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.

if everyone has that deficit is the one big problem of that system if used by GW

it is not that such a system in general cannot work
remember there are games out there were alternating turns work

problem is that how GW uses it does not work, and it already shows the flaws with the index so we expect that it gets worse with the Codex
and not better

 Insectum7 wrote:
But also, did you just chaosXomega with your "30% chance to do a wound or two?" statement? A Powerfist more than doubles the damage output of a 5 Marine squad against MEQ.

I don't find that statement to be a useful representation of what is actually happening there when we're talking about a single wound -- on average.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
But also, did you just chaosXomega with your "30% chance to do a wound or two?" statement? A Powerfist more than doubles the damage output of a 5 Marine squad against MEQ.

I don't find that statement to be a useful representation of what is actually happening there when we're talking about a single wound -- on average.

I'm going to screenshot this and save it for the next million years to post when you drop some nitpicky mathhammer to justify some unjustifiable balance decision.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
But also, did you just chaosXomega with your "30% chance to do a wound or two?" statement? A Powerfist more than doubles the damage output of a 5 Marine squad against MEQ.

I don't find that statement to be a useful representation of what is actually happening there when we're talking about a single wound -- on average.

It's pretty straightforward. This particular upgrade increases the models CC damage output by 4-8x depending on target. It should have an associated cost.

 vict0988 wrote:
sophistry

You keep using that word. I don't think you know what it means. Sophistry implies that I have motive to attempt to mislead - if I do, thats certainly news to me.

Then why do you keep proposing its worth is indistinguishable from zero when that is evidently not the case?

Because based on my own extensive experience playtesting and designing tabletop games, I basically arrived at the same conclusions that GW evidently did - its a lot of smoke and mirrors and the perceived improvement to game balance resulting from increasing the much-vaunted "granularity" of points systems and micro-costing individual weapons is purely illusory fiction, especially when the options are in many case effective side-grades (as has been the case in 40k for a couple years now, which makes this whole discussion even more funny because in many cases units have had free weapon options for upwards of a year now without anyone really batting an eye). There are corner-cases and scenarios where it matters (and those should certainly be addressed, but as is typical GW is heavy handed and ham fisted and takes a one-size fits all approach to everything), but in most use cases taken in aggregate, the minor differences in weapon loadouts between two opposed armies are not a meaningful factor in the outcome of a game.

Many other designers whom I respect greatly (and who, more importantly, are actually published and therefore have more clout than little ol' me) have arrived at very similar conclusions as well and moved towards less granular points systems or replacing points and using other mechanisms for army construction.

Granted, that might change if player A is the type to go out of their way to maximize everything, and player B is a no-frills barebones player, so you end up with player A having an army of high tech specops types loaded for bear, while player B has an equal number of dudes carrying nothing but lasrifles. But in my experience this is a corner case (and I say this as someone who is more often than not inclined towards acting like player B), and the average player in what I will refer to as an "open ended" system like this will often make choices and decisions that may otherwise seem "sub-optimal" if a points system is actually applied.

There are two kinds of balance, internal balance and external balance. It would be a rather shoddy wargame if the game was entirely externally balanced but wholly unbalanced internally as every faction would devolve to playing the same list with no opportunity for replacements or personal expression because a unit of Guardsmen costs more than a Leman Russ and Monoliths less than Deathmarks per model.

Both internal and external balance are achieved using the same points system and methodology, so if you want to talk about sophistry, trying to argue that points only impact one but not the other might just be it.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
People chose the upgrade for how they expected to use the squad.

Which is something you can still do. Worrying that your rearguard wouldn't be as efficient if the Sarge doesn't have a TH is kind of moot. Yes, you paid for a TH or whatever weapon you might use. A weapon you probably won't use actively and if you did it comes down to like 30% change to do a wound or two.

Are you aiming for the top tables at LVO? Then get those TH on. Otherwise I don't think it's worth worrying about. I do imagine most older gamers here have enough models to accommodate if they wanted to.

