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I have an idea about how to fix CP generation, and I’m passing it around for constructive criticism before I email GW. The idea is a change to the concept of CP generation being tied to the number of units. Instead, I would have it tied to the amount of points invested in a detachment, as follows:

- Patrol/Superheavy Auxiliary/Fortification Network - No benefit
- Battalion - gain 1CP for every 100pts spent on Troops in this detachment
- Brigade - gain 1CP for every 150pts spent on Troops, Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy Support combined in this detachment
- Vanguard/Spearhead/Outrider/Air Wing - gain 1CP for every 200pts spent on Elites/Heavy Support/Fast Attack/Flyers in this detachment
- Supreme Command Detachment - gain 1CP for every 300pts spent on HQs in this detachment (or none, this detachment is the source of a lot of problems)
- Superheavy Detachment - gain 1CP for every 400pts spent on Lords of War in this detachment
- Auxiliary Detachment - lose 1CP for every 100pts spent in this detachment

I believe this removes the CP battery and allying in issues - there's no cheap way to get CP. It balances CP generation of armies with small cheap units (Guard), armies with big cheap units (Cultists) and armies with big expensive units (Custodes); no matter how you do it, to get 3CP, you need 300pts of Troops. It maintains the status quo of Troops being useful by making them the most efficient way to gain CP. It ups the amount of CP for elite armies starved under the current system. It lets thematic armies like Deathwing, Ravenwing and Iyanden Wraiths have a useable amount of CP without needing to include anti-thematic CP battery units. It lets you include an Assassin or Inquisitor without costing a CP, but more powerful units will still burn CP in an Auxiliary Detachment.

Some examples at 2000pts:

- A Marine army with 500pts in Troops in a Battalion, 500pts in Elites in a Vanguard, 500pts in Heavy Support in a Spearhead and the rest in HQ/Fast Attack nets 3+5+2+2 = 12CP
- A Deathwing army with 1200pts in a Vanguard Detachment and the rest in Heavy Support/HQs nets 3+6 = 9CP
- A Custodes Battalion built around 12 Guardians for 600ish points nets 3+6 = 9CP
- A Guard Brigade with 200pts of HQs and 1800 in other slots nets 3+12 = 15CP

Some feedback I’ve had so far is to let Dark Eldar get the 100:1 bonus on Patrols as well as Battalions to account for their unusual army construction, and that the Specialist Detachments like Vanguard might need a higher ratio like 250:1 to keep the main Detachments relevant.

Thoughts?

To be honest, it is way to complicated for the current design ethos of 40k. It could be good for a comp system in a tournament but I don't think it'll go anywhere in the core game. I can also see problems with partial fulfilment of your criteria. Spending 288 points in a brigade would be quite detrimental, so things would start to revolve around bumping units up to arbitrary limits.

Has potential but needs streamlining I think.

Plus, good troops still means more CP, punishing armies with bad troops.

Brigades sorta make up the difference, but let's take Nurgle Daemons. I can spend as many points as I want on troops and feel good, same for Fast Attack, but Elites? Heavy Support? (Dear god, Heavy Support.) Not worth it.

All you're doing is creating exploitable point breakpoints and headaches.

It scales too bizarrely with armies like Imperial Guard, where your 6 squads of dudes doesn't actually generate a lot of CP.

A poster here named Xeno came up with a decent system where you work backwards from a certain amount of CP.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
A poster here named Xeno came up with a decent system where you work backwards from a certain amount of CP.

Seconded.

The backward system is actually the best proposition I've read on this forum. It forces you to fill your detachments as much as possible instead of spamming cheap troops in order to get more CP.

I don't think the detachments generating CP is a big problem. The main problem is that certain factions excel at putting out cheap battalions.

This means that any imperial army can generate 5 CP for very small points outlay.

How do you fix that?

 Nithaniel wrote:
How do you fix that?

Remove soup. You get one codex, period.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Nithaniel wrote:
How do you fix that?

Remove soup. You get one codex, period.

Whilst it would probably fix some problems, we know it is never going to happen. It also removes some really fun and fluffy army builds, such as a squad of marines supporting a guard regiment or chaos/demon warbands. This could work as the rules to a tournament though, which makes it easier to account for missions and terrain and such.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Nithaniel wrote:
How do you fix that?

Remove soup. You get one codex, period.

That would be my dream.

To the OP, I think your ideas have merit but I doubt they would ever be adopted because the design team want this flexibility. They have been to the big tournaments and have seen the loyal 32 in action and they have had multiple opportunities to fix it and have chosen not to.

Hopefully they will address the points in Chapter approved but this would also unnecesarily penalise Astra if they upped the points even more...

