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How do people think of all weapons of one type having to fire at the same target?

On Sunday I had this dark angel player with a huge blob of helblasters shooting two of them at a different target each, killing four buggies and some warbikers in one turn.

I think I’d prefer limiting it to two splits, rather than per weapon.

Specialist Units (such as Long Fangs) could then split further.

If it had to be changed

*sad Long Fangs being the only unit that could have 2 targets because they were so special, noises*

 kodos wrote:
*sad Long Fangs being the only unit that could have 2 targets because they were so special, noises*

And Land Raiders..., and any Tau vehicle/Battlesuit with a Target Lock...

Split fire coming back is very good and cool imo; always hated not being able to shoot, say, a missile launcher at a suitable target without wasting a load of bolter shots.

That said, I miss "pass a Ld test to not shoot the nearest unit" – a good rule.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Being able to split fire is in the same ballpark as being able to move and fire heavy weapons, or not having wound allocation - it requires less thought and planning from the player(s), making the game more of an exercise in just throwing dice until the problem goes away.

It also reduces the design space for having units which can split fire when as standard it isn't possible (like Long Fangs or Land Raiders).

This. You put it far more eloquently that I would have. So much player agency and tactical thought has been removed and this is yet another example. You can play 40k on autopilot essentially.

Yes and yes

 Grimtuff wrote:

 kodos wrote:
*sad Long Fangs being the only unit that could have 2 targets because they were so special, noises*

And Land Raiders..., and any Tau vehicle/Battlesuit with a Target Lock...

Maybe that was why I was misremembering - played Tau.

 Nazrak wrote:
Split fire coming back is very good and cool imo; always hated not being able to shoot, say, a missile launcher at a suitable target without wasting a load of bolter shots.

That said, I miss "pass a Ld test to not shoot the nearest unit" – a good rule.

Another option / house-rule that blends the two is NOT allowing split fire by default, but instead require a leadership test to be passed before you can split fire (and limit splitting fire to only two targets max). Makes it a little uncertain at times whether you can split fire or not (and forces tough choices and reduces lethality when it fails). This also gives another use for the Ld stat. Also crates design space to bring older "split fire" rules back to certain units (or a split fire strat, etc.).

How does limiting squads to the same target increase player agency and tactical thought?

If one argued that Split Fire across the board was contributing to issues of overloaded game lethality, I could understand that. But having more flexibility in what your units can accomplish isn't reducing agency.

Old - Tac Squad with a heavy weapon, say as Lascannon. Stand and shoot at a vehicle, then not bother rolling your bolter dice. Move and shoot with your bolters, plinking at some enemy infantry.

Now - Stand and shoot with your bolters at their optimal target, and fire the lascannon at an optimal target. Move and shoot, letting you maybe get a better target, but taking a limited penalty on the lascannon, and maybe a penalty on your Bolters due to losing some special rules for moving.

I feel as thought the biggest difference between then and now, was allowing everything to interact with the game, in some way. Split Fire so your bolters can matter, performing actions with units that can't get sight, or sacrificing the opportunity to shoot to perform an action instead. A big difference also comes in the mechanics of shooting at vehicles. The old lascannon could pop a leman russ or big nasty vehicles in a single shot. Now, you're likely to need a hanful of lascannon shots to take one out

Edit: Mezmorki snuck in while I was writing. I don't know what I would think about that. Random Chance obviously has a place in the game, but there's certain ways that Random Chance can present itself. LD Roll to be allowed to split fire would fall on the bad end of RNG IMO. It's RNG to be permitted to attempt to do something, as opposed to Random chance in the effectiveness of what you're trying to achieve. Seeing if you can attempt to shoot at something worthwhile with bolters, vs just attempting to shoot with your bolters. Not sure if this makes sense to anyone else, but I hope it does.

I would rather LD Roll to keep full effectiveness while Split firing. -1 to BS score if you fail, so it can be stacked atop other hit modifiers? Something along those lines.

 Thadin wrote:
How does limiting squads to the same target increase player agency and tactical thought?

The idea (in theory) is that it forces a "hard choice". E.G., you either do THIS or you do THAT, but you can't do both. By forcing a hard choice, you're requiring the player to evaluate trade-offs and the board state more deeply (gee, I really want to lascannon the tank because it's a threat, but I also need to move towards the objective and shoot their troops... what do I do?! If I stand and shoot the tank will my opponent beat me onto the objective first, or if I move will the tank try to block me or shoot my unit apart next turn?). You're creating agency by increasing the impact of the decision, which will lead to more variable outcomes.

