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I think we've just found one of the worst dollars to points ratio unit in 40k.

 Xerics wrote:
Just be careful you don't drive the people who help modify/create point lists like the OP has. When the time comes and GW Sigamrtizes 40K it will be people like him who figure out how to give everything a point value again.

Or, we could just use any of the existing Codices and their printed point values? It wouldn't be any worse than the OP's effort.
____

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I think we've just found one of the worst dollars to points ratio unit in 40k.

GW Forgeworld makes it easy.

 Peregrine wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Has anybody really tried to break it? Probably not.

Let's spend a few minutes breaking it, just to have fun. A small heavy vehicle with AV 10/10/10 and 2 HP armed with a bolter costs -1 point. Yes, NEGATIVE one point. Every one of these vehicles you add to your list increases your available points by one, in addition to the side effect of spamming an obscene number of AV 10 bolters all over the table. You could literally fill the entire surface of one of the OP's giant floor games with these vehicles, if you felt like making enough models to do it. Or play a 500 point game where you bring 3000 of these and dump a pile of them into the general area of your deployment zone around the Warlord titan you brought. To a 500 point game. They'd actually be good meatshield screens for your titan, if you weren't almost guaranteed to win the game in your first shooting phase. You know, because the OP's VDR rules let you bring a Warlord titan to a 500 point game.

Conclusion: 9 months of development and playtesting don't mean anything if nobody bothered to test your rules properly.

Its been through so many revisions I missed it. Lyth he's got a point, the VDR needs fixing.

A table sounds like a great idea if you start from scratch and build up, not worrying about GW point values and you have marines vs marines. Once you take into account racial abilities though as well as lore it stops working so cleanly.

What GW needs is what league of legends and smite has, thousands of playtests and actual players using a new ruleset over a short period and quick faqability

Tankman131 wrote:
A table sounds like a great idea if you start from scratch and build up, not worrying about GW point values and you have marines vs marines..

Oh, FW Horus Heresy

 Lobukia wrote:

Tankman131 wrote:
A table sounds like a great idea if you start from scratch and build up, not worrying about GW point values and you have marines vs marines..

Oh, FW Horus Heresy

Even in that, mechanicum wrecks the marines.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Meh, I prefer haiku. If every one of his tanks was equal in size to say a land speeder, how much room would he have on the table? How did he get them there, back a pickup truck up the the table?

I'm creating the model, I can make them as big as I want. I'll probably choose to make them very small.

Say you took 10 minutes to custom build every one of these little buggers, it would take thirty thousand minutes to have them all done. That's more than twenty days straight if you don't sleep. Just to cart them around with a warlord titan and hope someone will play you. I don't think it would be worth it.

1) It doesn't take 10 minutes to build them because I can make whatever I want. In fact, I think I'll use a bag of frozen peas. Psychic frozen peas that have mind lasers represented by bolter stats. I suppose melting is a problem, but hey, they're cheap and I can always buy more for next game. And if a few of them roll onto the floor and die I've got another bag to replace them.

2) The difficulty of buying and/or building a model is not a balancing factor. If your system is based on an assumption that nobody will be able to build the things that break it then your system is wrong.

3) The assumption that people will refuse to play you isn't a balancing factor either, it's a concession that your system is broken and you're depending on people "fixing" it for you by shunning anyone who breaks it.

Peregrine slayed me with the frozen peas line.

Ok, adding a minimum to point totals based on taking up table space (basically10 point, plus 5 points per additional hullpoint)

I couldn't start without looking at games workshops pricing because they gave me a plausible system to start with and I am so totally not going to try and build every unit in the game.

Yes a 2+ save means more based on what has it, if you look at the chart for saves it is based on a save to toughness ratio. An invul save is only useful at all if something is ignoring your armor or cover save. Otherwise it is wasted points. I see people complain ALL THE TIME that things like terminators, thousand suns, and c'tan shards pay too much for their invul because weight of fire bring them down too easily, or their cover is better.

You absolutely cannot use peas as a stand in for vehicle, I cannot determine facing, weapon range, or weapon arc due to lack of line of sight. Cute of an idea as that is, it isn't going to make the game more interesting or fun for anyone.

Edit:fixed my numbers at the top.

This made me think of a Leman Russ variant shaped like a giant pea with tank treads and a turret.

As for the main discussion it seems the focus on the costing of the Revenant Titan according to the custom VDR took away from the idea of "it was balanced for a different game mode and was ported over to one which unbalanced it", which seemed to be the main point being made at first (and seems to be a sticking point for many units, really).

