Has anyone tried doing vehicle vs vehicle combat? At first glance, they seem to be too resilient.

Why is the Leman Russ Cannon weaker than a MP Lascannon? Whyyyy?!

Because that's the way it is in the tabletop game.

A battlecannon is Range 72", Strength 8, Armor Penetration 3, Large Blast. A lascannon is Range 48", Strength 9, Armor Penetration 2.

On the tabletop, a battlecannon's power comes mostly from that "large blast", which means it can potentially take out an entire squad of chaos space marines in a single hit. A lascannon, while more powerful, can only ever kill a single target and is really best used against vehicles.

Only War is much the same. That Blast [10] trait means anyone within 10 meters of the target takes 3d10+10 X Pen 8 damage… pretty much a squad killer. Whereas the lascannons 5d10+10 E Pen 10 will kill one guy very dead, but leave his 9 buddies shooting back at you.

Also, a standard battle cannon is an infantry killer. If you want to go tank hunting, lascannons are the Imperial weapon of choice.

If you want to go tank hunting with another tank, you get the variant with the good gun; Annihilator (2 lascannons on the turret), Executioner (plasma destroyer) or Vanquisher (this one is the real problem, as it should be a good tank killer, and there is no reason why it's damage is lower than the standard one).

If that's not available, than you get AP shells (p.139), like in real life; they improve your penetration without sacrificing damage, although I do think they should add even more pen and just drop the blast quality from them (or reduce it).

If all else fails, you get a bigger tank.

It just seems that right now, if you have a russ go against a russ, you have to rely on RFs before things finally go on.

Having damage take too long means combat slows down

So I've been doing some musing on a one-shot or short campaign based on an Armoured Regiment and I've made an observations regarding vehicles, Tanks are stupidly durable.

The Vanquisher Cannon, which in the fluff is one of the Guard's Premier tank-killer cannons with a "high first-hit kill ratio" can barely scratch a basic Leman Russ' front armor.

The Leman Russ has 45/35/25 Armor and 70 structural Integrity Points (vehicle wounds basically). The Vanquisher Cannon is 3d10+5 X Pen 16, Accurate. Thus a hit to the front armor with a Max damage roll will deal only 6 Structural integrity points (35 damage - 29 armor (45-16)) or a whopping 8.5% of the Russ' SI. Ignoring Righteous Fury it would take a dozen max-damage hits to put another Leman Russ into critical damage. I know Tanks should be hard to kill on the front armor, but that is a bit ridiculous when in the tabletop, the same cannon has a very good chance of knocking out a Russ in a single hit.

Obviously an RPG shouldn't be quite that lethal, but that Vanquisher cannon should have a decent chance to take out a good chunk of the Russ' SI in a single hit even to the front armor.

Comparatively the standard Russ' Battle Cannon is 3d10+10 X Pen 8, Blast (10), Concussive (3), meaning it will only do 3 SI damage on a max damage roll to the front armor. Its actually more effective to aim BEHIND an enemy tank and use the Blast radius to strike the rear armor. Feels kinda cheesey to me.

"Anti-Tank" rounds are available for both guns, but all they do is change the penetration to 12 (a downgrade for the Vanquisher!) and thus don't change the Battle Cannon's Blast rating at all. They're also a bit hard to get at Very Rare availability, which is a -20 to logistics test to try to get them even when there are multiple Regiments deployed to the region. Given if you're playing an Armoured Regiment game you're likely to face enemy tanks, this is a bit rough.

As it is, the most reliable Anti-Tank weapon right now is the LasCannon, which is 5d10+10 Pen 10, Proven(3), which on a Max Damage Roll to the front armor of a Russ will do a respectable 25 structural integrity, on a MAX hit. On an average hit it will do 2-3 Structural integrity. Though regardless it has excellent odds of scoring a Righteous Fury. The Lascannon being so awesome is true to fluff, but the Vanquisher is arguably better at killing tanks and sucks compared to it.

