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 Charistoph wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.

Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.

It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.

Because dead troops are no longer obsec.

Legitimate question, what if dead troops were still obsec? So you can't just kill all the troops on an objective, you need to bring your own up there as well.

SecondTime wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.

Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.

It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.

Because dead troops are no longer obsec.

Contextless statement is non sequitur.

 Charistoph wrote:

SecondTime wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.

Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.

It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.

Because dead troops are no longer obsec.

Contextless statement is non sequitur.

I was agreeing with you in general. Obsec wasn't enough.

Charistoph wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.

Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.

It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.

Like I said in my post, obsec misses the mark because it doesn't contribute to winning fights- only to winning scenario objectives. Since obsec is baked into the unit cost, it means taking troops is sacrificing the greater combat ability of specialists in favor of greater objective performance, which creates an incentive to skew into either no troops (maximize your killing because the enemy can't score if they're dead) or skewing into tons of troops (take more bodies than the enemy can kill, win on objectives). The purposes of your Troops and non-Troops aren't synergistic; they're diametrically opposed. That means they're extremely hard to balance because there's so little room between too expensive for what they give you, cheap enough to spam in unkillable obsec hordes, and killy enough to take the place of specialists while still having obsec.

The problem is trying to give Troops something they can do instead of killing the enemy. What they need to do is contribute to killing the enemy, but in a manner different from the rest of your army.

Going back to WHFB, even the worst infantry could contribute flanking, outnumbering, and rank bonuses, and thus swing a fight more than having a few extra bodies in your uber-elite-killy unit. Defensively, getting in the way of enemy troops was incredibly important to prevent them from flanking you, so those speed-bumps had real utility. The underlying theme is that there was more to winning a fight than raw killing power; you had to set up the right situations to act as force-multipliers and prevent the enemy from doing the same to you, so sacrificing some elites in favor of a few more blocks of mundane troops (to maximize the effectiveness of your elites) was often the better way to play.

40K's in a bit of a rut because those kinds of force-multipliers don't exist. If we had a crossfire mechanic where having two units flanking a target gave some sort of bonus, then cheap troops would be useful both to set up crossfire shots for your heavy-hitters and to stop the enemy from doing the same. If we had units being slowed by enemy fire or forced to keep their heads down- even if said fire was ineffective- then basic dudes with rifles could pin the enemy in place for your specialists to bring down the hammer blow. If infantry in hard cover were extremely hard to dislodge, you might take some cheap squads to hold areas important to maneuver. If you needed spotters for long-ranged or indirect fire, you might take some infantry to do the job. These sorts of mechanics reflect what 'troops' do in the real world; they contribute to the fight by acting as force multipliers to more directly lethal assets.

Having holding objectives provide those sorts of bonuses is thinking along the right lines, but like you noted I'd be concerned that it's too situational and potentially exploitable to be a really robust mechanic- aggressive armies that can box the enemy into their deployment zone, for example, get a huge benefit and deny the enemy any utility to their troops.

I think it needs to be something more universal, more baked into the core mechanics. Find a way to make board presence useful for helping to kill the enemy, not just score points, and that'll give them a role.

Or is it just a holdover at this point which could really do with being ditched for a term that has more meaning relative to the current state of armies and the FoC?

Vipoid is asking the right questions here. To my mind, distinguishing between "troops" and the other battlefield roles (elites, fast attack, etc.) is basically pointless these days. We used to be forced to take certain units in an army, and now we're not.

What used to happen is instead of troops etc there were “squads,” which could be any infantry squad including jump infantry, a maximum percentage of characters, and a max of support, which meant vehicles. There’s a lot to be said for that and it’s better than making every game be 2x troops v 2x troop

 Charistoph wrote:


It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.

Well yeah this is really interesting, and there’s a post on the second page that asks for fog of war and if like that too. It’s too bad GW and most of the game store crowd don’t want that kind of game

Well it's not like Troops can't kill things, or can't contribute to the field. They're just not as shiny as some other units.

I'm kinda thinking the discount route could be the way to go. But rather than being a per-model discount or per unit discount, (because that could wind up being unfair for certain codexes), I'd instead look at some number of points refunded for every 100 points you spend on troops. Like 5-10 points for every 100 spent on troops. If I spend 1000 points on Tac Marines, I get 100 more points.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Well it's not like Troops can't kill things, or can't contribute to the field. They're just not as shiny as some other units.

