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

Honestly I found the Stormsurge much less annoying without the invul. Stronger perhaps but less annoying.

Yeah, but that invul is pretty much an auto take. I mean, 50pt for a constant 4++, on a T6 W8 unit. At worst, it doubles its survivability.

 Peregrine wrote:

 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?

I'm claiming that these are the common complaints. "Common" doesn't necessarily mean "majority."

More to the point, you don't decide how to balance something based on a poll, regardless of what arbitrary % you set.

You decide how to balance something based on the problems it presents to the game. The issue with the Riptide is simply that its abilities don't match the points (like literally every problematic unit). The specifics of how to do that are varied and up to whoever proposes a sensible idea.

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

Again, my oft-quoted maxim: "Balance is relative."

Why are walkers rubbish?

Are they rubbish because of the predominance of high strength, low AP anti tank weapons?

No.

They are rubbish because of predominance of cheese, e.g., the predominance of high rate of fire, mid strength weapons.

Walkers suck because scatter bikes exist. Walkers suck because wraithknights exist. Walkers suck because storm surges exist. Walkers suck teleporting grav centurions exist.

If you take away the cheese, walkers are fine and open up perfectly legitimate tactical options. A shooty dreadnought would give you greater durability than a devastator marine, but more accurate firepower while moving than a predator, as also greater durability against close combat than a predator.

What it should be, ideally, is a unit (of whatever kind) that is about as good an option good as any other unit.

Yes.

It doesn't have to be as good as a walker, because it's not a walker

Petitio principii.

and it doesn't have to be as good as some other army's walker, because it's a different army.

So what? What is your point?

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.

Or maybe no codex should have overpowered silliness.

And granted that every codex has overpowered silliness, perhaps we could all avoid the problems associated with the spam of overpowered silliness by simply not using those things.

Thus, to JA:

You know what's easier than toning down your riptide? Don't use your riptide. Field more crisis suits instead. Or anything else. Just no riptides, stormsurges or other 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.

That doesn't make the riptide any less durable or capable of firing high strength, low AP barrage pie plates.


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 Blacksails wrote:
More to the point, you don't decide how to balance something based on a poll, regardless of what arbitrary % you set.

You decide how to balance something based on the problems it presents to the game.

How are you going to determine what those problems are?

My solution is: Ask the people who play the game, have played against riptides, and see what they think actually are the main problems.

We also must understand that overwhelming agreement tends to be uncommon about things like this, so we have to look at the most common complaints. If we breach 40 percent, then that's a pretty substantial complaint.

The issue with the Riptide is simply that its abilities don't match the points (like literally every problematic unit).

That's often the case. That's not necessarily always the only problem. Invisibility is bull gak at any points level.

S9, AP 2, large blast, barrage at 72 inch range very well might be such bull gak.

 Traditio wrote:
low AP barrage pie plates.

Do you bother reading other peoples' replies? It has been explicitly and clearly stated now several times it is not barrage.

Define the "overpowered silliness" I can't use. Your OP is my normal.

 Blacksails wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
low AP barrage pie plates.

Do you bother reading other peoples' replies? It has been explicitly and clearly stated now several times it is not barrage.

I read them. The 72 inch gun has three different modes of fire. One of them is barrage; the other two aren't.


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pm713 wrote:
Define the "overpowered silliness" I can't use. Your OP is my normal.

Imagine yourself making a poll. If at least 35 percent of poll respondents would complain about it, then it's OP silliness you shouldn't use.

That said, PM, for the life of me, I don't really understand why you disagree with me about these things so often. You play an Eldar army that doesn't use farseers, scatterbikes or wraithknights.

 Traditio wrote:

How are you going to determine what those problems are?

My solution is: Ask the people who play the game, have played against riptides, and see what they think actually are the main problems.

We also must understand that overwhelming agreement tends to be uncommon about things like this, so we have to look at the most common complaints. If we breach 40 percent, then that's a pretty substantial complaint.

I'd determine the problem by simply looking at the unit and its performance on the table. Simple stuff really.

Asking a forum at large that hasn't been selected to test a game/unit and that likely doesn't have much or any experience with game design and balance (or just a poor understanding) will lead to skewed results. There's a reason game developers don't do mass polls to make changes to individual units. They have small teams of testers who provide detailed and in depth analysis and data from dozens of games. The average forum denizen will complain because the model they played against wasn't painted to their liking.

Look at yourself even. You don't even know the rules for this unit or how its typically used. Why would anyone trust a common poll knowing a significant portion of the player base here will also have a flawed understanding of some portion of the unit or the rules it works with.

