Monstrous Creature Vs. Vehicle

[Adam]

Alright, so I'm a bit fed up of people complaining about monstrous creatures being tougher than tanks. They see the 4 Wounds and completely forget about how much easier said wounds are to knock off. I also thought it'd be worth looking at how tough MCs and vehicles are in comparison to one another simply so I know how to point them in my Tyranid rewrite. My Carnifexes die heroically to lascannons from 15 miles away every game, so they get to be the Monstrous Creatures' guinea pig. The best equivalent to the Carnifex is the Dreadnought, which also conveniently has an average Armour value. Both of these are taken as unupgraded - no T7, 2+ saves, Armour 13, Venerableness, or whatever.

I actually wrote a program to do this. Type in the Strength and AP of a 40K weapon and it'll generate the average number of shots needed for a kill on each unit type and a table of the chances of scoring a kill in X shots. It can be found online here, together with the C++ source code file for anyone who wants to check the algorithms I've used: www.mediafire.com/?mjdwznztqrm.

The algorithm takes some liberties. The effects of stunning, weapon disablement, and so on, have been ignored, except in the case of S6 weapons, which can only glance the Dreadnought (the effect of stacking four weapon-destroyed/immobilised results is negligible compared to the penetrate-then-wreck route). In-game, a Dreadnought without an assault cannon is still a threat in melee, an immobilised Predator Annihilator will still continue to rape my HQ units and so on. Likewise, I've ignored the effects of monstrous creatures already being wounded, because although it makes them easier to kill it doesn't reduce their damage output (compare with vehicles suffering the opposite effect). Weapon range, poisoned weapons, silly tricks like Mind War, vehicles being hit on 6s by grenades and so on don't matter. Nor does Ballistic Skill. All that said, it's still a good mathematical measure of how long it takes you to kill a Carnifex or Dreadnought and how much effort you need to put in.

And what do you know? They're about equivalent, against lascannons at least. Lascannons are almost certainly the thing that most commonly gets fired at my monsters and Dreadnoughts. 'Fexes lose out against small arms, plasma guns, S6, missile launchers, etc. They have a bonus against melta weapons (less than you'd think; it only applies at short range, since at long range they're the same as lascannons for both parties as it turns out, and if you're that close to a Carnifex then it gets to assault you next turn).

Other than autocannons, I couldn't find anything that made life much better for the Carnifex than the Dreadnought. Bizarrely, both of them have the same number of average hits for a kill, but the chances of killing the 'Fex with less than that are far lower than those of killing the Dread. The reverse applies towards the top of the scale, but getting more than 18 autocannon hits on a single model in one turn (or even at all, considering it'll be in assault at some point) isn't going to happen any time soon. Besides that... Gimmicks like haywire grenades? Apocalypse Str:D weapons (well, not with the new codex)?

Here's a selection of the results. The general trend in each case is that the Carnifex is (obviously) unkillable from 3 hits or fewer, has a small chance of dying to 4, but the chance shoots up very rapidly. To illustrate this, I've included the chance of a kill from four hits and the chance of a kill from five hits along with the average number of hits required for a kill with each weapon. Six lascannon hits have an 0.938 chance of killing a Carnifex (that's 93.8%). By contrast, the same six lascannon hits have an 0.665 chance of killing a Dreadnought, roughly two-thirds. Before you hit the "But it can die in one shot!" button, did you know that (to two decimal places) a Dreadnought has the same chance of dying to one lascannon shot as it does of surviving 10?

Without further ado, here's the list.

The Definitive Resiliency Test: Carnifex vs. Dreadnought
Values shown are average number of hits, not shots, required to destroy the model once over. Values in brackets are the chances to die from certain amounts of hits.
Models are unupgraded. The Dreadnought is a standard one, with AV12.