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
This made me think of a Leman Russ variant shaped like a giant pea with tank treads and a turret.

As for the main discussion it seems the focus on the costing of the Revenant Titan according to the custom VDR took away from the idea of "it was balanced for a different game mode and was ported over to one which unbalanced it", which seemed to be the main point being made at first (and seems to be a sticking point for many units, really).

Exactly. It was designed for floor sized apocalypse battles but inadvertently doesn't lose any effectiveness in a normal size game due to their choice to make it faster with a shorter range than other units of the same calliber.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Ok, adding a minimum to point totals based on taking up table space (basically10 point, plus 5 points per additional hullpoint)

That's a start, but it's really just a patch that ignores the underlying problem. Your design approach is giving you obviously absurd point costs, so you have to manually fudge the results and make it more appropriate. If you have to special-case rule stuff to keep your system from breaking the game then your system is not working and you should fix the system itself.

Yes a 2+ save means more based on what has it, if you look at the chart for saves it is based on a save to toughness ratio.

But it should also be worth more or less depending on how many wounds the model has. A 2+ save protecting 100 wounds is worth a lot more than a 2+ save protecting one wound.

You absolutely cannot use peas as a stand in for vehicle, I cannot determine facing, weapon range, or weapon arc due to lack of line of sight.

That's not my problem. Some GW models have that same issues with determining facing and arcs but they're still legal.

Also, you're just nitpicking my deliberately ridiculous choice of "model" and ignoring the much greater issue that your system produced a broken result. I could replace the frozen peas with small cubes with a dot to represent the 360* bolter turret and the result would be the same. It just wouldn't be quite as amusing to think about.

Cute of an idea as that is, it isn't going to make the game more interesting or fun for anyone.

You're right, it doesn't make the game interesting or fun for anyone. That's why your system is broken.


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Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Exactly. It was designed for floor sized apocalypse battles but inadvertently doesn't lose any effectiveness in a normal size game due to their choice to make it faster with a shorter range than other units of the same calliber.

Which is completely inappropriate because floor-sized Apocalypse battles are absurdly rare compared to normal table games. If your cost system is based on an assumption that floor-sized games are relevant then your system is broken.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Exactly. It was designed for floor sized apocalypse battles but inadvertently doesn't lose any effectiveness in a normal size game due to their choice to make it faster with a shorter range than other units of the same calliber.

Seems to be the biggest issue many have with these kind of units as whole.
With that in mind, maybe you should bifurcate your VDR into a "normal game version" and "Apocalypse version" which each have different pricing for certain things to handle this?

If the cheapest a vehicle can be is 20 points, you may as well make the vehicle worth 20 points. The purpose of these rules is to let people make awesome models for the game and have a decent idea as to their power level. Then playtest to find their sweet spot.

Floor sized games are relevant if the distances utilised by units would show their supposed use. If you don't want to have those ranges, adjust the points and change the ranges. But if you want in on a game that size, I expect you to have paid the points for the range you bring to the game.

Everything has a price, even the lower vehicle armor values because they have more and more threats as the av drops (the reason for the negative in some areas is that small arms fire becomes a threat, meaning they are more apt to be shot in a game due to the more readily available weapons)

Your argument that some things are too expensive because they never have to shoot farther than 6' so they shouldn't have to pay for those bonuses is the exact opposite of balance. If the shadowsword dropped to a 60" range, it would lower the price of the vehicle by 80 points. With the chasis and barrel size it will still guarantee hit anywhere on a normal table.

If you wanted to drop the points without lowering the range, then by all means here are the points. But I won't price weapons below what they should cost in the vdr because some people do play those huge games, and I think they understand what that range value actually does for their games.

That seems to be one of the things that could be different for the Apoc VDR and the normal VDR, the former would price range like that while maybe the latter would stop charging points or give a discount for diminishing returns past a certain point.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Peregrine slayed me with the frozen peas line.

It could be the alien race called the Sativum (species name of peas) they fight in groups of 10 to 12 units in psychically linked "pods"

In the vdr there are weapons and options that are only available for Apocalypse level units and fortifications. Superheavies and gargantuan creature have different point levels per wound and hull point, and have their intrinsic benefits built into their overall point scheme. They pay the exact same points for av, and toughness/saves because the strength and ap of weapons systems in the game all follow the same sliding scale of strength and armor penetration. A las cannon will penetrate an av of 12 50% of the time and will wound toughness 8 66% of the time. That number doesn't change at all no matter how many would ds or hull points the model has. What does change is how many times it needs to do so. Those levels can be reduced by the fact that games workshop translated some monstrous creatures from vehicle statlines. Those were the base units I used to balance the mc wounds table. Interestingly enough, if you rebuilt the tyranid monstrous creatures with my vdr they all come out more cost appropriate. (Such as the carnifex, it is 35 points too expensive for its statlines, but the dakka set up is 30 points too cheap. Which is why that particular setup is seen as the only legit way to run them, the math actually balanced them out!)

