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niv-mizzet wrote:
Currently, if a unit of astartes models and a unit of 2 month old helpless babies (all stats .1) are out in the open, and each unit is hit by one of the following: battle cannon, ion accelerator, krak missile, lascannon, meltagun/fusion blaster, plasma, monstrous creature melee attacks, and many many more, there is no statistical difference between the marines and the pile of soon-to-be-dead babies. Assuming the same dice rolls, both units will go down at the same speed.

Exactly. This is how it should be, weapons like that are going to kill you no matter how tough you are. The only problem with the situation is that there's still a 1/6 chance of surviving a krak missile to the face no matter how low your toughness is. The solution is to remove the "a 1 always fails" rule and allow the to-wound chart to include a 1+. STR 7 vs. T4 = auto-wound.

Also, you're missing the fact that marines DO survive better in general, just against the things that a marine can plausibly survive. Against bolters/lasguns/etc T4 vs. T3 (or T1 for the babies) makes a huge difference.

 Peregrine wrote:

niv-mizzet wrote:
Currently, if a unit of astartes models and a unit of 2 month old helpless babies (all stats .1) are out in the open, and each unit is hit by one of the following: battle cannon, ion accelerator, krak missile, lascannon, meltagun/fusion blaster, plasma, monstrous creature melee attacks, and many many more, there is no statistical difference between the marines and the pile of soon-to-be-dead babies. Assuming the same dice rolls, both units will go down at the same speed.

Exactly. This is how it should be, weapons like that are going to kill you no matter how tough you are. The only problem with the situation is that there's still a 1/6 chance of surviving a krak missile to the face no matter how low your toughness is. The solution is to remove the "a 1 always fails" rule and allow the to-wound chart to include a 1+. STR 7 vs. T4 = auto-wound.

Also, you're missing the fact that marines DO survive better in general, just against the things that a marine can plausibly survive. Against bolters/lasguns/etc T4 vs. T3 (or T1 for the babies) makes a huge difference.

That only works if the number of S6+ weapons decreases though. There's enough of it out there that Marines end up paying for survivability that won't ever get used. If the suggested rule were to be added to an FAQ, it could be removed again when the absurd number of S6+ multishot weapons have gone down (which isn't ever happening, but still).

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Battlecannons are also sorta OP compared to a Predator autocannon. Both are supposed to be the turret gun of a main battle tank. Those statlines, I mean lolwut?

You've got it backwards. The problem isn't the battlecannon (which isn't an amazing weapon), it's the fact that the Predator is stuck with a broken gun. It's a relic of an ancient edition when autocannons were a powerful weapon, and for some bizarre reason once GW has said "the Predator has an autocannon" that is indisputable fluff that can never be changed. It's stupid and the poor Predator needs an upgrade to be more than just a sad joke that you only take because it's so cheap.


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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
There's enough of it out there that Marines end up paying for survivability that won't ever get used.

Remember the 3+ armor save? That thing that makes a huge difference when you're getting shot at with an AP 4 autocannon/scatter laser/etc? And remember all those basic infantry guns every army has? The fact that marines die to plasma doesn't mean that their survivability never matters.

 Peregrine wrote:


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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
There's enough of it out there that Marines end up paying for survivability that won't ever get used.

Remember the 3+ armor save? That thing that makes a huge difference when you're getting shot at with an AP 4 autocannon/scatter laser/etc? And remember all those basic infantry guns every army has? The fact that marines die to plasma doesn't mean that their survivability never matters.

When being shot by an S7 weapon, a Marine has his T4 advantage over a Guardsman completely nullified. When S6+ weapons become the most common, taken in vast amounts, paying for T4 over T3 becomes less and less useful.

Armour saves have their own issues in that not paying for an Armour Save and just grabbing cover is free. When this coincides with the devaluation of T4, Marines become rather severely overcosted.

The problem isn't the marines, its the vast quantity of heavy weapons which in all honesty, *should* blow a marines guts out his ass with one shot, plus the 'all or nothing' approach of the AP system.

In 'real life' you wouldn't send this sort of warrior out against these sorts of weapons, because here his superhuman durability and power counts for very little in the face of guns that can level buildings. Same deal goes for Terminators, whose ancient and nearly impenetrable armour suits are laughable in an open battle.

