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I have seen people write here that the game is unbalanced (in a way it seems like a marketing campain for certain models) and some people do not like that aspect on otherwise great game.

I have also seen a person to say he could rebalance the game but takes no action for it.


So, i suggest to use this thread to focus or rebalance the game keeping other changes than point cost changes at minimum. So no changing the rules or inventing new ones but to keep the game as it is. I do not own or have acces to any of the rule books so i cannot fully participate but i take the initiative to suggest this.

I am also aware that tweaking the game usually makes it in fact worse, but i still suggest and hope that instead of endlessly talk about it, rather do something constructive. If this goes to anything i might participate in the future.


One idea would be also to attach custom made material (units, relics, factions, chapters and so) in the same way than forge world models without affecting the core.

What specific rule are you confused about?

I think maybe you posted in the wrong forum, as I do not see a specific rules question for the YMDC area.

Indeed, the YMDC forum is for answering specific rules questions. We also have a forum for proposed rules;
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/16.page

However I have moved this to 40k General as it doesn't make any specific fix proposals.

Whaaaiiil....

Amongst many other things, the game suffers from trying to fit too broad of a variety of units into too small of a random number generator.

When there are weapons that kill Marines as quickly as Guardsmen, then how do you balance Marines (statistically better) against Guardsmen?

You can’t, really. You have to create rock-paper-scissors balance. Guardsmen beat Knights, Knights beat Marines, and Marines beat Guardsmen.

Sooo...

The best you can do is aim for codex vs codex balance, looking at a few (3, say) thematic builds from each, and how those themes balance against each other and then externally.

And that’s pretty hard even for a more limited game than 40k. If we hope for even 2 thematic builds per 20 factions, that’s 40 x 40 balance points. 1600 combinations to try to balance. Three themes each is 3600 combinations with multitudes of variation between.

Which leads to “people” being unable to see overall balance solutions. In a busy club, a person might encounter 40 themes, maybe? Yeah, big tournaments show what people looking to exploit the system can pull together.

The game’s balance can most efficiently be corrected with minor point tweaks at a time. Units that consistently see tournament play get a 5% bump for 6 months. Units that consistently do NOT see tournament play get a 5% decrease.

Over time, the balance should sort out.

I understand that GW’s business model works by “encouraging” people to buy the hot new thing by making them more powerful in-game. That is their choice, perhaps.

Idea is to first hunt those elements that are clearly "pts marketing" to buy something and adjust the point costs to the same level with other similar units.

That would seem the first step and other would be to hunt units that are for some reason overcosted and think about adjusting them also.

After that could discuss about immaterial stuff like relics and in my opinion not change how they work when suggesting changes and why. Some relics could cost 2cp instead of one for example when being clearly stronger than the rest and so could only be accessible through said strategem.

And additional stuff under additional marker.

Idea would be to produce a game where people say less that its unbalanced that and unfair that. You have to have roots, you re a great big tree.


Your canadian take is too complicated.

Tournament play should never be the basis on creating game balance as it is biased on some imaginary meta as a whole, creating more imbalance in general. True balance should be acquired outside tournament meta and let the tournament players shift to that and not the otherway around.


Perfect balance should not be the ideal in this. Making all options viable / useful / fun is.

Points alone probably would not balance out 40k. There are some units that are just way to simple to function in a rule set like this.
With lots of stacking rules that interact in ways that can throw off any thoughts to balance.
Even just having the same weapon at the same points on two seperate platforms will throw that balance off.

 greatbigtree wrote:

The game’s balance can most efficiently be corrected with minor point tweaks at a time. Units that consistently see tournament play get a 5% bump for 6 months. Units that consistently do NOT see tournament play get a 5% decrease.

That's a daft solution.
1) What if you keep seeing certain units? Are you going to keep upping the point cost 5% every 6 months?
2) Are you going to up t(& up & up & up) the cost of basic core units of a force? You know, those units you'd EXPECT most examples of an army of _____ to include?

And this won't balance the units. It MIGHT increase variety in your tournies. But it won't change how units play or die.

Yeah that would hardly work if tournaments used the actual 40k rules but since they are all house rule based why should GW penalise people who use the proper rules.

SeanDrake wrote:
Yeah that would hardly work if tournaments used the actual 40k rules but since they are all house rule based why should GW penalise people who use the proper rules.