NOBODY thinks the Dakkafex is 30 points too cheap. You're literally talking out of your arse now.

It isn't, and that's not what I said. The twin linked brainleach devourers are 15 points undercosted per set when compare to other midrange high volume of fire weapons systems. Making a pair of them 30 points more effective than they should be.

A normal carnifex is 35 points too expensive for his damage and survivability level when you compare it to the wraithlord, riptide, talos, chronos, and dreadknight.

The reason people say the dakkafex is the only way to run carnifex competitively is because the weapons exceptional efficiency almost point for point offsets the carnifex's overpriced base cost.

Did that make sense?

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The purpose of these rules is to let people make awesome models for the game and have a decent idea as to their power level. Then playtest to find their sweet spot.

Then why do you keep trying to use your rules to "prove" that GW's point costs are reasonable, if you concede that your numbers are at best a starting point for additional balancing work?

Floor sized games are relevant if the distances utilised by units would show their supposed use. If you don't want to have those ranges, adjust the points and change the ranges. But if you want in on a game that size, I expect you to have paid the points for the range you bring to the game.

Floor-sized games are not relevant because they are incredibly rare. That's like saying we should balance space marines around 5-point games, so tactical squads need to cost a maximum of 5 points each or there's no way to play space marines.

Your argument that some things are too expensive because they never have to shoot farther than 6' so they shouldn't have to pay for those bonuses is the exact opposite of balance.

They should have to pay. They just shouldn't have to pay very much. There is very little difference between 60" range and 120" range so the price difference should be very small. Your proposal that 120" range costs 80 points is just plain absurd. Would you also argue that making the Shadowsword have 200" range should cost another 80 points? What about 2000"? Should a Shadowsword with 2000" range cost ~3000 points (450 base + ~2500 for range)? It should by your numbers, but everyone else understands that this would be blatantly wrong.

If the shadowsword dropped to a 60" range, it would lower the price of the vehicle by 80 points.

The Shadowsword as it is sucks enough already. You could drop 80 points from its price without changing any stats and it would still probably be a weak unit. The only reason to assume that a point drop has to be accompanied by a stat nerf is that if you admit that the Shadowsword could be reduced in points without any stat changes you'd have to admit that your system gives the wrong point cost for it.

But I won't price weapons below what they should cost in the vdr because some people do play those huge games, and I think they understand what that range value actually does for their games.

IOW, defending your system is more important than getting good balance results for the vast majority of games and players.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
It isn't, and that's not what I said. The twin linked brainleach devourers are 15 points undercosted per set when compare to other midrange high volume of fire weapons systems. Making a pair of them 30 points more effective than they should be.

A normal carnifex is 35 points too expensive for his damage and survivability level when you compare it to the wraithlord, riptide, talos, chronos, and dreadknight.

The reason people say the dakkafex is the only way to run carnifex competitively is because the weapons exceptional efficiency almost point for point offsets the carnifex's overpriced base cost.

Did that make sense?

Except the Carnifexes is still highly ineffective, even if you knocked those points off. So clearly your system is flawed. Not that you'll listen though, seeing as a member here created a vehicle that inadvertently added more points to spend for your army.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
As for the main discussion it seems the focus on the costing of the Revenant Titan according to the custom VDR took away from the idea of "it was balanced for a different game mode and was ported over to one which unbalanced it", which seemed to be the main point being made at first (and seems to be a sticking point for many units, really).

Exactly. It was designed for floor sized apocalypse battles but inadvertently doesn't lose any effectiveness in a normal size game due to their choice to make it faster with a shorter range than other units of the same calliber.

That's a ludicrous statement, as GW designs as a tabletop game around 4x6 tables. Maybe they'd have put a couple tables together, but they aren't crawling around on their hands and knees when they spitball numbers, stats and points costs. GW pulled that 120" range out of thin air, much as you pulled your VDR numbers, stats and justifications out of your butt.

Now, if you've got an actual statement from Tony or one of the other FW guys saying that they specifically designed the Shadowsword as some kind of special unit for those rare games filling an entire multi-garage garage, sure. But I'll want that link to something that's real and verifiable.


