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Would you go for system were every individual piece of equipment is given a points cost, or more of a flat points cost like the power levels of 40k or how points are used in AoS?

I guess it depends on what scale the game is; smaller skirmish games probably suit the former better, and bigger games probably suit the latter better.

What do you guys think?

Points should roughly correspond to the real world cost of the unit, so flat points will generally be fine.

Alternately, you need to accurately assess the combat effectiveness and use that as your basis.

Even then, it's just a guideline

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Would you go for system were every individual piece of equipment is given a points cost, or more of a flat points cost like the power levels of 40k or how points are used in AoS?

I guess it depends on what scale the game is; smaller skirmish games probably suit the former better, and bigger games probably suit the latter better.

What do you guys think?

I personally like how it is done in 40k, except I'd like all units to have individual costs for equipment.

It depends on what your upgrade options are.

If, like 40k, you have units that can take upgrades with a wide range of power then you need to have points for individual upgrades. For example, there's a huge difference in power between a tactical squad with no upgrade weapons, a tactical squad with a lascannon and plasma gun, and a tactical squad with a heavy bolter and flamer. If you have a single cost for the unit then at least two of these options will have the wrong cost, with the result that at least two of them will not be valid options. You end up with having "options" that only exist on paper and add to rules bloat while everyone takes the single obvious combination of the most powerful upgrades. It's why PL in 40k is a joke, and the people advocating it are primarily CAAC players who use it as a warning to competitive players that list optimization isn't welcome.

If you have a flat power level in your upgrades then fixed costs for a unit make sense. In 40k a plasma gun is just plain better than a flamer in pretty much every situation, but if in a hypothetical alternative game they are both of equal value on average and just specialize in different situations you can consider them to have the same point cost. And if all of the upgrade options have the same point cost then you might as well build them into the unit cost. This likely requires a simpler rule set and a shorter list of upgrades, because it's difficult to get that level of balance when you have complicated rules and/or lots of choices, but it's theoretically possible with a more complicated game. And you'll probably benefit from grouping upgrades into general categories instead of 40k-style nitpicking at every possible difference. For example, you might give the unit a choice of an anti-infantry heavy weapon or an anti-tank heavy weapon, and give "anti-tank heavy weapon" the same stat line regardless of whether the model is carrying a lascannon or missile launcher.


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 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Points should roughly correspond to the real world cost of the unit, so flat points will generally be fine.

Uh, no. Real-world costs are completely irrelevant, paying attention to them at all instead of on-table performance is a great way to have an unbalanced mess of a game. For example, good luck playing 40k when a single tactical marine costs 100,000 points (in a standard 2,000 point game) to represent its real-world cost.

Points! Wargames shouldn't use points....... <scurries for cover>






The real question is, how much personalization do you want the player to have with their forces. If there is a lot of personalization, then everything needs a leveling mechanic (Points or something similar). If a Unit is always a unit of X, Y, and Z and the player can't do too much about it, then you can simply value at unit levels.

It is dependant on how you're planning to balance the game.

I loved the old 40k points from 7th edition, where you had points per model and points per upgrade. List building was actually a fun part of the game - with 8th edition, I get repetitive strain injuries from going back and forth between weapon costs, unit costs, and the page that tells me which unit has which weapon.

Another example is a game I'm working on which is alternating action, and uses the models action points as a points value - meaning that both players get the same number of activations. It's then a case of balancing the power of each action by costing it the correct number of action points - move would be 1 AP, attack 1 AP, attack with bloody huge axe of doom imbued with evil laser dragon demon power with explosions, 5AP. Elite armies can then spend AP faster, but both sides have the same amount, assuming they have the same points level.

This only works by having set loadouts for models, and will mean I'll end up making loads of variations to encompass all the combinations I want to have, and some will have more AP than others.

The thing to remember is that if a unit has a powerful action, but it is at the expense of doing anything else, it isn't necessarily any more powerful than a unit which has more basic actions but can do all of them every turn. This is one of the things 40k shows - all units can move, psyk, shoot and assault every turn - you don't have to sacrifice firing a plasma pistol to have time to grip your thunderhammer in both hands. Upgrades have no downsides, and no choice unless the model is seriously overloaded in weapons.

whereas if you have a unit with a sniper and a huge axe, it's realistic to assume that in the same timescale he cannot aim precisely down the scope, pop someone's head a mile away, then spring up, stow the sniper, pick up the axe, charge at someone else and smack seven shades of >dung!< out of them. It's more realistic that the rules only allow that they could do one or the other - and so wouldn't be as expensive as their counterpart in a 40k style game.

I have a spreadsheet for building armies in 8th (started in 6th) and that saves reference issues.