There's a more nuance on what to do with stuff like Death Company though ( highly dependent on unit buffs ).

its not about if theyre gonna use them or not tho... Its about purposefully choosing as a player that you want to bring naked squads as a backfield holder/action monkey. Now you can't do that.

If i want a cheap squad of legionnaires to hold my home objective, i can't do that, i have to pay extra points (therefore, limiting the options in the rest of my army) just because GW decided that bolters are the same as a lascannon+heavy melee weapon+tome+plasma pistol+icon.

It's not about the loss of % on effectiveness.

You're right, it has nothing to do with effectiveness %. It's just you arguing for the sake of arguing.
I mean, let's be clear here. You're bitching about a 5 man Legionaies squad now costing a flat 100pts. As opposed to the 90pts it ended 9th at. Double those #s if you want the full 10 man squad. In both cases there's no pts cost associated with lascannons etc (just the Balefire tome & god marks in 9th).

That's a difference of 2 pts per CSM!
Don't try & convince us that you can't deal with this minor degree of pts variance, that the sky has fallen etc. Things shift up & down by a few pts all the time in this game. Especially as editions change.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Because based on my own extensive experience playtesting and designing tabletop games, I basically arrived at the same conclusions that GW evidently did - its a lot of smoke and mirrors and the perceived improvement to game balance resulting from increasing the much-vaunted "granularity" of points systems and micro-costing individual weapons is purely illusory fiction, especially when the options are in many case effective side-grades (as has been the case in 40k for a couple years now, which makes this whole discussion even more funny because in many cases units have had free weapon options for upwards of a year now without anyone really batting an eye). There are corner-cases and scenarios where it matters (and those should certainly be addressed, but as is typical GW is heavy handed and ham fisted and takes a one-size fits all approach to everything), but in most use cases taken in aggregate, the minor differences in weapon loadouts between two opposed armies are not a meaningful factor in the outcome of a game.

Oof

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
People chose the upgrade for how they expected to use the squad.

Which is something you can still do. Worrying that your rearguard wouldn't be as efficient if the Sarge doesn't have a TH is kind of moot. Yes, you paid for a TH or whatever weapon you might use. A weapon you probably won't use actively and if you did it comes down to like 30% change to do a wound or two.

It's free now. You can expect every squad to start fielding the already built P-fist Sergeants I have lying around, and you can expect more to show up in the assembly line. It's going to be all Powerfist/ThunderHammer-Plasma Pistols all the time.

Weird how different minds work. In many cases I'm looking at options available to me and opting not to leverage them because its more effort to build/convert/paint the extra minis than I will get utility out of them on the tabletop. For all the times I actually paid for plasma pistols and power swords on my guard sgts in previous editions, I can't ever think of a time that I was actually glad I did so (whereas I can think of many cases where I determined that maybe the option wasn't actually worth taking because they ultimately did nothing to meaningfully alter the flow or outcome of the game for me and it was a capability that I wasn't actually utilizing or necessarily even able to utilize given the actual dynamics of play on the tabletop). Granted, the inclination to give a unit the free upgrade definitely varies depending on what the upgrade options are and what unit/army they are available to - a power fist or thunderhammer in a squad of marines certainly has more appeal than a powersword in a guard squad, for example.

Theres certainly the argument of "better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it", but I'll re-evaluate my feelings on this after I've played enough games where the absence of the "free upgrade" actually felt like it was a contributing factor to my loss. FOIP as Grotsnik says.

ccs wrote:


You're right, it has nothing to do with effectiveness %. It's just you arguing for the sake of arguing.
I mean, let's be clear here. You're bitching about a 5 man Legionaies squad now costing a flat 100pts. As opposed to the 90pts it ended 9th at. Double those #s if you want the full 10 man squad. In both cases there's no pts cost associated with lascannons etc (just the Balefire tome & god marks in 9th).

That's a difference of 2 pts per CSM!
Don't try & convince us that you can't deal with this minor degree of pts variance, that the sky has fallen etc. Things shift up & down by a few pts all the time in this game. Especially as editions change.

