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Which one do you all think was more fair and balanced, and or better representative of how a vehicles should be treated?

IMO the old rules were better, Vehicles on the old rules were a lot more difficult to deal with and felt like an actual tank vs now where even a Land Raider feels like a paper bag on treds. The only way you could really deal with it was if you had a dedicated unit as an armor killer.

Now you can just plink a tank to death, vs back in the day so to say, you could fire light weapons at it for days and not do damage.

What does dakka think?

Again, this is not which one you like more, but rather which one seemed more fair.

post your reasoning if you would.

Depends on which edition of rules you're refering to.

I personally prefered 4th edition rules, where glances still had a chance to destroy a vehicle without having to whittle down anything, but also wasn't so effective that penetrating hits could be disregarded entirely. 5th edition made vehicles a little too tough by making glancing hits near-worthless other than disabling a weapon or treads.

Can you fix the poll to clarify what you're talking about?

We've got four editions of 'old rules' to draw from.

Boths rules suck. The old vehicles rules left everything to chance. I can't tell you how many times I shot all my anti tanks guns at a crappy transport only for it to not die because I just couldn't roll a wrecked or explode result. It's not fun when your best game plan for dealing with a unit is "hope I get lucky".

New rules are technically better but not really. Hull Points normalized vehicle survivabilty but GW failed to adjust vehicles accordingly. For comparison MCs generally have 4-5 wounds with 3+ armor while vehicles generally only have 2-3 wounds with no saves at all. All GW had to do was give vehicles more HPs on average and/or give them a save they can take like MCs do and they'd be great but alas GW is bad at making rules.

Changing to clarify, 4th edition rules is what im referring to


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CrownAxe wrote:
Boths rules suck. The old vehicles rules left everything to chance. I can't tell you how many times I shot all my anti tanks guns at a crappy transport only for it to not die because I just couldn't roll a wrecked or explode result. It's not fun when your best game plan for dealing with a unit is "hope I get lucky".

New rules are technically better but not really. Hull Points normalized vehicle survivabilty but GW failed to adjust vehicles accordingly. For comparison MCs generally have 4-5 wounds with 3+ armor while vehicles generally only have 2-3 wounds with no saves at all. All GW had to do was give vehicles more HPs on average and/or give them a save they can take like MCs do and they'd be great but alas GW is bad at making rules.

This is how i feel about it really. I just find something really wrong with the fact that even a land raider, which is meant to be like THE heavy tank for SM, can just get plinked down by regular infantry. kinda weird.

I mostly like the vehicle rules in 6th/7th edition. they just need to give vehicles more HP. to a point where you're proably better off using high powered anti tank weapons for a one shot.

BrianDavion wrote:
I mostly like the vehicle rules in 6th/7th edition. they just need to give vehicles more HP. to a point where you're proably better off using high powered anti tank weapons for a one shot.

Over all i think that would be a really good move, would you say doubling current HPs of vehicles would be better?

The whole topic that brought this up for me was i watch a guy the other day get tabled by tau on turn one. His knight got plinked down by a bunch of low (For Tau) AP weapons, then when i start looking at other tanks they just end up seeming like wet paper bags for the most part.

I liked the old rules better. I did use Bright Lances on my tanks and stuff back then and would bring a falcon or 2 to help pop tanks. These days I can just bring scatter lasers and bring down vehicles through sheer volume of fire. I prefer the more random tables to try and explode vehicles because you couldn't just math hammer a vehicle away.

 Xerics wrote:
I liked the old rules better. I did use Bright Lances on my tanks and stuff back then and would bring a falcon or 2 to help pop tanks. These days I can just bring scatter lasers and bring down vehicles through sheer volume of fire. I prefer the more random tables to try and explode vehicles because you couldn't just math hammer a vehicle away.

Even from a fluff stand point it bothers me, i know the game does not equate to fluff but damn, i dont think they would be fielding all those LR if they just die in turn one.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Which one do you all think was more fair and balanced, and or better representative of how a vehicles should be treated?

