Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I don't think 40k is fundamentally impossible to balance.

But you do have to have some restraint when designing armies.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if GW were designing Team Yankee, you'd end up with games where FBI field agents (maybe with an allied Border Patrol team for their awesome jeeps) are fighting Israeli tank platoons with allied Armenian guerillas in Moscow.

And then people would say "It can't be balanced!". Which is correct, but the fault for that is on GW for making Codex: FBI for pitched battles against Codex: IDF.

Very true, so I think the best solution to this problem is to define the FBI as a sub-faction that can't be expected to perform well if left alone in anything but the smallest battles.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I don't think 40k is fundamentally impossible to balance.

But you do have to have some restraint when designing armies.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if GW were designing Team Yankee, you'd end up with games where FBI field agents (maybe with an allied Border Patrol team for their awesome jeeps) are fighting Israeli tank platoons with allied Armenian guerillas in Moscow.

And then people would say "It can't be balanced!". Which is correct, but the fault for that is on GW for making Codex: FBI for pitched battles against Codex: IDF.

Very true, so I think the best solution to this problem is to define the FBI as a sub-faction that can't be expected to perform well if left alone in anything but the smallest battles.

Don't look now, but this is how the game used to play way up until mid-5th edition.

I think this is back to making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Most people's issues are less "my FBI can't stand up to massed Israeli tanks". Its "I seem to pay 40 points for FBI agent and yet Mossad Agents have essentially the same stats but are 10 points less? Or have 3-5 extra special rules. Or both."

Whether or not you should spam FBI agents is another question to whether they are worth their points in their own context.

Tyel wrote:
I think this is back to making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Most people's issues are less "my FBI can't stand up to massed Israeli tanks". Its "I seem to pay 40 points for FBI agent and yet Mossad Agents have essentially the same stats but are 10 points less? Or have 3-5 extra special rules. Or both."

Whether or not you should spam FBI agents is another question to whether they are worth their points in their own context.

Well, yes, but the first step to balance is adequately scoping the game, IMO.

Fiddly bits like points aren't the be-all and end-all of balance, in my opinion (same as Jidmah). This is because, in my view, armies should be taken holistically - for example, an FBI agent might be more expensive than a Mossad agent because while they might provide the same "Fieldwork" buff, that buff goes further on American units rather than Israeli (or whatever).

But taking armies holistically is literally impossible when you expect the Codex: 9th Combined Arms Army to fight a tactical pitched battle against Codex: Yeomanry of the Tower of London.

Do I expect 40k to be balanced?
Not only! It is something I actually demand, because in my opinion there isn't any fun in a game that gives me the feeling to win or loose due to the intrinsic superiority or inferiority of my army, not because I was a best or worst strategist of the other player.

One inherent problem with this sort of scoping is that it's unrealistic to expect the FBI to be packing the sort of heavy anti-tank firepower you'd need to deal with an Israeli armoured company. Or god forbid someone is bringing their Royal Navy Destroyer Flotilla to the party, because GW gave those rules too.

I don't think there's anything wrong with having small factions that can't stand on their own. So relegating these factions to supplementary roles will allow GW to focus the game on a more reasonable scope.

It's sad that GW ever opened the pandora's box in the first place, just for the quick cash grab of shiny new faction sales.

You definitely need to limit the scope more than GW currently has if you want to get better balance. There was a discussion involving Infinity a few pages back and one of the comments from someone was along the lines of "well, Infinity doesn't count because it's only a skirmish game". That kinda missed the point that the designers have kept the scope consistent and within the constraints of the core rules, allowing them to have fewer variables to balance. This is a good thing if you want a balanced game. The first place I'd start with 40k is to go back to the 3rd edition FOC, likely with a single superheavy and single flyer allowed. In reality I'd probably just remove those two unit types from the game as some of the biggest offenders when it comes to trying to balance things properly but let's assume we're trying to be somewhat realistic.

If you look back at 8th, a lot of the really bad examples of unbalanced lists came about from people spamming things that were underpointed. We had 5 Stormravens and Guilliman, 7 Hive Tyrants and 9 Plagueburst Crawlers backed up by tiny numbers of Swarms until GW came out with the rule of 3. Then we had things like Eldar armies with 7 planes, which forced GW to come out with rules allowing you to move over the bases of aircraft so people could actually interact with the game in any meaningful way against these armies. It was kind of amusing watching GW play whack-a-mole with these issues when they'd already had a solution that they threw out because some guy on the board decided it might stop someone buying that 4th Predator.