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Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The purpose of these rules is to let people make awesome models for the game and have a decent idea as to their power level. Then playtest to find their sweet spot.

That's an out and out untruth, because you've done none of that. The real purpose of your rules is to say "Lyth is good at figuring out how GW costed stuff". Which is also untrue.

What playtesting did you do to validate the 15 point price you put on a 72" S8 AP2 Armorbane Vanquisher cannon relative to a 48" Lascannon? How about the value of Stealth on a superheavy?

I'm guessing none.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except the Carnifexes is still highly ineffective, even if you knocked those points off. So clearly your system is flawed. Not that you'll listen though, seeing as a member here created a vehicle that inadvertently added more points to spend for your army.

The funny thing is, the mechanic of taking units that allow you to take more units can be balanced, via special rules. In 40k parlance, there could be a FREE / underpriced / negative price unit that carries the risk of losing extra VPs if it's destroyed. Risk/reward outside the basic points value system. But that ain't what's happening in his VDR.

How is an 85 point carnifex ineffective? Do you realise how absurd that actually sounds?

I have been listening, how is me repeatedly saying that I am working on the changes you are suggesting here me not listening? If you think the shadowsword at an 80 point drop in price (putting it at 375 points, a little over a third of the revenant) isn't good enough, I don't know what to tell you.

I am adding a column on the far right of the weapon section of the vdr that will be labeled "constricted" giving the balanced point cost of the weapon when limited to a standard 6 foot table.

The leman Russ tank turrets were priced as an extrapolation of their points after taking away the points they pay for survivability. I am a xenos (eldar united and orks) and spacewolves player. I never tried to play with the turrets because I had no interest in them. Nobody else brought it up, so I left it at that. In my thread in the proposed rule section I already showed some of the changes I have done. (Such as the cannon in question being set at 25 points for bs3)

And finally, I know it was designed for those size games because that sort of distance happened all the time in the game it was originally designed for epic 40k. They translated it directly to 40k stats later on, it just kept the bonuses it had. The apocalypse units almost all had their start in a game where the battlefield was as big as a normal table, but they themselves were as small as space marines. That is why they are priced the way they do.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
If you think the shadowsword at an 80 point drop in price (putting it at 375 points, a little over a third of the revenant) isn't good enough, I don't know what to tell you.

It probably isn't good enough. A 375 point Shadowsword with the same range it currently has would be a lot closer to being a decent unit, but it's still a single-role specialist that struggles to make its points back unless the other player brings the perfect targets for it. Sorry if this awkward fact causes problems for your VDR system.

I am adding a column on the far right of the weapon section of the vdr that will be labeled "constricted" giving the balanced point cost of the weapon when limited to a standard 6 foot table.

Why do you even need to worry about this? Once again, giant room-sized games are so rare they're not relevant at all for balancing purposes. You might as well have another column called "irrelevant" which deals with balancing 500,000 point games played on a 1"x1" table.

And finally, I know it was designed for those size games because that sort of distance happened all the time in the game it was originally designed for epic 40k.

What does Epic have to do with anything? The Shadowsword's 40k rules have nothing to do with whatever rules the Epic unit that shares its fluff had.

They translated it directly to 40k stats later on, it just kept the bonuses it had.

No they didn't. Just to state one obvious example the Epic-scale Shadowsword (like the Baneblade and Stormblade) had different weapons. There was no direct translation at all, FW made a 40k-scale tank based on the same fluff as the Epic-scale one but gave it completely new rules for 40k. And then, when GW made the plastic kits they changed some of the weapons again and gave the unit completely new rules.

The apocalypse units almost all had their start in a game where the battlefield was as big as a normal table, but they themselves were as small as space marines. That is why they are priced the way they do.

...

Are you seriously suggesting that GW determined the point costs for the Apocalypse-scale stuff based on their point costs and performance in a completely different game? Have you even looked at the rule and point cost changes those units have gone through since the original FW models?

Lyth, you know that we're playing 40k, not Epic, right?

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:

Yes a 2+ save means more based on what has it, if you look at the chart for saves it is based on a save to toughness ratio. An invul save is only useful at all if something is ignoring your armor or cover save. Otherwise it is wasted points. I see people complain ALL THE TIME that things like terminators, thousand suns, and c'tan shards pay too much for their invul because weight of fire bring them down too easily, or their cover is better.

