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Okey, I just came from 7th and yesterday I did my first battle. Im a bit of a noobie in 40k (more of a Fantasy guy myself) but have a pretty big Imperial Guard army and starting Sisters as well. Not that it matters. What matters is this: I've seen multiple complains about "no point cost" for wargear options, making most unit options into a ILLUSION of choice, where you simply choose the most expensive/effective one. The most famous scenario being the Leman Russ sponsors.

The reason for this (I assume) is GW trying to simplify rules and army composition, and making it more simple to balance weapon profiles in the future. But... what if?

What if they'd turn it into a mix of both worlds? Some special/heavy weapons would be "free" or included in the cost of the unit, like we have atm. While others can be bought for a reduced price. You just have to slightly decrease the base cost of that unit and move it to the "premium" special/heavy weapons and wargear options. These weapons fall into two categories, "basic" special/heavy weapons and "premium" ones.

Example 1: Imperial Guard's Infantry Unit squad...
Basic special weapon: grenade launcher, flammer, sniper.
Premium special weapon (+5 points?): melta, plasma rifle.
Basic heavy weapon: heavy bolter, autocannon, mortar.
Premium heavy weapon (+5 points?): missile launcher, lascannon.
Sargent, perhaps keep all free as it is but differentiate further the chainsword and power weapon?

Example 2: Leman Russ...
No sponsors (reduce Leman's cost)
Basic sponsors: heavy bolter, heavy flammer.
Premium sponsors (increases cost by x): MM, heavy plasma.
Other options (Hunter-Killer missile, heavy stubber, storm bolter): to keep it simple, leave it as it is, differentiate heavy stubber from storm bolter further /balance issues.

Thoughts???

Yes this would be the best way to handle it. A default loadout with less value special/heavy weapons and then points to swap them for more effective options.

 Guillérmidas wrote:
Okey, I just came from 7th and yesterday I did my first battle. Im a bit of a noobie in 40k (more of a Fantasy guy myself) but have a pretty big Imperial Guard army and starting Sisters as well. Not that it matters. What matters is this: I've seen multiple complains about "no point cost" for wargear options, making most unit options into a ILLUSION of choice, where you simply choose the most expensive/effective one. The most famous scenario being the Leman Russ sponsors.

The reason for this (I assume) is GW trying to simplify rules and army composition, and making it more simple to balance weapon profiles in the future. But... what if?

What if they'd turn it into a mix of both worlds? Some special/heavy weapons would be "free" or included in the cost of the unit, like we have atm. While others can be bought for a reduced price. You just have to slightly decrease the base cost of that unit and move it to the "premium" special/heavy weapons and wargear options. These weapons fall into two categories, "basic" special/heavy weapons and "premium" ones.

Why should a Leman Russ with heavy bolter sponsons cost the same as a Leman Russ with no sponsons at all if a Leman Russ with superior sponsons should cost more than a Leman Russ with inferior sponsons? A Leman Russ cannot be equipped with just a heavy bolter and an attitude, the rules already tell you that the least a Leman Russ will carry is a hull mounted weapon and a turret weapon, but the sponsons should be optional, your rules would have heavy bolters be mandatory, this is bad and wrong. Many fans of 10th edition don't want there to be premium weapon and a basic weapon, so you're not getting the best of this "everything is equal" design either, those people would want you to nerf MM and heavy plasma or buff heavy bolters and heavy flamers. They don't want to choose between discount Russ and premium Russ, they want to choose between anti-tank Russ and anti-infantry Russ. So your idea would make everyone mad.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Guillérmidas wrote:
Okey, I just came from 7th and yesterday I did my first battle. Im a bit of a noobie in 40k (more of a Fantasy guy myself) but have a pretty big Imperial Guard army and starting Sisters as well. Not that it matters. What matters is this: I've seen multiple complains about "no point cost" for wargear options, making most unit options into a ILLUSION of choice, where you simply choose the most expensive/effective one. The most famous scenario being the Leman Russ sponsors.

