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Consider two units that are considerd to be sub-par troops choices in the current metagame.
Fire warriors, and guardians.
Fire warriors, GEQs with S5 weapons.
Guardians, GEQs with 12" bolters and fleet of foot.
10 points and 8 points respectively.
I notice they are both BS3.

Guardsmen are also rarely used, compared to vets which are BS4, and 10 ppm if they have 4+ armor saves.

Other than their weapon's strength and BS, they are no different from fire warriors, and are simply more expensive than guardians.
Ignoring special weapons (which puts them up to 30 ppm), why are they worth 7-10 ppm, when guardians and fire warriors, which have better weapons, better transports, and come in greater numbers, aren't?

Veterans have shooty transports. This is amazingly important.

Veterans can also have a large amount of useful dakka upgrade - you will rarely see them without 30pts worth of gunz.

So while 12" assault 2 boltguns may seem cool.. they will die when walking in, those 'better' transports are nearly double the cost and have worse firepower (which can be scalable to slightly better firepower, AT wise, @ triple a chimera cost). Now on to those assault weapon platforms - we're talking bs3 heavy weapons (my personal favourite is the EML) which fine, are assault weapons. The squad is still easy to kill and you can only take one per choice.

Fire-warriors are meant to rely on 30" str5 ap5 rapid fire guns alone & even with a 4+ save.. it just isnt worth it. Sinking more and more points into this unit means thats less points your not spending on heavy weapons, as these guys cant take any special or heavy weapons.

So, to recap:-
- Massively better flexibility with weapon loadouts; they can perfrom intergral tasks to any given army theme with thier weaponary & options.

- Very situationally useful transports. They can be fire-from, basically. Everything else is a little beside the point, compared to that.

- Imperial guard Orders! This makes their effective shooting able to attain an even greater potential.

What about storm guardians, they can take both meltas and flamers, for way cheaper than the vets can, and still be loaded in those awesome (if more expensive) Eldar transports. Not to mention warlocks, which can either make them way better in cc, give them an awesome flamer, or just be a hidden witchblade (which IMO is better than a pfist except against ICs)

Well, let's get the real comparisons worked out here.

10x Vets, 3x Meltas, Chimera: 155

10x Guardians, 2x Fusion Guns, Wave Serpent (EML, Shuricannon): 222

Certainly the Wave Serpent is much more potent than the Chimera, but the big issue here is getting Melta shots on target.

Which is better?

3 BS4 Meltas for 155, or 2 BS3 for 222?

It's not even close, the Vets dominate the Guardians here.

Fire Warriors can't even take special weapons, so they're not even in consideration.

Also, while Mech Vets are a really strong 5e unit in the first place, they're also a strong Troops choice in a list that has a bunch of other really brutal options (Vendettas, Hydras, Griffons, Russes). So, it's not that the Mech Vets themselves are totally dominating, it's that they're a well above average troop choice for an army with other very, very powerful options in support.

So at 6 inches the vets are better, but at every other range the guardians are better, more mobile, and more potent?

Back on topic:
How many PPM is BS4 worth over BS3, all other options remaining the same?

Canonness Rory wrote:So at 6 inches the vets are better, but at every other range the guardians are better, more mobile, and more potent?

How do you come to that conclusion?

As far as BS3 to BS4 goes I'd say it depends on the standard weapons your models are carrying. If they have a 12" Stormbolter or a S5 Rapid Fire weapon with a 30" range then BS4 would be worth maybe 3-5ppm, because the wound rolls with those weapons are going to have a decent success rate (3+ or 4+ against 90% of the infantry in 40K) as well as ignoring the armour saves of many models (Guardsmen, Orks, Gaunts, etc etc). If they're carrying flashlights it's maybe 1-2ppm because not only will those weapons not wound as much as S4/5 ones, every wound they DO cause will be allowed an armour save. Obviously if they have the ability to upgrade their flashlights to something more potent (meltaguns, say) it'd be worth more, but the extra will be included in the cost of the weapon upgrade.

As to why Vets' base ppm is more than FW or Guardians, consider the roles they play in their respective armies. Fire Warriors are supposed to be a stand-and-shoot gunline unit; making them too expensive means the gunline is small, and is more of a gun-hyphen. Guardians are filler. That's it. They exist to die and run away so that your Dire Avengers don't have to. They come in two flavours, Shooty Filler or Fleeting Assaulty Horde Filler, and in both cases making them too expensive negates their usefulness. Their ability to take Serpents can make them daunting, until they get out of the Serpent and are subsequently killed by a stiff breeze.

Vets are Vets. They're the Guard's Tactical Squad. Not designed to be fielded en masse, but rather used as a platform by which more tactically employable heavy and special weapons might be included. It makes no sense for such a squad to take a 50/50 punt each time it fires those weapons, in the same way it makes little sense for squads that aren't meant to be fielded as hordes cost less than those which are.

Boiled down; FW and Guardians are blunt instruments. Vets are scalpels. That's why they cost what they do.