Crunch-wise, I'd say the biggest issue is that AP system and the prevalence of high strength, long range pie plates that have nasty AP as well. If it was more like Fantasy, they'd still be getting a save most of the time, albiet a reduced one.

As for this rule, I'd prefer they had Feel No Pain, just because we don't need *more* rules that have such a similar effect.

Edit; bleh, Peregrine beat me to it. Not often I agree with the guy on fluff but this is one of those cases.

The solution is to remove the "a 1 always fails" rule and allow the to-wound chart to include a 1+. STR 7 vs. T4 = auto-wound.

Agree wholeheartedly. That ones always fail rule just adds more rolling to a slow and clunky game that doesn't need it.

Between this, converting cover to a BS modifier, making AP or strength degrade armour rather than just bypass it entirely, and then cutting back a bit on the amount of uber pieplate weapons, I reckon that would fix the issue

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
When S6+ weapons become the most common, taken in vast amounts, paying for T4 over T3 becomes less and less useful.

So what exactly are these armies that don't take any basic infantry?

Armour saves have their own issues in that not paying for an Armour Save and just grabbing cover is free.

And cover is usually a 5+, not a 3+. Unless of course you GTG, in which case the cover save is no longer free. Not that it's free anyway, since being forced to use cover as your only defense limits your movement options, while MEQs can go wherever they want as long as there aren't a lot of AP 2/3 weapons to worry about.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
There's enough of it out there that Marines end up paying for survivability that won't ever get used.

Remember the 3+ armor save? That thing that makes a huge difference when you're getting shot at with an AP 4 autocannon/scatter laser/etc? And remember all those basic infantry guns every army has? The fact that marines die to plasma doesn't mean that their survivability never matters.

When being shot by an S7 weapon, a Marine has his T4 advantage over a Guardsman completely nullified. When S6+ weapons become the most common, taken in vast amounts, paying for T4 over T3 becomes less and less useful.

yes, but a Carnifex faces the same issues against a Lascannon as well, toughness stats aren't meant to apply to everything, just a range of things. T4 over T3 is still huge in melee combat, and against anything with a Rapid Fire and most Assault weapon types, T4 still has a notable advantge. S6/7/8+ weapon spam isn't anything new. Plasma guns and starcannons were order of the day in 3E and 4E, autocannons and scatterlasers have likewise usually always been pretty popular. There's not a whole lot new here.

Armour saves have their own issues in that not paying for an Armour Save and just grabbing cover is free.

such cover however does not match the casualty-reduction of a 3+ armor save in most cases, and means such units must stay in cover while the marines can afford to move in the open, granting a significant mobility advantage.

niv-mizzet wrote:
Works for me! Yeah we have some people like that too. As seen above, where mutilators were involved in the chaos vs. BA game from this morning.

Ah, true. Mutilators are awful in every way.

I would be fine with a 6+ FNP, but I'd also be fine without it. Agreeing with the above that hits from huge weapons don't really discriminate between enhanced soldiers and two month old babies. Also with the auto-wounding thing, but then... I'd like to once again point out that Strength D is survivable. Not that the tabletop strives to be terribly realistic, but, if a colossal machine aimed a mountain-sized weapon at me, I'd say that 16% to survive a direct hit from aforementioned mountain-sized weapon is pretty damn good odds. It's very strange scaling, for I'd say that my odds against surviving being shot by an extremely advanced standard infantry weapon from the 41st millenium (50%) are incredible, too. Even two-month-old babies have, at the very least, a 16% chance to outright survive being shot. Assuming that two-month-old babies are S1 T1, though, I would have approximately a 84% chance of surviving being punched by one, which is really bad odds.

40k is weird.

niv-mizzet wrote:
I seem to have a history with not agreeing with Martel on much, even when I'd see him post while lurking, and not post myself.

On this, I agree with him heavily.

Lascannons can hit a ratling with no cover and not kill him. All I'm asking is: shouldn't a marine have a little bit better of a chance than the ratling? Even with this, the majority of marines hit by lascannons will still die. It wouldn't make them as resilient as say...necron foot soldiers, who boast an amazing 33% or even 50% (orb) survival rate against ap2 instadeath weapons, AFTER taking their 17% chance of just not getting wounded that every infantry gets.

