The only problem I've run into with 3rd edition is being able to include units the have 'special abilities' in detachments with units that just have regular firepower. This happened to me this weekend with some Mekboy speedstas with deth rays during a shooting phase.

Since the deth ray's have a 'special' shooting rule we agreed just rolled those dice seperately during the detachments shooting phase; which I suppose is in the spirit of the rules and ended up working fine.

On some level of game balance perhaps having to put units that have special shooting/moving abilities into their own detachments (and thus having to purchase a HQ for them, might, by making the units more expensive provide some restraint in their use).

Perhaps this would help restrain anti-tank units without totally changing or restricting their characteristics?

I have all the Firepower supplements, but not all the magazines nor articles. Going to look through stuff when I have a chance to see how these situations were handled back in the day (I'm aware that point value for anti tank was changed in Firepower 1).

Other 'issues' I have had with the game are really just a result of my opponent or myself making tactical errors (within the rules of the game) and not really a fault with the game system itself. (ex. if you don't want to risk loosing your knight to gretching units don't charge into close combat with them!)

Too often my first reaction in the game (when I don't like the outcome) is to blame the rules, and think of a way to 'fix' them. When I think about the problem from 'what did I do wrong' instead, a solution within the framework of the rules usually presents itself.

If anyone else happens to wonder how 'special/heavy weapon' firing works in 3rd ed when the weapon is not mounted on a 'war engine', I read the 40k 3rd ed Battle Bible (available on scribd) and all it basically said was that it counted seperately from the firepower in the detachment when placing the initial blast markers and that the 'shooting' would be conducted seperately from the detachments firepower shooting. Reference was also made to weapon being aimed at specific targets in the target detachment.

You might be making this seem more complicated than it is. A super-heavy weapon (except for those that just give extra Firepower) can fire at any time in the detachment's shooting phase; either before or after regular firepower. Each weapon picks it's target and, as you can split fire, the targets don't even have to be in the same detachment. Just keep track of your shots for blast marker purposes.

The game works best when you have just a few super-heavy weapons in a detachment with regular units. Based on the battle reports and sample detachments published when the game came out, I'm pretty sure that's how the game was playtested. Making seperate all super-heavy detachments would make it worse as you would have a powerful alpha-strike unit instead.

For example, if you had three Kult of Speed detachments, each with three dethray speedsters, your opponent would get to fire his detachments in between shots of your kults. If you put all the speedsters in one detachment of 9, all of those dethrays would get to fire at once without your opponent having any chance to kill or supress them.

Thanks for your feedback hedgehobbit2.

I really hadn't thought it through on how changing up the detachments would effect over-all balance. (And, just as you mentioned, I was over complicating something simple in the first place).

What I like about the game is it's balance and simplicity/abstraction. To me, it's fun to be able to play two or three fast paced games in an evening of gaming.