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"You're both right"

I'm using the word fallacy to mean #1. Thats the only position I have in this whole ridiculous side thread spawned by a very corrosive and inflammatory comment about me using a word incorrectly and how I shouldn't use a word that I don't "understand".

So no in that context he's most definitely not right.

He's discussing logical fallacies, which are a type of fallacy that yes indeed are underneath the definition of "fallacy". I never claimed that logical fallacies aren't a "fallacy", nor am I arguing that they are not.

Bharring wrote:
You wouldn't allow that rule.

But we have those rules, in effect. Most HQs buff guys around them - the guys they buff are worth more wtih them than without.

Tac Marines can be worthwhile with Bobby G, it seems, but aren't without him (or so the current thought goes)?

Reapers with Ynnari are clearly worht more than 30ppm, but without Ynnari are they still worth as much?

You can say you wouldn't let those rules into the game, but aren't they already here?

That shows an issue with the broken unit, which is Roboute. Why should the Tactical Marines be priced according to him, rather than fixing the pricing of Roboute?

The trick with balancing something like Rowboat is that his cost exponentially gets better the more crap he's buffing.

If he's only buffing say one unit... thats worth X, whereas if he is buffing eight units, that would be worth a value much greater than X.

Bobby G needs a re write as GW missed the mark so badly with his design. He shouldn't be a massive points sink that is only cost effective buffing an entire field of razorbacks or fireraptors.
Matched play has a rule of steategic disipline.
Strategic Genius could have so obviously allowed you to reuse one strategum per phase. He has a cool special rule and doesn't need a points costed thats scaled to balance a skew list.

There is a rumour GW will be limiting everything but troop choice to a max of 3 for everyone. Which I don't believe because it's bafflingly stupid and would make 40% of peoples armies illegal.

The values of auras can still be quantified so long as they are quantified compared to other auras.

Something like:

Aura effectiveness + aura size x number of units likely to be effected at a time or in an average game.

Then just make sure that all auras follow a similar sort of equation.

Obviously you then have to build your army intelligently, taking into account how many units you are expected to be buffing for that unit to get it's points back.

If Bobby G isn't balanced point-wise right now (probably something that is debatable), there is presumably a points value where he would be.

However, balance is about a lot more than just points values. Sometimes a unit is just poorly designed. I think that Bobby G is an example of this, because his buffs are so good that he sort of forces you to clump your army up around him, and he costs so much that if you don't spend your remaining points on the most efficient fire-base you can, you lack the durability to maintain a drawn out game. It seems like GW probably overlooked the fact that people would just cluster everything around him, and that's why they had to up his points.

A captain's aura is much more reasonable, as although you do want to get re-rolls of 1 to hit, they aren't so amazing you can't move out of it if you have to, and captains are cheap enough that you could use more than one and spread out the buffs. They also fill a decent roll of being a counter charge unit, and fill up a required HQ slot.

To make Roboute balanced, perhaps he should only give rerolls to hit and wounds of 1. Perhaps his points would need to drop some to make up for this, but then he would then fill the role of both a captain and a Lt without completely eclipsing the need for them, and have more of the focus be on how much of a monster he is in close combat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lolman1c wrote:
There is a rumour GW will be limiting everything but troop choice to a max of 3 for everyone. Which I don't believe because it's bafflingly stupid and would make 40% of peoples armies illegal.

+

It might make a current list or two illegal, but that's about it.

Generally I would argue it's not "fun" for me or my opponent if I have 6 of the same unit, with a few possible exceptions (bike or termy armies, perhaps? But even those, fluffy as they are, can make for somewhat boring point and click games).And i do think it is important that both I and my opponent have fuin while trying to win as competitively as possible.

Most of the time I find myself forced to take 3+ of a thing due to it being so good (which i like, since it's fun when units are good) that everything else is bad (which is annoying).

I obviously think points need to play a role in the balance process as well, but I think even if the points levels were perfect, there would still be one unit that would be the best a specific job and role, and the value of redundancy isn't ever going to just go away. If i could only take 3 of the best thing and then had to consider something else from the codex tool kit, that at least would be some variety.

