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 RustyNumber wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I think the 2" move thing would just feel fiddly most of the time. In edge cases, you maybe get arguments about how exactly the fall back is supposed to work if terrain gets in the way, if a vehicle would need to pivot, etc. But mostly it just sounds fiddly and unnecessary.

It works fine in TOW, which is by its nature a more complex and fiddly game. Though in that case it's usually on blocks of units moved via trays, to represent the close-and-separate of sword-n-board melee armies. It's the Ld test system with 3 states I'm saying is an interesting idea. Pass, partial pass, fail.

I'm open to different effects based on how well you roll on an Ld test, but we'd need to see meaningfully different and interesting results to help justify it. And those effects would ideally both fit the personality of the units involved and be mechanically elegant.

Randomly moving 2" after clashing with the enemy sounds like a roundabout way of just losing that unit to enemy shooting/charges if it happens at a bad time, or potentially a blessing in disguise if it means you just randomly get to charge the enemy on your own turn because nothing could capitalize on you falling back. Moving towards a board edge is fiddly from a model moving/book-keeping perspective, and how much you like it is probably going to depend on how much joy you get out of seeing your own units forced out of the fight. Plus it hits some units way harder than others depending on their threat range, job, etc.

So I'm open to it, but I don't think a direct port of the concept would be satisfying.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Tactical retreat is not the same as being routed.

And three SMs should be able to wipe 2000 points of Guard off the board without breaking a sweat if we're being "realistic". It's an approximation/abstraction of any number of things, to allow all armies to engage comparably with a ruleset that provides the players with interesting decisions. I do agree that with a more interesting system elite armies like SMs should behave differently to routed guuardsmen or tyranids.

The thing is, marines make up like half the factions in the game. If your core mechanic is a bad fit for half the factions in the game, I feel like that's a red game design flag.

And while I won't just assume that it *doesn't* create interesting decisions, I don't think randomly being forced to fall back innately creates those interesting decisions on its own. So we're basically saying, "If you overhauled the old world's system into something that doesn't much resemble that system, you could maybe come up with something that's fluffy and interesting."

Which is pretty vague and hard to discuss without a more concrete example of a version that would work in 40k.

And as JNA points out, if the number of units that can wet their pants and run away without feeling unfluffy in 40k for lore reasons is sufficiently small, then it might make more sense to make peeing your pants a unit-specific or army-specific rule rather than a core mechanic.

(Hope that didn't come across as harsh. Not trying to bite your head off or anything.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:

Morale doesn't have to equal a complete rout. One problem with 2nd edition 40k was exactly this kind of thinking - faction X will be immune to virus, faction Y doesn't care about morale, etc.

That's why you abstract it a little and make it something more akin to suppression or forcing a change in combat approach. Yes, Custodes will never wholesale turn and flee, but under some circumstances they may very well pause, hold back and hunker down. The same can apply to any unit for different reasons. The first thing that's needed when thinking about having a good morale system is to make sure it affects everyone, however you want to rationalise it.

Sure. Which is why battleshock as a thing that makes you less capable of pulling off special maneuvers (performing actions, using strats) works pretty well as a concept. But if we can agree that custodes (and probably marines and probably a few other factions besides) wouldn't turn and flee, then it's probably reasonable to say that turning and fleeing might not be a good fit for a core mechanic in a game populated largely by marines, right?

 catbarf wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
What units would actually rout?
Nids wouldn’t.
Necrons wouldn’t.
Marines wouldn’t.
Custodes wouldn’t.
Knights wouldn’t.
Daemons wouldn’t.

Guard, Tau, Eldar (dying race and all), Dark Eldar, Tyranids outside of Synapse, GSC (probably not the Stealers themselves, but the cultists), Orks, Chaos cultists and renegades, Votann, I'd argue Sisters and AdMech too. Could even make a case for Daemons, since daemonic instability is a thing. Remember, the mechanic doesn't have to mean 'wet themselves and ran for the hills', just 'combat ineffective'.

Either way, we're looking at a 50/50ish split, which is fine. Because the important thing is that the bit that Marines would get to ignore (routing) is secondary to the more immediately relevant and still applicable primary effect (pinning), as opposed to how it was in 3rd-7th where they got to ignore morale entirely. It's a continuum of morale effects rather than a binary y/n to functionally ignoring an entire mechanic.

Some Guard. Not ogryns, for example.
Tau, sure.
Eldar-would they route? Or retreat?
Dark Eldar have clones and thrive on pain.
Orks… that’s laughable. They might run TOWARDS a fight irresponsibly, but not away.
Some cultists, sure. Others are zealous like Sisters.
Votann, sure. Some.
Sisters are zealous in the extreme.
So are GSC, and they also have outright mind controlled ones.
AdMech are pretty similar to Necrons, and Necrons ain’t running. Sure Skitarii don’t regenerate-but the priests don’t care.
Daemonic instability isn’t routing.

