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 Gert wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
They're all tanks. Even chimeras are tanks. A tank commander, 3 leman russes, and even just one of the other kinds of tanks (including the one from FA) is A LOT of tanks . Not to mention that there are also LoWs tanks!

Yeaaaah, no, they are not all tanks. They are all armoured vehicles but they are not tanks. The only ones that could reasonably be considered tanks are the Hellhound/Devildog/Banewolf but the rest, no.

Problem when allowing that many russes is if russes become incidentally or intentionally OP spamming them breaks the game. Same with anything else that isn't the basic grunts. That's why I advocate for an highlander style, worked for ork buggies which are still good but don't break the game due to the restrictions they now have. Now I want russes to be good, they're one the most iconic AM units, but not too good to encourage players to bring lots of them and overshadow the other vehicles. Putting a cap on the number of models allowed helps, points aren't always the solution.

Or, and hear me out, people want to play Tank Companies because they've been around for donkeys (AFAIK) with naff all chance to use them outside of Apocalypse, a FW army list, and now with 8th/9th. You could do Infantry Companies or Mechanised Companies but not a pure armour force despite the background explicitly stating that's how the Guard operates and it being present in numerous books/novels.

Spam isn't a problem you can fix with Force Org changes because it will punish some armies over others. It's all well and good for an expensive army to have caps on certain unit types because it's then easier to fill out the other slots without wastage, something like Space Marines, Necrons or Thousand Sons. What about an army like Guard, Craftworlds or T'au? "Oh no, you've maxed out your one expensive unit, guess you'll have to take the maximum Troops units to fill out your points." It just forces people into styles of play or collections of models that they don't want.

GW gave the Imperial Guard an official Tank Company list for 3rd and 3.5, that was even tournament legal. I can send you a copy if you want, given that I currently use it for 4th.

Tank Company Commanders are HQ choices, tank squadron commanders are elites, and tanks are troops. Siege tanks and artillery are heavy support, while Fast Attack includes sentinels, Chimera armored infantry, Salamanders, empty recon Chimeras, and Hellhounds. Other Elites include chimera mounted stormtroopers, tech priest Enginseers (also Chimera-mounted only).

Doctrines abound, as do Rare Troops. There is also the "Aces High" special rule - doctrine points must be spent on Command Tanks of both variants before spreading to the troops tanks.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Percentages just put hard caps on the points one can put towards a certain unit type. Your whole army could be illegal because of 1 point taking it just beyond 25% or something. The points limit of the game could make certain units illegal simply because they are 25.003% of your points allowance. That, to me at least, seems way more arbitrary than any FOC. At least an FOC can be based in the structure of the army, tied into fluff, and so on. Flat hard-cap numbers? No thanks.

Is that substantively different from your army being illegal if it's 2001pts? Granted you now need to worry about points limits on each slot type, but having to downsize a squad in order to meet the 2K hard cap never felt particularly based on the structure of the army or tied to the fluff to begin with.

 Gert wrote:
The problem is that still locks out the armies with dirt-cheap Troop options from attaining anything good without also being forced to having masses of Troops. Now I love to see a good horde of Infantry but when Guardsmen, Guardians, and Fire Warrior Strike Teams are 3/4/5 Power respectively for just what comes in one unit box, that's gonna suck for anyone. To get to the 25% minimum of a 100 Power army you're fielding 80 Guardsmen just to get access to 2 Leman Russ's and a Heavy Weapons Squad in your HS slots.

I think there's a discussion to be had about whether that's really a bad thing. Your example is just about the worst-case scenario- you can meet 500pts with four squads of Guardsmen and two squads of Scions, if you're so inclined. And I regularly see 2K lists with 80+ infantry as it stands. You could also make certain dedicated transports count towards the requirement if they're carrying Troops, so that Rhinos/Chimeras/Devilfish/Falcons could reduce the number of infantry you need if you want to do mechanized. With that, three squads of Infantry in Chimeras would meet the minimum and you're good to go.

It seems to me like if you don't want to field masses of troops, you shouldn't play an army archetype that relies on masses of troops as their mainstay. Guard can do Scions, Tyranids have Warriors and Genestealers, Eldar have Dire Avengers and Rangers; there are lots of options for avoiding having to spam the dirt-cheap troops if you don't want to.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:
I think the way detachments now work is fine. I'd just give them more restrictions.

If you can just keep taking more detachments, then there are no actual restrictions.

Howabout this then; the only way to unlock a second detachment FOC is to completely fill the optional slots. The only way to unlock a third is to completely fill two, and so on?