I'm kinda thinking the discount route could be the way to go. But rather than being a per-model discount or per unit discount, (because that could wind up being unfair for certain codexes), I'd instead look at some number of points refunded for every 100 points you spend on troops. Like 5-10 points for every 100 spent on troops. If I spend 1000 points on Tac Marines, I get 100 more points.

you mean like if your army consists of an optimal 6 troops, to 2 fast attack and 2 heavy support you can take free dedicated transports?

Would be interesting, although am not sure many could afford buying 10 land raiders.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Well it's not like Troops can't kill things, or can't contribute to the field. They're just not as shiny as some other units.

I'm kinda thinking the discount route could be the way to go. But rather than being a per-model discount or per unit discount, (because that could wind up being unfair for certain codexes), I'd instead look at some number of points refunded for every 100 points you spend on troops. Like 5-10 points for every 100 spent on troops. If I spend 1000 points on Tac Marines, I get 100 more points.

you mean like if your army consists of an optimal 6 troops, to 2 fast attack and 2 heavy support you can take free dedicated transports?

Similar in the basic idea, except implemented in a far fairer fashion, and 100% focused on the value of the troops. Double-demi only required "units", meaning minimum squads showed up. Using the points value actually incentivizes bringing more rather than only spending "whatever" to hit the quota.

Double Demi-Co required some tax units, but since you could go cheap it didn't bite so hard. Plus you could get 800 points of Transports (Razorbacks). . . for about 450ish "tax" (six units of Marines). What I'm proposing . . . I think you'd struggle to get 150 points out of it if the ratio was 10:1


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Would be interesting, although am not sure many could afford buying 10 land raiders.

"Dedicated Transports" was the rule in C:SM 7th ed. So for Marines it was Razorbacks, Rhinos and Pods.

I Have 8 Land Raiders though.

 catbarf wrote:

Charistoph wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.

Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.

It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.

Like I said in my post, obsec misses the mark because it doesn't contribute to winning fights- only to winning scenario objectives. Since obsec is baked into the unit cost, it means taking troops is sacrificing the greater combat ability of specialists in favor of greater objective performance, which creates an incentive to skew into either no troops (maximize your killing because the enemy can't score if they're dead) or skewing into tons of troops (take more bodies than the enemy can kill, win on objectives). The purposes of your Troops and non-Troops aren't synergistic; they're diametrically opposed. That means they're extremely hard to balance because there's so little room between too expensive for what they give you, cheap enough to spam in unkillable obsec hordes, and killy enough to take the place of specialists while still having obsec.

The problem is trying to give Troops something they can do instead of killing the enemy. What they need to do is contribute to killing the enemy, but in a manner different from the rest of your army.

Going back to WHFB, even the worst infantry could contribute flanking, outnumbering, and rank bonuses, and thus swing a fight more than having a few extra bodies in your uber-elite-killy unit. Defensively, getting in the way of enemy troops was incredibly important to prevent them from flanking you, so those speed-bumps had real utility. The underlying theme is that there was more to winning a fight than raw killing power; you had to set up the right situations to act as force-multipliers and prevent the enemy from doing the same to you, so sacrificing some elites in favor of a few more blocks of mundane troops (to maximize the effectiveness of your elites) was often the better way to play.

40K's in a bit of a rut because those kinds of force-multipliers don't exist. If we had a crossfire mechanic where having two units flanking a target gave some sort of bonus, then cheap troops would be useful both to set up crossfire shots for your heavy-hitters and to stop the enemy from doing the same. If we had units being slowed by enemy fire or forced to keep their heads down- even if said fire was ineffective- then basic dudes with rifles could pin the enemy in place for your specialists to bring down the hammer blow. If infantry in hard cover were extremely hard to dislodge, you might take some cheap squads to hold areas important to maneuver. If you needed spotters for long-ranged or indirect fire, you might take some infantry to do the job. These sorts of mechanics reflect what 'troops' do in the real world; they contribute to the fight by acting as force multipliers to more directly lethal assets.

