I don't really have a problem with a synapse creature rushing over to"save" a leaderless swarm.  It's not going to work very often (you have to have an activated but leaderless swarm, in move range of an unactivated swarm) and when it does it's diverting the Nids' action.

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Neal

The clunkiest part in my mind is the assault exception.  I understand that not having the assault exception impacts the Infiltrators because they are tethered to the Synapse Creature, but it causes a lot of wrinkles, as witnessed by the large volume of discussion about how it works.

Without that exception, the whole swarm issue is pretty simple -

* Assign broods to a synapse within 15cm in the end phase.
* Dual coherency with identical rules for each (out of coherency = dead).

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Neal

Should we include something along the lines of "A swarm that starts its activation without any Synapse creatures may act normally, disregarding control range, but will be removed from play after an assault or in the End Phase if not within 15cm of a new Synapse Creature"?

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I don't.  Tough for them.

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Neal

Please keep it friendly gentlemen... don't make me call the NetERC in here to deal with... oh crap!  

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How often do the Nids lose a swarm because they lost their Synapse?  It's been a few versions since I played them, but we found it darn hard to eliminate synapse creatures.  The infantry synapse creatures have hordes of meat shields and they come in groups of 3 so snipers aren't all that effective.  The WE synapse are either darn big or fast skimmers.  Only Tyrant swarms had a real chance of losing the synapse before the swarm was gutted and even that wasn't easy.

And regardless of its impact on the unit or formation values, getting the rules right is priority, imho.

Keeping swarm destruction the same as the coherency rules is clean and simple.  It gets the job done with minimal confusion.  If it has a negative impact on the performance of Infiltrators or Synapse Creatures, then adjust points later.  That's a lot easier than trying to draft clear and airtight language to cover multiple rules exceptions.

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Neal

FWIW the thing I particularly like about the list is the flavor that comes from having to kill/protect the 'brains' of the army, but not having to worry too much about its body.

Given that if 'annihilating' a swarm seems too tough, the rebalancing could come in increased 'recruitment'/spawning rolls in the end phase.  Fluffwise, this would seem to make sense, because the 'reality' of the situation is a whole bunch of crawlies wandering around looking for a 'signal.''Dead' brood creatures are never really 'dead,' just gone missing, so why worry about heavy casualties.  As such would make sense that the more of them that are out there wandering, the more would actually find a signal at any given time.

At the extreme end of the spectrum, the spawning mechanic might be changed to a roll for every brood creature in the dead pool: one comes back for every '6' or '5-6' rolled.

In-game, the advantage here would be pushing the complexity toward the end-phase (where it's less onerous), and keeping in-turn calculations simpler: "kill 'em all" is a simpler solution, whether it is right or not.

While I agree with Neal that the situation is very rare, it does occur. So could we agree on what should happen when we have an unbroken and unactivated Leaderless swarm. As I see it there are three options:-
1) The swarm dies immediately it loses it's last Synapse.
2) The swarm may activate, but dies at the end of the activation.
3) The swarm may activate, and dies at the end of the turn if it is still out of control of any Synapse.

Personally, I would prefer simplifying the wording to allow creatures to move out of control during their activation, only removing 'out of control' creatures in the end-of-turn phase. This is essentially option 3) and IMHO is cleaner and clearer. It allows 'out of control' assaults etc and would keep leaderless swarms on the table.
IIRC the reason for keeping the swarm compact was to prevent any critter from disputing / controlling objectives which is now not the case.

With regards to BMs, OW etc I agree with Hena that they tend to relate to the swarm / Synapse. So if the Synapse is killed, I would suggest both are dropped during the reorganisation step and not transferred to another swarm.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

The current version.

4) The swarm may activate and dies if it moves or at the end of the turn if it is out of control of any Synapse.

I would keep this as it is.

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Technically, an "out of coherency" formation *MUST* move into coherency during its next activation, or remove the out-of-coherency units...

By strictest definition, a swarm without Synapse creatures is out of formation, cannont move into formation, and should be removed immediately.

Your interpretation of how things "should" be has been, I believe, the general consensus, but it's not, strictly, correct and we need to make things clear as to how it is supposed to work.

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I was trying to summarise the broad options here.

T-Ts 4th option is technically part of option 2), as is the situation where part of a swarm finds itself out of coherency due to enemy fire and is thus forced to move under 1.7.4.

The real question is whether we want to strictly align Synapse "control" with the usual "coherency" rules which are determined after each move; or whether we want to determine Synapse "control" during the end-of-turn phase.

We currently use a hybrid solution, determining Synapse "control" both after movement, after assault consolidation, and during the end-of-turn phase; and IMHO this is at the heart of the confusion and the cause of the 'clunky wording'.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Should we simplify it by looking at Synapse control only at the start of a turn (or end phase of previous turn). Keep in the part about dieing at the end of an engagement.

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Started a new [Rules] thread to discuss this, please head on over!

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?