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should for instance every +1 strength in a stat be worth something pts wise the every inch moving and every -1 ap and then you add it all up to get point cost this will apply to all armies or should they just stick with things now just make the stats then kinda work out what it should be

an example
1 strength + 0.5 points so a marines strength of 4 would cost 1 point
1 inch movement is 1 point
each bs below 7 is 0.2 points so bs 2+ =0.8 pts

No, because diminishing returns and difference between platforms.

To start? Sure. I don't think it should be "Strength is worth 1 point per point" since S3 is a LOT worse than S4, but S5 is a smaller bump, or S9 to S10 is basically nothing (only affects T5 and T9 models). But, saying S1 is worth X points, S2 is worth Y, S3 is worth Z, etc., I think is a fine START.

But it's not the end-all be-all. Once you have your stats, you need to see what synergies there are, what rules they have, etc. etc.

The problem is that the cost of a stat is dependent on a lot of other variables; ex. better weapons on a T3 model are worse than the same weapons on a T4 model, BS 3+ on a model with a lascannon is better than BS 3+ on a model with a lasgun...

Stats also affect each other’s utility. The same number of wounds can be more valuable with a high toughness. Likewise S and A.

You may be able to put together a crazy complicated formula, but it would probaby take less time to just guess and playtest.

TL;DR: no.

No. BS 2+ is worth a lot on a model with a lascannon. It's worth very little on a model with no ranged weapons.

I confirm. Pricing stats is impossible, there are too many interactions between stats and wargear to make this feasible.

You can only price a model as a whole and then price the wargear for THAT model.

Spoletta wrote:
I confirm. Pricing stats is impossible, there are too many interactions between stats and wargear to make this feasible.

You can only price a model as a whole and then price the wargear for THAT model.

I seriously doubt if GW is pointing things from the ground up. For example many units, Knight Castellan being one good example, are being priced with the weapons so they designer's purposefully hide how they have appraised the empty body versus the weapons.

The weapons clearly should be all priced in relation to each other. Giving one faction cheaper lascannons because of their poorer BS is bad reason. The worse BS should be reflected in the unit costs instead of weapon price (note: this is exactly opposite to melee weapons, which should be priced based on the target unit's baseline stats) Even with these weapon parities, there should be some rough mathematical parity analysis between units of roughly equivalent roles.
Problem is there isn't clear design process at work with GW: There are no clear Light Infantry - Heavy Infantry - Light Vehicle - Heavy Vehicle archetypes, and no clear weapon archetypes that work especially well against some of these unit archetypes. Same weapons that are good against Heavy Vehicles tend to be about equally good against Heavy Infantry and Light Vehicles, except when we move on the units like Castellan who have these weapons that are good against other Titanic units, however to make people buy the model the designers decided to give Castellan disproportionally good firepower against everything else also, except the cheapest hordes in game. Now the Castellan is incredibly cheap when compared against the fact that it can very efficiently engage all kinds of targets, except the lightest and cheapest infantry, but I suspect that extremely expensive units like castellan end up either being exceptionally good (=BROKEN) or bad. Following presented unit and weapon archetype logic, Castellan should be good against *almost* everything (like it is now) and too expensive (it is way too cheap now) or they have more well defined targets and they are relatively cheaper. Multifunctionality should be more expensive than extreme spesialisation.

Instead of well defined archetypes everyone is spamming plasma (it's extremely multifunctional), and this is partially because the single-purpose melta weapons are more expensive than plasma (for god knows why???), the GW design approach looks either excessively arbitrary or outright schizophrenic, and as end result we have codices full of trap choices.

So yeah, in general stats of units and weapons should be roughly proportional between each other, but generating exact mathematical equation for these can be difficult because various units and weapons have all sorts of special rules.

Why should only melee weapons be priced based on unit stats when BS massively influences how effective a ranged weapon is?

This is all academic anyway. I'm firmly in the camp of you can't have any absolute pricing rules. Everything has to be priced holistically in context of the whole. Take into account what army it is in, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what Stratagems, psychic powers, and other buffs they have etc etc.

You simply can't say "this thing should always cost X" and expect any kind of balance in a system like this.

 Stux wrote:
Why should only melee weapons be priced based on unit stats when BS massively influences how effective a ranged weapon is?

IMO the reason for treating them differently is that BS is a single stat that is mostly consistent across an entire faction and has a fairly narrow range of effectiveness, while melee power is the result of three separate stats and has a huge range of effectiveness. The only difference between the vast majority of shooting units is whether you have a 50% chance to hit or a 66% chance to hit, everything else is built into the weapon stats. That makes it a lot easier to keep weapon prices consistent across factions and vary the base price of the unit to reflect the difference in hit rate. But with melee even just a basic guardsman/tactical marine/etc vs. the squad's sergeant is a 2:1 difference in base power, and it only goes up from there. Melee strength values are a modifier on the unit's strength instead of a fixed value, and shot count is set directly by the stats. It's hard to set anything resembling an accurate fixed value for a melee weapon within a faction, forget about doing it across multiple factions.

That's a fair point. But just because there's less variability doesn't mean you shouldn't still vary costs to account for what variability there still is.

Putting it into the cost of the unit carrying it is all well and good in theory, but it doesn't really work when the base cost of the gun is like five times that of the unit. It's just easier to balance it by varying the cost of the gun.

deotrims 16th wrote:
should for instance every +1 strength in a stat be worth something pts wise the every inch moving and every -1 ap and then you add it all up to get point cost this will apply to all armies or should they just stick with things now just make the stats then kinda work out what it should be

an example
1 strength + 0.5 points so a marines strength of 4 would cost 1 point
1 inch movement is 1 point
each bs below 7 is 0.2 points so bs 2+ =0.8 pts

Depends. Do you want balance? If yes no.

 Stux wrote:
That's a fair point. But just because there's less variability doesn't mean you shouldn't still vary costs to account for what variability there still is.

Putting it into the cost of the unit carrying it is all well and good in theory, but it doesn't really work when the base cost of the gun is like five times that of the unit. It's just easier to balance it by varying the cost of the gun.

Yes, you can of course vary the cost of upgrades for each specific unit if precision balance is the goal. But there's also the ease of play factor of having those costs always be the same. So you have to ask how much does the error really matter. On a ranged weapon option, where a weapon's power is relatively constant across different units, a fixed upgrade price with unit base prices that account for BS differences is probably going to come reasonably close to the correct point cost and is likely to end up so close that it isn't worth refining.