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 Daedalus81 wrote:
Grade A snobbery, guys.

Show of hands for who else has the top selling table top game? Anyone?

Show of hands for who else pays the people that design their core product a bus drivers salary so that they're always employing people with minimal experience and then having the good ones leave after a few years?

40K is good because of the models and setting. The rules have always had problems.

Ultimately, I dont mind the random shots idea but I'm with the comment about their effectiveness against hordes.

If I got more shots, or a reroll for the number of shots, or something, to take into account shooting at a 15+ model unit, you'd have a better tool for reigning in hordes. These weapons do exist but theyre so damn rare they might as well not.

the point i don't like about the random shots is the "nerf" armys with a weak BS have now.
If i take 2D6 shots instead of a big template, let's say you roll for 7 shots: you fire them with a space marine, you get 4-ish hits, maybe 5. The ork equivalent get's probably 1 or 2 hits. The one or 2 hits instead of a template on a squad really hurts orks more than other armies.

To answer the original question, its because GW isn't particularly great at game design these days. For the last three editions, the prevailing trend has been random = awesome/fun/balance, which is most definitely not balanced, awesome, and only occasionally fun.

The game would be much better if they assigned a set number of shots and a set amount of damage.

Yes it is annoying - certainly the amount of dice you roll hitting on low numbers achieves very little. So make it less random. Actually make a unit of troops one element. With a simple roll incorporating many factors. And you are playing warpath or a different game. 40k for all its faults has a way of making each guy seem important even if it is bad for time and table space!

Random damage is something slightly different - that's like the damage chart, sometimes you hit something superficial, sometimes you punch straight through to the engine/power core/heart etc. High non-random damage is a large shell, low damage is something that will never punch too far. Random damge is something that will Peirce a long way under the right conditions.

Random shots on the other hand. That makes no sense. Either have a fixed shot count and roll to hit, or have random shots and auto-hit. One or the other. The only weapons that should have random shots and have to roll to hit are either damaged or experimental weapons, which is pretty rare.

What probably should have happened is the rules should have a new weapon type: blast. This would allow for a better system - I reckon they didn't implement anything sane because datasheets are a bit short on space for weapon specific rules.

Something like, blast weapons roll one dice to hit - the amount they beat their BS by plus some factor is the number of hits, with a Max of 1 per model. Then, add a -1 for moving and shooting and you've got your new weapon profile to sit alongside pistol, rapid fire, assult etc.

IMO the better solution is to have blast weapons automatically hit, up to the number of models in the unit. This represents the fact that your AoE weapon is always going to hit close enough to catch at least something in the blast radius (anyone incompetent enough to miss isn't going to be in a 40k army) but you don't know exactly how many targets will be in that radius and a target can only be there once per shot. Then adjust the stats and point cost on blast weapons appropriately. For example, LRBTs no longer need their double shot rule to compensate for their pathetic stats.

Personally I don't have any issue with random shots.

I think the biggest problem here is perception. 8th mixed up the game enough that you simply can't try to cram the effectiveness of something from 7th into 8th. A flamer in 8th is not required to do or accomplish the exact same thing it did in 7th. Look back to the 2nd-3rd changeover. Do you guys remember how vastly every single unit, and most weapons changed? It was 10x more than the 7th-8th change. "Oh you had a sustained fire 24" shuriken catapult with -2 armour save? Here's a 12" gun with no save modifier..." etc. GW is (thankfully) not beholden to make weapons perform identically over iterations.

When you add the mathhammer crowd - they'd rather have fixed values for everything, leading the game to be more like chess in the end. There needs to be a variety effect on many parts of the game. Chance, oddly, plays a huge role in the outcome of normal modern combat, and it's what makes 40K and similar games...games. You put together the list you want and see how it survives dice rolling. "Most" of the time things will go as planned (see: mathhammer) and sometimes they won't.

But sacrificing templates? Works for me. The silliness of spacing out miniatures an exact maximum distance every time and turn you moved, arguing over scatter directions, arguing over number of models hit...and then introducing all of those problems to a tournament setting? Silliness.

Solution? You still own templates (or most of you do anyway). So use them if you want. GW isn't going to come to your house and seize them. You want to use a flamer template? Just do it. There is nothing that I can think of, off the top of my head which hinders using templates and scatter from the old game in 8th edition. Put the keyboard down, go house-rule your game and have fun. If that's killing the game for you, do something about it.

