If there was a significant difference in cost then I could see some value in tactical companies. But Vets are only 100 more pts and you get better morale, double the CAF and the elite rule. For me that is easily worth 100 pts and 1 VP.
Expanding on this, I could take 3 battle companies for 2550 or I could take a vet company, assault company and devastator company for 2600, I get exactly the same number of units but my tacticals are now vets and better.
I always expect my infantry to get into combat so the extra CAF of an assault squad will make me take a company of them before tacticals at the same points.

On the subject of titans, I think the plasma idea has potential but you would want every titan to be able to generate a minimum amount, having your reavers or warhounds generate only 1 plasma seems harsh. At a minimum they need to be able to move and fire most weapons on advance.

Hi!

Hmm. That veteran company is too cheap. The only difference between it and the terminator company is the armor (as veterans are the ones that use terminator armor).

Methinks,a correction is in order. I always thought terminator and veteran companies should be special cards. They aren't always available for battle on a whim. They only show up in large battles when the chapter as a whole or most of it is fielded.

I'm thinking in classifying it as a special card in games under 5000 points. In games of 5000 and higher its a standard company card.

I would issue this as a general space marine rule. Of course there would be only ONE such card per chapter.

Thoughts?

Primarch

This reminds me the AT2 rules (or was it the AT1 rules ?).

I suppose this proposition should only apply to imperial titans and non daemonic chaos titan ? So it seems like a penalty for some kind of factions but not for others ( squat/ig praetorians, (datk) eldars titans, gargants, bio-titans)...

Imho this would force some players to totally drop some kind of weapons (blastgun on warhound). Imho, it would be interesting to have a fixed value or plasma + 1DX.

For example, reaver titan is not that hard to kill in the game, with a full random plasma regen, it would be from pure useless to interesting unit but no more plasma on it.

Titan battle gros will be in pain, just shut down the shields of the titan at the middle and see how your opponent will be able to repair them and make the titan move and fire next turn without blocking coherency.

Peter, that´s an interesting idea not perfect but interesting that would need a lot of play testing to find the good values for base plasma counters and regen and if this does not imply too much penalty to titans in comparison with others units.

More than a bit. The Reaver Titan battle group was just horrible to face, really horrible. If you tried to neutralise it, you wasted so much fire power you lost on objectives, because the rest of the Marine army got off relatively lightly, but if you ignored the titans, they blasted too many of your crucial units to pieces.

I did manage to defeat said Space Marine army with my Eldar twice, but my Chaos army were soundly thrashed every time they had to face the Reaver Titan battle group.



Yes, you could, but I don't believe in fighting fire with fire. I think that the NetEpic team have taken the right decision regarding the costs, and that goes a long way to solving the problem. They just needed to be more expensive.

Primarch: I don't see any need to change the status of the Veteran Company. It's a horrible company card to face, but it's pretty expensive, and is only going to be taken to bolster the line against armies with very high CAF anyway, such as when Marines have to face Chaos.

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Okay, so as to not mix up conversations I will create another post where the costing of vets (and other marine units maybe) can be discussed. Have a few thoughts which I will post up later after the partying tonight

@ Irisado
100 more pts than a tactical company for the same number of stands that are so much better is hardly expensive.

Also going to throw out there that the Ad Mech Mechanized Company costs the same as a tactical company (750). They have the same number of models, the chims are maybe slightly better than the rhinos, the infantry is massively worse (no save, no caf, worse morale). I can't believe they are equal in points?

Hi!

No worries, this gives you a taste of what the revision years used to be like. Lots of ideas, questions and wondering why.

That's why what was included was only after actual playtest. Lots of things sound good on paper but not in practice.

Mattman, army lists were made to be "internally" consistent. In other words if you take one unit from one list and compare with another from another list, you'll find a lot of examples like you mention.

Most of the time the cost for certain things were in comparison with units within the same list, not others. The other problem is that the points system is really not that great. Differences of 50 and 100 points for sometimes very different stats is the norm.

While we may like the system, it has many faults. You've just pointed one out.

Frankly I would have redone the whole points system from the ground up, but there is a lot of inertia tied into it.

Primarch

From as fluff standpoint, a restriction on veteran and terminator companies makes total sense. I like the idea of making it a special card and having only one per chapter.

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"I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate." N. Peart

I agree with Primarch that cross army comparison doesn't really help very much, so if there's going to be any quibbling about the cost of Space Marine Veterans, then it's better to look at them in relation to the other company cards in the Space Marine list.

Considering that this thread is supposed to be about titans though, I really think that we should discuss this elsewhere, as I don't like threads going off topic.

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You have to have some cross army comparison to balance each army against each other. Everything in 40k and WFB is done against a base line and each other, otherwise one army can easily work out better than the rest.
Obviously there is alot of Legacy and history tied to Epic and the original point system, but I suspect the amount of playtesting that was done back in the day of 2nd ed was some what limited.
As Primarch said, I could see a complete repointing to be worthwhile now that we have a good set of rules to work with.
Anyway, for the continuing discussion on repointing of vets (and other things), see my new post, this one can be left for the titans.

Hi!

Mattman seems to have come to the same conclusion I have had for several years now. The cost system needs to be redone. Now that a "complete" set of rules is available we can fix the points system.

Mattman started another thread for the purpose of the veteran card, but I'm thinking I'm morphing it (with Mattman's ok) into a thread for nailing down a points system.

I'll post further there.

Primarch

Correct, but internal balance is how you assess the cost effectiveness of a unit in the main, because if it's too effective or weak compared to similar units in the same army, then that's the first indication that you have a problem.

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