DINGDINGDING we have a winner.

something something tourney ruleset.

you'd be surprised to find when you play open war with cities of death and the additional terrain rules, there's plenty of mitigation for T1 bitchslapping.

Go in universe for a moment and perhaps look at things differently. Units and factions ARE NOT balanced. And maybe that's ok. Which it's why it's ok to field a small Space Marine army against a big Tyrannid army and have a pretty enjoyable ('balanced') game.

I think the solution to this is common sense flexibility and gaming experience.

Of course there will always be combinations, with certain weapons or psychic abilities, which will sometimes seem to make things 'unbalanced'. But again, that's the reality of the 40k universe and there's no reason why that shouldn't be replicated on the tabletop. Makes it all more interesting and unpredictable, which is half the fun!

Get rid of all those rules that make shoot twice, fight twice, and so on.

Tweak barrage weapons, now too powerful.

Well if you wanted somewhere to start, i'd suggest:

- assigning points costs to all of the free rules and items
- granting CPs based on game size (and deduct for extra detachments)
- switching auras to single unit buffs

 Darian Aarush wrote:
Go in universe for a moment and perhaps look at things differently. Units and factions ARE NOT balanced. And maybe that's ok. Which it's why it's ok to field a small Space Marine army against a big Tyrannid army and have a pretty enjoyable ('balanced') game.

I think the solution to this is common sense flexibility and gaming experience.

Of course there will always be combinations, with certain weapons or psychic abilities, which will sometimes seem to make things 'unbalanced'. But again, that's the reality of the 40k universe and there's no reason why that shouldn't be replicated on the tabletop. Makes it all more interesting and unpredictable, which is half the fun!

This is all narrative stuff that should not be represented in rules, blood angels have been wiped out like twice. But we cannot just up there points by 10 and say that’s all they have for each engagement to spare.
Or that space marine players have to roll to see if they can play this match as there is not enough of them to get to every battle in the imperium.
Nid players can just keep putting models on the table each turn and the game does not end until they get tired to represent the way they ether swarm relentlessly over a whole planet until they are finished and destroyed.
At a point you have to concede some of these to narrative play only.
Some things are fine being a bit off balance wise, but right now. Way to much is. Better balance also helps narrative games.

As well as design balance pushed towards making a narrative balance in each army on the battlefield.

How to balance 40k?

First of all, you need a design proposal on how the game should look like and than stick to it

GW usually stays with their initial edition design for the first year, than starts to change stuff and at the end of an edition lifetime the balance is off in a way that a new edition is needed to shake everything up

8th started with "points are paid for everything" and to regain balance, everything that is free would need a point value to be paid

this also means CP generation as equal amount of points should generate equal amounts of CP

same as everything that let you do stuff outside the core rule mechanics (fight twice etc)

Another problem to be solved are too low basic point costs
As it is impossible to balance points if general costs are already too low so there is no room for changes (except for making everything more expensive instead of lowering the points of 1 unit)

than we can talk about army and table size as the current 2000 points are too large for the suggested table size

PS: and all changes made to balance the game will be seen as "this is not 40k anymore and too much to be acceptable" until GW makes changes that go much deeper into the core mechanics and people will go for "best 40k ever"

The thing that gets me, is 40k looks and plays like a game that is copying a bunch from other games, and there own spin on it was to make a worse version.
A lot of what they do would have worked with competent design and thought put into it, even before rules.
Rule of cool used as an excuse to cover up poor design all along the way.

We talk and talk about balance but does anyone really think we'll ever have it ? At the start of 8th was the best hope we'd come out balanced at the end of it all and I think we see where this train is going now. It's not stopping at balance town.

Balanced is never a goal they are aiming for, they just aren't honest about saying so. Good enough that people can argue they are trying is all they care about.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
We talk and talk about balance but does anyone really think we'll ever have it ? At the start of 8th was the best hope we'd come out balanced at the end of it all and I think we see where this train is going now. It's not stopping at balance town.

Balanced is never a goal they are aiming for, they just aren't honest about saying so. Good enough that people can argue they are trying is all they care about.

8th was fairly clearly a fail from the start. About the only thing that changed was better marketing of there ideas, but it was not good. And went down the expected path.
Really they did nothing that on its own would provide better balance, and a lot of there design invited less.
With 8 I think it was more a showing of how simple they think there players are, and how bad from design the 40k team as a whole seems to be. Who knows why or where, but if they have no idea what’s wrong. Fixes do little but change things.

