I think the problem is really 2 fold.

First and the most important issue, the damages for weapons are all over the place - not really indicative of TT rules, but with TT rules aside they are still quite wierd. For example, an Autocannon deals the SAME damage as a KRAK MISSILE, with only 2 points less in PEN. So basically you have a rapid firing krak missile - the 2 point PEN reduction is negligent. We don't really have a lot of 4d10+X damage weapons, then it suddenly jumps to 5d10+10 with the lascannon. You really don't have a lot of damaging weapons. Almost all weapons are within or under 30 damage range. If you are in close combat you're basically screwed against any tank unless you have demo charges or melta bombs, even if you are a space marine. Where as the TT game as well as the Lore, you have marines cracking open tanks with power fists and chainfists - can't really do that in any of the 40k games.

Secondly, due to the damage for weapons being all over the place, it's really difficult to narrow down a good set of armor and structural integrity to balance out the damage. For the way we play at our group, we lowered the SI to reflect the TT versions. Basically SI is equal to ever 10-15 per hull point on the TT game (6th edition). Armor we used a formula that was posted on the Deathwatch forum about a year back, where 15-20 armor is equal to 10 in TT conversion, 21-25 is about 11 in TT, 26-30 is about 12 in TT, 31-35 is about 13 in TT, and 36-40 is about 14 in TT version. With +/-5 modifier for special vehicles.

The problem really stems from when Black Industries was making the game. Though granted we can all appreciate that they did get the ball rolling on the 40k rpg game with Dark Heresy, the rules they created did not reflect what it would be like with vehicles. It was built around person to person combat, and the damage for the weapons are evident. The only thing to by-pass vehicular armor with weapons is by using brute force (i.e. damage), NOT PEN, because the pen are already set to reflect the person to person combat. I suppose going full circle with this, due to damaging vehicles requiring brute force, it is reflective of the TT game, since you roll d6+str of weapon to overcome the armor, the AP of the weapon has no bearing, which seems to be the case for most listed weapons - even anti tank ones. The only weapons I've ever seen high double digit pen are titan class weapons listed in Rites of Battle for Deathwatch. The Turbo Laser Destructor has essentially pen 20 IIRC (which if there's a pattern, it's double that of lascannon pen, which again, a turbo laser destructor is essentially a huge lascannon).

I don't think there's a quick and easy fix unless you houserule it. I almost never pay any attention to the armor, SI, or even damage of some of these weapons except to use them as a reference in most cases. Most things I do are houseruled.

Maybe damage is just too on/off.

What if, instead, the basic damage mechanic [this is a big change, but if its RIGHT, then bloody hells, GO FOR IT] happened to add, say, the weapon's DICE to Damage and Penetration for every DoS on the hit. his occurs up to twice, or once if firing in Semi or Fully automatic modes, and it takes two dice of accurate to count as one real die of damage for this mechanic. Obviously since tearing involves dropping a die, sorry, it don't help here.

So a Lasgun hitting by at least 2 DoS deals 1d10+5 Pen 2 as a base. Or could do up to three hits of 1d10+4 Pen 1.

A Long-Las could do, with a full accuracy bonus, 3d10+7 Pen 5. That's actually quite brutal [though two of those d10s do not generate RF]

A Vanquisher Round could be dishing out an additional +8/+8 on a max accuracy shot: Its base is three dice, after all. 5d10+18 Pen 24? I hear we'd been having problems with heavy frontal armor…

A Plasma weapon gets a special little kick-up, by increasing its bonuses thanks to the extra die in Maximal.

A Las Cannon… well that just kinda brutalizes crap now. I'd recommend lowering it by 1d10 if this change were to be done. A solid hit would thus result in 4d10+18 Pen 18

Melta Weapons would stay brutal. Just, slightly more so.

Worst Case scenario, if you want to help keep Las and SP competitive [since Rares of those two tend to be nowhere near as capable as even a Scarce of other types save low-tech], the basics and pistols could just add a +1/+1 to the final total whenever it gets boosted. Not quite like an extra die, but decent.

Tons of ways of doing things, really… But somehow I'm thinking that offshoots of the lightning claw rules might be a good middle-ground to "well we're going to have to make this melta"

Veroldindir said:

I have to say, I disagree on PEN. PEN is worse for vehicles than for people, as their entire damage reduction is in armour. Past PEN 8 (though now 10+ in Deathwatch) it really doesn't do much in individual combat. Meltaguns start at PEN 12, and of course double at short range. You are right that it doesn't reflect the tabletop, as AP doesn't really do anything (except on penetrating hits), but it certainly matters for vehicles. It might even be worth lowering the damage on some weapons, while upping the PEN.

borithan said:

That could work as well. I'd strongly suggest applying "razor sharp" more liberally for AT weaponry. Just make it additive, not multiplicative, to Melta.

So Melta at normal range would be Pen 12, 24 if razor sharp triggers OR at half range, 36 when both are there.

borithan said:

Well, I'm not saying one way or another is right on Pen, but that's just the RAW right now - However as I mentioned in my post, the vehicle damage system RAW in the 40k rpg is the SAME as the TT game, which is brute force, using damage as a way to get past armor, the pen doesn't really affect the armor much at all.

I don't have a problem with personal weapons like Plasma Pistol or Plasma Rifle, they can actually damage vehicles fine if you go maximize, which reflects the TT quite well, and I think they would be overpowered if they are made to crack vehicles at every opportunity. It is the problem of fitting more powerful weapons to harm vehicles into the equation since that basically skews the damage.