Remember, I'm talking about rolling a TWO to wound failing. I'm not talking about someone rolling a 5 or 6 to wound, representing a beautiful headshot or removing everything from the torso up from existence. No, talkin' about a two here, as in, the next roll above "miserable auto-fail." So that would be...a near-miss that will still fry the troop from ridiculous heat? An arm hit? I don't see why it's so outlandish that one of the most expensive basic troops in the game could have a rule that says they survive a few more of those than the cheap throwaway troops.

And as martel said, getting to use atsknf implies that we survived the shooting. That's implying quite a bit.

I may want to seriously try playtesting "the nekkid marines" at some point, and I'll laugh when it actually performs well. How much do you think a marine statline without the power armor should cost? 7 or 8? Probably still above an ork boy, but not much.

The only problem I have with this argument is that this can easily be brought up for orks, nids, daemons (yeah sure 2+ invuln but it gets somewhat diminished when SM would basically get a 2/3 chance of just shrugging off the shot as well. And they would also get cover if they hid behind it), and Necrons (as well as a few more possibilities). Although, if we do this where 2 is.... does rolling a 6 lead to explosions? Cause then I'm all in

I agree, StarTrotter. As a few others have said, giving Marines more survivability just highlights similar issues present in several other units (most notably Tyranid Warriors). I think that the reason why Marines have such a hard time isn't because of their cost or anything else; they're just too generalised to be effective at any one thing. That said, I haven't really noticed a problem with Marines being too tough.

Still, 6+ FNP would be fine. That's actually how I thought invulnerable saves worked (and my opponent wasn't sure, so went with it - we were both really new to the game), so I gave my Chaos Marines the Mark of Tzeentch (I only did this for one game before I realised my mistake!). It really didn't do much, although I believe it did save a lone Marine (with a melta) from Ratling Rending and a direct hit from a Battle Cannon. He didn't reach the Russ he was running for, sadly, but it was cool.

Finally, I'd like to point out that not all Marines get ATSKNF.

Don't worry, ATSKNF doesn't really help anymore.

Lies and hearsay. ATSKNF is very important when playing against anyone except Tau.

Seriously ATSKNF isn't really bad. What's that? You can still go to ground, retreat out of close combat, not get swept, and you laugh at terrify? Oh and you automatically regroup no matter what, get a free 3" movement and can shoot like normal? NICE!

Well, it's got its own thread since it doesn't necessarily apply to just Marines, but here's another proffered solution;

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/582569.page

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Lies and hearsay. ATSKNF is very important when playing against anyone except Tau.

Nope. My marines are dying, not getting swept or suffering fear effects.


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 StarTrotter wrote:
Seriously ATSKNF isn't really bad. What's that? You can still go to ground, retreat out of close combat, not get swept, and you laugh at terrify? Oh and you automatically regroup no matter what, get a free 3" movement and can shoot like normal? NICE!

Doesn't help when you're dead.

Then you're doing something wrong.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Then you're doing something wrong.

Not all. I've voluntarily played without ATSKNF in effect and the difference was negligible. It's not the advantage it was in 3rd or 4th ed. Xeno shooting is too lethal for it to be of true importance. In fact, against superior assault lists, I WANT my guys to die to sweeping so I can shoot more. 6th ed is so shooty that ATSKNF is a nerf about half as often as it is a buff!

While I think its a novel idea to try and effect a certain balance it treats a symptom, and not the disease. That being the fact that there really is no points costing formula for balance. Points costs seems to be the biggest issue here, as it should be that x points worth of space marines is just as useful and z points worth of cultists both costing the same. Currently though the battles in this game are not between troops of two armies with other units supporting. It is support units fighting battles with troops scoring. This tilts the enitre value of troops more to those that survive better.

It was said earlier in this thread that if a lascannon is spending the game shooting at marines it will never "pay for its points". While I will agree that using a lascannon on marines might not be the most efficient use of the weapon, but unless I am missing something in the general costing of lascannons it would most definately kill more points of marines then it cost to add it to the army. This makes me ask is the problem that marines are not survivable enough or have high str low ap weapons simply become too prevelant?

That's another way to look at it, but C:Eldar and C:Tau are published and legal. So we are stuck with a huge amount of high STR shots in the game.

