Ideas For Handling Vehicles

V. Lobachev. Tanks of the 7th Guard tank brigade in Berlin

SandWyrm here. We've talked about vehicles off and on before. But CaulynDarr has brought up some points and ideas that I think should be discussed.

CaulynDarr Wrote:

"I was thinking about all the vehicles in 40K including all the forgeworld and 3rd party stuff.  Not to mention models from all sorts of abandoned game systems like AT-43.  It wouldn't be easy to include codex entries for each of these options.  I don't think we want to maintain a strait 1 to 1 mapping of 40K units to M42 units anyway. 

We could include a point-buy vehicle design system, but those are really hard to pull off well.  Someone always finds a way to break it, and you end up with armor 14 land speeders with 8 gatling long barreled las-cannons.    

I was thinking we create a semi-customizable tech tree for building vehicles in a codex.   I've got a rough example attached(If it doesn't show up right in the doc, one of those transport capacities is 10 and the other is 5).  Basically you start with  a base hull, and then you can follow arrows to all the available upgrades for that hull type.  Taking certain upgrades will mean you can't take others.  This gives a little flexibility, but keeps people from abusing the system. 

Thoughts?"

Sandwyrm's Reply:

I haven't really put a lot of thought into vehicles yet, aside from how to handle armor/damage. But I'm inclined to say that we would create vehicles for the rules that make sense in terms of roles/tactics and not simply copy GW's vehicle model range 1:1. But wherever we can, we should makes sure that the vehicles we do create can be meaningfully proxied with not only GW models, but those of other manufacturers as well.

Here's an example: Say we need a light tank with weapon X. Well, we can make it similar to a Hellhound, or we can just use someone else's kit, like this one:

6x6 Combat Vehicle, ©2011 Secret Weapon Miniatures

Which has most every weapon option that one could think of.

So we'd have one unit price for tracked, one for wheeled, and some different weapon options for the turret. But we don't make it completely build-your-own. You can't add or subtract transport capacity, for instance.

Gorgon Armored Assault Transport, ©Forge World

By the same token, if Forge World sells something useful rules-wise, like the Platoon Carrier above, we can go with it. Even if it doesn't appear in the main 40K rules. Of course we can let folks convert their own if they don't want to pay FW prices. But the FW model becomes the standard by which those conversions are judged.

Lascannon Razorback, ©Forge World

And even if we go with a 40K standby like Razorbacks, we don't have to give them the same rules. Think it should have full transport capacity? Sure. But we can make the turret armor a lot thinner too. :)

Super-Heavy Walker, ©Chapterhouse Studios

And of course I want more cool walkers in the game. Whether they come from 40K, Dust Warfare, or wherever.

Thoughts?