Faction Glut and 9th game play Conversation

[PeteySödes]

Exactly right. But that level of abstraction doesn't sit well. :p

I dunno, it makes a converter like me start thinking dark and beautiful thoughts...

[GreenScorpion]

Simplification is the key for balance, but I am not sure if simplifying to role would be adequate, but perhaps ensuring same weapon types have always the same profiles across different armies, e.g. a plasma gun is a plasma gun, regardless of who holds it and should cost the same for example. You can always have unit/faction modifiers if you are supposed to be better with something (like not blowing for example).

Another example: if you have a heavy flamer on an infantry soldier or a heavy flamer on a vehicle, it should be exactly the same thing, if it is a dual heavy flamer for example, it just counts as 2 weapons with the same profile.

[Volt]

It's funny you mention Bolt Action, I actually reckon that at larger points levels 40K would be better as a 15mm game...but then again that would mean completely invalidating every miniature ever made for it, which suffice to say is not a good idea.

 

Regarding large amounts of abstraction and simplifying loadouts, I really wouldn't want to see that. The streamlining worked for Age of Sigmar because even with the Moorcockian/Planescape-esque high fantasy aspects, a spear is a spear. And even then I still kinda wish they had been a bit less brutal with the simplification (and I say that as someone that likes AoS). With 40K, with all the weird, wacky and wonderful guns available to the many factions of the galaxy, lumping weapons together because they have a similar role and giving them all the same profile would just be completely wrong.

 

Heck, look at the differences between two IRL weapons made for the same basic role- the Bren gun and the Spandau MG-42. Both machine guns, both great weapons, but pretty different in performance. The Bren has a slower rate of fire (conserving ammunition somewhat) and assuming my memory isn't failing me is a touch more precise. The MG-42 (aka "Hitler's Buzzsaw") has an absurd rate of fire and is a superb suppression weapon, but obviously chews through bullets and is somewhat less accurate by simple virtue of how many rounds it chucks out and the following recoil. If 40K were a WW2 game, and they gave the Bren and the MG-42 the exact same profile, it'd be a bit rubbish.

Not really because equipment rarely determines who actually is the winner of a battle, and certainly never determines who wins the war. Warfare on the company-division level revolves entirely around mobility (up until you reach 'grand strategy' which is logistics) with who has a bren and who has an MG-42 meaning essentially nothing compared to where the weapon is. We don't need weird and wild weapon types because those weird and wild weapons contribute nothing to actually winning a battle and thus shouldn't have an effect in a game of 40k.

 

It doesn't matter whether a basilisk or a demolisher cannon lobs a shell, artillery is artillery so long it's of similar yield and the unit that just got hit by it is either dead, suppressed, or concussed in lieu of heavy armor. Which is the problem with 40k and where the hellish imbalance, utterly stupid tactics (really more rules lawyering at this point), and general bad game experience all comes into play. Nobody actually wins a battle because their infantry was strung out in a conga line that simultaneously occupied two arbitrary points. They won because they exercised a superior grasp of mobility to outmaneuver the enemy and push them from the field.

 

40k is too complex and too simplistic in all of the wrong ways for a wargame.

 

(Also a medievalist even a spear is a spear is getting too detailed at anything larger than small scale skirmishes. So long as it's a pointy stick, functionally there is no meaningful difference between a halberd, a spear, or a glaive; with only pikes being distinct and that's because of length. You could, and probably should just lump everything into "polearm" with far more attention paid to morale mechanics and drilling.)

[War Angel]

Simplification is the key for balance, but I am not sure if simplifying to role would be adequate, but perhaps ensuring same weapon types have always the same profiles across different armies, e.g. a plasma gun is a plasma gun, regardless of who holds it and should cost the same for example. You can always have unit/faction modifiers if you are supposed to be better with something (like not blowing for example).

Another example: if you have a heavy flamer on an infantry soldier or a heavy flamer on a vehicle, it should be exactly the same thing, if it is a dual heavy flamer for example, it just counts as 2 weapons with the same profile.

The same cost actors factions? You think a model with BS2 should pay the same for a gun as a model with BS4? Some weapons don’t even cost the same across models in a single codex.

