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"Just go back to the old AP system"

Game design and theory aside, redesigning an entire game mechanic is not something one just does in the middle of an edition. Arguably not even with the change of edition unless you are doing a complete overhaul again.

 Tyran wrote:
"Just go back to the old AP system"

Game design and theory aside, redesigning an entire game mechanic is not something one just does in the middle of an edition. Arguably not even with the change of edition unless you are doing a complete overhaul again.

They did it from 7th to 8th, they should do it again from 9th to 10th.
I was optimistic about it in 8th, but as its unfolded, its only caused more issues then it has fixed. Rending for ranged was a failed experiment.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

They did it from 7th to 8th

And they got rid of all 6th-7th codexes while at it. At the very least it wouldn't be a simple change, as GW isn't particularly interested in burning down the last 6 years of releases.

And if you are redesigning the whole thing, you probably could make a better AP system than just returning to the old AP one, because I refuse to believe that AP can only be an All or Nothing or just modifiers.

Tyel wrote:
But I don't see how that's an inherent problem.

I mean in the old editions you often didn't "spam" AP2 to deal with things like Terminators - because AP2 was relatively rare - being big heavy guns, or some usually character locked close combat options. Instead you just hit them with a bunch of AP- (or AP5, whatever) knowing that every 1 your opponent rolled was a dead terminator.

It wasn't particularly effective, though. You were always better off putting lascannons into Terminators rather than throwing massed lasguns or bolters and hoping you got lucky; you did that because there were only so many lascannons to go around and they were needed to deal with tanks. It took four whole squads of Guardsmen all in Rapid Fire range to average killing a single W2 Terminator.

The old AP system established hard breakpoints depending on the save. In the case of Terminators, it meant that virtually everything was ineffective except lascannons, meltaguns, or other high-cost, low-volume anti-tank weapons. Your choice was either to use your very limited pool of real anti-tank weapons on Terminators, or to try to fish for failed saves with high volumes of fire. Neither was especially attractive.

The AP modifier system puts the vital breakpoint at AP-1 a much lower bar, as it doubles your effectiveness against Terminators. It makes those heavy bolters, autocannons, and other low-cost, high-volume generalist weapons just as effective as lascannons against Terminators, massively devaluing their armor. Put the lasgun/bolter fire into basic troops, put your mid-strength AP-1 fire into Terminators, and put your lascannons into tanks. Enter Armor of Contempt, the band-aid fix to shift that breakpoint to AP-2 while causing a fair bit of collateral in the process.

I mean, having lots of access to AP would work fine if the game were dominated by armies in the 4+ to 6+ range, but when a majority of armies on the table are 3+ or better, the designers need to recognize that getting a single point of AP has a huge impact and design around that fact. Really, the problem is that GW derived AP modifiers directly from the old AP values while keeping saves exactly as they were, and fundamentally that does not produce equivalent results.

I'm not wedded to any particular solution- if a mechanic works, it works- but I don't think there's any easy fix either.

Catbarf I agree, but I do want to point out that GW started 9th for orkz with the "OMG LUK! AP-1 Choppas!" and shortly thereafter gave about half the game either invuln saves or AoC. I mean...almost half the game already doesn't care about AP-1 so it was nice that GW finally realized how bad they were at writing ork rules and gave us a hefty (sarcasm) 1ppm price cut on most of our infantry.

I'm just not a fan of these band aid fixes that leave entire armies devoid of their biggest buffs against large swathes of the game.

 catbarf wrote:
tanks. It took four whole squads of Guardsmen all in Rapid Fire range to average killing a single W2 Terminator.

Terminators only had one wound. It was Paladins who had 2.

 Tyran wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
tanks. It took four whole squads of Guardsmen all in Rapid Fire range to average killing a single W2 Terminator.

Terminators only had one wound. It was Paladins who had 2.

It does not detract from his point of the weight of fire needed to apply t2 wounds.

It does, because 2 squads of Guardsmen is around 100 pts and one Terminator is around 40ppm. A 40% return of investment in one round of shooting is usually considered an efficient one.

Killing Terminators by forcing 1s was definitely viable when they only had 1 wound.