I feel like it would be far simpler just to do what I said.

Use the standard FoC, and implement Rite of war from HH into 40k and modify it as needed.

Guard for example, you take tank commander, Russ tanks becomes troop choices, not heavy choices anymore. Take a captain in terminator armor, you can elect to take terminators as troops but not elites. Ect ECT.

Rather then worrying about spamming this unit or that, if someone wants to play a tank army as guard, fine your tanks are troops but you are still limited to your troop slot, and you can't fill all your troop slots with tanks, then fill your heavy support with Russ tanks as well because with a tank commander Russ tanks would be troops then.

Sure you got a lot of tanks now, but if you don't have anything that has ob sec that's gonna bite you.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If you can just keep taking more detachments, then there are no actual restrictions.

There are restrictions. The unit slots in said detachments, maximum detachment limits (3 in Strike Force), and they cost CP.

- Maybe Patrols should go up to 3 CP, has no effect on 500 point games or if it's your initial detachment in larger games, but taxes Patrol spam in higher point games.
- Maybe Spearheads, Vanguards, and Outriders should go up to 4 CP. To prevent spaming and incentivise people to take Battalions, or only take those kinds of specialist detachments when they have some kind of refund for them.

 catbarf wrote:
Is that substantively different from your army being illegal if it's 2001pts? Granted you now need to worry about points limits on each slot type, but having to downsize a squad in order to meet the 2K hard cap never felt particularly based on the structure of the army or tied to the fluff to begin with.

Yes, because "now need to worry about points limits on each slot type".

 carldooley wrote:
Howabout this then; the only way to unlock a second detachment FOC is to completely fill the optional slots. The only way to unlock a third is to completely fill two, and so on?

I don't see how that'd help, sorry.

Jarms48 wrote:
There are restrictions.

Let's go over them!

Jarms48 wrote:
The unit slots in said detachments...

And you can just take more detachments, so this isn't actually a limit.

Jarms48 wrote:
... maximum detachment limits (3 in Strike Force)

A limit that wouldn't need to exist if you couldn't just take more detachments. If the FOC was actually limited, there'd be no need for Ro3.

Jarms48 wrote:
... and they cost CP.

... that's not exactly a big cost. And it's not a restriction.

As to the rest of what you said, I don't think changing CP costs will fix anything. As long as you can just add an FOC (or multiple FOCs) on top of the FOC you already have, the FOC remains purposeless. There are no limits except for Ro3, which is basically a bandaid solution that exists specifically because the FOC is purposeless. If there were hard limits on slots (even scalable limits based on points levels, but still a single FOC and none of this detachment nonsense), then these additional rules wouldn't be necessary.

At that point it becomes about the individual Codices themselves, and if you want something to be rare, then you make it rare, either by imposing hard caps on unit types (0-1 Unit X) or points based scaling (No more than 1 per X00 points or part thereof). You can even flip that and put in unit requirements (1+ Unit Y or at least 1 of Unit Y per X00 points or part thereof).

 carldooley wrote:
Howabout this then; the only way to unlock a second detachment FOC is to completely fill the optional slots. The only way to unlock a third is to completely fill two, and so on?

Eww no. This would kill pure infantry Imperial Guard. Who are required to either take triple battalions, or a brigade and battalion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:
The unit slots in said detachments...

And you can just take more detachments, so this isn't actually a limit.

Jarms48 wrote:
... maximum detachment limits (3 in Strike Force)

A limit that wouldn't need to exist if you couldn't just take more detachments. If the FOC was actually limited, there'd be no need for Ro3.

Jarms48 wrote:
... and they cost CP.

... that's not exactly a big cost. And it's not a restriction.

As to the rest of what you said, I don't think changing CP costs will fix anything. As long as you can just add an FOC (or multiple FOCs) on top of the FOC you already have, the FOC remains purposeless. There are no limits except for Ro3, which is basically a bandaid solution that exists specifically because the FOC is purposeless. If there were hard limits on slots (even scalable limits based on points levels, but still a single FOC and none of this detachment nonsense), then these additional rules wouldn't be necessary.

At that point it becomes about the individual Codices themselves, and if you want something to be rare, then you make it rare, either by imposing hard caps on unit types (0-1 Unit X) or points based scaling (No more than 1 per X00 points or part thereof). You can even flip that and put in unit requirements (1+ Unit Y or at least 1 of Unit Y per X00 points or part thereof).