[Rogue]

That's a tricky one, though. Surely the BS4+ model is already costing less points compared to the BS2+ model (all else being equal), so that's where the saving comes. If you make the weapon cheaper as well, then you get a BS4+ discount twice.

[ThePenitentOne]

 

Not really because equipment rarely determines who actually is the winner of a battle, and certainly never determines who wins the war. Warfare on the company-division level revolves entirely around mobility (up until you reach 'grand strategy' which is logistics) with who has a bren and who has an MG-42 meaning essentially nothing compared to where the weapon is. We don't need weird and wild weapon types because those weird and wild weapons contribute nothing to actually winning a battle and thus shouldn't have an effect in a game of 40k.

 

Heck, look at the differences between two IRL weapons made for the same basic role- the Bren gun and the Spandau MG-42. Both machine guns, both great weapons, but pretty different in performance. The Bren has a slower rate of fire (conserving ammunition somewhat) and assuming my memory isn't failing me is a touch more precise. The MG-42 (aka "Hitler's Buzzsaw") has an absurd rate of fire and is a superb suppression weapon, but obviously chews through bullets and is somewhat less accurate by simple virtue of how many rounds it chucks out and the following recoil. If 40K were a WW2 game, and they gave the Bren and the MG-42 the exact same profile, it'd be a bit rubbish.

 

It doesn't matter whether a basilisk or a demolisher cannon lobs a shell, artillery is artillery so long it's of similar yield and the unit that just got hit by it is either dead, suppressed, or concussed in lieu of heavy armor. Which is the problem with 40k and where the hellish imbalance, utterly stupid tactics (really more rules lawyering at this point), and general bad game experience all comes into play. Nobody actually wins a battle because their infantry was strung out in a conga line that simultaneously occupied two arbitrary points. They won because they exercised a superior grasp of mobility to outmaneuver the enemy and push them from the field.

 

40k is too complex and too simplistic in all of the wrong ways for a wargame.

 

(Also a medievalist even a spear is a spear is getting too detailed at anything larger than small scale skirmishes. So long as it's a pointy stick, functionally there is no meaningful difference between a halberd, a spear, or a glaive; with only pikes being distinct and that's because of length. You could, and probably should just lump everything into "polearm" with far more attention paid to morale mechanics and drilling.)

 

 

Hate to say it, and don't mean to be confrontational, but I think almost everything you said is wrong.

 

Equipment ALWAYS wins wars. Guns are the whole reason collonialism and slavery happened. In the modern era, whoever has the greatest capacity to blacken the sky with drones wins the war. It is why and how cold wars exist at all.

 

A basilisk doesn't need LOS, a Demolisher does. HUGE difference.

 

A halberd has a sharpened edge, meaning it can slash as well as pierce; most spears are just points and can only pierce (though some large headed spears do have bladed or even barbed edges. And ANYTHING with a tempered metal blade/tip is different than a sharpened stick, which would not pierce metal plate, where a tempered metal point might.

[Bryan Blaire]

 

Exactly right. But that level of abstraction doesn't sit well. :p

I dunno, it makes a converter like me start thinking dark and beautiful thoughts...

Actually, I'm there with you and Petey - done the right way, I would actually much prefer that type of abstraction.

[GreenScorpion]

 

Simplification is the key for balance, but I am not sure if simplifying to role would be adequate, but perhaps ensuring same weapon types have always the same profiles across different armies, e.g. a plasma gun is a plasma gun, regardless of who holds it and should cost the same for example. You can always have unit/faction modifiers if you are supposed to be better with something (like not blowing up for example).

Another example: if you have a heavy flamer on an infantry soldier or a heavy flamer on a vehicle, it should be exactly the same thing, if it is a dual heavy flamer for example, it just counts as 2 weapons with the same profile.

The same cost actors factions? You think a model with BS2 should pay the same for a gun as a model with BS4? Some weapons don’t even cost the same across models in a single codex.

 

Shouldn't the model itself cost less/more based on how bad/good it is? And the fact that they don't cost the same across a faction is also an issue regarding simplification, which is what I was referring to.

Consider it like this, if you give a conscript a weapon and or a veteran the same weapon, where does the difference lie, in the manufacturing of 2 equal weapons or the experience of 2 different soldiers?

It would make more sense to consider the cost of the weapon the same and play with the cost of the soldiers.