Here's a situation.

There's an elephant and a mouse standing in the openfield. And they're hit with a battlecannon shell. Who has better chances to survive?

Making marines more resilient to high str weapons is simply illogical. Correct pricing for such weapons and you've fixed the problem. If you want to add this unique durability thing - you should increase the pointcost of marines.

 koooaei wrote:
Here's a situation.

There's an elephant and a mouse standing in the openfield. And they're hit with a battlecannon shell. Who has better chances to survive?

Making marines more resilient to high str weapons is simply illogical. Correct pricing for such weapons and you've fixed the problem. If you want to add this unique durability thing - you should increase the pointcost of marines.

Fair enough. That is a non-solution to the current meta problem, then. Correct pricing for S6+ would have been nice, but GW didn't do that.

 koooaei wrote:
Here's a situation.

There's an elephant and a mouse standing in the openfield. And they're hit with a battlecannon shell. Who has better chances to survive?

Making marines more resilient to high str weapons is simply illogical. Correct pricing for such weapons and you've fixed the problem. If you want to add this unique durability thing - you should increase the pointcost of marines.

Edge of the blast template? I'd say the elephant, but that he still should die most of the time, as opposed to the mouse, who should die even more often, as long as cover saves aren't involved.

BUT ONCE AGAIN, I have to point out, that the REALISM is NOT RELEVANT. THE GAME BALANCE IS. If we followed realism, the elephant AND the mouse would have a hell of a lot worse chances than 17%. See above for where someone extrapolated the babies example and concluded that a baby could kill them 17% of the time. Yes 40k rules sometimes don't make sense. It's not real.

Back on topic: I have a new data point. A 2k game of White Scars vs. more Chaos Space Marines.

This time, we tracked the numbers: In turn 1, the chaos ignored 1 wound that would've bypassed armor, and the white scars had 2 wounds uncounted due to rolling a 2 to wound. One would've allowed armor, and one would've allowed my 3+ jink after boosting.

In turn 2, another armor-ignoring wound failed against the chaos, while my scars got to discount 3 wounds that would've allowed armor saves.

In turn 3, 4 and 5, the chaos got to discount 4 more armor-ignoring wounds, while the scars got to ignore 1 armor-ignoring wound.

So, over the course of a 5 turn 2000 point battle, we both discounted exactly SIX otherwise-wounds each. 4 on me would've allowed 3+ armor, and 1 a 3+ cover. His wounds were all thunderhammer hits or melta shots in the clear.

I'm really REALLY not seeing op-ness there. (As a side note, It was purge the alien and relic combination, where I won 9-6 while he had some marines 1 turn from the relic, so it was quite a close game.)

niv-mizzet wrote:
Edge of the blast template? I'd say the elephant, but that he still should die most of the time, as opposed to the mouse, who should die even more often, as long as cover saves aren't involved.

The correct answer is "both of them die 100% of the time".

BUT ONCE AGAIN, I have to point out, that the REALISM is NOT RELEVANT. THE GAME BALANCE IS.

First of all, yes, realism is relevant because the reason you play the game is that it represents a "real" battle in the 40k universe. If the rules are unrealistic and don't accurately (within a reasonable level of abstraction) represent what's happening on the "real" battlefield then the game isn't fun. Second, balance is relevant, but there isn't really any balance issue here. The only problem is that certain marine fanboys and people who don't understand statistics expect a MEQ/TEQ stat line to be near-invulnerable protection, and complain when it isn't.


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 Frozen Ocean wrote:
40k is weird.

Yep. The real problem here is GW's obsession with rolling dice. GW loves the idea of rolling pointless dice, even when the outcome very strongly favors one side the mere fact that dice are being rolled makes the game "exciting" and lets you imagine all the awesome things that could possibly happen. So instead of just having an automatic wound from a STR 10 weapon against a T2 grot you have to roll a 2+ and give the defending player that brief moment of hope that some of their models will survive. Or you'll see all kinds of "if a double 1 is rolled on 2D6 one randomly chosen model suffers a wound with normal saves allowed" rules, where it's pretty much irrelevant but it could still happen because we're rolling dice!!!!!!!.

(Needless to say this is stupid game design.)

Maybe GW rules writers are all also craps addicts.

