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Eh, I wouldn't go that far. In the lore, Space Marines are actually a pretty minor part of the Imperium's defense. An important minor part to be sure, but still but a tiny fraction of the Imperium's military might.

 Melissia wrote:
Eh, I wouldn't go that far. In the lore, Space Marines are actually a pretty minor part of the Imperium's defense. An important minor part to be sure, but still but a tiny fraction of the Imperium's military might.

I wasn't speaking in terms of their firepower or numbers.

The role they serve is crucial. They crack open the enemy's defenses, then the IG flood in and burst it wide. They do the surgical strikes on critical targets.

They don't kill as much as others do, but they hit the tough targets that need to be taken out to weaken the enemy overall for the IG to smash to bits.

They're a small, elite force, but the role they serve is crucial.

Traditio, it's not always new models that get the crazy buffs. See: Wave Serpent in 6th ed. It's just GW flailing around.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Eh, I wouldn't go that far. In the lore, Space Marines are actually a pretty minor part of the Imperium's defense. An important minor part to be sure, but still but a tiny fraction of the Imperium's military might.

I wasn't speaking in terms of their firepower or numbers.

The role they serve is crucial. They crack open the enemy's defenses, then the IG flood in and burst it wide. They do the surgical strikes on critical targets.

They don't kill as much as others do, but they hit the tough targets that need to be taken out to weaken the enemy overall for the IG to smash to bits.

They're a small, elite force, but the role they serve is crucial.

Their role can't be crucial because there aren't enough of them to matter. An entire chapter would be wiped out by Tau or Eldar in an afternoon's fight. 1000 per chapter is far too small to accomplish anything of value on a strategic scale. Marines aren't even that good vs tough targets. Tough targets have a tendency to ignore that power armor. The entire Eldar race ignores it 16% of the time.

Martel732 wrote:
Their role can't be crucial because there aren't enough of them to matter. An entire chapter would be wiped out by Tau or Eldar in an afternoon's fight. 1000 per chapter is far too small to accomplish anything of value on a strategic scale. Marines aren't even that good vs tough targets. Tough targets have a tendency to ignore that power armor. The entire Eldar race ignores it 16% of the time.

...You do understand the difference between gameplay and lore, right?

Even in lore, Eldar weapons are hyper lethal and the Tau suits would melt marines wholesale. Remember that they have lorek, too. Besides, if you go full movie marine, they pass the Ogre limit are all all dead in a year by necessity.

The number that GW has assigned to the marine chapters is absurd, and no amount of fan boy hand waving changes that. For the BA to pull off ANYTHING in their lore, there would have to be MILLIONS of them.

 Pouncey wrote:
...You do understand the difference between gameplay and lore, right?

The basic principle is still true lore-wise. GW's writers just have no sense of scale, and don't understand how small a force of 1000 soldiers is relative to even modest wars. A chapter needs to be increased in size by several orders of magnitude for space marines to make any sense.

One could build enough Necron warriors from a single world to wipe out all the Astartes combined. That's scaling problems.

Martel732 wrote:
Traditio, it's not always new models that get the crazy buffs. See: Wave Serpent in 6th ed. It's just GW flailing around.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Eh, I wouldn't go that far. In the lore, Space Marines are actually a pretty minor part of the Imperium's defense. An important minor part to be sure, but still but a tiny fraction of the Imperium's military might.

I wasn't speaking in terms of their firepower or numbers.

The role they serve is crucial. They crack open the enemy's defenses, then the IG flood in and burst it wide. They do the surgical strikes on critical targets.

They don't kill as much as others do, but they hit the tough targets that need to be taken out to weaken the enemy overall for the IG to smash to bits.

They're a small, elite force, but the role they serve is crucial.

Their role can't be crucial because there aren't enough of them to matter. An entire chapter would be wiped out by Tau or Eldar in an afternoon's fight. 1000 per chapter is far too small to accomplish anything of value on a strategic scale. Marines aren't even that good vs tough targets. Tough targets have a tendency to ignore that power armor. The entire Eldar race ignores it 16% of the time.

Are we talking on the board or in the fluff? Because on the board you may be right, but in the fluff it's a different story. Just like how, on the board, you don't have literally endless waves of Ork Boyz charging across the board, or how on the board the Swarmlord would get his butt kicked by Calgar and his Honour Guard instead of nomming them all while Calgar escapes.