A possible fix I can see would be increasing the Penetration score of the Vanquisher Cannon and changing Anti-Tank rounds to a bonus to Penetration but removes the Blast Score.

Alternatively, you could simply take the missile launcher approach and make the Vanquisher and Battle Cannon's damage and specialties depend on what kind of ammo is loaded into it, though that makes the artillery shells a bit less generic/one-size fits all.

That said, I do have a question regarding the Battle and Vanquisher Cannons. What are their clip size and reload times supposed to represent? Is the "clip" the number of shells kept in the turret near the gun breech? Is the reload time how long it takes to draw extra shells from the ammo store inside the tank's hull? As-is switching tank shell types on the fly (such as loading Anti-tank shells when your Russ suddenly stumbles across a Chaos Predator while slaughtering cultists) is extremely prohibitive when it should simply be a case of grabbing the couple of AT shells you keep near the gun "just in case" and tossing it in on the next shot while someone else pulls more from the Hull bins. In the fluff the Russ carries a total of 40 shells and the Russ Vanquisher 28. I'd personally like to see the "clip" size reduced to 1 and the load time changed to 1 Full (which is handled by the tank's loader each turn).

I see a lot of house rules in my future for all this if I do decide to do a Tanker One-shot/Mini-campaign.

Actually this isn't very strange, a sherman tank didin't have a hope to penetrate the armour of a tiger tank. But if your fighting renegades or chaos space marines you will need to get creative.

Santiago said:

Yes, but the Sherman was a medium tank on the light side with an undersized turret. The Leman Russ is a full-sized MBT; it's supposed to be able to take on anything up to a super heavy-tank without problem if it engages correctly, and, with the correct main gun (and good positioning), to be able to hunt super-heavy vehicles. This is adequately represented in both the fluff and the tabletop, but, in this game, the Leman Russ can't even hurt itself (it's like some old WW1 tanks with really underpowered weaponry that was only good against infantry).

Furthermore, the Vanquisher is a dedicated tank hunting variant; it should be able to do damage to the front of a tank in it's own category. Therefore, I recommend upping both the damage of the Vanquisher cannon to the full 3d10+10, and increasing the penetration to something like 20, while modifying standard AP rounds so as to remove the blast quality and improve penetration by 10 (giving normal russes 18 penetration); Vanquishers should not be able to fire AP rounds as that is what they always use (note that these modifications are approximates, and will need further tuning).

I'd also argue for Accurate bonus damage applying to the Vanquisher cannon as well; as it stands, RAW says Accurate only applies to Basic weapons.

I just have to ask.

People bring up that lascannons are dedicated anti-armor weapons.

But, why is a man portable lascannon better than a vehicle-sized cannon? It's just silly.

And personally, I can get if they're balanced against 'adversaries' but FFG needs to remember fighting secessionists is a real possibility.

Because thats honestly how tabletop is as well. I know it sounds weird, but the LR battle cannon is best used for killing troops. I will admit, the vanquisher cannon does strike me as a bit weak, maybe needs +1d10+5 to put it back in line with 40k rules. The AT shells bonus should be additive, not a 12 pen replacement.

Frankie said:

Define "better."

A battle cannon can kill a squad in a single shot. A lascannon can kill one thing. A battle cannon isn't a tank hunting weapon.

Also, if the lascannon bothers you, don't look at the melta gun. It's a basic weapon that's far, far better at killing tanks than a lascannon… which is a heavy weapon, with "man portable" meaning you can move it from one place to another without wheels, not that you can carry it around like a .50 cal and hip fire it. (If you can, by the rules, that needs to be fixed.

Yes but there's a serious problem when a Leman Russ can't take on a clone of itself, let alone a Leman Russ Vanquisher.

@Frankie

That depends on whether a regular Leman Russ is expected to be able to take on another. The standard variant of the Leman Russ is supposed to deal with infantry - and if it's equipped with a Lascannon as the hull-weapon, it can still take on other tanks.