IMO the old rules were better, Vehicles on the old rules were a lot more difficult to deal with and felt like an actual tank vs now where even a Land Raider feels like a paper bag on treds. The only way you could really deal with it was if you had a dedicated unit as an armor killer.

Now you can just plink a tank to death, vs back in the day so to say, you could fire light weapons at it for days and not do damage.

What does dakka think?

Again, this is not which one you like more, but rather which one seemed more fair.

post your reasoning if you would.

Actually, 4th ed vehicles were pretty fragile, as it was possible to kill a vehicle with a single glance.
They were a bit tougher, but only because the destruction rules were reliant on RNG, rather than grinding the vehicle down with glances.
That said, pens had a much higher chance of destroying the vehicle, requiring a 4+ as opposed to a 6+, and as such anti-tank weapons were much more valuble compared to now.

It was in 5th ed that you had durable vehicles.

I dislike the concept of HPs because it turns vehicles into an armorless version of a MC with far more restrictions and drawbacks. On top of the chance to lose a HP to any attack, there's also a chance you might lose an arm, a leg or get shaken by the attack. Plus there's no restrictions on which weapons you can fire based on your movement for a MC. Vehicles in 4th edition at least were different enough from normal wound-based models to justify all the weird rules.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I mostly like the vehicle rules in 6th/7th edition. they just need to give vehicles more HP. to a point where you're proably better off using high powered anti tank weapons for a one shot.

Over all i think that would be a really good move, would you say doubling current HPs of vehicles would be better?

The whole topic that brought this up for me was i watch a guy the other day get tabled by tau on turn one. His knight got plinked down by a bunch of low (For Tau) AP weapons, then when i start looking at other tanks they just end up seeming like wet paper bags for the most part.

No, that would not fix the problem. You know what the solution to more HP is? Spam more glances.
Vehicles need saves, or the 4th ed penetration tables back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CrownAxe wrote:
Boths rules suck. The old vehicles rules left everything to chance. I can't tell you how many times I shot all my anti tanks guns at a crappy transport only for it to not die because I just couldn't roll a wrecked or explode result. It's not fun when your best game plan for dealing with a unit is "hope I get lucky".

Its 50%. Those are good odds. I'm sure you destroyed more vehicles than you failed to destroy. Its just that you remember failures more than the successes. Its a type of cognitive bias.

Thanks for the input Mecha!

Im seeing that 4th seems to be more a good middle ground between the current HP system, and the much stronger 5th ed rules.

I admit i dont have the 5th sitting in front of me, i have an old 4th and a copy of the 7th edition rules right now. So cant make to many comments on the 5th other then what i have been told.

I dont mind if even off a glace it could explode, because to me thats what makes games like this, and even in DnD, i like that small chance to do something amazing.

But getting widdled down by small arms fire seems rather...annoying to me.

I preferred 4ths Vehicle rules, as you "glanced vehicles to death" by stacking problems on them. So youd destroy all its weapons then immobilize it, then its wrecked, it was nice and simple.

I honestly feel if you removed the Wreck and Explodes result from the Glance chart and maybe retool the Pen chart a bit (anti tank weapons have gotten better over the editions) the old 4th ed rules would work fine in the current environment.

I say bring back 5th edition vehicle rules and tables and drop hull points completely. Give AP2 weapons +1 on chart and AP1 weapons +2 on chart. This would make anti vehicle weapons have a higher chance to explode them.

 Xerics wrote:
I say bring back 5th edition vehicle rules and tables and drop hull points completely. Give AP2 weapons +1 on chart and AP1 weapons +2 on chart. This would make anti vehicle weapons have a higher chance to explode them.

out of curiosity, with the sheer amount of AP 2 weapons and D weapons we see on the board now compared to the 4th, would simply bringing back the 5th rules work?

My understanding is that 5th was a little to strong, 4th was just right at the time, so with the current amount of AP2, 5th should be just about right, no?

