Is it feasible that the General rules contain a rule to allow formations to purchase Aircraft as Transports and not have them have to hang around before things get destroyed etc? e.g the same as the War Engine/Aircraft designation but only an Aircraft designation.

I've noticed a few places in various lists that have to come up with a special rule to allow aircraft to do funky things for dropping off troops but they're all handled differently and some seem very clunky and awkward.

All it would take is a note in the aircraft section stating that a ground formation can be transported by an aircraft formation as long as the all the aircraft together can carry the entire ground formation.

Terrible wording, but you get the idea. If you have a 12 stand formation, it can be transported by a formation of three aircraft with transport capacities of four, so long as all the stands are legal to transport in that type of aircraft.

There's no need IMO to make it possible to take aircraft as dedicated transports, only to allow a seperate formation of A/C to carry a ground formation a la WE transport.

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Agree, the aircraft and transported formation will activate together when transporting anyway.

Personally I think the right way to do it is to come up with a generic special rule that means a unit acts like a war engine transport despite not being a war engine. This could then be applied to aircraft, or to other unit types (like valkyries in a 'nam list).

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

I very much agree. A new Codex style Necron army would benefit from such a rule too.

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I do believe aircraft in general need some kind of rule like this: essentially "A formation may be transported by a formation of multiple aircraft if all units have a valid transport slot to use."



I think it becomes problematic as a general rule applying to basic ground units and would be better served with a "motor pool" rule within lists that need it. Eldar, Marines, and Orks all have formations that have "unused" transport slots that would have to be examined if something like this went into effect.

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I think the idea is to have a general special rule that can be applied to both aircraft and ground formations as needed?

The rule is there in the War Engines rule (replace "fit inside the war engine" with "fit inside the *foo* tranports in the formation"). Just needs a catchy name to replace *foo*.

And the name for this rule is: "Independent Transport" A rule i advocat for ages

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I'm okay with a drop-off-only concept for transport formations. Some sort of airborne/air assault kind of deployment where the transports split off to a separate mission after dropping loaded troops is not an unreasonable option.

Under no circumstances do I think it should be allowed for an independent formation to swoop in and link up on an "as needed" basis. It allows some seriously funky command and control issues in-game, which is why the possibility was removed from the Ork lists with the special fortress transport rules (the Orks were running around with Warband + Fortress formations, and combining/splitting willy-nilly as tactically expedient). It's also ridiculously unrealistic, as loading up mid-battle with non-dedicated transports is effectively impossible in real life.

Neal: The war engine transport rules already allow that for Independent War Engine Transports, though in army lists they are characterised more by the exceptions than the rule.

Is it that unrealistic that a formation that had dropped in would call for a valkyrie formation to come and pick them up?

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

It would be a massive power boost to any list that allowed this. Formation sizes would change as the game flowed...So formation A looking close to breaking? Bring in Transport formation B to increase its size. Suddenly need to grab an objective? Break off Transport formation B to grab it while formation A stays holding the one its on.

Adding this to a list designed to have it may work but I too would have strong reservations to adding such a thing in as general rule available to all lists.

Again, it's already available to war engine transports. I don't really understand how it's much different for non war engines.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Have anybody tried similar tricks to what Neal is describing with Krieg Gorgons? Or are the Gorgons too slow to do it properly?

At one stroke every Falcon formation can pick up and move an infantry formation that can fit in it.

This is why it should not be a general rule, but a special rule.