I gave ONE example on ONE unit.... Expand that to litterally every unit in my army, and its easily one extra squad that i can't bring anymore.

yeah, when balance is so bad you better skip points all together and play scenarios

that is way historical games don't use points, they have a setting with the historical order of battle and recreate that

there is never a system that lets you pay points for an upgrade
the conscript with bad weapons is worth the same as the veteran units with the best weapons available

except ther actually are point systems, even in Black Powder you pay for upgrades and your veteran unit with rifles cost more than your veteran unit with smoothbore muskets

somehow points for upgrades must have an impact on the performance of an army in game, otherwise it would not be used

that there is no real difference if a laser cannon costs 5 or 10 points, while a plasma cannon cost 10 or 15, but there is a difference between a naked unit and a full upgunned one
and even the basic "we don't use points at all" games make a difference there

 AtoMaki wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Because based on my own extensive experience playtesting and designing tabletop games, I basically arrived at the same conclusions that GW evidently did - its a lot of smoke and mirrors and the perceived improvement to game balance resulting from increasing the much-vaunted "granularity" of points systems and micro-costing individual weapons is purely illusory fiction, especially when the options are in many case effective side-grades (as has been the case in 40k for a couple years now, which makes this whole discussion even more funny because in many cases units have had free weapon options for upwards of a year now without anyone really batting an eye). There are corner-cases and scenarios where it matters (and those should certainly be addressed, but as is typical GW is heavy handed and ham fisted and takes a one-size fits all approach to everything), but in most use cases taken in aggregate, the minor differences in weapon loadouts between two opposed armies are not a meaningful factor in the outcome of a game.

Oof

Yeah, I know lol. In this case though I have a long post history on dakka advocating for points systems moving in a similar direction, so in my view its an example of GW doing something right (which happens, rarely) rather than me doing something wrong. As a general trend, the points systems in other games which I have found to work best in my experience are those which are less granular rather than more granular, and this would be GW seemingly moving in that same direction (though admittedly not in a way that I think is actually being executed well, but I give GW credit for trying lol).

I guess cheating is a bit easier now, as you could just have the same list printed twice and swap all the weapons from AT to AP easily. Not a major consideration of course, but a thought I had.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
But also, did you just chaosXomega with your "30% chance to do a wound or two?" statement? A Powerfist more than doubles the damage output of a 5 Marine squad against MEQ.

I don't find that statement to be a useful representation of what is actually happening there when we're talking about a single wound -- on average.

It's pretty straightforward. This particular upgrade increases the models CC damage output by 4-8x depending on target. It should have an associated cost.

One could instead argue that by assuming the legionaries always have a scary power fist guy in it without paying a significant cost for the weapon they are better suited for defending themselves compared to the actual cheap chaff objective holders, cultists.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
I'm going to screenshot this and save it for the next million years to post when you drop some nitpicky mathhammer to justify some unjustifiable balance decision.

If you can back up with relevant info and not just gak posting for fun then by all means do so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's pretty straightforward. This particular upgrade increases the models CC damage output by 4-8x depending on target. It should have an associated cost.

Well, it does have that cost. This is a scenario where you don't have the item and worrying about not being efficient as a result ( as opposed to not having free points to spend elsewhere ).

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's pretty straightforward. This particular upgrade increases the models CC damage output by 4-8x depending on target. It should have an associated cost.

Well, it does have that cost. This is a scenario where you don't have the item and worrying about not being efficient as a result ( as opposed to not having free points to spend elsewhere ).

It's the same thing, because points are a fluid asset. I no longer have the option of not taking the P-fist and spending the points on an upgrade elsewhere.

The upgrade is either worth something, or it isn't. And despite your attempt to minimize it, it's clearly worth something.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Yeah, I know lol. In this case though I have a long post history on dakka advocating for points systems moving in a similar direction, so in my view its an example of GW doing something right (which happens, rarely) rather than me doing something wrong. As a general trend, the points systems in other games which I have found to work best in my experience are those which are less granular rather than more granular, and this would be GW seemingly moving in that same direction (though admittedly not in a way that I think is actually being executed well, but I give GW credit for trying lol).