Currently, you can just "do it all" (move, shoot lascannon, and shoot normal guns), albeit with some penalties for moving + shooting a heavy weapon. But there is far less of an impactful decision to make. Less impact, means the choices you make matter less, ergo agency is reduced.

My overarching gripe with 8th and 9th edition is that by giving players more freedom and choice, the system has eliminated a lot of hard choices and decreased the agency and depth in the game as a result.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
How does limiting squads to the same target increase player agency and tactical thought?

The idea (in theory) is that it forces a "hard choice". E.G., you either do THIS or you do THAT, but you can't do both. By forcing a hard choice, you're requiring the player to evaluate trade-offs and the board state more deeply (gee, I really want to lascannon the tank because it's a threat, but I also need to move towards the objective and shoot their troops... what do I do?! If I stand and shoot the tank will my opponent beat me onto the objective first, or if I move will the tank try to block me or shoot my unit apart next turn?). You're creating agency by increasing the impact of the decision, which will lead to more variable outcomes.

Currently, you can just "do it all" (move, shoot lascannon, and shoot normal guns), albeit with some penalties for moving + shooting a heavy weapon. But there is far less of an impactful decision to make. Less impact, means the choices you make matter less, ergo agency is reduced.

My overarching gripe with 8th and 9th edition is that by giving players more freedom and choice, the system has eliminated a lot of hard choices and decreased the agency and depth in the game as a result.

This. 40k right now is simply an exercise of "Guns go Brrrrrrr!"

 Thadin wrote:
Random Chance obviously has a place in the game, but there's certain ways that Random Chance can present itself. LD Roll to be allowed to split fire would fall on the bad end of RNG IMO. It's RNG to be permitted to attempt to do something, as opposed to Random chance in the effectiveness of what you're trying to achieve. Seeing if you can attempt to shoot at something worthwhile with bolters, vs just attempting to shoot with your bolters.

That doesn't seem much different from psychic tests (make a RNG check to be permitted to cast, then roll for the actual effects), charge rolls (make a RNG check to be permitted to charge, then actually attempt to fight in combat), or random numbers of shots (RNG for how many attempts to shoot you may make). It's also a pretty common emergent element of gameplay- if you need an Advance roll to get into range of a target, then the outcome of that roll could mean whether you are allowed to shoot or not.

I'm generally in favor of removing rolling-to-see-if-you-can-roll when it's pointless or redundant, but in this case it's a mechanic that can be avoided through target prioritization (a player decision), rather than always necessary like rolling for random number of shots. But it does have to be handled delicately, because if it's too overbearing, the end result can easily be that nobody mixes weapon types (or takes units with mixed weapons).

I get what you mean, and I do understand that it's a rather flaky in terms of where the line is drawn. I suppose my stance would be, I'd prefer to have less of rolling-to-see-if-you-can-roll, which would be my issue with that proposed Splitfire LD check. I'd prefer a penalty for failing, but not outright preventing split fire.

When it comes to the previous 40k, where you couldn't scoot-n-shoot heavy weapons on infantry or use split fire, at least in my short time playing it, I always found myself thinking, "Well, why would I take heavy weapons on tactical marines/guardsmen"? It never seemed like the right choice, in any instance. You took the anti-infantry specials/heavies on your infantry squads, and left the anti-armor to other things. I feel like it begs the question, why would those options exist? This could come from my limited memory of prior editions, lack of experience, etc etc.

 Nazrak wrote:
Split fire coming back is very good and cool imo; always hated not being able to shoot, say, a missile launcher at a suitable target without wasting a load of bolter shots.

That said, I miss "pass a Ld test to not shoot the nearest unit" – a good rule.

When leadership and initiative etc. were more integral and less afterthought.

And yes, I feel the same way.

Possible other alternative for units whos thing was being able to split fire?

Replace it with Concentrate Fire, where each damage roll after the first gets a bonus in each shooting phase?