 Trickstick wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Nithaniel wrote:
How do you fix that?

Remove soup. You get one codex, period.

Whilst it would probably fix some problems, we know it is never going to happen. It also removes some really fun and fluffy army builds, such as a squad of marines supporting a guard regiment or chaos/demon warbands. This could work as the rules to a tournament though, which makes it easier to account for missions and terrain and such.

Fluff soup armies should belong to Open play, period. A type of game where players are friends and tailor their lists in order to get a fairly balanced game.

In competitive gaming it's impossible to balance stuff if a faction can choose between 250 entries. In fact it ends up top tier in each period of each edition.

We've already established that matched play is willing to sacrifice "fluffy" armies for the sake of balance. I cried no tears at all the biker spam armies that disappeared for the sake of the Rule of Three. I would feel the exact same lack of remorse for whatever combination of Guard+Other Imperium you're definitely running because it's fluffy.

Stop making complicated crap like this! 40k is a game, not a simulation... allso the rule of 3 isn't an official rule. It's a tournament suggestion...

 Blackie wrote:
In competitive gaming it's impossible to balance stuff if a faction can choose between 250 entries. In fact it ends up top tier in each period of each edition.

Yup, and that's why in 6th and 7th Imperium was dominating!

Oh wait, nope, that was Tau / Eldar, and Imperium could barely compete with 2 formations giving 500 points of free stuff, and even then it was mostly parking multiple units on objectives and hoping the opponent can't blow them up fast enough.

Can I take "things that didn't happen" for 200 too?

As for the part suggesting banning thousands of lovingly converted, perfectly valid armies emulating lost side lists of the past, fluffy ones that aren't in any way OP, it doesn't even dignify a response. Seriously?

 lolman1c wrote:
Stop making complicated crap like this! 40k is a game, not a simulation... allso the rule of 3 isn't an official rule. It's a tournament suggestion...

they're talking about the rule of three from the big faq that precludes people from fielding more than 3 units of the same datasheet in an army

 Peregrine wrote:

Remove soup. You get one codex, period.

I have a better idea! Let's ban Imperial Guard from the matched play; fixes pretty much this CP battery problem, and many other balancing problems too!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
We've already established that matched play is willing to sacrifice "fluffy" armies for the sake of balance.

See, he agrees! Guard players can still use their models in the open play!

You realize that by sending it to GW you literally ensure it can never be implemented? The GW legal team would have kittens because if they do implement it is just opens up legal problems.

Didn't even read past the second or third sentence. Way too complicated to ever be considered by GW, or in turn, event organizers.

Dead on arrival.

 Nithaniel wrote:
I don't think the detachments generating CP is a big problem. The main problem is that certain factions excel at putting out cheap battalions.

This means that any imperial army can generate 5 CP for very small points outlay.

How do you fix that?

I agree. Here is the problem as I understand it:

Different armies essentially have to pay different point cost for same set amount of CPs (when we consider only detachments and forget all the army/faction specific special CP generation). Now this CP farming is usually bound to Troop and HQ choices as taxes, but also on other units with other more special detachments.

Now the principal total function of CP efficiency between different armies is: Stratagem Power-Cost-ratio + Detachment spammable unit Power-Cost-ratios. Stratagem CP costs can't be 'balanced' as is because the values are low integers. So Stratagem Power-Cost-ratio is kind of locked, only way to balance these is actual altering of specific stratagem's rules, but even this is difficult in some cases. Example: CSM 3CP Fury of Khorne: Fight additional time. How would you balance this if you needed? Add +1 CP to cost? Reduce -1 CP from cost. These changes are huge based on rule wording.

Now we essentialy can only alter CP balance with spammable unit Power-Cost ratios. Altering the Detachments themselves is problematic because they will directly impact CP efficiency of most armies.

In principle I just declare CPs should be separated from Detachments in general and maybe just bought with normal points. What do we do with detachments exactly I don't know, but the problem is the tangle how detachment based CP generation interacts with spammable unit efficiency and associated army stratagem efficiency, making the balancing difficult. Changing basic point costs of spammable troops will affect both CP farming ability and actual tabletop efficiency in current system which then makes the balancing difficult.

'Too long, didn't read':
Just use points to buy CPs.
+ Also multiply every CP cost and generation by 10 to allow more refined balancing of stratagem CP costs.

 Nym wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
A poster here named Xeno came up with a decent system where you work backwards from a certain amount of CP.

Seconded.

The backward system is actually the best proposition I've read on this forum. It forces you to fill your detachments as much as possible instead of spamming cheap troops in order to get more CP.

Thirded. This really is the best and simplest design.
Start with X cp per Y points. Pay for your detachment choices with CP. The more specialist detachments you have, the fewer CP you end up with. Stick to one brigade or battalion for the most CP.

