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Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths

 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:51 am 
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Thanks for running those Matt. It's an interesting conundrum where the knight list is pretty strong in a straight up fight but it seems to me that it can fall apart against an opponent like marines that can easily set up crossfire or dictate engagements.

Looking over the list again (and TBH I haven't for some time, it was only the chatter in the Knight thread that got my attention), there seems to be some rather nasty synergies with the rough riders or crusaders though. I could see paladin households being used to crack enemy formations with the Rough riders using infiltrate or crusaders/castellans using the 90cm MW3+ to finish off stragglers.

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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 3:39 pm 
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I took a look at my notes, here's a quick write up for my thoughts back then. Pretty simple as I was just after a starting point, figuring games would show them too good/bad eventually:

3 Shadowswords can take the following on average:
36 regular hits
20.25 crossfire hits
18 MW hits
13.5 MW corssfire hits
9 points of TK damage
9 points of TK damage in a crossfire

and dish out the following on average:
@90 - 2.5 kills (6 points of damage)
@30 - 2.5 kills (6 points of damage) and 2 AP hits
@FF - 2 hits

4 Castellans can take the following on average:
32 regular hits
18 crossfire hits
16 MW hits
12 MW corssfire hits
16 TK hits
8 points of TK damage in a crossfire

and dish out the following on average:
@90 - 2.67 MW hits
@45 - 2.67 MW hits and 4 AP hits/2 AT hits
@FF - 4 hits

Defense-wise the only real differences were 8 as opposed to 9 DC and the TK survivability, I ended up calling those a wash when first coming up with the points.

Offensive-wise, much the same. Shadowsword wins out with the TK, Crusaders with the extra hits at the shorter ranges/FF. Given that I figured 500/4 or 125 points each. I did weigh the TK shots as being worth 25ish points so went with 350 for 3.

Admittedly, I didn't figure the BP in as I figured 2BP is pretty comparable to 1 TK shot (ala Ork Oddboyz). However, having the option to fire both is definitely worth something. Starmada* handles costing for dual-mode weapons like this by adding both costs together and dividing by 2 to get the new cost. I probably should have done something similar/factored it in.

----

* - http://www.mj12games.com/starmada/SAEdemo.pdf

If you like math-hammer like this, I highly recommend this game. While not in the free demo version linked to above, there's three sections (appendix A-C) in the full PDF that flesh-out the best math-based point system that I've ever seen. Plus the game's great, a lot more fun than BFG anyways.

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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:54 pm 
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I would personally rather see a nerf than a points increase.

And thanks for the link Dave :)


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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 10:44 pm 
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Yes, a BP berf to 1BP each is way better than increasing the points for the Castellans/Crusaders.

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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 4:58 am 
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Quote:
* - http://www.mj12games.com/starmada/SAEdemo.pdf
If you like math-hammer like this, I highly recommend this game


That link looks dangerous -- Don't try to get me into another game Dave!! :D

Quote:
However, having the option to fire both is definitely worth something. Starmada* handles costing for dual-mode weapons like this by adding both costs together and dividing by 2 to get the new cost. I probably should have done something similar/factored it in.


It's an interesting approch - Wouldn't that result in a lower cost the moment an unit with an expensive gun was give an additional one that cost less?

Offensive-wise, much the same. Shadowsword wins out with the TK, Crusaders with the extra hits at the shorter ranges/FF. Given that I figured 500/4 or 125 points each. I did weigh the TK shots as being worth 25ish points so went with 350 for 3.

Thanks for posting the maths.

I agree they're comparable to shadowswords at killing reinforced armour at 90cm so it's a great starting point.
What the charts I posted showed is they're hugely better than shadowswords at killing infantry, heavy infantry, terminators, and against armoured vehicles (light vehicles weren't shown but the result would be significantly better than shadowswords due to rate of fire).

I guess I owe a couple of recommendations for the unit so people can have a go at criticising them instead :D
Here are a couple based on the popular idea of no price increase that would make the unit have to maneuver more.

Knight Castellan WE 20cm 4+ 5+ 4+
Knight Cannon 60cm MW3+, FwA
DC2, Knight Shield, Reinforced Armour, Walker. Critical Hit Effect: The unit is destroyed.
Multi-barrelled Autocannon 45cm 3x AP5+/AT6+, FwA

Knight Castellan WE 20cm 4+ 5+ 4+
Knight Cannon 75cm MW4+, FwA
DC2, Knight Shield, Reinforced Armour, Walker. Critical Hit Effect: The unit is destroyed.
Multi-barrelled Autocannon 45cm 3x AP5+/AT6+, FwA

Tear them up. :D

I'll post some numbers to contribute to the Assault knights conversation soon.


