(nealhunt @ Aug. 15 2006,16:00)
QUOTE
I say 40K is in its 4th edition version. Over time, the developers have made it what it is for reason.
You have repeatedly made the point that "the 40K designers obviously want it that way" and that is true but completely beside the point.
The issue at hand is not how they wanted it but WHY they wanted it that way. ?Did they want it for background reasons or were they constrained by mechanics?
In 40K every unit can fire at aircraft. ?This is necessary because of the scale of the game. ?It is unworkable to have AA assets in every squad-level army. ?They obviously didn't want it that way because Joe Trooper has a real chance of shooting down an aircraft but because making aircraft invulnerable is not a viable mechanic. ?They compromised by making it possible but rather difficult. ?Epic didn't do that because the scale is large enough to allow more highly specialized units (or at least a different mix). ?That compromise was not necessary and we simply made it impossible.
In 40K every unit can engage a jetbike in hand to hand, so jetbikes are vulnerable to CC. ?Again, this is clearly required by the 40K mechanics because making them invulnerable won't work at that scale. ?Instead they made it difficult. ?Eldar bikes have the bonus assault phase move to help them avoid CC but it can't be impossible because the scale of the game doesn't allow that to be balanced.
Since it is clearly a requirement of the other mechanics, that's one "why." ?They wanted it for mechanical reasons because it's necessary. ?Maybe there were other motivations or maybe mechanics overrode other considerations as it obviously did in the case of aircraft.
I think it happens to be a solid compromise mechanic that roughly approximates the desired effect rather than "that's how it should be." ?I don't see it as any different than using Teleport to simulate an ambush ability as we do in Epic. ?Sure, you could write detailed hidden deployment rules that would be a nightmare to balance... or you could use an existing, tested mechanic that gets roughly the same effect.
The reason I think it is a matter of 40K mechanical convenience as opposed to a fully accurate representation of design intent is because the background material since RT has had Eldar jetbikes easily capable of running hundreds of feet in the air, both in illustrations and in textual description. ?There's an entire piece of fiction out there somewhere about Eldar jetbikes doing aircraft-style strafing runs while the enemy were firing small arms up at them. ?If you were to represent that in the Epic rules I don't know what that would possibly be except the equivalent of forcing FF.
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The same kind of considerations apply to many 40K-Epic translations. ?Separating out conceptual "wants" from mechanical "wants" is paramount. ?In the end, mechanical "wants" trump everything else so they can never be taken as the true concept without other support. ?They are only the best approximation available.
It is a long-standing pattern that you go for the 40K mechanics first for your conceptual framework and it is the source of most of the disagreements between you and me.
if we purely designed to fluff at its extremes, a single platoon of IG would be able to take on an entire chaos army (Gaunts ghosts)... Marines would be more akin to movie marines (see WD article for reference)... and Eldar would never have to fight a battle, they would already know the outcome, so they would know whether they should field or not.