Point for point, Tactical Marines were more durable against small arms than Terminators, as they costed less than half a Terminator.

The problem is not the AP system itself, its simple power creep running harder then ever before.

a space marine with a chainsword went from 2 attacks with no additional rules to 4 attacks with -2 ap (astartes chainsword, assault doctrine and shock assault) from 8th into 9th.

That (not the space marine specifically, but the power increase in general) is where the problem is.

The old systems, with the same insane lethality scaling would have the exact same problem. And it already had that when it still existed. When I was playing Tau and the Riptide came out I suddenly started throwing out ordnance templates that instant killed marines with no save. It was ludicrous.

The AP system as a concept works just fine. The problem is GW rules writers waging an all out arms race with eachother.

I'm sort of struggling with the 2 wounds, because that was a brief period of time. Today Terminators have 3 wounds - in the old days they had 1.

But I still don't think AP-1 is the issue painted here.

Lets take a CSM Terminator at 33 points, a Legionaire at 18 and a Boy at 8. It could be said this isn't fair, because GW "knew" they were going to go with AoC when they were determining CSM points - but I don't believe they are remotely that joined up.

Against S4 AP-1 attacks, it takes 2*3*3=18 hits to kill a terminator. It takes 2*2*2=8 hits to kill a Legionaire and it takes 3 hits to kill a Boy.

So we can see that S4 AP-1 is... most effective against the Boy, and least effective against the Terminator. I.E. 18 hits expects to kill a single 33 points of terminator, kill 2.25 legionaires for 40.5 points and it would also expect to kill 6 boyz for 48 points.
With AoC its even more skewed in the favour of the Marines.

Now you might take the view that Terminators should be even tougher than this - or functionally immune to these guns (like people who hate the idea bolters can chip off a wound from a tank etc) - but I certainly don't think its an inherent problem. Because the issue is in the relationship of the maths and the points - and the relative meta that emerges between them.

The issue is just that GW dolled out far too much stuff - usually much better than mere AP-1. Hail of Doom for example putting out loads of AP-3 attacks. The aforementioned "anti-Marine" S5 AP-3 2 damage profile (or better) appearing all over the place, seemingly for ever fewer amounts of points. But even that can be balanced - it just means the points uplift for being T4 over T3, 3+ over say 4+ or 5+, and a 2nd wound, needs to be much lower. But equally it makes this factions that are stuck with AP-1, that seemingly they very much are paying for, feel awful. That's the rub. Its just balance.

Its certainly easier I think to balance than the all or nothing of the old system. What value for example do you put on AP4 gun? I mean what was that for? Fire Warriors? Some aspect warriors maybe?

 Ordana wrote:
The problem is not the AP system itself, its simple power creep running harder then ever before.

a space marine with a chainsword went from 2 attacks with no additional rules to 4 attacks with -2 ap (astartes chainsword, assault doctrine and shock assault) from 8th into 9th.

That (not the space marine specifically, but the power increase in general) is where the problem is.

The old systems, with the same insane lethality scaling would have the exact same problem. And it already had that when it still existed. When I was playing Tau and the Riptide came out I suddenly started throwing out ordnance templates that instant killed marines with no save. It was ludicrous.

The AP system as a concept works just fine. The problem is GW rules writers waging an all out arms race with eachother.

This. Have an exalt.

For the sake of discussion, let's all mentally rewind the statlines of various weapons a bit. Picture like, index 8th edition statlines for units and weapons, and set aside various reroll auras. No extra AP on tau pulse weapons or shuriken cannons. No doctrines giving us AP-1 bolters and AP-2 bolt rifles. No auto-wounding with to-hit rolls of 6. No armor of contempt. No doctrines/strands of fate mechanics. I feel like rolling back to something like this (and then selectively updating some profiles with changes we actually like) would give us statlines that work well with the current AP system. I like that a krak missile is better at getting through tank armor than a bolter but not as good as a lascannon or melta. It makes variations in AP meaningful without turning it into a gamble.

"Oh, your Thousand Sons are paying how many points for AP3 inferno bolts? That's rough. My Death Wing army only has 2+ saves."

