Immersion, or not, in 40K from 8th Edition

[Semper Fortis]

I've lived through a fair few edition changes and often times I've been more an observer than a player. I've noticed that players tend to have varying degrees of immersive experience. And the more immersion the player experiences, the more the edition change tends to temporarily disrupt that immersion.

 

Temporarily is the key word. While it may seem a huge issue that vehicles will soon have wounds, it is truly just a matter of semantics. It won't make your tanks grow hair and start to bark. I guarantee that no real life tanker would think the term hull point represented the reality of taking a round. So the chart says wound, think hull point. Learn the new terminology, translate to that most comfortable to you. Soon it will be second nature.

 

What the heck, give the new edition a try. You may even find that once you're accustomed to the new terms and streamlined rules you might be even more immersed. Hey, it could happen.

[JeffTibbetts]

I've gotten the all-clear to post this:

 

http://chapterapproved.com/podcast/8th-edition-warhammer-40k/

 

I finished up my podcast episode that takes a little bit of a different view of the changes coming to 8th Edition. I think you'll find it's very appropriate to the conversation in this thread. 

 

I like to keep my episodes around a half-hour and this one is no exception. Take a listen and let me know if you have any feedback at all. 

[Valerian]

Tibbs, I listened to the podcast last night. Well done. You nailed it.

[Damo1701]

I've gotten the all-clear to post this:

 

http://chapterapproved.com/podcast/8th-edition-warhammer-40k/

 

I finished up my podcast episode that takes a little bit of a different view of the changes coming to 8th Edition. I think you'll find it's very appropriate to the conversation in this thread. 

 

I like to keep my episodes around a half-hour and this one is no exception. Take a listen and let me know if you have any feedback at all. 

 

Currently listening to the Podcast, and, much respect to you for doing it.

 

While I understand what you are saying in the podcast, a lot of it sounds like trying to create a narrative to replace the one that was taken away by the changes.

 

The everything hurts everything?  Totally uncinematic, as you never see a handgun completely wreck a tank, the rounds literally bounce off them.  

 

Large models losing viability in a totally generic way, that really takes zero account of what has actually been happening on the battlefield.

 

Vehicles becoming creatures and immune to exploding when hit with anti-tank weaponry, which is designed to cause catastrophic damage in as shorter time as possible.  

 

People are complaining at how long games take?  They'll take even longer if you literally have to whittle down every vehicle and creature without the opportunity to hit the vital spot for an instant kill.

 

Battle-shock.  Totally unrealistic, it doesn't represent all armies at all.  A tactical withdrawal is just that, pulling back, regrouping, and going again.  Otherwise, it's just marines dying because a mate or two keeled over or got shot to bits.

 

Basically, trying to justify the changes by changing the fluff to suit the rules, rather than the rules to suit the fluff, which is what happened to AoS.

 

Sure, some things in 7th edition didn't make sense, like the proliferation of machines that should have been vehicles, however, rather than fixing that, they went the opposite way.  However, much more in Nu40k requires a change to the fluff to explain, and that is a slippery slope towards grand, sweeping changes that begin to affect the setting.

 

There is something that I would like to discuss relating to both rule sets (7th and 8th).

 

Play Styles:

 

Open + Unbound = massive assumption that this means a case of bringing everything you have for massive games, where there is no force organisation.  What about the people with tiny collections?  Facing a pair of gaunt broods against a marine squad to work on getting the basics of the game rather than exploring the special rules?

 

Narrative = Campaign based games for both editions, with set forces, that enable you to recreate battles that you have read about in the fluff.  Sure, these are snippets of overall forces, but they give you a theme and a story prepackaged, the same with the forces.

 

Matched + Casual/Competitive = what 99% of players played, where there were a wonderful array of choices on how to build a themed army, that could be effective against other armies.

 

Now, how does this affect immersion?  That totally depends on the player.  Personally, I love the fact vehicles are glass cannons.  Either incredibly effective or caught out of position and neutered quickly.  Protecting their rear armour while still being a fairly stable platform for supporting infantry advances, or, going all out to get transported squads into position.