Then you need to make sure each faction can build a good TAC list and isn't forced into extreme skew territory by design. I don't have a problem with designating certain armies as auxiliaries or allies rather than full-blown armies as long as that's made clear to people. The old Daemonhunters Codex which expanded the Grey Knights from their single Terminator squad they had in 2n edition had a designer's note saying that while it was possible to build a GK army using the Codex it wasn't recommended. If GW really want to keep their various mini-factions around I'd like to see more of them handled in that way.

I think Super Heavies should stay, you could have something like a Super Heavy takes up 2 or even 3 Heavy Support slots for example.
Flyers are more complicated. Back in 6/7th being a Flyer was a big deal, because it meant you were only hit on 6s. Nowadays though, they're just -1 to hit. Which isn't a huge deal, especially now that modifiers are capped at 1, stacking negatives is not longer a problem.
So if we keep Flyers in roughly the same place they are now, I don't see why they can't be in the game or even that heavily restricted. Although I do think Flyers should be squishier than battletanks when they get hit.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think Super Heavies should stay, you could have something like a Super Heavy takes up 2 or even 3 Heavy Support slots for example.
Flyers are more complicated. Back in 6/7th being a Flyer was a big deal, because it meant you were only hit on 6s. Nowadays though, they're just -1 to hit. Which isn't a huge deal, especially now that modifiers are capped at 1, stacking negatives is not longer a problem.
So if we keep Flyers in roughly the same place they are now, I don't see why they can't be in the game or even that heavily restricted. Although I do think Flyers should be squishier than battletanks when they get hit.

the relevant flyers are just squishier, faster tanks with a -1 to hit, they can't even moveblock as well now.

All the fliers I can think of (Valkyries, Stormravens and Stormhawks) are a standard T7/3+/10+W that a lot of tanks are.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
All the fliers I can think of (Valkyries, Stormravens and Stormhawks) are a standard T7/3+/10+W that a lot of tanks are.

I meant the eldar ones, which were the only relevant ones last time i checked. I barely ever see valks/storms and i assume these arent the flyers people are complaining about.

Relevant to what? 8th edition tournaments maybe.
But that's exactly what we're trying to discuss solutions to right now.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Relevant to what? 8th edition tournaments maybe.
But that's exactly what we're trying to discuss solutions to right now.

Thats the point i'm clumsily trying to make.

Flyers were abuseable in the past because of the maluses to hit they gave in various forms.
9th basically fixed all these problems to a point where the only difference between a regular tank and a flyer is the force org slot and the movement speed of the flyer.

This is why i think the focus on "fixing" flyers is irrelevant to the current state of the game and is a leftover from past editions.

Doesn't Battletech have roughly the same scope as 40k? Infantry, Power armor, tanks, super heavy tanks, light super heavy walkers up to heavy super heavy walkers, helicopters, jets, etc?

I understand that game takes a lot more of an RPG approach to balance but I also do not read or hear a lot of complaints about it in the same sense as I hear about 40k. Granted, I could be totally off base here.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Fiddly bits like points aren't the be-all and end-all of balance, in my opinion (same as Jidmah). This is because, in my view, armies should be taken holistically - for example, an FBI agent might be more expensive than a Mossad agent because while they might provide the same "Fieldwork" buff, that buff goes further on American units rather than Israeli (or whatever).

But taking armies holistically is literally impossible when you expect the Codex: 9th Combined Arms Army to fight a tactical pitched battle against Codex: Yeomanry of the Tower of London.

Armies do have to be considered holistically - but I don't think that does make it impossible to consider.
Really unless you are dying in a ditch over things like the Inquisition, Sisters of Silence (aren't these annexed to Custodes now?), the only "outlier" is Knights.

I mean looking at WHFB, you had herohammer. Then cavhammer. Then in 8th you saw "hordes"->"monstrous creatures"->"chaff and spam dwellers".
This applied across all factions.

40k never seems to be [archetype]hammer.

Were Eldar Flyers overpowered? Yes. Why? Because given the stackable minuses to hit they were overcosted. Were all flyers overpowered? No. Many were considered rubbish. Was the Castellan overpowered? Yes I think so - again, you got too much for your points. Did it mean vehicles as a whole were? No, not really. Did SM2.0 make anyone else's elite infantry overpowered? No.

I think right now multimeltas (and multimelta cosplayers) are overpowered at the moment. Why? Because they are too good compared to everything else in the game - especially monsters and vehicles, but also non-horde infantry. You can shoot ork boys and its still not that bad - certainly not at the level of shooting a Leman Russ with unbuffed boltguns. They don't have any weaknesses at the points cost they are currently at.

