Bikes

[El Capitan]

If you think about the physics, Bikes need the ground itself to perfrom the skid

[LukeG]

No traction, no skid turn, TREE! No more jetbike! Ha!

[Adoni-Zedek]

Okay, so while jetbikes can fly, they can't perform skid turns. (I was actually thinking along the lines of angling the bike so the support thrusters oppose your forward momentum (similar to the role the wheels play in a normal skid turn), but as the jetbikes use anti-grav technology, they have no lifting thrusters to angle in such a manner. So no skid turns). Something to keep in mind when comparing the prices of the two types of bike. Of course, jetbikes are faster, and can ignore most terrain, and perform pop-up attacks. So there is still probably a points disconnect in here somewhere.

[James 40K Champ ***]

but while jet bikes can do all those things,

bikes can move upto fast speed in 1 turn from stationary, which puts to bed the speed.
bikes can use small terrain as cover.. jetbikes are in the air, and cant.
Duno if jetbikes have targeters? But if they dont that makes bikes a lot better, twin bolters are nice with targeter and close range..!

Also the armour, id feel much safer with an army of mounted space mariens that I would with an eldar equivelant.. theyd just crash and burn to easy

[LukeG]

Jetbikes do have targeters too, but they also have guardian pilots. Marines are nightmare shots on bikes. Can get straight into short range for +2 to hit at fast-very fast speeds. At their worst the targeters negate the penalty for moving over 20"

[Adoni-Zedek]

Don't forget that any shooting from vehicles moving at fast speed is at -1 to hit.

I thought jetbikes could also accelerate to fast speed in one turn. They still qualify as bikes, don't they?

As skimmers, they have a 1-in-3 chance of crashing whenever they go out-of-control, as well. Bikes only crash if they hit something.

[tturen]

Jet bikes are bikes so do skip a speed band for excelleration.

As far as cover goes they are just as easily concealed simply by removing them from their stand. (Of course then they can be attacked in CC.) Our Eldar player uses baseless bikes for this reason.

In our terrain filled games jet bikes rule and marine bikes drool simply because jet bikes fly to avoid terrian and pop-up from cover.

[James 40K Champ ***]

Fair enuf.

Dont think theres any clear clarification on skimmers flying hights, perhaps your on/off flying base isnt a bad idea, an u can obviously only change it in ur movement phase.

But personally I think skimmers should all be set a about 2" above ground, base or no.

Unless you have a very large peice of scenery to block line of site, jet bikes should be pretty out in the open really..

[tturen]

I'm pretty sure GW intended skimmers to be above ground most of the time. I think our Eldar player is the only one to remove the base from his units. The rest of us (non-Eldar) use them although in the case of the Tau drones I will be lowering the little devils a bit. The base does indeed have a huge impact in game terms because of the LOS to the units.

[Adoni-Zedek]

I agree. My bikes (and tanks) will all have removable bases, but only for transport reasons. In game, they will all be elevated.

[El Capitan]

Just catching up on all this. All of the Eldar players I know have seen their bikes snap for one reason or another, be it dropping them, them getting crushed in transport or the infamous Luke sitting on them incident back at the Meatgrinder in '99.

Bikes need a preset height + it stops arguments, and 2" seems fair, the bikes could also be 'sticky' to the ground so they automatically go 2" over things like a basic 2D flight game. Their should be a max height jetbikes can cross over as well like 8" so they can go out of control and smash into a building or such like. The same rule can apply for Grav Tanks or 'Heavy Skimmers' but they only have 1" ground clearance and can be engaged in clsoe combat. These rules are covered to some degree in the White Dwarf from when the Falcon was released.

[Adoni-Zedek]

A maximum altitude sounds okay, but you'd better put it higher than 12". That's how high the skimmers get to "pop up" when making pop-up attacks.

[Simon]

I'd say the max should be the slow speed of the vehicle seems better to me.

[tturen]

What rules exactly are in that WD? Anybody know off the top of their head?

[El Capitan]

It gives the actual height the skimmer was off the ground but i cant remember, im sure it was 2" + it also classed a grav tank as a heavy skimmer and as a rule models could charge it and make a single cc attack against it. Also it had special crashing rules which are on the datafax

[bot]

jetbike priced at 20 point for skimmer/bike combo is just a mistake. i'm saying it from the eldar player's point of view. everyone agrees they're just to good for their price.
i don't understand why you guys want to drop the 'skid' rule and keep 'accelerate'. explanation about momentum and thrusters isn't very convincing.

my idea is to completely remove the 'bike' rules from jetbike, so no 'skid' and 'acceleration'. that would make things way more balanced. what's left is 'skimmer' and 12" pop-ups and fly over everything. sounds cool imo.

[tturen]

I agree with the cost issue but in terms of bike rules we use accelerate for jet bikes but not skid turns. I don't see anything realistic about jet bikes doing a 'skid' turn at all.

Nice to see your alive bots!

[El Capitan]

Jetbikes certainly shoudlnt be able to skid turn, it really makes no sense. I'd go with bot - its not that space marine bikes are overpriced its that eldar bikes are under priced! Making them a skimmer and not a bike seems fair enough and will be adopted here!

[Adoni-Zedek]

Bikes get their acceleration from the high power of their engines, relative to the mass of the vehicle. I see no reason why Eldar jetbikes should not benefit from this, just as the ground-bound bikes do. Disallowing skid turns makes perfect sense, but the acceleration ability ought to apply the same to all super-light vehicles, perhaps even to Hellion skyboards

[El Capitan]

Random Bike rant:

Bikes have the following rules - rapid fire bolters whilst moving, immune to psychology, on a 3-6 the marine has equivalent Toughness 6, and 0-30" in one movement phase and the opportunity to utilise additional to hit modifiers that are notobtainable by any other infantry unit for a massive -4 to hit behind heavy cover.

Jump Packs are entirely different to this and have a compeltely different tactical use. Ive seen small bike units wipe out scores of marines simply because there so damn tough and can be used effectively enough to avoid bigger weapons. In conjunction with a well planned assualt bikes are amazing as they can force heavy weapons fire away from the main line. Jump Pack troops on the other hand are very efffective in precision strikes but are almsot guaranteed to die if left out on their own and are best used in adding pressure to assualts...typically ones started by bikes.

I strongly recommend not reducing the bikes points cost and instead evaluating all the strengths that they have. Also comparing them to eldar jetbikes is entirely unfair, (tho im not overly against putting up the jetbike points) however eldar cannot rain the Assault cannons or heavy armour and also have a tendency to lose a lot of troops agianst small arms fire, if you cant bring it to bear you need to have a tactical rethink.

We did playtest the reduced ike costs and found them too be far too effective, if you want to see how powerful bikes are see how they work in all bike armies woth compliments of a few tanks and attack bikes. Its exceptionally powerful.