 

Now, what are we looking at?  Less effective shooting, extending a game due to whittling, a morale system that is punitive and not fitting for the setting, and unrealistic weapon capabilities that sees infantry pinging damage to vehicles with the smallest of side arms.

 

The only really decent thing I've seen from the new edition rules is the return of individual targeting for each weapon.  This is possibly the best thing that could happen, and the most annoying change from 2nd to 3rd.  Still, we have to see the whole arsenal facts before deciding whether army buildds are still viable, and whether GW has kept to the "Every model you use now you will be able to use in 8th" that they have claimed.  Will my jump packing, relic lightning claw wielding chaplain still be a viable model?  Will my entirely close combat vanguard actually be useful?  Will my combi-weapon toting sternguard still have a place?  Are 10-man squads goign to be more of a liability now that marine leadership has been reduced to 7 rather than 8?

 

While I'm waiting to see, it's not with excitement, more fatalism, the same fatalism I am regarding the real world with currently.

[Khornestar]

Tibbs, I listened to the podcast last night. Well done. You nailed it.

 

Likewise. Good job, Tibbs!

[JeffTibbetts]

Tibbs, I listened to the podcast last night. Well done. You nailed it.

 

 

 

Tibbs, I listened to the podcast last night. Well done. You nailed it.

 

Likewise. Good job, Tibbs!

 

 

 

Thanks, you two! I appreciate it. 

 

Now, Damo, as a fellow RG guy I guess it seems like we're going to have to respectfully agree to disagree on some points.

 

I actually can see how massed infantry fire can take down a tank. Get enough guns firing at about anything and a few lucky shots will start to destroy optics, break joints, make it through vision ports, vents, seams in armor plates, etc. We're not talking about Hollywood-style lucky shots per se. More like the Matrix or Ghost in the Shell (the old one) where the machine guns were chewing through stone columns. Does it get silly at a certain point for guard to take out a baneblade? Yes. But the guard are a bit silly like that, and it would take several turns of 50-100 person squads just pouring fire into it. I guess maybe some things should explode when they go down, but that, to me, has more to do with the weapons you're using against them than the target. Of course, if you hit some ammo or a fuel line, sure, but I guess I understand that's pretty rare? 

 

As for games taking longer as you whittle things down, that really only applies if you're using the wrong tools for the job. There are still tank-busting weapons out there which will make quick work of the big stuff if you concentrate fire. They just made it so a huge blob of troops wasn't totally ineffective against certain targets and I think that's fair. Get 50 infantry with even modern assault rifles shooting at just about anything long enough, and they'll get through it. I'm sure there are exceptions, but we don't have the full rule set yet. For instance, the All is Dust rule from Rubric Marines insulates them a little bit from small arms fire. It's not totally ineffective, just a bit less effective.

 

I feel the same about Battleshock. To me it's so vague and open-ended as to represent all kinds of things. It's up to us to fill in the blanks.

 

I don't think they're changing the fluff to suit the rules at all. I just think it's a matter of interpretation. If you're cynical I think that's one way to see it, but I saw it the other way around; it's up to us as players to think about what the designers are trying to show us with the new edition. I'm not saying I'm right or you're wrong, just that we're looking at the same set of data and coming up with totally different conclusions. 

 

I feel like I have to go by what they've told us, and that's basically the designers rethinking things from the ground up.

 

"Let's take a look at this Storm Bolter. Forget everything you think you know about it. How do you think it should work?"

 

"It should fire twice as fast as a regular bolter?" 

 

"Okay, good. Moving on." 

 

I do get your points and I enjoy playing Devil's Advocate, but in all honesty this time around I'm just flat excited. My usual cynicism about life in general has been completely suspended for GW based on everything they've done over the last couple years. I think over time one or the other of us will probably come around or we'll meet in the middle. 

[Hellrender]

Immersion. 