It removes the incentive to soup for CP entirely. It removes the nonsense you see where people take multiple detachments that could have all fit in a single detachment. It even provides an incentive to avoid MSU.

Have you play tested this? Or is it just something you’ve written down?

Zustiur wrote:

 Nym wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
A poster here named Xeno came up with a decent system where you work backwards from a certain amount of CP.

Seconded.

The backward system is actually the best proposition I've read on this forum. It forces you to fill your detachments as much as possible instead of spamming cheap troops in order to get more CP.

Thirded. This really is the best and simplest design.
Start with X cp per Y points. Pay for your detachment choices with CP. The more specialist detachments you have, the fewer CP you end up with. Stick to one brigade or battalion for the most CP.

It removes the incentive to soup for CP entirely. It removes the nonsense you see where people take multiple detachments that could have all fit in a single detachment. It even provides an incentive to avoid MSU.

I'd love to see this in FAQ3. There are so many good reasons to do it:

Fluffwise it makes sense that a single cohesive force gets more command benefits than a divided and especially multi-faction army.
Mono-faction gives you more CP than soup, meaning that using a wider variety of units is a cost rather than a benefit
Elite factions like Custodes or GK get an even footing with msu troop armies
The same applies for specialist detachments like Deathwing or Ravenwing, who currently suffer from the CP disparity with troop-based detachments

Start everyone with 15-20CP instead of 3, change Command Benefits to Command Penalties and slap an appropriate cost ranging from say zero for a Brigade to -5/6CP for a Supreme Command or Aux Support. Tweak the Drukhari and IK special rules accordingly.

Zustiur wrote:

Start with X cp per Y points. Pay for your detachment choices with CP. The more specialist detachments you have, the fewer CP you end up with. Stick to one brigade or battalion for the most CP.

It removes the incentive to soup for CP entirely. It removes the nonsense you see where people take multiple detachments that could have all fit in a single detachment. It even provides an incentive to avoid MSU.

This is pretty solid suggestion.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Have you play tested this? Or is it just something you’ve written down?

We stopped short of actually playing with it, but we added up how the CP would have changed and the progress of CP usage.

Custodes - Battalion with a large Troops element, would go from 8->9CP, spent the whole game rationing Stratagem use carefully

Death Guard - Battalion + Vanguard, go from 9->10, started the game very conservative with Stratagems so he could burn them hard later

Those 2 would see very little change. However...

Guard + AdMech + GK - 14->10, had CP farming and finished the game with 2CP despite being liberal with usage
Knights + Marines - Battalion + Superheavy, go from 11->9, played fairly fast and loose with CP usage
GS Cult with Guard - 13->9, had CP to burn

Overall the soupier lists had CP flying everywhere but the Pure armies had to be very careful. Had we used my proposed system, the purer armies would have had a few more but the soupier armies would have actually had to start thinking about their use.



Also, if the above is complicated, I’m a little concerned. That level of maths should be easy to do in your head...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, while I prefer my own, I don’t hate the subtracting solution.

Peg CP to points, not army composition. Boom fixes the whole system.

I think GW is by this point fully aware and in favor of the loyal 32. There are very very few factions in the game who don't have access to something similar (Necrons?). Pretty sure its a feature at this point and only a problem in the sense that people keep insisting it needs to change.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Nithaniel wrote:
How do you fix that?

Remove soup. You get one codex, period.

Or make it so that you can still use 3 detachments from 3 different codexes, but each detachment can only use CP generated by that faction. Then you wouldn't be able to use CP generated by loyal 32 on strats for custodes jetbikes or IK.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Peg CP to points, not army composition. Boom fixes the whole system.

And suddenly Custodes Jetbikes become even more unbeatable.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Peg CP to points, not army composition. Boom fixes the whole system.

And suddenly Custodes Jetbikes become even more unbeatable.

Hmm lets think about this...

I think limiting it so that if you take a detachment you have to fill it out complimently, and the more you fill it out the more CP you generate. Each 'Section' of the Detachment will have separate 'maximums' in terms of CP generated.

Now this is for a regular Battalion not for a Brigade and it would change based on detachment. It could be very easy to limit it.

HQ's have a max of 5.
While Troops have a max of 10. Which all requires a Point or Power Level requirement in order to obtain all points. you have half the points, you get half the points. (If it is a decimal round down).
Fast Attack has a max of 8 CP
Heavy Support max of 8 CP
Elites Max of 6 CP

Now to prevent people from using soup lists you can't take soup list until you completely fill out a Detachment. This would prevent rampant abuse and cross units across multiple subfactions.