From a game at the ESC in Poland. Got back a week ago and it's been hectic. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a write up on the ETC trip soon. But 5th ed is finally over for me and I can start concentrating on 6th. Now I'll just throw out a couple of quick thoughts.
Suppression fire was very popular in 5th ed. The basic idea was to generate as many low strength shots as possible to force a crew shaken or stunned result. A glancing hit was just as good as a pen when you were simply looking to reduce your opponent's fire power. This also meant you could deal with more targets as destroying every tank was not necessary. But how about in 6th ed?
Glancing hits don't cause results, meaning that the amount of damage you can generate reduces drastically. They do take hull points off, isn't that great? Well, it only has an effect once you destroy the tank. Many people are saying that low strength high rate of fire weapons are the proper antitank tools in 6th. But you are basically being forced to destroy the vehicle. You won't get anything back from shooting at those targets before they're dead. This means you can deal with less targets.
Penetrating hits are the only way to shake/stun vehicles. I bet low av gunboats will slowly fade away but stuff like predators will still be viable. Do you really wanna shoot at it until you strip off 3 hullpoints? I'm thinking most lists will need a certain amount of high strength shots (preferably > 8) to throw at gunboats that you want silenced but not necessarily destroyed. If you explode the vehicle, then that's even better. But it's probably more economic to throw high strength shots at some targets, compared to stripping their hullpoints.
