Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Could really use some feedback from fellow Tau players out there. Today, I played my first test game of 8th ed.

...very mixed feelings. I like the new rules system, and I like stuff like free sergeants and such- that's cool. But I hate the new convoluted points system- why on earth do I pay 5 pts for a pathfinder, and an additional 3 for a markerlight? That's really annoying and convoluted. Why not include that in the base cost to begin with?

Anyway, on to the issue at hand: markerlights. For those who missed it, the new bonuses are:
1: Reroll to hit rolls of 1.
2: Fire seeker missiles at normal ballistic skill.
3: Fire heavy weapons that moved without penalty.
4: Ignore cover bonuses.
5: +1 to hit.

Pros:
-all units benefit from markerlights now, meaning the bonuses applies to everyone who shoots at the target.
-the new heavy weapons rule, with a -1 to hit if you moved rather than snapshots, in addition to markerlight #3, mean your pathfinders can move and still fire their stuff decently.
-Points cost is down, to 8 pts per pathfinder.

Cons:
The new benefits seem like pure ass compared to the old system. Let's run through them real quick:
Reroll 1s. A miniscule bonus for your average 3+/4+ shots, which is the ballistic skill of the vast majority of your units.
2: Seeker missiles being fired at normal? When that used to be a given? Seeker missiles, that are a limited resource, being one-use only? Really?
3: Useful, but situational. Usually, you don't want heavy weapons to move anyhow.
4: Also useful, but given that cover only seems to confer +1 (rather than the 5+/4+ saves you saw in 7th), this seems to also be limited in utility.
5: +1 to hit. FIVE MARKERLIGHTS, FIVE WHOLE MARKERS, just to get +1? Are you *kidding* me?

Compared to the nice and easy tokens in 7th, smoothly boosting your ballistic skill or ignoring cover, this feels dreadful. That's my opinion anyhow. I'm new to 8th and there may well be things I've missed. Could anyone tell me why I'm wrong? Because I'd really love to be wrong about this.

Over saturating is kinda worthless now except for situations that REALLY need it like a oh gak unit right in spitting distance.

otherwise i feel like a unit of markerlights should be throwing them around on multiple units and just going for that hot reroll 1s which is already a HQ level bonus to your whole army.

if you have a lot of heavy weapons moving around id be trying to net that 3+ and not worry too much about any higher.

it could be worth saturating hard on one unit for first blood if you are going first. with the way drones are you might be giving that way first turn.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

5: +1 to hit. FIVE MARKERLIGHTS, FIVE WHOLE MARKERS, just to get +1? Are you *kidding* me?

Perspective. Tau nearly double their number of shots. Do you really need more than 3s to hit rerolling 1s? Do you think it's asking a little much to be able to easily apply those effects to multiple enemy units?

Perspective. Tau nearly double their number of shots. Do you really need more than 3s to hit rerolling 1s? Do you think it's asking a little much to be able to easily apply those effects to multiple enemy units?

Fair point, but tons of 4+ hits is just... really unreliable. This is even worse for bigger guns with fewer shots, and those matter the most.

+1 to hit is massive if you're fielding infantry with the pulse rifle's stats, which you really, really should in this edition.

If you can land 5 markerlight hits you don't just get a +1 to hit, you also get to ignore cover bonuses. Also, while yes bonus #3 doesn't look like much, it's of huge benefit to all T'au vehicles, and T'au flyers (who do NOT get to ignore moving and firing heavy weapons).

If you're fielding Razersharks, you're going to be breaking even on the Quad Ion Cannon because of the -1 for moving and shooting heavy weapons penalty combined with the +1 to hit non-flying targets with the QIC. However, if you target something with 3+ markerlight hits, you're suddenly at +2 to hit on a 4+, which is not bad at all.

That #3 will also be important in the early game if you're fielding broadsides as it will allow them to get into cover AND shoot without any penalties. That can mean the difference between a 2nd turn assault out of a rhino, and a dead rhino on turn 1 for your opponent.

