Well, the CC would be useful for ensuring stuff gets broken and potentially doubling damage output if you're using barging, using the charges to move the slower titans down field faster and even coordinated FF with minion formations would still be a different play style to the other lists*

I'll try and do some more drafting work this weekend.

* although I suspect it's an important tactic for all of the titan lists really.

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Right.

After beating my head against it for some time, I decided to frame the sets of upgrades as epithets. In this case, specifically adjectives a senior officer might use to describe the titan that slaughtered his troops, broke the line and is still at loose in the warzone.
Well, some of the adjectives anyway.

A Warhound pack may take 0-1 epithets. Parts of an epithet may be shared, but each part used only once. They take scout titan weapons.

A Reaver must take one (1) epithet and three (3) titan weapons

A Warlord must take two (2) epithets and four (4) titan weapons

A Coloussus must take three (3) epithets and six to eight (6-8) titan weapons


Vicious: +5cm Speed, -1DC, add EA(+1), add First Strike to one weapon

Brutal: Inspiring, add EA(2+) MW to one CCW, add One shot and triple the firepower to one weapon (eg 2BP becomes 6BP, one shot)

Hulking: +1DC, add EA(+1) TK to one CCW, add disrupt to one weapon, add slow-firing to one weapon

Spectral: Invulnerable Save, Jump-packs, add EA(+1) MW to one CCW, add sniper to one weapon

Corrupted: replace one weapon with Carapace Hive upgrade, add (Small arms) EA(d6) AP4+/AT4+, add Ignore cover to one weapon

Blasphemous: Demonic Pact, Augment Summoning, Fearless, add 30cm AA5+

Ancient: Leader, add 2xAP4+ / AT4+ to one CCW, add Indirect to one weapon.


Weapons:

Free - CCW - (Base contact) – AP4+ / AT 3+ (& improve CC stat)
25 points - Spray – Template – AP3+ / AT5+
50 points - Bombard – 40cm – 2BP
50 points - Cannon – 60cm – 3x AP4+ / AP6+


Balancing will be difficult, but as a draft idea what do people think?

EDITED:

Changed Hulking: the speed reduction was removed and replaced by a slow-firing weapon
Changed Spectral: Infiltrator is way too good, gave Invulnerable save instead.

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I think different chassis will need different pricing. For example, cutting 5cm move from a Reaver is a 20% cut and leaves it at the basic 15cm infantry move speed, while cutting 5cm from a Warlord is a 33% cut and puts it slower than nearly everything in the game.

yeah, and the bonus DC is proportionally worth less too.

I'd be personally tempted to just make sure that there's enough optimal options for each chassis, and leave the rest to taste.

But that's probably not as rigorously internally balanced as should be aimed for.

I edited it:

Changed Hulking: the speed reduction was removed and replaced by a slow-firing weapon
Changed Spectral: Infiltrator is way too good, gave Invulnerable save instead.

better now I think.

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Good news!

I got stuck in a meeting this morning, and maths was done. I like the epithet idea, but it\'ll simply be impossible to playtest all the options, so I\'m going to mathhammer it as balanced as possible first.

with four basic weapons and a reaver taking 3, a warlord taking 4, there\'s a number of different combinations possible (thankfully much smaller then the number of permutations).

- 20 different reavers and 35 different warlords.

there\'s currently 7 epithets.
1 (blasphemous) has no mathhammerable effect and thus will need to be judged instead.
1 (Corrupted) swaps a weapon for the carapace hive, which reduces the number of possible combinations of titan with that epithet to 10 reavers and 20 warlords.
the other 5 all have mathammerable effects (and some other parts too).

I plan to spreadsheet the lot and see what prices are needed for balancing. It\'s 130 reaver combinations and 220 Warlords (for a single epithet warlord. I\'ve not worked out the increase from a 2nd epithet, but it\'ll be somewhere between 925 and 740 possibilities.)
This will take some time to do.