No, you miss understood me. It would mean you can only have 3 max of a type of unit not a model. So you can only have a max 3 elites, heavy support, ect... Regardless of the models or units. So if I brought terminators, an apothecary znd a dreadnought I could no longer legally bring any more elites no matter what type of detachment I have or how many detachments I have. This is just a rumour though.

So for me who plays mech Orks. I could only bring killa kans, deff dread and a Morkanaut. I wouldn't be allowed to take any more heavy support which would render most my models useless.

 lolman1c wrote:
No, you miss understood me. It would mean you can only have 3 max of a type of unit not a model. So you can only have a max 3 elites, heavy support, ect... Regardless of the models or units. So if I brought terminators, an apothecary znd a dreadnought I could no longer legally bring any more elites no matter what type of detachment I have or how many detachments I have. This is just a rumour though.

So for me who plays mech Orks. I could only bring killa kans, deff dread and a Morkanaut. I wouldn't be allowed to take any more heavy support which would render most my models useless.

That's ridiculous. It would mean that...no, I'm not even going to bother to explain it. It's just ridiculous.

 lolman1c wrote:
No, you miss understood me. It would mean you can only have 3 max of a type of unit not a model. So you can only have a max 3 elites, heavy support, ect... Regardless of the models or units. So if I brought terminators, an apothecary znd a dreadnought I could no longer legally bring any more elites no matter what type of detachment I have or how many detachments I have. This is just a rumour though.

So for me who plays mech Orks. I could only bring killa kans, deff dread and a Morkanaut. I wouldn't be allowed to take any more heavy support which would render most my models useless.

It seems like you might be a bit late to the party, unless that is a brand new rumor, as the previous one was 1-3 per unit from like 2 days ago.

That being said, that is how it was in 5th and that seemed fine to me. I doubt they would do it now, though, as it would be quite a shock to the current state of the hobby.

KinGensai wrote:

A mistaken belief is a misconception. From what I have learned in philosophy, the term fallacy is always used to describe errors in logic that deconstruct the argument, and from what I have read and in common discourse I have never heard the term fallacy used specifically because the word misconception exists to describe that condition with precision. These two states of error are very distinct because one is a structural error and another is simply an error in fact recollection.

You’re making what could be said to be a classical mistake of the higher-educated: that how you have been taught something is defined is the only way it can be defined, and that you speak with authority due to your higher education.

I’ll use an example from my own field (engineering). Take two bars, one made of steel and another of some ceramic. You hit both bars with a hammer. The steel bar is slightly dented/bent, but not by much. The ceramic one is unblemished. You hit them again, this time 0.1% harder than you did the first time. The steel bar is very slightly more dented/bent. The ceramic one has shattered completely.

From the way I have been educated, I would tell you that the ceramic bar is stronger. Most people would look at the slightly bent steel bar and the scattered shards of the ceramic one and tell me I’m a moron. I would then tell them that no, the steel bar yielded first, so it is by definition less strong. The steel might be tougher than the ceramic, but by definition the ceramic bar is the stronger of the two. At which point they would then pick up the steel bar and bash me over the head with it.

Your strict definition makes you correct inside the defined box of your field, but it doesn’t mean the layman’s more practical use of the term isn’t more correct when applied outside of your little box.

No true 40k fan would continue talking about fallacies in this thread...

Hmm. What if turn 1 Deepstrikes and the like all required a CP?

It wouldn't shut down Alpha Strikes, but would make them a bit more costly to pull.

What if they made it so that, if a unit was taken more than x amount of times, the next ones go up in point cost? If you imagine spamming a unit as more powerful than only having a few, would a higher cost for spamming that unit reapply balance? Like saying they're worth more points taken in large numbers.

(Sorry if someone has already mentioned this)

Tiberius501 your idea is similar to the ‘sliding scale’ mentioned on a previous page. It’s a good idea, but I see some notable flaws.

The first is that every point value would have to become a table of values. Not an issue for me, I read tables for work, but it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. To do that you’d have to do a wholesale rework of all points in one go. That such a massive undertaking you might as well make a new edition at the same time. A good way of handling that might be to leave points of Codexes and just leave Power Level in there, then release a quarterly ‘points booklet’ and patch for the list building app, but that’s another discussion.