That feels like a pretty bad-faith response, given that I explicitly said routing as a mechanic doesn't have to mean literally running away.

I have no trouble imagining the remaining couple of Eldar in a squad would be more concerned with retrieving the spirit-stones of their fallen brethren than throwing themselves into the meat grinder. Ogryns are brave but dumb and the last one alive might want to stay with his critically injured mates rather than fight, or wander off to find an officer. Dark Eldar understand how discretion is the better part of valor and aren't into the whole 'die gloriously for a noble cause' thing. There's definitely fiction where Orks squabble or retreat after Beefcake McProtagonist kills the boss. The difference between Daemons 'running away' or 'fading back into the immaterium, the magic binding them to physical reality eroding' is a line of flavor text.

Many factions in the game could plausibly become combat ineffective from the loss of C&C, the need to care for the wounded, pragmatic recovery of irreplaceable technology, or the sheer disruption to unit cohesion imposed by casualties. Use your imagination here.

 catbarf wrote:
That feels like a pretty bad-faith response, given that I explicitly said routing as a mechanic doesn't have to mean literally running away.

I have no trouble imagining the remaining couple of Eldar in a squad would be more concerned with retrieving the spirit-stones of their fallen brethren than throwing themselves into the meat grinder. Ogryns are brave but dumb and the last one alive might be more concerned with keeping his mates from bleeding out than fighting, or needs to go find an officer to tell him what to do. Dark Eldar understand how discretion is the better part of valor and aren't into the whole 'die gloriously for a noble cause' thing. There's definitely fiction where Orks squabble or retreat after Beefcake McProtagonist kills the boss. The difference between Daemons 'running away' or 'fading back into the immaterium, the magic binding them to physical reality eroding' is a line of flavor text.

Many factions in the game could plausibly become combat ineffective from the loss of C&C, the need to care for the wounded, pragmatic recovery of irreplaceable technology, or the sheer disruption to unit cohesion imposed by casualties. Use your imagination here.

Please elaborate on what sorta mechanics you'd want, then.

Edit: Also, I do apologize if I was too combative. Just in a bit of a mood, and that bled through into the text.
Sorry.

Disruption and loss of cohesion affect everyone, whether it scares them or not. When you are suffering a deluge of fire, it will reduce your visibility, hearing, pull you in multiple directions.

Imo a distinct set of behavioural options for each faction would do a good job of covering this. You only have to remember the one your army uses, but it allows you to reflect voluntary retreats over routes, holding ground at disadvantage, freezing because you can't Compute the next move etc.

It allows different play styles for each faction and building their behaviour into the tactics.

Or, you could make a blank slate morale that all armies are affected identically by, and then provide each a strategem that reflects the unique behaviour. The way armour of contempt isn't active all the time.

 Hellebore wrote:
Disruption and loss of cohesion affect everyone, whether it scares them or not. When you are suffering a deluge of fire, it will reduce your visibility, hearing, pull you in multiple directions.

And this, I feel, is somewhat well represented by 10th edition battleshock in that it prevents you from scoring or doing actions (too scattered to place the beacon, chant the ritual, etc.) and prevents you from using more coordinated maneuvers (stratagems.)

Imo a distinct set of behavioural options for each faction would do a good job of covering this. You only have to remember the one your army uses, but it allows you to reflect voluntary retreats over routes, holding ground at disadvantage, freezing because you can't Compute the next move etc.

It allows different play styles for each faction and building their behaviour into the tactics.

See, I'm open to bespoke behaviors for each faction, but that sounds like a ton of work and an easy way to inject an extra layer of imbalance into the game. It's also potentially just more complicated than it needs to be depending on what you want morale to do for the game. If GW (or someone in the proposed rules section) wanted to go to that effort, I'd be open to it. I just don't see GW wanting to give themselves that much extra work.

Or, you could make a blank slate morale that all armies are affected identically by, and then provide each a strategem that reflects the unique behaviour. The way armour of contempt isn't active all the time.

Depending on how stratagems are handled in future editions, I'm not sure I'd want 1/6th of each detachments stratagems going towards a strat for modifying morale-related behavior. Especially if such strats tended to basically boil down to ignoring the downsides of battleshock. (Which feels like the most likely direction someone would go when designing a morale-related strat that costs CP for a faction like marines.)

'Morale rules are bad because Marines ignore morale rules' is raw apologetics, since Marines only ignore morale rules because GW decided to have Marines ignore morale rules.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
'Morale rules are bad because Marines ignore morale rules' is raw apologetics, since Marines only ignore morale rules because GW decided to have Marines ignore morale rules.