--Lascannon
Carnifex: 4.8 hits to average a kill (0.482 chance to die from 4 hits, 0.804 chance to die from 5 hits)
Dreadnought: 6 hits to average a kill (0.518 chance to die from 4 hits, 0.598 chance to die from 5 hits)

--Plasma gun
Carnifex: 6 (0.198, 0.461)
Dreadnought: 18 (0.204, 0.248)

--Missile launcher/bright lance
Carnifex: 4.8 (0.482, 0.804)
Dreadnought: 9 (0.376, 0.445)

--Melta gun (short range)
Carnifex: 4.8 (0.482, 0.804)
Dreadnought: 2.4 (0.884, 0.932)

--Melta gun (long range)
Carnifex: 4.8 (0.482, 0.804)
Dreadnought: 6 (0.517, 0.598)

--Bolter/lasgun
Carnifex: 72 (Who cares? It's like 0.00013 for 6 hits...)
Dreadnought: Immune

--Heavy bolter/other S5 attack
Carnifex: 36 (Same - 0.0018 for 6)
Dreadnought: Immune

--Scatter laser/shuriken cannon
Carnifex: 24 (Same again - 0.0087 for 6)
Dreadnought: 72 (0.00013 for 6)

--Battle cannon
Carnifex: 4.8 (0.482, 0.804)
Dreadnought: 5.4 (Roughly the same as the lascannon ones; the program doesn't easily cater for a 5/9 penetration chance)

--Assault cannon
Carnifex: 12 (Rending complicates things)
Dreadnought: 18 (likewise)

--Autocannon
Carnifex: 18 (0.024 for 6 hits, 0.267 for 12 hits)
Dreadnought: 18 (0.29 for 6 hits, 0.496 for 12 hits)

--Space Marines in Melee
Carnifex (S4 attacks): 72 (tiny)
Dreadnought (S6 krak grenades): 72 (tiny)


Overall results

When you consider that, every turn, a targeted monstrous creature or vehicle is likely to suffer about (the equivalent of) five or six lascannon hits against a reasonably large and well-equipped Imperial army, that puts the two at about equal levels of overall resilience. Dreadnoughts are harder to destroy, and less prioritised, but in practice the chance of killing one in one shot makes itself felt. Statistically speaking, since I have three Dreadnoughts in my Deathwing army, it'll happen once every other game unless they get ignored.

[dragonlord]

It is interesting to see that Carnifexes and Dreadnoughts come out fairly similar in terms of average survivability. I would argue that the thing that people dislike about the difference between vehicles and monstrous creatures is not a feeling that it is necessarily more difficult to kill a Carnifex than a Dreadnought in absolute terms but in the way that the damage accumulation works, at least that is what I dislike about the difference.
With a Carnifex you know that if you hit it 3 times with a lascannon it will not die (or indeed suffer any degradation in effectiveness whatsoever), but that if you hit it 5 times then it is fairly likely that it will die.
With a Dreadnought, yes statistically it might take more shots to kill it than a Carnifex, but it is more prone to randomness, as you pointed out there is the same chance of dying in one hit as surviving 10. In addition the Dreadnought will stack up other damage as you hit it even if it doesn't die. An immobilised dreadnought with its assault cannon destroyed is as good as dead as it is no longer a threat. In addition a stunned vehicle is effectively 'dead' for one turn as it cannot do anything. A Carnifex on the other hand suffers no degradation of effectiveness until it dies.

[Adam]

May 14, 2010 6:57:23 GMT -5 dragonlord said:

A Carnifex on the other hand suffers no degradation of effectiveness until it dies.

This is another major incorrect assumption (you should know this is wrong, you play Nids! ). Vehicles suffer no (or negligible) degradation of resilience when they get stunned or debilitated. However, a Carnifex that takes a wound is, to oversimplify, now 25% easier to kill. If I have a Carnifex with only one or two wounds, there's no way I'm going to charge it into that character and try for an instant death result; the risk of it dying is too high to not send it after the battle tank/cheap infantry unit nearby. A Carnifex with one wound left is at some not-inconsiderable risk from a power-weapon-toting squad leader and the cheap attacks of the rest of the squad; a Carnifex with four can be reasonably expected to last a few turns, vastly increasing the damage it will deal to the squad and the amount of time for which it will take that squad out of the game as a whole. If the game is nearly over, and that squad is on an objective, a Carnifex with four wounds left will almost certainly survive to contest, whereas a Carnifex with one wound almost certainly won't.

See the difference? Once that Carnifex starts losing wounds, the amount you can (or will) do with it - and the incoming fire you can absorb/misdirect with it - becomes limited. Sure, an immobilised Dreadnought with no guns isn't going to do much, unless it's on an objective or is already in melee; but nor is a Carnifex with one wound, because it'll die very quickly in almost any situation.