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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 5:22 am 
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Knights in Combat

I've done a comparison of just over 500pts worth of Knight Errants with two other similar priced formations.
The formation were chosen for specific reasons:
1) None are Fearless or have ATSNKF built into their price,
2) They all have similar armour (probably a fair comparison; Reinforced; 4+RA is better in most circumstances than Knight 4+/5+, but worse vs the TK CC weapons that are on the chart. In addition it takes 2 wounds to remove a knight from the fight, compared to 1 per Tank/Terminator)
3) Chaos Terminators are a gold standard for durable Close Combat, and Minervans for durable Fire Fight assault.

Each unit has a row for its CC damage output and a separate one for FF output. The Knights have additional rows to show how it performs with extra attacks when charging.
For example, on the Charge 5 Knight Errants will do an average of 5 CC hits, 0 CC Macro Hits and CC 2.5 Titan Killing hits, with a bonus 1.6 FireFight first strike attacks

*Note: AFAIK the unit can combine the attacks; get the Firefight EA+1 First strike when charging and do the rest of the attacks as Close Combat

Excellent is marked in red, Very Good is marked in orange

Image


Amongst other things, what this shows is that Knights are excellent in Close Combat whether charged or charging. The difference is much smaller than I had anticipated after seeing some of the battle reports; is it possible it feels a bigger difference than it is?
That's not meant to under-rate the impact of the shock lances; any First Strike ability is significant, and First Strike FF far more than most. What I didn't find was that Knights are in any way bad when charged, merely that they aren't as good.

As you can see, the Errants are very good in CC while Terminators are Excellent and Exterminators Awful.
Errants are also excellent in FF (because their basic FF is macro), as are Exterminators, and Terminators are mediocre

This is the same table with with the amount of Marines (or any 4+ armour) and Terminators (or any 4+RA) the units can expect to kill.

Image

As you can see, when it comes to inflicting casualties the Terminators are really poor in firefight, and the Exterminators even worse in Close Combat.
The Knights, with their combination of EA First Strike (when charging), Titan killing close combat and Macro fire fight are between very good and excellent in all of the above cases, whether charging or not.

Chaos Terminators outperform them in close combat, but are far behind in FF. In fact, Knights are less than a fifth of a kill behind Terminators when it comes to killing Reinforced Armour units on the charge, and since the Knight formation is fractionally less expensive they're pretty even.
If they charge, 5 Errants outperform 10 Executioners in Firefight, and even if they don't charge they score very similar results, and obviously are leagues ahead in CC. They actually make the fire-fight specialist executioner tanks I've used at some tournaments look very average, which frankly was a surprise to me.
It's also worth noting that the Errants have more bodies in the fight (10) than the terminators (8) and are the cheapest of the 3 formations.

Anything that looks decent compared to Terminators in close combat AND looks good compared to Minervan Executioners in Fire Fight has to be a pretty versatile killing machine.


Last edited by Matt-Shadowlord on Thu Jan 22, 2015 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 8:43 am 
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Thanks for taking the time to do this, it is in my opinion a good guideline. Sure you have to play to get all the other factors but with the low number of games luck/chance/skill may warp the results :)

Anyway I noticed a small error, 4+RA is not worse against MW hits only against TK. Not that it matters as 4+RA is better against normal hits with most of the knights and they are more common then TK... :)
Matt-Shadowlord wrote:
2) They all have similar armour (probably a fair comparison; Reinforced; 4+RA is better in most circumstances than Knight 4+/5+, but worse vs the Macro/TK CC weapons that are on the chart)


I will try to use something similar with my Cadians as I feel one of the units in there might be to good. Do you have a premade "formula" I could borrow or do you do it from scratch?


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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 8:56 am 
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Thanks, edited. It's equal vs Macro (any of these units simply takes a 4+ of one form or another) and better vs TK.

I don't have a formula, so Excel is just my preferred program because it allows nice clear (hopefully!) presentation of results, especially when it's not just a matter of how many hits does a unit score but how many kills agains A B C targets under A B C circumstances, etc. I could send you a copy if you want.


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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 2:05 pm 
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Not a bad tool in general if you want to share it somewhere

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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 3:10 pm 
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Matt-Shadowlord wrote:
It's an interesting approch - Wouldn't that result in a lower cost the moment an unit with an expensive gun was give an additional one that cost less?


My bad, missed a parenthesis. It's the full cost of the better mode, plus one half the cost of the lesser mode.

Quote:
I agree they're comparable to shadowswords at killing reinforced armour at 90cm so it's a great starting point.
What the charts I posted showed is they're hugely better than shadowswords at killing infantry, heavy infantry, terminators, and against armoured vehicles (light vehicles weren't shown but the result would be significantly better than shadowswords due to rate of fire).