You could change the rules or the points - but something has to give. Until it happens they are I think the major meta warping feature beyond "gotta go fast" - which stems from the primary objectives and needing to get on them ASAP, which applies to all factions.

If you bring an army full of tanks, and I could have brought some anti-tank units but didn't, I should be worse off. There are questions of *how* worse off - which is where you get debates of hard counters and soft counters - but that's to a degree a different matter than "this it top tier anti-tank, and this is bad anti-tank you shouldn't take" which is the main source of imbalance in 40k - and I feel has been in every edition.

You look at the placing armies, they are not really a skew. They are TAC. Its just they are all *good* - composed of units which are comparatively cheap for what they bring compared to hundreds of datasheets for the factions are in the game.

I think GW's obligation to be up front about a purchase is hit or miss at best. It really depends on the sales person. My very first experience with 40k was 2 weeks before 8th dropped. I had no idea what an edition was, or what a faction was. I just knew this looked awesome and I wanted to get started.

I walked in to my local GW store, and said I wanted to get started with the hobby but I didn't know what was good or fun, but I thought the GK looked cool. Cut to an hour later and he's ringing me up for a 7th BRB, a GK codex, and a few boxes of Paladins and strikes, and an appropriate paint set, glue, snips, brushes, etc. I walk out of the store over 400 dollars lighter, and start assembling my minis. I quickly learn that 8th has been announced, and my recent book purchases are now invalid. I went back to the store and asked why he sold me books when he knew they were about to be invalidated. (I didn't care about the models) and he said "I wanted to help you get started playing the game as soon as possible, and we aren't allowed to know when new editions are coming out". This suffice to say put me off the hobby for a few months.

Cut to 3 weeks before 9th drops, around when Sisters was still hawtness, and I watched this guy sell a brand new player like me, a SM Codex, and SM supplement, a 8th BRB, and two boxes of Intercessors. This happens ALL the time. GW is under ZERO obligation to help you from being screwed over by their "releases". One of their corner stones until "legends" became a thing was that you can literally play anything GW ever released (Modelwise) and there will always be rules for it. Obviously this is factually not correct, or at best, misleading as hell.

Rihgu wrote:
Doesn't Battletech have roughly the same scope as 40k? Infantry, Power armor, tanks, super heavy tanks, light super heavy walkers up to heavy super heavy walkers, helicopters, jets, etc?

I understand that game takes a lot more of an RPG approach to balance but I also do not read or hear a lot of complaints about it in the same sense as I hear about 40k. Granted, I could be totally off base here.

It's been a long time, but claims of Battletech "brokenness" usually came from Clans and custom built mechs. IIRC there were ways to abuse some of the other unit options like tanks as well.

*disclaimer: This information is about 25-30 years old. I have no idea how the game is now.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I think GW's obligation to be up front about a purchase is hit or miss at best. It really depends on the sales person. My very first experience with 40k was 2 weeks before 8th dropped. I had no idea what an edition was, or what a faction was. I just knew this looked awesome and I wanted to get started.

I walked in to my local GW store, and said I wanted to get started with the hobby but I didn't know what was good or fun, but I thought the GK looked cool. Cut to an hour later and he's ringing me up for a 7th BRB, a GK codex, and a few boxes of Paladins and strikes, and an appropriate paint set, glue, snips, brushes, etc. I walk out of the store over 400 dollars lighter, and start assembling my minis. I quickly learn that 8th has been announced, and my recent book purchases are now invalid. I went back to the store and asked why he sold me books when he knew they were about to be invalidated. (I didn't care about the models) and he said "I wanted to help you get started playing the game as soon as possible, and we aren't allowed to know when new editions are coming out". This suffice to say put me off the hobby for a few months.

Cut to 3 weeks before 9th drops, around when Sisters was still hawtness, and I watched this guy sell a brand new player like me, a SM Codex, and SM supplement, a 8th BRB, and two boxes of Intercessors. This happens ALL the time. GW is under ZERO obligation to help you from being screwed over by their "releases". One of their corner stones until "legends" became a thing was that you can literally play anything GW ever released (Modelwise) and there will always be rules for it. Obviously this is factually not correct, or at best, misleading as hell.

The orders to do schiesty sales come down from the top.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I think GW's obligation to be up front about a purchase is hit or miss at best. It really depends on the sales person. My very first experience with 40k was 2 weeks before 8th dropped. I had no idea what an edition was, or what a faction was. I just knew this looked awesome and I wanted to get started.

