This thread is concerning the topic of making vehicles a more balanced and viable choice in the era of 6th Edition and hull points using armour saves.
Now, I think this has been touched upon in other threads, and forgive me if another thread has exactly the same topic (but I couldn't find one).
The basic idea is that currently vehicles, in particular any vehicle that doesn't hover or fly, are too vulnerable to glancing hits and massed S6 and 7 shooting, as well as higher S anti-tank shooting being mostly invalidated. I have seen a couple of ideas revolving around cover saves or invulnerable saves for vehicles, but I personally feel that both of these ideas are both unfluffy and not balanced on the tabletop. I have a couple of ideas of implementing armour saves on vehicles, and was wondering what other players thought of these, or even if anyone has tried any of these ideas themselves already. In all examples, I don't think flyers and skimmers needed a benefit, as they already have their own innate defenses based on speed rather than armour plating. (rules are in italics, thoughts yellow)
Idea 1: All vehicles have a 3+ Armour save. Flyers and skimmers (unless they also have the heavy vehicle type) do not benefit from this save, due to their lightweight frames.
This is the simplest idea to implement, and means that high-powered anti-tank weapons are just as effective vs vehicles as they were before, but glancing a vehicle to death becomes suitably difficult, but not impossible. Also makes very light vehicles like ork trukks more viable again, as they may actually survive the first round of shooting. The issues with this are that certain very high strength weapons, like Manticore Storm Eagle missiles, become almost totally invalidated against every vehicle except skimmers.
Idea 2: The same as Idea 1, except the armour saves only apply to glancing hits.
I prefer this idea, as autocannons, Storm Eagle missiles and other Ap4 or worse weapons still have a decent chance of killing a vehicle, but only with penetrating hits, with glances requiring larger numbers to take down vehicles, yet is still simple to implement.
Idea 3: The armour save is proportional to the S of the weapon hitting the vehicle (and may still be negated by AP as per usual):
S10: 6+ save
S9: 5+ save
S8: 4+ save
S7: 3+ save
S6-1: 2+ save
This is more complicated, and hits S4, 5 and 6 shooting a bit too hard.
Idea 4: Same as above, but the save never gets better than a flat 3+ save, so:
S10: 6+ save
S9: 5+ save
S8: 4+ save
S7: 3+ save
S6-1: 3+ save
This is a little fairer on the low end of vehicle shooting, in my opinion at least, and is my second favourite way of implementing the armour saves.
There are other tweaks to these basic rules ideas that I have thought of, such as a negative modifier to saves against rear armour for example, but they all make the rules more complex still, and I want to keep such an addition to the rules fairly simple. So, comments and criticisms everyone