Marker Lights are incredibly niche, as well as being incredibly decisive. I'm in love with trying to figure out the T'au this addition. What's becoming clear, is there are no easy answers. Whats can wreck can be wrecked, if a carefully planned synchronicity pays off, there is nobody better. ML are what you make them. Go heavy, but be ready to have a carefully planned strategy.

The other nuance is that the effects are cumulative. If you have 5 MLs on a target then all 5 effects apply to every unit shooting at it.

Edit - oops Arand already mentioned that.

Hollow wrote:Marker Lights are incredibly niche, as well as being incredibly decisive. I'm in love with trying to figure out the T'au this addition. What's becoming clear, is there are no easy answers. Whats can wreck can be wrecked, if a carefully planned synchronicity pays off, there is nobody better. ML are what you make them. Go heavy, but be ready to have a carefully planned strategy.

I'm thinking about giving my brother my old necron army (his iron warriors got accidentally donated to goodwill when my parents moved out of their house) because he's really digging the new necron stuff from 7th and 8th edition, and was looking at T'au for myself (I make more than he does, so I can more easily put together a new army).

I'm really liking the idea of an infantry-heavy focus-fire army. Like 60-100 infantry + 2-5 vehicles (can't decide between hammerheads and broadsides. Need to re-read the targeting rules a bit and do some more mathhammer on survivability). In this kind of army, markerlights would be core as it would function based on concentrated small-arms fire.

KiloFiX wrote:The other nuance is that the effects are cumulative. If you have 5 MLs on a target then all 5 effects apply to every unit shooting at it.

Edit - oops Arand already mentioned that.

Something I didn't point out is that a single markerlight hit makes you almost immune to ion-self-damage. I've been trying to figure out why the ion guns all work the way that they do, and haven't been able to put my finger on it.

I just noticed it, and overcharged ion weapons are all kinds of scary.

Clean your lens; you seem to have a bunch of previous editions on it.

Let's run through all of your gripes in order:
"Convoluted" points cost: markerlights come on many more units than just pathfinders. 8ppm for a pathy with the light is still cheaper.

Reroll 1s negates one of the failing numbers at the same frequency as hitting to begin with. Depending on BS or other buffs this takes a 50/50 to hit into a nearly 59% chance to hit(not as good as a +1, but 1/3 of misses still hit half the time); and physical dice work this out better than probability.

Seeker missiles: well, first they couldn't be fired at all without ml support, then they could but hit harder. Now they have a slight inbetween; also destroyer missiles are effected. Also as a limited resource you want them hitting, not flying off willy-nilly. They are more important for rerolls, firing at bs, and bonuses to hit than ANYTHING else.

Heavy move and fire without penalty: this has been covered by previous posters but I will reiterate the big one; no relentless on vehicle as stock.

Ignores cover: you didn't really complain but, there are quite a few abilities(new special rules) that effectively double cover bonuses. Ignoring all cover, and with a few ap weapons makes this not bad at all.

#5: ignores cover, reroll 1s, and +1 to hit firing seekers at bs, ignoring the heavy penalty. Yeah, useless and not worth 5 ml hits. Other weapons like the heavy railgun solid shot firing on the move at full bs ignoring cover, rerolling 1s gives you a nearly cannot miss very likely 3 damage to an enemy vehicle. That is, from Each heavy railgun.

Finally there is another 8th aspect you may not be looking at: each markerlight can fire at a separate target: do for 96 points and a fast attack slot you can Reroll 1s against an average of 6 targets if the pathys don't move.

Problem with 2 ML
Most sources of Seeker Missiles have mediocre to poor accuracy, 1 Mortal Wound is a mediocre effect even when successful

Problem with 3 ML
You need to move first, then fire Markerlights.
Meaning, if you don't reach your 3 Markerlight Goal on your target. You just screwed yourself.
Also, the vast majority of our guns are Assault. Not heavy.

Daedalus81 wrote:
Perspective. Tau nearly double their number of shots.

No they didn't, most of Tau shooting was not affected by the general Twin Link bonus that happened.

