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Okay, so basic gist is that the points system would return to how it was in previous additions: take the base cost of the models, pay extra for any add-ons. Only very basic wargear (e.g., swapping rifles for pistols/CCW).would remain nominally free.

However this new system would also incentivise players to take wargear by giving units 10% of their base model costs (rounding down) in free wargear.

So for example:
- A Guard infantry squad worth 60pts would get its first 6pts of extra wargear free.
- A tank worth 240pts would get its first 24pts of extra wargear free.

The only issue for me is that this would make calculating lists a bit trickier, but most people use apps for that now anyway.

I guess it would also make units without any wargear upgrades a little 'feelsbad'. Alternatively, you could just get 10% of your total model costs to spend on free wargear across your army, which while easier would also allow individual units to be stacked (which isn't necessarily a con, just saying).

I don't see the benefit of this compared to just making some equipment cheap(er) or just free.

What problem is this trying to tackle?

This can work, but I think its an added layer that's a bit too much for a wargame of 40K's scale. It's a neat idea, but I feel like it would work better if it were limited to very few models (Eg how Old World has a lot of wargear and free choices and such but typically only for Lords/leaders).

That way its more complex, but its restricted to the leader models in the army and thus its easier to manage.

Otherwise you'd run the risk of making army building needlessly complex.



GW has already had that issue with some units having an insane number of choices for a wargame; with many of them being non-model represented elements. 10th is basically the knee-jerk reaction to that by kicking the whole system sideways and trying to remove a huge number of them but also reduce the maths element to make it simpler by removing the point costs too. It's your typical "GW sees problem - GW reacts on multiple fronts at once - resulting in an extreme over-reaction that ends up with the opposite problems to what it was trying to solve in the first place"

a_typical_hero wrote:
I don't see the benefit of this compared to just making some equipment cheap(er) or just free.

What problem is this trying to tackle?

People hating on Guard?

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
However this new system would also incentivise players to take wargear by giving units 10% of their base model costs (rounding down) in free wargear

Historically some units would get items either by default or at zero cost with a corresponding decrease in the other values (i.e. old tactical marines) with some of that equipment cost baked into the units base cost.

It worked well enough in terms of discouraging minimum cost 'slot fillers' but it was pretty circumstantial, and pretty quickly power creeped too.

I'm not sure what the goal of this change is. In theory, it seems like it would encourage people to take some minor upgrades that they might have otherwise passed on? But if that's the goal, it makes me wonder what the problem being solved is. Like, is a squad of 5 tac marines with all bolters a problem, but 5 tac marines with 4 bolters and a flamer fine?

This would also impact different units/armies very differently. Units like hormagaunts, for instance, don't have (and haven't had for as long as I've been playing) small individual model upgrades you could spend those points on. If you want to give a unit of 10 gaunts toxin sacs, then 10% of the base unit cost won't cover that. Unless the intent is that you can pay for a given upgrade with a combination of amry points and "freebie points"? In which case, that gets complicated fast and makes it really tricky to recalculate your list.

Which is probably the biggest challenge to your pitch. Calculating X% bonus points per unit is pretty clunky. If you have to develop an app to make the idea work, then I'd say that's a bit of a red flag.

Might it not be better to do this by army-size, rather than per-squad?

e.g. a 2000pt army has an extra 200pts that can only be spent on wargear?

This would achieve a similar effect, while making things a lot simpler in terms of math.

A general war gear allowances proposal doesn't solve the problem, because the problem is the existence of wild outliers effectiveness in the unit equipment choices.

That problem gets solved by identifying the outliers and either removing them completely, add individual costs to the outliers, or grouping the upgrades that a unit can take into tiers and putting a cost on accessing each of the tiers.

Yeah, for each unit the likely tiers would probably end up looking a lot like what the "X% free stuff" list would be, but the person making an army list isn't sitting down and figuring out how much wargear each unit is getting and seeing if it's below the limit--you just choose the tier that gets what you want access to, and take the stuff you want.

You know what, forget the whole 'free wargear' fad and let's just go back to the old points system.

Who cares if somebody runs Guardsmen with nothing but lasguns as bottom-dollar screening units? The actual issue in those kind of cases is that players don't consider wargear worth it, which speaks to a conflict between the unit's intended role and its practical utility.

What would 10% free wargear be achieving?

What problem is it trying to solve?

People aren't not taking wargear now, and people didn't not take wargear when there was a functional points system.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

People aren't not taking wargear now, and people didn't not take wargear when there was a functional points system.

Nitpick: people did sometimes pass up wargear in the old system. It wasn't uncommon to forego sticking a special weapon in a guard squad or to skip giving special gear to your scourges' solarite if doing so meant you could afford more wargear/units elsewhere in the list.

But as spoon points out, the problem there was that the wargear being passed on was perceived to have too little value for its cost.

