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.

Tyel wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Nowadays it's pretty well-accepted among game designers that the goal of a point system is to serve as a structuring mechanism for force-building, allowing players to optimize within the constraints of a limited resource.

Could you expand on this - because its a phrase that comes up often in these threads, but while I see the other things you go on to mention as "structuring", I don't really follow it with points.
Beyond the limited sense that the designer can say "we expect people to play games around 2k points, and it should take about 3 hours to play" or something like that.

You say points are "at best a heuristic representation of relative value" - but to my mind that's exactly what they are. They should be "relatively" balanced across the totality of 40k - through a combination of theory and then practice. That could produce scenarios where all heavy weapons, all indirect, all assault etc is too good because they've been systematically undervalued. But it should avoid a scenario where faction A's unit X is paying 150 points for 4 BS3+ lascannons - but faction B's unit Y is paying 100 points for (effectively) 4 BS3+ lascannons. So unit X is functionally obsolete and Faction B (if possessing enough of such units to make a 2k point list) is winning every tournament on the back of undercosted stuff.

"cross one's fingers and pluck a number out of the air" - Priestley on how to assign pts in 40k. No math on the effectiveness against various types of enemies, no stress testing to see if spamming units tends to be OP. The old school game designers are modern-day witch doctors, telling people they need their hand sawn off because of a blister or they need to eat poisonous mushrooms to deal with their excess phlegm. No logic and the results of GW over the years have shown how awful the tactic is and instead of blaming their illogical medical methods they blame all of medicine and tell people that the best answer is to pray to God for salvation. Points and medicine are good actually and they can work, that they didn't for GW most of the time was not a systemic error in pts, but a user error. Wraithknights beating Scout Marines is not a problem, Wraithknights beating everything is a problem.

A good first step to making points easier to do would be not having re-rolls and special abilities on everything, only on the things where the narrative necessitates it or where the unit is otherwise left without a niche to fill for the faction.

Breton wrote:
The issue is things aren't pointed correctly - things that got put on the shelf weren't pointed correctly. People didn't take Leman Russ with sponsons so sponsons weren't pointed correctly even though they were separate points. It's different when it doesn't support my narrative isn't an objective fact either.

Let me quote myself from this very thread:
All of these considerations are irrelevant now, because there is 0 downside in taking sponsons. The question moved to "are LR costed attractive enough with any of their configurations to see play?"

I wonder if this universe where nobody previously took sponsons is evidence of the Mandela Effect..?

None of my 4 Leman Russ tanks have sponsons, as I don't like the way they look. That was previously okay as they cost fewer points, but now...

 Insectum7 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's an example of how the new "points" don't account for upgrades correctly (5 Devs w/bolters vs 5 Devs w/1 bolter and 4 heavy bolters = same cost, which is ludicrous). The fact that you'd never actually take 5 Devs with just bolters is immaterial.

I find it hard to take seriously and argument that the designers should point out an option that nobody would every use. Devastators bring heavy weapons. It is the entire point of the unit.

There are at least three posts in the last two pages describing instances where people have not taken the full complement of heavy weapons on Devastators.

And it was all about points. Nobody will take less than 4 Heavy Weapons if they have already paid to have them. They took them to make the unit as cheap as possible to do what they needed it to do.

GW obviously doesn't want to reward that in 10th Edition. Are they tell you that you are playing the game wrong? Perhaps, but the game designers get to do that if they want to. Right or wrong, they hold the levels of power to encourage you to play the game the way they want to. You get to choose to leave the free heavy weapon behind in favor of the bolter if you please.

 alextroy wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's an example of how the new "points" don't account for upgrades correctly (5 Devs w/bolters vs 5 Devs w/1 bolter and 4 heavy bolters = same cost, which is ludicrous). The fact that you'd never actually take 5 Devs with just bolters is immaterial.

I find it hard to take seriously and argument that the designers should point out an option that nobody would every use. Devastators bring heavy weapons. It is the entire point of the unit.

There are at least three posts in the last two pages describing instances where people have not taken the full complement of heavy weapons on Devastators.

And it was all about points. Nobody will take less than 4 Heavy Weapons if they have already paid to have them. They took them to make the unit as cheap as possible to do what they needed it to do.

GW obviously doesn't want to reward that in 10th Edition. Are they tell you that you are playing the game wrong? Perhaps, but the game designers get to do that if they want to. Right or wrong, they hold the levels of power to encourage you to play the game the way they want to. You get to choose to leave the free heavy weapon behind in favor of the bolter if you please.