 Peregrine wrote:
IMO the better solution is to have blast weapons automatically hit, up to the number of models in the unit. This represents the fact that your AoE weapon is always going to hit close enough to catch at least something in the blast radius (anyone incompetent enough to miss isn't going to be in a 40k army) but you don't know exactly how many targets will be in that radius and a target can only be there once per shot. Then adjust the stats and point cost on blast weapons appropriately. For example, LRBTs no longer need their double shot rule to compensate for their pathetic stats.

How do you point a weapon that wildly more effective against one opponent over another?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Show of hands for who else pays the people that design their core product a bus drivers salary so that they're always employing people with minimal experience and then having the good ones leave after a few years?

I presume you would be willing to share their salary and turn over data then?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
IMO the better solution is to have blast weapons automatically hit, up to the number of models in the unit. This represents the fact that your AoE weapon is always going to hit close enough to catch at least something in the blast radius (anyone incompetent enough to miss isn't going to be in a 40k army) but you don't know exactly how many targets will be in that radius and a target can only be there once per shot. Then adjust the stats and point cost on blast weapons appropriately. For example, LRBTs no longer need their double shot rule to compensate for their pathetic stats.

How do you point a weapon that wildly more effective against one opponent over another?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Show of hands for who else pays the people that design their core product a bus drivers salary so that they're always employing people with minimal experience and then having the good ones leave after a few years?

I presume you would be willing to share their salary and turn over data then?

The same way you pointed flamers in 7th? Or the same way you point haywire weaponry in 8th? Different weapons have different niches, you'll still maybe have some imbalances, I'm sure, but I don't think points costs are going to keep a weapon from having the profile Peregrine suggests.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

The same way you pointed flamers in 7th? Or the same way you point haywire weaponry in 8th? Different weapons have different niches, you'll still maybe have some imbalances, I'm sure, but I don't think points costs are going to keep a weapon from having the profile Peregrine suggests.

Those weapons in 7th had a defined limit through a template.

So, a Battlecannon that auto-hits up to the number of models in a unit.

40 Cultists, 40 hits, 33 wounds, 33 dead (133 points)
5 Marines, 5 hits, 4 wounds, ~3 dead (36 points)
10 Marines, 10 hits, 8 wounds, 6 dead

What's the appropriate cost for a weapon that invalidates any infantry entirely?

And then how do you differentiate other blast weapons so they don't seem like absolute rubbish compare to the BC?

In earnest there are places where it's appropriate and places where it isn't.

I would be curious to know how GW values randomness.

Is D3 worth more, less, or equal to 2, when determining balance?

What about 7 versus 2D6?

For instance, would the Rapid Fire Battle Cannon be more points with a flat 7 shots, less, or the same?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Show of hands for who else pays the people that design their core product a bus drivers salary so that they're always employing people with minimal experience and then having the good ones leave after a few years?

I presume you would be willing to share their salary and turn over data then?

I know what they were paying the last time they were recruiting because I looked into the role.

As for turnover - no special data is needed. Look at all of the good ones that have left for other companies.

Yeah, everybody is playing those ex-gw employee games, aren't they

I think that one of the issues is the swinginess of the d6 or d3. When you roll a 6, all well and good, but the 1 stinks, even with the reroll mechanic (building in a mechanic to offset your bad mechanic?). Old historicals used to have (and some still do) an "average die" that had 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5 on the faces. Less swingy, more toward the average. Of course, that's another specialized/custom die to add. I think the template mechanic needed to go, but didn't have a better idea how to fix it.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

The same way you pointed flamers in 7th? Or the same way you point haywire weaponry in 8th? Different weapons have different niches, you'll still maybe have some imbalances, I'm sure, but I don't think points costs are going to keep a weapon from having the profile Peregrine suggests.

Those weapons in 7th had a defined limit through a template.

So, a Battlecannon that auto-hits up to the number of models in a unit.

40 Cultists, 40 hits, 33 wounds, 33 dead (133 points)
5 Marines, 5 hits, 4 wounds, ~3 dead (36 points)
10 Marines, 10 hits, 8 wounds, 6 dead

What's the appropriate cost for a weapon that invalidates any infantry entirely?

And then how do you differentiate other blast weapons so they don't seem like absolute rubbish compare to the BC?

