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Keep in mind that the Wraith Knight is in a different position from other superheavies because of how its keywords work. For awhile, it was the only one that could get traits and strats. Now that knights are getting a codex, they'll catch up in that area, and Orks soon. But Knights still cannot benefit from psychic powers. Whereas WK and Baneblades can.

All else being equal, WK should cost a bit more due to the synergy options.

I abused the mech bulding rules so hard in that game.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Keep in mind that the Wraith Knight is in a different position from other superheavies because of how its keywords work. For awhile, it was the only one that could get traits and strats. Now that knights are getting a codex, they'll catch up in that area, and Orks soon. But Knights still cannot benefit from psychic powers. Whereas WK and Baneblades can.

All else being equal, WK should cost a bit more due to the synergy options.

Not if the controlling player is also paying for those synergy pieces. If you're going to charge more for a wraithlord because a farseer can guide it, then the farseer needs to be free, and you can't charge other elder units for the buff either.

 Mmmpi wrote:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Keep in mind that the Wraith Knight is in a different position from other superheavies because of how its keywords work. For awhile, it was the only one that could get traits and strats. Now that knights are getting a codex, they'll catch up in that area, and Orks soon. But Knights still cannot benefit from psychic powers. Whereas WK and Baneblades can.

All else being equal, WK should cost a bit more due to the synergy options.

Not if the controlling player is also paying for those synergy pieces. If you're going to charge more for a wraithlord because a farseer can guide it, then the farseer needs to be free, and you can't charge other elder units for the buff either.

No.

These abilities are powerful force multipliers. They are effectively more powerful on more powerful units. +1 attack to a nurgling is weaker than +1 attack to a knight, and the overall rules need to take this into account or psychic armies will always break stuff. It makes more sense to have equivalent units in armies with powers cost more than to just keep upping the cost of the psyker. A farseer is effectively worth more the more powerful of unit it is buffing.

Wraith Lords, Bane Blades, and Khorne lord of skulls can benefit from powers (and presumably other non-knight chaos super heavies in the future). the easier option would be to let Knights benefit from imperial powers, but this will require keyword tweaking. However it will make psykers mandatory in knight lists, which is kind of silly.

Martel732 wrote:
I abused the mech bulding rules so hard in that game.

If you mean Battletech I suspect most people did, I've started to prefer stock mechs simply because it made things more intreasting, although some of the later mechs ended up seeming a lot like mine, the Warlord is practially something I would have designed myself .

Getting backj on top I agree, correctly points costing force multipler synergies is hard. something that gives unit X +1 attack within 6 inches might seem easy eneugh to points cost, but if it's effecting a unit of 5 it's a LOT less efficant then if it's say impacting 2 units of 15.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Keep in mind that the Wraith Knight is in a different position from other superheavies because of how its keywords work. For awhile, it was the only one that could get traits and strats. Now that knights are getting a codex, they'll catch up in that area, and Orks soon. But Knights still cannot benefit from psychic powers. Whereas WK and Baneblades can.

All else being equal, WK should cost a bit more due to the synergy options.

If the wraith and Imperial knights were equal prior to throwing psychic powers into the mix, you might have a point. But that's simply not true - WK's are massively underpowered/overcosted compared to the IK alternative: they're less durable with no invuln save, have less firepower, and have less flexibility in weapon loadouts. We're not talking "a bit more." Psychic powers - which you already pay for by having to buy the psyker, position them properly, protect them, etc. - don't ever come close to closing a gap.

HuskyWarhammer wrote:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Keep in mind that the Wraith Knight is in a different position from other superheavies because of how its keywords work. For awhile, it was the only one that could get traits and strats. Now that knights are getting a codex, they'll catch up in that area, and Orks soon. But Knights still cannot benefit from psychic powers. Whereas WK and Baneblades can.

All else being equal, WK should cost a bit more due to the synergy options.

If the wraith and Imperial knights were equal prior to throwing psychic powers into the mix, you might have a point. But that's simply not true - WK's are massively underpowered/overcosted compared to the IK alternative: they're less durable with no invuln save, have less firepower, and have less flexibility in weapon loadouts. We're not talking "a bit more." Psychic powers - which you already pay for by having to buy the psyker, position them properly, protect them, etc. - don't ever come close to closing a gap.

I agree. I was bringing it up in the context of discussing changes to these units. They certainly need them! But if they were balanced vs Knights 1v1, then they'll be stronger in the context of their armies is my point.

Bharring wrote:
In 6th/7th, a great example of this was Relentless.

How many points was Relentless worth to ScatterBikes? I'd argue tons, but clearly more than 0.