Go download the 40K app and start a marine army in the army builder. Add a devastator squad. The default loadout is 5 marines with bolters, bolt pistols, a CCW. It cost 120 points. So I guess GW is ok with not running HW in your Dev squads. In fact, the app punishes you for wanting to add HW to the Dev squad. You can't immediately set the equipment when adding the unit. You can't even see the unit wargear options when adding it. Instead, after adding the squad, I have to select into it. Then decrease the amount of bolt guns by 4. Then select each heavy weapon. I would say GW doesn't want me adding HW to my Dev squads because their app makes it so painful to do. If you didn't know that Devs are heavy weapons' squads, and didn't know to look, you might think that Devastators are just 5 man squads with bolt guns.

Yes, I know this is flippant. The app developers are not the designers. But how am I to know what GW intended or not? How do I parse apart intention versus mistakes? I'm going to say the app was badly written. I'm also going to say the points system was badly implemented.


Edit: The app doesn't even cap the amount of weapons in the squad. You can add a million lascannons to it if you wanted. It does add a little yellow exclamation point, but doesn't stop you from exporting the list. So I can hand you a list out of the official army builder with marines carrying dozens of lascanons each. It's fine. It's only a 1995 point list.

Tyel wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Nowadays it's pretty well-accepted among game designers that the goal of a point system is to serve as a structuring mechanism for force-building, allowing players to optimize within the constraints of a limited resource.

Could you expand on this - because its a phrase that comes up often in these threads, but while I see the other things you go on to mention as "structuring", I don't really follow it with points.
Beyond the limited sense that the designer can say "we expect people to play games around 2k points, and it should take about 3 hours to play" or something like that.

You say points are "at best a heuristic representation of relative value" - but to my mind that's exactly what they are. They should be "relatively" balanced across the totality of 40k - through a combination of theory and then practice. That could produce scenarios where all heavy weapons, all indirect, all assault etc is too good because they've been systematically undervalued. But it should avoid a scenario where faction A's unit X is paying 150 points for 4 BS3+ lascannons - but faction B's unit Y is paying 100 points for (effectively) 4 BS3+ lascannons. So unit X is functionally obsolete and Faction B (if possessing enough of such units to make a 2k point list) is winning every tournament on the back of undercosted stuff.

You've got a model with the defensive profile of a Guardsman, no weapon, and an ability that gives every tank within 24" full re-rolls. How many points is that worth? Obviously its actual utility is going to depend on how many tanks you bring. If it's cheap it'll be a must-take for any army with tanks, and if it's expensive it might be worthless in all but the most edge-case Apocalypse games where you can surround it with Baneblades. It may be impossible to find a magic points cost that balances it, and may be necessary to change its rules instead, or put other constraints on the army (eg how many tanks you can field) that allow a reasonable price to be determined.

You've got a melee-only unit that's vulnerable to shooting but extremely powerful. On planet bowling ball, it'll need to be very cheap to ever be worth considering. In city ruins, it can be more expensive and still viable as it is less likely to get shot. Its points cost has to make assumptions about the environment, scenario, and matchup that in reality will rarely accurately reflect its utility in any given game.

You've got an upgrade that confers significantly improved close combat ability for a backline artillery unit. It might be exactly the same in profile as the same weapon available to your assault specialists, but the actual utility of that item to the two units is completely different. It would be reasonable to set a lower cost for the unit that is less likely to get use out of it- unless the designer actually wants you to put melee capability on your melee units and not your artillery units, in which case making the cost equivalent is a deliberate incentive/disincentive.

Maybe there's a unit that represents a pretty heavy skew, so having just one in an army is fine, but taking 3+ becomes overpowered. The designer might choose to have the cost increase the more of them you take, or might just impose a hard limit of 0-1.

And maybe Faction A pays 50% more for their lascannons, but they also have delivery mechanisms and buff capabilities that allow those weapons to punch well above their weight. They might be underpowered if you don't bring along transports and characters, but those are integral to the designer's vision for the army, so they're both designing and balancing around how the army 'should' work.

The points cost for a unit isn't an objective measure of its value. It can't be. There are too many variables to ever guarantee that any two 2000pt armies will be evenly balanced in practice, let alone that any two 5pt upgrades are equally effective. The points cost is simply an opportunity cost for taking that unit in your army, and the designer sets these opportunity costs to shape army composition, giving the player some freedom to assemble their force while providing natural incentives towards how they want armies to be constructed. And because points are a rough, heuristic measurement, prone to edge cases and perverse incentives, points must work hand in hand with other structuring mechanisms (like forcebuilding restrictions) and rules adjustments to make the units and army work as it should and achieve balance.