Consider this: Would you call an anti-aircraft battery a failure if it's incapable of destroying another anti-aircraft battery? I wouldn't.

That being said, that's still no excuse for the Vanquisher. To quote:

Equipped with the exceptionally longbarrelled
vanquisher cannon, a Vanquisher is capable of
sending specialist anti-tank shells that far outclass standard
anti-tank munitions.

"Far outclass" in this case apparently means "deal three more points of damage". Er… right. It becomes even more fun if you decide to equip a battle cannon with Anti-Tank shells - apart from range, they're strictly better than the Vanquisher, retaining Blast and Concussive while dealing 2 points more damage.

mostly things just need higher AP or atleast a special quality similar to felling that effects vehicle armor.

Frankie said:

First, a Russ has a hull mounted lascannon, so I fail to see the so called "serious problem."

Second, apart from the fact that the armor is 5-8 point too high on all facings, the Russ described in Only War pretty well matches the one I field on the tabletop. If it didn't, then there would be a "serious problem."

I still think it's silly for a man portable lascannon to be stronger than a tank cannon.

And I dunno about you, but I like how the high lethality on P-Scale means things move fast.

The high AP value of IG things are a problem for me since secessionists WILL be fought.

I still think it's silly for a man portable lascannon to be stronger than a tank cannon.

You may of course think as you wish, but the tank cannon is IMO stronger than a lascannon - in its own game. It has a higher range and it can eradicate entire squads. The only thing it can't do is pierce heavy armour, but then again it wasn't designed to.

Frankie said:

The battle cannon is basically 1940's technology. It's not even as good as a modern tank cannon. The lascannon is a concentrated high power laser of a sort that can't even been made today. Welcome to the Imperium of Man.

Plus the Battle Cannon is loaded with High-Explosive rounds by default, not dedicated anti-tank munitions. Its basically the frag grenade of tank cannons.

The Vanquisher really needs to have better penetration though, as well as the Anti-Tank rounds for the Battle Cannon being more worthwhile. Even just 5 or 8 points of penetration would make a difference. Or, perhaps the armor rating of the Russ and similar tanks should be adjusted a bit.

I'm not really sure what, but something should change.

GalagaGalaxian said:

I've said it before and I'll say it again, loudly and often. The armor on the Russ… on all the vehicles… is to high. On the tabletop a guardman with a frag grenade (S4) has a 1 in 6 chance of scoring a glancing hit of the rear armor of a Russ (Armor 10), rear and side of a Chimera or Chimera hull variant (Hellhound or Basalisk) and everywhere on a Sentinel. Since frag grenades in Only War do 2d10 X Pen 0 damage, that means the rear armor on a Russ ought to be less than 20… probably around 16 or 18 would be a more "accurate" number. All the other armor values should be reduced by a similar amount.

@Lucius

I consider it questionable whether the RPG should strive to mirror the TT too closely, as both games have their own requirements.

Cifer said:

Agreed, since the TT is a d6 system, weapon stats are very…generalized and similar…This is a d100 system, so while you can use the TT as a (very) rough guide, it's pointless to base it on examples such as Guardsmen throwing frags at vehicle rear armour.

Actually, if you consider the tabletop an abstraction, the frags are entirely justified. AFAIK, you use them in melee, right? Well, if you get in melee with a tank, there's a very specific application for a frag grenade: Pry open the hatch and drop it inside. Chunky Salsa ensues.

Tossing them in hatches (seriously, who wouldn't lock the things!) is not attacking the armour with the grenade, so it's not relevant here I'm afraid.

And according to 5th Ed, assault attacks vs vehicles with grenades are specifically against the armour, not prying parts open to the squishy crew. They are not a weapon that should be considered against the tank, crew yes, if you can get a hold of them, tank no. Only way around I can think of this is tossing molotovs down the exhausts..which is what the Russians did. But again, thats going for the crew, and has nothing to do with a vehicles given AP.