 

As a more casual, fluff driven collector, that is one of the more important aspects of gaming to me. And sadly, incredibly easy disrupted by constant rules checking. Like last night i was going to check some rules on scout and independent characters. Not while a game, but still. I went from the special rules section, to the character section, the special rules section (because IC's are covered in the Special Rules section, and not in the character section), and then kept leaving back and forth between infiltrate, scout, stubborn and outflank, to figure out how it works with transfering said rules to IC's by squad mates.

After 30 minutes re-reading all the sections several time, i still don't know.

 

To me that breaks immersion, and 7th edition is exactly like that.

 

Any rule set that allows me to place my toy soldiers on the table, have a good flow while rolling some dice, is what helps create the immersion. The rules are just there to give structure. The immersion, i will fix hat myself :)

[Damo1701]

Now, Damo, as a fellow RG guy I guess it seems like we're going to have to respectfully agree to disagree on some points.

 

I actually can see how massed infantry fire can take down a tank. Get enough guns firing at about anything and a few lucky shots will start to destroy optics, break joints, make it through vision ports, vents, seams in armor plates, etc. We're not talking about Hollywood-style lucky shots per se. More like the Matrix or Ghost in the Shell (the old one) where the machine guns were chewing through stone columns. Does it get silly at a certain point for guard to take out a baneblade? Yes. But the guard are a bit silly like that, and it would take several turns of 50-100 person squads just pouring fire into it. I guess maybe some things should explode when they go down, but that, to me, has more to do with the weapons you're using against them than the target. Of course, if you hit some ammo or a fuel line, sure, but I guess I understand that's pretty rare? 

 

As for games taking longer as you whittle things down, that really only applies if you're using the wrong tools for the job. There are still tank-busting weapons out there which will make quick work of the big stuff if you concentrate fire. They just made it so a huge blob of troops wasn't totally ineffective against certain targets and I think that's fair. Get 50 infantry with even modern assault rifles shooting at just about anything long enough, and they'll get through it. I'm sure there are exceptions, but we don't have the full rule set yet. For instance, the All is Dust rule from Rubric Marines insulates them a little bit from small arms fire. It's not totally ineffective, just a bit less effective.

 

I feel the same about Battleshock. To me it's so vague and open-ended as to represent all kinds of things. It's up to us to fill in the blanks.

 

I don't think they're changing the fluff to suit the rules at all. I just think it's a matter of interpretation. If you're cynical I think that's one way to see it, but I saw it the other way around; it's up to us as players to think about what the designers are trying to show us with the new edition. I'm not saying I'm right or you're wrong, just that we're looking at the same set of data and coming up with totally different conclusions. 

 

I feel like I have to go by what they've told us, and that's basically the designers rethinking things from the ground up.

 

"Let's take a look at this Storm Bolter. Forget everything you think you know about it. How do you think it should work?"

 

"It should fire twice as fast as a regular bolter?" 

 

"Okay, good. Moving on." 

 

I do get your points and I enjoy playing Devil's Advocate, but in all honesty this time around I'm just flat excited. My usual cynicism about life in general has been completely suspended for GW based on everything they've done over the last couple years. I think over time one or the other of us will probably come around or we'll meet in the middle.

Don't get me wrong, I do see what you are saying.  

 

However, did glancing a vehicle make it explode?  Not since 3rd edition (I believe, keep in mind it was a long time ago lol).

 

Sure, using armour busting weapons should be causing catastrophic damage to vehicles, rather than just degrading them.  Regardless of doing "multiple wounds" the fact nothing more happens feels an awful lot flatter and much less cinematic and immersive than the chance to either blow a weapon to bits or make the vehicle shatter in a cloud of smoke and shrapnel.

 

I would love to see waves of guys firing their handguns at a tank.  I wonder whether anything would actually happen before they all died...

 

I've yet to tally Battle Shock with marines.  At all.  I can just about put it on guardsmen or cowardly xenos, except the bugs ofc.  Yet I can't see marines being lost to Battle Shock at all.  Sure, a squad would pull back as orders are received, but to lose members for no real reason?