I don't see your point. If you increase the CP cost of taking detachments then that leaves less CP for using stratagems during army creation and for in-game buffs. For example if Patrols were 3CP each, then if an army took 3 Patrols they'd only have 6 pre-game CP left to play with. If they take 1 additional relic and 1 additional WLT then they're down to 4 pre-game CP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

GW gave the Imperial Guard an official Tank Company list for 3rd and 3.5, that was even tournament legal. I can send you a copy if you want, given that I currently use it for 4th.

Tank Company Commanders are HQ choices, tank squadron commanders are elites, and tanks are troops. Siege tanks and artillery are heavy support, while Fast Attack includes sentinels, Chimera armored infantry, Salamanders, empty recon Chimeras, and Hellhounds. Other Elites include chimera mounted stormtroopers, tech priest Enginseers (also Chimera-mounted only).

I loved this, 3rd edition chapter approved armoured company followed up by a 3.5 edition update. Then superceded by imperial armours armoured battle group list up until about 6th edition.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Percentages just put hard caps on the points one can put towards a certain unit type. Your whole army could be illegal because of 1 point taking it just beyond 25% or something.

Learning to do math will prevent that from happning.

ccs wrote:
Learning to do math will prevent that from happning.

I can only presume your aim was to miss my point?

Heh... aim to miss.

Jarms48 wrote:
I don't see your point. If you increase the CP cost of taking detachments then that leaves less CP for using stratagems during army creation and for in-game buffs. For example if Patrols were 3CP each, then if an army took 3 Patrols they'd only have 6 pre-game CP left to play with. If they take 1 additional relic and 1 additional WLT then they're down to 4 pre-game CP.

If they're taking 3 Patrols, they're not limited by the FOC, because they've spent a resource that isn't points to ignore the limits on their choices.

If they couldn't just purchase more slots, then there'd be limits. Spending CP, which armies have twice as many since 9th started, and you get a rebate on the first detachment, makes it even more laughable.

Limits aren't limits if the price to ignore them is insignificant. Sacrifice isn't sacrifice if you don't care/weren't worried about the thing you are sacrificing in the first place.

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Percentages just put hard caps on the points one can put towards a certain unit type. Your whole army could be illegal because of 1 point taking it just beyond 25% or something.

Learning to do math will prevent that from happning.

Sometimes. In certain editions with percentages, it meant 'Thou Shall Not Have a Greater Daemon.'
No amount of math solved that problem, it was just a lever people used to demand larger games.

Voss gets it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If they're taking 3 Patrols, they're not limited by the FOC, because they've spent a resource that isn't points to ignore the limits on their choices.

If they couldn't just purchase more slots, then there'd be limits. Spending CP, which armies have twice as many since 9th started, and you get a rebate on the first detachment, makes it even more laughable.

I don't know how you're getting that, the majority of competitive 8th edition armies were getting around 13 - 17 starting CP from detachments, then you got the bonus 3 for being battleforged.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Limits aren't limits if the price to ignore them is insignificant. Sacrifice isn't sacrifice if you don't care/weren't worried about the thing you are sacrificing in the first place.

CP is a limited currency. You start with 12 pre-game, and are trickled 1 per battleround. Most competitive 9th edition games are blowing through their CP in the 1st or 2nd turn using their stratagems. So having less CP to play with is a sacrifice.

Voss wrote:
Sometimes. In certain editions with percentages, it meant 'Thou Shall Not Have a Greater Daemon.'
No amount of math solved that problem, it was just a lever people used to demand larger games.

Is disallowing 501+pt models in 2K games an unreasonable restriction? It's not 2nd Ed anymore; that really only bars the bigger Lords of War. And presumably pure Knights wouldn't be subject to a percentage limit on LoW, since they rely on taking multiples.

I don't think anyone was suggesting a percentage system with values under 25%, so there might be some pick-and-choose about what you take but very little would be outright unusable in normal-sized games.

 the_scotsman wrote:
I'd just do it by percentage. 25% (or more) of your points must be Troops. All other slots must be 25% or less of your total points value. If a unit can be made to take up no slots, then it does not count towards any total.

This, like many similar systems, falls down when you consider the wildly differing value of troops. Being forced to take 400pts of Skitari rangers, Custodian Guard, or Trueborn+Wracks wouldn't have any meaningful impact on those armies.

Being forced to take 400pts of Battle Sisters would be a tragedy.