Having holding objectives provide those sorts of bonuses is thinking along the right lines, but like you noted I'd be concerned that it's too situational and potentially exploitable to be a really robust mechanic- aggressive armies that can box the enemy into their deployment zone, for example, get a huge benefit and deny the enemy any utility to their troops.

I think it needs to be something more universal, more baked into the core mechanics. Find a way to make board presence useful for helping to kill the enemy, not just score points, and that'll give them a role.

I really wish I could exalt your posts more than once.

I've seen you make a lot of suggestions that I think would really help make 40k into a much deeper and more tactical game than it currently is.

Yeah, outnumbering for combat isn't even a thing anymore, unfortunately. It used to be awesome because Dreadnoughts counted for 10 models, so you could force hard checks just by slamming them into a combat, even if they didn't kill too much.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Yeah, outnumbering for combat isn't even a thing anymore, unfortunately. It used to be awesome because Dreadnoughts counted for 10 models, so you could force hard checks just by slamming them into a combat, even if they didn't kill too much.

I think it's also a shame that Morale has been turned into nothing more than some extra casualties to large units at the end of the turn.

The removal of stuff like 'pinned' and 'falling back' seem like a significant blow to the game.

I get that not being able to use units isn't fun, but couldn't they have kept them even in reduced forms? e.g. make pinned half speed, can't advance/charge and -1 to hit, or -2M, can't advance/charge and can't fired overwatch. Just *something* that can be inflicted on a unit and will at least hamper its ability to fight in the subsequent round..

^100% agree. Just some small modifiers for pinned/suppressed would be great.

How about just making them decent?

As it stands most armies are forced into taking bad troops, which means people only take the minimum amount as a tax.
CSM, Cultists, Guardians, Kabalites and many more are all objectively bad troops at the moment.

I'm not talking about making all of them on the same level as intercessors but giving people a reason to want to play them somehow.

Dire avengers, Skitarii, Daemonnettes and cult marines are all troops that don't feel as bad to take as the ones mentioned before.
I guess giving small rules would help people play them. Or make them dirt cheap so they can serve as simple bodies to stand on objectives and get mulched

 Canadian 5th wrote:
That's just not how armies work. For one thing, soldiers spend most of their time doing everything except for fighting; they patrol, train, stand watch, maintain their equipment, and enjoy their free time with actually shouldering arms and shooting taking only the barest fraction of their time. Even then, your average soldier is armed with the cheapest thing that works and can be adapted for more than one battlefield with a squad of soldiers perhaps having an LMG or Grenadier in the mix for suppression. The job of your average soldier is to hold ground, not to kill.

When they need something dead they call in support units like planes, tanks, artillery, etc. to do the job. This is why things like power armour probably won't be as much of a thing as people would like it to be because if your soldier becomes too heavy they start to have a nasty problem the moment they need to search a home and find the floor unable to support them. It's also why deaths on the battlefield tend to be from artillery, disease, malnutrition and not rounds from riflemen. War simply doesn't come down to mashing equal forces into one another and seeing who's deadliest.

Yes, that's fine, but what about 40k, where people actually do go and kill each other with footsoldiers. Troops are there because they are lethal for the amount of effort their faction puts into them. It doesn't mean they aren't a horde of poorly-trained and equipped mooks, but they're there to kill things. They don't have the training for anything else.

catbarf wrote:

Charistoph wrote:Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.

It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.

Like I said in my post, obsec misses the mark because it doesn't contribute to winning fights- only to winning scenario objectives. Since obsec is baked into the unit cost, it means taking troops is sacrificing the greater combat ability of specialists in favor of greater objective performance, which creates an incentive to skew into either no troops (maximize your killing because the enemy can't score if they're dead) or skewing into tons of troops (take more bodies than the enemy can kill, win on objectives). The purposes of your Troops and non-Troops aren't synergistic; they're diametrically opposed. That means they're extremely hard to balance because there's so little room between too expensive for what they give you, cheap enough to spam in unkillable obsec hordes, and killy enough to take the place of specialists while still having obsec.

Which is why I moved on from there after the second sentence.

catbarf wrote:The problem is trying to give Troops something they can do instead of killing the enemy. What they need to do is contribute to killing the enemy, but in a manner different from the rest of your army.