Canonness Rory wrote:What about storm guardians, they can take both meltas and flamers, for way cheaper than the vets can, and still be loaded in those awesome (if more expensive) Eldar transports. Not to mention warlocks, which can either make them way better in cc, give them an awesome flamer, or just be a hidden witchblade (which IMO is better than a pfist except against ICs)

A warlock + enhance + 11 guardains + 2xMelta/flamer (transportable) = 11.6ppm.

A veteran squad + 3melta = 10ppm.

Yes the warlock led guardains are better in close combat but thier base str3 is still cripplingly poor. The vets simple do the job 10x better. Being able to fire from the vehicle is seriously very awesome.

If you want close-combat hordey types... 40 guardsmen & a priest & commissr = 6.67ppm, Thats a horde done properly that has better clout & much better morale that a CC guardain sqaud. Guardsmen can do hordey close-combat squads better than eldar. So the reasons for larger-than-veteran sqaud units is moot as IG can still trump eldars horde.

20 Storm Guardians + Enhance Warlock - 9ppm

Head to head the above squad are going to rape the face off your "horde done properly" in almost every situation; and what's more they're 80 points cheaper. WS4, I5, Fleet, hidden Witchblade, Shuriken Pistols; considering all the advantages they have it's actually pretty shocking that they only cost 9ppm. I mean here's a unit that has enough shooting and I5 attacks to overwhelm most basic infantry, plus has a decent chance of hanging in against Walkers and an outside chance of landing penetrating hits against vehicles. Your horde done properly can do none of these things. You might be able to get two hordes done properly into each of your Troops slots but they're pathetically expensive for what they are, and considering f*cking Storm Guardians will kill them all day long you've got to wonder if it's worth it.

Yeah, the Guard might be able to trump the Eldar's horde in terms of numbers, but in terms of capability they still gak it against Storm Guardians. 6.67ppm sounds about right for that load of old bollocks.

So at 6 inches the vets are better, but at every other range the guardians are better, more mobile, and more potent?

No? One Melta is worth a lot more than any number of Shuricats against many targets, plus they're having to take pistol/CCW to be Storm Guardians, meaning their 12" firepower will be inferior even to just Lasgnus.

Other than that, the Guardians are always more mobile...

I dunno, it's hard to know what you're trying to get to. Guardians are not very good at all. Veterans are a very solid unit. There will always be some cases where Guardians are better, but practically speaking you'd rather have the Vets in virtually any list.

How many PPM is BS4 worth over BS3, all other options remaining the same?

It's impossible to answer that. After all, what's BS worth to a Genestealer? Nothing. What's it worth to a Ratling? A lot...

Generally speaking, BS4 is about 33% better than BS3 in terms of shooting stuff. If that was all that counted, I'd say costing 33% more would be right. However, shooting is never all that a unit does. They also assault, get shot at, etc. etc. So, having bodies is worth something too. Picking an arbitrary number that factors this in, I guess I'd say that going from BS3 to BS4 should cost about 15-20% of the cost of the BS3 model.

I don't really understand the topic title, "Ballistic skill metagame".

There is no metagame centered around Ballistic skill because that by itself does not cover enough factors to be a decision-maker.

Take Orks, for example. BS2, but with an 18" assault 2 weapon at S4 and 6 ppm, 20 Shootaboyz will throw more dakka down-range than a similar points level of Marines.

Taken by itself, BS2 is largely irrelevant. Range, # of shots, and PPM hold more weight. If you just want to see how much it's worth in a theoretical sense, then do the math for how many more hits the unit would put out if its BS was one higher, and then figure out how many more models you would have to add to get that total.

Shoota Boyz, for example:

15 Shoota Boyz (90 points) = 30/3 = 10 hits
15 BS3 Shoota Boyz = 30/2 = 15 hits
To get another 5 hits at BS2, you'd need 15 extra shots so roughly another 7 Boyz.

22 Shoota Boyz *6 ppm = 132 pts / 15 models = 9 ppm for a basic Shoota Boy with BS3.

But as Phryxis said, shooting isn't all that matters. You have to give a negative weight to the calculation because although 9ppm BS3 shoota boyz shoot as well as 6 ppm BS2 boyz, they die much more easily. So this would be the maximum premium that should be charged, and reality would probably be a much smaller fraction of that. There's where you can get into trouble, though, because it's hard to divide up such small numbers. If 3 points is too much, then is 2 too many as well? What if 1 is too few?

What if 1 is too few?

I notice a trend in the new Codices which I think hints at an answer to this.

First off, it's my impression that GW is deliberately doing a bit of regular, gradual Codex Creep to keep their stuff selling. I have no problem with this, but it does create a problem: Eventually, as you get more power for fewer points, you get to a point where a Grot (for example) is worth less than a point.

The solution GW seems to have hit upon, is to sell blocks of troops. Instead of charging 6 points per model, now they can charge, say, 55 points for 10 models. It's effectively 5.5 points per model.