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 Traditio wrote:

Got any proof that's a common complaint? I can give you 1 and 3 I suppose, but they only have one S8 AP2 gets hot! large blast.

S9, AP 2, large blast, barrage, gets hot. 72 inches.

That's the statline, iirc.

And that's only:

1. One of the weapons it can use.
2. One of the firing modes of that weapon. That gun has two other firing modes.

And you picked the firing mode that no one uses.

The one you're referring too is S8 AP2 72" Large Blast, Gets Hot!.

 Traditio wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:
I don't think I've heard the complaint about it not being a walker in a LONG time

There was a poll on dakka about it within the past several months, IIRC. The conversation included riptides, wraithknights and wraithlords. If memory serves, the conversation was so volatile and divisive that it ended up being locked.

My earlier points addressing why it should be a walker are basically pulled directly from that thread.

Mind finding that?

 Traditio wrote:

Got any proof that's a common complaint? I can give you 1 and 3 I suppose, but they only have one S8 AP2 gets hot! large blast.
S9, AP 2, large blast, barrage, gets hot. 72 inches.

That's the statline, iirc.

That's the nova, which is inferior to the 3++ so it pretty much never gets used.

 Blacksails wrote:
Then propose the details of your solution

Ultimately, the precise details of the solution don't matter. The point stands, however, that if you haven't addressed all of the common points of complaints, then you haven't proposed a viable fix.

1. The riptide's firepower must be diminished.
2. It's durability must be diminished significantly.
3. It must be appropriately priced.
4. It must be a walker.

What do the details of this look like? Ultimately, you can propose whatever you want, just so long as it meets all 4 conditions.

Great you haven't done anything but rehash your 4 points without providing any details or actual ideas.

You know, we still haven't really gotten back on track...

This is where we were.
I I
I I
I I
I I
I I
......................................................And we're over here now.


As JA said, simply make Walkers relevant again and make the Riptide a walker. If you want some durability, hell make it 13/13/11 or something. Nerf the IA, and even let it keep a 5++. Price it appropriately, and we're solid.

There doesn't need to be a condition that it isn't an MC.

Ultimately, the only issue is to appropriately cost its abilities, or match its abilities its points, or a combination thereof. The specifics are up to the person proposing the fix, and the merits can be weighed then.

If the Riptides durability was lowered, but firepower and price remained the same while also being an MC, it could be balanced.

Those 4 criteria are your own, and if you wish to propose a solution that addresses those, then go for it. But for the sake of the discussion, stop enforcing it on others.

There are literally a thousand ways you could balance anything. Don't pigeon-hole yourself, and especially others.

*Edit* If I'm going to propose anything, it'll be that you make every large thing that currently uses either the MC or Vehicle rules into one ruleset, using either the MC or Vehicle template as a guide. Then you add two USRs, called Biological and Mechanical, or something along those lines. Then all those special weapons we have that have specific effects for MCs or Vehicles will be re-tooled for either Mechanical or Biological constructs. Now every large gribbly is under the same comparable game mechanic which eases learning for new players, easier to remember rules during a game for all players, easier to balance because now everything is directly comparable, and better fits the fluff of every unit.

The details of such a proposal would require a whole different thread, but that's what I'd do.

If we're only talking Riptides, just knock down the durability (basically remove the FnP option, reduce the invul, maybe shave off a wound) and play test from there. Maybe hike its cost up ~20pts with those changes, but even then I don't think its overly necessary.

Wolfblade wrote:Mind finding that?

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/120/689446.page#8629667

"Should these models be walkers?"

Want to guess what the top contenders were? Any guesses?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

krodarklorr wrote:If you want some durability, hell make it 13/13/11 or something.

This would still be a grossly unacceptable "fix." Combined with the invuln and range, this would still result in a virtually immortal model. That's unacceptable.