Whoops, I misunderstood what he was saying, you got me here. But I think in general, a weapon profile that scales with the size of the unit (without scaling 1:1) and auto-hits is the way to fix blasts (at least if by "fix", one means to keep them with some semblance to how they worked in 7th and make them useful at the same time.)

 Daedalus81 wrote:
So, a Battlecannon that auto-hits up to the number of models in a unit.

40 Cultists, 40 hits, 33 wounds, 33 dead (133 points)
5 Marines, 5 hits, 4 wounds, ~3 dead (36 points)
10 Marines, 10 hits, 8 wounds, 6 dead

What's the appropriate cost for a weapon that invalidates any infantry entirely?

Uh, what? No, that's not what I'm talking about. Blast weapons would still have their random shot count, they just wouldn't roll to hit once you determine the number of shots. A current D6 weapon would have D6 auto-hits, up to a maximum of the number of models in the unit. The point is not to make some kind of god-level anti horde weapon, it's to prevent blast weapons from stacking up multiple hits on single-model units.

Peregrine wrote:

Uh, what? No, that's not what I'm talking about. Blast weapons would still have their random shot count, they just wouldn't roll to hit once you determine the number of shots. A current D6 weapon would have D6 auto-hits, up to a maximum of the number of models in the unit. The point is not to make some kind of god-level anti horde weapon, it's to prevent blast weapons from stacking up multiple hits on single-model units.

Ah, that sounds a lot more reasonable. Thanks for clarifying.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Peregrine wrote:

Uh, what? No, that's not what I'm talking about. Blast weapons would still have their random shot count, they just wouldn't roll to hit once you determine the number of shots. A current D6 weapon would have D6 auto-hits, up to a maximum of the number of models in the unit. The point is not to make some kind of god-level anti horde weapon, it's to prevent blast weapons from stacking up multiple hits on single-model units.

Ah, that sounds a lot more reasonable. Thanks for clarifying.

What about tweaking it where you roll to hit and if you hit, you deal hits equal to the rolled result, flamers excluded?

That way BS would still factor into it and Flaner weapons would keep something to negate their short range compared to battle cannons

 Peregrine wrote:

Spoiler:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
So, a Battlecannon that auto-hits up to the number of models in a unit.

[spoiler]40 Cultists, 40 hits, 33 wounds, 33 dead (133 points)
5 Marines, 5 hits, 4 wounds, ~3 dead (36 points)
10 Marines, 10 hits, 8 wounds, 6 dead

What's the appropriate cost for a weapon that invalidates any infantry entirely?

Uh, what? No, that's not what I'm talking about. Blast weapons would still have their random shot count, they just wouldn't roll to hit once you determine the number of shots. A current D6 weapon would have D6 auto-hits, up to a maximum of the number of models in the unit. The point is not to make some kind of god-level anti horde weapon, it's to prevent blast weapons from stacking up multiple hits on single-model units.

This would also help with blast weapons suddenly becoming much worse for low BS armies this edition, like orks. And Orks could use the help

 Iur_tae_mont wrote:
What about tweaking it where you roll to hit and if you hit, you deal hits equal to the rolled result, flamers excluded?

That way BS would still factor into it and Flaner weapons would keep something to negate their short range compared to battle cannons

The whole point of blast weapons was/is to remove the importance of BS. It's representing the fact that the weapon is a huge explosion and even the least-skilled gunner can't possibly miss so badly that it doesn't hit anything. And, aside from this, rolling to hit once makes blast weapons very all-or-nothing in their effect. You're either doing absolutely nothing or piling up a lot of damage, with a 50/50 roll to decide which. That has a lot of frustration potential, both when you miss multiple shots and your expensive weapon does nothing, and when you hit with multiple shots and your opponent's army gets deleted by too-efficient firepower. This is (presumably) why GW used the current system, as awkward as it is. Rolling the "damage" first and then rolling to hit separately for each fraction of the damage converges the outcomes towards the middle a bit and makes each individual roll less important.

meleti wrote:
Templates went away so people wouldn't have to place templates anymore. Simple as that. Games Workshop isn't troubled that their dice game has inherent randomness.

THIS. Templates and scattering caused way more trouble for the game than it was worth. You had multiple cases for arguments - angle of scatter, distance it moves and whether or not units were under the template. All of which could be emulated with a single die roll, rather than 2 dice (scatter + distance) and a bunch of futzing around.