 

As for changing the fluff versus interpretation, I can expect new fluff and novels to reflect the rules to begin appearing after the launch of 8th edition, with the odd marine just keeling over here and there or what-have-you.  Plus, look at the effort you have to go through to try and justify the rules when they are questioned.  That's what I'm talking about.

 

I've reallly worked hard, especially in this thread, to see the rules in a different light, and, yes, it's :cuss difficult sometimes.  However, it is worth bearing in mind that if you have to go to so much trouble to try to explain a rule, the rule itself could very well be at fault.

[Teetengee]

Eh, it takes more effort to justify all the current abstractions and inconsistencies than it does to explain battleshock.

[Claws and Effect]

The "anything can hurt anything" actually isn't that big a deal to me. For one major reason that is commonly ignored or forgotten: The tank your dudes are slowly whittling down is going to be SHOOTING BACK.

 

Sure, 100 guys might be able to kill a Baneblade if they shoot at it long enough. But that makes the totally illogical assumption that said Baneblade is just going to sit there and not use its 12 weapons to fight back.

 

100 dudes can kill it, but do you really think that is going to happen when the tank is killing 25 of them every turn?

[Hellrender]

 

I would love to see waves of guys firing their handguns at a tank.  I wonder whether anything would actually happen before they all died...

 

I've yet to tally Battle Shock with marines.  At all.  I can just about put it on guardsmen or cowardly xenos, except the bugs ofc.  Yet I can't see marines being lost to Battle Shock at all.  Sure, a squad would pull back as orders are received, but to lose members for no real reason?

 

 

 

I wanted to discuss these 2 things further.

 

Imagine this:

A squad of guardsmen are firing their lasguns at a Leman Russ. They get lucky, with their say, 20 shots, and the Leman Russ loses a wound (remember, first to hit, then to wound, and then the leman russ makes armour saves). For me, this is like they took out a sensor, damaged the tracks in someway, or what have you. Nothing major initially...

 

Then the Leman Russ pivots it's turret, and shoots it's punisher cannon at the squad. Poof, squad dissapeared in a mist of red blood.

 

But there are more where they came from. A whole platoon of lasgun equipped conscripts appears, and decides to pour all their fire in that leman russ. With 50 shoots, they do just 2 more wounds.

Leman Russ aims, takes fire, and more mist of red blood.

 

 

 

What i am trying to say, is that tanks aren't immovable objects. And as long as enough force is applied, even if only in quantity, things are going to budge. If anything, the new ruleset is more realistic, because tanks now get to make an armour save. Something i always wondered why power armour can give a 3+ armour save against an autocannon, but an armoured chimera just has to take it...

 

--

 

Lets look at battleshock.

 

It's in the name really. Any soldier can enter a shock when suffering trauma, or seeing your whole squad (like above) disspear in a mist of red blood. It's logical that they run away, shoot themselves, or simply refuse to acknowledge the rest of the world while they sit on the floor cuddling their legs and whispering softly about phantoms in their mind.

 

You also refer to space marines, but we haven't even seen the rules for space marines. So we don't even know if they get either ways to improve their leadership (like 10 across the board), or a rule that represents And They Shall Know No Fear in the future.

 

If we look at Stormcast in AoS, which a lot have said are the space marine equivalents in the Mortal Realms. These guys are one of the bravest in that universe. And the only time i have seen them run away, is when i go in with so much force, that there shouldnt have been a battleshock phase to begin with, but was there just by virtue of lucky dice.

 

 

Thats just my 2 kraks :)

[Iron Father Ferrum]

The point is that 100 dudes firing small arms at a tank will never kill the tank. Ever. That's the immersion-break.

[Bryan Blaire]

A several tens-100s megawattpulsed variable wavelength laser in man portable form (what a Lasgun would have to be by modern science) is nothing like a current small arm. A 5.56 or 7.62 round could not effectively defeat the armor on a modern tank, but a laser like that could likely chew through modern armor, considering that modern technology is looking to lower powered versions of something like that to shoot down missiles or even planes.