How many points was Relentless worth on Shining Spears? Exactly 0 (guns were Assault).

So how many points is Relentless worth?

If you say 0, ScatterBikes prove you wrong.
If you say any other number, Shining Spears prove you wrong.

There is no constant value that properly pointed Relentless in the last edition.

You could argue that you could have factored in weapon types. But you'd also need to factor in weapon ranges, strengths, durability, mobility, CC ability, and far more. The number of factors is absurd.

Yeah. In my example the speed bump is vastly more important for the warglaive than for the hel-whatever. Platform that has melta weapon(need to get close for full effect) AND big choppy chainsword? SPEED!

Platform that has 2 guns that have fairly decent range? I would gladly drop speed down to some 8" for cheaper one easily! Speed is not much of importance. It can be useful but not nearly as much as first one.

So how is formula supposed to take into account that? Just the cost of speed needs to factor in huge amount of other stuff starting from weapons. Then your own survability(is speed your main form of defence?). And then we aren't even talking about effect OPPOSING army has...Against orks for example that speed becomes even less useful as you have less room to actually try any cunning flanking manouvers and they are rushing forward on their own as well so...Meanwhile warglaive against gunline will welcome any inch of an extra speed with open heart.

Hell just making fair point value is flat out impossible. Any attempt to create formula is even worse off. To get even fairly reasonable approximate that is just "broken" rather than "stupidly broken" you need more serious study and testing. And of course if you want balance you skip points to begin with.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Keep in mind that the Wraith Knight is in a different position from other superheavies because of how its keywords work. For awhile, it was the only one that could get traits and strats. Now that knights are getting a codex, they'll catch up in that area, and Orks soon. But Knights still cannot benefit from psychic powers. Whereas WK and Baneblades can.

All else being equal, WK should cost a bit more due to the synergy options.

Not if the controlling player is also paying for those synergy pieces. If you're going to charge more for a wraithlord because a farseer can guide it, then the farseer needs to be free, and you can't charge other elder units for the buff either.

No.

These abilities are powerful force multipliers. They are effectively more powerful on more powerful units. +1 attack to a nurgling is weaker than +1 attack to a knight, and the overall rules need to take this into account or psychic armies will always break stuff. It makes more sense to have equivalent units in armies with powers cost more than to just keep upping the cost of the psyker. A farseer is effectively worth more the more powerful of unit it is buffing.

Wraith Lords, Bane Blades, and Khorne lord of skulls can benefit from powers (and presumably other non-knight chaos super heavies in the future). the easier option would be to let Knights benefit from imperial powers, but this will require keyword tweaking. However it will make psykers mandatory in knight lists, which is kind of silly.

The problem here is that of the 3 most valuable force multipliers Craftworlds have; Doom, Guide and Jinx, only Guide actually directly effects friendly units whilst Doom and Jinx are debuffs on enemy units. At this point the Wraithknight has so few shots that Guide is actually better spent on a 20 man blob of Guardians where it will make a significant difference, Doom also has minimum effect as Wraithcannons are S16 so wounding everything short of Titans on 2's and Jinx only really comes into play against units with a good invuln since most WK weapons are AP-3 or better. The only loadout that really benefits from Psychic support is the Suncannon, due to having 3D3 shots and S6 so both Guide and Doom will see valuable use, but at 118pts nobody in their right mind is taking a Suncannon.

I wonder if the Wraithknight is already paying an opportunity cost for potential psychic buffs, it would explain why it remains horribly overcosted for a unit that is a terrible choice for Psychic support when Guardians, Reapers and Shinning Spears are all perfect targets.

I don't think that GW put that much thought into it.

When they changed the toughness chart and how AP works, added damage to the game and multiplied the wounds of large models, they pretty much blew what little experience they had with balancing the game right out the window. There was no way for anyone to know which weapons would be fighting 8th edition because the changes were so massive.
It's pretty safe to assume that they had no clue what they were doing when putting point values on models the first time around. They pretty much distributed points according their experience with 7th, which resulted in models with many wounds being way overcosted. Knights, Nauts, Stompa and many other models are testament to that.

The point drop in the codex was very minor, but I don't think eldar codex was particularly well tested - considering how well things like dark reapers, the allaitoc trait and some other things turned out.

However, a model should always be costed properly in the context of an army. Possible buffs need to go into that calculation just like all other tools the army has. A poweful long range, high accuracy weapon is a lot more valuable to orks than it is to eldar. A tough close combat bruiser with low range is going to be more powerful for tau than it is for daemons.

