Well that was an exciting 24 hours. I seem to have kicked a hornets nest here.
Personally I would still love to implement a "plasma generation" rule where each titan gets one point of plasma for every DC remaining. Each weapon would require a certain amount of plasma to fire: Scout weapons, 1 point. Battle Titan weapons, 2 points. This would allow titans to degrade over the course of a game as they take damage. However, I don't think anyone else wants that so moving on...
First up, let me add to the chorus, SS do NOT ignore shields. Unless your weapon stat line specifically says "ignore's shields" you don't get to use random bits of text to justify doing that because I want shield ignoring VC to use against gargants.
Now, to what I'm seeing here on ideas. I think we can put these directly to playtesting and see what happens:
Weapons. We won't be changing stats on weapons, however we can look into carapace restrictions. I believe this is already the case with the Plasma Destructor, Carapace Landing Pad, and Support Missile. I'm not seeing anything else that screams to have that limitation. Was there something I missed?
Support formations. 1. Remove Skitarii Corvus restriction, increase cost to 250 points.
Upgrades1. Reduce CML to 25 points. (note. this used to be 25 points but was increased so it wasn't an autobuy, not that it matters)
Titans1. Reduce Warlord hull to 675 points
2. Reduce Reaver hull to 550 points (note. this was increased due to OP armies taking only free weapons. May no longer be an issue with the removal of sentinels.)
Future options1. Increase titans to 2+ initiative
2. Vet Princeps grant 1+ initiative
3. Integrate Collectors weapons/ equipment (I would do this now, but I think the other changes are more important and it'll be hard to gauge with these in play as well)
Not happenin'1. Single Weapon surchage. I think this helps promote weapon variety more than it does balance which isn't a bad thing.
2. Adding modern skitarii vehicles. This is a titan list and they'd be out of place. Use the Skitarii list.
3. Base Void shield changes. These are pretty well established for the chassis and I don't want to mess with them.
4. Remove fearless. I think this is a can of worms we don't need to open. No one wants to see their Warlord die from a BM.
5. Changes to the Crusader formation size. They are four for fluff reasons and to allow folks to proxy sentinels.
I think that's everything, let me know if I missed something.