 

Let's not let our modern frame of reference get in the way of things 38,000 years or so into the future...

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Except that 7 editions of game stats tell us that the lasgun hits about as hard as I do if I'm swinging an e-tool at someone. I'm not going to crack tank armor by hitting with a shovel.

[Claws and Effect]

You can put an e tool through one side and put the other of a bullet proof best with one thrust?

 

Awesome.

[Ishagu]

Wow Tibbs, fantastic podcast.

[Bryan Blaire]

Except that 7 editions of game stats tell us that the lasgun hits about as hard as I do if I'm swinging an e-tool at someone. I'm not going to crack tank armor by hitting with a shovel.

And the lasguns don't "crack" tank armor either. They might, on the 1 in 108 chance or something, be able to peel off a single Wound out of 15+ or something, which can just as easily represent damaging a sponson movement or attachment mechanism or sighting lens (something that small arms can do - small arms can foul small or delicate mechanisms or exposed hydraulics, etc.). They might also be able to do more internal damage once an actual "crack" has been made in solid armor (and truthfully, if you really want to have that abstraction, you can easily house rule in something like "Weapons without an AP value of -2 or lower cannot take off the initial five Wounds from a vehicle" or "Weapons with an Ap value of 0 or -1 cannot remove the final Wound from a vehicle" - that would make it so your "small arms" can't kill a vehicle, or something like that).

 

Maybe I'm just more forgiving with my abstractions. It's not a simulation. I do know that GW isn't perfect in game design, and neither are any of us (or we would be designing games for a living, not playing GW stuff).

[Iron Father Ferrum]

My problem is that your so-called abstractions don't jive with mechanics.  Sure, a laser beam can foul optics or weld a sponson in place, but that does not destroy the vehicle.  It impedes function, sure, but the tank is still there, still capable of fighting, its engine still runs, its crew is still alive.  And before you mention hitting fuel lines or ammo stowage, those things are well-armored and usually held as deep within the chassis as possible, so yes, your lasgun would indeed have to crack the armor first.  I'm not even going to touch your house-rule suggestion because I don't play with house rules; they create more problems than they solve.

 

Look, I understand that I'm on the losing side of this argument because the rules are the rules and as a player I have to live with them.  Overall, I so far have very few issues with 8th Edition.  I've said this before, but maybe 8th will be the single greatest version of the game to date and it will be fun and exciting and play quickly and the game will return to greatness.  I really hope that is the case.  But I also really wish GW hadn't abstracted vehicles to this extent.

[Hellrender]

But... imagine a tank that has already taken damage. That crack is already there. 

 

The obvious one first: You hit a leman russ with a Krak Missile. Crack appears, taking 2 wounds off.

The tank is still there. it still moves, it's crew still alive. It impedes the function of the armour.

 

Now let's shoot it with futuristic laser weapons. I do really think that if you shoot 100 such lasers at or closely around that crack, more damage will apear. Taking another wound off.

 

I think that if a laser, even a weak one, hits roughly the same spot enough times,it will still burn or crack the armour plating. Doing the same as a single krak missile.. only with 100 lasguns this time...

 

Lasguns will never finish a tank in 1 round. That is silly. Not even if you shoot a full platoon of lasguns at the leman russ (unless the dice gods favor you). 

Just like real life small lasers will never destroy a tank any time soon. But with enough laservolume, you will still damage it. You bring AT weapons to take care of tanks, much more efficient.

 

 

All that said though, saying that a lasgun is the equivalent of a normal human striking at normal strenght based on game mechanics is rather moot imo. Space Marine stats really don't make any sense that way. In the fluff a single space marine is worth how many guardsmen? Now compare that to how that works on the tabletop again...

[Iron Father Ferrum]

I'm a combat vet.  I was around military vehicles for a decade.  I know how hardy they're designed to be, so no amount of "imagine, if you will..." scenarios are going to convince me that 8th Edition's vehicles mechanics are not personally immersion-breaking.  I'm still going to play the game by its rules, and I'm still going to take Rhinos and Land Raiders and Dreadnoughts.  But trying to convince me I'm wrong and GW is right is not going to work.