I\'m further assuming I can pick the optimum way to use each epithet for the combination of weapons. That\'s a debateable point


Non easily quantifiable parts are:

+ 5cm speed
- 1DC
First strike
Inspiring (normally +50 pts?)
+1 DC
Disrupt
Slowfiring (can build into spreadsheet by halving firepower)
Inv Save
Jumppack (small movement bonus -10pts?)
Sniper
Carapace hive (choose price and playtest)
Ignore cover (I\'ll incluse guardsmen in cover as one of the test groups for firepower)
leader (normally 25pts?)
Indirect fire (worthless? titan weapons here have max range of 60cm, and titan height makes direct fire normally easy)

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I have just learnt about the rules for a titan with mixed types of BP wepoans.

more possible combinations of firepower. oh goody.

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Some of these are quantifiable. DC, movement and armor are pretty easy to factor into overall calculations. Again, though, they will vary by chassis. Some of the other factors can be ballparked based on some hand-waving kinds of comparisons. For example, we know Ignore Cover will be a substantial boost in firepower against a pretty specific but not uncommon kind of target, so you figure out the likely proportional increase in firepower based on that.

Use the square root rule for your math-hammer:

That's pretty obvious for DC.

Same for Invulnerable - just factor it into overall armor saves.

For firepower, I generally consider ranged firepower and assault firepower as separate factors in terms of calculating multipliers.

Assault firepower is mostly based on FF, with 1/3 or less coming from CC.

For speed increases, I generally use a square-square root rule. While it is important, it's definitely less so than raw firepower and durability.

For a lot of the less quantifiable values, I tend to simply round. For example, I would factor Jump Packs in by rounding up at some point in the calculations when I might not otherwise.

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So, to give an example, if you give a Warlord titan an upgrade that makes it 5cm faster, but cuts it -1DC...

-1 DC is a 1/8 cut in overall damage it can take and how many BMs will break it, or .875x as tough. There are some other considerations like the void shields staying the same and potential critical hits which negate lots of DC, but this will be close enough.

+5cm move is 1.33x the starting 15cm. I normally take a square root of a square root for movement, so that's where I'll start. However, experience has shown that increasing speed for a slow, very tough unit like this tends to be quite effective. If it comes down to it, I'll definitely use this as a factor for rounding up estimated point comparison.

SQRT(.875)*SQRT(SQRT(1.33)) = .935*1.07 = 1.00 cost multipler

So, basically, -1DC, +5cm speed is about a wash for a Warlord. Testing might show it to be different, but that should be a solid place to begin. You might consider rounding it up to +25 due to historical effects of adding speed to big WEs, but I think 0 is okay due to the next comparison.

We can do a quick cross-check to see how that fares with other comparable units. Compared to a Reaver chassis, it would be the same speed, +1DC, with an extra weapon system. DC and weapons are factors of 1.167 and 1.333, respectively

SQRT(1.167)*SQRT(1.333)*650 = 810 points.

That's a touch lower than starting from the Warlord basis, but it's just a rough cross-check and we didn't get into things like the Warlord having better CC. I think it shows that an even swap is about right and the potential +25 rounding up mentioned above is not needed.

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For a Reaver, the proportional decrease in DC is higher and the proportional gain in speed is considerably lower. You'd end up with...

SQRT(.833)*SQRT(SQRT(1.25)) = .91*1.06 = .965 cost multipler
.965 * 650 = 627.4 = 22.6 point decrease

So, it went from being roughly flat on the Warlord to a decrease on the Reaver. I'd round this to the obvious -25 points and test from there.

ooh, that's a tremendously powerful tool there, thanks.

Also thinking it over, the BP rules variants are a non issue.
Since only 1 type of basic BP weapon is available, multiple weapons on the same titan will always have the same range, and thus you'd always want to fire them together and add the epithet special rules to a different weapon.
If you desperately want BP +disrupt or ignore cover, then you'd stick with a single BP weapon.

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ok. first step done:

What this spreadsheet does:

1) lists all of the possible reaver and warlord combinations, even the silly ones like 4 CCW.

2) calcs the damage output of each weapon against a variety of targets - ork infantry, guard in cover, rhinos, russes, warhounds, this also includes bonus templates and CC and FF outputs

3) mulitiplies this by the area that weapon can affect

4)uses Neal's sqrt rule to compare the cost of the titan to the firepower output. The output is a single number that should be constant for all of a titan class (it represents durability and they all have the same DC, void sheilds and armour). That's what the main graph is. The number on the x axis is the titan combo name

The lower the number, the more overpowered for it's cost it is.