Basically, whenever you compare a model (or wargear) to a different codex for points, you are doing it wrong. Especially for xenos, no two armies are alike. When putting points on a WK you need to account for potential psychic (and non-psychic) buffs, just like you need to account for a stompa or naut getting the KFF save and probably being repaired by big meks.

Not really cus the knights have the kff save built into them and they got people who can repair then in the exsact same way. Plus more wounds... but i get what you mean.

How would you fix the stompa though? In detail what points should it be and what wounds should it be?

The stompa? As it is now you could probably drop it to 200 points without breaking the game.

It pays a ton of points for guns that don't hit jack. The entire stompa can't even kill a unit of guardsmen and will rarely do more than 6 damage to a vehicle.
The mega-choppa is pretty much the only thing it has going for it, but its starts loosing WS after losing 25% of its wounds (unlike every other model that starts degrading at 50%) and is pretty much a useless piece of scrap metal when it has lost half its wounds. A four klaw deff dread does more damage in combat than a stompa with 20 wounds left and Thrakka completely blows it out of the water.

The stompa needs a major overhaul to return it its old glory. And the effigy rule? Re-rolling morale for ork mobs? Seriously?

kombatwombat wrote:
This only works because you’re confining the situation to a micro level. By doing so you’ve eliminated almost all of the variables and focused down to only a handful. Mathematics is very powerful at the micro level.

What maths can’t do is the macro level. That’s what we’re asking it to do here - create a global model of a complex system. This isn’t a new idea - it’s the dream of anybody who works with the design of complex systems, as it’s powerful, elegant and solves so many problems. Unfortunately it just can’t be done. You end up spending more time working out how to stack variables upon variables upon variables than you would have done just going the eyeball-iteration route, then spend the rest of eternity trying to figure out why variable #3086 interacts weirdly with variable #1522 when variable #549 is bigger than variable #2.

I don't buy this. Its the excuse used in a lot of game systems that are poorly balanced.
I think the best claim I saw was in Age of Conan (if anyone remembers that) where the Devs claimed they didn't balance PvP for 1v1, they balanced for 40v40. As if you can remotely balance "for 40v40", and their servers fell over if you got that many people together anyway. That would be like GW saying "we don't balance individual unit entries, we balance for 2000, sorry, 1750 vs 1750 points."

If everything were balanced at the micro level it is highly likely that the macro level would be more balanced than now. You would not have units which are obvious auto takes and auto avoids.
Attack and defensive characteristic are probably the most important things a unit has unless they suffer from an unusually low movement or an unusually low range.

Sure certain things probably need play testing but lets say there were "sprinting Marines" that were otherwise exactly the same as Marines, but had movement 10". Clearly they have opportunities that regular marines don't, so they should be worth more.

I suspect that even if they were 14 points they would still be considered to suck, because performance at the micro level as you put it is so bad.

Are there any units which are bad at the micro level but out perform at the macro level?

How do you cost something like the reaper range finder with pure math?

 Jidmah wrote:
The stompa? As it is now you could probably drop it to 200 points without breaking the game.

It pays a ton of points for guns that don't hit jack. The entire stompa can't even kill a unit of guardsmen and will rarely do more than 6 damage to a vehicle.
The mega-choppa is pretty much the only thing it has going for it, but its starts loosing WS after losing 25% of its wounds (unlike every other model that starts degrading at 50%) and is pretty much a useless piece of scrap metal when it has lost half its wounds. A four klaw deff dread does more damage in combat than a stompa with 20 wounds left and Thrakka completely blows it out of the water.

The stompa needs a major overhaul to return it its old glory. And the effigy rule? Re-rolling morale for ork mobs? Seriously?

Omg! I forgot it even allowed you to reroll failed moral tests! Hahahaaa! I think it should be changed to either fearless or plus 10ld.

Martel732 wrote:
How do you cost something like the reaper range finder with pure math?

I'll suggest *a* way to do it, but please don't consider it the only way, because it's a really pared-down method.

You take the probability of the rule coming into play (e.g., from tournament or FLGS data, or even how common rules producing the benefit it counters in other codices), combined with the net benefit of the rule (e.g., killing 12.5% more of X target), and compare the results to the average costs of other weapons or rules that are similarly-situated per point cost and determine if it's an outlier. Because we're working with things that are already-costed, we can, do this over and over with all traits (toughness, armor, weapons, etc.) to get a total "cost" for the unit. You'll be able to see massive outliers in this fashion (e.g., wraithknights) and have solid data to back up buffs. As has already been mentioned, it's a trap to consider things in a vacuum, but luckily we have lots and lots of data to work from.

 lolman1c wrote:

Spoiler:

 Jidmah wrote:
The stompa? As it is now you could probably drop it to 200 points without breaking the game.