 Talamare wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:
Perspective. Tau nearly double their number of shots.

No they didn't, most of Tau shooting was not affected by the general Twin Link bonus that happened.

In many cases they do get to mount two of something instead of getting them "twin-linked".

Honestly, "twin-linking" seems to be very, very inconsistent across the armies. In some they get "twin X" weapon table entries that just double the number of shots, and in others they simply went from "twin-linked X" to "2 X-gun".

OTOH, something that hitting with 5 markerlights DOES do is nearly double the hits you'll get, which is extremely powerful.

You'll re-roll all 1's.
You'll ignore cover.
You'll get a +1 to hit if you advanced and are shooting an assault weapon, or moved and are shooting a heavy weapon.
You'll get a blanket +1 to hit.

That 2nd hit is by far the least valuable, but all the rest are important. Especially if you land all 5. Then it's just nuts.
Markerlights are extremely powerful.

Actually also even though its probably not going to come up too often,

and i didnt read anything to say otherwise, you could shoot the markerlight AND carbine its attached to at different targets.

also i still dont know if this is correct but since every shot is technically one at a time does a previously hit markerlight effect the next ones and so on.

first one hits,

next one gets to reroll 1s. (thats about as far as it matters)

but this matters for the carbines that come next.

 Desubot wrote:
Actually also even though its probably not going to come up too often,

and i didnt read anything to say otherwise, you could shoot the markerlight AND carbine its attached to at different targets.

also i still dont know if this is correct but since every shot is technically one at a time does a previously hit markerlight effect the next ones and so on.

first one hits,

next one gets to reroll 1s. (thats about as far as it matters)

but this matters for the carbines that come next.

You cannot, pg48

 Kommissar Kel wrote:

Seeker missiles: well, first they couldn't be fired at all without ml support, then they could but hit harder.

Now now, who's with too many edition on one's mind?
In 6th and 7th Seekers could be fired as any other weapon. With 1 ML spent PER missile, each one could fire at BS5, ignoring cover and LoS. Costed 8p each.
Now they only fire at BS6+ unless you have 2 MLs on the target, do only 1MW each and are still one-use?
Oh, did I forget to mean that Sky Rays - the prime deliverer of Seeker missiles and our best AA platform - lost Velocity Tracker?

Seeker missiles are pretty bad now.

 Desubot wrote:

and i didnt read anything to say otherwise, you could shoot the markerlight AND carbine its attached to at different targets.

Only vehicles can fire markerlights AND their other weapons. Each pathfinder must choose between a markerlight, a pulse carbine or a photon grenade to fire/throw.

 Talamare wrote:

No they didn't, most of Tau shooting was not affected by the general Twin Link bonus that happened.

Yeah, mostly Broadsides, XV9 and SMS. The rest weren't twin-linked or it doesn't matter now (Crisis)

The marker light system is good if you are fighting Necrons and need to focus fire.

Kroot can use the markerlights now.

Otherwise the bonus's are fairly lackluster given that in order to get 5markerlight hits you need at least 10 markerlights in your army at BS 4+.
Factor in variance and actually need 15 markerlights to get 5 hits.

So basically you markerdrone spam. At least the drones serve secondary purpose as drone protectors.

So the issue isn't so much of the fact that marker lights got worst, it's that the sources of marker lights got worst and rules have changed. So before you could easily take a commander with a group of marker drones and you had an cheap and easy source of bs5 marker lights. Path finders were not use. You were normally looking for at least 4 hits, 2 to get ignore cover and 2 to get +2 bs. Now you are looking to get 5 hits which really wouldn't be much of a problem in the old system because you were hitting with bs5 drones.

Now that the bs for most marker lights is bs 4+ it is much harder to get your hits. If there was an easy source of bs 5+ marker lights you would see them a lot more.

The other issue is cover means so much less in this eddition. Cover is only +1 to your save and your AP can already negate it. so even if you could get easy marker lights they aren't as important.