Anyways, in regards to the original question... (I haven't read the whole thread, so this may have been stated already.)
No, because this is impossible. Maybe if we went back to using the 5th-edition setup of '1 HQ, 2-6 Troops, 0-3 of Everything else' with no detachment bonuses, this could work, but in the current form of the game, there'd be no way to balance it.
For example, lets say that we made a stock Devestator that's part of a CAD equally potent to, say, an Imperial Knight. (Point-for-point, that is.) I dunno how this would be accomplished, but let's assume that someone does it. This is two in-game options that are equally efficient.
Now, let's put that same Devestator in a Skyhammer formation instead. Suddenly, he gets a huge buff, and his point-to-damage ration changes, meaning that he's better than he was, and more points efficient than our poor knight. Right there, you've got in-game options that are necessarily different in points efficiency. (Now, there are still reasons to take a Devestator in a CAD, but the fact remains that they are differently efficient if played in otherwise the same conditions.)

Now, should there be units which are so bad as to be unusable? No! Of course not!

 Peregrine wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
...You do understand the difference between gameplay and lore, right?

The basic principle is still true lore-wise. GW's writers just have no sense of scale, and don't understand how small a force of 1000 soldiers is relative to even modest wars. A chapter needs to be increased in size by several orders of magnitude for space marines to make any sense.

To be fair, no human can really comprehend defending an interstellar Imperium with a million planets in it. We have no reference for it.

My mentioning the gameplay/lore thing was because the person I had replied to was referring to the 1 in 6 chance for a Bladetorm with Shuriken weapons.

I'm gonna get some sleep now. Good night.

" but in the fluff it's a different story."

But it wouldn't be. Because 1000 is a very, very small number.

Martel732 wrote:
" but in the fluff it's a different story."

But it wouldn't be. Because 1000 is a very, very small number.

Imagine, say, 1000 copies of Iron Man showing up at a war on Earth. Say, WWII, because that's an easy example. They'd pretty much own the show. Even if they can't spread their resources across the entire war, wherever they show up is going to be a one-sided slaughter.

Now, I'm not saying that a Space Marine in the Imperium is as powerful compared to the average soldier as a superhero is to your average joe, but my point is that 1000 people can still make a huge difference if each individual person is powerful enough.
(Not to mention, that level of power is packed into a tiny, super-efficient package, and strikes more like a razor blade than a hammer. It cuts tendons and weakens specific points, so the Guard can do the heavy lifting.)

But they're not that powerful. And they don't enjoy an iron man vs WWII earth advantage over any of their foes. Not a single one. They are an absurd concept as stated in the lore. Multiply all the numbers by 5,000 and it starts to make sense.

This goes back to how good tac marines should be. They are utter trash in 7th ed unless they are receiving free transports. Maybe that's by design, maybe it's not. Plan accordingly.

 Traditio wrote:

Pouncey wrote:Tactical Marines are a fairly weak unit by modern standards

Do you think that tactical marines should be weak?

Of course. Troops that are strong against everything make the rest of the codex pointless (see scatter bikes).

Do you think that a basic guy with a rifle should be effective against heavily armed tanks, aircraft, enormous creatures?

They're passable against some theat types depending on the upgrades you select and they are obj sec objective sitters. That's their role and it has always been their role.

40K is a game with a wide range of threat types that require different tools to deal with them. Even if every unit was perfectly costed you can still take a poor combination of units and upgrades such that you will struggle against certain unit types.

Your codex has the tools to deal with anything. The ork codex, for example, does not. That is a problem.

Tradito you don't get it
Some armies should be better at things than others. For example engaging tau in a SHOOTING fight should be a bad idea for any army other than a Tau army

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
Tradito you don't get it
Some armies should be better at things than others. For example engaging tau in a SHOOTING fight should be a bad idea for any army other than a Tau army

That's the problem though. The whole 'Tau are now the shooting army' design philosophy leaves existing shooting based armies (Imperial Guard) laying in the dust storm created by the army of weaboos rushing to buy their gundam-tides. GW has all the subtlety and nuance of a handbag full of bricks.

