Unit Transports = Useless?

[Caladbolg]

It seemse that although you are instructed to use a transport ONCE in the entire game, you never need to anymore. It is my opinion, that Relic made a big mistake even including Unit Transports.

Seriously, has anyone ever used a transport or a land raider to carry troops for anything other then fun? I mean using transports in an actual strategy. If so please do me a favor and post the replay.

Otherwise, I ask and petition Relic to reconsider the transports, and change them somewhat to be better. Because as it stands they are USELESS

[Evil M0j0]

have used one once, in a MP game with the 'Kill Commander' (or whatever it is) win condition... My Chaos Lord was on the run, and I built a Rhino and drove across the map, loaded him up and bailed. THe speed on the Rhino is pretty good, so I could keep him ahead of the troops, until I finished off the opponents commander.

But yea, that was the only time. No real use for them in "normal" games, as far as I can tell.

[doeden]

The only transport I find usefull is the Grav tank. Load some gaurdians and banshees in them while your other forces hit them head on. Once the battle is set and has been going on for like 30 seconds, fly your grav tanks over the entire fight and unload behind the enemy. It really throws them off and the grav tanks do a great job of supporting you units.

[Caladbolg]

Okay, the Eldar transport has a purpose, due to the fact it can support and it can jump XD. But the other ones ... well, post #2 was kinda situational (Asassinate)

[Imperial Russki]

Or...make a mod where the Transports become able to crash into stuff! RHINO RAMPAGE! Think about it!
Two armies clash, the Orks sinewy flesh ripping alongside the Human meat as shots fill the air. Axes clash, and Chainswords slice through bone and meat alike! When suddenly, a roar is heard...not the WAAAAGH! that the Orks are so accustomed to..but the brutal sounds of 40,000 Horsepower Engines! The revving like a death knell upon the now frightened hordes of Ork! Then, the horrors make themselves apparent...RHINOS! The Orks panic, but the Warboss manages to hold them together long enough.... until the Rhinos stampede through Killa Kan and Ork alike! Space Marines dash with all their might, as Ork bodies fly...crushed! The Force Commander looks upon the tread marked battle field in awe, horror, and disgust of the brutality...enough even to make a Commander hardened through millenia as he cringe! Suddenly, the marking on the Rhinos that were not seen amidst the chaos of war make themselves apparent...the eight-pointed star of Chaos! The Rhinos turn..slowly...and rev their engines..

[doeden]

The think with Rhinos is that they are too...weak in my opinion. Think about the way units do pathfinding. To me the one flaw in this game is that units and buildings are too big. They like have this forcefield that keeps others away from it. Quite annoying.

Here you are loading one squad into a rhino, and by the time the damn thing stops moving forward, stops, goes again, stops, and finnaly corrects itself for a steady drive your marines could have been there already.

[Zelnaga]

Transports wank for the SM. Especially the Rhino (Land Raider is okay cause of the massive amrour)

Its pretty useless. Unless they made transporting a bit more interesting ..... (taking a book outta Starcraft and SM units can use the Rhino as a bunker?)

[EffeKt]

I used a rhino once and it was to bring my Force Commander to an enemy base to use orbital bombardment. Damn im cheesy.

[Ravenous]

(taking a book outta Starcraft and SM units can use the Rhino as a bunker?)

I think the table top rules had it so half of all units in a transport can shoot out...er something like that.
The most important thing transports do is get a CC squad to the battle before they are shot down or their morale is broken. But I agree, I think the biggest problems that makes rhino's stink is the over all funky pathfinding of the games larger units.

[Flak]

In gun ported vehicles (or open topped) half the units can fire out. The rhino has no gun ports and is considered closed (though the mk 1s had he bay door on top and bottom, assuming they think of that as escape hatches now).

Transports are useless now because all the maps are tiny.

Wait till you see big maps where it takes 10 minutes for normal infantry to cross the maps and you will start seeing them used a LOT.

Eldar will finally get to use their biggest advantage too- speed.

[DoomKnights]

Make rhinos upgradable to razorbacks? This way you buy a transport and then upgrade it when you need a little fire power with it.

[lantzer]

I've used them to hide/transport worker units in danger zones.

And I've kept a servitor in a land raider - pop him out to repair. pop him back in when the enemy shows up.

I've heard of folks doing the same with infiltrated gretchin and the squiggoth. (okay, nobody is going to claim that the squiggoth is worthless).

And I once built a rhino specifically to create smoke when I was assaulting a fortified position.

