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ShumaGorath wrote:

Absolutionis wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

oni wrote:IMO... Percentages have failed before... They'll fail again.

The FOC is failing right now.

How so? What feature of the FOC chart is failing right now that can be remedied by percentages?
Just because something is broken right now doesn't mean it's a good idea to switch to something else broken.

When one of the games top armies consists of two 2 wound 2+ save FNP 3+ cover save terminator squads with str7 I6 force weapons as their troops than something has gone wrong with force organization. The single most elite unit in the game is a troop. Why? What is that? Did they forget what troop meant? None of the top armies are particularly varied or interesting, they all just manipulate a FOC chart that no longer does anything. Percentages at least do what the FOC was always supposed to, while percentages with hard limits like what fantasy has would fix many of the more obnoxious forms of spam. Raw percentages just opens the door to problems, but they don't use raw percentages in their other flagship game.

Fantasy's percentage forces you to AT LEAST spend 25% on core units (troops-equivalent). Troops are supposed to be the common, spammable unit. The problem with the Grey Knights is that their Paladins are troops, not the FoC itself. Under a percentage system, you could take the same amount of Paladins.

This is even more absurd considering that you're blaming the FoC for failing and you want to go to percentages... when the 'problem' you're stating will still exist under either system.

Please, please tell me this isn't true.

Reecius wrote:Please, please tell me this isn't true.

It's not true. Feeling better?

PS: I don't actually know if it is or isn't. And no one really knows until the product is actually out.

Yes, don't make any assumptions until we actually hear more, and be skeptical about any rumors. I personally am taking this with a bucket a salt, since any rumors that's "We're taking the rules from X and putting it in Y" is always shaky.

Percentages makes my fluffy harlequin themed army cry sad space-clown tears. I guess I could play 3 units of harlies at 3500 points, though.

In fact, unless FoC manipulation remains a big part of the game, percentages will probably hurt most fluffy armies more than it would help. It will help make balanced armies overall, but fluffy lists are usually unbalanced, designed to match a particular niche element of the Warhammer universe. Also, an army with 50% of the points in GK razorbacks with min. Henchmen sounds terrifying, even if vehicles are weaker.

Regarding cover and armor saves being separate - you'd need to recost a lot of units for that work. Units that don't currently take cover saves gain a second layer of protection, and units that currently rely on cover find that in competition with harder units they have lost a lot of killing power for no gain at best - probably a net loss, since a to-hit modifier probably won't be as strong as a 4+ cover save. Orks in cover shooting at Tacticals in cover suddenly becomes a far, far worse proposition for the Orks.

Have people forgotten what it was like in the old days with %'s? I remember old Dwarf armies that used their 50% Command allowance to bring a single Anvil of Doom that was literally half their army. And in 40K you could bring multiple insane characters.

Now we haven't got the same level of power to have 'Herohammer' as we once did, but in this era of over-abundant special characters, I don't think increasing how many we can take is a good thing.

Also, an army with 50% of the points in GK razorbacks with min. Henchmen sounds terrifying, even if vehicles are weaker.

What if, hypothetically, the FoC changes that the SC's bring don't happen anymore with the percentages based system?

Now we haven't got the same level of power to have 'Herohammer' as we once did, but in this era of over-abundant special characters, I don't think increasing how many we can take is a good thing.

Most of them aren't even that good to begin with. Sure you want to take Ahriman and Abbadon with Kharn and Typhus? I'll just take some actual troops to fight them off.

The percentage based thing would require that we no longer have FoC changes however. Get rid of that and it'd be good.

I really doubt the psychic powers one. All the races that use powers use them for vastly differing things. Some armies rely on them just from a plain gaming perspective, i'm looking at Nids and Grey Knights here.

But other armies also.
Psychic powers are so race specific atm that I couldn't see how this would work without invalidating what is there. Unless they gave psykers that choose their powers currently the ability to swap for a random one. Or put random tables in the Codexes like fantasy but I can't imagine it would be good especially with how slow it would be to update the codexs. You would need a lot of wargear to support a change like that too.

I'm calling BS.