The reason MCs are seen as tougher than vehicles is because the ways in which they aren't are harder to spot.

[Adam]

Thinking about it, Tyranid MCs are inferior to proper vehicles in a lot of ways. Most vehicles are either tougher than a Carnifex, or faster. Battle tanks like Predators and Leman Russes have good armour and excellent firepower at long range; transports like Chimeras are fast and cheap; skimmers have unparalleled mobility; and heavy transports like Land Raiders and Monoliths are nigh invincible against certain armies. The only vehicles that aren't ostensibly better are basic Dreadnoughts (who are better at melee tarpitting due to their immunity to low-Strength attacks) and Sentinels and the like. MCs' advantage comes from their increased damage output in close combat. Most walkers (including Wraithlords) are fairly pathetic in melee, except for some of the silly new Blood Angel ones and that Bjorn guy. Carnifexes are the only ones who ever get 4+ attacks at Strength 9 or 10, and it's fair to say that a Carnifex in close combat is the best anti-tank weapon in the entire game. Hive Tyrants can be tooled up to murder infantry or characters (S6+I6+WS7+implant attack = dead HQs), and can fly, removing the speed advantage of tanks and some of the mobility advantage of skimmers.

Also, just noticed this:

May 14, 2010 6:57:23 GMT -5 dragonlord said:

In addition a stunned vehicle is effectively 'dead' for one turn as it cannot do anything.

Not quite. Don't forget that it can still draw fire, and to me at least, is just as much a target as it was last turn when I stunned it. If I don't kill it this turn, it comes back to life and starts blasting me as if nothing had happened. If anything, to a Tyranid player it's more of a target when stunned than otherwise, because I hit it automatically in melee and so it's far more likely to die (unless it has that accursed Extra Armour upgrade). Stunning obviously has an effect for you, but in practice actually does very little for your opponent other than a little less damage being suffered. Just like the Carnifexes being on fewer wounds, I suppose, except that that's permanent.

I guess it depends on your army, mind. If you're playing a fully mech force and a couple of your transports get stunned, that breaks up the force and messes with your plans, taking a significant effect on the game. If, on the other hand, you're using a hybrid/mainly infantry-based list (as most of the armies I've faced in the past have been), being able to rapidly relocate or redeploy isn't that important and all you lose is a bit of damage output.

Of course, Extra Armour. I can't remember the last time I actually stunned a Rhino... and my opponents ALWAYS make the same joke about "oh no you knocked out my storm bolter". Grrr.

[dragonlord]

May 14, 2010 9:42:44 GMT -5 Adam said:

Carnifexes are the only ones who ever get 4+ attacks at Strength 9 or 10, and it's fair to say that a Carnifex in close combat is the best anti-tank weapon in the entire game.

Defilers with 2 extra close combat weapons can get 5 attacks basic.

May 14, 2010 9:42:44 GMT -5 Adam said:

Also, just noticed this:

May 14, 2010 6:57:23 GMT -5 dragonlord said:

In addition a stunned vehicle is effectively 'dead' for one turn as it cannot do anything.

Not quite. Don't forget that it can still draw fire, and to me at least, is just as much a target as it was last turn when I stunned it. If I don't kill it this turn, it comes back to life and starts blasting me as if nothing had happened. If anything, to a Tyranid player it's more of a target when stunned than otherwise, because I hit it automatically in melee and so it's far more likely to die (unless it has that accursed Extra Armour upgrade). Stunning obviously has an effect for you, but in practice actually does very little for your opponent other than a little less damage being suffered. Just like the Carnifexes being on fewer wounds, I suppose, except that that's permanent.

While it is true that a stunned vehicle will be as much of a target as a fully functional one, the same is true of a wounded Tyranid MC, except that you get the bonus of the vehicle not being able to shoot at you (or run away in the case of stunned) in the meantime.