I feel like a lot of the durability buffs GW has handed out (invuln saves, damage reduction, even better armor saves) could all probably be replaced by a simple Wounds increase. Dreadnaughts dying too quickly to plasma? Up their wounds. Russes dying too quickly to melta? Up their wounds. Now that plasmagun is doing X% of the dreadnaught's health per shot (where X is whatever value the designers want), but they don't need to add a paragraph of special rules text to the game to do it. This would also give designers a bit more freedom to play around with Damage values because they don't have to worry about how AoC or Damage Reduction or an invuln impact the math of raising a weapon's Damage by a point.

And frankly, most of the rules in the game that make our units more lethal could be removed or replaced with more interesting mechanics. Less, "reroll a bunch of dice when attacking, " and more, "pick a unit to move after shooting."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:

Its certainly easier I think to balance than the all or nothing of the old system. What value for example do you put on AP4 gun? I mean what was that for? Fire Warriors? Some aspect warriors maybe?

Great example. Yeah, AP4 was a death sentence for my dire avengers, but my striking scorpions didn't care about it at all. Which was odd and kind of frustrating. You'd run into something like a heavy flamer and go, "Oh. I see. GW decided that my army is one of the ones that this weapon is good against, but it's just a minor inconvenience for power armor."

Slipspace wrote:

Spoiler:

 bullyboy wrote:
I totally disagree with the statement that armies now live or die by their invulns. AOC has made the discussion relevant of whether invulns are even necessary on many units, especially at the additional cost.
It certainly has changed the dynamic of certain choices, especially in the low AP arena (-1 and -2). However, not all opponents will have AOC so ditching AP-1 weapons as worthless may not be a great strategy.
IMHO it’s nice to see 3+ save actually mean something.

Agreed.

Storm Shields are now fairly useless

Spoiler:

given that you need at least AP-3 before the advantage of the 4++ comes into play. Even then, cover can mitigate that so you need -4 before the SS is worth it on power armoured marines. Terminators now need to get hit by AP-5 before their 5++ become relevant. Personally, I've already dropped a lot of SS from my Deathwatch due to AoC

.

Patch hammer 2K. Yeah, dropping storm shields was a given, with most recent armor of contempt. What a clumsy wreck…

Tyran wrote:Terminators only had one wound. It was Paladins who had 2.

Guess I'm getting mixed up with later editions, my bad. I face two-wound relic Termies a lot in HH, and they had two wounds in 8th as well.

Point being, though, that if you feel they were too easy to kill when you just had to throw a bunch of lasguns into them, they're even easier to kill under the new armor system when AP-1 and AP-2 weapons crack them open too. The only thing that makes them more durable now, aside from the AoC band-aid, is the addition of extra wounds to their profiles.

Wyldhunt wrote:For the sake of discussion, let's all mentally rewind the statlines of various weapons a bit. Picture like, index 8th edition statlines for units and weapons, and set aside various reroll auras. No extra AP on tau pulse weapons or shuriken cannons. No doctrines giving us AP-1 bolters and AP-2 bolt rifles. No auto-wounding with to-hit rolls of 6. No armor of contempt. No doctrines/strands of fate mechanics. I feel like rolling back to something like this (and then selectively updating some profiles with changes we actually like) would give us statlines that work well with the current AP system. I like that a krak missile is better at getting through tank armor than a bolter but not as good as a lascannon or melta. It makes variations in AP meaningful without turning it into a gamble.

It was definitely less lethal, and armor definitely had more value, but that was still an era where disintegrators and plasma guns beat lascannons and meltaguns because GW didn't appreciate the effects of the new AP system. Reining in the AP creep just restricts the scope of the problem to mid-AP vs high-AP weapons, rather than everything all the time.

Though if we rolled back to index-era profiles, kept the extra wounds for units that deserve it (eg Terminators at W3 don't get yeeted by autocannons), and gave dedicated anti-tank weapons a buff to damage values (swingy D6 damage kinda sucks), then that would be a better state. I think you'd still find Marine players complaining that their armor doesn't feel useful, because that's been a complaint since the start of 8th, but it would be a step in the right direction.

You know when I first read the title I thought, "What a great idea. The stronger the weapon the more damage it does." Reading what is inside is mundane.