The bigger issue is scalability. Taking 7 Flyrants in 2000pts is abusive. Taking 7 Flyrants in a 15000pt Apocalypse list is not. (Please don’t tell me to use Power Level for Apocalypse - like many people I prefer points regardless of game size.) So in a big game I’m paying a ‘Spam Tax’ simply because multiples of the same unit make sense in a game that big.

Why is that a problem? Surely every unit in every army will have the same tax, so you all scale up together and everybody’s happy. The issue then is that different Codexes have different numbers of units. Above say 5000pts an AdMech player is going to be getting into their 3rd and 4th multiple of each unit and paying the ‘Spam Tax’ on all of them, whereas a Marines player can probably do it without duplicating a single unit and hence isn’t paying the Spam Tax - so the get a big advantage.

I’m not saying it’s an unworkable solution, but there are issues that need addressing.

An alternative I like is the limit to 3 of each non-Troop unit as the rumour suggests, but instead of a flat 3 scale it with game size. So at 1000pts you can have 2 of each, 2000pts you can have 3 of each, 3000pts you can have 4 of each etc.

 lolman1c wrote:
There is a rumour GW will be limiting everything but troop choice to a max of 3 for everyone. Which I don't believe because it's bafflingly stupid and would make 40% of peoples armies illegal.

Like the old standard FOC chart was in 3rd - 6th (?) editions? I'm not opposed to this.

Panzergraf wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:
There is a rumour GW will be limiting everything but troop choice to a max of 3 for everyone. Which I don't believe because it's bafflingly stupid and would make 40% of peoples armies illegal.

Like the old standard FOC chart was in 3rd - 6th (?) editions? I'm not opposed to this.

I am. It was terrible in the old editions and shoving it into an edition that wasn't designed to work that way will make about half the armies in the game immediately unplayable.

You don't like Eldar, Nids, Guard, and Chaos dominating the top spots at tournaments? Whoooo boy, wait 'till that change goes through! It is the ULTIMATE 'rich get richer' scenario. You think 6 hive tyrants is bad when you have 6 of your best units to counter it? Wait until he has 3 Hive tyrants and 3 of a unit that's like...5-10% worse than a hive tyrant and now you've got to deal with 3 of your best unit(which already wasn't as good as a hive tyrant) and 3 units 20% worse than that!

If you play codex marines, dark angels, sisters of battle, grey knights, orkz, deathguard, Thousand sons, custodes, space wolves, or deathwatch; get ready to lose EVEN HARDER except now you're forced to soup your list just to have a complete army.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Hmm. What if turn 1 Deepstrikes and the like all required a CP?

It wouldn't shut down Alpha Strikes, but would make them a bit more costly to pull.

Or simply limit them to certain armies, like blood angels and grey knights that have always had deepstrike-heavy armies in their fluff. However, those changes do nothing for shooting-based alpha strikes, which are worse and more prevalent.

That is probably the correct thing to do. Limit soup than fix individual codices.

25% of your army can be allied detachments. There, job done.

Banville wrote:
25% of your army can be allied detachments. There, job done.

That's about 200pts more than I need to get infinite CP.

Martel732 wrote:
I can spam anything i want in starcraft. Way more balanced than 40k. It's the points values. Period.

Starcraft is a game with hard counters. It handles imbalance a lot better than a game of soft counters like Warhammer.
To elaborate, its somewhat inconsequential if Roaches or other things that can't shoot up are 10% undercosted if I've built an army of Liberators or Battle Cruisers to fight them.
The same applies to swarms of infantry vs. AOE units as an example of a fight where both sides might damage the other.

Comparitively, if Dark Reapers are off by 10-15%, its a lot harder to come up with a counter composition that makes up for the gap in efficiency.

This is why Starcraft is built upon multi-unit composition like Marine Tank, Roach Bane Muta and so on.
Also because there's two resources.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
What if they made it so that, if a unit was taken more than x amount of times, the next ones go up in point cost? If you imagine spamming a unit as more powerful than only having a few, would a higher cost for spamming that unit reapply balance? Like saying they're worth more points taken in large numbers.