 Peregrine wrote:
The only problem is that certain marine fanboys and people who don't understand statistics expect a MEQ/TEQ stat line to be near-invulnerable protection, and complain when it isn't.

Nice ad hominem.

'No, you don't need them to be buffed. You're wrong because you're fanboys.'

If GW won't nerf Tau/Eldar firepower, then buffing the resilience of those who suffer most from it seems nice. And Marines, who pay a significant amount of points for T4 3+ which is rendered irrelevant when the Ion Accelerators start raining, are some of those who get serious problems.

Not the only ones, mind you. Buffing Marines like that won't solve the problem itself. SoB also have problems, as do others.

But it would not be a negative change overall, and it would certainly do something to help.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
'No, you don't need them to be buffed. You're wrong because you're fanboys.'

Sorry, but that's exactly what it is. Marines not being as powerful as you think they should be fluff-wise isn't a balance problem. And when "make marines tougher" proposals are also accompanied by an increase in point cost to account for their new durability it should be pretty clear that this isn't about fixing a balance problem.

If GW won't nerf Tau/Eldar firepower, then buffing the resilience of those who suffer most from it seems nice.

You're assuming that a problem exists to be fixed. It doesn't. Some MEQ units might be slightly too expensive, but this doesn't mean that all marines need to be tougher.

And Marines, who pay a significant amount of points for T4 3+ which is rendered irrelevant when the Ion Accelerators start raining, are some of those who get serious problems.

This isn't a problem. You're just assuming that the MEQ stat line should give you awesome protection against even the heaviest weapons, instead of just being good defense against basic weapons like bolters/lasguns/etc. You pay those points so that your opponent has to use heavy weapons to kill your basic troops effectively.

Heavy weapons are all the Eldar pack nowadays. There are no "light" weapons in the lists I face.

As has been stated, the purpose of this proposition is that Marines aren't good enough for their points. I don't know how it devolved into a realism discussion, but we should remember the crunch part.

That said, things like Ion Accelerators should still invalidate Marines, as it is effectively a large tank weapon.

EDIT:

Martel732 wrote:
Heavy weapons are all the Eldar pack nowadays. There are no "light" weapons in the lists I face.

That is, unfortunately, not a failing on the Marines' part. Honestly the only real answer to that is to bring fewer Marines.

Lots of strawmen here. Let's see.

 Peregrine wrote:
Sorry, but that's exactly what it is. Marines not being as powerful as you think they should be fluff-wise isn't a balance problem. And when "make marines tougher" proposals are also accompanied by an increase in point cost to account for their new durability it should be pretty clear that this isn't about fixing a balance problem.

Increasing points costs do not have to be 100% proportional to the resilience increase, you know. There are other ways to adjust price. And what do you mean 'as powerful as I think they should be'? I never said what I thought they should be. I suggested improving resilience- not only Marine resilience, mind you, but this thread is about Marine resilience and they certainly need fixes- but I didn't specifically say to do 'X'.

Oh, and you admitting you're using ad hominem does not excuse it.

You're assuming that a problem exists to be fixed. It doesn't. Some MEQ units might be slightly too expensive, but this doesn't mean that all marines need to be tougher.

Yeah, when I see Tau or Eldar firepower tabling army after army effortlessly I start to think there might be a problem that needs to be fixed, actually.

Some units might be slightly too expensive? Sure, if ASMs were buffed to only cost 16 ppm, would you take them? If Vanguard vets got an incredible -3 ppm drop, would you take them?

Yeah, no. We need something else than slight points drops to solve this problem.

This isn't a problem. You're just assuming that the MEQ stat line should give you awesome protection against even the heaviest weapons, instead of just being good defense against basic weapons like bolters/lasguns/etc. You pay those points so that your opponent has to use heavy weapons to kill your basic troops effectively.

Big, nasty strawman. I never said that the MEQ statline should give 'awesome protection against even the heaviest weapons'. That is just your own imagination running rampant, and I'd prefer if you can get it under control as I'm not interested in debating your fantasies. I said that certain races and units have too much firepower and, if this won't be changed, then improving the resilience of certain other units and races might help counteract the problem. Besides, when heavy weapons are as available as they are, being 'forced' to use them is hardly a problem for the firer.