 Grimmor wrote:
I preferred 4ths Vehicle rules, as you "glanced vehicles to death" by stacking problems on them. So youd destroy all its weapons then immobilize it, then its wrecked, it was nice and simple.

I honestly feel if you removed the Wreck and Explodes result from the Glance chart and maybe retool the Pen chart a bit (anti tank weapons have gotten better over the editions) the old 4th ed rules would work fine in the current environment.

That was 5th ed. In fifth glances had to cripple the vehicle before killing it.
In 4th there was a 1/6 chance for the vehicle to die.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Grimmor wrote:
I preferred 4ths Vehicle rules, as you "glanced vehicles to death" by stacking problems on them. So youd destroy all its weapons then immobilize it, then its wrecked, it was nice and simple.

I honestly feel if you removed the Wreck and Explodes result from the Glance chart and maybe retool the Pen chart a bit (anti tank weapons have gotten better over the editions) the old 4th ed rules would work fine in the current environment.

That was 5th ed. In fifth glances had to cripple the vehicle before killing it.
In 4th there was a 1/6 chance for the vehicle to die.

For reference, i can post the 4th ed rules of Vehicles in my OP, but before i do, is posting old rules that are obsolete kosher with the rules here? or can we still not?

5th would be fine with the proliferation of AP2 guns if they gave those weapons + on the penetration chart. you needed a 6 to wreck and a 7 to explode on those charts if I remember correctly with a glance getting a -2 on the chart and open topped giving you a +1 on your roll. It has been a few years and if I was home instead of Jordan I would pull out my old rulebooks... I keep them around for good times sake.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Grimmor wrote:
I preferred 4ths Vehicle rules, as you "glanced vehicles to death" by stacking problems on them. So youd destroy all its weapons then immobilize it, then its wrecked, it was nice and simple.

I honestly feel if you removed the Wreck and Explodes result from the Glance chart and maybe retool the Pen chart a bit (anti tank weapons have gotten better over the editions) the old 4th ed rules would work fine in the current environment.

That was 5th ed. In fifth glances had to cripple the vehicle before killing it.
In 4th there was a 1/6 chance for the vehicle to die.

True, but IIRC glances and pens didnt have 2 different charts in 5th and pens weren't worth much of anything. I could be wrong as its been awhile and i've tried to forget the mess that was 5th.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
[
For reference, i can post the 4th ed rules of Vehicles in my OP, but before i do, is posting old rules that are obsolete kosher with the rules here? or can we still not?

It should be ok, as they are almost 10 years OOP

 Xerics wrote:
5th would be fine with the proliferation of AP2 guns if they gave those weapons + on the penetration chart. you needed a 6 to wreck and a 7 to explode on those charts if I remember correctly with a glance getting a -2 on the chart and open topped giving you a +1 on your roll. It has been a few years and if I was home instead of Jordan I would pull out my old rulebooks... I keep them around for good times sake.

Yeah, -2 for glances.
I remember hating 5th ed because of that, as prior to the update the only way necrons could kill vehicles at range was by glancing it, and their true Anti-tank options were expensive.
-2 would hurt necrons again, but there are a few more good anti-tank options now so it might be better than it was before.

Hrm, both 4E rules and 7E rules were pretty bad for vehicles. One will note you pretty much never saw non-skimmer transports used in 4E, and about the only non-skimmer tanks you'd see were AV13/14.

5E was the only edition where vehicles were pretty solid all around and for every army, the only issue being the super cheap transports that only cared about being killed or immobilized and could ignore everything else. One will note that nobody though Land Raiders, Hammerheads, Russ tanks, Predators, Hellhounds, Dreadnoughts, Fire Prisms, Wave Serpents, Ravagers, etc were "too hard to kill" in 5E, particularly when glances would silence battle tanks for a turn.