But something I have been playing with is a tidewall drone port with a fireblade cadre and 10 firewarriors. You can have cadre take control of the drones, giving them bs 2+ and you can shoot with the cadre first giving your drones reroll 1's making it much easier to land all five marker light hits. I am taking the cadre and firewarriors anyway and the drone port is comparable to a devilfish your firewarriors actual put out more damage than the devilfish so really you only lose the 12" move.

I would agree with the OP, marker lights are a lot worse.

I would start by saying that in previous editions maker lights were the primary, well only, means to compensate for our bad ballistic skill as compared to other more elite armies, this need has only become more critical as all of our suits have become more expensive but for the most part the number of shots they make hasn't changed and new maker lights don't really help.

1, reroll ones sounds nice but it is only increasing accuracy by a very small margin. I,E, you fire 12 shots now 7 hit as opposed to 6, not great. On top of that this is a bonus easily obtained by taking an ethereal or if you want multitrakers are a 2 point upgrade and always work and can't be killed independently of the unit using them.

2, Seeker/destroyer missiles hit on normal ballistics skill, OK? Seeker missiles are basically garbage now and nobody is going to take them, seriously 6 points for 1 mortal wound a game, maybe? Yeah I will pass. For destroyer missiles I guess its fine IF you brought a storm surge but only because you can't take those missiles off and save 40 points.

3, no penalty for moving and shooting heavy weapons. This will almost never come up because, if you are a not a vehicle and have heavy weapons and will need to move, take a target lock, its five points and WAY more reliable then marker lights. If you are a vehicle then you are either garbage (sky ray, hammerhead, flyers) or have assault weapons anyway (devil fish, piranhas). The only unit that doesn't fit in the above is pathfinders, but as maker lights suck you should give them special weapons or not take them. I also there is the point other people brought up about not knowing if you'll get it until after your heavies moved.

4, ignores cover. Cover in 8th is useless and so is the ability to ignore it, besides an ATS is 8 points and effectively does the same thing except when not shooting in to cover your AP is just better then it was.

5, +1 to hit, this would be helpful if it were lower on the list, so we could use it to compensate for our bad BS, but being so far down means you will need more then 100 points put into maker lights per unit you want +1 against to get it semi-reliably, and all of our marker light platforms are either way too expensive or way too fragile, so they won't last past turn one, or you just won't have enough to get to this point.

TL;DR All the benefits of make lights are either; replicated by other units/war gear easier, are just not all that helpful, or are too hard to get to be useful. And you won't get them after the first turn since all our maker light platforms are bad at being maker light platforms(sky ray) or extremely fragile (everything else).

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
Clean your lens; you seem to have a bunch of previous editions on it.

Let's run through all of your gripes in order:
"Convoluted" points cost: markerlights come on many more units than just pathfinders. 8ppm for a pathy with the light is still cheaper.

Reroll 1s negates one of the failing numbers at the same frequency as hitting to begin with. Depending on BS or other buffs this takes a 50/50 to hit into a nearly 59% chance to hit(not as good as a +1, but 1/3 of misses still hit half the time); and physical dice work this out better than probability.

Seeker missiles: well, first they couldn't be fired at all without ml support, then they could but hit harder. Now they have a slight inbetween; also destroyer missiles are effected. Also as a limited resource you want them hitting, not flying off willy-nilly. They are more important for rerolls, firing at bs, and bonuses to hit than ANYTHING else.

Heavy move and fire without penalty: this has been covered by previous posters but I will reiterate the big one; no relentless on vehicle as stock.

Ignores cover: you didn't really complain but, there are quite a few abilities(new special rules) that effectively double cover bonuses. Ignoring all cover, and with a few ap weapons makes this not bad at all.

#5: ignores cover, reroll 1s, and +1 to hit firing seekers at bs, ignoring the heavy penalty. Yeah, useless and not worth 5 ml hits. Other weapons like the heavy railgun solid shot firing on the move at full bs ignoring cover, rerolling 1s gives you a nearly cannot miss very likely 3 damage to an enemy vehicle. That is, from Each heavy railgun.

