DS2: stats for Epic miniatures

I have set out several times to design DS2 stats for Space Marine
miniatures, but usually got discouraged on the way and never
finished.  I've got Henry Morris' stats, and Steve Gibson's,
but I'd like to give them a try myself.  To succeed this time,
I need to make some assumptions about a number of things, and
know what rules I want to break.  I don't think DS2 is generic
enough to cover everything.

1) Leave out the difficult things for now.  Bikes, wheeled or
jet, for example.  Are they transportation for infantry?  Are
they an infantry class, or size 1 vehicles?  Walkers, too,
though I'll take a look at other people's walker rules.

2) I'll design things by the way I see them, not necessarily
trying to get the same effect that GW used.  For instance, I'll
use skimmers as grav vehicles, but they won't get pop-ups.  They
look like things that skim over the surface, not like things that
jump up in the air.  VTOLs will do that (maybe thunderhawk, maybe
nightwing).  Another example: I haven't yet decided if I want the
Land Raider to carry troops.  Well, it probably will, but I
don't want to make that so just because GW says it does.

3) I'm adding Renegade Legion tanks to the Eldar forces (what
I'm just calling the Advanced Alien force), but I need to leave
out the smaller ones.  I just couldn't stretch the vehicle
classes over the range I wanted for the smaller ones.

4) Don't follow the recommendation of limiting number of weapons
to vehicle size.  (Though I'm not sure this rule would come into
play very often.)

5) Allow breaking of the rule that a vehicle may only have a weapon
of vehicle size + 1.  If it fits in the capacity, allow it.  Though
I'd leave it as a guideline.  I'm thinking of the vindicator, for
instance.

6) Allow multiple firecons.  Well, some way of shooting more than
one thing at a time.  Maybe I ought to try it first, to see if I
care about this, but GW miniatures have tons of weapons on 'em,
and I have trouble not seeing them shoot as many as possible.
I've heard of some people just allowing vehicles to fire every
weapon, but I think there should be some cost.	DS2 allows
oversize vehicles to have more than 1 firecon.	You just pay
more points, and it allows you to fire more weapon systems.
How about allowing any vehicle to buy more than one weapon
system of any quality, and every weapon has to be assigned
to one firecon?  You pay for each firecon points according
to the largest weapon assigned to it.  You still may only
be able to fire one weapon per firecon, but if you want
to pay the points, you can put a firecon per weapon on.
Firing systems down would take out all weapons on that
firecon.  Any thoughts on this?  If you've made the SM to DS
conversion, how did you handle this?

7) Minor infantry changes.  Add a Heavy Infantry type, like
Line except taking 5 hits to kill.  These would be my Space
Marine figures, and I think of 'em like Star Wars Stormtroopers.
I'd probably make Terminators powered infantry.

8) Minor movement changes: Medium tracked, halfway between
slow and fast in cost and speed.  For the Land Raider.

9) Think about the roles of things before I start.  The
Advanced Alien race (Eldar) will use lasers, for example.
I need to design stats that use point defense and area defense
and ECM--it would be easy to forget those as I start out.

10) Most importantly--write the stats down on vehicle cards,
so you don't lose 'em and have to do it again!

I'd appreciate the thoughts of those of you who have done
this.

Thanks,
andy
andy.skinner@tseng.com