The 4E rules just had too punitive a damage table, where a single bolt pistol to the ass end of a Leman Russ could kill it (glancing 6's killed in 4E) and a penetrating hit killed on a 4+ and the other results inflicted a Stunned result on top of immobilizing or destroying a weapon, and transports were simply nonfunctional (lol your transport got penetrated by one shot, auto-disembark and take a pinning test!). The exception to this was Skimmers, who could only ever be glanced and usually had wargear that mitigated or removed the in-built downsides for skimmers, and that's how the Invinci-Falcon was born.

The problem with the post 5E era is Hull Points turning vehicles into MC's that lack saves and still have the overlapping damage table kill mechanic.

So, I would go with neither and vote 5E. Ideally I'd love to see a return to 5E with the 7E's effects on passengers (the big issue with 5E that needed addressing) and snapshots. That would probably balance out fairly well.

 Grimmor wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Grimmor wrote:
I preferred 4ths Vehicle rules, as you "glanced vehicles to death" by stacking problems on them. So youd destroy all its weapons then immobilize it, then its wrecked, it was nice and simple.

I honestly feel if you removed the Wreck and Explodes result from the Glance chart and maybe retool the Pen chart a bit (anti tank weapons have gotten better over the editions) the old 4th ed rules would work fine in the current environment.

That was 5th ed. In fifth glances had to cripple the vehicle before killing it.
In 4th there was a 1/6 chance for the vehicle to die.

True, but IIRC glances and pens didnt have 2 different charts in 5th and pens weren't worth much of anything. I could be wrong as its been awhile and i've tried to forget the mess that was 5th.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
[
For reference, i can post the 4th ed rules of Vehicles in my OP, but before i do, is posting old rules that are obsolete kosher with the rules here? or can we still not?

It should be ok, as they are almost 10 years OOP

Fair enough 4th

Glancing:
1-2 Crew Shaken
3 Crew Stunned
4 Armament destroyed
5 immobilized
6 destroyed

pen
1 stun
2 weaons destroyed and crew stun
3 immobilized crew stun
4 5 destroyed
6 explodes

5th
d6
1 shaken
2 crew stun
3 weapon destroyed
4 immobilized
5 destroyed
6 explodes

+1 for AP1
+1 for open topped
-1 AP-
-2 for glanceing

5th seemed a whole lot more simple, just one table to go off of.


Also changing poll so please update your choice if you would.

4th vehicle rules were great at the time. For the first time they made tanks mobile without sacrificing firepower and they were pretty tough. But that was back when a tournament sized army would pack maaaybe 10 guns capable of even glancing a MBT. A 6-man Marine squad with one lascannon and one plasma gun was the height of douchebaggy min/maxing at the time.

Nowadays tanks aren't relevant at all. Good anti-tank weapons are handed out like candy and newer models put old MBTs to shame in regards to mobile firepower. GW just keep gluing ever more guns to ever smaller and cheaper models as time goes on.

I'm not saying 4th was perfect by any stretch, but that system I felt was the best in terms of dealing with vehicles. If they were to bring it back, then they would seriously need to rework the glance table and the pen table. Forcing both to share one table like they did in 5th is a sub-optimal solution at best.

Imo I think that instead of auto-wrecking on a roll of a 6, you instead got 2 rerolls on the table discounting any new 6's. That way you can break more stuff with a good glancing roll, (and possibly even cripple weaker tanks on further good rolls) but it wouldn't completely destroy the vehicle on a 6.

Hmmm, with all the changes to weapons that have happened the 5th ed rules could work, though id change the bonuses around and ditch the Wrecked result and instead give Shaken 1-2. So it would look like this:

5th
d6
1-2 shaken
3 crew stun
4 weapon destroyed
5 immobilized
6 explodes

+2 for AP1
+1 for AP 2
+1 for open topped
-1 AP-
-1 for glancing

I lowered the penalty for glancing as 5th ed was brutal for the Crons. Add in 7ths rules for passengers and this should stop the Super Rhino Rush bull that was going on in 5th.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I'm not saying 4th was perfect by any stretch, but that system I felt was the best in terms of dealing with vehicles. If they were to bring it back, then they would seriously need to rework the glance table and the pen table. Forcing both to share one table like they did in 5th is a sub-optimal solution at best.