The reason for this (I assume) is GW trying to simplify rules and army composition, and making it more simple to balance weapon profiles in the future. But... what if?

What if they'd turn it into a mix of both worlds? Some special/heavy weapons would be "free" or included in the cost of the unit, like we have atm. While others can be bought for a reduced price. You just have to slightly decrease the base cost of that unit and move it to the "premium" special/heavy weapons and wargear options. These weapons fall into two categories, "basic" special/heavy weapons and "premium" ones.

Why should a Leman Russ with heavy bolter sponsons cost the same as a Leman Russ with no sponsons at all if a Leman Russ with superior sponsons should cost more than a Leman Russ with inferior sponsons? A Leman Russ cannot be equipped with just a heavy bolter and an attitude, the rules already tell you that the least a Leman Russ will carry is a hull mounted weapon and a turret weapon, but the sponsons should be optional, your rules would have heavy bolters be mandatory, this is bad and wrong. Many fans of 10th edition don't want there to be premium weapon and a basic weapon, so you're not getting the best of this "everything is equal" design either, those people would want you to nerf MM and heavy plasma or buff heavy bolters and heavy flamers. They don't want to choose between discount Russ and premium Russ, they want to choose between anti-tank Russ and anti-infantry Russ. So your idea would make everyone mad.

Nop. Perhaps I worded wrongly or you didnt understand it, either way... what I meant is all Leman Russes would get a price reduced across the board, but they come with no lateral sponsors at all. Then you have the option to buy them "regular" sponsors (heavy bolters/heavy flammers) or premium ones (MM/heavy plasma).

Nerfing MM further would only put some factions, such as Sisters of Battle, in an ever worse spot. In fact, its a weapon that, from what I've gathered, people are demanding buffs. Now, back at the current Leman Russ sponsors, its almost a no brainer to choose MM over Heavy Bolter. Its only one shoot less (no sustained hits though) but a much powerful one. Unless you want to only use the Russ to target light/medium infantry, the MM is a much better choice, hence, the Illusion of Choice which I mentioned earlier.

Separating weapons in two categories would make the balance much easier, give more freedom to build armies, and not over complicated as before (all weapons with different prices). Right now, balance "attempts" to make all weapon profiles equal with different niches. But either due to balance or lore, this is simply not possible at all. All with different prices and balanced separately is the old way, which GW seems to want to move away from. A middle ground between both worlds, even if its not perfect, would make things much easier to balance without being hurtful to lore.

You could even make some armies have easier access to "premium" weapons, like sisters having to pay the same for a MM or heavy bolter/heavy flammer. That would help the ladies perform relatively better and would make sense for them. Or Dark Angels getting easier access to plasma in characters/units. Just to name two examples that came to mind.

Basic special weapon: grenade launcher, flammer, sniper.
Premium special weapon (+5 points?): melta, plasma rifle.

That leads me to believe basic special weapons are +0 as opposed to the +5 you listed for the premium.

If a weapon worth 20 pts costs 20 pts instead of being shoved into the basic category that is 10 pts or the premium category that is 30 pts for that datasheet then the weapon being 20 pts is exactly as complicated as it needs to be and shoving it into one of the other categories is needlessly dumbing things down and either making the option too good or not good enough to fit an arbitrary and unreasonable design constraint. Now if I'm not reasonably sure that it's worth 20 and I think it's worth 10-20, then let it be 10 pts even if I suspect it might be more, but if I know it's worth 20 then it should be 20.

If you're going to make the MM cheaper to help Sisters you might as well make heavy bolters and heavy flamers cheaper as well, that'd help the Sisters players that don't happen to have MM Sisters laying around.

Solution in need of a problem TBH, just go back to the normal point system with upgrade points for everything.

Just going back to the old points system is probably the better solution, but I do see merit to the OP's suggestion.