the idea was never the problem, but as usually GWs execution of it

2 examples, a good one and a bad one

the 3 Landspeeders (though historical reasons): 3 Datasheets with 3 different points and 3 different weapon options that are sidegrades, if you take a Melta in addition to the rocket launcher, a flamer or a bolter does not matter for the points

the Crisis Suit: 1 Datasheet, ~30 different loadouts, all cost the same points and it is just not realistic that a unit with 2 flamer and a rocket launcher is equal to a unit with 2 rocket launcher and a flamer

otherwise, if the crisis ones are all equal value in points, why does the Landspeeder have 3 different values as they should be all equal as well
specially as the difference between 2 of them is 5 points

so the point system is granular enough that a landspeeder with assault cannon is worth 5 points less than one with rocket launcher
but not granular enough that a Crisis with assault cannon must be the same cost as a crisis with rocket launcher

that the basic idea works is not the problem
that GW does not know how to handle such ideas is and either we see units with several weapon options split into different datacards were loadouts are just options that do not change the value,, or we get the granular system of points for upgrades back
as it is now, it won't work and some factions will turn out better than the others because of how the units are priced

chaos0xomega wrote:
(as has been the case in 40k for a couple years now, which makes this whole discussion even more funny because in many cases units have had free weapon options for upwards of a year now without anyone really batting an eye).

If you didn't see "eyes-batted" over a lack of point costs for wargear this past year you are blind.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I'm sure you are capable of doing the math, but you didn't bother to. You just pulled a number from your rear and assumed it was correct.

In my experience with the industry, many designers don't have much background with math or more specifically probability, and struggle to get the math to align to intuition. I've seen all sorts of probabilistic fallacies cited to justify balance decisions and it's no surprise that many designers have trouble with purely numerical systems.

The overwhelming majority of non-historical wargames use some kind of resource-based army-building limitations- still functionally points, but lower granularity makes the math easier, and it emphasizes design as the balancing factor rather than raw points. And it works, it legitimately does.

But GW hasn't done the legwork to actually support this across the game.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
One could instead argue that by assuming the legionaries always have a scary power fist guy in it without paying a significant cost for the weapon they are better suited for defending themselves compared to the actual cheap chaff objective holders, cultists.

That ties back to points as a shaping mechanism rather than a balancing mechanism per se. You can make wargear free because it's what the unit 'should' be using; essentially declaring as a designer that Tactical Marines are shock troops, not backfield objective monkeys, and running them naked is contrary to their fluff. But you can also create that shaping effect through points if powerfists and special weapons are cheap enough to be no-brainers, and then there is strong incentive to take them (while at least having some trade-off). The problem is when you have multiple choices that are clearly unequal, but still being treated as no-cost sidegrade options.

Is having a powerfist so integral to the setting's depiction of Legionnaires that it ought to be functionally standard-issue wargear in every squad? If it is, there's no point in having the other options; just delete them from the datasheet and all those legacy models with chainswords count them as powerfists. If not, then there ought to be some incentive to take other loadouts. There are a bunch of ways to do that:
1. Make all the melee options equally powerful sidegrades. Chainswords equal to powerfists- you can make it work, but you might not like the side effects.
2. Tie the melee weapons to other options. Maybe it's chainsword + plasma pistol versus powerfist + nothing, or taking the chainsword confers a special rule to the unit, or the powerfist has an opportunity cost like not being able to deep strike or strikes-last. This may be challenging if these weapons are options on a wide variety of units that the advantages/disadvantages may not apply equally to.
3. Give the better weapons some kind of cost to offset the greater power.

#3 is straightforward and the least likely to have knock-on effects elsewhere. GW already has the tool to do this, they just seem reluctant to leverage it in the cases where it's more appropriate than the sidegrade model.

And as I've said before: We already went through this song and dance in recent memory. The 9th Ed Tyranids codex tried the 'all free' approach, and then fairly quickly walked it back after public outcry over some of the options having no reason to exist, being clear upgrades/downgrades forced into a sidegrade model. GW really doesn't need to slap a cost on every option, they just need to make sure that all options have a reason to be taken, and 'my models are already built like that' is the worst one possible.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's pretty straightforward. This particular upgrade increases the models CC damage output by 4-8x depending on target. It should have an associated cost.