From Bols

6th Edition
-Many of the general concepts from magic from Warhammer Fantasy are coming to Warhammer 40,000.
-There will be "lore equivalents"
-Psychic powers will be generated randomly by psykers (like fantasy)
-Entirely new rules for constructing army lists (~Look at Fantasy for hints)
-The FOC may be history

So does this mean that there will be different levels of psykers?

TechMarine1 wrote:
From Bols

6th Edition
-Many of the general concepts from magic from Warhammer Fantasy are coming to Warhammer 40,000.
-There will be "lore equivalents"
-Psychic powers will be generated randomly by psykers (like fantasy)
-Entirely new rules for constructing army lists (~Look at Fantasy for hints)
-The FOC may be history

So does this mean that there will be different levels of psykers?

It means that you copypasted the first post of this thread

I can see the percentage one being true though. Mostly to try to stop the killer paladin and lesser extent nob biker point sink units that is too common in competitive play.

The only way they are otherwise going to get rid of such units will be to bring a points system similar to VPs back in. Which I could actually see them doing too. It does open up the problem of MSU again but GW may try other tactics to get around MSU.

Psychic powers are so race specific atm that I couldn't see how this would work without invalidating what is there.

In the fantasy one, there's 8 lores of magic that are general, and then there's the more specific ones given to the codexs that have it.

Some of them can't even take the lores of magic (orks use the Big WAAAGH! and the little WAAAGH!) for example.

Though I'd love to see far more psyker powers that are general in function though myself. I still don't believe this rumor at all.

Absolutionis wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Absolutionis wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

oni wrote:IMO... Percentages have failed before... They'll fail again.

The FOC is failing right now.

How so? What feature of the FOC chart is failing right now that can be remedied by percentages?
Just because something is broken right now doesn't mean it's a good idea to switch to something else broken.

When one of the games top armies consists of two 2 wound 2+ save FNP 3+ cover save terminator squads with str7 I6 force weapons as their troops than something has gone wrong with force organization. The single most elite unit in the game is a troop. Why? What is that? Did they forget what troop meant? None of the top armies are particularly varied or interesting, they all just manipulate a FOC chart that no longer does anything. Percentages at least do what the FOC was always supposed to, while percentages with hard limits like what fantasy has would fix many of the more obnoxious forms of spam. Raw percentages just opens the door to problems, but they don't use raw percentages in their other flagship game.

Fantasy's percentage forces you to AT LEAST spend 25% on core units (troops-equivalent). Troops are supposed to be the common, spammable unit. The problem with the Grey Knights is that their Paladins are troops, not the FoC itself. Under a percentage system, you could take the same amount of Paladins.

This is even more absurd considering that you're blaming the FoC for failing and you want to go to percentages... when the 'problem' you're stating will still exist under either system.

It's a representation of the problem inherent to force org, in all likelihood percentages wouldn't fix force org. It's clear that the games designers don't think the force org chart is worth keeping, if they did they wouldn't make every codex ignore it.

The current force org doesn't do anything when the most powerful armies in the game get to effectively ignore it with their most powerful and capable units. All it does is effectively hold every other codex back while being a false separation between units that is unrepresentative of anything except worthless spread sheeting. An 80 point whirlwind will never see the table because its 80 points and takes up a slot. Were I to have 500 points rather than three choices I would consider taking them. There are dozens of units plagued by the issue of "taking up a slot". There are also several armies that get to blatantly ignore the force org (orks, GKs, IG, BA) and who are benefited strongly by that fact.

I don't know how percentages would be implemented in accordance with books that move units around the FOC chart, but if the new system reduces spam by limiting duplicate choices than it would go an exceptionally long way towards fixing monobuilds in this game. You could do the same thing with the FOC by reintroducing maximum unit allowances, but since that'd require a rerelease of every codex it seems unlikely and it's a poor fix since it doesn't help with the issue of "Well i'd take it but it's cheap and takes up and entire slot!"

TechMarine1 wrote:So does this mean that there will be different levels of psykers?

Grey Knights and their Psyker Mastery Levels say hi.

ShumaGorath wrote:

oni wrote:IMO... Percentages have failed before... They'll fail again.

The FOC is failing right now.

In what manner do you think the FOC is failing? Again, IMO I feel it works quite well. It's restrictive for those units it should be restrictive of and less so for those units more essential to having a more balanced game.