You could still have some exception with a relic weapon of that type that could only be used by X or Z character, but overall it would be easier to balance on a larger scale.

That is mostly how I went with balancing units in a mod I did a few years ago for Dawn of War.

[War Angel]

 

 

Simplification is the key for balance, but I am not sure if simplifying to role would be adequate, but perhaps ensuring same weapon types have always the same profiles across different armies, e.g. a plasma gun is a plasma gun, regardless of who holds it and should cost the same for example. You can always have unit/faction modifiers if you are supposed to be better with something (like not blowing up for example).

Another example: if you have a heavy flamer on an infantry soldier or a heavy flamer on a vehicle, it should be exactly the same thing, if it is a dual heavy flamer for example, it just counts as 2 weapons with the same profile.

 

The same cost actors factions? You think a model with BS2 should pay the same for a gun as a model with BS4? Some weapons don’t even cost the same across models in a single codex.

Shouldn't the model itself cost less/more based on how bad/good it is? And the fact that they don't cost the same across a faction is also an issue regarding simplification, which is what I was referring to.

Consider it like this, if you give a conscript a weapon and or a veteran the same weapon, where does the difference lie, in the manufacturing of 2 equal weapons or the experience of 2 different soldiers?

It would make more sense to consider the cost of the weapon the same and play with the cost of the soldiers.

You could still have some exception with a relic weapon of that type that could only be used by X or Z character, but overall it would be easier to balance on a larger scale.

That is mostly how I went with balancing units in a mod I did a few years ago for Dawn of War.

 

From a fluff standpoint, yes, it would be weird that to give a veteran a gun cost more than to give a conscript (but you can’t give them options, so we’ll say infantrymen) but points are not used to show fluff. If that we’re the case a Marine should cost 100x that of a guardsmen. It’s to give balance to the game. The game can not and should not be balanced across all units in the game, it should be balanced across all factions in the game. Then you can tweet balance across the units in a faction so that they all have value in an army.

 

Now there’s a small element of fluff providing a guidance to the cost of models, guard are a horde army, their basic infantry cost 5 points. Lots of guardsmen is a defining feature of their army. (Even with a lot of tanks, they can take a lot of infantry) Chaos Space Marines are not a horde army. And so cultists cost 6 points. A side by side comparison shows that an infantry squad is better because it has a better leadership, while everything else is the same. But the chaos cultist provide something to a CSM army that they otherwise wouldn’t have. So for chaos it’s worth the extra point.

[Vermintide]

Being balanced too tightly is definitely a monkey's paw to 40k. There's a fine level of imbalance necessary to the rules in order to give us, the players, what we really want, as opposed to what we think we want. If we get really meta to the game design, it becomes obvious that one thing above all is constant- Change. Chances are we wouldn't be satisfied if they had figured out how to balance it perfectly mid-6th edition, and just left it there, unaltered, ever since.

 

I remember saying something similar mid-8th when everyone was complaining constantly about Loyal 32/Cultist blobs etc. I think the game could actually make bigger strides towards functional balance by being slightly more prescriptive with force organisation, than any amount of points tinkering ever could. Nudge players in the direction their faction is supposed to be constructed, then let them mess around within that framework; instead of letting them cherry-pick their toys to their hearts content and then somehow trying to work the costs around it.

[Scribe]

 

 

Exactly right. But that level of abstraction doesn't sit well.

I dunno, it makes a converter like me start thinking dark and beautiful thoughts...

Actually, I'm there with you and Petey - done the right way, I would actually much prefer that type of abstraction.

 

 

I mean a Power Weapon used to be a Power Weapon. Many people cried out for the whole an Axe is not a Mace is not a Sword...

 

I'm all for simpler rules, as I do think it makes a better game, but there are many who disagree.

[Volt]

 

 

Not really because equipment rarely determines who actually is the winner of a battle, and certainly never determines who wins the war. Warfare on the company-division level revolves entirely around mobility (up until you reach 'grand strategy' which is logistics) with who has a bren and who has an MG-42 meaning essentially nothing compared to where the weapon is. We don't need weird and wild weapon types because those weird and wild weapons contribute nothing to actually winning a battle and thus shouldn't have an effect in a game of 40k.