(Sorry if someone has already mentioned this)

Whilst not a bad idea, this doesn't accomplish anything too different from the 0-3 limit aside from punishing the lower end of spam more and not having a hard cap against the upper end.
With, say, a 10 point increase per unit taken after the first, units that are close to being balanced quickly become untenable after the second, whilst units that are severely undercosted can still grab four or five before they start paying the proper amount of points for things.

kombatwombat wrote:
An alternative I like is the limit to 3 of each non-Troop unit as the rumour suggests, but instead of a flat 3 scale it with game size. So at 1000pts you can have 2 of each, 2000pts you can have 3 of each, 3000pts you can have 4 of each etc.

The idea of the hard limit scaling with game size is a good one.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:
You wouldn't allow that rule.

But we have those rules, in effect. Most HQs buff guys around them - the guys they buff are worth more wtih them than without.

Tac Marines can be worthwhile with Bobby G, it seems, but aren't without him (or so the current thought goes)?

Reapers with Ynnari are clearly worht more than 30ppm, but without Ynnari are they still worth as much?

You can say you wouldn't let those rules into the game, but aren't they already here?

I agree that auras are problematic from a balance prospective. I for one would be happy to see auras go and turn into target activated abilities that could only affect X numbers of units.
Like a LT can buff 1 units
A captain 2
A grand master 3
and RG maybe 4

Something like that would be far easier to balance. You could alter the range of the abilities too - 6" could become 9" or something to give you more freedom to maneuver and make the game more fun. I wish all "aura abiltiies" worked like this.

That is much better solution than the current auras. Kinda works like the old warlock psychic buffs when they automatically passed.

Martel732 wrote:

Bharring wrote:
What pointscost could possibly support using just a few of a unit sometimes if it gets better the more of them you take?

Lets do it this way, to remove some biases:
Fire Warriors gain:
Sphere Expansion: For every other friendly Fire Warrior unit on the board, gain +1S/T/A, and +1 shot when firing Rapid Fire

What point cost, approximately, would you point that at so it has it's uses, but isn't OP

I wouldn't allow that rule in a game for the exact reason you posted it.

Welcome to Strength From Death Martel, except that instead of getting better it gets worse with each additional unit you bring.
Its a really stupid ing rule and it will continue to screw with the balance of the 2 and a half other Eldar codices as long as it exists in its current state

Why on earth are people comparing 40k to starcraft.

The two cannot be compared between balance because your effectively building your armylist and changing it on the fly in SC. In 40k your list is static and designed before you even know what race your fighting.
The two call for completely different approaches to balance because of this.

Try this against a friend. make him start random. Don't scout. Just build a 100 supply army without even knowing what race the randomed. He does the same and then meet in the middle. It will be a horribly unbalanced crapshoot.

Its so far apart its not even apples and oranges anymore.

 Ordana wrote:
Why on earth are people comparing 40k to starcraft.

The two cannot be compared between balance because your effectively building your armylist and changing it on the fly in SC. In 40k your list is static and designed before you even know what race your fighting.
The two call for completely different approaches to balance because of this.

Try this against a friend. make him start random. Don't scout. Just build a 100 supply army without even knowing what race the randomed. He does the same and then meet in the middle. It will be a horribly unbalanced crapshoot.

Its so far apart its not even apples and oranges anymore.

The red part is where you are wrong. In general, trying to balance a game based stuff dealing damage to other stuff is roughly the same, whether you are playing Star Craft, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, League of Legends, Magic the Gathering, CounterStrike or Warhammer 40k.

Sure, the game itself is different and the people trying to balance the game need to understand their game very well. The process of identifying problems in your game, iterating over solutions to fix those problems and collecting data on your changes is about the same, no matter what kind of game you are playing. For many problems there are common solutions that can be found in almost every kind of genre.

The main difference between WH40k and StarCraft is how problems with specific problems are solved.
It's very much the same as working on two different pieces of software - even if the programming language and the purpose of the software vastly differs (for example Windows 10 and StarCraft II), there are some basic processes and principles that are true for both of them. And not just some basic stuff, some are complex enough to fill multiple books.
In the end, both 40k and StarCraft are just rule sets. We are very much comparing grapefruit to oranges here.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Why on earth are people comparing 40k to starcraft.