It pays a ton of points for guns that don't hit jack. The entire stompa can't even kill a unit of guardsmen and will rarely do more than 6 damage to a vehicle.
The mega-choppa is pretty much the only thing it has going for it, but its starts loosing WS after losing 25% of its wounds (unlike every other model that starts degrading at 50%) and is pretty much a useless piece of scrap metal when it has lost half its wounds. A four klaw deff dread does more damage in combat than a stompa with 20 wounds left and Thrakka completely blows it out of the water.

The stompa needs a major overhaul to return it its old glory. And the effigy rule? Re-rolling morale for ork mobs? Seriously?

Omg! I forgot it even allowed you to reroll failed moral tests! Hahahaaa! I think it should be changed to either fearless or plus 10ld.

This is something I was going to try in a narrative setting, but it might actually be fun in the main game if there was a way to balance it:

Stompas and Gargants are supposed to be effigies of the Ork gods. I've read several times that the Orks are building them as bodies for Gork/Mork to inhabit. It would be cool if X Orks were within X inches of the Stompa it gained the Daemon keyword and some thematic abilities (it's powered up by their belief). On the downside, if the Stompa is destroyed then all friendly Ork units within X" have their confidence so shaken that they lose Mob Rule for a turn.


Adjusting points alone isn't a good fix for the Morkanaut IMO. If I did the math right at BS 5+ it is as likely to wound itself firing it's KMK as it is to wound an enemy tank. Throw in any negative modifiers and it is far more likely to wound itself than the enemy. I think the Morkanaut needs to be BS 4+ to work.

Please excuse any typos. My Internet connection is down so I'm posting from a phone.

Daemon keyword? I think you got your lore a bit fethed up here

But I like the general idea. There a plenty of auras for close combat units all over the other armies, like rolling two dice for advances, re-rolling hits in combat and more. There should be something better than re-rolling moral on units that either ignore or get wiped out by moral no matter what you roll.

Orks are older than Daemons my dude. They hunt them for sport before the real battle!

yeah, I'm looking at my suncannon/shield/starcannon wraithknight at 570pts and feeling rather foolish.

I love the concept, I love how he looks, but 118pts for 2D6 shots is not going to blow anyone away. yes, I can put Fortune on it, yes I can Guide it (so add more points to Farseer who's only job is to buff this one model), but it is still way too many points.
But wait! We can put it in the brand new webway gate..........and lose a 500pt model even easier, plus the 125pts tax. Awesome.
I could spend another 70pts on a Bonesinger to give it back 1-3 wounds a turn (so I've invested 750pts now into this guy?)

Several things need to happen. Remove the weapon restrictions. All the options are in the box so allow me to run suncannon/wraithcannon, wraithcannon/shield, etc. Why be specific on loadouts?
If the Suncannon is going to cost 118pts, then make it Heavy 12 and not Heavy 2D6. What is cost of Hvy gatling in new Knight Codex? But really, drop the points.
Give it a Spirit Stone.
Hvy wraithcannon actually somewhat OK, but allow it to be Flat 6 damage on a roll of 6 to wound.

Isn't that the price of that new mega knight with a 80" mega cannon and weapons that do flat 10 damage?

 bullyboy wrote:
yeah, I'm looking at my suncannon/shield/starcannon wraithknight at 570pts and feeling rather foolish.

I love the concept, I love how he looks, but 118pts for 2D6 shots is not going to blow anyone away. yes, I can put Fortune on it, yes I can Guide it (so add more points to Farseer who's only job is to buff this one model), but it is still way too many points.
But wait! We can put it in the brand new webway gate..........and lose a 500pt model even easier, plus the 125pts tax. Awesome.
I could spend another 70pts on a Bonesinger to give it back 1-3 wounds a turn (so I've invested 750pts now into this guy?)

Several things need to happen. Remove the weapon restrictions. All the options are in the box so allow me to run suncannon/wraithcannon, wraithcannon/shield, etc. Why be specific on loadouts?
If the Suncannon is going to cost 118pts, then make it Heavy 12 and not Heavy 2D6. What is cost of Hvy gatling in new Knight Codex? But really, drop the points.
Give it a Spirit Stone.
Hvy wraithcannon actually somewhat OK, but allow it to be Flat 6 damage on a roll of 6 to wound.

Fully agree, the WK is 90-125pts overcosted for sure, it doesnt do much damage at all and if you opt for a Shield (oohhh wow. a 5++) it does even less, i honestly cant believe its not a 4++. It really would be 300pts base, shield maybe 20pts max given its only a 5++.

 lolman1c wrote:
Isn't that the price of that new mega knight with a 80" mega cannon and weapons that do flat 10 damage?