That's often the case. That's not necessarily always the only problem. Invisibility is bull gak at any points level.

Yes, there are exceptions. Unfun game mechanics being one of those exceptions.

None of the 3 modes are barrage for the billionth time...

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
None of the 3 modes are barrage for the billionth time...

QFT. Seriously Traditio, if you're not even going to bother to read the rules for the unit you're trying to "balance" then why should we listen to your opinions on it?

To modify a Traditio quote;

If you don't know the rules, your opinion doesn't matter.

 Traditio wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
low AP barrage pie plates.

Do you bother reading other peoples' replies? It has been explicitly and clearly stated now several times it is not barrage.

I read them. The 72 inch gun has three different modes of fire. One of them is barrage; the other two aren't.


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pm713 wrote:
Define the "overpowered silliness" I can't use. Your OP is my normal.

Imagine yourself making a poll. If at least 35 percent of poll respondents would complain about it, then it's OP silliness you shouldn't use.

That said, PM, for the life of me, I don't really understand why you disagree with me about these things so often. You play an Eldar army that doesn't use farseers, scatterbikes or wraithknights.

Most of what you say is absolute rubbish. That's why I disagree.

 Traditio wrote:
Imagine yourself making a poll. If at least 35 percent of poll respondents would complain about it, then it's OP silliness you shouldn't use.

And there you go again, setting such a low bar for "victory" that you're almost guaranteed to "win". If you exclude everything that can get 35% on an "overpowered?" poll you don't have much of a game left. 35% is not far off from the level of people who will complain about any unit, whether or not it is actually overpowered. So what you're left with is a squad of basic tactical marines with bolters facing a squad of boyz with their standard weapons, and nothing else is allowed because it's "OP silliness". Maybe you enjoy that game but the rest of us don't.

 Traditio wrote:

Why are walkers rubbish?

Are they rubbish because of the predominance of high strength, low AP anti tank weapons?

No.

They are rubbish because of predominance of cheese, e.g., the predominance of high rate of fire, mid strength weapons.

Uh, no, they're rubbish because they can be killed with a single shot, which was bad enough, and then 6th Ed added in wounds without giving them a corresponding saving throw to balance it out.

Or maybe no codex should have overpowered silliness.

And while that might be nice, it's simply not the game that 40k is currently designed to be.

If you don't want to accept the post-5th ed game, maybe you would be better off sticking with a previous edition, rather than spending your time railing against change.

Quit using your half-baked polls and use math. If you're not using math, your balance arguments are trash.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
None of the 3 modes are barrage for the billionth time...

I have just checked the rule, and you appear to be correct.

For some reason, I could have sworn it had barrage. I distinctly remember playing a game against a tau player and we had a dispute about whether or not his riptide had line of sight. Determining it did not, he rolled the scatter dice and did not subtract BS.

He apparently was playing it wrong.

Consider my comments about the barrage weapon retracted.


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insaniak wrote:Uh, no, they're rubbish because they can be killed with a single shot

Lots of things can be killed with one shot. Why is this inherently a bad thing?

In order to kill a dreadnought with one shot, you have to use either AP 1 or AP 2 weaponry and you have to roll a 5 or better. Even if a dreadnought takes a direct hit from an orbital strike and suffers a penetrating hit, it only has a 1/3 chance of kaboom-ing.

which was bad enough, and then 6th Ed added in wounds without giving them a corresponding saving throw to balance it out.

Again, this is only a problem because of bull gak like scatter lasers, gauss, etc. What you are paying for when you purchase AV is immunity to things like poison, fleshbane and much small arms fire.

A walker is undeniably more durable, against a lot of things, than a comparable power-armored infantry model with a similar number of wounds.

If things like scatter laser spam and flyrants with twin-linked devourers didn't exist, vehicles would be much better off.

And while that might be nice, it's simply not the game that 40k is currently designed to be.

And with that, you do away with the legitimacy of any house rules proposals for the sake of "balance" at all. At that point, this entire thread becomes pointless.

You cannot have your cake and eat it too.


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Martel732 wrote:
Quit using your half-baked polls and use math. If you're not using math, your balance arguments are trash.

I'll leave the math to you, Martel.

So, I raised four points:

1. Riptides are undercosted.
2. Riptides should be walkers.
3. Riptides are too durable.
4. Riptides have too much fire power.

Would you say that mathematics agrees or disagrees with each of these points?

 Traditio wrote:
Lots of things can be killed with one shot. Why is this inherently a bad thing?

