Nope that is plain wrong on several counts.

The warp distance is 2D6 + 6" (+a rerollable D6 in the shooting phase from battle focus) the minimum distance is therefore 9" before shooting but you'd have to be unbelievably unlucky to manage that.

Then you get to move a further 2D6 in the assault phase even if you have no charge target which Swooping Hawks cannot do as they are Jump infantry not Jetpack infantry.

The absolute minimum distance a Warp Spider can travel is therefore 11"

However to achieve this staggering feat you would have had to roll 1s in 6 consecutive rolls which is a 1 in 46'656 chance.

If you only look at the pre-shooting distance you are still talking about a 1 in 1'296 chance, hardly a good basis for an argument.

A Warp Spider's average distance is actually 17" before shooting plus 7" in the movement phase for 24" total. Whereas if you take a Hawks average flight distance it is 16"... Which was why I said that Warp Spiders can move further but Swooping Hawks actually tip them when you factor in their superior weapon range.

My bad I was working from memory.

As an unrelated thing how often do you actually roll an average roll?

Oh god - Probability theory

Basically the more ways of getting a number as a combination of 2 (or more, though let's just stick to 2 for this example) rolls the more common it will be.
7 is therefore the commonest score on 2 dice since you can get to it in the largest number of ways 1&6, 2&5, 3&4, 4&3, 5&2, 6&1
So you are 6 times more likely to roll a 7 on 2 dice (the average) than you are to roll 2 or 12 since there is only one combination that will get you those scores 1&1 and 6&6 respectively.

The following are the percentage probabilities for these scores when rolling 2 dice - rerolls are something else entirely.

2 or 12 - 2.78% .... 3 or 11 - 5.56%.... 4 or 10 - 8.33%.... 5 or 9- 11.11%.... 6 or 8 - 13.89%
7 - 16.67%

Well -ish, you wouldn't want to make hawks too strong or they'd be all anyone played. They really need to have one role they can do really well and similarly there should be ways to counter them.
Now I did deliberately fix the scenario to showcase what I see as being the strengths of the swooping hawks (speed, anti-assault kiting and kamikazi vehicle smashing) and while I could have given them an easy time of it I wanted to show how a relatively weak unit could still have a large impact.

When the singlemindedness of the Marine commander forced them to attack the convoy directly they would have needed to get to H2H range with moving tanks so firstly there was the danger that they could get run over as they tried to jump onto and next to the moving tanks to slap their grenades onto their hulls.

Then there is the fact that these vehicles can mount a whole heap of powerful anti-infantry weapons like heavy bolters, autocannons and even heavy flamers, all of which are great against squishy units so heavy losses would have been inevitable.

The fact that they did so well really comes down to them having weapons that are good against vehicles.

Wow.....just wow.

Of course not but you want to have them about as survivable as other Eldar in Aspect Armour so they're actually played. That's a fair point but why not just drop the grenades onto the tanks. I'd call it speed, anti-assault and the ability to drop grenades (of various strength).

Because in TT they don't drop Haywire grenades with their grenade packs and mainly use them in hand to hand combat because they get more attacks that way.
Why that is I don't know but I imagine that haywire grenades might work best when attached to the vehicles hull, a bit like a melta bomb.

Being forced to get up close and personal to take out vehicles is their big drawback since they are very fragile and often get killed in the attempt (still talking TT here) so it just feels right for it to work the same way in EC.
Plus if they were better at vehicle hunting at a range then they would put Fire Dragons and Wraithguard out of a job, especially as they wouldn't need help from a transport to do it.

Now I know this isn't TT but some of the same ideas still apply, especially in an army as specialised as the Craftworld Eldar.
Each Aspect has a specific role in TT and trying to imagine what the best match for them would be in EC which has different constraints due to it's being a realtime action game rather than a turn based strategy game is going to be a bit tricky, Warp Spiders and Swooping Hawks being prime examples.
Frankly though I reckon finding distinct roles for Banshees and Scorpions will be way harder.

That's to balance the TT. No you can throw them so it makes no difference. Maybe alter it so Haywire disables the vehicle but only Melta destroy it?

This is actually pretty valid. Fades do have that almost teleport-like movement. If the motion is invisible it would be perfect. The problem would remain : how hard would a couple of warp spiders jumping around punish our hardware. And the final issue : wouldn't this be really OP. A warp spider running behind your back , unloading in you , running away, repeat. Maybe that is why the devs aren't too keen on them and give hints on swooping hawks instead.

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qMtbp6hbeQ

There's a discussion on Warp Spider jump mechanics here and the phase out idea coupled with free flight is IMO the best way of making it work. A better example though would be Champions online Teleportation


As to invisible players punishing your hardware... Well there's no reason why that should happen at all since if anything they are causing less demand in terms of processing (client side) since they aren't being rendered.


In TT Warp spiders can do hit and run attacks that prevent them from getting shot at in the shooting phase, but they can still get shot at with overwatch fire. If they could do this by appearing, dealing a ton of hurt and then just disappearing before the enemy can react that would be seriously OP so there should be some mechanics to prevent this.

Firstly I think that there should be a cooldown timer on their warp jump ability to limit how quickly they can jump again, this should prevent much of the abuse by forcing them to pick their targets with care.
For instance if they were to appear behind a Tactical marine or an Assault Marine then they could easily get charged in hand to hand combat before they could warp away and killed before their warp jump recharges, or if the Tactical marine is toting a plasma gun (good against armor and at close range) then they could just get roasted.

Secondly warp jumping should be dangerous to the Spider, my favorite take on this so far (that isn't horribly hard to implement) is the warp lottery.
Basically the longer the Spider stays in the warp the more damage they rack up, however they don't automatically take that damage.
When they try to cancel the warp and re-enter normal space (phase in again) they have a random chance of getting all that damage in one big hit and if they die as a result they simply don't re-appear, however since the damage they may take is predictable based on how long they are in the warp they should be able to avoid getting killed by making shorter jumps, though then they run the risk of getting caught by the enemy.

You could even get rid of the cooldown entirely and replace it with this damage lottery, with the amount of time spent in normal space reducing the 'jackpot', making fast hit and runs really risky, but that may lead to players being stupidly reckless and then blaming their own mistakes on the game (no-one likes being killed repeatedly randomly) so it may not be the best approach.

I personally reckon that a cooldown plus a warp lottery (or some other better risk) are the most elegant ways to balance the Warp Spider's jumping ability.

Yes but assuming you move really fast forward with this you gain visibility of more enemies. If you really rush forward you could travel a fair distance with this and your machine would have to load these textures faster . In a game where 100 vs 100 battles would be the norm and you can expect much much more it could be an issue.
And depending on the distance at which the models are loaded a model moving too fast forward could cause issues for lower end machines. (even if it is abnormal for a warp spider to rush too far)
Btw thanks checked the thread.