Brother SRM wrote:

oni wrote:IMO... Percentages have failed before... They'll fail again.

And the FOC isn't perfect either. Honestly, your statement is about as general as saying "movement values have failed before, they'll fail again" since it's such a general concept that can be applied to any wargame. It doesn't need to be a carbon copy of 2nd ed's percentage rules you know.

General... Yes, because I have no information beyond a speculative rumor. However, it seems I still managed to get my point across. Perhaps you would have liked me to elaborate more on my thought process regarding the alleged change? If this is the case just read my reply to ShumaGorath above followed by my comments below.

Furthermore, the amount of points available for a particular selection scales with the percentage system (obviously). I can see how that sounds appropriate and very appealing for game play, but I view it as a potential factor for further unbalance between codex's. If you limit a selection to a hard number rather than its points value it's a non issue; as percentages scale up issues tend to only gets worse. At the moment the example I'm thinking of... Instead of facing two lash daemon prince's you're facing 3 or even four. Instead of 4 Rune Priests, now you're facing 6 or 7.

Back in 2nd edition it was this percentage system that allowed Hero Hammer to be realized.

Samurai_Eduh wrote:I would also not mind a return to the percentage based system of yesteryear. Though I hope that they would change the percentages from what they used for fantasy. For example, in fantasy you can have up to 50% of your points be in the "special" category. In 40k terms this would count as Elites I guess.

I think a better setup would be:

HQ: 25%
Troops: 40%
FA/HS/Elites: 25% each

In a standard 2k game this would come out to be:

HQ: 500
Troops: 800
FA/HS/Elites: 500 max for each category.

This may be fine for Space Marine armies, but this would kill Tau.

9 Broadsides (Heavy, typical loadout) come in at roughly 850 points.

9 Crisis suits (Elite, PR/MP) come in at roughly 550, and that's with zero upgrades.


I would love to see the FOC eliminated, but I'm not sure that points-based percentages are really the most effective method for 40k. Not with current codexes, anyway.

Hey listen, I think Tau need a new codex as much as the next guy, but you think maybe the 9 broadsides thing might be exactly what they SHOULD be aiming to stop (assuming they should be stopping anything)?

In what manner do you think the FOC is failing? Again, IMO I feel it works quite well. It's restrictive for those units it should be restrictive of and less so for those units more essential to having a more balanced game.

-The blood angels can take 12 dreadnaughts in an army.
-The imperial guard can take nine Leman Russes and nine hellhounds in the same army
-The Orks can have two scoring full squads of nobz on bikes led by warbosses with no other army
-The GKs are capable of taking six psyfledreads backing up two units of troop palladins with no other army
-There are three marine armies capable of making entire armies composed of nothing but terminator armor
-Several marine armies can take five land raiders at 1850
etc, etc, etc

It's meant to force army builds with varied unit choices that are representative of a realistic army. It is failing at that totally and completely and the games design intentions have been to nullify it as much as possible for years, first with the removal of max allotments, then with the removal of the force org itself in many situations.

Maybe.

If percentages were going to be the system for force orgs, I'd prefer to see codex-specific percentages.

I don't think the proposed changes are totally bad overall for the meta of the game, In fact I think seriosu changes are needed. However, there could be some devasting impacts on some armies with this as well. The more I reflect on this and some of the other rumors as a dedicated eldar player, the more scared I become i made a bad choice to come back. Rejoining the game after a hiatus at the end of 3rd I had been picking up a couple of units here and there to fill in gaps created by missing two editions; but I am going to cold stop that now, including putting off the major forgeworld order I am desperatly wanting to make.

I know I may be overly pessimistic on this, but the only version of eldar I have ever refused absolutly to play is guardian meat shield; and I am a skimmer head, always have and always will be. This set of rumors terrifies me that guardian meatshield footdar is the future of eldar, at minium until a new dex, especially were transports to become a seperate option. I won't say I think that will happen, but were it come to pass my 40K days would be over, and it worries me enough that I am going to save my money until things firm up a little.