Giving everything some wargear freebies does nothing to stop some not being considered worth it though. You'd just spend the Scourge's free points on guns, or the Guard's free points on... different guns.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
You know what, forget the whole 'free wargear' fad and let's just go back to the old points system.

Who cares if somebody runs Guardsmen with nothing but lasguns as bottom-dollar screening units? The actual issue in those kind of cases is that players don't consider wargear worth it, which speaks to a conflict between the unit's intended role and its practical utility.

If a stratagem, aura or order only affects one type of weapon, having the same weapon on everyone in the squad makes sense. FRFSRF and similar. Skip the 'free' upgrade altogether, but you currently don't get points back for doing so.
And, the times you are 10 points short of fitting a unit into a list. Drop a weapon upgrade somewhere, and get that unit. That currently can't happen.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Giving everything some wargear freebies does nothing to stop some not being considered worth it though. You'd just spend the Scourge's free points on guns, or the Guard's free points on... different guns.

Totally agree. I'm just pedantically nitpicking this claim from Damocles:

people didn't not take wargear when there was a functional points system.

I liked this as a solution to Power Levels, but I think there's a lot of value in the free wargear of 10th. It just forces GW to create design space for weapons rather than make something simply stronger. While its far from perfect, there's vastly more interesting weapon diversity where its more a meta call. The issue now seems to be that base troops aren't enough of a problem to need to take some of the guns better suited to dealing with them over things with higher S or AP.

 LunarSol wrote:
It just forces GW to create design space for weapons rather than make something simply stronger.

What's the design space for not putting a hunter killer missile on every Rhino?

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It just forces GW to create design space for weapons rather than make something simply stronger.

What's the design space for not putting a hunter killer missile on every Rhino?

I'm unconcerned about the "or nothing" elements. They seem to exist as a legacy support vestigial rather than a true option. Rhinos have Hunter Kill Missiles as much as they have Armoured Tracks as far as I'm concerned and they're way more interesting to take for it.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It just forces GW to create design space for weapons rather than make something simply stronger.

What's the design space for not putting a hunter killer missile on every Rhino?

I'm unconcerned about the "or nothing" elements. They seem to exist as a legacy support vestigial rather than a true option. Rhinos have Hunter Kill Missiles as much as they have Armoured Tracks as far as I'm concerned and they're way more interesting to take for it.

I don't think giving every transport a powerful one-shot weapon is good for the game.
Alpha Strikes are a problem, and free Hunter-Killer missiles don't help.

It doesn't have to be one way OR the other I think. Even Power level costed wings with 1PL, as they're obviousely a pretty good thing to have.
I think it's okay to see many weapons as sidegrades, but others should cost something, really. Hunter killers and Sponsons are obvious examples.
They should find a way to make base weapons more appealing for you to not always trade them away. You only take Bolters? Here, now your CSM get Fury of the Legion.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
It doesn't have to be one way OR the other I think. Even Power level costed wings with 1PL, as they're obviousely a pretty good thing to have.
I think it's okay to see many weapons as sidegrades, but others should cost something, really. Hunter killers and Sponsons are obvious examples.

Not to toot my own horn, but I still feel like my recent pitch does this reasonably well. (If we're not just going to bring back the old points system entire.)
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/812887.page

They should find a way to make base weapons more appealing for you to not always trade them away. You only take Bolters? Here, now your CSM get Fury of the Legion.

I think you generally want to avoid having to create special rules to make people take baseline weapons purely because that route is going to require you add a ton of rules to the game which will each have the potential to break something or just be another rule that has to be remembered. Really, the concept of paying fewer points for a less powerful option was fine. The only issues were when some options were too cheap/expensive for their value and GW seeming to be bad at figuring out what those values were.

There's a reason why modern-day militaries equip the majority of their infantrymen with rifles, or variants thereof... because for the vast majority of things infantry units are expected to do, a rifle is better-suited to the task than a specialist weapon. A lasgun, for example, is going to:
- be effective at most ranges
- be effective in all terrain (including buildings, ships, civilian-populated areas, and wherever else collateral damage is a concern)
- be light enough to carry/operate for prolonged periods
- have enough ammo to remain useful throughout an operation as a 'first-resort' or suppressive option

And is a logistician's dream ofc for many other, well-documented reasons.

These factors aren't really represented in 40k. A Guardsman can lug around his grenade launcher and its 20-round (!) drum mag without fatigue, and fire it off as frequently as he wants without worrying about ammo scarcity or cost. Collateral damage to terrain, friendly units and/or civilians is never a concern (I mean, it can't be fired into a melee, but neither can a lasgun). He'll never have to worry about navigating a corridor, room or other confined space with it. It doesn't even have any rules penalty to represent its inferior handling, or its uselessness at close range. The scarcity/cost/whatever used to be represented by the additional points investment at least, but not even that stuck (hence this convo).