Or, for a less book keepy and swingy? Super specialists like Long Fangs can declare their splits in tranches. For purely arguments sake, let’s say I’ve got 4 Lascannons in that squad. At first, I aim two at a…I dunno…Dreadnought. But unlike other squads, I can hold off declaring the other two until I’ve resolved the first two shots. This means if the original target (here the Dreadnought) soaks the first two shots, or is left largely but irritatingly not quite dead, I can use the other two Lascannon on it. But if it’s all blown up and exploded, I can then declare a separate target entirely. Or do that if I feel it’s suitably messed up for now and something else is in equal need of a swift knee capping?

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
How does limiting squads to the same target increase player agency and tactical thought?

The idea (in theory) is that it forces a "hard choice". E.G., you either do THIS or you do THAT, but you can't do both. By forcing a hard choice, you're requiring the player to evaluate trade-offs and the board state more deeply (gee, I really want to lascannon the tank because it's a threat, but I also need to move towards the objective and shoot their troops... what do I do?! If I stand and shoot the tank will my opponent beat me onto the objective first, or if I move will the tank try to block me or shoot my unit apart next turn?). You're creating agency by increasing the impact of the decision, which will lead to more variable outcomes.

Currently, you can just "do it all" (move, shoot lascannon, and shoot normal guns), albeit with some penalties for moving + shooting a heavy weapon. But there is far less of an impactful decision to make. Less impact, means the choices you make matter less, ergo agency is reduced.

My overarching gripe with 8th and 9th edition is that by giving players more freedom and choice, the system has eliminated a lot of hard choices and decreased the agency and depth in the game as a result.

I agree with all of this, but the ability to split fire is one of the pieces where I think the 8th-9th paradigm gets it right.

That said there are places where 8th-9th went wrong in comparison to pre8th, and that's the ease of moving and firing heavy weapons, plus the other one I don't think anyone has mentioned yet, which is the ability to Assault after firing with Rapid-Fire/Heavy weapons. I think those are the places to put the "hard choices" back into the game, not split fire.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Possibly, who knows.

Occam's Razor. The game was heavily simplified. Split fire was removed as a result of that. I seriously doubt that split fire was removed to "simulate covering fire" or whatever.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
All you’d see would be Las/Plas.

As it happens, Las/Plas as a combo exists specifically because of the lack of split fire. They were the most matched weapons, with complementing ranges and identical AP values. If split fire were allowed, then you wouldn't need to match like with like weaponry. It would still be the more efficient choice, sure, but it wouldn't have been as necessary.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
How does limiting squads to the same target increase player agency and tactical thought?

The idea (in theory) is that it forces a "hard choice". E.G., you either do THIS or you do THAT, but you can't do both. By forcing a hard choice, you're requiring the player to evaluate trade-offs and the board state more deeply (gee, I really want to lascannon the tank because it's a threat, but I also need to move towards the objective and shoot their troops... what do I do?! If I stand and shoot the tank will my opponent beat me onto the objective first, or if I move will the tank try to block me or shoot my unit apart next turn?). You're creating agency by increasing the impact of the decision, which will lead to more variable outcomes.

Currently, you can just "do it all" (move, shoot lascannon, and shoot normal guns), albeit with some penalties for moving + shooting a heavy weapon. But there is far less of an impactful decision to make. Less impact, means the choices you make matter less, ergo agency is reduced.

My overarching gripe with 8th and 9th edition is that by giving players more freedom and choice, the system has eliminated a lot of hard choices and decreased the agency and depth in the game as a result.

But the point is most players would avoid making that "hard choice" in the first place since it would lead to a not optimized build. Without split fire only units that can add anti tank for real cheap would mix those weapons with basic ones. Anyone else would just skip those option. I mean, who's gonna pay for a storm bolter on a vehicle that has an anti tank weapon and can't split fire? No one. Who's gonna mix big shootas and zaap guns in their battlewagons or rokkits on their boyz squads? Still no one.

If we're talking about "hard choice" split fire could come with a penalty. You either shoot everything at the same target and at full BS or split fire at -1BS (so even cumulative with an eventual -1 to hit), maybe just keeping one gun at full BS. That would force choices on players.

I'm not convinced you increase the number of "hard choices" (or... choices) by taking options away from the player.

I guess you can say, in some simplified situation, where your unit with a lascannon and boltguns faces precisely 1 tank, and one unit of troops, that you'd always do this split. But there are plenty of situations where this is not the case. You may have the option to shoot 3, 4, 5 different units. Boltguns can obviously hurt vehicles (which some posters seem to dislike but lets leave that aside). You may want to fish for that last wound on a tank by firing the bolters at them as well - especially since that lascannon could easily fail to find its mark.