 Traditio wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
Then propose the details of your solution

Ultimately, the precise details of the solution don't matter. The point stands, however, that if you haven't addressed all of the common points of complaints, then you haven't proposed a viable fix.

1. The riptide's firepower must be diminished.
2. It's durability must be diminished significantly.
3. It must be appropriately priced.
4. It must be a walker.

What do the details of this look like? Ultimately, you can propose whatever you want, just so long as it meets all 4 conditions.

Ok, fair enough. Here's one, aiming for the "close-support suit" concept:
XV104 Riptide - 195ppm
WS1 BS2 S4 AV12/12/10 4HP A1 I1, Jet Pack Walker
Wargear: two twin-linked pulse carbines, blacksun filter, point-defense targeting relay, nova reactor, Riptide shield generator
Special Rules: Move Through Cover, Large Target
Large Target: An XV104 Riptide is a very large target. All close combat attacks against it always hit.
Options: May exchange a twin-linked pulse carbine for:
Fusion blaster: 20 points / Twin-linked fusion blaster: 30 points
Burst cannon: 10 points / Twin-linked burst cannon: 20 points
Cyclic ion blaster: 20 points / Twin-linked cyclic ion blaster: 30 points
Plasma rifle: 20 points / Twin-linked plasma rifle: 30 points

Riptide Shield Generator: A vehicle with a Riptide Shield Generator has a 6+ cover save.
Nova Reactor: At the beginning of the controlling player's Movement Phase, a model equipped with a nova reactor may roll a D6. On a result of 1-3, the model loses a hull point and suffers a Weapon Destroyed result. On a roll of 4-6, the model may select exactly one of the following benefits until the beginning of its next Movement Phase.
1) Weapons: all of the model's weapons extend their range by 6".
2) Jets: When making a thrust move, the model rolls 4d6 instead of 2d6.
3) Escape: The model gains the Hit & Run special rule.
4) Shield: The model's base cover save improves to a 5+.

Alright, cool was curious, that still was a decent while ago though.

Gonna ignore the rest of the stuff though? Like cherry picking the nova profile? Or not actually providing any details to your 4 points? After all these are your points not ours. Just because you say something doesn't mean it's right or the only way to do something.

jade_angel wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
Then propose the details of your solution

Ultimately, the precise details of the solution don't matter. The point stands, however, that if you haven't addressed all of the common points of complaints, then you haven't proposed a viable fix.

1. The riptide's firepower must be diminished.
2. It's durability must be diminished significantly.
3. It must be appropriately priced.
4. It must be a walker.

What do the details of this look like? Ultimately, you can propose whatever you want, just so long as it meets all 4 conditions.

Ok, fair enough. Here's one, aiming for the "close-support suit" concept:
XV104 Riptide - 195ppm
WS1 BS2 S4 AV12/12/10 4HP A1 I1, Jet Pack Walker
Wargear: two twin-linked pulse carbines, blacksun filter, point-defense targeting relay, nova reactor, Riptide shield generator
Special Rules: Move Through Cover, Large Target
Large Target: An XV104 Riptide is a very large target. All close combat attacks against it always hit.
Options: May exchange a twin-linked pulse carbine for:
Fusion blaster: 20 points
Burst cannon: 10 points
Cyclic ion blaster: 20 points
Plasma rifle: 20 points

Riptide Shield Generator: A vehicle with a Riptide Shield Generator has a 6+ cover save.
Nova Reactor: At the beginning of the controlling player's Movement Phase, a model equipped with a nova reactor may roll a D6. On a result of 1-3, the model loses a hull point and suffers a Weapon Destroyed result. On a roll of 4-6, the model may select exactly one of the following benefits until the beginning of its next Movement Phase.
1) Weapons: all of the model's weapons extend their range by 6".
2) Jets: When making a thrust move, the model rolls 4d6 instead of 2d6.
3) Escape: The model gains the Hit & Run special rule.