I was not in any way stating the game should be pay to win, I specifically said that your troop units should not be able to answer every challenge in the table top. I don't give a gack if you bought your 5 man troop unit for $150 dollars, it should still be unable to answer every challenge out there. Your army should have killy-er units, more durable units, faster units, etc. than what your basic troops provide.

I don't expect my elite slot to answer every problem, nor the fast attack and heavy support slots. They should have different roles to play, and you should decide on what you want them to do in the game before you ever put them on the table. You plan, you build a list, you play a game, you adjust the list and strategy until you find one that works for you. That's how the game is played.

If someone comes along with a list that defeats you, change strategies or change lists. Don't cry because you lost. It's insulting.

I like the way my original statement about believing the game should be balanced was completely ignored, pay to win is not balanced. If you want my view on money look back on threads about WYSIWYG, something along the lines of letting people play coke bottles as drop pods as long as they're well painted.
My belief in some units being rubbish comes from a preference to facing new lists rather than the same old things. A unit's validity should change, some editions they're good, some editions they suck, it forces people to make new lists.

Accepting that new stuff is often strong so it sells is not the same as demanding new stuff be expensive and game breaking so my opponents have to pay through the nose to stand a chance against me, especially when my only demand on proxies is that they've at least had some effort put into making them.

MarsNZ wrote:That's the problem though. The whole 'Tau are now the shooting army' design philosophy leaves existing shooting based armies (Imperial Guard) laying in the dust storm created by the army of weaboos rushing to buy their gundam-tides. GW has all the subtlety and nuance of a handbag full of bricks.

Ditto:

Why should either imperial guard or tau have the monopoly on shooting? Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists know a thing or two about shooting also.

SM shooting is only bad if you only bring MLs, flamers and bolters. Imperial shooting is quite good with grav weapons.

 Wolfblade wrote:
SM shooting is only bad if you only bring MLs, flamers and bolters. Imperial shooting is quite good with grav weapons.

Why should I have to take grav weapons?

This thread is full of people telling me that, if there's going to be balance, then specific things should have specific niche purposes. One thing shouldn't be good in every situation.

But grav fits basically that exact description (it's literally good for everything, except for the things that it isn't good against, and the things that carry grav usually have bolters, and that kills the rest...so it's all good).

So you criticize me for thinking that tactical marines should do OK against everything else.

And promptly follow that up by telling me that I should be using grav, because that is, in fact, good against everything, at least, everything when it counts.

So nothing should be one size fits all. Except grav. Which is one size fits all. I should be using that. Because it's one size. But it fits everything.

Fantastic. Very well thought out on your part. Very coherent. #Sarcasm

We're pretending that grav isn't the most expensive option on unit that can take it?

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
We're pretending that grav isn't the most expensive option on unit that can take it?

What's your point?

That if the option is more expensive point ts wise it damn well should be the best option. The only issue I have at all with grav is re-rolling only the fails when using the grav amp. Otherwise it is perfectly fine as is.

Also, I play wolves, orks, corsair eldar, and harlequins. So I get no benefit from stating as such. You want balance of points, but complain when the more expensive options are better.

What exactly are you arguing for?

Alright, let's set some things straight.

1) 40k is poorly balanced. Its a poorly written, poorly designed mess of a game at the moment. People's level of enjoyment with 40k seems to be entirely independent of the quality of the rules due to the momentum of the game, the detailed lore, and all around excellent miniatures in easy to deal with plastic.

I don't believe anyone here is or can argue that 40k isn't anything but a poorly balanced mess, and examples are everywhere.

2) Balance doesn't need to be perfect. If I see one more person make a reference to chess, I might have to do something extreme, like write a sarcastic forum post explaining how moronic the example is. In tabletop wargaming, the balance just needs to be good enough. It will never be perfect because there's simply too many variable, but it can be so good that the ultimate deciding factor is player skill. Without going into all the details, this can be more or less accomplished in 40k by having the right point values assigned to the right units, and in specific cases, some statline or USR changes for formations.

Of course, 40k would benefit from more sweeping changes, like fixing the issues with MCs vs. vehicles, or shooting vs. assault, or any number of problematic areas, but you could make 40k significantly better balanced by simply having the right costs reflecting the unit's power.