I admit I don't use them much - in the single-player mission that requires one, I would have rather dumped assault marines on the Reaper ambush, with sniper support.

[Stymie_Jackson]

The eldar is useful due to jump as has been mentioned before. But I see them rarely.

All the other three are sorta useless (and the LR is just redundant...you have deep strike at Tier3!) as Assault Troops are more useful overall. The ork can shoot, but hell, give me a Wartrakk!

That said, I HAVE used transports once, successfully. Deadman's crossing, my worst 1v1 map. I've won it once through a heavy SM whirlwind and entrenched marine position. Used a few bombchucksas to race up, unload a volley to knock some marines clear and raced in three wartrucks with sluggas in them. Adding in a teleported nob and two stormboys, my WHOLE INFANTY ARMY (skipped shootas for wartracks) was now in and amonsgt his troops.

Lost the game anyway, because he was able to tech to Tier 3 before I beat him and the massed F2 terminators killed me...I went for sluggas and not slower to build nobs and they all died.

I wiped out his first army tho and decapped the his two points before they began deepstriking all around me. I let my squads overwatch too big and morale breaking killed me...

[Caladbolg]

I see some people have used their races transport to some effect, but generally we have agreement that as it stands they are virtually useless. I don't even think they can take THAT much punishment (I could be wrong.) and Smoke Launchers is kinda stupid, it should come for free not have to buy it.

[BLacK_HeLL]

its really sad that a feature in all the races is pretty much used ineffectively, mostly due to small map sizes. The thought of my marines running around in rhinos, making hit n run attacks were appealing, but they don't exist with these maps. To make matters worse the squad caps are too high, why would you take up 2cap when a dread takes up the same or a whirlwind, its not like your traveling long distances. When people start making those ungodly big levels in map editor, then were gonna start seeing some transport heaven.......

[First And Only]

Rhinos are milk cartons. Very slow milk cartons. When the marines hop in, it's like the Sgt then says "Alright we're all in! Everybody get under the pile of kevlar vests!"

They're just way too fragile and they have no real use. Falcons are the only semi-useful transport.

[Viper114]

Rhinos, Chaos Rhinos, Wartrukks and Falcons aren't used widely since they're so weak and, in the case of the Rhinos, unarmed. If they were to up the HP for every transports up to around 1000-1500, and give the Rhino and Chaos Rhinos weapons (Storm Bolters, like the TT!), they'd be used more to get those useful units to where they're needed faster.

And, change the capacities to hold a number of units at one, time, not one Squad, since a Commander unit by itself seems to count as one Squad, and takes up the entire space! Ten unit slots, so it can hold a whole Squad, or hold a number of independent units, like your Commanders and such in one Rhino, rather than more than one...

[Shakrith]

Everyone has said they're useless for a long time. To any other whine, I would say "Get over it!", as I really think balance is fine and I have found no problems, except for this one. The transports really have no purpose. On "ungodly big levels", like Burial Grounds (I know, not ungodly, but it is pretty big) jump troops dominate. For transports, this means slaughter: melta bombs. So with their puny HP and lack of armament, there is nothing they can do! Save us Relic!

Though I have found Falcons with their jump capability useful for transporting Banshees, Seers and Reapers sans-webway.

[XavionDeosXIV]

And whats really sad is that transports are the only 2-cap vehicle chaos has! And since theyre so damned useless, the de-facto max cap for chaos is 18. Problem much?

[Tank Hunter]

I used the Squiggoth quite effectivly one game as a transport. It was a 4 way FFA take and hol game on training grounds. This SM player had this Crit location that I despritly needed to win the game. Unfortunatly he had snipers and rocket turrets all over the place. So I took my Sqiggoth and loaded it up with 2 maxed out Nob Squads. I sent my Squiggoth though the barrage of turrets and snipers, unloaded my Nobs and slaughtered the SMs gaurding the Crit. I took it over an used the Sqiggoth and the nobs to hold it off while he was attacking and the Victory timer was counting down ( I dont know why he didnt attack the other crits that were virtully ungaurded lol)

[PureChaos]

iv said this before as a idea.

so il say it agan the idea is making it deployable cover. destructable cover. properties of heavy cover but it can blow up and kill your squad so keep a eye out on them.

basicly assualting cover is the idea.

[evilhippo]

Obviously the Land Raider is formidable, but the Falcon is also very useful indeed due to its excellent mobility... jump jet right next to a shooty enemy unit and debus a bunch of Banshees directly into contact with them, or even nastier, the Seer Council, thereby preventing them getting shot to hell before they can get to close combat range... ouchy ouchy.