That seems incredibly weak honestly, even with the cyclic blaster. And why is it BS2? It's still Tau, unless you're making it a drone unit. Either way it's not an auto take. In fact, it's a never take considering the ghostkeel can bring more firepower for way less. (130pt with a cyclic instead of 215), and has way more durability (AV12 wHP3 with a 6+ COVER save is basically worthless)

 Traditio wrote:

krodarklorr wrote:If you want some durability, hell make it 13/13/11 or something.

This would still be a grossly unacceptable "fix." 13 front and side armor would give it durability comparable to IKs. Combined with the invuln and range, this would still result in a virtually immortal model. That's unacceptable.

Virtually immortal? Drop pod meltas, grav, Gauss, Scarabs, Lances, Vehicle damage chart. I fail to see how that's immortal. Is my Triarch Stalker sitting in a ruin Immortal as well? If so, I guess I missed something.

krodarklorr wrote:Virtually immortal?

Front AV 13 means that missile launchers glance it on 5s and lascannons glance it on 4s. It would also make them immune to krak grenades.

If they can reach it. The gun has a 72 inch range.

jade_angel wrote:
IMHO, walkers bite badly. There are only a few interesting walkers as a result. Buff walkers, and then we can talk about making Riptides, Ghostkeels, Wraithlords, etc into walkers.

In the interim I suggest making the Riptide and Ghostkeel into Infantry and the Stormsurge into an MC (instead of a GC).

Ultimately, I think vehicles with AV should go away, and all models should be handled with a durability/Toughness score, armor save and Wounds/Hull Points, with some kind of special rule to differentiate between biological and mechanical things. (Yes, that might mean that things like Crisis Suits and Necron infantry would get the 'mechanical' tag.)

I agree with you completely on this. I understand the vehicle mechanics was to make things more "realistic" and to make vehicles killable, but ultimately they failed. Yes, they are killable, but they are far too easy to kill. The vehicle chart doesn't work very well or add any realism either. Which is a joke reason to keep the rules as are. When things come down to it, this is a game and you will never be able to simulate the fluff or get realism into things. You can however get the feel of things, and come as close to the fluff as is REASONABLY possible. Marines obviously shouldn't be able to kill armies single handedly as they seem to do in the books ect for instance. And things like game balance should be taken into account (both internal and external) when adding fluffy elements. You can't recreate the fluff exactly, but you can recreate the FEEL of the individual fluff. At least that is my take on things.

IKs are a joke compared to Riptides and even more so compared to WK. Vehicles in general are a joke. I can't offhand think of a single vehicle at the moment (excluding drop pods with current draft faqs in which case they should probably cost double for all they do) that couldn't lose about 25% or more of it's point cost, and be considered too cheap or overpowered. At least not in the Imperium codicies.

 Traditio wrote:

krodarklorr wrote:Virtually immortal?

Front AV 13 means that missile launchers glance it on 5s and lascannons glance it on 4s. It would also make them immune to krak grenades.

If they can reach it. The gun has a 72 inch range.

aaaand we're back to "if my premade marine army can't kill/MLs can't wreck in one turn/Lascannons can't auto pen/glance it, it's still too strong."

My hammerheads have AV13, and yet, they seem to die fairly easy.

 Traditio wrote:

krodarklorr wrote:Virtually immortal?

Front AV 13 means that missile launchers glance it on 5s and lascannons glance it on 4s. It would also make them immune to krak grenades.

If they can reach it. The gun has a 72 inch range.

Yes, but a Lascannon can one shot it. It can also make it snapfire that large blast, oh wait, it wouldn't be able to fire it at all. And what would a missile launcher do to it as it currently stands? Wound a 2+, but has to get through a 2+ armor and FNP. Seems like reliable damage to me! Also, as a 2+ armor MC it's virtually immune to small arms fire anyway, except now my gauss would eat it alive. It's also currently immune to Krak grenades, especially with the nerf to them in the FAQ.