 

Heck, look at the differences between two IRL weapons made for the same basic role- the Bren gun and the Spandau MG-42. Both machine guns, both great weapons, but pretty different in performance. The Bren has a slower rate of fire (conserving ammunition somewhat) and assuming my memory isn't failing me is a touch more precise. The MG-42 (aka "Hitler's Buzzsaw") has an absurd rate of fire and is a superb suppression weapon, but obviously chews through bullets and is somewhat less accurate by simple virtue of how many rounds it chucks out and the following recoil. If 40K were a WW2 game, and they gave the Bren and the MG-42 the exact same profile, it'd be a bit rubbish.

 

It doesn't matter whether a basilisk or a demolisher cannon lobs a shell, artillery is artillery so long it's of similar yield and the unit that just got hit by it is either dead, suppressed, or concussed in lieu of heavy armor. Which is the problem with 40k and where the hellish imbalance, utterly stupid tactics (really more rules lawyering at this point), and general bad game experience all comes into play. Nobody actually wins a battle because their infantry was strung out in a conga line that simultaneously occupied two arbitrary points. They won because they exercised a superior grasp of mobility to outmaneuver the enemy and push them from the field.

 

40k is too complex and too simplistic in all of the wrong ways for a wargame.

 

(Also a medievalist even a spear is a spear is getting too detailed at anything larger than small scale skirmishes. So long as it's a pointy stick, functionally there is no meaningful difference between a halberd, a spear, or a glaive; with only pikes being distinct and that's because of length. You could, and probably should just lump everything into "polearm" with far more attention paid to morale mechanics and drilling.)

 

 

Hate to say it, and don't mean to be confrontational, but I think almost everything you said is wrong.

 

Equipment ALWAYS wins wars. Guns are the whole reason collonialism and slavery happened. In the modern era, whoever has the greatest capacity to blacken the sky with drones wins the war. It is why and how cold wars exist at all.

 

A basilisk doesn't need LOS, a Demolisher does. HUGE difference.

 

A halberd has a sharpened edge, meaning it can slash as well as pierce; most spears are just points and can only pierce (though some large headed spears do have bladed or even barbed edges. And ANYTHING with a tempered metal blade/tip is different than a sharpened stick, which would not pierce metal plate, where a tempered metal point might.

 

To spoiler something getting very off topic from the rest of the post.

And no offense, the idea that equipment is the predominate factor in deciding who wins a battle or a war is so hilariously wrong that it's the very mentality that validates the continued study of the Art of War despite its basic factors. it's why the US has lost multiple wars since WWII despite overwhelming logistical and technological advantages. The ultimate deciding factor in all war after logistics is not who has the best gun, but who is willing to die in greater numbers and stick in the fight. A hundred marines could not win a battle against ten thousand men with pointy sticks if the ten thousand are totally willing to die for their cause and the marines are unwilling to sacrifice their own. Battle, above all else, is about shattering the enemy's will to fight, not killing them. Technology is described as a force multiplier, meaning it increases the effectiveness of the force(s) you already have at their ability to inflict casualties upon the enemy, increasing the damage wrought upon enemy morale. This does not win a battle, in of itself, ever, it needs to be leveraged properly with the most crucial aspect being properly drilled troops that are motivated and experienced.

 

This also ties into the later part of your post before I resume the on topic discussion out of spoilers, that no, fundamentally the minutia of how a halberd behaves is completely irrelevant on the grand scheme of battle. You are stuck in the mind of a duelist, thinking the individual means anything when what matters and decides the fate of battle is the cohesion of infantry formations and whether they break and rout after sustaining casualties. Reach is the most important factor, which saw the persistent appearance of pikes in well drilled armies across millennia. That a glaive can cut and also thrust is virtually meaningless in determining the victor of such battles as Sempach. The Swiss were armed with inferior weapons of reach, mostly using lances or glavies against the lances of the dismounted Austrian/German nobles. They won anyway because they refused to break as a formation regardless of their disadvantage and marched right over the knights. That they could or couldn't cut with their glaives was immaterial, no pole weapon can functionally pierce contemporary armor their days, what matters is the position of the formation and its cohesion. Which for example is how the Macedonians lost Cynoscephalae, the left flank of the army broke after it was unable to form a line properly before getting slammed by Elephants and Roman infantry tactics, broke and saw the right flank get destroyed by the Romans who charged the rear. 