So my counter-point to that is you're not going to be able to field 21 of them in a 3k list (as opposed to 12 Shadowswords). What I didn't do was compare 12 of them to 9 Shadowswords though. Both of those are fieldable in a 3k and the same cost assuming 375 for the Custodians. Given that, they're still going to eek out above the Shadowswords (while having 1 more activation).

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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Tue Jan 27, 2015 11:27 am 
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When I was the champion for this list, I had them as 2 for 325 points with the quake cannon. They had ATSKNF but DC1. Same stats as Dave's but with a move of 15cm. I found them very glass-cannon-ish with my stats. The small fm size made their impact not that noticeable and of course they were very easy to break.

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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 2:52 am 
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Hi
I saw the topic of the quake cannon's power level being discussed on the Epic Au facebook page, so thought it worth adding a post here to see if any progress has been made or is planned for the Castellan.

As a recap, what makes the weapon controversial is the way its range (90cm) combines with its power (MW3+) and the fact the unit has the option to choose to fire a large volume of blast templates (6 to 8 BP) also up to 90cm.

Expect to see lots of them soon.

Thanks!


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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 3:28 pm 
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No, but that's only because we're in the same place were at the start of the year. I'm open to changes, but not without some reports first. PFE played them in two this year, one saw them wiped out pretty early and another saw a formation of 4 do heavy damage to Eldar and pull of a Knight win.

Locally, they don't seem too good for 375.

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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 1:39 am 
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Dave wrote:
No, but that's only because we're in the same place were at the start of the year. I'm open to changes, but not without some reports first. PFE played them in two this year, one saw them wiped out pretty early and another saw a formation of 4 do heavy damage to Eldar and pull of a Knight win.

Locally, they don't seem too good for 375.


Thanks for the reply.

The approach I take is to first work out the maths to decide which units are over / under powerd compared to their peers, which can be like simulating dozens of games at once. That's a short cut to finding out what is most worth taking, and how many of them I can fit into a list.

Then I do games with them to find out if they actually perform better or worse than the maths made them appear.

As reported, when I did the maths for Castellans I found them to be not average, good or great, but possibly the best shooting unit per point in Epic. (note a formation is 30pts more now)

Matt-Shadowlord wrote:

Image

When a result is exceptionally good (as good as or better than 12 shooting units shown in the large chart in this post viewtopic.php?p=549933#p549933 ) it is marked in red. When it is very good it is marked in orange. Most formations compared get a red or an orange or two, some get none at all.

What this table shows is per point spent, the Castellan has the:

[] Highest score for effective range (90cm, joint winner with Shadowswords)
[] Highest score killing guard equivalent units out of cover at range over 30cm (outside the Heavy Bolter range that boosts most tanks), and exceptional performance at extreme range 90cm
[] Highest score killing marine equivalent units at range over 30cm, and exceptional performance at extreme range 90cm
[] Second highest score killing Terminator equivalent units at range over 30cm, but this is after Warhounds using Slow firing plasma.
[] Highest score killing marine equivalent units at range over 30cm using weapons without Slow Firing rules, and exceptional performance at extreme range 90cm
[] Second highest score killing Predator equivalent tanks at range over 30cm (after Stormblades), Highest at over 45cm , and exceptional performance at extreme range 90cm
[] Third highest score killing Leman Russ equivalent tanks at range 30-45, second at over 45cm, close second to Shadowswords at extreme range 90cm
[] Third highest score killing Super Heavy tanks at range 30- 45cm, second at over 45cm, distant second to Shadowswords at extreme range 90cm

Conclusion: This is one of the best shooting units for its price in Epic by a large margin, against virtually any type of target.
It is very powerful within 45cm and exceptionally powerful at long range.


Because of that conclusion, I took the approach that sooner or later I expect to be very common: Maximise the Castellans, and generate a battle report as an example.

Image

Report:
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=84&t=29291

It was a first attempt, so an imperfect list (eg no Seneschal on castellans) with a trial and error plan played imperfectly, but I found them to be resilient and mobile enough to survive and put massive amounts of extreme range macro into enemies.

The feedback from my opponent was that they were OP and would obviously have to be tweaked, and I agreed with him while simultaneously apologising for using 8 castellans against him in a 'just for fun' game. ::)


So that's my contribution to the discussion, I've done the maths in depth (minus adjusting for the 30pts increase) and made a report.
I hope it helps.


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 Post subject: Re: Are Knight World units over/underpowered? Maths
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 1:53 am 
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I think I should add a personal note because I've seen how these balance conversations can go on for a while.

The maths I have done and the report I have posted are not because of bias against Knights. When I spotted how good some of the units in the Knight list were, per point spent, my first inclination was to not get involved in arguing the problems and highlight the issue, and instead just whip up some tournament lists and go stomp face :D

These posts are an attempt at a more constructive approach.


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