This is all assuming that anyone would use Krak missiles or Lascannons, because most people just bring melta and grav. (Which would kill it even easier, methinks)

 Traditio wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
Then propose the details of your solution

Ultimately, the precise details of the solution don't matter. The point stands, however, that if you haven't addressed all of the common points of complaints, then you haven't proposed a viable fix.

1. The riptide's firepower must be diminished.
2. It's durability must be diminished significantly.
3. It must be appropriately priced.
4. It must be a walker.

If you do 1 & 2, #3 takes care of itself. Why over-nerf one of the THE centerpiece units of the Tau? #4 isn't going to happen, like ever.

--

Wolfblade wrote:Gonna ignore the rest of the stuff though? Like cherry picking the nova profile?

It has an S9, AP 2 barrage large blast. It also has an S8, AP 2 large blast. It has multiple modes of fire.

Or not actually providing any details to your 4 points? After all these are your points not ours.

They're not just my points. Again, they are completely commonplace criticisms of the riptide. If I started 4 polls, excluded Tau and Eldar player opinions, and asked the questions:

"Should the riptide be a walker?"
"Is the riptide undercosted?"
"Does the riptide have too much fire power?"
"Is the riptide just too durable?"

I can pretty much gaurantee you that at least 40 percent of poll respondents would agree with me on every point.

Either way it's not an auto take.

If it's an optional unit and auto-take, then it is almost certainly OP.

Every unit in every book, with the exception of core troop choices, should be "take it or leave it depending upon your personal preferences."

considering the ghostkeel

Is the ghostkeel balanced?

If the ghostkeel is cheese, then saying that the "fixed" riptide is inferior to it doesn't really say much.

Well, what do you think of it?

I think it's fairly balanced. If you try to kill it by raining long-range, high-S, low-AP weapons on it, it lives forever. If you get close and barrage it with tons of light weapons, it dies like a minimum squad of Plague Marines (so, takes a little doing - a squad of tac marines probably won't kill it in a single shooting phase, but the several squads in range probably will...)

It's got good firepower, but it's not point-click-and-squish.

For the nth time Traditio, the Nove profile isn't Barrage.

Also Auto-take doesn't necessarily mean OP. Unless you're going to suggest Chaos Spawn are OP.

jade_angel wrote:
Well, what do you think of it?

I think that there's any number of ways that the riptide could be fixed. Ultimately, my participation in this thread, at this point, is primarily negative.

Unless your "fix" meets these 4 criteria, it's a non-starter. Ultimately, how you meet those 4 criteria doesn't really matter a whole lot to me.

But you must meet those 4 criteria, and then, when you do, you must ask the question:

"Is this unit an auto-take, as it stands?" If the answer is "yes," then what you've come up with is unacceptable. However you "fix" it, it has to meet those 4 criteria and then end up as a "take it or leave it,depending upon your personal preferences" kind of unit. It's power level should be no better or worse than "ok for its points cost."

If you meet all of those criteria, then regardless of what it looks like, I'm pretty much fine with it.

If it doesn't, then I don't want to play against it. I'll continue to make it my policy to refuse to play against Tau players who field riptides in their army.

Ultimately, though, what you should end up with is a walker that's about as good as any other walker.

 Traditio wrote:

Ultimately, though, what you should end up with is a walker that's about as good as any other walker.

In an edition where walkers are largely rubbish, that's not a good baseline.


What it should be, ideally, is a unit (of whatever kind) that is about as good an option good as any other unit. It doesn't have to be as good as a walker, because it's not a walker, and it doesn't have to be as good as some other army's walker, because it's a different army.


But, frankly, I think trying to de-OP this one unit is like nailing jelly to a tree. In this edition, just about every army has access to overpowered silliness in one way or another. Depowering one option from the Tau list does nothing more in that sort of environment than remove one way for Tau to compete with those other armies' overpowered silliness.