Ok i will ask this:

Can anyone give examples of single units that are overcosted ?

Can anyone give examples of single units that are undercosted ?


No rules changes whatsoever. Only adjusting points if necessary.

In case of relics, cp is concidered as "points" and this leads to third question: Can anyone give examples which relics are at least twice as powerful than others ?


Side question, are there still gaming groups that play other editions ?

Side note, purpose of this thread is to create a more balanced version of the current rules, not to just discuss about making it. Then everyone can decide do they want to use the official or "balanced" version of the same rule set.


Another side question: what games 8th ed 40k have taken rules from, and what rules ?


I will mention that there is still zero response that contributes to anything in this project.

All you'd need to do really is check out most high end lists. You'll see some units that are right on or under costed, and what everyone takes for relics will be your over performing ones. The same issues that plagued the game in editions past is still there.

Some choices are no brainer great, others, you'd need to have no brain to take them I doubt anyone has enough time to just list them all book by book but you'll see most of the same units and options in list after list if you look hard enough.

That is exactly what i am asking for, to list those things if anyone is that much interested. It is vital for this project.

Even better if one has a solid suggestion of point changes.

All relic changes would preferably be 1 cp -> 2 cp, no more. (I can see why ironstone would be 3 though)

I can't think of many really undercosted units.

Maybe something of the new marine stuff, but we still have no clear picture on them and before a big round of FAQs it's too early to talk.

For 3cp artifacts just look at knights. So many of those are easily worth 3 cps.

Greater Blight Drone shouldn't be more expensive than the Bloat Drone, as it's practically worse, but it can infiltrate. So make it about 160 points instead of the 230(!) it's now.
Same goes for Plague Hulk, make it 170 like the Defiler instead of 210.

Land Raiders are still on the expensive side.
Possessed don't compare well to Berzerkers but I'm not sure if it's more of a Berzerker problem.

Horticulous Slimux costs 190 Points, imo he'd be okay with 150 or less. Beasts of Nurgle are overpriced, too.

Plagueburst Crawler seems pretty cheap for its durability.
Daemon Prince is always the number 1 character, could be more expensive.
These are what comes to mind in my armies.

Forgive me for saying this, but the OP is being hopelessly naive to think that this could be done in a single thread. And that is only if you agree with the original assertion that the game is unbalanced.

If you want to see how complicated a fan made system is, check out the work by the Ninth Age team. Incredible work ethic and a really fantastic game, though I have no idea how the contributors found the time they did to support it.

As for 40k, I don't find it unbalanced. My gaming group plays, we have fun close games and occassionally go to tournaments where (with little real meta practice) we generally go 3-2 or 2-3. That to me says it's basically ok. Yes there will be internet warriors who will tell people to take 8 flyer lists or 5 repulsor lists, but in the real work 9/10 gamers don't want to buy that many expensive versions of the same model.

I live in a competitive region. The majority of 40k players here burn and churn and chase the meta. If you aren't fielding a tournament calibre list and you show up to game day, you will get trashed based off of lists alone.

Based on that alone, I view 40k as an unbalanced entity that requires heavy social engineering to have good games in, or luck of having a group that won't min/max at every opportunity and force the entire group to follow suit.

Balancing 40K for competitive play is easy.

You could play perfect-mirror tournaments with only one list pre-set by the TO allowed for all players.

You could allow 100% open allies with all models in the game available to all players all the time, all buffs, psychics, etc.. applying to all other models made by GW, etc.., , effectively having one big super-faction to chose from.

You could list-swap before each game, and/or play multiple rounds against the same opponent, some with your list, some list-swapped, etc...

Etc..

Apple fox wrote:

 Darian Aarush wrote:
Go in universe for a moment and perhaps look at things differently. Units and factions ARE NOT balanced. And maybe that's ok. Which it's why it's ok to field a small Space Marine army against a big Tyrannid army and have a pretty enjoyable ('balanced') game.

I think the solution to this is common sense flexibility and gaming experience.

Of course there will always be combinations, with certain weapons or psychic abilities, which will sometimes seem to make things 'unbalanced'. But again, that's the reality of the 40k universe and there's no reason why that shouldn't be replicated on the tabletop. Makes it all more interesting and unpredictable, which is half the fun!