Noted that there's limited granularity for devs to play around with, but atm there'd be little incentive not to replace every single lasgun with a grenade launcher if given the chance, even when considering the FRFSRF order (mathematically, frag grenades still win out).

Basic infantry weapons need to be made more appealing in some way (even if that means making special weapons less appealing). Especially things like bolters, which should absolutely be on equal footing with many 'special' weapons in terms of their combat utility.

Idk. I think you just represent the ammo scarcity/difficulty of supply by making "slots" for special weapons less common in the army.

I'm not sure how you'd make a bolter feel equivalent to a plasma gun (similar range and rate of fire) while still letting the latter *feel* like a plasma gun. Like, by its very nature, the plasma gun should be able to hurt a given target more reliably than a bolter.

I think the main issue is just that infantry is a little out of place in some armies. Their weapons mostly hurt other infantry so you can limit the effectiveness of infantry by just not taking infantry.

It's a meta problem. When everyone is taking what they perceive as above average options, the baseline becomes sub-par. Bolter fire is rather effective so the first competitive choice is to limit how much of things you take that are susceptible to bolter fire.

Wyldhunt wrote:Idk. I think you just represent the ammo scarcity/difficulty of supply by making "slots" for special weapons less common in the army.

Yeah, fair point I guess. This combined with points values, or even army-wide limits for some weapons?

Wyldhunt wrote:I'm not sure how you'd make a bolter feel equivalent to a plasma gun (similar range and rate of fire) while still letting the latter *feel* like a plasma gun. Like, by its very nature, the plasma gun should be able to hurt a given target more reliably than a bolter.

Should it have a similar range and fire-rate? When I see plasma guns represented in media, they shoot far more slowly than boltguns (in terms of both fire-rate and projectile speed). Lexicanum states that their accuracy falls off quickly with range, and that a typical plasma gun only has enough fuel for 10 (!) shots... and is difficult to reload. The operator also needs to wait between shots for the gun to cool down. To me, this indicates that maybe the in-game stats are a little flattering.

Off the top of my head, some changes I could imagine implementing for plasma guns to make them more of a trade-off:
- Range 18" (plasma projectiles are slower, reliant on fallible magnetic containment, and inaccurate at range).
- Remove 'rapid fire', to represent their cooldown between shots and limited ammunition per flask... so by choosing a plasma gun over a rifle-type weapon, you're sacrificing overall attacks and synergy with things like FRFSRF.
- No 'safe' setting (for Imperial/Chaos versions anyway)... one hazard roll per attack, and on a result of 1, the attack is resolved against the wielder (hitting automatically). Most units would get saves against failures. MEQs would only take 1W from a non-overcharged shot, but would be instakilled by an overcharged one. Kind of a tangent but I think it's a neat idea.
- A points value obviously.

These changes would make bolters a superior and cheaper option against GEQs for example.

As an aside, I think bolters (Astartes ones anyway) need some love regardless, in the form of a buff to AP and either Strength/Damage... but that's another topic.

Also a big fan of different weapon types getting more characteristic rules more generally. For example, las weapons could grant accuracy bonuses/re-rolls of some kind, shuriken weapons could all have AP bonuses on critical hits (which they used to have IIRC?), etc. But again, another topic.

LunarSol wrote:I think the main issue is just that infantry is a little out of place in some armies. Their weapons mostly hurt other infantry so you can limit the effectiveness of infantry by just not taking infantry.

Yeah, I'd like to see games with more 'grunt' units.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:Idk. I think you just represent the ammo scarcity/difficulty of supply by making "slots" for special weapons less common in the army.

Yeah, fair point I guess. This combined with points values, or even army-wide limits for some weapons?

Points are a pretty natural way to do it. I wouldn't put an artificial cap on the number of plasma guns (or any other weapons) in the army because opting to field more or less of a given weapon type is one of the means by which we give our army character. If I want to show that my space wolves belong to one of those fire-themed great companies, I take lots of flamers or meltas. If I want my DA to lean into the "extensive access to oldschool tech" thing, I give them lots of plasma. Etc.

Wyldhunt wrote:I'm not sure how you'd make a bolter feel equivalent to a plasma gun (similar range and rate of fire) while still letting the latter *feel* like a plasma gun. Like, by its very nature, the plasma gun should be able to hurt a given target more reliably than a bolter.

Should it have a similar range and fire-rate? When I see plasma guns represented in media, they shoot far more slowly than boltguns (in terms of both fire-rate and projectile speed). Lexicanum states that their accuracy falls off quickly with range, and that a typical plasma gun only has enough fuel for 10 (!) shots... and is difficult to reload. The operator also needs to wait between shots for the gun to cool down. To me, this indicates that maybe the in-game stats are a little flattering.