Well, it does have that cost. This is a scenario where you don't have the item and worrying about not being efficient as a result ( as opposed to not having free points to spend elsewhere ).

It's the same thing, because points are a fluid asset. I no longer have the option of not taking the P-fist and spending the points on an upgrade elsewhere.

The upgrade is either worth something, or it isn't. And despite your attempt to minimize it, it's clearly worth something.

On one end it's worth potentially zero, because you might never swing it. On the other end it does have some effect on what you can fit in a list, but everyone is at the same level.

That said a tac squad is 175 and was 180 before gear in Nephilim. And Devs were 130 with Heavy Bolters and now sit at 120. They already shaved the points off for you! ( slight sarcasm )


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:
so the point system is granular enough that a landspeeder with assault cannon is worth 5 points less than one with rocket launcher
but not granular enough that a Crisis with assault cannon must be the same cost as a crisis with rocket launcher

What speeders are you talking about? I see 130, 160, and 160.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's pretty straightforward. This particular upgrade increases the models CC damage output by 4-8x depending on target. It should have an associated cost.

Well, it does have that cost. This is a scenario where you don't have the item and worrying about not being efficient as a result ( as opposed to not having free points to spend elsewhere ).

It's the same thing, because points are a fluid asset. I no longer have the option of not taking the P-fist and spending the points on an upgrade elsewhere.

The upgrade is either worth something, or it isn't. And despite your attempt to minimize it, it's clearly worth something.

Stop looking at it as an upgrade, look at it as base equipment you can opt not to use for whatever reason. That's the general point of the discussion I think, same with the squad of legionnaires mentioned earlier, if you can have 5 with a free special/heavy, assume they always have one.

 kodos wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Yeah, I know lol. In this case though I have a long post history on dakka advocating for points systems moving in a similar direction, so in my view its an example of GW doing something right (which happens, rarely) rather than me doing something wrong. As a general trend, the points systems in other games which I have found to work best in my experience are those which are less granular rather than more granular, and this would be GW seemingly moving in that same direction (though admittedly not in a way that I think is actually being executed well, but I give GW credit for trying lol).

the idea was never the problem, but as usually GWs execution of it

2 examples, a good one and a bad one

the 3 Landspeeders (though historical reasons): 3 Datasheets with 3 different points and 3 different weapon options that are sidegrades, if you take a Melta in addition to the rocket launcher, a flamer or a bolter does not matter for the points

the Crisis Suit: 1 Datasheet, ~30 different loadouts, all cost the same points and it is just not realistic that a unit with 2 flamer and a rocket launcher is equal to a unit with 2 rocket launcher and a flamer

otherwise, if the crisis ones are all equal value in points, why does the Landspeeder have 3 different values as they should be all equal as well
specially as the difference between 2 of them is 5 points

so the point system is granular enough that a landspeeder with assault cannon is worth 5 points less than one with rocket launcher
but not granular enough that a Crisis with assault cannon must be the same cost as a crisis with rocket launcher

that the basic idea works is not the problem
that GW does not know how to handle such ideas is and either we see units with several weapon options split into different datacards were loadouts are just options that do not change the value,, or we get the granular system of points for upgrades back
as it is now, it won't work and some factions will turn out better than the others because of how the units are priced

Heres the thing about the crisis suits, depending on what the rest of my army looks like, I could legitimately have need for the capability a unit of crisis suits equipped with 2 flamers and a rocket launcher whereas a unit with 2 rocket launchers and a flamer carries less utility to me given the other selections in my army.

Going back to guard for example (because its an easy baseline that everyone understands), there have been times when I wrote my guard lists where every infantry unit was equipped with a lascannon and a meltagun, because all my other unit selections were heavily focused on other capabilities which left me exposed to enemy tanks from an army building standpoint. There are also times when I wrote my guard lists where every infantry unit was equipped with a flamer or grenade launcher and a heavy bolter/mortar, because my other selections were so heavily focused on anti-tank weapons and heavy firepower that I lacked sufficient mass to deal with a green tide or a tyranid horde. A lascannon and meltagun is basically at the opposite end of the spectrum from a heavy bolter and a flamer, etc. yet they all found equal uses in my lists, even when they were all priced identically at 5/0 points over the last edition, so yes - even those "less ideal" weapons can have a place in a world where they are stacked against a "more ideal" weapon at the same cost.

