Hi!
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Cheeky fudger!
LOL!
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I'm not against the scrapping of companies & special cards at all. As you say, the Points System which myself and Craig are pretty satisfied with during playtesting does level the playing field properly for the first time. That said, I'm wary of going so far as saying there should be no formations.
I would be more than happy with a system where everything was a support card (it would be called something else obviously) with similar formations as exist now, possibly with some minor tweaks; you might want to buy a formation with an HQ for example. You would have total freedom to buy as many of these formations as you like, even if it was simply a force consisting of Titans for example.
I'm not sure how much you remember (or have experience with) SM1 era organizations and army building. But they function to a large degree like a system where everything IS a "support card". The main thing is that there is an organization "matrix" guiding how those "support formations" are organized. The only thing the player days is "flesh out" the template. Take a look at L4's pics (while not exactly what we may use it gives and idea).
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Where I do have more of a problem is the idea that you could buy one stand as a single formation. The reason is activations. Obviously I have selfish reasons for worrying about activations because of Evolution but this does affect Net Epic Gold also. Serious consideration has to be given to the affect a whole lot of tiny and cheap units will have on the balance of the game itself.
Let's say you made a SM company that has an organizational slot of "3 formations" to fill and you filled them with 3 single stands? You get 3 activations but they would be extremely ineffective, not to mention brittle and easy to gain VP's from. Another player could fill those same 3 slots with more models per formations have the same amount of activations and be much more effective game wise.
The problem of activations in net epic gold is the way army construction is built. Meaning 1 company card can attach 5 support and one special card. EVERYONE can do this, regardless of formation cost.
That and not formation composition is the reason for the activation inequity. If you give everyone the same organization, but formations cost differ then the army with cheaper formations gets more activations.
With the organizational charts you can make them "flavorful" but you can also make them in ways that takes into account the average formation costs and thus let those armies use a framework so as to enable the player to maximize "activations" in the way he builds his force.
For example IG are cheap, but their organization is "ponderous". IG companies can consist of 1 or 2 formations slots. Since they are cheap he can build HUGE formations, but the organization would limit him to a few formations slots per company, thus few activation.
On the other hand Squats are very expansive, but given the background they like working in smaller more numerous formations. So for example a squat brotherhood could have 4 formations. Due to cost those formations may not be very big (much smaller than IG ones), but the squat player has the liberty of "matching" activation with such a force making smaller ones. Of course they may not be as resilient as larger ones, but that is part of the squat's "feel" to work with small formations.
Therefore the activation limit is determined by the organizational chart for that army. We could make them taking in consideration each armies particularities. Thus elite armies usually have more, but smaller formations per unit of organization and large attrition armies have less formations per organizational unit but could have more of those units since they are cheaper.
In a nutshell we can basically "even out" the total activation/formation for the armies without using the same one for each army (which is essentially what net epic gold does) by tailoring each organizational chart to be attuned to the way that army due to cost may be structured.
Its all on the organizational structure and it would leave formation content totally up to the player, but in the end it wouldn't matter since organizational charts, while different between armies would balance formation/activations as a whole.
Understand what I'm getting at?
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One of the things that is becoming increasingly apparent with the points formula is that forces with large or expensive units (see Orks and Squats) is that they are losing out big time to the likes of IG which can buy huge masses of troops which will out-activate any enemy. I'm having to apply a fix to the Orks which I'll be testing out soon where a mob will be split into three units of 5 just to fix the balance. The Squats are harder to work a fix on because of their reliance on Praetorians - although that has always been a problem in Net Epic IMO. Definitely the recent adjustments to the formula seem to help the Squats out a bit but I'll need to do more testing
The card system, army unit buying restrictions, etc are all by products of how units were priced under the older paradigm (arbitrarily). Once all units are priced in accordance with a formula that applies itself equally to everything then none of those conventions are necessary.
However a framework to guide people on how the army is constructed needs to exist, but not for the purpose of solely balancing, but for the purpose of translating how an army looks and feels on the field of play and how it maximizes how that army would be organized.
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Please note that I am not whingeing about the formula; as I said above we're pretty happy with the project, it's more a case of we're discovering these minor issues but want to find fixes for them rather than reverting back to the old system.
Anyway, in short, yes, free up everything but keep a close eye on the effect of it for activations please!
Also, please don't label me "conservative" again, it makes me feel very grubby indeed!
I would think that it is more an issue now of thinking how a given organizational chart should look like to best represent a given army. While SM1 offers some guidance and examples there are many armies/forces with no representation in those rules and we must determine how best to represent their "fluff" in such a chart.
No worries Bissler, I love ya, grubby or not, LOL!
Primarch