Because "Balance" is in the title of the thread, I'm taking it for granted that most are talking about matched play. I'm only posting here because I was kind of liking where Unit was going with bespoke FOC options... But then I started thinking about the different factors that would influence FOC from a narrative perspective:

The first is the character of the force in question- which is what I think Unit was getting at- and this is cool; people like this- it's things like Ravenwing, or Deathwing FOC exceptions and such. But it's not the only factor.

For some armies, you've got different sizes of standing forces- so Sisters can be organized by Missions, Commanderies and Preceptories. Missions have small rosters to choose from, Commanderies are company level and Preceptories are Chapter level.

If you're fielding a force that is derived from a mission, you're likely playing Combat Patrol or Incursion, and you might be taking ALL of your available forces to battle. If you're fielding a force derived from a Commandery, you likely have enough variety to field pretty much any type of detachment, and you likely aren't bringing the entire force to battle, even at the Onslaught level. Obviously, Preceptories can get away with bringing damn near anything.

But all of those choices can be influenced by the first factor, and the smaller the force from which the army is drawn, the more likely this is to occur. So for example, Argent Shroud likely have a higher concentration of Doms and Transports wherever they may be... But this is most likely to influence them at the Mission and Commandery level. At the mission level, you may find that you don't have a whole heck of a lot of troops to work with- likely a single MSU squad because even at the Mission level, Argent Shroud likely have a transport. If a Commandery based force field more than one detachment, it's pretty darned fluffy for one of them to be Outriders.

And then your final factor is mission choice. Think Planet Strike: if you're the defender, Heavies and Fortifications make a lot of sense; if you're the attacker, elites make more sense. And ALL of these factors exist in dynamic tension.

So the first factor could be represented by modifications to FOC from the dex.
The second factor is up to the controlling player.
The third factor would be FOC modifications based on the mission.

Now when you're thinking at that level of detail in order to create or maintain an immersive narrative, the flexibility of the detachment system allows you to account for ALL of those variables, despite the problems it may impose for balance. So let me end the post where I began: for matched play, or even play in other modes where balance is a priority, any of the options in the thread probably would work better than the detachment system. But given the necessities of immersive narrative play, the detachment system really hits the gold standard for telling YOUR story.

And keep in mind that the rules for Battleforging armies aren't exclusively a matched play phenomenon, so any changes to them would need to be made in such a way that it is clear they only apply in matched play.

ERJAK wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
I'd just do it by percentage. 25% (or more) of your points must be Troops. All other slots must be 25% or less of your total points value. If a unit can be made to take up no slots, then it does not count towards any total.

This, like many similar systems, falls down when you consider the wildly differing value of troops. Being forced to take 400pts of Skitari rangers, Custodian Guard, or Trueborn+Wracks wouldn't have any meaningful impact on those armies.

Being forced to take 400pts of Battle Sisters would be a tragedy.

Those who advocate for percentages claiming it worked good for fantasy are ignoring the fact that in fantasy pretty much all light armoured infantries and light cavalry were core units, aka the equivalent of troops in 40k. In that 25% there should be units such as dominions, celestians, retributors, seraphyms, zephyrims, etc... not just plain battle sisters. Also bikers, for those who have them. Basically only heavy armoured dudes and extremely specialized or kinda unique infantries (such as repentia for adepta sororitas) should be special or rare, therefore limited. Then it could make sense a percentage limitation, or even an old style FOC. The latter should also shaped on the factions though, since armies that have expensive units should have less slots available compared to those who field much cheaper stuff.

I did have a feeling that 3.5 Guard would have that and it kind of helps to prove the point I was making, thank you. Going back 5 Editions (from when 8th introduced the new detachments) of the game to find core rules that allow someone to field the army they want is just stupidly irritating.

 catbarf wrote:
I think there's a discussion to be had about whether that's really a bad thing. Your example is just about the worst-case scenario- you can meet 500pts with four squads of Guardsmen and two squads of Scions, if you're so inclined. And I regularly see 2K lists with 80+ infantry as it stands. You could also make certain dedicated transports count towards the requirement if they're carrying Troops, so that Rhinos/Chimeras/Devilfish/Falcons could reduce the number of infantry you need if you want to do mechanized. With that, three squads of Infantry in Chimeras would meet the minimum and you're good to go.

It seems to me like if you don't want to field masses of troops, you shouldn't play an army archetype that relies on masses of troops as their mainstay. Guard can do Scions, Tyranids have Warriors and Genestealers, Eldar have Dire Avengers and Rangers; there are lots of options for avoiding having to spam the dirt-cheap troops if you don't want to.