As far as the comparison to land speeders is concerned, I don't know what to tell you except GW is generally bad at their job. 5 points is basically the nothingburger of points differences - its literally 0.25% of the typical points total, and somewhere between 2.5% and 5% of the cost of the typical unit in the game, which is why I find the reaction to the current point system so hilarious, keeping in mind that the majority of upgrades in the previous edition were priced at 5 points already. Based on my analysis, I find margin of error on unit performance in relation to points to generally vary about +/- 7-12% (with some things, like certain ork units and underperforming units having much higher margins), because balance isn't really perfect and tying everything to a d6 outcome often produces pretty big swings, etc. For the typical unit, stacking up those 5pt upgrades does not result in a cost swing that exceeds the margin of error on the units performance, meaning that the upgrades probably should have been free in the first place because they aren't statistically changing the outcome of what that unit will do in a meaningful way. The exception to this is very low cost units like guard squads in 9e where the upgrades could almost double the cost of the unit - ironically enough, however, doing so produced a unit that was basically guaranteed to underperform and it wasn't until GW fixed the squad at 65pts and made the upgrades entirely free that the unit started seeing success in actual games.

Point is, those landspeeders probably should all cost the same, because its unlikely that the results they generate for you on the table will significantly vary.

Mmm. I'm not sure that Predator thing is a good approach to the problem, because there's waaaay to many variables to assess that outcome. Especially when you assess target types, buffs like Oath, and reduction in return fire.

I'm happy sticking to Thunderhammers. Sponsons are a bridge too far.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Heres the thing about the crisis suits, depending on what the rest of my army looks like, I could legitimately have need for the capability a unit of crisis suits equipped with 2 flamers and a rocket launcher whereas a unit with 2 rocket launchers and a flamer carries less utility to me given the other selections in my army.

What Tau army are you running where you came to the conclusion that Crisis suits were the best solution for below-average-for-Tau-strength firepower?

 Daedalus81 wrote:
There's a more nuance on what to do with stuff like Death Company though ( highly dependent on unit buffs ).

Cool. Please explain the nuance that makes either the bolt pistol or the chainsword a valid choice over the plasma pistol and the power weapon for Death Company.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Heres the thing about the crisis suits, depending on what the rest of my army looks like, I could legitimately have need for the capability a unit of crisis suits equipped with 2 flamers and a rocket launcher whereas a unit with 2 rocket launchers and a flamer carries less utility to me given the other selections in my army.

What Tau army are you running where you came to the conclusion that Crisis suits were the best solution for below-average-for-Tau-strength firepower?

It's funny. I was just thinking to myself how absent the Cyclic Ion Blaster, you probably could just call all the Crisis Suit guns basically side grades. And you'd be hard pressed to come up with a bad configuration of Crisis Suit weapons...other than maybe some combination of flamers and missile pods

 Daedalus81 wrote:
What speeders are you talking about? I see 130, 160, and 160.

Landspeeder 80pts, Landspeeder Tornado 95 pts and Landspeeder Typhoon 100pts (in the app, the pdf I have shows 70 for the Landspeeder)

The 130/160/160 ate the Stormspeeder
Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Heres the thing about the crisis suits, depending on what the rest of my army looks like, I could legitimately have need for the capability a unit of crisis suits equipped with 2 flamers and a rocket launcher whereas a unit with 2 rocket launchers and a flamer carries less utility to me given the other selections in my army.

and you might feel the need to run an LS with Melta+Flamer instead of Rocket Launcher
And if you do it costs 5 points less

Here is the thing, whatever the idea was, GW messed it up and does not follow their design sheme

Hence it does not work as either they are worth a difference of 5 points, than Tau are off, or they are not and than Marines are off
Whatever the idea behind that was, o does not work

PS: we had the same with the movement icons for Kill Team, GW does not understand their own design ideas

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
Again, it's literally your job as a designer to figure this sort of thing out. It's not an unknowable mystery, just not necessarily straight forward. In a given paradigm, maybe points aren't the reason something isn't taken, though meltas are a bad example because there will always be a non-zero cost where people will take a melta over a bolter. Flamers, for example, suffered in previous editions because they usually weren't an upgrade, so any points cost above 0 was too high.