You would also notice that the damage overall has been nerfed since Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch pre errata. Back in the day Autocannons dealt 4d10+4 damage, significantly higher than a krak missile of 3d10+10. I think if anything, Krak Missile should be 4d10+8 while autocannon should remain the same.

I would also NOT lower damage anymore than it is - right now because pen does not affect TB, you will find that greater daemons, monsterous creatures would greatly eclipse vehicles or even super heavy vehicles. Ironically right now, a guardsman could have a better chance of surviving a bolter shot than say, a small bike, due to TB.

Razor Sharp may fix some issues, if not only a patch at this point and time. Don't forget too, we now have the Lance weapons quality too, which should make those Eldar lances far more dangerous.

 There are indeed fundamental issues with the system as it currently stands, but its too late in the development cycle to change core mechanics, only tweak numbers.

As such i'd propose all dedicate AT weapons either getting a new special trait 'Tank Killer - Weapons with this trait use advanced technology or sheer brute power to take out armour assets. When calculating damage to vehicles, half the Armour rating of the facing being attacked' or alternatively just tweaking down all of the armour ratings and integrity rating of vehicles as per previous discussion in this thread.

Kasatka said:

I don't think that a change in core mechanics is needed. The solution you proposed is probably working quite fine, as would numerous others that involve handing out various weapon traits or tweaking Pen, Dmg, SI and Armour Values.

I'll wait for Week Four Update until I start testing various proposed suggestions. Maybe I'll wirte up a new tool that can handle multiple weapons firing at the ssame target to get accurate vehicle vs. vehicle data instead of only weapon vs. vehicle.

If this is a beta proper, as opposed to the fake betas we keep seeing nowadays in videogames [you know, like the bad alphas, the buggy barely-betas that make up the bulk of actual releases, and so on], then if mechanics need changing, mechanics need changing.

Right now, what we're seeing is that in order to even scratch most tanks, a weapon needs to be such a clean overkill result on anything else that you'd be foolish not to use it whenever possible, and any weapon "meant" for a general purpose versus both light vehicles and critters utterly fails to do the former. Its not just a bit of tweaking that's needed to fix this. We're looking at redoing the entire armor and weapon tables. one or two weapons changing here or there won't alleviate the problem. If a maximal plasma pistol can occasionally cause significant damage a chimera in fluff and tabletop, but mechanically it can barely scratch it on good rolls, there's a problem.

Meanwhile, we've got a perfectly good DoS system that's not really using its own advantages to its advantage when we're dealing with AT weaponry. Drop the output of the AT weapons a bit, and base an improvement in damage and penetration on the number of dice it provides by DoS. A nice, small but significant flat bonus, that counts for more with more accurate strikes of heavy weapons.

Sure we'd be adding like a paragraph or two to the rules, but the basics wouldn't change, and one way or another the numbers were going to need tweaking both ways, and it still wasn't going to make everybody happy.

Kiton said:

See that's were you went wrong in my opinion. Look at my data again, specifically the Multi-Melta and the Multi-Melta on short range.

Look what doubling the penetration from 12 to 24 does. 11 turns turn into 3.4 9 turns into 2.8 and 710 turn into 12.3 turns. All this by adding the Melta property to a weapon. There's no target out there that isn't a vehicle that has 12 points of armour so it hardly matter if a weapon has 12 or 24 pen unless used against a vehicle. A simple change in Pen values (which is far easier and less problematic than rewriting the rules) or adding a weapon property (like the proposed Tank Hunter a few posts earlier or the already existing Razor sharp) can be done without a lot of side effects popping up all over the place.

There's no change in mechanics needed (unless you'd define weapon properties and damage / pen / armour values as mechanics) just a some numbers that need changing.

Kiton said:

We'd also be adding extra math to each and every attack. Never a good idea.

A very small amount of math. Can't remove all of it anyways.

There's quite a few weapons out there that shouldn't be ignoring personal armor entirely, yet should still be able to cause some damage to vehicles. As things are, this doesn't happen. You can't even count on Righteous Fury in this case. Even Melta weapons should be able to damage the front of a Russ outside the Melta bonus range, they're just far better at it once within. They just happen to be the lucky case ignoring personal armor all the time.

When we're talking side or rear armor though, Kraks, Plasma weapons, Pulse weapons [for the lighter stuff] and Bolters are all examples of weapons that would need to be doing double or triple their current penetration, but only when against vehicles, if we're to keep the rules as they are. Admittedly, Plasma is on the Melta level for ignoring personal armor, and thus can easily just take a straight boost to penetration, but the others? That's still a hole right now.

My (probably terrible and ill-thought-out) suggestion for a remedy for this situation:

Weapon quality: Anti-tank(x)

The weapon has been precisely engineered to crack the toughest vehicle armor.  When used against a vehicle, multiply the attacks PEN value by x, however, against all targets, the attacker takes a -10 penalty to BS multiplied by X.

That rule is overly complicated and just makes it harder for a tank to hit another tank with it's main gun, which doesn't help the problem at all. Nor does it really represent tank or anti-tank combat very well.

I'd scrap the penalty to hit, and just have the Pen multiplied by the number in parentheses. That'd mean that normal people could survive being glanced by one, but a solid hit on a tank would take it out.

I still think that Structural Integrity needs halving though.