Flamers, OTOH, had none of these problems, because they hit everything they touched and didn't scatter. I have no clue why they went to random shots for those, and D6 shots was just way too low for a 8" weapon - should have been 2D6, but any model could only get hit once.

Edit: Forgot to mention the forced unit spacing templates caused everyone. Flamers templates would still make this happen, unfortunately.

What is all this hate going around for being able to hit the same model more than once? That's the BEST thing of this change! Why would a carnifex suffer the same amount of damage from a bullet and a blast? Why wouldn't a flame thrower be a good weapon against something 4 meters tall? The old templates had this horrid drawback of invalidating many AT weapons, because being blast was bad for AT were volume of fire was needed. Now a battle cannon is a good weapon against monsters, is it that strange?

Also, templates are mutually exclusive with current character rules, so it is either one or the other. Else you create gamey situations warmachine style with blasts and stealth models.

Spoletta wrote:
What is all this hate going around for being able to hit the same model more than once?

It's not hate, it's just an acknowledgement of balance. If you make blasts able to reliably generate lots of hits against multi-model units then your risk making them too effective at killing single-model units. Capping the number of hits at the number of models in the unit allows you to be more aggressive in scaling blast weapon effectiveness against their primary target without worrying about it becoming too powerful against smaller elite units.

Now a battle cannon is a good weapon against monsters, is it that strange?

Yes, because now the vanquisher cannon, the dedicated anti-tank choice for the LRBT, is trash. It can't even do the one thing it's supposed to do because the battle cannon's much higher shot count is way better than higher damage on a single shot.

Also, templates are mutually exclusive with current character rules, so it is either one or the other.

Easy: templates. In fact, even though I don't really like the old template rules I'd take them just to get rid of the sheer idiocy of the 8th edition character rules.

Spoletta wrote:
What is all this hate going around for being able to hit the same model more than once?

For flamers, it's about the nature of the weapon. It sprays stuff all over the place, and it's not like you can set something on more fire once it's on fire. It makes sense that bigger things could take more hits, but flamers being a better anti-character weapon than anti-horde weapon is dumb.

Plenty of weapons in the game should scale based on the target in question - and some do, but they're few and far between.

 Peregrine wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
What is all this hate going around for being able to hit the same model more than once?

It's not hate, it's just an acknowledgement of balance. If you make blasts able to reliably generate lots of hits against multi-model units then your risk making them too effective at killing single-model units. Capping the number of hits at the number of models in the unit allows you to be more aggressive in scaling blast weapon effectiveness against their primary target without worrying about it becoming too powerful against smaller elite units.

Now a battle cannon is a good weapon against monsters, is it that strange?

Yes, because now the vanquisher cannon, the dedicated anti-tank choice for the LRBT, is trash. It can't even do the one thing it's supposed to do because the battle cannon's much higher shot count is way better than higher damage on a single shot.

Also, templates are mutually exclusive with current character rules, so it is either one or the other.

Easy: templates. In fact, even though I don't really like the old template rules I'd take them just to get rid of the sheer idiocy of the 8th edition character rules.

Vanquisher cannon versus battle cannon is a problem of those datasheets, not of the new blast rules. I could tell you that tyranid shock guards can finally perform a good AT role exactly because they are no longer template weapons, but it's just a specific case and doesn't make the whole mechanic good or bad.

Indeed the strangler like rules (+1 to hit against x models) should be more prevalent, but even then that would only encourage MSU.

Yes. The problem with the vanquisher is not that it's single shot - it's that isn't good enough (S, AP, D) to make up for the lower number number of shots. It's not unfixable. See the harpoon on the valiant.

 John Prins wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
What is all this hate going around for being able to hit the same model more than once?

For flamers, it's about the nature of the weapon. It sprays stuff all over the place, and it's not like you can set something on more fire once it's on fire. It makes sense that bigger things could take more hits, but flamers being a better anti-character weapon than anti-horde weapon is dumb.

Plenty of weapons in the game should scale based on the target in question - and some do, but they're few and far between.

While I agree that more weapons should scale with their target like Demolisher Cannon does (more shots if 5+ models in target unit), I don't see how your flamer argument makes sense. The flamethrower spreads some fire around because of how it's wielded, not because of how it works. If you want to focus on some thing, like a monster or a character, and bathe it in flames until it stops moving instead of showering those flames around over as many targets as possible, it absolutely makes sense that it takes more hits from that. Things don't suddenly become resistant to heat and walk through the rest of the raging firestorm around them when they get a bit singed.