I walked in to my local GW store, and said I wanted to get started with the hobby but I didn't know what was good or fun, but I thought the GK looked cool. Cut to an hour later and he's ringing me up for a 7th BRB, a GK codex, and a few boxes of Paladins and strikes, and an appropriate paint set, glue, snips, brushes, etc. I walk out of the store over 400 dollars lighter, and start assembling my minis. I quickly learn that 8th has been announced, and my recent book purchases are now invalid. I went back to the store and asked why he sold me books when he knew they were about to be invalidated. (I didn't care about the models) and he said "I wanted to help you get started playing the game as soon as possible, and we aren't allowed to know when new editions are coming out". This suffice to say put me off the hobby for a few months.

Cut to 3 weeks before 9th drops, around when Sisters was still hawtness, and I watched this guy sell a brand new player like me, a SM Codex, and SM supplement, a 8th BRB, and two boxes of Intercessors. This happens ALL the time. GW is under ZERO obligation to help you from being screwed over by their "releases". One of their corner stones until "legends" became a thing was that you can literally play anything GW ever released (Modelwise) and there will always be rules for it. Obviously this is factually not correct, or at best, misleading as hell.

Out of curiosity, I don't guess that the manager mentioned that GW was providing credits for folks who had bought new rulebooks/codexes in the months leading up to 8th edition, so that they could get new books for free? I run a FLGS and worth with GW regularly. All of my customers who bought books within like 60 days (it's been a few years so I can't quite remember. May have been 90 days?) of 8th edition being announced were given credit directly from GW (done through me) so that they could get their new books for free when they came out.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I think GW's obligation to be up front about a purchase is hit or miss at best. It really depends on the sales person. My very first experience with 40k was 2 weeks before 8th dropped. I had no idea what an edition was, or what a faction was. I just knew this looked awesome and I wanted to get started.

I walked in to my local GW store, and said I wanted to get started with the hobby but I didn't know what was good or fun, but I thought the GK looked cool. Cut to an hour later and he's ringing me up for a 7th BRB, a GK codex, and a few boxes of Paladins and strikes, and an appropriate paint set, glue, snips, brushes, etc. I walk out of the store over 400 dollars lighter, and start assembling my minis. I quickly learn that 8th has been announced, and my recent book purchases are now invalid. I went back to the store and asked why he sold me books when he knew they were about to be invalidated. (I didn't care about the models) and he said "I wanted to help you get started playing the game as soon as possible, and we aren't allowed to know when new editions are coming out". This suffice to say put me off the hobby for a few months.

Cut to 3 weeks before 9th drops, around when Sisters was still hawtness, and I watched this guy sell a brand new player like me, a SM Codex, and SM supplement, a 8th BRB, and two boxes of Intercessors. This happens ALL the time. GW is under ZERO obligation to help you from being screwed over by their "releases". One of their corner stones until "legends" became a thing was that you can literally play anything GW ever released (Modelwise) and there will always be rules for it. Obviously this is factually not correct, or at best, misleading as hell.

1) So why did you, the experienced player who's been fleeced exactly like this, just stand by & watch it happen? YOU knew when 9th was arriving.

2) And no, it's never been true that you can use anything ever released as there'll be rules for it. Even with Legends it's not true.
As exhibit #1? I present you .... the Squats.
Here in 9th? Oh sure, I could use most of them as short Guardsmen. Or Nurglings, or Knights, or anything else my opponent will agree to. But the only editions I've been able to run them as Squats is RT & 2e.
Or how about my Las/Plas Razorback turrets? Where are these for 9e?

If there is a number of FBI agents out there that can compete with a tank then they can play ball. 6s always wound. Knight armies are still pretty lame and often cause bad games, but that is because it is a skew list.

Slipspace wrote:
You definitely need to limit the scope more than GW currently has if you want to get better balance.

No, nerf one undercosted or buff one overcosted unit and then the game has better balance, no need to change the scope of anything to improve balance. Perfect is the enemy of good and no matter how much you narrow the scope of the game GW can still say Guardsmen should cost 1PL and Cultists should cost 2PL and if those PLs do not line up with the value those units have in the game then the game is still going to be unbalanced even if those are the only two units in the game.

Rihgu wrote:
Doesn't Battletech have roughly the same scope as 40k? Infantry, Power armor, tanks, super heavy tanks, light super heavy walkers up to heavy super heavy walkers, helicopters, jets, etc?

I understand that game takes a lot more of an RPG approach to balance but I also do not read or hear a lot of complaints about it in the same sense as I hear about 40k. Granted, I could be totally off base here.

The difference is that in battletech all units can be taken by any faction. So there aren't any factions that just don't get to take certain mechs or aren't allowed to have infantry. Players may add those restrictions themselves in order to better emulate the fluff, but the rules don't force it.