The 10 damage weapon is 12" and almost universally considered to be terrible.

 Jidmah wrote:
Daemon keyword? I think you got your lore a bit fethed up here

 lolman1c wrote:
Orks are older than Daemons my dude. They hunt them for sport before the real battle!

I might be understanding the lore wrong. What I was thinking is that Gork and Mork are entities of the Warp, like the Eldar gods, but like the Eldar gods they are separate from Chaos. I was thinking that a Stompa that was being powered up by the latent psychic abilities of a horde of Orks (whose psychic power comes from the Warp like most races, right?) and becomes "possessed" by part of one of their gods would be something sort of like a daemon engine. Kind of like how the Avatar of Khaine has the Daemon keyword, but isn't Chaos. I'm definitely not married to the idea of it getting the Daemon keyword, though.

One thing I find sad about the Stompa is that not only is it too expensive and bad for normal games, it actually can't survive in an Apocalypse game with human titans either. That's partly because of the way they implemented Macro weapons, and because the Kustom Stompa rules that Forge World put out aren't very good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm interested in seeing what they do with the Morkanaut in the Codex. I don't think fixing it by adjusting points alone is a good solution. Reason being that (if I'm doing the math right) the KMK is about as likely to wound the Morkanaut as it is to wound an enemy tank. This is not counting any sort of negative to hit modifiers. If those come into play the KMK is much more likely to wound the Morkanaut than it is to wound the enemy. If they made it cheap enogh it would be worth taking, but I'd rather have it be able to more effectively use the KMK. Giving it a +1 to hit with the KMK, or just a flat BS 4+ for all weapons would be nice. There might be some other buffs in the form of Clan abilities or auras or whatever that fix it when the codex comes out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think the thing that bothers me the most about the Orkanauts and especially the Stompa isn’t the poor tabletop performance, but rather the lack of customization options. I know that other armies also suffer from this, and the Ork kits are relatively cheap compared to their counterparts so I am whinging a bit. There’s also legal/money reasons why GW has been more restrictive with options than they have in the past. But one of the main reasons I got into Orks (and I’m guessing this is true for a lot of Ork players) is that they were a hobbyist’s army with tons of kitbashing and scratchbuilding potential. It bothers me that lack of options makes some of our biggest kits un-orkilly uniform.

I'm definitely getting into TL;DR territory, so I'm putting some stuff inside spoiler tags.

Stompa


Orkanaut

Stompa, well for starters its a heaping pile of crap, Somehow its 100sh points MORE then the most expensive Knight (Porph) but is T8 to the knights T9, the Knight also comes stock with a 5+ invuln, the knight also has longer ranged guns that hit on 2+ instead of 5+, ohh and the knight can self repair. So how do you go about fixing crap?

Honestly, at this point I don't think you can "Fix" the stompa, The old saying is "you polish a turd its still a turd". it needs a COMPLETE rework. It does so many different things in the game but terribly. It shoots but horribly, its a transport but who cares? Its a buff model (kind of) but it buffs something we don't need or want, Basically it needs to find itself a niche and stay there. If you want to have a dakka Stompa it needs to literally QUADRUPLE its dmg output before it would even be remotely considered worth taking. If you want a buff Stompa then it needs to buff something worth while, Like +Movement or +armor/toughness, we don't need a reroll for morale when our units are using LD30 blobs. If you want it to be a transport....why? but then it should carry 60-90 models, not 20 like a battlewagon.

Honestly, in its current iteration it shouldn't cost more then 500pts, You should be able to take 2 of them in a 2,000pt game and not feel bad about doing so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the Nauts...they are literally smaller versions of the bigger pile of crap that is the Stompa.

Morkanaut needs significantly more dakka, I wouldn't say no to doubling or tripling its KMK shots, and give it +1 to shoot it so that it doesn't over heat and doesn't hit 1/3rd of the time, the Rokkitz need to be Quad not Dual, the big shootas need to be changed to Deff Gunz or something with more oomph, because 12 S5 shots with no ap = 3 hits and less then 1 dead space marine a turn. Finally, the KMB needs to be changed out completely for something more useful, like a belly gun or something, and IT NEEDS THE GAZE OF MORK! FFS its in the fluff.

There is literally no reason for either the Mork or Gork to have a transport capacity. NONE! Get rid of it and give us a 50pt Reduction.

The Gorkanaut needs basically more dakka from its primary, (about 2.5x more shots) and all its secondaries need buffs except the SKorcha, im fine with that thing. Finally, it needs a speed boost. Otherwise its too slow.