Which is further evidence that VDR's are going to be ridiculously hard to balance, due to unit effectiveness not being related to the sum of its parts.
In the VDR thread, I created a 550 point vehicle with 9 hull points, Av14 and a gakton of firepower. I then doubled its durability for 30 points. That is not a balanced feature.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Your argument that some things are too expensive because they never have to shoot farther than 6' so they shouldn't have to pay for those bonuses is the exact opposite of balance. If the shadowsword dropped to a 60" range, it would lower the price of the vehicle by 80 points. With the chasis and barrel size it will still guarantee hit anywhere on a normal table.

Range is only part of the issue on the Shadowsword. I greatly object to dropping its range, due to the fluff of the thing, and the fact that it *does* get used in APOC games where it gets houserules to be able to fire from one table to another, right across the room.
Its major issue is that it pays a stupid amount for a gun that it largely unimpressive. Liable to miss any SH thing it targets, and is usually negated by cover when it hits troops.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:

I have been listening, how is me repeatedly saying that I am working on the changes you are suggesting here me not listening? If you think the shadowsword at an 80 point drop in price (putting it at 375 points, a little over a third of the revenant) isn't good enough, I don't know what to tell you.

I know what to tell you: GW massively overvalues Baneblade variants. They are very, very ineffective vehicles.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I am adding a column on the far right of the weapon section of the vdr that will be labeled "constricted" giving the balanced point cost of the weapon when limited to a standard 6 foot table.

I object to the idea on principle, but GW should have been doing conditional costing from the start.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The leman Russ tank turrets were priced as an extrapolation of their points after taking away the points they pay for survivability. I am a xenos (eldar united and orks) and spacewolves player. I never tried to play with the turrets because I had no interest in them. Nobody else brought it up, so I left it at that. In my thread in the proposed rule section I already showed some of the changes I have done. (Such as the cannon in question being set at 25 points for bs3)

Tbf, looking at a LRBT, removing the points it pays for the hull HB and the armour, and then working out whats left is probably getting an accurate representation of what a LRBT should be paying for its gun. However, mounting them on oher things is where the issue comes. Like how Vanguard Veterans pay 10ppm for power weapons, and the IG pay 15ppm, despite the ridiculous power disparity between the two.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
And finally, I know it was designed for those size games because that sort of distance happened all the time in the game it was originally designed for epic 40k. They translated it directly to 40k stats later on, it just kept the bonuses it had. The apocalypse units almost all had their start in a game where the battlefield was as big as a normal table, but they themselves were as small as space marines. That is why they are priced the way they do.

Don't try to justify GW. They're a bunch of idiots. Better writers than us have tried and failed to make 40k balanced.

Vanguard vets pay less because they are super special snowflakes. Don't space marine sargents, eldar storm guardians, and almost every independent character in the game pay the exact same 15 points for a power weapon? How about powerfists/claws on orks, chaos, and imperial army? The weapon is the same, but the base price of the unit is different. Imperial guard Sargent may only be srt6, but the model is only worth 30 points. The space marine veteran Sargent is str8, but he totals out to a 50 point model. He should be better.

So, dropping the range to give you points back doesn't work because you want the range. Giving you the option of a different point value for playing it on a normal sized table doesn't work because you want it cheaper even in situations where it WILL have the range advantage it does in the fluff. Nothing ( I will repeat my self here because this is what balance should be) NOTHING in the game should get an advantage it doesn't pay for

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Vanguard vets pay less because they are super special snowflakes. Don't space marine sargents, eldar storm guardians, and almost every independent character in the game pay the exact same 15 points for a power weapon? How about powerfists/claws on orks, chaos, and imperial army? The weapon is the same, but the base price of the unit is different. Imperial guard Sargent may only be srt6, but the model is only worth 30 points. The space marine veteran Sargent is str8, but he totals out to a 50 point model. He should be better.

So, dropping the range to give you points back doesn't work because you want the range. Giving you the option of a different point value for playing it on a normal sized table doesn't work because you want it cheaper even in situations where it WILL have the range advantage it does in the fluff. Nothing ( I will repeat my self here because this is what balance should be) NOTHING in the game should get an advantage it doesn't pay for

But I think the point is that it isn't an advantage worth paying for. It is an advantage, and there may be a point level that is worth paying for it (10, 1, 50, whatever) but the law of diminishing returns says that the longer the range is, the less extra the unit will have to pay. So something with 120" inches of range should really only be paying for like, 80" or whathave you.

At least I believe that is the argument.

I'd say it also comes down to people saying the Shadowsword is paying too much for what it already has and getting the same stuff for some lesser amount would be a more appropriate deal.
At least, that's how it seems.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
I'd say it also comes down to people saying the Shadowsword is paying too much for what it already has and getting the same stuff for some lesser amount would be a more appropriate deal.
At least, that's how it seems.

Right.