I am sure that if the percentages rumor is true there will be a limit to how many times you can take a specific unit just like WFB. So I would imagine that you would be able to take a total of 3 Dreads from the elite selection, but you would also be able to take any other elite unit that you had points to spend to reach your maximum percentage.

ShumaGorath wrote:

In what manner do you think the FOC is failing?

-The blood angels can take 12 dreadnaughts in an army.
-The imperial guard can take nine Leman Russes and nine hellhounds in the same army
-The Orks can have two scoring full squads of nobz on bikes led by warbosses with no other army
-The GKs are capable of taking six psyfledreads backing up two units of troop palladins with no other army
-There are three marine armies capable of making entire armies composed of nothing but terminator armor
-Several marine armies can take five land raiders at 1850
etc, etc, etc

It's meant to force army builds with varied unit choices that are representative of a realistic army. It is failing at that totally and completely and the games design intentions have been to nullify it as much as possible for years, first with the removal of max allotments, then with the removal of the force org itself in many situations.

Actually the FOC is not failing at that. The specific exemptions from the FOC is what is causing it to fail. If you put dreads in troops for blood angles it leads to the same problem FOC or %.

The "problem" is the exemptions to the FOC, not the FOC itself.

wolf13 wrote:I don't think the proposed changes are totally bad overall for the meta of the game, In fact I think seriosu changes are needed. However, there could be some devasting impacts on some armies with this as well. The more I reflect on this and some of the other rumors as a dedicated eldar player, the more scared I become i made a bad choice to come back. Rejoining the game after a hiatus at the end of 3rd I had been picking up a couple of units here and there to fill in gaps created by missing two editions; but I am going to cold stop that now, including putting off the major forgeworld order I am desperatly wanting to make.

I know I may be overly pessimistic on this, but the only version of eldar I have ever refused absolutly to play is guardian meat shield; and I am a skimmer head, always have and always will be. This set of rumors terrifies me that guardian meatshield footdar is the future of eldar, at minium until a new dex, especially were transports to become a seperate option. I won't say I think that will happen, but were it come to pass my 40K days would be over, and it worries me enough that I am going to save my money until things firm up a little.

If it is Eldar your worried about, I have some good words for you. There was a time when Eldar was great a top tier army and above that. GW have long neglected Eldar but I can see the tides turning towards Eldar. Eldar are one of the armies that rely on their psykers and a shake up to this part of the game and the Eldar codex could put them back in serious contention. Eldar ruled in 3rd with MSU and foot sloggers were the way to go, there is a possibility those things could make a return with all this talk of changes to missions, FOC and percentages.

Still I wouldn't bet anything, I too am holding off till I see the new rules and commend you on your cautious approach.

Dracos wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

In what manner do you think the FOC is failing?

-The blood angels can take 12 dreadnaughts in an army.
-The imperial guard can take nine Leman Russes and nine hellhounds in the same army
-The Orks can have two scoring full squads of nobz on bikes led by warbosses with no other army
-The GKs are capable of taking six psyfledreads backing up two units of troop palladins with no other army
-There are three marine armies capable of making entire armies composed of nothing but terminator armor
-Several marine armies can take five land raiders at 1850
etc, etc, etc

It's meant to force army builds with varied unit choices that are representative of a realistic army. It is failing at that totally and completely and the games design intentions have been to nullify it as much as possible for years, first with the removal of max allotments, then with the removal of the force org itself in many situations.

Actually the FOC is not failing at that. The specific exemptions from the FOC is what is causing it to fail. If you put dreads in troops for blood angles it leads to the same problem FOC or %.

The "problem" is the exemptions to the FOC, not the FOC itself.

Actually they are inseparable at a very basic level, the problem with one is the problem with the other.

ShumaGorath wrote:Actually they are inseparable at a very basic level, the problem with one is the problem with the other.

In what way are they inseparable? Are you saying that it is impossible to have a FOC with no exemptions? How does a % fix the problems you perceive with FOC?

ShumaGorath wrote:

Bobug wrote:Dont really think scrapping the FoC for % based system would be a good idea, some armies would suffer hugely from it, imagine having to spend 25% on your points on troops as tau or eldar :s while armies like guard where your troops choices are great would be laughing all the way to the objectives, thats perhaps more of a codex problem overall though....