I mean what was the option in the old days? "Well I could shoot my lascannon, and maybe take out/disable a fairly expensive vehicle in one shot. Or I could shoot my handful of bolters, and kill 1 chaff - or maybe, occasionally a marine. Hmmm. Tough one."

the choice in the past was move or don't move in the first place, the target for you weapons came 2nd

and this changed, not moving to do something was removed as an option not only because you now can shoot heavy weapons on the move but also because weapons and ranges changed

not having split fire in 3rd Edition is very different in not having split fire in 9th

with higher range, smaller tables and weapons being more deadly the chance of multiple units that are a worthy target being in range and the full unit on 1 target is overkill, happens more often than in the past

Originally, in RT and 2nd ed units could split fire. in RT each model could fire at a separate target. in 2nd ed special/heavy weapons could split fire, but the rest of the squad had to shoot at the same target, this concentrated fire was itself subject to some exceptions, like if some models in a unit didn't have LOS to what the unit was shooting they could shoot something else. This wasn't too oppressive as weapons were generally limited to 1 shot each (outside of following/sustained fire). There were also masses of other restrictions, like facing, whether a unit had moved etc that determined whether certain weapons could be used. Vehicles often had shooting arcs and could split fire accordingly.

But RT and 2nd Ed were closer to skirmish games than current 40k, and the lethality of the game was far below what it is now. Model count was a lot lower, and the speed of the game was a lot more sedentary. It would take an average infantryman, doing nothing but running flat out (no shooting, close combat or anything else) until his 4th turn to get into the enemy deployment zone. rather than, you know, half your movement phase like now.

3rd ed on wards are not skirmish games, they are squad based games, so a lot of the restrictions you would place on individual models, were now placed on squads. some restrictions remained.

I agree with the OP, but thats more due to the quite schizophrenic game that 40k is in its current incarnation. It has the customization of a skirmish game with cool faction rules, special wargear, character traits and special abilities (stratagems) you can use as if it was an RPG. The scale of the game is more akin to a company sized squad based game than it is to a skirmish based one, and there are plenty of rules that would support the game as simply a squad based one (split fire is not one of those rules) and its also an Epic scale game, with massive engines of destruction blasting or carving their way through enemy squads as if they were nothing.

GW really needs to pick what kind of game they want. As it is, 40k is an apocalypse scale, squad based skirmish CCG RPG, so yeah, split fire fits perfectly into the 'skirmish' bit

Tyel wrote:
I'm not convinced you increase the number of "hard choices" (or... choices) by taking options away from the player.

Having meaningful choices (i.e. choices that lead to greatly different potential board states) is predicated on having distinct options available to the player. I'd argue that the older system presented the player with distinct options - whereas 8th/9th eliminated those distinct options. If anything, 8th/9th was the edition that took choices away from the player by eliminating an entire decision decision point in the first place.

With most books the armies come, there is often one way to play and that is it. Unit gets nerfed kiss fun with your army good bye. The few armies that are different, are mostly drasticly undercosted and with super efficient rules, where single nerfs don't fix the problems they create in the meta. We have seen this with DE and I think we will see it with tyranids too.
For the specific faction player, it is of course better to be in the second camp, because it keeps your army fun for longer. Even gives options or illusion of them to try out different builds, because either everything is good or the army can carry a bad unit choice or two.

With armies from the first cathegory you can't really do that. Often the difference between the army build , the way it should be played, and something someone likes is huge. To a point of one being a competen and powerful list and the other being a source of unending frustration.

 Mezmorki wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm not convinced you increase the number of "hard choices" (or... choices) by taking options away from the player.

Having meaningful choices (i.e. choices that lead to greatly different potential board states) is predicated on having distinct options available to the player. I'd argue that the older system presented the player with distinct options - whereas 8th/9th eliminated those distinct options. If anything, 8th/9th was the edition that took choices away from the player by eliminating an entire decision decision point in the first place.

Not all choices are created equal, though. IMO, forcing players to choose which-part-of-a-mixed-loadout-squad-does-nothing-for-no-clear-reason-this-turn isn't a choice worth preserving.

 Mezmorki wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm not convinced you increase the number of "hard choices" (or... choices) by taking options away from the player.