I've got a some problems with like 90% of what you said here.
1 - Just because you've seen 2k lists with 80+ Infantry doesn't mean everyone wants to do that. The majority of people buy the models they want, not what models the game says you should buy.
2 - Telling someone "well you shouldn't have picked army X" because they might not have known the rules before buying the models they want is a gakky attitude to take.
3 - Force Orgs in previous Editions didn't prevent spamming or OP units because Force Org has absolutely no bearing on unit profiles. If something is broken, it's broken and the only way to fix that is to change its profile.
4 (and this is the real kicker) - The game should not force people to buy units/models they don't want to buy in the name of achieving "balance".

If 8th/9th did anything right it was the way detachments were made so that you could take what you want in a legal list, instead of forcing people to fit into the "one size fits all" method of previous editions or requiring army gimmicks or special characters to circumnavigate restrictions.

 Gert wrote:

If 8th/9th did anything right it was the way detachments were made so that you could take what you want in a legal list, instead of forcing people to fit into the "one size fits all" method of previous editions or requiring army gimmicks or special characters to circumnavigate restrictions.

I think there is a difference between being able to take what you want versus being able to spam whatever unit you want. A fixed FOC like we used to have isn't preventing anyone from taking up to three copies of a any unit they might want.

-------------------------------------------------------

Another way to combine a FOC with some % limits could be to do something like this: You have to have at least as many points in Troops as compared to any individual specialist slot. Want to take 700 points in elites? You'd need to have at least 700 points in troops (including transports, etc.). If you want to limit your investment in troops then it's going to force you to take a more rounded force.

The above could be combined with codex specific rules for what units count as troops and ways for having specialists count as troops under certain situations.

--------------------------------------------------------

That's better than hard caps. It's not quite scaling, but it does allow for some flexibility.

 Mezmorki wrote:


I think there is a difference between being able to take what you want versus being able to spam whatever unit you want. A fixed FOC like we used to have isn't preventing anyone from taking up to three copies of a any unit they might want.

But it totally does that. If I want to recreate the Narmenian Armoured Regiment from Necropolis, I have to include Infantry units as Troops, even though the Narmenian's didn't have Infantry in their Regiment.

Another way to combine a FOC with some % limits could be to do something like this: You have to have at least as many points in Troops as compared to any individual specialist slot. Want to take 700 points in elites? You'd need to have at least 700 points in troops (including transports, etc.). If you want to limit your investment in troops then it's going to force you to take a more rounded force.

The above could be combined with codex specific rules for what units count as troops and ways for having specialists count as troops under certain situations.

The problem with that is as soon as you introduce ways for certain armies/subfactions to get around Force Org limitations, any reason for changing the Force Org for "balance" is lost. If, for example, Terminators become broken then in a regular SM list they are restricted but then Deathwing or an army with a Character like Calgar can just ignore those restrictions and take a broken list with no issue.

 Blackie wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
I'd just do it by percentage. 25% (or more) of your points must be Troops. All other slots must be 25% or less of your total points value. If a unit can be made to take up no slots, then it does not count towards any total.

This, like many similar systems, falls down when you consider the wildly differing value of troops. Being forced to take 400pts of Skitari rangers, Custodian Guard, or Trueborn+Wracks wouldn't have any meaningful impact on those armies.

Being forced to take 400pts of Battle Sisters would be a tragedy.

Those who advocate for percentages claiming it worked good for fantasy are ignoring the fact that in fantasy pretty much all light armoured infantries and light cavalry were core units, aka the equivalent of troops in 40k. In that 25% there should be units such as dominions, celestians, retributors, seraphyms, zephyrims, etc... not just plain battle sisters. Also bikers, for those who have them. Basically only heavy armoured dudes and extremely specialized or kinda unique infantries (such as repentia for adepta sororitas) should be special or rare, therefore limited. Then it could make sense a percentage limitation, or even an old style FOC. The latter should also shaped on the factions though, since armies that have expensive units should have less slots available compared to those who field much cheaper stuff.

I think anyone advocating for a change to the FOC in any capacity is doing it under the pretense that the codex and unit distribution would be changed to align with the new vision. Obviously if you implement a % based system ala WHFB it wouldn't slot into the existing codex's. Since this is all fan theory/wishes I don't think it's reasonable to expect someone to detail out exactly how every codex and every unit would be reassigned to fit this new FOC system.

Eh, I think the current system is fairly decent, but there's always room for improvement.

I'd like to see stratagems dropped entirely (at this point they just need to go away) and the CP system used solely for army building. I think this could make for some interesting control over army construction.