Going back to WHFB, even the worst infantry could contribute flanking, outnumbering, and rank bonuses, and thus swing a fight more than having a few extra bodies in your uber-elite-killy unit. Defensively, getting in the way of enemy troops was incredibly important to prevent them from flanking you, so those speed-bumps had real utility. The underlying theme is that there was more to winning a fight than raw killing power; you had to set up the right situations to act as force-multipliers and prevent the enemy from doing the same to you, so sacrificing some elites in favor of a few more blocks of mundane troops (to maximize the effectiveness of your elites) was often the better way to play.

40K's in a bit of a rut because those kinds of force-multipliers don't exist. If we had a crossfire mechanic where having two units flanking a target gave some sort of bonus, then cheap troops would be useful both to set up crossfire shots for your heavy-hitters and to stop the enemy from doing the same. If we had units being slowed by enemy fire or forced to keep their heads down- even if said fire was ineffective- then basic dudes with rifles could pin the enemy in place for your specialists to bring down the hammer blow. If infantry in hard cover were extremely hard to dislodge, you might take some cheap squads to hold areas important to maneuver. If you needed spotters for long-ranged or indirect fire, you might take some infantry to do the job. These sorts of mechanics reflect what 'troops' do in the real world; they contribute to the fight by acting as force multipliers to more directly lethal assets.

They actually kind of exist in 40K, but they are somewhat rare. Tau Markerlights fit this pattern of using your fire to improve another unit's abilities, and they have whole units dedicated to doing this.

The PC Game Battletech has a mechanic where if a unit moves far enough they gain evasion, reducing people's ability to hit them. If a unit fires on them, this evasion is reduced, even if they miss. I was thinking of this as a possible mechanic, but then was reminded of Markerlights, and I'm sure that Tau players would not appreciate having a core mechanic spread to every Troop in the game.

catbarf wrote:Having holding objectives provide those sorts of bonuses is thinking along the right lines, but like you noted I'd be concerned that it's too situational and potentially exploitable to be a really robust mechanic- aggressive armies that can box the enemy into their deployment zone, for example, get a huge benefit and deny the enemy any utility to their troops.

I think it needs to be something more universal, more baked into the core mechanics. Find a way to make board presence useful for helping to kill the enemy, not just score points, and that'll give them a role.

That's why I suggested a "camping" mechanic, something that can be used when Objectives are available or not. However, how to make those determinations and what they should do, if the bonuses should be universal, faction, or unit specific is something that would have to be pounded out.

pelicaniforce wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.

Well yeah this is really interesting, and there’s a post on the second page that asks for fog of war and if like that too. It’s too bad GW and most of the game store crowd don’t want that kind of game

While Fog of War would have an affect, I don't think it would have any affect on the idea I presented...

VladimirHerzog wrote:How about just making them decent?

If that was considered likely, this discussion wouldn't really be one that comes up a lot.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
How about just making them decent?

As it stands most armies are forced into taking bad troops, which means people only take the minimum amount as a tax.
CSM, Cultists, Guardians, Kabalites and many more are all objectively bad troops at the moment.

I'm not talking about making all of them on the same level as intercessors but giving people a reason to want to play them somehow.

Dire avengers, Skitarii, Daemonnettes and cult marines are all troops that don't feel as bad to take as the ones mentioned before.
I guess giving small rules would help people play them. Or make them dirt cheap so they can serve as simple bodies to stand on objectives and get mulched

I would argue they are not bad in opposition of each other.
They are all terrible when they have to share the world of a 20ppm 2 Wound intercessor marine with doctrines and traits which makes them just terrible..

Ideally, troops should just be the most efficient choice points-wise. You should want to take them because they're just all-around good. Non-troops can then be something you take because you need the specific thing they can do, but that are less efficient overall and therefore not something you take unless you really want that specific thing.

Unfortunately, GW doesn't like that approach for some reason, I guess because they'd rather sell you more expensive specialist models. So instead they are stuck taxing you into taking them in one way or another, whether through the mission or through a detachment system.

And how do you propose making troops efficient points-wise without either turning them into specialists or simply making them the most lethal option?

