Following the discussion in the Adeptus Mechanicus Titan Legions Tweaks thread, here are some of my thoughts about titans:

Epic Armageddon is good for formation-to-formation interactions but poor for multi-Damage Capacity units and poor at making individual formations intrinsically interesting to manage. This becomes especially apparent with titan armies. Titans are not reduced in effectiveness upon suffering damage which leads to two issues:
(i) titan firepower can be overwhelming if too string and the other player can't take any positive action to reduce it except for destroying titans outright (unlike with normal formations). This makes titans more expensive and exacerbates (ii).
(ii) titan destruction (or failure to activate) has a big impact on the titan player's army both in terms of firepower and in terms of tactical manoeuvrability. This is exacerbated by expensive titans reducing the number of titan formations on the table.

A third, related, issue is that individual formations in EA are quite uninteresting to manage on their own. This becomes more of a problem with low formation-count armies.

So, what solutions are there? Reducing the firepower of titans to decrease their cost reduces the effect of both (i) and (ii) but results in unsatisfactory titans. Is there another way to reduce their cost to address these issues?

Another solution is for enemy firepower to reduce the effectiveness of titans. This rewards the defending player for positive action (i.e. choosing to attack) against the titans by reducing the target titan's firepower (addressing (i)), and reduces the drop in effectiveness between damaged titan and destroyed (addressing (ii)). Together, these also allow titans to be cheaper, giving the titan player more formations to utilise, also helping with the third issue.

There are several mechanisms that can be created to reduce the effectiveness of multi-DC units upon receiving firepower.
(a) Blast marker mechanism. Works for other formation types in the game though probably requires modification to remove breaking penalties (like the Automaton rules for robotic units). Does not require much modification of existing core rules and so is possibly the easiest answer.
(b) Damage capacity-tied mechanism. Vaaish's plasma generator idea is an example: titans get a number of 'generator points' equal (or proportional to) their remaining damage capacity. Scout Titan weapons require 1 point to fire, Battle Titan weapons, 2 points. This system could even be extended to cover all titan actions, like damage repair, void shield generation, movement etc. but in Vaaish's form is simple and easy to implement in the current rules.
(c) Critical hits mechanism. Replace the existing critical hits with more varied and system-specific critical hits (e.g. weapon destroyed, legs damaged, head damaged). The critical hit roll could potentially be modified based on what the attacking formation aims at. This system is also quite simple but requires a bit more book-keeping.

All of these solutions are aimed at reducing the effectiveness of titans upon sustaining enemy firepower just like every other formation, allowing titans to be cheaper and better balanced.

Are there other ways to achieve this? What do people think?

Some of my other meanderings about titans:

Another idea to adjust how the firepower of the larger titans is used is to allow splitting of fire. A Warlord Titan can have enough firepower to destroy a formation outright but if players had the choice of splitting firepower they may not focus firepower so often. It does seem strange that such a large, dedicated weapons platform is restricted to only firing at a single formation (and this problem is made worse by the low number of formations in a titan army).

Personally, I think making multi-DC units like titans more interesting to manage would improve the game experience, too. Using a 'plasma generator points' mechanism to introduce some kind of resource management (potentially affected by critical damage) makes titans seem important by virtue of more in-depth rules, and also reflects quite well (in my humble opinion) the stoic nature and sheer size of titans compared with infantry and even standard tanks. Titans are significantly different from other units, so why not have their rules reflect this?

In my ideal world, some kind of integration of the Adeptus Titanicus II titan rules (or their revision for EA by Evil and Chaos) into EA would be the way to go. Using plasma generator power for all actions (rather than an initiative roll and an activation action, you could replicate 'sustained fire' or 'march' by simply allocating generator points differently) and a more complete and integral critical hits system would combine well with the directional tactics already required with titan fixed fire arcs and vulnerable rear armour.

I'm not sure how this would relate to other, non-titan war engines either. Possibly, smaller war engines that are not Fearless (or with less firepower than titans) can still be treated as they are now? Superheavies like the Shadowsword don't seem like they would benefit as much from generator point allocation, for example, because of their one-directional load-out and manoeuvrability.

Interesting thoughts. I don't have time right now to go into much analysis though.

One big thing is splitting fire. This comes up over and over, specifically for the Imperator titans where the effects of having overwhelming firepower but little real impact over the course of a game are most felt. It's one of those things that everyone suggest and then it gets shot down. There's plenty of threads on it, and I even suggested it a long time ago.

For me Titans should FEEL like titans, not watered down shells. That's the single most important thing to balance against. How to make them feel like massive heavily armed and armored god-machines without breaking the game.

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-Vaaish

The plasma tokens idea is an interesting one, but would it be too time consuming? In an all-Titan army the game is usually fast enough that that won't matter, but it may be an issue in a mixed titan/other units force. Also, how would the tokens work for the likes of Eldar Titans, where the shields don't need to regenerate?

Critical hits leading to systems damage is also interesting, but it may not be common enough to make a difference. Your average Reaver would suffer a single crit sometime between full health and dead.