Off the top of my head, some changes I could imagine implementing for plasma guns to make them more of a trade-off:
- Range 18" (plasma projectiles are slower, reliant on fallible magnetic containment, and inaccurate at range).
- Remove 'rapid fire', to represent their cooldown between shots and limited ammunition per flask... so by choosing a plasma gun over a rifle-type weapon, you're sacrificing overall attacks and synergy with things like FRFSRF.
- No 'safe' setting (for Imperial/Chaos versions anyway)... one hazard roll per attack, and on a result of 1, the attack is resolved against the wielder (hitting automatically). Most units would get saves against failures. MEQs would only take 1W from a non-overcharged shot, but would be instakilled by an overcharged one. Kind of a tangent but I think it's a neat idea.
- A points value obviously.

These changes would make bolters a superior and cheaper option against GEQs for example.

I'm okay with playing around with the range, rate of fire, etc. of a plasma gun. However, the thing to keep in mind is that they're usually competing directly with meltas and flamers for "slots" in a unit as well as for mechanical niches. If you turn plasma into a short-ranged, single-shot gun with better AP and damage... it's looking awfully similar to a melta, and you'll have a hard time not making one of those weapons a clearly better version of the other.

Right now, plasma guns and bolters aren't really asked to compete with eachother, and I think that's for the best. Trying to make one the equivalent of the other means that you suddenly have to add bolters alongside meltas and flamers as weapons that plasma competes with. And that's the nice thing about wargear with a points cost; you don't have to make every weapon similarly powerful. You can just make one a smaller investment. This has the added benefit of making the rare and expensive weapons feel more grandiose. A plasma gun can be an especially awe-inspiring weapon rather than just being the equivalent of a humble bolter. Heck, this even makes bolters "better" against hordes in a roundabout way because letting them remain cheap and easily accessible means that they're both more cost-effective against cheap enemies and more readily available en masse.

As an aside, I think bolters (Astartes ones anyway) need some love regardless, in the form of a buff to AP and either Strength/Damage... but that's another topic.

I'd be cautious of that. That's the kind of power creep we saw in 9th, and 10th has bent over backwards to attempt to reign that sort of thing in. If you want to make the common rifle in the game significantly stronger, you need to also make the most common units in the game (read: most marines) more expensive as well. And that will have all kinds of knock-on effects. Not that I'm necessarily against making marines even more "elite," but that's a whole can of worms.

Also a big fan of different weapon types getting more characteristic rules more generally. For example, las weapons could grant accuracy bonuses/re-rolls of some kind

While fun to think about, you have to remember KISS and ask yourself if such rules are really needed. Do lasguns *need* rerolls to represent their fluff and serve the mechanical niche you want them to have in-game? Or can they just be a simple, humble, straightforward statline that's easy to resolve? And if they do need rerolls, is it more thematic to tie those rules to, for instance, Orders or stratagems? Generally, granting bonuses or rerolls to a weapon is basically just changing their wounds-per-shot from X to Y.

, shuriken weapons could all have AP bonuses on critical hits (which they used to have IIRC?), etc. But again, another topic.

They used to be AP 0, but AP-3 on critical to-wound rolls. Had a nice, juicy "crit" feeling, but also had weird side effects. Like making shuriken catapults weirdly good against vehicles because half or all of their wounds were AP-3. There are lots of ways to reasonably abstract shuriken catapults, but they're actually a pretty good example of KISS. Instead of giving them like, 12 shots each at S1 AP0 D1 with Lethal hits or Devastating Wounds, we instead get a simple 2 shots at S4 and AP-1 that maths out to roughly what GW wants.

LunarSol wrote:I think the main issue is just that infantry is a little out of place in some armies. Their weapons mostly hurt other infantry so you can limit the effectiveness of infantry by just not taking infantry.

Yeah, I'd like to see games with more 'grunt' units.

Depends on what you mean by "grunts." I'm not a fan of forcing people to field a bunch of "troop" units because what is and isn't a troop is pretty arbitrary, how cost-effective those troops are tends to be inconsistent (some armies used being a troop as an excuse to make units kind of suck for their points), and not fielding a bunch of troops is a major part of a lot of subfactions (i.e. Biel-Tan, Iybraesil, Iyanden (arguably), Raven Wing, Death Wing, etc.)

This is actually something 10th has done a pretty good job with. Generally, battleline units are being given ways to be useful/desirable to an army without requiring they be as lethal or tanky (for their points) as non-battleline units, and being battleline means you can spam a bunch of them if you like the idea of having a large number of such units in your army. But not taking them is equally viable and valid.

Requiring Battleline to be taken is a sloppy band aid; they just need to have a job to do. Sticky objectives and the like is a solid answer. I'd not be sad to see units that can perform actions and shoot or something like that.