But what a great idea in that the stronger the weapon the more damage it does.

 catbarf wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:For the sake of discussion, let's all mentally rewind the statlines of various weapons a bit. Picture like, index 8th edition statlines for units and weapons, and set aside various reroll auras. No extra AP on tau pulse weapons or shuriken cannons. No doctrines giving us AP-1 bolters and AP-2 bolt rifles. No auto-wounding with to-hit rolls of 6. No armor of contempt. No doctrines/strands of fate mechanics. I feel like rolling back to something like this (and then selectively updating some profiles with changes we actually like) would give us statlines that work well with the current AP system. I like that a krak missile is better at getting through tank armor than a bolter but not as good as a lascannon or melta. It makes variations in AP meaningful without turning it into a gamble.

It was definitely less lethal, and armor definitely had more value, but that was still an era where disintegrators and plasma guns beat lascannons and meltaguns because GW didn't appreciate the effects of the new AP system. Reining in the AP creep just restricts the scope of the problem to mid-AP vs high-AP weapons, rather than everything all the time.

Though if we rolled back to index-era profiles, kept the extra wounds for units that deserve it (eg Terminators at W3 don't get yeeted by autocannons), and gave dedicated anti-tank weapons a buff to damage values (swingy D6 damage kinda sucks), then that would be a better state. I think you'd still find Marine players complaining that their armor doesn't feel useful, because that's been a complaint since the start of 8th, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Yes, this. Sorry. Poor wording on my part. You've phrased it better than I did. I'm not advocating for simply going back to index 40k stats. Just trying to point out that we had relatively tame statlines not so long ago and that the current AP system would probably work reasonably well if we just scraped off some of the recent power creep. If you used index 40k statlines as a starting point and then added in a few of the more well-received changes (higher wounds on some tanks, changes to Dd6 weapons' damage stats, etc.), I think you'd mostly end up with weapons that kill their intended targets at a reasonable pace.

You know when I first read the title I thought, "What a great idea. The stronger the weapon the more damage it does." Reading what is inside is mundane.

I think that works better as a guideline than a strict rule. Currently, you can have an overcharged plasma gun and a krak missile both have the same strength, but one has a better Damage stat. So the plasmagun gets to reliably do some damage to tanks, but the krak missile is a bit better at fully killing the tanks. And then you've got the lascannon which wounds and gets through armor more reliably than the krak missile but which does the same amount of damage (ignoring the new CSM 'dex for now).

Both of these examples show weapons having distinct niches and "feels" thanks to Strength and Damage not being directly connected.

Out of curiosity who here supporting the rending system has seen the AP system/rework done in HH 2.0?

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Out of curiosity who here supporting the rending system has seen the AP system/rework done in HH 2.0?

Can't say I have. Any interesting points of note?

 Dysartes wrote:
Anyone claiming that having a couple of dice of a different colour with them to allow resolving plasma attacks at the same time as basic weapon attacks is too difficult has larger problems than the plasma weapon profiles.

I mean, judging from some of the people in the PL thread, yeah, there are some people like that.


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SemperMortis wrote:
I feel like myself and several other posters here said that power creep for Space Marines was an astonishing thing to behold and that shortly after every single buff they receive in terms of durability/dmg output there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Christ i'm going to term this "Semper's third law of Speese Mehreens"

Here we are with Marines getting AoC and now we have threads about Bolters not being good enough and this one about Plasma not being good enough anymore.

AoC was definitely a mistake.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Out of curiosity who here supporting the rending system has seen the AP system/rework done in HH 2.0?

Can't say I have. Any interesting points of note?

Yeah actually, they curbed a lot of AP2 and AP3 weapons and right off hte top of my head the only "Common" ap 2 and 3 waepons out there are melta, laz canon, conversion beamers, and i think krak missile
What they did was something i was suggestion for a long time, they started instead to put rending on a lot more weapons and a new rule called breaching, which is sorta like rending lite. Rending will wound a target regardless of tougnness and set the AP of the wound to AP2. Breaching will just set the wound to AP2.