Taking meltas specifically, let's show why you're wrong. We'll assume we're talking about Tacticals here and we'll assume meltaguns are not currently taken but we don't know why. A simple thought experiment shows why your reasoning doesn't work. If we increased the cost of plasma, grav and flamers to 100 points and changed the cost of meltaguns to 1, we'd see everyone taking meltaguns and nobody taking the other options. That fact alone tells you there is a point-based solution to this. You can argue the reduced range means the bolter still has some utility over the meltagun, but I'd challenge that assertion given the huge lethality increase a meltagun provides and the tiny cost in our example. The exact ratios are not easy to determine, but that's not the same as things being impossible. If nobody is ever taking a weapon that is an upgrade over your basic gun you haven't costed it appropriately, by definition.

Even with all that said, GW's current solution still isn't the solution.

Flamers are an interesting one. GW has tried a few things. CSM had +2 flamers that were half the cost of plasma and melta. No one took them. AoO dropped points to zero. Do you know what people took? Cultists.

Making meltas 1 and everything else would STILL have people not taking them. Why? When you build your list what do you do? You fill in your basic requirements, which is the cheapest of the cheap. Then you do the rest of your list. THEN if you have points left over you start grabbing tertiary upgrades starting from the top - not the bottom.

And yet people still aren't going to take Flamers with the new system either, because it now costs the same as a Plasma gun.

Not Online!!! wrote:
See, i can see your point but you yourself admited that for that to happen we would need a better designed game. I'd even go so far as to say a game that right now GW has not the capability to design.

And the predator exemple shows preciscly the problem, the other versions still suck now

What gets me is that if a trio of Predators getting sponson lascannons (that let them do an extra 150-200pts of damage over the course of the game) is irrelevant and not worth putting a cost on, there is absolutely no reason why it should cost 25pts to replace a squad of Tacticals with a squad of Devastators.

Points are tracked minutely when you're picking units, but then you get to wargear and it's 'eh, sure, it's only tripling their firepower, who cares'.

It's a lot of excuses and handwaving for sloppy, inconsistent design.

 kodos wrote:


....GW does not understand their own design ideas

This is very true. They created a new strength/toughness matrix that should open up the possibility of fine tuning unit performance. But then, instead, they throw all those options into a bucket and say, "Eh, take whatever, It'll all even out"

Slipspace wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
There's a more nuance on what to do with stuff like Death Company though ( highly dependent on unit buffs ).

Cool. Please explain the nuance that makes either the bolt pistol or the chainsword a valid choice over the plasma pistol and the power weapon for Death Company.

When I say nuance I mean it's trickier to navigate. Not that all is right with it. I'm of the mind that people should just counts-as their pistol of choice. Someone did mention cheating, but generally your lists are loaded into BCP so you'll get found out eventually. Obviously that doesn't pertain to non-BCP tournaments, but I don't know how many of those there are. Pick up games are whatever.

Plasma pistols can mess your squad up if you OC. Otherwise they do 2.2 wounds to T6 termies and BP do just about jack gak. Technically BP close the gap on 3+ saves in cover, but hardly worth mathing.

Chainswords *should* have A5 instead of 4, which would help, but I have no idea if GW has that on their radar or if they intended it as such.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
Points are tracked minutely when you're picking units, but then you get to wargear and it's 'eh, sure, it's only tripling their firepower, who cares'.

1) Abilities
2) Tacs are 17.5 per model and Devs are 24 per model ( for the first 5 ).

It would be more appropriate to say that 88 points of tacs with all the upgrades are matched to 120 points of Devs. Then the remaining 88 points of Tacs gets matched to the 80 of Devs.