(Ginger @ Oct. 07 2007,20:50)
QUOTE
This is a somewhat old topic. To summarise thoughts from various earlier threads, although apparently a nice idea on the face of it, is actually impractical for a number of reasons :-
- To garrison, Infantry (other than scouts) are restricted to a single vehicle - so the entire formation is already restricted to a 15 cm move anyway. Dreadnought transport is superfluous here.
- In the trademark Marine air assaults, you cannot put any transport in either Thunderhawks or Drop Pods, so Dreadnought transport is superfluous.
- Tacticals cannot take Landraider upgrades. However if permitted, this would make ground based tactical formations very over-powered (and very expensive)
- No-one adds them to Terminators as it restricts the deployment options to a Landing Craft, but even if you did, you may not add more than 4 landraider transport (insufficient to carry the additional Dreads), and the formation would not be able to fit into the Landing Craft.
- The only formation that you could feasibly add Dreadnoughts and transport to is the Devastators. But if you changed the Landraider upgrade to permit this it is not actually cost effective, costing almost as much as a pair of Warhound titans, for a formation that is significantly weaker and easier to break.
- Personally, I would love to change the THawk to carry three Rhinos or two Landraiders in addition to troops - but you still run into capacity issues when wanting to transport the Dreadnoughts.
So in practice, the suggestion is a non-starter unless you are prepared to revamp a significant number of other items in the Marine list, and these in turn would actually be significantly over-powered and open to abuse.
So to repeat, although it would seem to be a nice idea to be able to transport Dreadnoughts, it really is not actually a sensible idea.
You've forgotten some thoughts from earlier threads:
One of the reasons why the Land Raider was picked as the potential transport for the Dreadnought, aside from the background descriptions of the Land Raider having superior "roominess and ride" (sorry, I work in the automotive industry) was because the Land Raider is/was perceived to not only be underpowered for its points, but also under utilised. ?But if the points cost was lowered from 100 points/pc to 75 points/pc the group consensus was that was too much of a points drop, and nobody was considering 80, 85, 90, or 95 points/pc since that was counter to the general trend of keeping units and formations in increments of 25 points. ?So if the points can't be lowered and the stats can't be improved (aside from the FF rating to 4+) then the utility of the Land Raider could be improved. ?Among the ideas for improving the utility of the Land Raider was:
- Allowing the Land Raider to carry a wider variety of units, primarily dreadnoughts, but maybe also Assault Marines.
- Allowing the Land Raider to be used in more detachments, including the Tactical and the Dreadnought detachment (see below).
- Creating Veteran detachments that would allow Land Raiders as transports.
One of the improvments thrown around for the Dreadnoughts was the creation of a 4x unit dreadnought detachment as was seen in Space Marine / Titan Legions and mentioned in background material dating back to supplements for Adeptus Titanicus. ?This detachment would obviously need transport if it was going to operate in something other than a garrison formation or an air assault formation.
One of the complaints about adding dreadnoughts to Tactical detachments is that by adding the dreadnought you have pretty much relegated the Tactical Formation to either Garrison or Air Assault duty and eliminated it from being a ground/armored operations unit. ?If Land Raiders were allowed for Tactical detachments and Land Raiders were allowed to carry one Dreadnought you could then have a Tactical detachments of 6x Tacticals, 1-2x Dreadnoughts, 3x Rhinos, and 1-2x Land Raiders that is realistic in regards to background and mobile enough to operate within Space Marine combat doctrine.
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The idea of transporting Dreadnoughts in Rhinos was around in the first edition of WH40K. ?I'll admit that I don't remember how serious or official it was, but it does have a little merit to it. ?If Dreadnoughts were allowed to be transported by Rhinos it would certainly make the job of using Dreanoughts in ground assault forces a lot easier. ?How realistic that is, especially in the shifting sands known as WH40K background, I don't know. ?I'd dare say that the proper application of torches and I-beam reinforcement ribs would allow the Rhino to be used as such, but I'm not going to push for it unless the guys in my group do.