Its also not just rending 6, they have rules for rending 6, 5,4,3 and even in super rare cases rending 2, same goes for breaching as well, i have seen anywhere from breaching 4 to 6

So like plasmas for example. Are AP4, but have the breaching 4 rule so that if you roll a 4 to wound it goes to AP2. So in effect they are able to curb a lot of spamable AP2 and 3 but still let it provide a very usable role as anti heavy armor. So you ahve things like plasma that are still really good at anti heavy armor, but are not the instant take, while things like melta will absolutly still do its job.

Pie plate AP 2 and 3 is basically non existent even things like the earth shaker is now AP4 but gets shred. Every thing in HH genuinly feels very good, Terminators are nice and durable but still fall to AP2 and have 2 wounds a peice, the only thing thats out right rediculous in HH so far are dreads.
I would highly suggest looking at the reworked AP values of HH.

To give you an idea of how much they curbed AP in HH, even the plasma blast canon, the warhound arm is large blast plasma AP3 with breaching 4.

Plasma should be special and do a lot of damage how ever they should do away with the dual profile and up the power while having it always gets hot on a 1 you should not be able to skirt this except on very rare occasions.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Out of curiosity who here supporting the rending system has seen the AP system/rework done in HH 2.0?

Can't say I have. Any interesting points of note?

Yeah actually, they curbed a lot of AP2 and AP3 weapons and right off hte top of my head the only "Common" ap 2 and 3 waepons out there are melta, laz canon, conversion beamers, and i think krak missile
What they did was something i was suggestion for a long time, they started instead to put rending on a lot more weapons and a new rule called breaching, which is sorta like rending lite. Rending will wound a target regardless of tougnness and set the AP of the wound to AP2. Breaching will just set the wound to AP2.

Its also not just rending 6, they have rules for rending 6, 5,4,3 and even in super rare cases rending 2, same goes for breaching as well, i have seen anywhere from breaching 4 to 6

So like plasmas for example. Are AP4, but have the breaching 4 rule so that if you roll a 4 to wound it goes to AP2. So in effect they are able to curb a lot of spamable AP2 and 3 but still let it provide a very usable role as anti heavy armor. So you ahve things like plasma that are still really good at anti heavy armor, but are not the instant take, while things like melta will absolutly still do its job.

Pie plate AP 2 and 3 is basically non existent even things like the earth shaker is now AP4 but gets shred. Every thing in HH genuinly feels very good, Terminators are nice and durable but still fall to AP2 and have 2 wounds a peice, the only thing thats out right rediculous in HH so far are dreads.
I would highly suggest looking at the reworked AP values of HH.

To give you an idea of how much they curbed AP in HH, even the plasma blast canon, the warhound arm is large blast plasma AP3 with breaching 4.

You understand that this is a necessity given how narrow the all or nothing (AON) AP system? There's just not much range to move in there without slicing it up by creating special exception rules and applying them to a large range of weapons. And this game is designed purely around T4 W1 Sv3+ models. AP4 wipes out everything that's not a space marine, ie almost every other faction.

The current APMOD vs APAON can also be manipulated to optimise play by using lots of special rules - armour of contempt is just an armour-based special rule to fix a problem, while your examples are weapons based ones.

If they just stuck to their guns on AP and left it at 0 for all infantry weapons, not using it as an opportunity to distinguish them from each other, that would solve most modern problems. AP0 should be the most common.

If only special and heavy weapons have AP, and they're mostly AP1 and 2, you get a far better balance in the game.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Out of curiosity who here supporting the rending system has seen the AP system/rework done in HH 2.0?

Can't say I have. Any interesting points of note?

Yeah actually, they curbed a lot of AP2 and AP3 weapons and right off hte top of my head the only "Common" ap 2 and 3 waepons out there are melta, laz canon, conversion beamers, and i think krak missile
What they did was something i was suggestion for a long time, they started instead to put rending on a lot more weapons and a new rule called breaching, which is sorta like rending lite. Rending will wound a target regardless of tougnness and set the AP of the wound to AP2. Breaching will just set the wound to AP2.