Assumptions:
obviously I've simplified a lot of stuff. Especially the amount of units hit by a a single template (assumed 1.75), i think it reality you'd get diminishing returns, but meh.

Findings: I'm going to play around with this for a while and see if i can get it balanced. Basically I want the two graphs to be as flat as possible.

Should I even be considering multiple CCW titans? or are they a bit too silly to bother trying to balance?

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Despite officialy being on holiday I found myslef in a meeting again today.

today's insight: CCWS suck.

the only reason to take one on a bare bones titan (no epithets) is for the bonus to the CC stat. once you get the first CCW, any others are superfulous.

I can actually calculate how many points that bonus to the titans overall firepower is worth, and it's not many.

Should I make the generic CCW gift extra attacks? Extra MW attacks?

Should we look at a second bonus to the CC stat for 2 CCWs taken? (taking a warlord to +1CC ! )

Should I just assume that more then 1 CCW should be a bad choice best avoided?

I think the first option is probably the best*. I'll keep working on the megaspreadsheet and try and find a balanced option.

Mostly becuase I think a mutated warlord with hugh crab claws and tentacles should be viable. just saying.

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EAs are the normal option. For a Warlord EA+3 and dropping the CC by 1 are almost equivelant. I'd go that route; changing the base stats is a less elegent option, and Slaanesh would not approve.

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I ended up needing to do both. To make a 850 point 15cm speed WE a worthwhile CC monster, the damage output has to be truly glorious. 44+8 attacks in CC!

I have some basic results re balancing the basic 4 weapons. Interestingly, the spreadsheet requires the weapons for the Warlord and the reaver be rather different to balance. A set of weapons that balance well on a reaver are badly underpowered on a Warlord, and once set for a warlord are massivley overpowered on a reaver.

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Some minor progress has been made.

I've altered the spreadsheet so
1) there are two seperate sets of weapons for the reaver and Warlord.
This is faster and easier to balance, and also gives more variety then just 4 basic weapons

2) I've changed the output measure to something more intutive. The graphs show how badly overpriced/underpriced each titan is, while the variance number is helpful for calibrating.

next step - epithets.

EDIT:

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The spreadsheet does not include options for doubling or sustain fire type attacks. One favors closer range shooting weapons on a reaver, the other long range weapons on a warlord. Probably balanced. If not playtesting will show it up.
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I've also tried running the Banelord through. the indicator suggest the Banelord is 50-70pts too expensive.
As mentioned in the BL review: titans thread - the Banelord excels at a single role:

stand on blitz and lob rockets for two turns, then charge anything that's got close enough. It's very good at that role.

The indicator spreadsheet doesn't account for the indirect fire on the Havok missiles. Nor does it account realistically for the Banelord's mission. How much is indirect fire worth? 25 pts? 50pts?

Ignore cover is counted on the guard in cover (are 20% of infantry targets normally in cover?)

I've counted the one shot on the missiles as a divide by three, for the game length. Approximate. (if you check for 3 missiles being fired a turn, then the price gap is only 50pts)

Conclusion: The spreadsheets will make balancing the epithets faster, and the method is reasonably robust. One shot weapons are best counted for optimum output, not average.

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I also ran an analysis on a 4CCW using the 25pt EA3+ TK(dD3) on a 725pt titan that the AMTL list uses.
the spreadsheet suggest the titan is 360pts overpriced.
Of course, i'm not sure how competitive the CCW in the Admech list is (it's meant for TK and insurance, not for taking 4 of). I also haven't tried it on a reaver chassis, where it might do a lttle better (due to the higher speed)

Still, I think I may add a 'Assault breaker' factor to the given firepower scores for CCW. I'm just concerned that 11 basic attacks is just too powerful, even on a slower warlord.

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fixed how BP weapons work.

the original idea was to keep them separate for later adding special rules via epithets. since that's not how BP weapons with the same range work, i've changed them to work more obviously.
I've also changed the BP wounds on the warhound target to take account of the shooting at WE rule, and included the extra BMs from larger barrages (1 BM = 1/2 a wound as an approximation) Everything has then been rebalanced again.
I'll start coding the specific epithet sheets next.

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