I like the idea of Titans having different targetable sections- after all, the weapons are the size of armoured vehicles. Issues with that come from some sections being overly important (destruction of a leg could be at least as bad as damaging the head), and also hits from non-targeted weapons (eg. you shouldn't be able to declare where a barrage would hit). This system is also very complex and time consuming- at some point I'd be tempted to just agree to play Battletech rather than Epic vs these Titans.

Thank you for reading and replying, guys!

No problem, @Vaaish! Even getting replies from you and @Geep is more of a start than I thought would happen

It's funny how some ideas always seem to come up against opposition! I think there is a wide range of thoughts about any fire splitting: I've seen some people say they can't stand Epic Armageddon because no formations can split fire (the reasoning being that you shoot at whatever enemies you can see, you can't tell if they're the same formation or not). I think allowing it on smaller units could be problematic (a Reaver or Warhound unit able to splat two formations a turn, for example) but it seems the larger units like Imperators are a bit pointless without it.

I agree about the feel of titans—that's one thing the AT2 rules did really well! I think the plasma generator idea replacing activation initiative rolls and orders could help achieve that, too.

@Geep: The way I envision the plasma generator working is:
(1) Pick unit.
(2) Check remaining DC
(3) Determine power points (based on DC remaining)
(4) Perform actions to power points limit

In its simplest form (Vaaish's original idea) it can be used just to work out which weapons you can shoot, which achieves the most important goal (reducing titan firepower as titans sustain damage). It also can replicate critical damage (no power to spare on some systems). AT2 extended the system to more fancy stuff, like shields, repairs, and movement but that's less critical for fixing the immediate problem.

In a more fancy system like AT2, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids (&c.) who don't have regenerating shields just use their points on other things.

Agreed about the frequency of critical hits! I think the Critical Hits option would probably need to see changes to how many damage capacity points titans have. E40K titans generally had more damage capacity than EA titans do. AT2 does away entirely with damage capacity and uses critical damage to determine when titans are destroyed (which would take some work but could be done for EA).

Maybe an idea is to make titans composite units (so a Warhound might be 2 guns, a body, and legs, treated as 4 units in a formation—though this is probably only useful for bigger titans)? I once had this idea when trying to imagine what a superheavy would look like if WH40K was ported to the EA system.

Perhaps another idea is to put the existing titans aside for a second and think about how one would represent reduced effectiveness from damage? Non-war engine formations get suppressed one unit at a time (notably not one weapon at a time) by blast markers and lose one unit (again, not weapon) at a time from damage. Maybe multi-DC units could have some kind of 'resilience' to replicate that? So, a hypothetical Warlord needs three blast markers to suppress one weapon, for example. Of course, the plasma generator system is basically a fancy name for the DC version.

I think the simplest effective solution is the goal, too. One can play many games with snazzy robot rules (sadly I've missed out on Battletech!) but Epic is one of the few games where giant walkers and conventional military are integrated so thoroughly.

With regards to splitting fire: I think one issue may be the ease of placing blast markers everywhere. Blast markers can be just as important in Epic as actual damage.
Two options off the top of my head are:
1) A titan which splits fire does not place blast markers on units when firing at them (only for damage caused). If it concentrates all fire on one formation it places a blast marker as usual. Barrage weapons which are placed in accordance with the usual barrage rules (ie. fully cover the target formation before clipping others) also ignore this drawback, so long as no other weapons are firing at something other than the primary target formation.
2) A titan can only place blast markers on one of the units it shoots at for bringing them under fire (and other markers for damage on any formation). Barrage weapons will only place the extra markers if the unit they hit is the one chosen to receive the 'under fire' blast markers (this does nerf titan barrages a bit).

You could just copy the crippling mechanism from Battlefleet Gothic; Once a ship is reduced to half damage capacity, it becomes crippled. As a result it halves its firepower/number of shots as well as shields and turrets, and movement is reduced by 5 cm.

Similarly, you could make it so War Engines that are reduced to half DC halve their BPs/number of shots (rounding up?) and reduce movement speed by 5cm.

The problem with the above would be weapons like Volcano Cannons that only fire one shot, and thus wouldn't be halved. Maybe a to hit modifier, or reduced range instead for those cases?


As for splitting weapons fire, one idea would be a negative modifier to the activation roll and/or a negative to hit modifier as a result of the split focus.

Another approach might be to split weapons into primary (on all Titans), secondary (on battle titans), and tertiary on things like the Imperator etc. These become subject to critical hits, so throw a dice to see which section is affected (including the engines and legs). Each group of weapons can target a different enemy formation in LOS and arc etc.

That said, any solution like this adds complexity and is still not going to satisfy everyone. But there is nothing to stop you doing your own thing. Give it a whirl and let us know how you get on, and as L4 always says, DWWFY

Imperial battle titans have a rather convenient ratio of DC to weapon mounts (6:3 for a Reaver, 8:4 for a warlord). This suggests that degrading titan weapons capability based on damage could be pretty straightforward.

