase "or that unit's transport if the unit is embarked" to the first sentence of the first point on Non-Vehicle Morale.

A further thought on the switching everything over to SV/T: why not give vehicles an LD value according to their crew such as to have a complete correlation between infantry and vehicle profiles? It seems reasonable from the point of view of fire priority checks, and under certain situations vehicles might be forced to test LD to avoid having their crew abandon them. (i.e. immobilized)

For movement options, possibly just eliminate the die rolling and have it as a flat bonus or penalty of 3" for infantry and 6" for vehicles. Fleet becomes 9", sprinting is 12", slowed is 6", and slowed three times is stuck. A fast vehicle that somehow became slowed would move 18", on a well-maintained road it would move 30".

Switching to simultaneous movement and fire resolution is another oft-touted house rule for the system.

Well a unit trying to disembark from a vehicle should use its own leadership to charge out.  It could simply be that a unit attempting to exit a vehicle which was fired on during the previous turn needs to make a leadership test (with a -1 for each additional firing unit) or be suppressed when exiting.  A more complicated alternative would be suppressing individual arcs and exit points.

I personally have always liked the random element of difficult terrain for infantry, because it limits the predictability of unpredictable elements.  So I wouldn't get rid of rolling for vehicles, although rather than using the system i proposed of die roll matching, I would go ahead and use the 1 on a d6 system used for non vehicles in dangerous terrain.  (even my Emperor inspired ideas are subject to change with enough time in an excruciator)

 

Speaking of which, I would propose using the same T/sv values i suggested earlier, but removing the invulnerable saves on everything but the monolith, which would keep the 5+.

I would also add on two new vehicle upgrades, available to certain units on certain lists, and you know who you are...  Ablative armor: +1 wound, and Reinforced armor: improved save (improves by 1, but will not improve beyond 3+ if it would get a 6+ invulnerable instead.  This way rather expensive land raiders could be dang hard to kill (T10 W4 Sv2+/6+) but would be adding on 50-100 points on top of their base cost.

I actually had a brainstorm a little while ago on this subject - why not use an AV/W system for everything? It would get rid of the "lucky shot" and the "garden hose" factors, and speed up gameplay by eliminating one set of die rolls. The standard profile for any figure in 40k would then look like:
M
WS ("-" for vehicles)
BS
S ("-" for vehicles)
AV - F/S/R (if one value is shown it applies to all)
HP - as # of crew, capped at 4 or something like that, seems silly to have vehicles be wounded hence more generic "Hit Points"
I ("-" for vehicles)
A ("-" for vehicles)
LD

ie off-duty PDF
M WS BS S AV HP I A LD
6 3 3 3 5 1 3 1 6

Genestealer
M WS BS S AV HP I A LD
9 6 - 4 8 1 6 2 10



Terminator
M WS BS S AV HP I A LD
6 4 4 8 12 1 1 2 9

edit - in line with a possible three values for typical vehicle AV, possibly three values for M would also be appropriate - startup/rough, cross-country and road, with walkers having only a single value for all three. For "startup/rough," "cross-country" and "road," read respectively "reverse/climb," "combat," and "top." Vehicles moving at road speed must pass an additional BS test to fire weapons at least - maybe even say that ordnace may not be fire from them at all. Moving at your startup speed when you could be using your road speed counts you as stationary, moving at your combat speed when you could be moving at your road speed or moving at your startup speed when you could be using your . Skimmers can always opt to move at road speed regardless of if there is a road.

Russ
M           WS BS S      AV           HP I A LD
6/12/18   -     3   - 14/12/10      4  -  - 7

Trukk

M           WS BS S AV HP I A LD
9/18/36   -     2   - 10  2  -   - 7

Trakk

M           WS BS S AV HP I A LD
12/21/27  -    2   - 10  2   -  - 7

Vyper

M           WS BS S AV HP I A LD
18/27/36  -    3   - 10  2   -  -  7

Landspeeder

M           WS BS S AV HP I A LD
12/27/36  -    4   - 10  2   -  -  8

 

and for ID in an AV system - penetrating hits inflict an additional hit point for every full multiple of three by which they excede the target AV. So say a multi-melta bike shoots at a Trukk and hits. The bike rolls snake eyes and one Ork buys it. The next turn, the bike repositions itself to shoot at a captured Land Raider. It hits and rolls box cars. 8 + 12 =20, greater than 14 by 6, so the tank suffers three wounds - one for being glanced, and two for having had its armour beaten by six. (one wound per beating it by three each time)

It took me a while to get back to this, so sorry.

It looks like you are removing a die roll from the process, specifically lumping saves into AV.  The big problem with doing that is it is going to really change probability curves.  Instead of 216 combinations, you get 36. 

Of course, not all 216 combinations really exist now, if you roll a 1 to hit, you don't proceed to roll to wound, or save...

I would have to do a lot more math than I care to to determine if you can keep the same effectiv probability while eliminating a die roll.

The little problem is that people like saves.  They like having a chance to protect themselves, take that die roll away from them and they get skittish.

The AVs DO actually make AP-fire a fair bit more effective - ever-maligned S3 weapons would hurt MEQs 1/6 instead of 1/18 of the time and GEQs 1/2 instead of 1/3 the time, successful AT hits on infantry will annihilate a single enemy. This will screw with some points balances - the costs of a Starcannon and a Scatter Laser would have to be reversed considering the former would become just a half-sized version of the latter, for instance. Template weapons would get nerfed somewhat thanks to the 50% strength reduction for targets with an AV not under the center - so while the humble human infantry of the Imperial Guard would be three times as lethal against power armoured superhumans, their artillery would be about half as effective. (A note on those HP values - AV14 vehicles like the Russ should probably get 6 HP in retrospect - so in lieu of the lucky 1/36 shot, they can be brought down by 6 x 1/6 shots.)

The real trick would be finding a way of rolling the 2D6 to hit/to pierce armour roll into a single die roll - in that case, it would probably have to become a D20 ruleset. You could start by finding the % chance rounded to the nearest 5% for the odds of each individual figure to inflict a casualty on any other individual figure - so an IG would need a 20 to wound a Space Marine, or a 12+ if he were armed with a plasma gun or missile launcher, incidentally roughly the same probability of a Space Marine with a boltgun has of killing him in return. The thing is that with any streamlining, you lose probability. Switching to all-W away from the vehicle damage chart is an enormous loss of probability. Using a D20 value might preserve the basic odds on whatever case-by-case set of examples you base it on, but to have a workable system built around it would probably remove probabilities as well, just as each incidence of a lower number of variables would expotenentially decrease the number of options. (pardon the less than exact nature of that statement)

You've a point about die rolling and typical 40k player psychology. The thing is, ANY streamlining at all is going to remove die rolls and therefore alter probabilities. The question is, in a BETTER 40k, are we still rolling dozens of dice for one turn of shooting? 40k is based purely in fiction, and fluff ought to be malleable to accomodate game balance. Those guys relying on limited AT to cover heavier infantry armies would probably get a bit skittish having their chance to take out a tank in one shot taken away from them too. Almost any step away from the RAW and you're playing a different game as far as a list writer or competitive player is concerned. A more detailed and exhaustive set of probable effects might be a reasonable price to pay for a more scenario - and maybe more tactics-focused - game, as opposed to one with its emphasis on game preparation, army selection, exhaustive knowledge of gimmicks and the quantity of eight-millimeter D6s you can squeeze into one hand.