Balancing by percent -- How much handicap would you give for game balance?

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**Jancoran**

Kellevil wrote:
So I play SM and my son plays CSM. When the new SM codex came out I was all excited to try the new formations. But it put my son at a noticeable disadvantage. We found that I was winning more often and I wasn't min / maxing anything. Prior to the new codex we had fairly balanced games. Our solution was to just give him 10% to 15% more points. It seems to work out well for us but we don't have that much variation in our list since we don't add models to our collection very often any more.

If you use ELDAR as the base, is there an equitable way to assign weaker armies more points to make games fair? Lets make the assumption that the players are using a middle power level list for each faction.

EXAMPLE (no formations - no allies):
Eldar --- 0%
Necrons - 5%
Tau - 5%
Space Marines - 10%
Chaos Space Marines - 20%
Imperial Guard - 25%
Orks - 25%

Can the same list work if neither of the factions playing each other are Eldar (ie: SM 10% vs Orks 25% = 15% handicap for Orks)?

I'm not saying this will work. I'm just curious if it will. Is there a set of numbers that everyone can agree with?

What kind of handicaps would you assign to the faction list?

So much of this comes down to strategy as much as list. a limited collection limits flexibility to deal with new things, that's fo sho.

A handicap is one solution. One other I might offer for you to turn over for a while in your mind is the points limit of your games. Cetain armies "Scale up" better than others and scale DOWN bettr than others. So instead of creating a point inequity, have you tried a different sized game?

**Trasvi**

Have a look at www.communitycomp.org .

The system effectively introduces a handicap that is based on how good particular things are, not some number based on faction. It caters for formation rules, spamming particular options, spamming similar options cross codex, allies/super friends.

The system introduces another set of points rather than as a multiplier to existing points, but it achieves the same goal of penalising you for taking the efficient/op options.

**Dragannia**

Experiment 626 wrote:
Kellevil wrote:
CrownAxe wrote:
The problem with the handicap system is its too general. It doesn't account for the power of the specific list a person is using because that has a huge determining factor on how how broken any given army is.

For example a space marine army that is using Gladius to get free transports is already gets a couple hundred free points, giving them a 10% handicap is just giving them almost 200 pts (or denying weaker armies almost 200 pts) on top of their free tranports. But a player using a soft SM list that is fluffy (like a list that is just a bunch of Assault Marines) would need perhaps an even stronger handicap to keep up with competitive lists of even the weak armies like IG.

That has always been part of the game. It's one of the reasons that list building is fun.

But please note. In this handicap list we specifically remove the use of formations. I know that some people like them but honestly, formations break the point system.

And isn't it the removal of a point system that has the AoS community pulling their hair out? A unit value system is necessary to the game.

And please consider this; Without some kind of player created system that the community can agree to, there is no list that an Orc player can bring to play against an Eldar player without being totally certain of defeat. That leads to frustrated players. Frustrated players dont play. That equates to fewer games for everyone.

Because we as a community have to accept that GW will not balance the codex's any time in the near future. There are daily threads on Dakka about OP codex's. Well... what makes a codex OP? Simply, the points cost. There is no such thing as a good or bad unit, just cheap or expensive ones. Because you wouldn't take a Leman Russ if it was 250 points. It would suck at that point value. But you would take squadrons of them if they were 75 points.

So the system has to be simple. We can't rewrite the codex's. But we can do a little to balance them IF we could a published set of balancing rules that people could refer to.

Formations on their own aren't that bad really, outside of a couple standouts such as the Skyhammer.

What's really killing the balance between the 7.5 codices vs. the rest of the game, is the Decurion/GSF/Hunter Cadre/etc... special Detachments, that are nothing but "formations + formations = even more 'free' bonuses/perks."

On it's own for example, there's nothing really OP or hugely unbalancing about a Demi-Battle Company. There's a fairly decent 'tax' to pay of overall purely average units (3x Tactical Squads), that balance out the bonus of gaining Obsec + an additional set of Tactical Doctrines.
It's when the Gladius is used that Codex Marines becomes hugely obnoxious, because the 'free' transports effectively means you're now only paying 3-5pts/model per Marine!

Likewise, the few formations that Chaos now has, (mostly through Daemons), overall are pretty 'meh'. However, again, it's a Daemonic Incursion detachment that gets completely bonkers!
On the other hand, the three different Hellbrute formations are literally the one and only way to make use of an otherwise completely unusable unit!

Necron formations are overall quite fun. It's the additional buffs of the Decurion that make them all but unkillable.

Etc, etc...
A blanket ban on formations is pretty heavy handed & entirely unneeded. A restriction to the Decruion style detachments is definitely a good idea, as well as a restriction to the small handful of really busted formations. (*cough*Skyhammer*cough*).

Well said. I feel like most formations in the game are fine. However, the problem ones need just a few tweaks to get them in the right place. For example, the Skyhammer suddenly looks a lot weaker if you were required to have maxed units. A demicompany that mandated maxed units is nowhere near as powerful as before. If Aspect Shrines required maxed units they'd suddenly look a lot more balanced. I think the way to fix most OP formations and decurions is to require they have maxed units.