This is all narrative stuff that should not be represented in rules, blood angels have been wiped out like twice. But we cannot just up there points by 10 and say that’s all they have for each engagement to spare.
Or that space marine players have to roll to see if they can play this match as there is not enough of them to get to every battle in the imperium.
Nid players can just keep putting models on the table each turn and the game does not end until they get tired to represent the way they ether swarm relentlessly over a whole planet until they are finished and destroyed.
At a point you have to concede some of these to narrative play only.
Some things are fine being a bit off balance wise, but right now. Way to much is. Better balance also helps narrative games.

As well as design balance pushed towards making a narrative balance in each army on the battlefield.

Fair point, well made.

I will take all suggestions on a text file and post the results later on.

This will form a basics on this attempt.

I will only take account on specific suggestions and thus far there is one. If there is too few suggestions i will type the vague ones that point to some direction such as "relics on a certain book".


As it is, the final version should be done by someone else as i lack the experience and material to do so. If no one is up to the task i could get back to this after i have gained more experience in this matter but this could take years and possibly never even happen. (i have played this game only once in the early 2000).

Possibly the best result would be if the version is done by a single person with honest and dedicated approach.


General guidelines when doing this (as i imagine it)
-Game rules should not be adjusted, only the point costs
-Point costs should be first adjusted a minimal required amount as there might be factors one did not take to account, at least if the point is not clear enough
-Adjusted units and relics should be kept in minimum and overall all changes as light as possible and thus keeping the game the same as official rules -> with an approach that do not try to sell models to the players

Those are the general view points in this project.


Things that should be avoided:
-Too many people forcing their own view through
-Changing the gameplay to something else (which is also fine, but only in a different project and a lot harder to make work)


Comment on chapter approved: If it gives the players the stable pts cost environment they want, this project is pointless but i doubt it as so many people are discussing this subject, which is the reason i made this topic in the first place. (As why not do something about it)

Amai wrote:
I will take all suggestions on a text file and post the results later on.

This will form a basics on this attempt.

I will only take account on specific suggestions and thus far there is one. If there is too few suggestions i will type the vague ones that point to some direction such as "relics on a certain book".


As it is, the final version should be done by someone else as i lack the experience and material to do so. If no one is up to the task i could get back to this after i have gained more experience in this matter but this could take years and possibly never even happen. (i have played this game only once in the early 2000).

Possibly the best result would be if the version is done by a single person with honest and dedicated approach.

Well. we have that, it's called Chapter approved

Amai wrote:
Ok i will ask this:

Can anyone give examples of single units that are overcosted ?

The stompa

Amai wrote:

Can anyone give examples of single units that are undercosted ?

Iron father feirros

Amai wrote:

Can anyone give examples which relics are at least twice as powerful than others ?

the ironstone vs The Skull of Elder Nikola

Amai wrote:

I will mention that there is still zero response that contributes to anything in this project.

agreed, because armchair balancing is a lot harder than it seems. But still, i think bringing up the fact that "free" stuff needs to have points cost (relics for example, but i don't think paying for warlord traits and even chapter tactics would be bad fo the balance of the game)

GW has actually done a half-decent job. The last CA was fairly on-target with a couple obvious bloops (Tac Marine prices for instance, although those have changed since). Much of what was stupidly OP or undercosted got addressed.

I do think additional points refinements could certainly help. However, the crux of the current balance problems aren't points - they're stacking rules.

While out of scope, I believe a gutting of Chapter Tactics (across all factions) would be the single biggest step in the right direction balance-wise. Currently, an UltraMarine LandSpeeder isn't the same points as an Iron Hands or Salamander LandSpeeder, for instance. You can't fix that with changing the LandSpeeder points value; it's either too high for UM or too low for IH.

For points changes alone, you should peruse Proposed Rules. You'd be shocked how many absurdly outsized "fixes" there are. Take Guardsmen, for instance; there's a non-trivial fraction of the fanbase that thinks they're worth 6ppm minimum, and a non-trivial fraction of the fanbase that thinks they're worth 4ppm maximum (which side is crazy is offtopic). No single points value is going to get a strong consensus agreement.

I could share some things I'd like to see:
-Dire Avengers: -1ppm
-Exarchs (all non-vehicles): +10ppm
-Tac/Dev/ASM(/CSM/etc): -1ppm (beyond even Codex)
But I"m sure there's a dozen people who object to each of those.