How can someone fairly judge the system when most of the game ignores the system theyre meant to judge? The system might not be poor in isolation, but if it's rarely used it still doesnt serve a purpose in reality and that is still poor design.

I think it's currently subjective whether the rest of the games interactions (or lack of) are considered part of the question. If they are? 3rd-7th was abysmal. If it isn't? Then it merely is bad imo.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Morale doesn't have to equal a complete rout. One problem with 2nd edition 40k was exactly this kind of thinking - faction X will be immune to virus, faction Y doesn't care about morale, etc.

That's why you abstract it a little and make it something more akin to suppression or forcing a change in combat approach. Yes, Custodes will never wholesale turn and flee, but under some circumstances they may very well pause, hold back and hunker down. The same can apply to any unit for different reasons. The first thing that's needed when thinking about having a good morale system is to make sure it affects everyone, however you want to rationalise it.

Sure. Which is why battleshock as a thing that makes you less capable of pulling off special maneuvers (performing actions, using strats) works pretty well as a concept. But if we can agree that custodes (and probably marines and probably a few other factions besides) wouldn't turn and flee, then it's probably reasonable to say that turning and fleeing might not be a good fit for a core mechanic in a game populated largely by marines, right?

Seems reasonable. I'm not advocating for a mechanic that forces units to flee as I think it's mechanically difficult to implement in a game like 40k and doesn't represent the effects of battlefield morale degradation particularly well.

Battleshock is a decent attempt at a morale system, but I feel it doesn't go nearly far enough. BS should turn off more than just OC and strats, IMO. I'd prefer to see it remove all detachment, army and datasheet rules from a unit, essentially leaving them as their stat line. That better represents a loss of combat cohesion and becomes an actual disadvantage, whereas many times BS effectively does nothing. If we also had any Battleshocked unit having to roll to recover even if above half strength that would improve things further. Finally, I'd probably look at reducing Ld across the board. Setting SM Ld at 6+ as a baseline has also led to far too many units passing BS tests too easily.

 catbarf wrote:
Because the important thing is that the bit that Marines would get to ignore (routing) is secondary to the more immediately relevant and still applicable primary effect (pinning), as opposed to how it was in 3rd-7th where they got to ignore morale entirely.

Marines in 3-7 didn't ignore morale.

Pinning affected them normally.
Tank shock affected them normally.
Morale causing weapons (nightmare shroud, terrorfex, etc) worked normally.
Morale tests from casualties were taken as normal.
Marines would fall back from both shooting and close combat, and could be run off the board if they were too close to the edge.
Marines that fell back could be wiped out due to the 'trapped' rule
Leadership penalties worked as normal.
Like any other unit Marines could not regroup while an enemy unit was nearby (until it was removed for all factions in 6e)

ATSKNF only did the following:
-marines that ran and were chased down suffered fearless casualties rather than being wiped out.
-automatically passed regrouping tests (with other edition specific benefits like ignoring minimum squad size for regrouping)
-ignored the fear rule (6e onwards).

Voted 10th because it’s the least worst. Would like to see a move to heresy style effects from weapons next edition though.

A.T. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Because the important thing is that the bit that Marines would get to ignore (routing) is secondary to the more immediately relevant and still applicable primary effect (pinning), as opposed to how it was in 3rd-7th where they got to ignore morale entirely.

Marines in 3-7 didn't ignore morale.

Pinning affected them normally.
Tank shock affected them normally.
Morale causing weapons (nightmare shroud, terrorfex, etc) worked normally.
Morale tests from casualties were taken as normal.
Marines would fall back from both shooting and close combat, and could be run off the board if they were too close to the edge.
Marines that fell back could be wiped out due to the 'trapped' rule
Leadership penalties worked as normal.
Like any other unit Marines could not regroup while an enemy unit was nearby (until it was removed for all factions in 6e)

ATSKNF only did the following:
-marines that ran and were chased down suffered fearless casualties rather than being wiped out.
-automatically passed regrouping tests (with other edition specific benefits like ignoring minimum squad size for regrouping)
-ignored the fear rule (6e onwards).

Issue was, base Ld8 base, usually Ld9 because Vet Sarge, and higher if you stick a character in them. They basically had Dwarf like resistance to psychology. Now, not out of character for them as a force. But it did mean you couldn’t factor psychology type things into your battle plan against them. And, as Marines are so prevalent? Nobody really leaned into psychology tricks as a result.

That I feel was the main failing. Marines can have higher than average leadership as befits them. But when average is Ld7? Better than average rapidly moves you to “near to immune”. Now. If your average Ld is 5 or 6? You’ve more room for more reliable troops to not be Completely Reliable. Which matters when it’s a 2D6 roll and chance swings wildly between rolling under 8 and rolling under 9.