Because the whole point of vehicle vs. MC durability, in previous editions, was that vehicles could be killed in one shot but could also survive lots of shots without permanent damage, while MCs would fight at full effectiveness until their last wound was gone but would have a ticking clock of wounds remaining before they were dead. Adding HP to vehicles took away their durability advantage that was supposed to offset the one-shot issue and made them bad MCs.

Peregrine wrote:Because the whole point of vehicle vs. MC durability, in previous editions, was that vehicles could be killed in one shot but could also survive lots of shots without permanent damage, while MCs would fight at full effectiveness until their last wound was gone but would have a ticking clock of wounds remaining before they were dead. Adding HP to vehicles took away their durability advantage that was supposed to offset the one-shot issue and made them bad MCs.

And in 5th edition, vehicles were commonly admitted to be OP because too durable for their points cost. Perhaps hull points were a good thing and vehicles are just fine in terms of durability, and it's MCs that are too durable and should also be similarly nerfed.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
Lots of things can be killed with one shot. Why is this inherently a bad thing?

Because the whole point of vehicle vs. MC durability, in previous editions, was that vehicles could be killed in one shot but could also survive lots of shots without permanent damage, while MCs would fight at full effectiveness until their last wound was gone but would have a ticking clock of wounds remaining before they were dead. Adding HP to vehicles took away their durability advantage that was supposed to offset the one-shot issue and made them bad MCs.

There's also the difference between my 9 point Guardian dying in one shot and my 145 point Dreadnought dying in one shot. One matters and one does not.


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 Traditio wrote:

Peregrine wrote:Because the whole point of vehicle vs. MC durability, in previous editions, was that vehicles could be killed in one shot but could also survive lots of shots without permanent damage, while MCs would fight at full effectiveness until their last wound was gone but would have a ticking clock of wounds remaining before they were dead. Adding HP to vehicles took away their durability advantage that was supposed to offset the one-shot issue and made them bad MCs.

And in 5th edition, vehicles were commonly admitted to be OP because too durable for their points cost. Perhaps hull points were a good thing and vehicles are just fine in terms of durability, and it's MCs that are too durable and should also be similarly nerfed.

Hull points are a good idea done badly.

pm713 wrote:There's also the difference between my 9 point Guardian dying in one shot and my 145 point Dreadnought dying in one shot. One matters and one does not.

It's a difference in kind, though. I can one shot your guardian with a single boltgun round. A dreadnought can take an infinite number of boltgun rounds to the face and still not go down.

To one shot a dreadnought, you have to use very specific kinds of weapons.

I mean, sure, you technically can kill a dreadnought with S4 weapons...if you somehow manage to be shooting against its rear armor facing (or if you are playing Necrons, because why the feth not, right?).

But there's simply no question that the 100 point dreadnought is way more durable than your 9 point guardian.

Sure, it's not immortal. Far from it. And I'm fine with that.

 Traditio wrote:

pm713 wrote:There's also the difference between my 9 point Guardian dying in one shot and my 145 point Dreadnought dying in one shot. One matters and one does not.

It's a difference in kind, though. I can one shot your guardian with a single boltgun round. A dreadnought can take an infinite number of boltgun rounds to the face and still not go down.

To one shot a dreadnought, you have to use very specific kinds of weapons.

I mean, sure, you technically can kill a dreadnought with S4 weapons...if you somehow manage to be shooting against its rear armor facing (or if you are playing Necrons, because why the feth not, right?).

But there's simply no question that the 100 point dreadnought is way more durable than your 9 point guardian.

Sure, it's not immortal. Far from it. And I'm fine with that.

It's also too easy to kill considering how fast some things are and the rear armour is terrible.

I like how the Space Marine player complains about Gauss.

pm713 wrote:It's also too easy to kill considering how fast some things are and the rear armour is terrible.

Again, this goes back to my previous point about balance being relative. Yes, given the fact that scatter bikes exist, dreadnoughts can't compete.

But if we remove the cheese from the game, dreadnoughts are fine.

Sure, they still have a rear AV of 10 and it's possible to outmaneuver them, say, with a bike or something.

But that's something that provides occasions for good in-game tactical decisions. You have a dreadnought and your opponent is fielding meltagun bikes? Then play accordingly.

[In fact, I have a suspicion that this is why "competitive" players insist on spamming win buttons. They don't want to actually have to (possibly because they can't) use good tactics. They want their armies to win their games for them instead of having to make good in-game decisions.]

I like how the Space Marine player complains about Gauss.

If you're alluding to grav, I think that grav is also pure silliness that shouldn't exist in the game.