3) Every unit has a role to fill. When assigning point costs, or indeed designing the unit, it needs a role to fill in an army list. Something like 'this unit kills tanks'. Great. Now you give it weapons to do the job effectively and give it a point value to reflect how well it does that job. You can have multiple units doing the same role, all doing it in different ways. As an example, see the lascannon vs. the melta gun. In general, these two weapons are a good example of how the same role can be filled by two different weapons and accomplished in two different ways.

When costing a unit, the context needs to be considered. Outside of kill team, you'll never have an army of a single unit, so why consider things in a vacuum? Armies can be geared to do certain things better, and thus will pay less or be more effective at doing those particular things, while units that fill other roles might cost more than would otherwise be found in other armies. As an example, Kroot with Tau. A close combat oriented unit who's primary purpose is to be a cheap and effective tarpit. They do the job well, and pay a small premium in CC ability over other books because Tau are a shooting army to the extreme.

So should all in game options be equally points efficient? No, not worded in that way.

Instead, try this; all in game options should have a role to fill in the army list and costed correctly for how well they perform said role in the context of the army. How you go about doing that is whole different animal and better left to the professionals (or a super dedicated individual/small team with game design experience), but the idea is that you can pluck any unit you want, and then build an army around it to effectively support the units you want to field. You still need to cover your bases, or, if you choose not to, accept that you'll run into hard counters or end up being someone's hard counter. But that's fine. That's what list building is all about. You can either try and bring a small rock, scissor, and paper to the table, and against someone doing the same thing, you'll have a close match. But if you run into a giant rock, you'll have to play your rock and paper elements smart while hiding your scissor elements.

TL;DR Everything should be costed appropriately to their role in the army list (or have their abilities match the point cost, as the case may be).

I voted no.

Not because I think 40K should be unbalanced.

Also not because I like a play-to-win environment.

I voted no because I think a certain degree of list-building competence should be required. If you take an army of all foot infantry with no anti-armor capability, and I take an army of mech infantry, I'm gong to beat you most of the time. You'll have more boots on the ground, but I'll be able to move my forces more rapidly, achieve localized supremacy over chunks of your army, and pick it apart piecemeal. That doesn't make transports overpowered, it just makes me more competent at list building than you are.

For my money, 40K's main problem is that GW has never enforced any list building requirements with any bite. There's a degree of truth to "Tacticals suck" not because they're a bad Troops unit, but because players can get away with spending less than 10% of their points on compulsory Troops, and spend the vast majority of their points on units that are supposed to be scarce support units. Do Tacticals suck compared to most other armies' Elites, Fast Attacks, and Heavy Supports? Yeah they do, but that's not a fair yardstick by any measure. My gaming group has been using a 40% Troops house rule for a couple years now, and that's working fantastically for us - we generally have close games, and everybody's Troops can actively engage in the game, as opposed to just sitting on an objective or two and hoping to not get noticed. It has the added benefit of making lists look like actual military units that are typical of their respective factions.

Eh, I'd be happy if this game leaned more towards rewarding having a large base of "troops" and a sprinkling of specialists for flavor, rather than the reverse. But it is obvious I approach this game with an entirely different mindset than just about everyone else on this board.

As far as unity parity, I'd prefer that two units that cost about 100 points were equally killy (and survivable), but in different ways; for example, tac squads would do their killing between shooting and melee, but bezerkers would primarily get their kills from close combat and tau fire warriors would work best when their opponent is at arms range. But they would "earn their points" if you could use them tactically effectively.

I think you should be rewarded for having more of a TAC list. Where units excel at certain things but can baseline in others.

I feel spam should be punished to an extent, not sure how to do it. But, if someone brings only Scat Spam, there should be a hard counter to it that will give them a disadvantage for only having that one type of unit.

The punishment for scat spam is making the scat bike cost 10-12 more points as it should. Proper costing stops spam. Period.

Yeah, if there was an escalating cost instead of linear cost for bringing non-troop options, that would help against spamming troublesome units (though fixing underpriced/overpriced units would help too). Say, 1 squad of scat bikes was 30, but 2 squads were 75.

As long as you couldn't make the units "troops"...

No. It's better to appropriately cost the individual scatbike than have arcane rules to make spamming more costly.