For a designer, the ideal points system is one where armies that fit their vision of how the factions should work have a roughly even shot of winning, armies that egregiously violate this vision are weaker (not more powerful), and within each army the options presented all have value and reason to be worth considering. If those lofty goals have been achieved, the designer doesn't care one iota about how individual units and weapons stack up point-for-point in a vacuum- getting the numbers to represent 'objective' value isn't the goal, getting the game to function well while fitting their vision is.

All this to say that there is nothing wrong from a design perspective with 'cheating' the points a bit as long as it achieves the desired end state. Heavy weapons troops can have the costs for heavy weapons baked in or provided at a discount, Epic gives you a free commissar per 500pts (its value baked into the costs of all the other units), or older editions of 40K give Chaos Marines a free upgrade if the squad size is their patron deity's favorite number. The points cost are as arbitrary and fictional as prices at the grocery store, where buy-four-get-one-free is an incentive to get you to buy five lemons, not a failure of the grocery store to appropriately value a single lemon. The designer wants you taking heavy weapons on your Devastators, fielding Commissars with your Guardsmen, and fielding Plague Marines in squads of 7; how exactly that is accomplished is immaterial as long as the end result is that the armies look like they should, provide relevant and interesting options, and are adequately balanced.

The problem with 10th's approach to points isn't axiomatically that every upgrade must have a points cost that objectively reflects its value. It's that 10th's implementation of baked-in wargear misses the mark on all three of those desired end results.

It’s possible the app devs didn’t get to see the rules of the game beforehand, and were building it entirely on some basic mock-ups.
Which is why we have a fairly basic tabs system.
Rather than something fancy like every other Game app I have used.

 CaulynDarr wrote:
I would say GW doesn't want me adding HW to my Dev squads because their app makes it so painful to do.

really scraping the bottom of the barrel here ....

Apple fox wrote:
It’s possible the app devs didn’t get to see the rules of the game beforehand, and were building it entirely on some basic mock-ups.
Which is why we have a fairly basic tabs system.
Rather than something fancy like every other Game app I have used.

The point is: is it intentional, or is it bad?

Every time we point out a bad thing with the current points someone tries to make the case it's intentional. I think it's just bad. Just like I make the judgment that the app is bad. Even though it could be intentional.

Cause it really doesn't matter or not because the end result is a bad user experience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 CaulynDarr wrote:
I would say GW doesn't want me adding HW to my Dev squads because their app makes it so painful to do.

really scraping the bottom of the barrel here ....

Did you see the part where I admitted being flippant to make a point about guessing at intentions?

Removed for rule 1

 CaulynDarr wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
It’s possible the app devs didn’t get to see the rules of the game beforehand, and were building it entirely on some basic mock-ups.
Which is why we have a fairly basic tabs system.
Rather than something fancy like every other Game app I have used.

The point is: is it intentional, or is it bad?

Every time we point out a bad thing with the current points someone tries to make the case it's intentional. I think it's just bad. Just like I make the judgment that the app is bad. Even though it could be intentional.

Cause it really doesn't matter or not because the end result is a bad user experience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 CaulynDarr wrote:
I would say GW doesn't want me adding HW to my Dev squads because their app makes it so painful to do.

really scraping the bottom of the barrel here ....

Did you see the part where I admitted being flippant to make a point about guessing at intentions?

You don't need to guess about the intentions concerning Dev squads & how many heavy weapons they are allowed.
Right there under wargear options it tells you how many heavy weapons you're allowed to add.
And if you do make an error - intentional or not - then you get that little yellow !.

 catbarf wrote:
You've got a model with the defensive profile of a Guardsman, no weapon, and an ability that gives every tank within 24" full re-rolls. How many points is that worth?

More than 0.

You've got a melee-only unit that's vulnerable to shooting but extremely powerful. On planet bowling ball, it'll need to be very cheap to ever be worth considering. In city ruins, it can be more expensive and still viable as it is less likely to get shot. Its points cost has to make assumptions about the environment, scenario, and matchup that in reality will rarely accurately reflect its utility in any given game.

Hmmm, maybe it should be 0 pts? Upon further deliberation I have come to the conclusion that it should in fact be more than 0.

You've got an upgrade that confers significantly improved close combat ability for a backline artillery unit. It might be exactly the same in profile as the same weapon available to your assault specialists, but the actual utility of that item to the two units is completely different. It would be reasonable to set a lower cost for the unit that is less likely to get use out of it- unless the designer actually wants you to put melee capability on your melee units and not your artillery units, in which case making the cost equivalent is a deliberate incentive/disincentive.