Finally there is another 8th aspect you may not be looking at: each markerlight can fire at a separate target: do for 96 points and a fast attack slot you can Reroll 1s against an average of 6 targets if the pathys don't move.

You have to pay for wargear separately for every unit. It's annoying as hell. Paying 125 pts for a hammerhead and having the railgun and gun drones included, with options to switch out or upgrade things for a clearly displayed points cost, that made *sense*. This is ANNOYING.

Reroll 1s is a small and inconsistent bonus. If you got a set amount of rerolls, it would serve me better, but we don't.

Number 2 is just... so incredibly useless the more I think about it. Even if I took some, I'd probably not bring more than a handful, and most sources of seeker missiles (broadsides, piranhas) hit on a 4+ anyway, meaning your one-off weapon is an unreliable 50/50 to-hit.

Number 3 is, like I said, useful but limited in its usefulness.

Number 4, well, cover means so much less these days. It's nice, but not nearly as nice as it used to be.

And well, five...
Sure. Sure it's nice that the bonuses are available to everyone who fire. The problem is that #1 is so small it's often entirely pointless, #2 is almost completely pointless, #3 is limited in usefulness... really the only reliably good bonuses are 4 and 5, and you have to actually have ten markers just to get there reliably.
This sucks. This really, really sucks. I am honestly considering just running an army without pathfinders altogether, because the bonus of having them there is so small I'm not sure why I should bother.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NL_Cirrus wrote:
I would agree with the OP, marker lights are a lot worse.

I would start by saying that in previous editions maker lights were the primary, well only, means to compensate for our bad ballistic skill as compared to other more elite armies, this need has only become more critical as all of our suits have become more expensive but for the most part the number of shots they make hasn't changed and new maker lights don't really help.

1, reroll ones sounds nice but it is only increasing accuracy by a very small margin. I,E, you fire 12 shots now 7 hit as opposed to 6, not great. On top of that this is a bonus easily obtained by taking an ethereal or if you want multitrakers are a 2 point upgrade and always work and can't be killed independently of the unit using them.

2, Seeker/destroyer missiles hit on normal ballistics skill, OK? Seeker missiles are basically garbage now and nobody is going to take them, seriously 6 points for 1 mortal wound a game, maybe? Yeah I will pass. For destroyer missiles I guess its fine IF you brought a storm surge but only because you can't take those missiles off and save 40 points.

3, no penalty for moving and shooting heavy weapons. This will almost never come up because, if you are a not a vehicle and have heavy weapons and will need to move, take a target lock, its five points and WAY more reliable then marker lights. If you are a vehicle then you are either garbage (sky ray, hammerhead, flyers) or have assault weapons anyway (devil fish, piranhas). The only unit that doesn't fit in the above is pathfinders, but as maker lights suck you should give them special weapons or not take them. I also there is the point other people brought up about not knowing if you'll get it until after your heavies moved.

4, ignores cover. Cover in 8th is useless and so is the ability to ignore it, besides an ATS is 8 points and effectively does the same thing except when not shooting in to cover your AP is just better then it was.

5, +1 to hit, this would be helpful if it were lower on the list, so we could use it to compensate for our bad BS, but being so far down means you will need more then 100 points put into maker lights per unit you want +1 against to get it semi-reliably, and all of our marker light platforms are either way too expensive or way too fragile, so they won't last past turn one, or you just won't have enough to get to this point.

TL;DR All the benefits of make lights are either; replicated by other units/war gear easier, are just not all that helpful, or are too hard to get to be useful. And you won't get them after the first turn since all our maker light platforms are bad at being maker light platforms(sky ray) or extremely fragile (everything else).

Well, thanks for that. Will play more games to see if this makes some sort of sense, but overall I'm wondering if I'm not better off not using pathfinders at all.

There are some Tau players having success in local tournaments without even bringing ML in their list. They say the effect is too neligible. Heck even most of the ones who bring them take them to help an alpha strike build and then mostly as fodder after the alpha or beta strike has hit. I would say right now ML are fairly niche and really depend on your list.