I'm not arguing completely from the point of MC being better than vehicles, but as much from the point of view that I don't like the difference between them. Aside from the fact that one is organic and the other mechanical there isn't that much difference between a large tyranid organism and a vehicle, even less so in the particular case of dreadnoughts. It becomes even more silly when you consider that Wraithlords are MCs but dreadnoughts are vehicles, there is almost no difference between them so why the dichotomy? Why should a monstrous creature not be able to have one of its weapons blown off when a vehicle can? The situation gets even sillier with gargantuan creatures and super heavy vehicles, yes super heavy vehicles get a kind of 'wound' now but the split between them just gets sillier (and at this point I am definitely arguing from the point of view of gargantuan creatures loosing out, aside from the lack of weaponry reduction).

To come back to the lack of weaponry reduction point, yes a wounded Carnifex might be easier to kill in that it is that much closer to death but until the point that it dies it suffers from no reduction in firepower or close combat output.

As I believe I have said before one of the things I like about the way you did IF is that it treats vehicles and MCs in the same way, which in my opinion they should be. A vehicle should not have the chance to shrug off 10 lascannon shots and suffer no damage, but at the same time an MC should not be able to carry on as is until it eventually dies.

In my opinion the current 40k wound system only really works for relatively small multi-wound creatures, IG heavy weapons teams for example, and special characters. In the case of characters it represents their movie hero style ability to get shot in the shoulder and still fight on as if nothing had happened. In the case of an IG heavy weapons team, one of the team was the scout/ammo loader, it is possible for one man to operate the gun (though they may have a hard time moving it). It also works for the small multi-wound daemons. The only case I can think of for MCs that I am unsure whether they would be better represented under the current 40k style wound system or a system that treats them like vehicles are Greater Daemons and Daemon Princes (and the Avatar).

[Adam]

May 14, 2010 16:57:01 GMT -5 dragonlord said:

Defilers with 2 extra close combat weapons can get 5 attacks basic.

I forgot those! Bjorn probably gets about five million attacks as well, but he's a special character and doesn't count. Carnifexes get exclusive access to S10+2D6 armour penetration rolls though.

May 14, 2010 16:57:01 GMT -5 dragonlord said:

While it is true that a stunned vehicle will be as much of a target as a fully functional one, the same is true of a wounded Tyranid MC, except that you get the bonus of the vehicle not being able to shoot at you (or run away in the case of stunned) in the meantime.

...To come back to the lack of weaponry reduction point, yes a wounded Carnifex might be easier to kill in that it is that much closer to death but until the point that it dies it suffers from no reduction in firepower or close combat output.

Yes. I did point that out earlier, I believe. As I mentioned, the vehicle degrades in damage output while the Tyranid degrades in resilience. Don't forget that it's usually quite a bit more difficult to 'wound' a vehicle than it is a monstrous creature; this is the case for any weapon of a Strength less than 9. Proper guns like lascannons and missile launchers ignore the 'Fex's armour save, too.

The bit about the reduction in CC output isn't quite true. A Carnifex's low Initiative makes it vulnerable to being killed before it can strike. One with four wounds that goes ploughing into an average Space Marine unit will probably still get to strike; one with a single remaining wound probably won't.

May 14, 2010 16:57:01 GMT -5 dragonlord said:

I'm not arguing completely from the point of MC being better than vehicles, but as much from the point of view that I don't like the difference between them. Aside from the fact that one is organic and the other mechanical there isn't that much difference between a large tyranid organism and a vehicle, even less so in the particular case of dreadnoughts. It becomes even more silly when you consider that Wraithlords are MCs but dreadnoughts are vehicles, there is almost no difference between them so why the dichotomy? Why should a monstrous creature not be able to have one of its weapons blown off when a vehicle can? The situation gets even sillier with gargantuan creatures and super heavy vehicles, yes super heavy vehicles get a kind of 'wound' now but the split between them just gets sillier (and at this point I am definitely arguing from the point of view of gargantuan creatures loosing out, aside from the lack of weaponry reduction).

I do agree with you on this, although it's outside the remit of the point I was making. I think GW do lean a little towards including more random game mechanics. 40K has very, very few absolutes in it. Examples aren't hard to come up with: seizing the initiative, almost always failing rolls on 1s, psychic tests, randomised terrain/fleet movement, Ork and Chaos effects so zanily 'omgsorandom' that you might assume the rules designer has a 14-year-old Myspace kid as a daughter, Red Thirst, and the rumoured 8th-edition Fantasy rules (oh god the rumoured 8th ed Fantasy rules...). There are a few things that bypass dice rolls, usually psychic powers (Jaws of the World Wolf anyone?), but even that has an arbitrary stat test to avoid dying.