I think value-wise it's worth taking the goals of the game, like sitting on objectives and whatnot, and working backwards.

40k is super-complicated in that there's the whole weapons-on-models thing so that some weapons are popular, but only on certain models that optimise their use. It's worth thinking about availability.

In Titanomachina I noticed that some values were off because of the combination of how cards were played, and their traits. It meant that I needed to re-jig the points for a bunch of cards, but the big switch that I'll use as an example would be the Macro Laser and the Macro Gun.

So the Macro Laser was 5pts and let you roll 4D6 and pick the highest for damage on a target. You needed to pay three other cards to activate it though. You got an additional +1D6 vs Titan targets. The range was 5 squares.

By comparison the Macro Gun was 4pts and let you roll 3D6 and pick the highest for damage on a target. You needed to pay two other cards to activate it. You got an additional 1D6 vs Building targets, and you could pay can extra card when activating for an additional +1D6.

While the Macro Gun was obviously weaker vs Titan targets, and the same against Building targets, it had a distinct advantage over the Macro Laser: It could be activated if it was only 1 of 3 cards in hand. So I reduced the Macro Laser's Effect to 3 dice, and swapped the costs, making the Macro Gun 5pts.

By comparison the Laser Battery rolls 2D6 with a bonus vs Titans for Charge 3, and the Gun Battery rolls 2D6 for Charge 2 with the option to spend another card to charge for 3D6. The Laser Battery is three cards to charge, the Gun Battery is two cards. Their costs are 2 & 3 respectively. In this case the Gun Battery is more flexible, so it costs more.

It depends heavily on the game and how customizable your units are. An equipped model for a fix ammount of points is easier to balance, while customizing your troops is a hell lotta fun. But in either case I would use detailed point costs for every piece of equipment at least in my calculations.
Further a point cost formula is a mighty tool as a guideline to get many different units quiet fast and ready for testing.

If I were designing a game, it would be similar to Warmachine style of points. Units typically come in 1 or 2 sizes (often 6 or 10 models). You have the costs for those. You can then add “weapon attachments”, which are additional models armed with upgrades or abilities.

So you could buy a 6 or 10 model squad, and add 0-3 Plasmagunners, for example.

It has been my experience that weapon options rarely translate to unit variety, unless all weapons have similar utility. In a hypothetical game where low volume, high damage weapons were distinctly effective against tough units, and high volume low damage weapons were ineffective against tough units, you might see one of each unit being taken, instead of the “best gun only”.

Like, you might see a unit of Havocs armed with Lascannons and a unit armed with Heavy Chainguns... if the Heavy Chaingun wasn’t also good at punching through armour. 40ks core mechanics have a seemingly irreparable issue with scale at this time.

In the end, I think more unit options with fewer internal upgrade options makes a game easier to balance.

For example, Guard Infantry Squads. They have tremendous variety of weapon load outs, making them a true nightmare to balance. But if each squad was *required* to take a heavy weapon and a special weapon (and a vox) they become much more predictable in terms of board control and overall attrition capability. Which makes it easier to assign a point value to.

For the navel-gazing glory of it...

Anti-Infantry Squad: Power Weapon, Bolter (Sarge) Flamer or Grenade Launcher, Heavy Bolter or Mortar, Vox - 60 points

Versatile Squad: Plasma Pistol (Sarge) Plasma Gun, Auto-Cannon or Missile Launcher, Vox - 80 points

Anti-Tank Squad: Meltabombs (Sarge) Krak Grenades (squad) Meltagun, Lascannon, Vox - 80 points

Off the cuff, specific costs could be argued, but the point is that I think there would be more unit variety if presented this way. I think Tactical Marines could get a very similar treatment, and other “ handful of upgrades” units.

Which also works out well with PL, if you give the AI unit a PL of 3, and the other two options a PL of 4.

But you could compensate the balancing issue of versatile units by giving each model the possibilty to attack individual targets.
If all models of a unit must stay together and shoot on the same target the best way to work against balancing issues is greatbigtree's solution.
So the questsion whether detailed or packed point costs are better is a question of scale and how autonomously a model can act. The more autonomous your models can interact with your system the more detailed your point costs can be.
So if you want to equip every model individually you'd better let them move and attack individually, too.

Have point cost on the top of the data card entry (above the stat line in the title bar)for the basic chassis including any madatory gear, and then point costs for all the different options on available listed.

I dont see how something so simple is so fething easy for gw to mess up. They obviously people would rather use Battle scribe than buy their codexes..

 some bloke wrote:
I if a unit has a powerful action, but it is at the expense of doing anything else,

In a 6-turn game, having a powerful one-use action is very powerful, not very far down from having it always available.