[Bryan Blaire]

The ammo storage is not stored inside heavily armored things, on the Marine vehicles it literally hangs behind the turret in a box that is very clearly incapable of being armored as well as the side slabs of the tank itself just based on scale, or hangs off the sponson exposed outside the weapon in thinner walled ammo boxes, or things like plasma and lascannon capacitors or containment bottles hang exposed and without much armor right off the weapons. The conduction lines on a lascannon hang without any armor at all on a Land Raider.

 

I'm sorry that you guys are having problem with 2/3rds of an IG company needing double the length of a standard game to efficiently "destroy" a tank (which isn't actually death, but could literally simply represent the total inability to affect the battle any further, the road wheels have been damaged and the treads no longer work, the lenses no longer function and the physical movement and firing mechanisms are totally locked up, and the engine housing has been damaged, but the crew is alive and well and trying to get things started up again), but it isn't a worry I can share, because if I'm using 6 tanks, I'm totally cool with them ignoring the entire rest of my force trying to damage something that is ludicrously difficult for them to do - I'm riding the other five tanks (plus any associated forces) laughing as I blow the :cuss out of everything else.

 

Honestly, the biggest immersion breaker of all for 40K is HOW military vehicle design is depicted to be in model form. It's soooooo regressed compared to modern military vehicle construction, we can't even apply current understanding to them. THAT should be the immersion break for anyone that knows anything about modern military vehicle construction.

[Khornestar]

 

 

The lasgun uses the same basic technology and operates along the same lines as other laser weapons, emitting a beam of focused light. The high amount of energy in the beam causes the immediate surface area of a target to be vaporized in a small explosion^[

 

100 (or however many) shots could easily hit the same general spot repeatedly and do something meaningful. Not exactly bullets pinging off a hull. Not the same as a multimelta to the face, either.

 

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Lasgun

[Iron Father Ferrum]

The ammo storage is not stored inside heavily armored things, on the Marine vehicles it literally hangs behind the turret in a box that is very clearly incapable of being armored as well as the side slabs of the tank itself just based on scale, or hangs off the sponson exposed outside the weapon in thinner walled ammo boxes, or things like plasma and lascannon capacitors or containment bottles hang exposed and without much armor right off the weapons. The conduction lines on a lascannon hang without any armor at all on a Land Raider.

 

 

Which is great, because it means that touching off the ammo doesn't actually destroy the tank, just the weapon.  Thank you for making my point for me.  It's almost as if we need a chart or something to show a weapon has been destroyed without damaging other parts of the vehicle.

[MysticTemplar]

 

The ammo storage is not stored inside heavily armored things, on the Marine vehicles it literally hangs behind the turret in a box that is very clearly incapable of being armored as well as the side slabs of the tank itself just based on scale, or hangs off the sponson exposed outside the weapon in thinner walled ammo boxes, or things like plasma and lascannon capacitors or containment bottles hang exposed and without much armor right off the weapons. The conduction lines on a lascannon hang without any armor at all on a Land Raider.

 

 

Which is great, because it means that touching off the ammo doesn't actually destroy the tank, just the weapon.  Thank you for making my point for me.  It's almost as if we need a chart or something to show a weapon has been destroyed without damaging other parts of the vehicle.

 

 

I don't follow your logic - why would cooking off the ammo that's not currently loaded into the weapon (IE: In ammo storage) A.) Destroy the weapon.  and B.) Not hurt the rest of the vehicle?   Why wouldn't this be well represented by taking off wounds (or hull points, if you prefer) off of the vehicle?  It's taken some damage, but isn't out of the fight yet, and there's no reason to believe that this would stop its ability to fight in the next thirty seconds or so that the table top battle represents.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

 

 

I don't follow your logic

 

 

 

Neither does GW, so does it really matter?