To be fair, they had to drop Markerlight effectiveness at least slightly.

In previous editions you would easily put 10 hits on a unit and then just sit there and take two away to hit on 2+, some more to remove cover, I cant remember what other bonuses they gave to be fair. So 10 Markerlight hits meant most units could then be hit by your plasma suits or Nova Charged Riptide and would evaporate. Now their bonuses are still useful and affect your whole army but aren't just a case of oh, I hit you with a few lights remove that unit.

Now I feel like they were buffed, 5 ML and your entire army gets Reroll 1S, +1 To hit, relentless, and ignore cover against that unit. That seems pretty good.

People need to stop comparing to last edition, nearly every unit changed in effectivness and how it works. What is good, what is not so good. Look at how these things now affect the game and then look at what everyone else has to take to do the same, if they even can.

1st result is good/worth the hassle,

2,3,4 are situational

5 is great.

result is, sprinkling of markerlights is okay to get the 1st result , but there is no good source to get 5 with the nerf to drone controller and marker drones.

it's too much of an investment to try and get 5, you're better of skipping the units that need it (e.g. crisis, keel, fire warriors of both kinda)

The only exclusion to this I feel is the storm surge, you want to get the most out of the destroyer missiles. (and no, the skyrays is bad)

But then you kinda want 2 surges and shadowsun for double kouyun to get the most of it.

Result is, for competitive at least you end up with no marker list as was alluded to by some people above, or heavy investment to make double surge work.

Personally I think they are no longer worth the bother and the new system sucks, and because of it, most of the bs4+ tau stuff had been gimped (especially the high investment/quality fire power)

You already see most tau player gravitating to good bs units

Commander, hammerhead, longstrike

units which ignore bs5

yvahra, flamer crisis

and cheap chaff (with high rate of fire)

drones, kroot.

to make some of this work, you need homing beacons so,

stealth teams are the last unit on the list.

And combination of this is current competitive tau.

C.Straken wrote:
To be fair, they had to drop Markerlight effectiveness at least slightly.

In previous editions you would easily put 10 hits on a unit and then just sit there and take two away to hit on 2+, some more to remove cover, I cant remember what other bonuses they gave to be fair. So 10 Markerlight hits meant most units could then be hit by your plasma suits or Nova Charged Riptide and would evaporate. Now their bonuses are still useful and affect your whole army but aren't just a case of oh, I hit you with a few lights remove that unit.

Now I feel like they were buffed, 5 ML and your entire army gets Reroll 1S, +1 To hit, relentless, and ignore cover against that unit. That seems pretty good.

I am okay with a slight nerf. Not that Tau was *that* OP competitively speaking, the army overall suffered from a major inability to score points on the map, but a nerf? I can live with that.

Now... now you have no dronemander who can markerlight stuff on 2+, meaning you have to have a minimum of 10 pathfinders to get *one* target up to 5 markers.

Rerolling 1s is so small a buff I don't even care about having it. Ignoring cover isn't close to as useful as it used to be. And you have to have a whole of ten pathfinders just to get +1 to hit. This is a huge, huge nerf. I am personally questioning whether they're even worth the points anymore.

I think re-rolling ones is amazing. Like someone else pointed out usually most armies have to take an HQ to do that in a 6" bubble and they cost around 80pts minimum (about the same as 10 pathfinders.)

I have built many lists around the re-roll 1s for my Marines, it makes a Stalker really good (as it hits on 4+ against non flyers).

Ok Marines hit on 3+ so it benefits them more, but still. Re-rolling ones against three or four units with your entire army isn't bad for roughly 80points.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

You have to pay for wargear separately for every unit. It's annoying as hell. Paying 125 pts for a hammerhead and having the railgun and gun drones included, with options to switch out or upgrade things for a clearly displayed points cost, that made *sense*. This is ANNOYING.