This emphasis on sheer, often un-affectable chance is - I believe - a deliberate design decision. It isn't so hard to imagine that GW is leaving more things up to the whims of the dice in 40K to create more amusing and more accessible gameplay. If tactics and skill have less of an effect, it helps mitigate the gulf between old and new players, which given the company's insistence on marketing itself to 12-year-olds, is understandable. 40K is also the sort of not-quite-serious game where having a Dreadnought explode on the first shot of the first turn and kill three of the Terminators standing nearby is funny rather than crippling.

May 14, 2010 16:57:01 GMT -5 dragonlord said:

As I believe I have said before one of the things I like about the way you did IF is that it treats vehicles and MCs in the same way, which in my opinion they should be. A vehicle should not have the chance to shrug off 10 lascannon shots and suffer no damage, but at the same time an MC should not be able to carry on as is until it eventually dies.

Thank you. Those were pretty much my thoughts on the matter. I can understand the all or nothing nature of vehicle armour - if a shot gets through, it's probably going to harm crew, detonate ammunition, damage the vehicle's mechanisms or a combination of these things - but in game-mechanic terms, it's harder to balance and makes using vehicles a tactical black hole. The gradual degradation of Monstrous Creatures affects how you use them rather than what they can still actually do; with tanks, it's the other way around. Critical vehicle damage results rarely seem to happen in our playtest games for some reason (read: dice), but aren't hugely prevalent in any case and shouldn't majorly impact on the game. They're more a passing nod to realism/cinema and a way to benefit shooting vehicles from behind than a relied-upon mechanic.

Thinking of vehicles as multiwound things is surprisingly hard. In my previous playtest game, against Luke (and later Dan), I had two enemy Dreadnoughts to contend with. An unwounded Dreadnought was a dangerous proposition to engage. It's the same as with characters - I wouldn't have bothered attacking his Librarian with two grenade-toting Guardsmen if he hadn't perilsofthewarped two wounds off himself while throwing Invocations of Will at me. The activation system makes quite a big difference, especially when melee or short-ranged units are involved. My Leman Russ with its one lascannon isn't going to kill that Dread in one go. Sure, it probably won't in 40K either, but it might.

The same works conversely, mind. To my amusement, my Leman Russ stayed on three wounds for about two turns, as Dan assault-cannoned it mercilessly and consistently failed to produce 9s on the wound rolls. It eventually died to the unit that had knocked off its first three wounds, the Terminators. I'm digressing now, but whatever.

May 14, 2010 16:57:01 GMT -5 dragonlord said:

In my opinion the current 40k wound system only really works for relatively small multi-wound creatures, IG heavy weapons teams for example, and special characters. In the case of characters it represents their movie hero style ability to get shot in the shoulder and still fight on as if nothing had happened. In the case of an IG heavy weapons team, one of the team was the scout/ammo loader, it is possible for one man to operate the gun (though they may have a hard time moving it). It also works for the small multi-wound daemons. The only case I can think of for MCs that I am unsure whether they would be better represented under the current 40k style wound system or a system that treats them like vehicles are Greater Daemons and Daemon Princes (and the Avatar).

I dunno, I think it works for MCs as well. I don't mind the lack of persistent damage results to keep track of. Warmachine's the worst, where Slayers' arms fall off as soon as anybody looks at them funny, the poor things. It's quite annoying when my Dreadnoughts get their assault cannon licences forcibly revoked, although it doesn't stop them from fulfilling their main purpose, that of tying up and/or causing to flee enemy infantry. What I can't deal with with my meagre, dice-neglected firepower, I will deal with by engaging it with an AV12 walker. Job done. (Or the 30-attack lightning claw death squad in the Land Raider.)

I think, if anything, the Greater Daemons and Avatar are better suited to the wound system than Tyranid monsters. You could feasibly saw/tear a limb off a Carnifex if you were quick and had a suitable weapon, and the Fex wouldn't like it, no sir. Do the same to a metaphysically-powered avatar of an existent god, and it'll probably just reform or have no actual effect whatsoever. Being animated by Khaine probably means that an Avatar can continue killing people even when it's just a few floating droplets of magma and a shapeshifting sword.