 

On topic, that's my point. The only difference meaningfully between a demolisher cannon and a basilisk is that one is indirect fire and longer ranged. In terms of damage there is no need for them to be different, or in terms of the strength of the hit either. HE shells of similar power are HE shells of similar power, and will inflict similar results when hitting a tank or infantry. It's only in regards to armor penetration that things should be different, ie, autocannons and vanquishers obviously shouldn't be comparable and in a similar grouping.

[battle captain corpus]

-][- Keep it 40k focussed please folks. -][-

 

BCC

[WrathOfTheLion]

AoS has a ton of factions and manages quite good support for them I think. So GW has a model to make it happen.

I think it has a much more focused offering than 40k though. However, some of the smaller factions like Grey Knights, Harlequins, etc. would easily work with an AoS-sized faction release.

AoS manages about 3 factions per year, just with that support going to Eldar, Orks, Guard, etc. would not take that long to start making quite a bit of ground. Most of those don't need a full reboot, Eldar have some fairly new kits, just juxtaposed with some really ancient ones.

 

Edit: Even with a token 1 of those going to SM every year, doing that model would have something like 6+ factions updated to a good spot just over the lifetime of 9E if it were 3 years. Do that through 11E, and over 3 editions, basically every faction is updated significantly once, which isn't bad at all. I think it has nothing to do with the number of factions in 40k, but the more unfocused release model they have done in the past.

 

8E had actually done a decent job with this I think, with updates to SM (x2), GSC, Ad mech, Orks, Chaos Space Marines, Death Guard and SoB. Maybe a few more I've missed, could be some knights, etc.

Another round of that as 9E could conceivably be SM (x2 I guess?), Necrons, Eldar, CSM again (other half), Tyranids, EC maybe as a new faction and maybe Dark Eldar. That would be a pretty sizeable update to a good chunk of the forces I think if it matches 8E, although I think with their increased revenue we will start seeing that increase more.

Edited August 9, 2020 by WrathOfTheLion

[Ascanius]

I always liked the approach from earlier editions where, for instance, Chaos Space Marines had the four varieties of cult troops as elite options, but taking a Death Guard/World Eaters/Thousand Sons/Emperor's Children army meant you could have those units as cult troops and that you were forbidden from taking any of the other three options.

 

(Admittedly, that doesn't make much sense for Rubricae if your army is from any of the other Traitor Legions except the Black Legion, but it's manageable through alliances.)

 

These days there's even more room for that sort of thing than there used to be, with the Primaris range making the Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves closer to the standard range than they have been for decades.

 

I don't know if it makes business sense, but as far as I'm concerned there's no reason why they couldn't fold all the Space Marines back together. Grey Knights, I guess, are a bit of an outlier since they don't have units in common.

[Fajita Fan]

That’s how it used to work and it was much better then. They must think that selling all those $40 codices separately really makes them a lot more money or something but folding them all back together with small chapter supplements makes things much easier to balance.

[nanosquid]

Regarding weapons being different, remember that half of the rules writing is actually marketing. They've been doing a bit better the past 2 editions, but at the end of the day GW wants to sell you toys. They've put tons of artist effort and r&d into not just the dudes, but the weapons too. Think about how much lore and design has gone into the bolter and chainsword - it's important enough that we're on a forum straight-up named for them. Hell, even the xenos factions can go on for hours about their basic small arms (source: I've done it). Making Cool Space Swords different from Cool Space Spears is not just a balance choice, but a sales choice.

 

As a hobby first fan, the more the better for me.

[mughi3]

Sure, it can be improved, but that's not what most people probably are into.

 

5th was the best version to me, but all the narrative folks hated it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

40k is too complex and too simplistic in all of the wrong ways for a wargame.

 

 

 

 

Scribe

Yes 5th was not perfect, but it was the best rules set (and i still play it instead of 9th) the narrative folks such as myself didn't like what they did to the CODEXES not the edition. the 3.5 chaos codex was the best representation of chaos and it has never had a well represented codex since. which is why our group allows people to use whatever compatible codex(3rd-7th) they feel best suits their factions fluff .

 

Volt

40k is the game i go to when i want the less complex system  because i need a break from technical skirmish systems such as  battletech, infinity, or B5 wars and the like.