EDIT - Nevermind

balmong7 wrote:

Rihgu wrote:
Doesn't Battletech have roughly the same scope as 40k? Infantry, Power armor, tanks, super heavy tanks, light super heavy walkers up to heavy super heavy walkers, helicopters, jets, etc?

I understand that game takes a lot more of an RPG approach to balance but I also do not read or hear a lot of complaints about it in the same sense as I hear about 40k. Granted, I could be totally off base here.

The difference is that in battletech all units can be taken by any faction. So there aren't any factions that just don't get to take certain mechs or aren't allowed to have infantry. Players may add those restrictions themselves in order to better emulate the fluff, but the rules don't force it.

That doesn't impact the scope, though. I brought it up because a lot of posters are saying the scope of what 40k covers is too much for the game to be reasonably balanced.
I think that as long as each faction has ways of meaningfully dealing with each tier of scope the game can be balanced. What I mean by that is not every faction needs light infantry, heavy infantry, light vehicles, heavy vehicles, flyers, etc. But they do need something that can fight all of those targets.
So I think a game can exist with both grots and warhound titans and be balanced but I don't think a game where 1 faction has only grots and 1 faction has only warhound titans can be balanced, if that makes sense. Give those grots void grenades though... now we're talking!

Rihgu wrote:

balmong7 wrote:

Rihgu wrote:
Doesn't Battletech have roughly the same scope as 40k? Infantry, Power armor, tanks, super heavy tanks, light super heavy walkers up to heavy super heavy walkers, helicopters, jets, etc?

I understand that game takes a lot more of an RPG approach to balance but I also do not read or hear a lot of complaints about it in the same sense as I hear about 40k. Granted, I could be totally off base here.

The difference is that in battletech all units can be taken by any faction. So there aren't any factions that just don't get to take certain mechs or aren't allowed to have infantry. Players may add those restrictions themselves in order to better emulate the fluff, but the rules don't force it.

So I think a game can exist with both grots and warhound titans and be balanced but I don't think a game where 1 faction has only grots and 1 faction has only warhound titans can be balanced, if that makes sense. Give those grots void grenades though... now we're talking!

And I made this point before too. Just because Imperial Guard and Tau are known to be terrible at melee it doesn't mean their melee options should automatically be garbage just because. As well, just because Marines aren't known for artillery it doesn't mean Whirlwind variants should be terrible (TFC slowly got better as time progressed)

Do I expect 40k to be balanced?

No.

Why? Because imbalance sells more than balance... You wouldn't buy a useless unit to play (and lose) with, you would buy one that you think will win...

 Slayer6 wrote:
Do I expect 40k to be balanced?

No.

Why? Because imbalance sells more than balance... You wouldn't buy a useless unit to play (and lose) with, you would buy one that you think will win...

damn, thats a big assumption on your part.

Tell that to my :

Warp talons
Raptors
Wyches
Wraith Host (purchased before PA)
Thousand sons (purchased before PA)

 Slayer6 wrote:
Do I expect 40k to be balanced?

No.

Why? Because imbalance sells more than balance... You wouldn't buy a useless unit to play (and lose) with, you would buy one that you think will win...

There is some truth to this in video games- LOL is designed to frustrate you into a "one more match, I need a win" mindset, and to sell RP, with which to purpose one of the handful of presently viable champions.. Every month they release a new champion that is always broken. There was one named Ecco that took them six months to fix, despite many and loud complaints.

However- that is an extreme waste of resources if kits are produced for the purpose of NOT selling. GW rules writers are not competent enough to intentionally imbalance the game.

 Slayer6 wrote:
Do I expect 40k to be balanced?

No.

Why? Because imbalance sells more than balance... You wouldn't buy a useless unit to play (and lose) with, you would buy one that you think will win...

Are you sure?
Among the people I know nobody did never said: «I need a new army because this sucks». They preferred stop to play; also the people with the strongest armies.

The_Grim_Angel wrote:

 Slayer6 wrote:
Do I expect 40k to be balanced?

No.

Why? Because imbalance sells more than balance... You wouldn't buy a useless unit to play (and lose) with, you would buy one that you think will win...

Are you sure?
Among the people I know nobody did never said: «I need a new army because this sucks». They preferred stop to play; also the people with the strongest armies.

And you would be right. It's well established that games draw more players, and thus more sales, if the game is more balanced because more people enjoy playing balanced games.
Especially in miniature gaming, where people have to build and paint their expensive sets first, a stable near-balanced state will generate a lot more sales than catering to the few meta-chasers who actually keep up with all the releases. A clear indicator of this would be the massive drop of tournament attendance and community activity after the Iron Hands supplement dropped.