Imo I think that instead of auto-wrecking on a roll of a 6, you instead got 2 rerolls on the table discounting any new 6's. That way you can break more stuff with a good glancing roll, (and possibly even cripple weaker tanks on further good rolls) but it wouldn't completely destroy the vehicle on a 6.

This could also work

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I'm not saying 4th was perfect by any stretch, but that system I felt was the best in terms of dealing with vehicles. If they were to bring it back, then they would seriously need to rework the glance table and the pen table. Forcing both to share one table like they did in 5th is a sub-optimal solution at best.

4E essentially had one table with a modifier, they just added Stunned to every non-kill result on pens and an extra "annihilated" result that auto-killed passengers if you got an penetrating 6 with Ordnance.

 Grimmor wrote:
Hmmm, with all the changes to weapons that have happened the 5th ed rules could work, though id change the bonuses around and ditch the Wrecked result and instead give Shaken 1-2. So it would look like this:

5th
d6
1-2 shaken
3 crew stun
4 weapon destroyed
5 immobilized
6 explodes

+2 for AP1
+1 for AP 2
+1 for open topped
-1 AP-
-1 for glancing

I lowered the penalty for glancing as 5th ed was brutal for the Crons. Add in 7ths rules for passengers and this should stop the Super Rhino Rush bull that was going on in 5th.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I'm not saying 4th was perfect by any stretch, but that system I felt was the best in terms of dealing with vehicles. If they were to bring it back, then they would seriously need to rework the glance table and the pen table. Forcing both to share one table like they did in 5th is a sub-optimal solution at best.

Imo I think that instead of auto-wrecking on a roll of a 6, you instead got 2 rerolls on the table discounting any new 6's. That way you can break more stuff with a good glancing roll, (and possibly even cripple weaker tanks on further good rolls) but it wouldn't completely destroy the vehicle on a 6.

This could also work

Do we really need meltaguns popping tanks on 3's? Or Fire Dragons popping tanks on 2's (and open topped tanks automatically)?

Having two different tables, even if they're largely alike, still makes balancing pens and glances easier, as if you just used one table with a modifier you'd always have to consider where that modifier goes and which order the results go in.

My proposed "take 2 rerolls on the Glance Table" result wouldn't work if both shared one table. Not to mention taking away one of the results for all types of hits, but it also results in more rules needing clarification when you get a Penentrating hit landing on that result, which then results in a vehicle exploding twice from a single shot.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I mostly like the vehicle rules in 6th/7th edition. they just need to give vehicles more HP. to a point where you're proably better off using high powered anti tank weapons for a one shot.

Over all i think that would be a really good move, would you say doubling current HPs of vehicles would be better?

The whole topic that brought this up for me was i watch a guy the other day get tabled by tau on turn one. His knight got plinked down by a bunch of low (For Tau) AP weapons, then when i start looking at other tanks they just end up seeming like wet paper bags for the most part.

No, that would not fix the problem. You know what the solution to more HP is? Spam more glances.
Vehicles need saves, or the 4th ed penetration tables back.

.

yeah I was thinking that... another solution might be just to make glances NOT deal HPs. you need a solid penatrating hit to actually deal HP damage. suddenly glances are good for damaing treads, knocking off a pintal weapon, but to actually kill the tank you need a weapon that can punch through the armor. this might work pretty well as I do agree I didn't care for how random vehicle kills in 5th ed felt

Ultimately, if HP's are going to be retained, vehicles are going to need saves, because they're effectively being given "wounds".

Having two overlapping kill mechanics is both unnecessary and ugly rules. They really need to have either a damage table, or wounds/saves, but not both.

The 5E damage table could feel random, but essentially it acted as a "save" of sorts, you could look at 5E vehicles as W1 units with a "save" where if they got something other than a "destroyed/explodes" result (a failed "save"), they were disabled or crippled in some way instead but remained alive. Really not any more random than a Marine with a 3+ save in that regard.