It'll be nice to see an IG army composition that isn't 70% heavy support choices.

What? Are you playing guys with three squadrons of three lemun russ's all the time? How are they spending 70% of their points in heavy support? I usually see people fielding two manticores and then a lemun russ or a squadron of hydras. That makes up about 25% of a 2k point list. With far more points already put into the troops section with either large meched platoons or six squads of meched vets. Six squads of melta vets in chimeras is over 900 points, so almost 50% of a 2k list.

The biggest problem (stop me if you've heard this one before) is game balance, not force org issues. Spamming the same unit and calling it an army is more effective than having a varied army, because you pick the undercosted or overpowered unit to spam. In a better-balanced game (hello, Infinity) you can pick the units you like, call it an army, and expect to do fine with it, because there are far fewer undercosted/overpowered issues.

ShumaGorath wrote:

In what manner do you think the FOC is failing? Again, IMO I feel it works quite well. It's restrictive for those units it should be restrictive of and less so for those units more essential to having a more balanced game.

-The blood angels can take 12 dreadnaughts in an army.
-The imperial guard can take nine Leman Russes and nine hellhounds in the same army
-The Orks can have two scoring full squads of nobz on bikes led by warbosses with no other army
-The GKs are capable of taking six psyfledreads backing up two units of troop palladins with no other army
-There are three marine armies capable of making entire armies composed of nothing but terminator armor
-Several marine armies can take five land raiders at 1850
etc, etc, etc

It's meant to force army builds with varied unit choices that are representative of a realistic army. It is failing at that totally and completely and the games design intentions have been to nullify it as much as possible for years, first with the removal of max allotments, then with the removal of the force org itself in many situations.

So what you're saying is that most armies can use the FOC to make some exotic build. I like that those options are available. Nothing would be more boring to me than to think that every codex would produce something that resembles your idea of what a realistic army is. Remember also that while 40k isn't considered a skirmish game, it is far from a game that would depict an large engagement between two armies. As it stands it can be used to show a battle between two company sized forces or two small elite forces, or anything in between. I like the idea of taking 22 paladins and a dreadknight and going up against 100+ orks with kanz and lootas thrown in. The game is so exciting to me because of all of the strange army possibilities out there.

I think that the FOC and army selection in general works just fine right now, and hope that it is one aspect that does not change. If it does, I'll likely adapt to it, and wonder about what aspect of 6th edition everybody will be railing against until 7th comes out.

So what you're saying is that most armies can use the FOC to make some exotic build. I like that those options are available. Nothing would be more boring to me than to think that every codex would produce something that resembles your idea of what a realistic army is. Remember also that while 40k isn't considered a skirmish game, it is far from a game that would depict an large engagement between two armies. As it stands it can be used to show a battle between two company sized forces or two small elite forces, or anything in between.

And right now it's showing a showdown between bare minimum numbers of men with maximized numbers of metal boxes and bronzed supergods holding miniguns or missile launchers from a time when Brom painted everything and no one cared about fun or balance.

I like the idea of taking 22 paladins and a dreadknight and going up against 100+ orks with kanz and lootas thrown in.

And no one likes playing your 22 palladins, especially not that ork player who might as well not even deploy. My idea of 40k is being able to put an army on the table and not knowing for absolute certain whether I will win or lose the game based on how many av14 vehicles or utterly idiotic death star units they have on the table. My ideal for 40k is one where there is a game between bouts of rock paper scissors army creation.

The game is so exciting to me because of all of the strange army possibilities out there.

It's exciting to me because in theory it's a game, not a competition to see who can make the most fundamentally broken army within the rough constraints of the rules followed by rock paper scissors for four hours.

I think that the FOC and army selection in general works just fine right now

And for numerous reasons I think you're wrong, and they go beyond my preference for a game composed of balanced armies and decision making. The FOC chart fundamentally benefits some armies more than others and unduly punishes units for being low point values by making then uneconomical choices.

And for numerous reasons I think you're wrong, and they go beyond my preference for a game composed of balanced armies and decision making. The FOC chart fundamentally benefits some armies more than others and unduly punishes units for being low point values by making then uneconomical choices.

This x 9000.