Example: for each full 2DC damage suffered, an Imperial battle titan loses the ability to use one of it's weapons mounts. To keep it simple, the individual mount wouldn't be damaged, just the capacity. So, a standard Warlord with 6DC remaining could fire three of the four: gatling blaster, volcano cannon, and 1x TLDs for instance... Turn to turn it could switch to a different combo of the 3 possible.

I'm not sure how that would work for other factions as I'm sure the ratio of DC:weapons mounts changes. Chaos titan tails come to mind. Maybe they never lose the ability to fire those weird chaos-y things. But it should be pretty simple to establish ratios for the other races.

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Capt, that's basically what my plasma gen rules do but it's also affected by BM. The concept being that as the titan takes fire or is damaged, more power is being used for other systems and not as much will be available for weapons. The key difference is that instead of straight up losing a mount as it takes damage, the titan doesn't get as much plasma to power weapons.

The result is a reaver with three battle titan weapons would loose the ability to fire one as soon as it got a BM and would permanently lose the ability to fire all its weapons when it lost a DC. However, a reaver with two battle titan weapons and a scout weapon would still be able to fire all weapons with one BM and would still have full firepower after taking a point of damage.

While I think a system like this would help AMTL, I'm not convinced it should be used for other lists. There might be alternative ways to do something like this if it's needed.

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-Vaaish

I think these are good ideas - many people i have introduced to epic (esp those who played 2nd ed) are disappointed by titans in EA.

Unfortunately i think there will be too much resistance (as there has been all the other times this has been suggested) as it is seen as meddling with the "core" rules. (Hence my suggestions to limit auto fearless/shields etc in the AMTL list).

Another (even more meddlesome) thought offered by a player in Bristol (Duncan) is to give titans multiple activations, but each activation is only one "action" - eg: warlord has 3 activations a turn. These are spilt and can either be used separately or a retain can be used to move and fire together etc. (I think we assumed the fire action could be only used once a turn) but over a turn it could choose to :

Move, fire, move

Fire, assault, move

Move, move, assault.

Etc.

Would need to track remaining activations titan by titan.

Obviously it would probably need some tweaks to the stats, otherwise movement could get a bit quick, but it sounded interesting.

Whatever the solution, making an exception for the AMTL list seems to only way forward. Perhaps if that is tested and approved then there would be the appetite to change war engines in other lists...

Anyway, good luck.

sooo, what im understanding here is triple activating warlock titan?



but, yeah, changing 'core rules' is unlikely to get anywhere except very friendly games. Titan list only specific maybe. But multiple activations per titans removes one of the only weaknesses, so im not convined

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AFK with real life, still checking PMs

Sorry, didn't explain well (difficult in a short post). Essentially the titans actions are split down into separate parts - a move is just one single. A "fire" action is one round of firing (or perhaps even just half the titan's weapons?) Etc. So a titan has to activate to "move" then retain to "fire". Don't get me wrong, it would require a restructure of the warengine rules almost from the ground up. But Its an interesting idea (like i say not mine so no credit due) but not likely to gain any traction I'm sure ! :-)

If only GW hadn't cancelled support for EA so swiftly! I have the feeling they would have implemented some mechanism for progressively weakening multi-DC units through damage (or done something more interesting for titans).

I suppose, when it comes down to it, it's really Fearless multi-DC units that are the game-damaging issue—unsuppressable, they remain at full power the whole time. So, it seems like the suggestion @Blip and I had about a modified Fearless for titans is the best option for that problem. I would propose:
(Provisional title) Behemoth.
- Each blast marker suppresses one weapon from firing.
- Immune to damage inflicted by blast markers if broken.
- In assaults, may choose not to withdraw. Only damaged if unit elects to withdraw and remains within 5 cm of an enemy (rather than 15 cm).
- In assaults, only suffers a single point of damage from being wiped out if already broken or not withdrawing far enough (or maybe no damage; maybe this should just be the rule for normal War Engines?).
- In assaults, immune to additional Hack Down hits (this seems to work okay with Fearless titans, but it could be changed).

I don't think tying firepower to actual damage sustained would be necessary with blast marker suppression (though it might turn out to work better that way). This suppression also works with all titans or titan-like entities, and you can keep ordinary list titans exactly the same by giving them Fearless.

Besides addressing titan suppression, I think the other important thing to try is allowing the larger titans to split fire: it's such a commonsense notion that it's practically begging us to try I think @Geep's suggestion above is a sensible start. Other, less important changes for the state of EA as a whole can come later and if they work in a titan list maybe people will be more receptive to them.

I think @Blip's other suggestions about upgrading titans would work well for an AMTL list, too (like limited void shields, &c.), but are probably too complex for normal list titans.

I guess a useful next step would be to make a separate list AMTL for testing titan doobies and new rules (not intending to rush things, of course!)? If people were serious about wide-ranging changes (though Legion4's point about DWWFY is valid, it's sometimes nice to have a standardised change ), a central document seems like the best way to test them and if it's separate from the main list, people might complain less....

A very simple change to try out in friendly games would be to have one weapon system be suppressed per two BMs on the War Engine.

It doesn't affect all Titans completely equally, but it also saves working out lots of weapon/DC ratios etc.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion