I posted a comment in the latest twitch stream, and I was wondering what the community felt about this topic. Here's the comment: On Tabletop, giving a SM a Bike as an upgrade does NOT increase his Toughness regarding weapons that would cause Instant Death, so if they wanted to emulate that aspect, they should allow shots hitting the driver/passenger to damage the player rather than the vehicle
I'm hoping they have a "crew compartment" modeled into their damage model for Tanks and Rhinos/APCs. If the vehicle gets hit in a certain area, crew members or passengers can receive damage or even death, with the tank still being a viable fighting platform. Bikes and "open air copula" type vehicles, I certainly hope you can hit either the player or the vehicle.
Just for open vehicles IMO, if you are accurate (or lucky) enough to headshot a guy that is going in a bike you should do damage to him.
I think for those vehicles that are close-topped, the "crew compartment" zone shouldn't be affected until the vehicle encounters a Wrecked, Destroyed, or Annihilated result since that is the only time passengers would be affected by damage dealt to the vehicle on the tabletop. However, I'm definitely leaning towards some form of direct damage to the player for any open-topped vehicles, but I feel that these vehicles should be longer-range, or significantly more destructive, so as to make them a viable threat on the battlefield before the driver/passengers get sniped out of their compartment. Then again, I'm only citing from tabletop rules rather than lore.
Other than Bikes... I couldn't really tell if they were confirming 'open air' copulas today or if they were saying they'd look into it. As in Trukks? I'd imagine Orks in EC will have Trukks. To my knowledge most Trukks are open air, as in no overhead cover. It was rather confusing to me that they were even debating open air vehicles, you'd think that Trukks were already being modeled. At the very least on the vehicles with anti infantry weapons atop the turret, whoever is manning the top turret should have to be exposed from the waist up. That is what you see on most 40K miniatures that have a anti infantry weapon atop the turret. The commander should have a periscope they can use while buttoned up inside, to check their surroundings. If they want to fire the weapon atop the turret, the should have to pop the hatch and actually man the gun. High Risk... high reward... There's not much balance or trade off with the current automated fire from inside the turret for the top heavy shoota, twin bolter, ect.
personally i would prefer that player hitpoints and vehicle hitpoints stay separate. meaning that hitting an exposed player would damage the player and not the vehicle, so enclosed vehicles would keep the player safe and open vehicles or open slots would expose the player to the risk of taking direct damage.
Exactly. On a similar note, I'm extremely worried after watching todays Twitch Live Stream. The 2 devs hopped out of their tank right as it was exploding. They both got out as the vehicle exploded and both of them remained at full health. On my screen at least they were literally jumping out when the tank exploded, and neither of them received any damage from the explosion. So while I'm wanting to see tank damage separate from crew damage, the crew sure as hell should be injured, if not killed outright if they're in the tank or right next to it when it explodes.
I've only seen this implemented in Red Orchestra and the newer F2P game Heroes & Generals, and I have to admit that it is a really cool concept, but if this were to be added, it would cause players to avoid manning the mantle weaponry in favor of staying alive (which happens in RO and H&G all the time). Another concept I recall from the tabletop is the Sniper Rifle's ability to cause vehicle damage on rare occasions (the Rending rule, if you're familiar), which would make for another possibility of causing vehicle damage (and thus crew damage). The problem with this is we haven't ANY info regarding Sniper Rifles being utilised in EC that would make use of the Rending rule, but it would be super cool if this became a thing!