Its also not just rending 6, they have rules for rending 6, 5,4,3 and even in super rare cases rending 2, same goes for breaching as well, i have seen anywhere from breaching 4 to 6

So like plasmas for example. Are AP4, but have the breaching 4 rule so that if you roll a 4 to wound it goes to AP2. So in effect they are able to curb a lot of spamable AP2 and 3 but still let it provide a very usable role as anti heavy armor. So you ahve things like plasma that are still really good at anti heavy armor, but are not the instant take, while things like melta will absolutly still do its job.

Pie plate AP 2 and 3 is basically non existent even things like the earth shaker is now AP4 but gets shred. Every thing in HH genuinly feels very good, Terminators are nice and durable but still fall to AP2 and have 2 wounds a peice, the only thing thats out right rediculous in HH so far are dreads.
I would highly suggest looking at the reworked AP values of HH.

To give you an idea of how much they curbed AP in HH, even the plasma blast canon, the warhound arm is large blast plasma AP3 with breaching 4.

That reads like a system that could work because the entire game is designed around 3+ and 2+ sv models fighting each other but would horribly fail in 40k because your not just marines punching marines.

 Ordana wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Out of curiosity who here supporting the rending system has seen the AP system/rework done in HH 2.0?

Can't say I have. Any interesting points of note?

Yeah actually, they curbed a lot of AP2 and AP3 weapons and right off hte top of my head the only "Common" ap 2 and 3 waepons out there are melta, laz canon, conversion beamers, and i think krak missile
What they did was something i was suggestion for a long time, they started instead to put rending on a lot more weapons and a new rule called breaching, which is sorta like rending lite. Rending will wound a target regardless of tougnness and set the AP of the wound to AP2. Breaching will just set the wound to AP2.

Its also not just rending 6, they have rules for rending 6, 5,4,3 and even in super rare cases rending 2, same goes for breaching as well, i have seen anywhere from breaching 4 to 6

So like plasmas for example. Are AP4, but have the breaching 4 rule so that if you roll a 4 to wound it goes to AP2. So in effect they are able to curb a lot of spamable AP2 and 3 but still let it provide a very usable role as anti heavy armor. So you ahve things like plasma that are still really good at anti heavy armor, but are not the instant take, while things like melta will absolutly still do its job.

Pie plate AP 2 and 3 is basically non existent even things like the earth shaker is now AP4 but gets shred. Every thing in HH genuinly feels very good, Terminators are nice and durable but still fall to AP2 and have 2 wounds a peice, the only thing thats out right rediculous in HH so far are dreads.
I would highly suggest looking at the reworked AP values of HH.

To give you an idea of how much they curbed AP in HH, even the plasma blast canon, the warhound arm is large blast plasma AP3 with breaching 4.

That reads like a system that could work because the entire game is designed around 3+ and 2+ sv models fighting each other but would horribly fail in 40k because your not just marines punching marines.

It works outside of the Sv3 and 2 stat line as well considering Bolters are also only AP 5, which solar aux had 4+ and so did mechanicum which also operated on mostly T5 units. So, no it works outside of the Sv 3 and 2 stat line quite well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

If only special and heavy weapons have AP, and they're mostly AP1 and 2, you get a far better balance in the game.

They have effectively done that now, only heavy and special weapons are rocking AP 1 and 2 in the game, Bolters are base AP5
Im skimming back over the SM armory and the only weapons that are base AP1,2 or 3 are all either melta, laz canons, missles, or heavy vehicle mounted weapons and are their main battle weapon Everything else is stat line AP 5, most auto canons are AP4, and artillery's is AP4 as well.

The current problem with plasma is platform cost and RoI.

Hellblasters and Inceptors with plasma are exorbitantly expensive compared to their durabilty.

To be good, they pretty much need to kill their points cost in one volley of fire, because they are extremely easy to kill, and they also kill themselves. Inceptors especially get bitten by this, as they typically deep strike away from a reroll 1s aura.

I don't think Plasma will ever be properly balanced until they change the rule from "model is slain" to "unit suffers a mortal wound". They will always be either "too good" or "not good enough" until then.

