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.

I would consider the question starting from the basics:

Everything should cost something.

Technically detachments have a price attached because they demand certain minimum number of units to be legal. However this price varies between armies. I haven't done the calculations and I won't do these calculations as I don't have access to all the codexes, but in principle every army has the cheapest possible price for forming a brigade or battalion. Now in essence every Army pays different price for set amount of CPs. Simultaneously different armies Troop options have wide differences in functionality and the stratagems also have a lot of variance in functionality. End result of this is you have these rules that are dependent on so many different variables that are hard to balance because of these 'interdependencies'.

For example:
One army's basic troop choice could deserve price reduction because Reasons. This price drop might make the unit more spammable and enable cheaper Brigades which enables CP hoarding which enables Stratagem spamming because of how the factions Stratagems have been designed and priced. So the end result could be that you can't reduce basic troop cost because the army in question has 1-2 almost broken stratagems that become too spammable because of this point cost reduction.

So based on logic above, one should rework how detachments award CP.

One solution could be that instead of detachments awarding flat CPs, the detachments cost points and larger detachments generate CP every turn.

Other alternative option could be each player is forced to used some basic FOC (like in earlier editions) but can buy more specialized detachments for set amount of points. This would also allow faction special rule detachments creation (free or pointed). This way detachments themselves would not generate CPs and we would manage to decouple CPs and detachments from each other. In this model you only get CPs with:
1. by buying them with points
2. Some special army/faction specific units or items, which then can be individually balanced through points based on every army's own needs.

Additionally the CPs themselves should be in each case multiplied by 10. So everything that gave 1 CP before would give 10 CPs and everything that costed 2 CPs before would cost 20 CPs instead and so on. This change would allow more refined balancing of individual stratagem CP costs as now many armies have loads of stratagems but mostly use only a few of them and many go unused most of the time, to my understanding. Problem with small only-integer values is the adjustment. Something that costs 1 shouldn't be reduced to zero, and meanwhile increase to 2 is doubling of the price which may not be justified balancewise. Simplified:

base 1 + 1 = 100% increase
base 2 + 1 = 50% increase
base 2 - 1 = 50% decrease

Imagine if you tried to balance the point cost of Land Raider and you are only allowed to either increase or decrease the cost 50%. You can't do balancing in this kind of situation. Same applies to stratagems currently because how the CPs and stratagems are valued originally.

EDIT: Various grammar edits. Some additional examples/explanations.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Harlequins and Deathwatch would burn through their CP so fast that they may as well not have any to begin with.

Only if you insist on playing soup. If you play a full Harlequin/Deathwatch army you have plenty of CP because all of your detachments share a faction. And TBH, if you're playing a small Harlequin/Deathwatch detachment in a soup list why should they have enough CP to use a lot of stratagems? They're a tiny part of your army, they should only have a tiny part of your stratagem use.

I'd argue that harlequins, though probably more well-rounded this edition than last, aren't really meant to be a standalone army. Mechanically, they're kind of tight on options, and fluff-wise, they should absolutely be comfortable hanging out with other aeldari. I'd take a similar stance regarding GK or DW. Playing mono-faction with either should be viable, but they should also be comfortable hanging out with some admech or sisters.

The representation of them being "comfortable hanging out with other aeldari" is represented in how they share keywords.

Guardsmen are just as comfortable hanging out with Marines, Sisters, and other Imperial forces. Why do they not get the same fluffy treatment?

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying harlequins should get their own special rules. I'm saying that there are factions like harlequins (Death Watch or Grey Knights) that should absolutely be comfortable hanging out with their allies. Faction-locking and detachment-locking CP would severely cut into such factions' ability to use stratagems. Meanwhile, other factions are pretty good at generating CP and would not be as impacted by faction or detachment locking CP.

So my point is that the uneven way in which faction/detachment locking impacts different factions makes them a bad mechanic in my eyes.

Uneven CP generation, tying CP to troops and detachments, and trying to balance a stratagem in the context of a single codex/faction rather than in the context of possible allies all introduce way too many unnecessary variables. CP generation should be divorced from unit choice outside of specific units whose gimmick is giving you some extra CP. CP Generation should be divorced from detachment selection. Troops should be wort their points and fill a niche just like every other unit. Stratagems should cost a portion of your CP that reflects their usefulness regardless of which codex they're from; if all armies generate CP at basically the same rate, then we can price strats based on usefulness rather than the context of the book they're found in.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Uneven CP generation, tying CP to troops and detachments, and trying to balance a stratagem in the context of a single codex/faction rather than in the context of possible allies all introduce way too many unnecessary variables. CP generation should be divorced from unit choice outside of specific units whose gimmick is giving you some extra CP. CP Generation should be divorced from detachment selection. Troops should be wort their points and fill a niche just like every other unit. Stratagems should cost a portion of your CP that reflects their usefulness regardless of which codex they're from; if all armies generate CP at basically the same rate, then we can price strats based on usefulness rather than the context of the book they're found in.

So basically we should just stop detachments giving CP? I agree completely. Current system basically allows some armies to farm CPs more efficiently for some arbitrary reasons, and additionally because of this arbitrary CP farming ability the stratagems aren't costed based on approximate absolute power but the relative CP farming power of codexes, which then makes allies and mishmash armies unbalanced like you say.

I'm repeating my earlier opinion, but the Stratagem CP costs being small integer values makes them extremely difficult to balance through CP cost changes - this is problematic and clearly a missed opportunity on balancing.

I'm still of the mind that battalions should be 2/3/1/1/1 in their requirements instead of slightly more than double a patrol

will that fix anything not really but it makes far more sense than slightly more than double a patrol detachment for way more benefit

 warmaster21 wrote:
I'm still of the mind that battalions should be 2/3/1/1/1 in their requirements instead of slightly more than double a patrol

will that fix anything not really but it makes far more sense than slightly more than double a patrol detachment for way more benefit

Yeah. It does seem weird that it goes from slightly double a Patrol for Battalion, to basically filling everything for a Brigade.

I kinda wish they had gone with a more simplified approach and kept the old FOC and then kept the special detachments (e.g. Vanguard or Spearhead) if you found you wanted more of a specific type. Without all the extra CP generation.