The two cannot be compared between balance because your effectively building your armylist and changing it on the fly in SC. In 40k your list is static and designed before you even know what race your fighting.
The two call for completely different approaches to balance because of this.

Try this against a friend. make him start random. Don't scout. Just build a 100 supply army without even knowing what race the randomed. He does the same and then meet in the middle. It will be a horribly unbalanced crapshoot.

Its so far apart its not even apples and oranges anymore.

The red part is where you are wrong. In general, trying to balance a game based stuff dealing damage to other stuff is roughly the same, whether you are playing Star Craft, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, League of Legends, Magic the Gathering, CounterStrike or Warhammer 40k.

Sure, the game itself is different and the people trying to balance the game need to understand their game very well. The process of identifying problems in your game, iterating over solutions to fix those problems and collecting data on your changes is about the same, no matter what kind of game you are playing. For many problems there are common solutions that can be found in almost every kind of genre.

The main difference between WH40k and StarCraft is how problems with specific problems are solved.
It's very much the same as working on two different pieces of software - even if the programming language and the purpose of the software vastly differs (for example Windows 10 and StarCraft II), there are some basic processes and principles that are true for both of them. And not just some basic stuff, some are complex enough to fill multiple books.
In the end, both 40k and StarCraft are just rule sets. We are very much comparing grapefruit to oranges here.

(note the following is based on old Sc2 knowledge and may no longer be entirely correct at this time, the point made should still be valid tho).
Hard counters are probably the easiest way to highlight the difference.
Take Zerg vs Terran. Mutalist vs Thor. The Thor pretty hard counters the Mutalisk. If I run my army of Mutalisks into an Army of Thor's I lose, the end. That's ok in SC because I can still buy time and build some other unit that work better against Thor's.
In 40k I would just strait up lose. Sure I can try and play objectives but thats more delaying the inevitable then actually winning, when dealing with a hard counter. There is no option for me to 'build' a more suitable army.

In SC it might be balanced. In 40k it won't be. If my Mutalisks are priced correctly when facing a horde of Thor's they are going to be hilariously OP when faced with a Siege Tank push. Balancing for both is a complete nightmare, if even possible.
So the basic triangle of Rock-Paper-Scissors becomes night unworkable when faced with pre-determined lists that allow spam. You can balance the game around taking a bit of all 3 but then my army of pure Rock (or any other) will likely dominate because I overwhelm your paper, crush your scissors and do well enough against your own bit of rock.

Instead of responding to Mutalisks being dominated by Thor's with "So build some Roaches" 40k has to find a point where Mutalisks and Thor's are priced to be more or less balanced against eachother. While also having Thor's be balanced against Mass Roach, and Zergling, and Ultralists and..ect..
Its a much more complex situation because "its ok, X is supposed to counter, use something else' is not good enough.

This is where a proper use of unit restrictions can help your balance. By selective limiting units you can try to force armies having some rocks, some scissors and some paper. Which is much easier to balance.

 Ordana wrote:
Why on earth are people comparing 40k to starcraft.

The two cannot be compared between balance because your effectively building your armylist and changing it on the fly in SC. In 40k your list is static and designed before you even know what race your fighting.
The two call for completely different approaches to balance because of this.

Try this against a friend. make him start random. Don't scout. Just build a 100 supply army without even knowing what race the randomed. He does the same and then meet in the middle. It will be a horribly unbalanced crapshoot.

Its so far apart its not even apples and oranges anymore.

Because someone brought Starcraft up as an example of spam being okay when the costs of the units themselves are balanced.
The overarching point of their argument was that additional restrictions, such as the rumoured 0-3 cap on non troops, are superfluous waffle and Points alone are sufficient.