Wyldhunt wrote:I think that works better as a guideline than a strict rule. Currently, you can have an overcharged plasma gun and a krak missile both have the same strength, but one has a better Damage stat. So the plasmagun gets to reliably do some damage to tanks, but the krak missile is a bit better at fully killing the tanks. And then you've got the lascannon which wounds and gets through armor more reliably than the krak missile but which does the same amount of damage (ignoring the new CSM 'dex for now).

Is that really a practical niche, or just a 'feel' thing? I mean, if krak missiles were S9 but DamD6-1, they'd still be better tank killers than plasma guns, but they'd still also be effectively 'lascannon but a bit worse'. The breakpoints would change a bit, the niche stays the same- a slightly less capable lascannon with an alternate fire mode. You could have plasma at lower S than krak missiles but the same Dam, and it would still hold true that plasma guns can do some damage to tanks, but the krak missile is better at it. Shuffling S for Dam and vice versa doesn't seem to have a huge impact on the weapon's role.

Really, the only reason a Dam stat was introduced was because GW flattened the wounding table so just wounding on a better value wasn't sufficient anymore, and expanded out the number of wounds most things have. In prior editions, 'damage' existed but was tied to S in the form of Instant Death. Otherwise, the fact that lascannons wounded T7 on 2s while heavy bolters wounded T7 on 6s was enough to favor the lascannon.

I could see a simplified 40K consolidating S and Dam (maybe have damage inflicted depend on your roll to wound), and a fast-play system potentially also T and W. If you haven't played Grimdark Future, the two defensive attributes are just armor save and hitpoints. It still has distinctions between heavily-armored troops and hard-to-kill troops, and between armor-piercing weapons and high-damage weapons, but there's no roll to wound.

Ordana wrote:That reads like a system that could work because the entire game is designed around 3+ and 2+ sv models fighting each other but would horribly fail in 40k because your not just marines punching marines.

You've got it a bit backwards. The reason HH2.0 had to make these changes is specifically because it is a game of mostly 3+ and 2+ models, so weapons that reliably pierced those saves were taken and ones that didn't weren't.

HH1.0's system, IE the old AP system and weapon profiles from 3rd-7th, works fine if you have a healthy variety of armies to discourage that sort of optimization. If it's all Marines all the time, then it becomes all plasma guns all the time, and the disincentive to leaning into highly specialized MEQ killers goes away.

In an AP modifier system you can safely spam AP-1/AP-2 because it works against everybody. Damage is the more relevant army-specific breakpoint.

 catbarf wrote:


You've got it a bit backwards. The reason HH2.0 had to make these changes is specifically because it is a game of mostly 3+ and 2+ models, so weapons that reliably pierced those saves were taken and ones that didn't weren't.

HH1.0's system, IE the old AP system and weapon profiles from 3rd-7th, requires a healthy variety of armies to discourage that sort of optimization. If it's all Marines all the time, then it becomes all plasma guns all the time, and the disincentive to leaning into highly specialized MEQ killers goes away.

That kinda feel apart in practice. Space Marines may have not been everybody, but they represented (and still do) a significant minority if not majority of the factions played, so the game still revolved around SV3+ and the ways to kill them.

And most of the time, such weapons were still very useful against Xenos and other armies. Missile launchers and plasma guns were just as good at killing Tyranid warriors and Tyranid monsters or any medium or lighter vehicles.

Battle cannons were good against any infantry unit without a 2+ save, demolisher cannons were good against any infantry unit period.

In fact, weapons that were good against Marines and only against Marines were very rare, as most ap3 and 2 were combined with high strength (so good against monsters and vehicles) and/or templates (so good against pretty much any infantry).

If anything, I think only Xenos armies really struggled with access to AP weapons, or at the very least Tyranids did.

 Tyran wrote:

 catbarf wrote:


You've got it a bit backwards. The reason HH2.0 had to make these changes is specifically because it is a game of mostly 3+ and 2+ models, so weapons that reliably pierced those saves were taken and ones that didn't weren't.

HH1.0's system, IE the old AP system and weapon profiles from 3rd-7th, requires a healthy variety of armies to discourage that sort of optimization. If it's all Marines all the time, then it becomes all plasma guns all the time, and the disincentive to leaning into highly specialized MEQ killers goes away.