 Traditio wrote:

pm713 wrote:It's also too easy to kill considering how fast some things are and the rear armour is terrible.

Again, this goes back to my previous point about balance being relative. Yes, given the fact that scatter bikes exist, dreadnoughts can't compete.

But if we remove the cheese from the game, dreadnoughts are fine.

Sure, they still have a rear AV of 10 and it's possible to outmaneuver them, say, with a bike or something.

But that's something that provides occasions for good in-game tactical decisions. You have a dreadnought and your opponent is fielding meltagun bikes? Then play accordingly.

I like how the Space Marine player complains about Gauss.

If you're alluding to grav, I think that grav is also pure silliness that shouldn't exist in the game.

I meant pretty much anything that's a Bike, Deepstriking, Jump Infantry or just has long range but okay then. I guess all those things are cheese.

No I meant how Space Marines get to ignore a key part of the Assault Phase and Morale for no reason. Grav is dumb too though.

As for your theory about competitive players I can tell you right now that cheese won't make up for how bad they are if they can't/won't use any tactic.

pm713 wrote:I meant pretty much anything that's a Bike, Deepstriking, Jump Infantry or just has long range but okay then.

Again, yes, walkers aren't immortal. They will go down, even against a balanced army list, if you make bad in game decisions.

But again, so what?

Your opponent is using bikes? Then position your stuff accordingly.

Your opponent is deep-striking? Then position your stuff accordingly.

Your opponent has jump troops? Position your stuff accordingly.

Your opponent has lascannons? Then position your stuff...

If my lascannons and missile launchers all have line of sight to your dreadnought, then that's your fault. You need to learn how to use the terrain to your advantage.

 Traditio wrote:

pm713 wrote:I meant pretty much anything that's a Bike, Deepstriking, Jump Infantry or just has long range but okay then.

Again, yes, walkers aren't immortal. They will go down, even against a balanced army list, if you make bad in game decisions.

But again, so what?

Your opponent is using bikes? Then position your stuff accordingly.

Your opponent is deep-striking? Then position your stuff accordingly.

Your opponent has jump troops? Position your stuff accordingly.

Your opponent has lascannons? Then position your stuff...

If my lascannons and missile launchers all have line of sight to your dreadnought, then that's your fault. You need to learn how to use the terrain to your advantage.

Ah L2P lovely.

Right I'll just position the terrain that I don't have that way then. You realise not everyone has all this LOS blocking terrain to hand? Setting that up will cut the game in half where I am.

pm713 wrote:Ah L2P lovely.

Right I'll just position the terrain that I don't have that way then. You realise not everyone has all this LOS blocking terrain to hand? Setting that up will cut the game in half where I am.

Get some red solo cups. Less than 5 USD and you'll have all the LOS blocking terrain you'll need.

 Traditio wrote:

pm713 wrote:Ah L2P lovely.

Right I'll just position the terrain that I don't have that way then. You realise not everyone has all this LOS blocking terrain to hand? Setting that up will cut the game in half where I am.

Get some red solo cups. Less than 5 USD and you'll have all the LOS blocking terrain you'll need.

Also probably not allowed in the store. Plus I'm not bringing those due to the fact I'm not completely changing how I transport things for cups.

No, Dreadnoughts are not fine even if you remove Scatterbikes. They are easily shut down by common anti-tank weapons if not killed outright from the front. Dreadnoughts can be stun-locked into making both their CCWs and guns completely worthless. Not to mention that they only can take three hits before being destroyed. What MC costs as much, only has 3 wounds and no saves at all.

And it's also incredibly easy to get rear shots on them since they are such slow walkers. 6" movements and you go forgo shooting for D6" additional movement? Whoopee.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
No, Dreadnoughts are not fine even if you remove Scatterbikes. They are easily shut down by common anti-tank weapons

Why is this a bad thing? Dreadnoughts are vehicles. They are supposed to be shut down by anti-tank weapons.

Dreadnoughts can be stun-locked into making both their CCWs and guns completely worthless.

You have to get a result of exactly 4 to get that to happen. No more, no less.

Not to mention that they only can take three hits before being destroyed. What MC costs as much, only has 3 wounds and no saves at all.

Again, why is this evidence that there's something wrong with walkers? Again, isn't it perhaps the case that MCs in general need to be nerfed because too durable?

And it's also incredibly easy to get rear shots on them since they are such slow walkers.

What can you think of besides deep-strikers, fast vehicles and bikes that can reliably get rear AV on a walker, assuming the person controlling that walker is even halfway decent?