But yeah, the Rhino is pretty useless and costs too much vehicle cap to be worth it. If they cost 1 point of vehicle cap, sure, might be worth it for the mobility and resistance to artillery... but otherwise, just not worthwhile to build.

I have not played Ork enough to have strong views on Orky trucks.

[unquestionable]

I really want to know what Relic was doing.. didn't they try the rhino?? what were they thinking?..

[Shakrith]

We all complained about how it sucked in the beta, and nothing was done. Thankfully, most of the other problems havebeen fixed!

[BuzzCutPsycho]

Make the Rhinos like apothocaries in that they don't cost pop but you can only have so many.

Say... 5? All ya need and problem solved.

[Midgetus]

I've made good use of rhinos in the campaign, though haven't had the need yet in online games. (haven't played enought to say, really) I had only one servitor (my Treminator death squads were burning too much pop cap) and 2 (sometimes 3) separate forces with mechanized units, plus several listening posts that were under frequent attack. The only way to keep everything reparied was to have this one servitor running back and forth all the time. Obviously, the Rhino made things faster. It also hleped cut down-time when I needed to bring Apothecaries up front to replace the ones from the aforementioned terminator death squads. (Poor dumb apothecaries can't be arsed to hide behind a terminator from time to time, no they gotta be up front in hand-to-hand combat)

[Kleezs]

They are pretty useless atm and also too weak compared to other vehicles. It is not really worth investing the money or the food cap in. Increasing their usefulness by adding bigger maps, boosting HP drastically and adding a bit more overall combat usefulness (by giving rhino's storm bolters) will be much appreciated.

For chaos it is even more lame, as they don't even have much in the way of vehicles to begin with.

[AlienHack]

When the editor comes out and the bigger fan-made maps start to show up then we will probably see more transports.

Nevertheless it could push their use a little if the vehicle cap came down to 1 and their health up to lets say 1500-2000.

[Dracmus]

Don't know if anyone mentioned this or not, but I think that transports are just that, but I do know that if you throw some buiders into em, and keep in in the back of the force for safety, you can get em out for fixin up your tanks,mechs,and such.

I know that puttin builders in the Squiggough makes for fixing it quite usefull, or taking over areas of the map easier, once you secured with fortifications, you put em back in and leave, hoping that your weaker/ened opponent cant retake the position. The idea works with the other races as well.

Cons to the manuever is that it takes up more unit count which is low to begin with, I think they need to expand the maps, make the buildings a tad smaller, bump up the unit counts/machine count too. I know that the more units fighting, bogs down the comp, but hey, why do you have to have limits in gaming wars. Or how about when the game boggs down the game auto switches to a lower graphic res to allow the smoth progression of the game, and switches back when game limitations allow for it? Maybe it's to progressive for the technology that the common consumer possesses, if that is the case, guess we will have to wait till the year 3004 for WarHammer 40,000 Dawn of the 300th War.

[Kleezs]

Well it would be nice if you could fit a maximum number of units (individual models) in them, instead of squads. A lone apothecary takes up the same space as a full squad of 8 marines + a sergeant AND that same apothecary ... :D

Pretty strange if you ask me. o_0

[Cyberjankie]

we posted this problem allready within the beta, and relic sad they know that problem and sometime after the dowrealise they will solve it in a patch... so lets hope fore the next patches....

[btha]

i have never even built a transport.. i mean.. would you rather have a rhino or a dreadnought? if the transports were flying aircrafts or something like that might be usefull.. but that won't happen..

i don't even know how they work.. when you kill a transport full of troops, do they die?

they could maybe be made remotely usefull if they got a cloaking ability

[Dracmus]

That sounds usefull, cloak for transport. That would be alot better than just a smoke grenade, which fails to render in the game all the time. Would be great for an infiltration strat. Might possibly make it a little stronger HP, I mean, it can't shoot, what should it take so little damage for?

[Moysturfurmer]

Nah, making transports 0 vehicle cap with a max of 2 (adjusted for each race) would suffice.

[Imperial Russki]

How about Deepstriking Rhinos? I'm not sure what it'd accomplish, but it'd be funny.

[nodachi]

make em 1 cap
more health
smoke is already implemented

GIVE THEM AND AUTODROP. When you have 4 rhinos loaded up with troops, its a pain to get them to deploy where you want so most of the time you are forced to have to tab-click-tab-click-tab-click. A simple hotkey to autodrop all units in all of the transports would be awsome.