The old rules with only single hits and and damage with fiddly plastic bits were vastly inferior as a core engine for a game like this and I for one am glad they are gone. That does not mean the current values for weapons are necessarily correct, for an example flamers could do with a significant price reduction to reflect their restricted usefulness.

The whole point of blast weapons was/is to remove the importance of BS. It's representing the fact that the weapon is a huge explosion and even the least-skilled gunner can't possibly miss so badly that it doesn't hit anything. And, aside from this, rolling to hit once makes blast weapons very all-or-nothing in their effect. You're either doing absolutely nothing or piling up a lot of damage, with a 50/50 roll to decide which. That has a lot of frustration potential, both when you miss multiple shots and your expensive weapon does nothing, and when you hit with multiple shots and your opponent's army gets deleted by too-efficient firepower. This is (presumably) why GW used the current system, as awkward as it is. Rolling the "damage" first and then rolling to hit separately for each fraction of the damage converges the outcomes towards the middle a bit and makes each individual roll less important.

So why don't the rules change with blast weapons. Instead of randomness...make it a straight number,......but if you miss then there would still be a 50/50 or a 1 in 3 or whatever chance to hit that unit of other close by.

So if a Whirlwind does 6 hits....and only 2 actually hit ....roll the other 4 on any unit within 3" of the original target unit. and if it is 50/50 then 2 more from that other unit could possibly be hit as well.

Any such option could better fix the BS relevance you mentioned.

Spoletta wrote:
What is all this hate going around for being able to hit the same model more than once? That's the BEST thing of this change! Why would a carnifex suffer the same amount of damage from a bullet and a blast? Why wouldn't a flame thrower be a good weapon against something 4 meters tall? The old templates had this horrid drawback of invalidating many AT weapons, because being blast was bad for AT were volume of fire was needed. Now a battle cannon is a good weapon against monsters, is it that strange?

Also, templates are mutually exclusive with current character rules, so it is either one or the other. Else you create gamey situations warmachine style with blasts and stealth models.

Thats because a battle cannon isn't supposed to be an anti tank weapon. It's been covered before but current methods of low shots and multi hit on low model count units makes smaller expensive models suck in comparison to masses of cheap models.
It's one of the main driver's as to why elite units like terminators, crisis suits and primaris marines are all various levels of uncompetitive.

Massive damage weapons don't get to spill their damage across models, blast weapons shouldn't get to stack shots against single models. A blast doesn't suddenly turn into an implosion just because their was only 1 dude to hit, it expands in 3 dimensional space.

Currently too many weapons have had a very generous transition to 8th edition rules while other just flat up suck.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sherrypie wrote:

While I agree that more weapons should scale with their target like Demolisher Cannon does (more shots if 5+ models in target unit), I don't see how your flamer argument makes sense. The flamethrower spreads some fire around because of how it's wielded, not because of how it works. If you want to focus on some thing, like a monster or a character, and bathe it in flames until it stops moving instead of showering those flames around over as many targets as possible, it absolutely makes sense that it takes more hits from that. Things don't suddenly become resistant to heat and walk through the rest of the raging firestorm around them when they get a bit singed.

The old rules with only single hits and and damage with fiddly plastic bits were vastly inferior as a core engine for a game like this and I for one am glad they are gone. That does not mean the current values for weapons are necessarily correct, for an example flamers could do with a significant price reduction to reflect their restricted usefulness.

Because roasting something to death makes sence if it has exposed flesh or a requirement to breath. Most of the 40k universe especially dreadnaughts, terminators, powerarmour, Tau suits vehicals are full inclosed pressurised environmental suits, if they can protect their use from solar radiation, thermal sheer and vacuum some fire really shouldn't effect them.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Show of hands for who else has the top selling table top game? Anyone?

Yet they've never won awards for it when the time comes up...huh

I didn't like blast templates all that much as they didn't always work in large/dense/multi level terrain areas.
But simply saying you get D3/D6 shots feels...lazy.
Ok on some rapid firing weapons I can kind of get it (though 2D3 is certainly better than 1D6). Especially orks. But on things like explosive or ordnance weapons I just don't.
I hit a unit of 10 models I get D3/D6 shots.
I hit a unit of 100 models I still only get D3/D6 shots.....
Huh?
That's not how explosions work...