I feel like this might be the hardest one yet, that thunder hammer comes up so rarely on Devastators, could it be worth 0? No, because that'd make it mandatory, so it has to cost more than 0, like all other upgrades. You could have zero discount, but then you'd be really far off from the actual value added by the thunder hammer and you could make it so heavily discounted that picking between taking THs on your Assault Marines and your Devastators is a hard choice, but we are miles off from those kinds of considerations because PL is a broken format so discussing such details is completely irrelevant. If GW wanted to force people to take upgrades they should do it, like with Combat Patrol, you have to take the upgrades you have to take, but pretending it's an option to upgrade from S3 to S7 for free is stupid and I think the people defending PL are being silly.

We know GW throws some models on the table a few times and then go to the dartboard and there are more sophisticated methods than that for increasing the balance in 40k.

I also don't buy the whole "just be fluffy about it" argument because some dude probably already made a Marine Chapter called the Hammer of the Emperor and outfitted every Sarge and Character with a Thunder Hammer.

They got a free bonus from their fluff!

 CaulynDarr wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's an example of how the new "points" don't account for upgrades correctly (5 Devs w/bolters vs 5 Devs w/1 bolter and 4 heavy bolters = same cost, which is ludicrous). The fact that you'd never actually take 5 Devs with just bolters is immaterial.

I find it hard to take seriously and argument that the designers should point out an option that nobody would every use. Devastators bring heavy weapons. It is the entire point of the unit.

There are at least three posts in the last two pages describing instances where people have not taken the full complement of heavy weapons on Devastators.

And it was all about points. Nobody will take less than 4 Heavy Weapons if they have already paid to have them. They took them to make the unit as cheap as possible to do what they needed it to do.

GW obviously doesn't want to reward that in 10th Edition. Are they tell you that you are playing the game wrong? Perhaps, but the game designers get to do that if they want to. Right or wrong, they hold the levels of power to encourage you to play the game the way they want to. You get to choose to leave the free heavy weapon behind in favor of the bolter if you please.

Go download the 40K app and start a marine army in the army builder. Add a devastator squad. The default loadout is 5 marines with bolters, bolt pistols, a CCW. It cost 120 points. So I guess GW is ok with not running HW in your Dev squads. In fact, the app punishes you for wanting to add HW to the Dev squad. You can't immediately set the equipment when adding the unit. You can't even see the unit wargear options when adding it. Instead, after adding the squad, I have to select into it. Then decrease the amount of bolt guns by 4. Then select each heavy weapon. I would say GW doesn't want me adding HW to my Dev squads because their app makes it so painful to do. If you didn't know that Devs are heavy weapons' squads, and didn't know to look, you might think that Devastators are just 5 man squads with bolt guns.

Yes, I know this is flippant. The app developers are not the designers. But how am I to know what GW intended or not? How do I parse apart intention versus mistakes? I'm going to say the app was badly written. I'm also going to say the points system was badly implemented.


Edit: The app doesn't even cap the amount of weapons in the squad. You can add a million lascannons to it if you wanted. It does add a little yellow exclamation point, but doesn't stop you from exporting the list. So I can hand you a list out of the official army builder with marines carrying dozens of lascanons each. It's fine. It's only a 1995 point list.

I read this post and could only think “tell me you’ve never used BattleScribe without telling me you never used BattleScribe”.

 alextroy wrote:
I read this post and could only think “tell me you’ve never used BattleScribe without telling me you never used BattleScribe”.

Is there anybody who hasn't missed CaulynDarr's point yet? Well, I got it at least.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I also don't buy the whole "just be fluffy about it" argument because some dude probably already made a Marine Chapter called the Hammer of the Emperor and outfitted every Sarge and Character with a Thunder Hammer.

They got a free bonus from their fluff!

So before when it was a poor use of points that was balanced?

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I read this post and could only think “tell me you’ve never used BattleScribe without telling me you never used BattleScribe”.

Is there anybody who hasn't missed CaulynDarr's point yet? Well, I got it at least.

Well, missing points is sort of the theme of the thread I guess......

 alextroy wrote:
I read this post and could only think “tell me you’ve never used BattleScribe without telling me you never used BattleScribe”.

I've never used Battlescribe. I heard it's become defunct, too. There's probably going to be a lot of people using the GW app.

 vict0988 wrote:
More than 0.

I'm not sure if you misunderstood what I was responding to, completely missed the point, or are just trying to strawman my position.

 LunarSol wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I also don't buy the whole "just be fluffy about it" argument because some dude probably already made a Marine Chapter called the Hammer of the Emperor and outfitted every Sarge and Character with a Thunder Hammer.

They got a free bonus from their fluff!