Most of the time, issues with 'overpowered' ranged units can be resolved simply by putting more LOS-blocking terrain on the table. From my experience, most tables have far too little terrain, and that's where the bulk of the complaints about overly-shooty armies come from.

In this specific case, more of the complaints would, I think, be resolved not be nerfing specific MCs, but simply by fixing walkers.

Great. I'll never play you. I'll make sure I scratch that of my bucket list.

 Traditio wrote:

Happyjew wrote:Why remove the opinion of Eldar players?

Because they have the same bias towards the question as Tau players do. Of course an Eldar player is never going to want a riptide or a storm surge to turn into a walker. The day that happens is the same day that wraithlords and wraithknights turn into walkers.

Then we must remove your opinion.

So how do you recommend Crisis suits become Walkers?
This is a genuine question I'd be interested in, given the premise that Riptides are just an evolution of a Crisis suit (which is why they are not vehicles in the first place).
I can only accept the assumption that Riptides "should" be Walkers if Crisis Suits, Broadsides, Stealth suits, etc are Walkers as well.

Would a Crisis Suit be AV10 all around, 2 HPs? Or would you make something GW has never done and go below AV10, like AV9, or AV8?

As different and interesting as that would be, I think if we are redesigning a how bunch of units, it might be easier just to reclassify Walkers as non-vehicles with their own special rules. Imagine a unit type with a AV and an Armour save, with Wounds instead of HPs, yet it also rolls on a "damage chart" and could potentially lose weapons or become immobile.
Let's blur the line between MCs and Vehicles to create new rules for "Walkers". Then we can make the Riptide a Walker, and make Dreadnaughts better at the same time.

--

Why do that, as opposed to just making walkers MCs?

 Traditio wrote:

Unless your "fix" meets these 4 criteria, it's a non-starter. Ultimately, how you meet those 4 criteria doesn't really matter a whole lot to me.

But you must meet those 4 criteria, and then, when you do, you must ask the question:

No, it doesn't.

There is nothing stating it MUST meet those criteria. It only needs be balanced. How that is achieved is up to the person proposing it. You are not the authority on the specifics of how it gets balanced.

 insaniak wrote:
Why do that, as opposed to just making walkers MCs?

In a round-about way, that is what I'm getting at

 Traditio wrote:
I can pretty much gaurantee you that at least 40 percent of poll respondents would agree with me on every point.

That's sure setting the bar pretty low, isn't it?

 Traditio wrote:

Or not actually providing any details to your 4 points? After all these are your points not ours.

They're not just my points. Again, they are completely commonplace criticisms of the riptide. If I started 4 polls, excluded Tau and Eldar player opinions, and asked the questions:

"Should the riptide be a walker?"
"Is the riptide undercosted?"
"Does the riptide have too much fire power?"
"Is the riptide just too durable?"

I can pretty much gaurantee you that at least 40 percent of poll respondents would agree with me on every point.

No one cares about your polls, especially since you literally just ignore the results every time and use whatever you can to twist it into claiming your side won. Every. Single. Time. And you STILL have yet to provide ONE actual solution (i.e. raise X by Y points). You keep parroting these points without actually providing anything other than your own personal wishlist.

Also, like Peregrine said, only 40%? That leaves 60% on the other side. That's a pretty big difference. (50% more people voting against you than for you)

 Traditio wrote:

Wolfblade wrote:Gonna ignore the rest of the stuff though? Like cherry picking the nova profile?

It has an S9, AP 2 barrage large blast. It also has an S8, AP 2 large blast. It has multiple modes of fire.

It's not a barrage blast, and it's never used anyways. You simply picked the strongest profile to make it look stronger.

Either way it's not an auto take.

If it's an optional unit and auto-take, then it is almost certainly OP.

Every unit in every book, with the exception of core troop choices, should be "take it or leave it depending upon your personal preferences."

Ghostkeel is pretty annoying though...

It's annoying, but it's no stormsurge, especially since it has to be very close for it to deal any damage.