Yeah interesting, though personally I prefer the damage system. You'd have to work out which weapon is suppressed, and if you are going to do book keeping you might as well use the natural mechanism to do it in, ie damage capacity. For example one random weapon system or movement penalty every 2 DC.

Regarding splitting fire or activating separately, whilst they seems somehow logical for titans I am not sure if they address the issue of making titans work better within the game as these would make titans even better than they are now, so even more expensive and even fewer models in what is an objective-centric game.

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@Kyrt, regarding suppression of weapons: why can't you just look at the number of blast markers you have and then reduce the number of shots you can take based on that?

I agree that reducing firepower via DC could work just as well; the difference is really whether shooting at titans or damaging titans should suppress them. I don't think that particular weapons need to be knocked out; for simplicity, I would keep the choice up to the titan player (it could be handwaved as on-the-spot repairs, etc.).

@IKW Wartrader might be right with 2 BMs per suppressed weapon (though a speed penalty could be appropriate, too, but the simplest option is to just reduce firepower, like with every other suppressible formation in the game).

Now, onto the digression!

Splitting fire or activating separately are indeed not the solution for small titans. However, for large titans (Imperators and friends, and maybe down to Warlords) with large weapons loadouts, I'm not sure if they'd ever be balanced well (unless everyone plays with them for a while!) without split fire. Their large firepower can arbitrarily destroy most formations but since they can only focus on one formation at a time—excepting barrage overlap—the damage overflow can be quite significant if the enemy only has small formations. How does one balance that well (this isn't meant to be a patronising question! Just an honest observation)? How many points is a 'delete one unit' weapon worth? EA (and almost any wargame; see WH40K for current poor pricing!) pricing relies on how much damage a formation can do and that needs formations sitting in a regime where their firepower is not enough to destroy the biggest formations in one shot (and since armies usually have a mix of units, this lets the player prioritise what to spend their valuable firepower on—i.e. don't shoot the big guns at Sentinels unless it'll win the game—as a meaningful tactical choice).

If Imperators (say) are priced with killing 4-man Sentinel formations in mind, they'll be grossly underpriced against most opponents; 10-tank Leman Russ squadrons will probably result in them being overpriced in most battles. Their output will swing widely and only their resilience will really be a stable basis for pricing. Other formations suffer this problem too but it's much worse when you have a giant gun-platform.

Split-fire does make a formation more dangerous, no doubt about that! But for those few units at the top end of the firepower range, split-fire is one method to make sure an expensive unit is actually worth its price.

These are all good suggestions.

Quick point : I really think the titan's assault attacks should also reduce in line with remaining DC.

I agree that assault attacks should come down with damage. We had an occasion where my opponent had my phantom titan broken on one DC and teleport attacked it with terminators when it failed to rally. Result was a dead titan and all of the terminators died too (titan powerfist FTW).

It just seemed odd when my titan was barely able to stay standing up

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that certainly feels immersion breaking

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Similarly, I'm pretty sure a game against Blip involved a Phantom Supporting Fire to full effect when it was on a couple of DC and nearly broken from BMs.

Obviously War Engines that this applied to would need to be reduced in points cost*, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.

*EDIT - depending on split fire abilities.

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I just want to say that changing the "core rules" isn't realistically going to happen. Creating a coherent tight entertaining set of optional rules will be. Just good to have some realistic expectations here.

I like Vaaish's general concept of each power levels. Back when Battle Tactic supplement was somethng real we had worked out how a titan/gant chassis have a certain capacity of plasma for lack of a better term that as damage occurs, is progressively degraded in ability to regenerate. When you let loose you pull from that reservoir and in fact can pull extra (thus depleting) plasma to increase effects. Likewise you can chose less weapons to activate when picking out a target. Likewise you should be able to spend plasma to help shed BM or raise shields or other effects. Anyone familiar with Starfleet Battles (tabletop or PC) would already be intimately familiar with such a concept in practice. Basically your titan can do anything, just not everything. This sidesteps a huge amount of special rule exceptions and XYZ rule - light cases or fringe scenarios.

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I agree about the reduction assault dice when damaged (I guess blast marker suppression shouldn't reduce them just as it doesn't reduce normal units in assaults). When I was tinkering with an idea to port WH40K to EA rules (which I secretly suspect the designers had at least thought of) I put in that reduction.

@jimmyzimms That's another nifty idea! So you have a store of 'plasma' and generate some new plasma every turn (much like Warhammer Quest's magic points storage, or kind of like LotR:SBG's Might mechanic as used by Aragorn)? I like how it combines resource management with options to do more or less, which would make things much more interesting.

I agree about 'core rule' changes being very difficult (though I suppose not impossible!) to promulgate. Even if a change was going to happen, I think it would have to be through showing everyone a working, fun list first so then people might say, "O, that's a cool mechanic, why didn't I think of that before?" The most important concept for game balance, reducing damage output with damage (splitting fire is more of a bonus, who uses Imperators and Giga-Gargants normally anyways? :/), can be quite easily achieved (at least in some form) with existing rules or slight tweaks that have precedent—we have an excellent suppression rule already, why not just use it and make the game system more coherent anyway? (Rhetorical question mark implied )

Veterans of this forum will point out that Grandma Wendy still owns the copyright and IP on the rules, which is the main reason that they are highly unlikely to be changed. Other reasons might involve time boxing tournaments and the impact of the rules on balancing lists etc.

However, as others have said, there is nothing to stop people creating their own house-rules. Or you could wait for the new version of Epic the

Well they own the IP on the rulebook, not the rules mechanics. Several times has a community "Epic 5th edition" been mooted which would simply rewrite the rules in a new rulebook. TBH I think the main reason "core" rules will never be changed is because once you throw away that central reference point you instantly get dozens of ideas about how it should be done and there is not a strong enough incentive for everyone to follow along with someone else's idea instead of their own. If there is one group that could do it it'd be a closed group like Epic UK, but I very much doubt they are interested.

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Personally I feel that simplicity would be best. Something along the lines of the BFG "crippled" system where the WE suffers penalties to shooting (even if it's just an extra -1 to hit?), void shields (halved?) and maybe speed (-5cm Speed) once it drops below half DC seems OK to me. Not too crippling for the Titan/WE but enough to feel like it's "on it's way out" and simple to keep track of

There are two axioms that I think need to be kept in mind (and have already been mentioned by other posters):

- Keep it simple
- Don't mess with core rules

Any suggestions that stray from those concepts are non-starters because they will never get sufficient traction, or else they'll become optional rules that no one will use.

I think the issue here isn't titans in general - small titans like warhounds, or a single large titan like a Phantom in a Biel Tan list, seem to function fairly well. Their issues usually come down to points cost within the list versus effectiveness.

The real issue is the AM titan legion list. I think the problems we're talking about only show up when you have a whole list of expensive war engines. So I wouldn't worry about how plasma charge rules would affect, say, a lone Great Gargant or a Shadowsword. I'd focus on an army-wide rule for the AM titan legion list that makes the list more interactive for both players and makes the titans cheaper (so you can afford more activations).

I'm in favor of a two pronged approach: a system that moderately reduces effectiveness based on blast markers, and permamently reduces effectiveness when the titan is below half DC. Say every two BMs suppress one weapon system, and below half DC you lose half DC for close combat purposes, and can no longer March.

Those two together provide more positive feedback for the opponent placing BMs on titans, provide a little more decision making about which weapons to use when you start taking fire. Overall you could adjust the list and make cheaper titans with more effective weapons.