So before when it was a poor use of points that was balanced?

More balanced than being free, yes. Now you're finally getting it.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 CaulynDarr wrote:


Did you see the part where I admitted being flippant to make a point about guessing at intentions?

no because reading your comment made me facepalm so hard, i couldn't bear to read that long. in the future, if you make gak takes like that to prove a point, keep it short so people don't just automatically assume the rest of your post is stupidity

Wow. Classy.

There's probably an argument to be made that the app could be the primary army building tool/interface or a good number of people, too. It's relevant, even if it makes you facpalm.

Thats not the point they were trying to make. And they admitted themselves that they were pushing it on purpose to prove a point.

I merely meant that if you're gonna do that kind of post, make sure the "exaggeration part" is shorter than your actual point.

The app 100% could use some QoL updates

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I also don't buy the whole "just be fluffy about it" argument because some dude probably already made a Marine Chapter called the Hammer of the Emperor and outfitted every Sarge and Character with a Thunder Hammer.

They got a free bonus from their fluff!

So before when it was a poor use of points that was balanced?

More balanced than being free, yes. Now you're finally getting it.

I'm not sure it actually is. A thunder hammer never used should probably cost as much as a combat knife that is also never used.

Given that its an option that you should never pay anything for, I'm personally a fan of a world in which Sgts have Thunder Hammers over one where they have combat knives. That's more interesting to me.

 LunarSol wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I also don't buy the whole "just be fluffy about it" argument because some dude probably already made a Marine Chapter called the Hammer of the Emperor and outfitted every Sarge and Character with a Thunder Hammer.

They got a free bonus from their fluff!

So before when it was a poor use of points that was balanced?

More balanced than being free, yes. Now you're finally getting it.

I'm not sure it actually is. A thunder hammer never used should probably cost as much as a combat knife that is also never used.

No, it should still cost something, that thunder hammer being on your Devastator sargeant might still have done something even if the unit never fought in melee.

-Forcing your opponent to commit a bigger melee squad to the unit to be sure they get wiped (to dodge the hitback from the hammer)
-Making your opponent chose not to charge the squad at all
-Making your opponent move differently in fear of the squad shooting + charging and being able to double dip.

if i see the same squad armed with a basic CCW instead, all of these melee-centric decisions are pretty much gone

Right, so that's now a feature of the unit. If it wasn't, the unit should cost 118 points instead of 120.

Previously a Devastator Sgt was just an ablative wound (or 2). Now he's a functional piece of the unit with an interesting purpose.

 LunarSol wrote:
Right, so that's now a feature of the unit. If it wasn't, the unit should cost 118 points instead of 120.

Previously a Devastator Sgt was just an ablative wound (or 2). Now he's a functional piece of the unit with an interesting purpose.

unless as a player, you value NOT taking that option and instead bring something else with the points you saved, which is now a non-option.

I don't believe there is a points value that makes it an interesting choice, so I don't really consider it an interesting option in either scenario. Of the two, I think sgts having cool weapons is more interesting than them being a wound marker.

And nothing was stopping you paying points to take wargear on your sergeants under points if that is what you wanted to do.

But now the people who didn't are effectively paying to do it anyway, so they might as well take the stuff. So now everyone is nudged closer to uniformity by rhe way the rules are written.

Like how nothing in the Tau army that can take drones will choose not to take them as there is literally no reason you wouldn't take them, again making everybody slightly more uniform and removing choices which, while admittedly small, were still choices.

 LunarSol wrote:
Right, so that's now a feature of the unit. If it wasn't, the unit should cost 118 points instead of 120.

Previously a Devastator Sgt was just an ablative wound (or 2). Now he's a functional piece of the unit with an interesting purpose.

Didnt dev sgts literally buff one of the other guys to bs2+ though, and now they do nothing?

Intercessor sarges with a thunder Hammer got to use them, so did the tactical sarges. Not picking them when they were like 15 points was a thing because they were overpriced, but they were still worth more than 0 pts.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
And nothing was stopping you paying points to take wargear on your sergeants under points if that is what you wanted to do.

But now the people who didn't are effectively paying to do it anyway, so they might as well take the stuff. So now everyone is nudged closer to uniformity by rhe way the rules are written.

Like how nothing in the Tau army that can take drones will choose not to take them as there is literally no reason you wouldn't take them, again making everybody slightly more uniform and removing choices which, while admittedly small, were still choices.

And yet I'm still not feeling any need to go re-arming any of my existing Dev Sgts with Thunderhammers.
Maybe if I were to build a new Devastator squad for some reason. But as I already have enough Dev squads that's unlikely to occur.