Old GW had this problem - units with special and heavy weapons were "flexible" but essentially became specialists (6 man tac squads with plasma + lascannon in 4th edition, bikes in 5th edition, windrider jetbikes in 7th edition...). Units without special weapons were either waaaaaay too efficient (Khorne Zerkers got like, 1 powerfist but it was always better to bring more Khorne Zerkers in a WE army than literally any other CC option) or not good.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
And how do you propose making troops efficient points-wise without either turning them into specialists or simply making them the most lethal option?

Old GW had this problem - units with special and heavy weapons were "flexible" but essentially became specialists (6 man tac squads with plasma + lascannon in 4th edition, bikes in 5th edition, windrider jetbikes in 7th edition...). Units without special weapons were either waaaaaay too efficient (Khorne Zerkers got like, 1 powerfist but it was always better to bring more Khorne Zerkers in a WE army than literally any other CC option) or not good.

To be fair, part of that was due to their own rule structure, like forcing the unit to be only able to have one target a turn. Of course, the other part of it is simple expediency in that it is easier to move one unit with melta weapons against a tank than to maneuver a unit between infantry and vehicles. Still with the Armor Value system, even 7-8 Boltguns would be rendered useless in a Melta strike. It's a little better since they did away with that, but not by much.

Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
I also imagine that certain terrain set ups should incentivize different types of units. Cities require troops, preferably with jump packs, while deserts require tanks or other vehicles. Basically the terrain would determine what you bring.

The problem with this idea is that many people don’t like the idea of changing a list right before a game. Anyway, just something to consider I guess.

Random executions when objectives are not met?

Cookies?

Special commendations from the commissar?

This is the commissar, BTW.

 Argive wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
How about just making them decent?

As it stands most armies are forced into taking bad troops, which means people only take the minimum amount as a tax.
CSM, Cultists, Guardians, Kabalites and many more are all objectively bad troops at the moment.

I'm not talking about making all of them on the same level as intercessors but giving people a reason to want to play them somehow.

Dire avengers, Skitarii, Daemonnettes and cult marines are all troops that don't feel as bad to take as the ones mentioned before.
I guess giving small rules would help people play them. Or make them dirt cheap so they can serve as simple bodies to stand on objectives and get mulched

I would argue they are not bad in opposition of each other.
They are all terrible when they have to share the world of a 20ppm 2 Wound intercessor marine with doctrines and traits which makes them just terrible..

For the most part, yes these are selfcontained quite ok... except the cultists.... because god forbid a csm player wanted to field a Cultist army. or bypass the gakky state csm were in..

Dandelion wrote:
Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
I also imagine that certain terrain set ups should incentivize different types of units. Cities require troops, preferably with jump packs, while deserts require tanks or other vehicles. Basically the terrain would determine what you bring.

The problem with this idea is that many people don’t like the idea of changing a list right before a game. Anyway, just something to consider I guess.

I agree completely, in an earlier post I said that basic infantry in cover might get an extra save against weapons that don't have blast or possibly rapid fire. Maybe not rapid fire tho.

maybe light infantry (Save 5+ pr worse) gets a 6 FNP save in cover against anything that isn't a blast weapon. So normal guns suffer against them in cover but blast weapons don't.

Maybe troops should get dedicated troop abilities. Go to ground, for example. Stratagem type abilities that can be used for free on troop units.

The easier option is still making troops slightly cheaper. This would be easier to get right, and could be fixed on the fly in Chapter Approved. Were 5ppm IG infantry squads really that oppressive?

 Matt Swain wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
I also imagine that certain terrain set ups should incentivize different types of units. Cities require troops, preferably with jump packs, while deserts require tanks or other vehicles. Basically the terrain would determine what you bring.

The problem with this idea is that many people don’t like the idea of changing a list right before a game. Anyway, just something to consider I guess.

I agree completely, in an earlier post I said that basic infantry in cover might get an extra save against weapons that don't have blast or possibly rapid fire. Maybe not rapid fire tho.

maybe light infantry (Save 5+ pr worse) gets a 6 FNP save in cover against anything that isn't a blast weapon. So normal guns suffer against them in cover but blast weapons don't.

Someone suggested Troop units setting up barriers, and that is part of what inspired the "camp" concept for Troops.

a digging in mechanic would be interesting...