It's kind of interesting how the value of things drops (or increases) as a game proceeds and develops.

One thing points don't do well (if at all) is account for syngergystic effects. if unit A is OK and unit B is OK but unit A and B together are excellent, then how do you set points for those? Give them low costs because they're each mediocre? Then the combo will be too cheap. High costs because the combo is good? Then each unit is too expensive. add additional points if you take the combo? That'd work, but then your points cost tables become some horrific non-euclidean nightmare.

Then there's scenery. The only game I know that took scenery into account was Kryomek (which is basically Aliens the miniatures game); That had the human faction with lots of guns but relatively poor close combat ability vs the Kryomek (aliens with little to no firepower but terrifying in melee). It suggested that if you had less cover on the table, the Kryomek force should get more points. That only worked because there were only two factions, though.

Really, if you're going to include a points system, you should also clearly explain the assumptions behind it, the range of scenarios where it's valid, and state that it's never going to give you a perfect "objective" measurement of balance where the players have any choice in the scenario.

There's an easy work around for taking account synergies.
Give every or almost every model synergies with as much as possible other models of its faction and do it with every faction.
Or do it the other way around and kill synergies where you can find'em... Whatever you do don't do it half assed, because that way everything you do is to design "codex corpses" and evil matchups.


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For unit profiles I figured this out for my skirmisher system...

I have following values: Movement, Accuracy, Defence, Size, Healthpoints, an overall Value for Interactions and special rolls called Survival, Squadsize (as models aren't bound directly to a squad, squads are cramped together or divided during the game)
Adding the weapons' profile: Acc-Mod., Range, Damage, Armour Penetration, Attacks per Round (that's actually more than one value, but for balancing it's one)

Everything is balanced around the damage potential during a game and how much damage can be taken. So my point costs are bound to damage/game and Health/Defence.

For values that are difficult to relate to damage (ie. movement) I took an avarage value (in the case of movement it's 5) and determine it as 100%... so MV 4 would cost 80% in the movement's cost part for example. With that you "only" have to figure out how much influence those values have on the model's damage potential/sustain. There are even values that have no influence on the models' cost... size for example, a model with a high size value has a better chance to withstand a knock prone attack against models of a lower size better, but gets less cover since covering terrain pieces have a size aswell. With a high size you can deliver more serious punches and sustain more damage, but this is taken to account already in other values.
It's a bit complicated to explain without going too much into detail.
But it works fine as a guideline and is subjectively surprising accurate. At least it FEELS balanced.

The big mistake I see most games make in regards to points is that they see it as something of a balance catch all rather than part of their list building mechanics. You see a lot of games that seem to design models how they want them with the idea that if they price it right, it will be balanced. In reality, granular pricing tends to mostly just create weird conditionals.

A model may be appropriately priced, but if there aren't enough models that have complimentary point values to even out, you end up eating those points, paying extra, and ultimately having an overcosted model. Some systems try to shore this up with upgrades or other low cost filler, but those choices generally aren't ideal and still get worked out of the system or worse yet, become auto include to the point where they're not even an option for flexibility.

I'm personally a fan of deciding how something fits in point wise first and building a model's power to that level. If I want a big, expensive super gun, I'll decide how big and expensive I want it to be and make sure the stats justify the cost rather than decide its cost after deciding the stats. Obviously, sometimes points have to change and there's value in meeting somewhere in the middle, but overall I'd rather see how a model fits into a list first and build it up with that role in mind.

Balance is an art and not a science.

You create balance by creating the "feel" of balance. You can do this with formulas (as above), tweaking through playtesting, experience, and gut feel.

Formulas do not work flawlessly as they can not take into account mission and terrain. Playtesters have their own biases. Experience with and gut feel are loaded with author bias.

In addition, there is no system that can not be broken no matter how thorough you are with building it. Instead, keep it simple and loose. The fewer variables in the game, the easier it is to balance.

 Easy E wrote:
Balance is an art and not a science.

You create balance by creating the "feel" of balance. You can do this with formulas (as above), tweaking through playtesting, experience, and gut feel.

Formulas do not work flawlessly as they can not take into account mission and terrain. Playtesters have their own biases. Experience with and gut feel are loaded with author bias.

In addition, there is no system that can not be broken no matter how thorough you are with building it. Instead, keep it simple and loose. The fewer variables in the game, the easier it is to balance.

I can 100% sign that. The thing is that actual exact balancing sometimes doesn't feel like it is balanced at all. So in practice exact balancings are changed in contrary to the balancing data, if there are too many players complaining about that one OP champion in LoL or Overwatch for example. In Tabletop Wargames that's a very rare case cause the connection between player and designer is much looser... it's much more a connection between tester and designer.