If we must do something similar to the current wonky system, then at least having some nuance to how units are priced would be an improvement. Using scourges as an example, you could do something like:

* 5 scourges with shard carbines. Costs X.
* Up to 4 models may be equipped with shredders, blasters, or splinter cannons for +20 points, or up to 4 models may be equipped with shredders, splinter cannons, dark lances, haywire blasters, or heat lances for +30 points.
* You can add up to 5 more shard carbine scourges for +Y points (where Y is less than X because additional bodies are less useful than the first 5 bodies).

So functionally, the unit can cost X, X+20, or X+30 points depending on what tier of gun you give them, and then you can take another 5 bodies for +Y points. It's slightly less math than the old system, but you don't have to pay dark lance prices for models with shard carbines.

Also, not that many people were doing this, but this is theoretically easier to calculate for people who just assemble a squad of scourges with the single copy of each special weapon in the box rather than buying multiple boxes to specialize the squad. So instead of adding up a different price for a blaster guy, a lance guy, a heat lance guy, and a shredder guy, you just say, "Okay, I have at least one of the top tier guns. The squad will cost X+30 points."

But at that point, we're probably getting dangerously close to being complicated enough to negate the benefit of simpler math that the current system has, at which point we should really just go back to the old points system.

I'd even go so far as to say that we should maybe go back to the old-old system where the wargear options for each unit were listed on their datasheet rather than having a fixed cost in the back. That way, you could make a special weapon more or less expensive based on the context of a platform. I.e. a lascannon on a squishy devastator is probably a smidge less valuable than a lascannon on a chonky land raider.

A Grenade Launcher is much better than a Lasgun, so it should not be free.

Not what I mean. A Grenade Launcher is of course a much better weapon than a Lasgun.

But it would be in the Special Basic Weapons category, and as such, it would be included inherently in the price of the unit, just like we have right now.

On the other hand, you could pay access to "premium" special weapons to unlock Plasma/melta for such unit. Same for Heavy Weapons.

As Wyldhunt suggested, it could be better to pay for the unlock rather than for every single premium weapon. The math required for building such unit would be very simple, fast and easy, but would still allow for a much deeper and fun army building, and remove the illusion of choice we have atm. You could still get basic special/heavy weapons of course. And they'd be still worth using and fulfill particular niches, like Grenade Launcher/Flammer still being better and more efficient vs hordes than Plasma, even if the latter one has an overall better weapon profile.

The old point system, as cool as having huge customization liberties (which I loved) it had many flaws and was harder to balance. We would get the best of both worlds. At least thats how I see it.

basically you want the pre-8th Edition system for points back

the unit comes included with a basic loadout, can replace sidegrades for free and pays for upgrades (weapons or models)

Fluff should be written to suit models, if the guy has a big gun the fluff should say the big gun does big things. The rules should be written to fit the fluff and be fun to use. Points should balance options against each other, no sponsons vs sponsons, heavy bolter vs plasma cannon, Leman Russ vs Manticore every option should have a reason for taking it, the better the pros and cons of each option are balanced, the better. When you put restrictions on points you are making the rules subordinate to something other than being fun and fluffy, namely fitting into a premium or basic category.

 Guillérmidas wrote:
Not what I mean. A Grenade Launcher is of course a much better weapon than a Lasgun.

But it would be in the Special Basic Weapons category, and as such, it would be included inherently in the price of the unit, just like we have right now.

... what I meant is all Leman Russes would get a price reduced across the board, but they come with no lateral sponsors at all. Then you have the option to buy them "regular" sponsors

Which is it, are you paying points for the basic sponsons or not? Grenade launchers are synonymous with sponsons in 10th we'll say.

The old point system, as cool as having huge customization liberties (which I loved) it had many flaws and was harder to balance. We would get the best of both worlds. At least thats how I see it.

What made it hard to balance? GW could make exactly as many price brackets as they needed depending on how the rules they assigned worked out to be performing in the real world.

 Guillérmidas wrote:
The old point system, as cool as having huge customization liberties (which I loved) it had many flaws and was harder to balance. We would get the best of both worlds. At least thats how I see it.

Your system is harder to balance than the traditional system and requires almost as much time to build lists. It's really just a solution in need of a probem.