Having meaningful choices (i.e. choices that lead to greatly different potential board states) is predicated on having distinct options available to the player. I'd argue that the older system presented the player with distinct options - whereas 8th/9th eliminated those distinct options. If anything, 8th/9th was the edition that took choices away from the player by eliminating an entire decision decision point in the first place.

Does this not just switch up where the meaningful choice is though?

After all, the points limit forces such choices to begin with. Being able to freely split fire adds new information to that initial decision. I’d argue going for Las/Plas (to stick with an example) in hope they’ll be presented with suitable targets is still a potentially unsafe assumption. Because if, again purely for arguments sake, you come up against horde after horde of cheap basic infantry, and no particularly choice targets in the enemy force, your meaningful and purposeful choice of weapons becomes a poor one?

Yes, every post from me is coming from my own ignorance so again go easy if I’ve said something genuinely stupid to someone actually informed in the game.

Good lists have no such problems. Their units are at worse, good vs all targets. And often exeptional vs either a large part of the armies played or a super hard counter. For the best armies they often do both things at the same time, while ignoring crucial core rules like LoS, or being MW and ingnoring invs etc.

I know it is an entirely different kind of game, but Infinity doesn't have split fire. In fact, in a fireteam, only one model can fire at a time. This works because of how activations work, with orders going to any model/fireteam you'd like. What this means is that I can have a fireteam with a machinegun, a melee specialist, a medic, an engineer, and a hacker. This isn't the best fireteam, but if I run one like this, I can change the role the fireteam fills with any order. One order, it can be a shooting specialist with +3 to Ballistic Skill, a bonus to its burst value, and better reactions, or it can be a hacker specialist that can hack anything that enters its zone of control, or a melee specialist to take out big robots, or a medic or engineer to heal or repair anyone in the fireteam that gets hurt.

Basically, what I'm saying is, if 40k was a system that was built to support mixed units, rather than just having them, you could get rid of split fire and it might even end up being more fun.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
I know it is an entirely different kind of game, but Infinity doesn't have split fire. In fact, in a fireteam, only one model can fire at a time. This works because of how activations work, with orders going to any model/fireteam you'd like. What this means is that I can have a fireteam with a machinegun, a melee specialist, a medic, an engineer, and a hacker. This isn't the best fireteam, but if I run one like this, I can change the role the fireteam fills with any order. One order, it can be a shooting specialist with +3 to Ballistic Skill, a bonus to its burst value, and better reactions, or it can be a hacker specialist that can hack anything that enters its zone of control, or a melee specialist to take out big robots, or a medic or engineer to heal or repair anyone in the fireteam that gets hurt.

Basically, what I'm saying is, if 40k was a system that was built to support mixed units, rather than just having them, you could get rid of split fire and it might even end up being more fun.

Except you can splitfire in infinity, if your gun shoots more than one shot, you can split them among any number of targets.

but yeah, you can't shoot more than one gun at a time

 Jidmah wrote:
How do people think of all weapons of one type having to fire at the same target?

On Sunday I had this dark angel player with a huge blob of helblasters shooting two of them at a different target each, killing four buggies and some warbikers in one turn.

Sometimes there are little scraps of units you are trying to polish off. You might just one guy to pop that lone spore mine, or try to allocate just enough fire to clean off an objective, while putting the rest of the squad into a more threatening target.

It’s one of situations where there are tactical decisions in splitting up a squad.

 Mezmorki wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm not convinced you increase the number of "hard choices" (or... choices) by taking options away from the player.

Having meaningful choices (i.e. choices that lead to greatly different potential board states) is predicated on having distinct options available to the player. I'd argue that the older system presented the player with distinct options - whereas 8th/9th eliminated those distinct options. If anything, 8th/9th was the edition that took choices away from the player by eliminating an entire decision decision point in the first place.

Meaningful choices are good, but forcing squads into situations where they're deciding between lousy choices that feel artificial . . . not so good. I say this as someone who thinks 4th ed was peak 40K too. Giving up all the bolter fire in order to fire the single Lascannon, while there are merits to that design, still always felt 'off'.

This is particularly the case when you're teaching the game to new people, which in my case was often kids. 40K is the first wargame of many people, and learning that their little dudes with guns and clear LOS to viable targets can't fire because of one model always felt awkward.