That kinda feel apart in practice. Space Marines may have not been everybody, but they represented (and still do) a significant minority if not majority of the factions played, so the game still revolved around SV3+ and the ways to kill them.

And most of the time, such weapons were still very useful against Xenos and other armies. Missile launchers and plasma guns were just as good at killing Tyranid warriors and Tyranid monsters or any medium or lighter vehicles.

Battle cannons were good against any infantry unit without a 2+ save, demolisher cannons were good against any infantry unit period.

In fact, weapons that were good against Marines and only against Marines were very rare, as most ap3 and 2 were combined with high strength (so good against monsters and vehicles) and/or templates (so good against pretty much any infantry).

If anything, I think only Xenos armies really struggled with access to AP weapons, or at the very least Tyranids did.

Yes and everything you just mentioned is addressed fully in the AP revamp of HH 2.0. The average AP of weapons in HH 2.0 is AP5, even most special and heavy wepaons are average AP 4 and 3 but come with Breaching and rending rules. Very few weapons are guaranteed AP3,2 or 1 at range.
Pie plate AP3 and 2 are virtually none existant in the game any more. The largest and lowest AP pie plate i have seen was the plasma blast canon which is AP3 and can only be taken on warhounds and stormblades.

If you are upset about Nids getting exploded well, i mean im sorry you are playing a horde army thats kinda their thing if you are not wearing any armor and are just getting tshirt saves not sure what to tell you about that.

And the reality is, that yes the game will always be balanced around the 3+sv because its the marine stat line, the marine stat line always has been and always will be the games base stat line to go off of, because at some pont some stat line will need to be the floor.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

If you are upset about Nids getting exploded well, i mean im sorry you are playing a horde army thats kinda their thing if you are not wearing any armor and are just getting tshirt saves not sure what to tell you about that.

I'm not upset about gaunts being exploded. I was upset about Warriors and Monsters getting exploded. Warriors's defensive profile was awkwardly bad as T4 Sv4+ was easy to kill by way too many weapons.

As for monsters, I mean, in HH 2.0 dreads have T7 W6 Sv2+ because that is the kind of defensive profile a monster needs to survive HH 2.0 AP environment, not even the 5th-7th AP environment.

 Tyran wrote:
That kinda feel apart in practice. Space Marines may have not been everybody, but they represented (and still do) a significant minority if not majority of the factions played, so the game still revolved around SV3+ and the ways to kill them.

You aren't wrong. I phrased that post carefully. The old system worked if there was a variety of target types to contend with, but in practice MEQs were something like half the factions and a majority of armies seen on the tabletop, so that was very heavily meta-dependent. The same issue of most armies being Sv3+ is exactly why so much easy access to AP-1 is a problem for the game state.

The difference is that in a hypothetical where there were more non-Marine factions, under the old AP system you'd see more stuff that's AP4 or worse, because each tradeoff of AP versus S or shots has its own niche. Whereas under the AP modifier system, AP-1/AP-2 is optimal against everything and is still what you should be spamming. That's much harder to balance out such that every weapon has a niche.

 Tyran wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

If you are upset about Nids getting exploded well, i mean im sorry you are playing a horde army thats kinda their thing if you are not wearing any armor and are just getting tshirt saves not sure what to tell you about that.

I'm not upset about gaunts being exploded. I was upset about Warriors and Monsters getting exploded. Warriors's defensive profile was awkwardly bad as T4 Sv4+ was easy to kill by way too many weapons.

As for monsters, I mean, in HH 2.0 dreads have T7 W6 Sv2+ because that is the kind of defensive profile a monster needs to survive HH 2.0 AP environment, not even the 5th-7th AP environment.

Actually its really not, the majority of the community is already on the side that Dreads are way over powered in HH 2.0. they need to be sv 3. Dreadnaughts are insanely durable for their point cost. The only solution to them is either ot have another dread swing into them, or hit them with incredibly high damage weapons, or disintegrators which are very rare in the game.
Or you have to throw a 5 man terminator squad at them and use things like chain fists and power fists to beat them.

The point is, taht even a Sv 4 model is saving against a lot of things in the game still since the AP average is 5 of common weapons.