Predators (both SM and CSM) have an autocannon as their stock primary. So 3/4 of the starting factions have at least one primary turret that fires conventional shells, and on Orks it's everything but the Zzap gun. I'm guessing Eldar's laser cannons will be hitscan, and technically angling can apply somewhat to energy weapons too because it still increases how many inches of steel (or ceramite, or wraithbone) it has to melt through before it can do damage. Due to trigonometry. Still, if it's too math intensive, Tabletop's armor values will do. Hit, roll vs AV, pen, glance, or bounce. Very simple. I would like it to use the point of impact rather than the point of origin to determine which facing it hits though. Edit: Ew, aimbots and one-man tanks. No thanks.
Agreed DoW was a game where you controlled squads, a tank in that game was manned by a squad. In EC you control 1 single trooper, so to run a tank you will have to rely on multiple players and it won't be "my" tank (I'm hoping it will be a requisition cost for the entire unit/group that is driving it).
I say have one driver and then as many gunners as the tanks has guns. Promotes teamwork and kinda supresses zerg rushes. Also, how about if we make vehicles customizable? Have the devs commented on this? WHen you buy a predator or a looted wagon you choose the guns and turrets.... Even decorations or stuff lik that?
Ordinance is a city law, Ordnance is splody stuff. Not important, just fyi. The rest of your post is spot on, all I would add is; Tanks can not be effective on their own. They have giant blind spots, they move slow, make heaps of noise and are generally the least tactical thing on the map. They need screening forces of infantry to be anywhere near capable of being employed in urban areas, and for open ground warfare they need other vehicles to provide that screen/reconnaissance. I would like to see this reflected in game. Tanks require crews to operate. No solo tanks. Don't do it. Another PS2 travesty to avoid. Driver and gunner at a minimum, but I would like to see other relevant positions filled as well. They should require a huge amount of resources to acquire and they should be limited in how may can be employed at any given time. The trade off is: when a tank is spotted it should be a real 'OMFG GET DOWN TANK'! situation, because they should be capable of creating absolute hell when they open up that case of whup ass. They need to be a real viable, tactic changing threat when they show up to make the price of driving them worth it.
While having tank combat this in depth would be incredible, I don't think the devs want to make a tank game, and implementing that would be pretty resource intensive. That said tanks are a must have in this game, they are central to 40k war in general. Some things that would certainly be easier to have would be no one man tanks, you require a gunner, having blind spots, being able to destroy defenses as was suggested in the OP. Basically the devs should focus less on complicated tank mechanics, and more how they fit into a battle tactically. If that makes any sense.
Actually most of the things he suggested can easily be implemented and are in fact implemented in mosts games with combined arms. I personally love most everything said on this thread.
In fact, most of them are just stats that all vehicles will have anyway (shell velocity, how far up/down you can aim, zoom levels, rate of fire, crew size), and I'm just making suggestions as to what exactly those stats should be. As for the others, self-leveling sights are seen on almost all aircraft HUDs even in games where tanks don't have them (which is kind of silly if you think about it). The seat-swapping delay would be a simple flag that locks the gun for a set time. Alternatively, if the reload time is considered long enough then a simple script could make the gun start as unloaded when you enter the seat. The range markers are a matter of taking some measurements before you draw the lines, rather than just slapping them on there to look pretty. Though it does mean that if you change a gun's ballistic profile, you need to re-draw its range lines so that they're still accurate. Gyro-stabilized turrets are common in games that have separate drivers and gunners (so your driver doesn't screw with your aim as much), but are otherwise under-represented as a feature.
The important and interesting part of what the OP asks, amounts to this: "How common and plentiful will the tanks be?" To outline this, take these two drastic hypothetical extremes into consideration: - In one extreme, tanks are exorbitantly expensive, and even under daily gameplay, it takes weeks to save sufficient funds to purchase one. Thus, they are extremely rare sights. - In the opposite extreme, they're so cheap that every player can basically buy a tank every time he spawns. The game essentially is now almost a 40k version of World of Tanks, though you have the option of playing as infantry to ambush the tanks, of course. Clearly, we expect an actual game design that falls somewhere in between those two extremes, but where exactly? Do we want tanks to be somewhat common, where we see moderate sized tank formations in every single battle (and have their firepower and durability adjusted downward accordingly)? Or do we want tanks to be a fairly rare sight, where the appearance of just one or two of them is a major event, that has us scrambling to prepare a proper defensive response against it (because higher cost/rarity means adjusting vehicle power upward of course)?
For the record, I'd personally lean in this direction as well (make vehicles more rare, but generally adjust them to be more powerful). Regardless of whether they are made strong+rare or weak+common, either way, they should always be vulnerable to infantry in their flanks and rear, and have difficulty detecting infantry hiding in broken terrain. So on battlefields with very open terrain, they can do decently without much support. However, they still remain vulnerable to ambush by infantry lying in wait in tight terrain, that can easily get close enough to use weapons like meltaguns/fusion guns and meltabombs. The obvious counter to this is to escort the tanks with friendly infantry to flush out all the hiding spots first.. therefore encouraging and rewarding teamwork and coordination.
I think the simplest solution in this case is sticking to the TT rulebook (more or less ). Faction is divided into groups of about 100 men\xeno strong commanded by a Strike Force Commander. Like in every WH40k TT battle each army (in this case - strike force) has a force organisation chart, (with slight variations depending on the race\legion) for example: 3 slots for heavy support (so You can take 3 tanks or 3 devastator squads instead or say 2 deastator squads and one tank) 3 slots for elite troops e.g. teminators 3slots for fast attack e.g raptors 4\5 slots for tactical squads 1\2(3?) slots for HQ. What's more, heavy support and elite units are much more expensive in terms of requsistion (points) than tacticals so HQ would have to decide if it's better to have a smaller strike force but of a better quality (with tanks, termies etc) or just more regular marines. This idea is just a rough draft which aims to reflect the ready and well thought Games Workshop scheme, it could be modified to suit the mechanics and the world of the game better e.g You could have say 5 slots for heavy support and 10 for tacticals but probably then You'd have to split 10 marines squads into 5 people combat squads etc.