I agree that Starcraft isn't the greatest example.
Something like a Total War game would be much better

So we should compare with soccer and hiw the adding of the goalkeeper restrictions ruined the game

To me there are usually 3 different situations that cause there to be a balance problem:

1. A unit is well designed but it's points cost is incorrect
2. A unit is poorly designed and is so good ability wise that it can do everything for your army (hive tyrants can deepstrike, cast magic, shoot, and fight great while being very durable)
3. A side effect of the rules makes a unit too good in some way (Tau commanders are great at shooting but also invincible from shooting if they are behind other units, unlike almost any other character in the game)

Sometimes points definitely seen like the answer, but other times I think units need a rules change to get them back in line with their specific role, or have their ability to abuse the rules limited in some way.

If a sideboard /2 list army were to become more of a normal, I think it’d really add in that extra level of mind game and strategy that currently can be a bit… lacking.

However, I would up the limit from 500 to 600/650 points, reason being is the cheapest Custodes battalion is 590 points. 600-650 allows everyone to have the option of a swap no matter what army they play.

I’d also imply further restrictions, something along the line of –
When swapping, you swap the entire detachment for your “reserve” detachment.
CP amount is calculated after any detachment swaps are made, not before.
You can only swap a detachment for your “reserve” detachment if they both share the same sub-sub-faction keyword (I.E <regiment>/<chapter>/<sept&gt. Things that don’t affect detachments (I.E Ogryn/Scions in a Cadian detachment) don’t prevent swaps.
After any swaps, your list must still be battle-forged, legal and not above the points limit.


In regards to outlying units IF a max of 3 is brought in (i.e 30 Dark Reaper issue), then we can quickly and easily identify said units and work to address them. As others have said, currently, all we can target are the “flavour of the month” units, rather than a wider range of units.
As for Dark Reapers, I think capping the unit at 6 works. Pretty much every unit has a max size of double its basic starting size. For some reason, Reapers decided to ignore this. I’d just bring them back into line.

Auras are a tricky think to balance, I agree. An aura affecting 2 units (character and 1 other unit) is never going to be as valuable as when it affects 5 or 6 units, but where do you draw the line? Restricting the buff to x number of units isn’t the right way to go imo, so the only other option is points. As it stands, an army wide, no restriction, re-roll 1’s to hit for everything is costed at 24 points (3x marker drones). If we use this as a starting point, we can work towards an aura cost (which would be substantially lower). This could then be worked into the aura givers points cost – though, as the points cost is so minimal, I think it already is in most cases. The issue instead comes from BobbyG’s aura alone, allowing all hits and wounds to be re-rolled. This is an easy fix, as we all pretty much agree that he needs a point increase.
Alternatively, we can go down the “Guard Order” style route. This is an interesting idea, however, I would make the Lt and Captain both affect 2 (plus themselves) and add in Chapter Masters at 3. I’m also tempted to say that <characters> within the aura range don’t count towards the “affected unit limit”.

A lot of balance problems IMHO 90% or so can be fixed either permenantly or temporarily via points costs.

It's the the other 10% and the this-just-isn'f-fun-problems that need other solutions.

Starcraft is a bad comparison because it's primarily about the macro economy rather than the actual fighting. Als o a lost due to bad build in sc wastes maybe 20 minutes of your time. However a list botched game of 40k can be half or even your entire day wasted. (travel/packing/etc).

 Ordana wrote:

Instead of responding to Mutalisks being dominated by Thor's with "So build some Roaches" 40k has to find a point where Mutalisks and Thor's are priced to be more or less balanced against eachother. While also having Thor's be balanced against Mass Roach, and Zergling, and Ultralists and..ect..
Its a much more complex situation because "its ok, X is supposed to counter, use something else' is not good enough.

This is a complete misunderstanding of what people mean by "balance" in the context of a game like this. They don't mean that you should be able to take an army of Mutalisks and put up a good fight against an army of Thors. The whole point of Thors is still that they counter Mutalisks. It's still a balanced game even if some lists have a big advantage over other lists. What people want is a meta populated with diverse and interesting lists, where most units in the game show up at least occasionally. Thor-Mutalisk interactions are a perfectly acceptable and even desirable part of this -- if you bring some units that are weak to Mutalisks, you can keep your list competitive against lists with lots of Mutalisks by also bringing some Thors. It's your need to do well in the meta that keeps you honest -- you could take an army of Thors, and this would crush the occasional army of Mutalisks, but you would lose most of your games against more common TAC armies.