Alas short of having prices in every datasheet separately there's no real way around it. If you have points all on back you cannot have it so that you only pay for upgrades. If they are in datasheets changing price of one weapon requires changing point cost of every datasheet(since GW believes within army same weapon is worth same for every unit).

Having backprice for weapon list only upgrade price while unit price includes default wargear obviously doesn't work.

Having backprice for weapon list only upgrade price while unit price includes default wargear obviously doesn't work.

Why? That's how it worked in 7th ed rulebooks. It was smooth and simple.

C.Straken wrote:
I think re-rolling ones is amazing. Like someone else pointed out usually most armies have to take an HQ to do that in a 6" bubble and they cost around 80pts minimum (about the same as 10 pathfinders.)

I have built many lists around the re-roll 1s for my Marines, it makes a Stalker really good (as it hits on 4+ against non flyers).

Ok Marines hit on 3+ so it benefits them more, but still. Re-rolling ones against three or four units with your entire army isn't bad for roughly 80points.

It seems that you aren't noticing that pathfinders are not characters. That is a huge difference in survivability. You SM captain is going to stick around about all game because only snipers can shoot him if he is behind whatever he is buffing, but pathfinders are going to get blown away as soon as your opponent gets a turn. Remember that's 80 points for the defensive capabilities of a guard squad, except the pathfinders might as well be holding a shoot me sign.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

Having backprice for weapon list only upgrade price while unit price includes default wargear obviously doesn't work.

Why? That's how it worked in 7th ed rulebooks. It was smooth and simple.

And say good bye balance when guy with more expensive gun has to pay same price for upgrading to gun X than another guy.

To put very simple example: Is upgrading lasgun to twin-linked lascannon worth the same as upgrading twin-linked assault cannon to twin-linked lascannon? Change in firepower isn't nearly as big when gun you are replacing is shootier than with other guy.

And say good bye balance when guy with more expensive gun has to pay same price for upgrading to gun X than another guy.

To put very simple example: Is upgrading lasgun to twin-linked lascannon worth the same as upgrading twin-linked assault cannon to twin-linked lascannon? Change in firepower isn't nearly as big when gun you are replacing is shootier than with other guy.

What you're saying makes no sense to me. How is it imbalanced to include the standard equipment into the base cost of a unit?

Example: Let's say a razorback costs 110 pts and comes equipped with twin heavy bolters as part of its base cost, with the option to upgrade the bolters to twin lascannons for +20 pts. What part of this is imbalanced? What part of this doesn't make sense?

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

And say good bye balance when guy with more expensive gun has to pay same price for upgrading to gun X than another guy.

To put very simple example: Is upgrading lasgun to twin-linked lascannon worth the same as upgrading twin-linked assault cannon to twin-linked lascannon? Change in firepower isn't nearly as big when gun you are replacing is shootier than with other guy.

What you're saying makes no sense to me. How is it imbalanced to include the standard equipment into the base cost of a unit?

Example: Let's say a razorback costs 110 pts and comes equipped with twin heavy bolters as part of its base cost, with the option to upgrade the bolters to twin lascannons for +20 pts. What part of this is imbalanced? What part of this doesn't make sense?

You have 2 guys. One has gun worth 1 pts, one has gun worth 20 pts.

You seriously claim it's fair both pay 30 pts for upgrade to same weapon? One guy has then paid effectively 50 pts for the weapon while other paid 31 pts.

A Tau player cimplaining about starting with a base model in points and then adding piints for weapons and wargear is the most insane thing I have seen in several days. Did you never play with Crisis suits before?

Anyways; since you are having trouble understanding, lets look at some units that have different guns as options:

SM predator: comes with a predator Autocannon. Price with base gear is 151 pts. Under current rules swapping the turret to twin lascannon makes it 152 pts; a fair exchange. It is also not the only vehicle that gets twin lascannon. If the Autocannon cost was built into the price, and you had to pay for the upgrade a predator with twin lascannons would cost 201 pts and never be taken because a third again the pri d is dumb.

Weapons are priced for their effectiveness, units are priced for their ability to use those weapons.