40k The Balancing Act

[Wolfshade]

Preamble

There has been a lot said about the lack of balance in the new Tyranid codex and it got me thinking about the overall balance and how hard it is to achieve.

First, let us look at games with perfect balance. The three that immediately spring to mind are draughts, chess and go. Now these games also have the advantage of being turn based to help make the comparison, so why are these games so well balance? Well with draughts and go, the pieces have identical rules and are in identical numbers so you have balance made out of symmetry. Similarly, with chess, though chess is slightly more complicated as the pieces each have their own relative strengths and weakness. But again balance is made through mirror symmetry.

The idea of chess then brings us to the idea of different models having a perceived strengths. The queen is the most powerful down to the pawn being the weakest. Though in the right situation the pawn can be invaluable, be it becoming promoted (to a queen for instance) or if it happens to make the check mate. Indeed, it is all about having the right tool for the right job.

So the easiest way to achieve perfect balance in 40k is to have mirror armies, which quite frankly is boring.

Balance with a Codex

So is it possible to achieve balance within a codex? Yes. Although there are simple ways of doing this. You first of all need to define your base line and work from there. So a unit that is twice as good as the base unit should be twice the points. And you then build out from there.

The big trouble with this approach is that there is no point in buying one unit over another since they can do the same job with a varying degree of effectiveness.

Of course in the "good old days" every army had almost every option so you didn't need to consider balance because whatever one army did another one could do identically.

What is worth a point

This is hard to define. If every model had the same purpose then how effective they are at doing this can show how they should be costed. Sometimes this is measured in their offensive ability (MEQ kills), or perhaps their defensive ability. But then there are more intangibles.
Consider a terminator and a rhino they are similarly priced, the termy weighs in cheaper. Offensively at range the rhino and termy are the similar, the power fist is certainly more dangerous than the tank shock. So is the ability to transport worth 10 extra points? Especially given the much larger target area making it more vulnerable.

Then there is an issue that Jervis describes himself and that is that when you get used to someone's rules you start to play with the philosophy behind the rules rather than all of the options available which makes it more unclear.

The affect of local meta

With the advent of netlists, and the 40k community now being a truely global thing so local meta are now becoming slightly more global.

But if you are trying to work out the point costs of a single melta gun, first you need to factor in the effectiveness of the user the ability to take them and the likely numbers of those fielding them. You then need to work out their effectiveness. Imagine then that you are play testing in a meta that is very armour heavy, then suddenly melta guns are really important and really effective. This would not be observed if you were in a horde type meta.

So you might end up with a points costing that you believe to be balanced in the way your local community play it, but then when exported to globally there are some metas where the game play is that different from the test environment that the option suddenly becomes wrongly priced.

Perhaps this is an argument for a wider play testing community? (Though that has issues which I shall try and avoid discussion here).

The issue of varied armies

The biggest problem of all comes because of GW's very wide range. If there were two armies then it would be quite simple to balance them against each other, but the more armies with varied and different styles means that it is harder and harder to get balance.
Other things to consider are things like is a unit over costed or just under utilised? Are there just bad match ups? Because of the armies themes is it possible that the encounter would not be balanced? For instance an heavy anti-tank army full of single shot weapons like meltas could potentially be at a disadvantage against say foot-slogging green tide. That isn't to say that the anti-armour army is over-costed and the green tide is under-costed, it is an issue with the list.

Then owing from the initial point costings you might get an effect that armies are better or worse at certain points levels, this is especially difficult when you consider the game is targeted for 1,500 - 3,000 points. This isn't even taking into account the affect of apocalypse.

Then we need to do that all over again taking into consideration allies, a double FOC, allied formations et al.

Closing thoughts

I think we all would love to see a balanced game regardless of the points/match up. But I think we also need to acknowledge that some lists will work better or worse against others. We also need to consider what the effect of experience has. Though the results of the LVO tournament might help mitigate the effects of poor list construction/in experience of gaming/ poor playing, so perhaps those results it does show a trend where some areas need to be addressed. Though whether the issue is the list itself, the units within the list, how the list interacts with allies/detachments etc. Would need some careful consideration, so the right aspect is tweaked.

This is all taken out of context with the fact that GW's job is to sell models, so there is an argument that new big expensive kits are under point costed in order to get people to splash out on large kits.

As we look set to have more new varied units/detachments it is a very exciting time to play 40k, but on the flip side each new unit/option makes balance that much harder.

[daboarder]

All that would be acceptable if it at least looked like GW was trying. But they're not therefore it is not.

[Gleipnir]

You forgot to mention you are working within the constraints of a single d6 result as well in most cases, which while the predominant medium of dice rolling for war-games and tabletops minis originally, they largely constricts balance options artificially that could be expanded with d8, d10 or d12 for example, in what is a fairly mechanics heavy game.

[Dalleron]

I've wondered in the past as to whether or not a D6 is sufficient for 40k anymore. I don't know how you'd go about changing things, but i just feel that a D6 isn't enough.

I think an issue of balance comes from this. I do not know if there is someone who is in charge of the game side of the business. Someone who has final say in what goes into a codex, or the rulebook in general. It appears that codex authors have free reign to do as they please, and you get redonkulousness that is the Tau or Eldar. If I'm wrong on this, then that person/people just suck at their job.

Just my 2 cents.

Plus I agree with daboarder. I dont think GW give a hoot about balance.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Decent little piece that, Wolfshade, thanks for your thoughts.

[Anggul]

Yeah, there's a great big list of units that no-one with a hint of care about balance could possibly have thought were well-priced, whether too much or too little. Even without play-testing it's easy to see that some units are just bad and don't do anything worthwhile. Now when you consider they're being paid to write this stuff, they should carry out extensive playtesting and listen to the playtesters.

The worst thing, as I say, is when you can obviously tell a unit isn't worth it or costs too little without even having to play a game with it. Things like Mandrakes which are obviously awful and don't do anything useful for the army for their cost, and definitely don't reflect the deadly creatures that they're meant to be.

[DarkLink]

What's even worse-er than that is when you have a unit that's terrible, has been terrible for a while, and anyone with half a brain should know that it's terrible, yet the new codex comes out and they don't fix it.

[Wolfshade]

I hadn't considered the effect of the D6, but I shall give it some thought:

Probability on balance
Random actions are the enemy of balance. Or rather the observations of the results resort in observed balance issues.

Imagine you have a weapon that costs 50pts and drops a S10 AP2 Large blast, 36” Range. Which hits on a 4+, in a game where you are facing tightly blocked infantry and you are “lucky” (urgh I hate that word) and it works every turn (like the game when my vindicators never scattered) then at 50pts it might seem a bit over powered.
Now translate the same thing into a game where the enemy is much more spread-out and you can only hit up to 1 model each time and then you are unlucky and it never works, the response is that it is massively over costed.

With most games we don’t roll enough dice to have average rolls (well maybe if you run a CC green tide..) so we don’t see how things balance out. Or at least we realise how they do but how we feel is based on the observed reality.

So the D6 introduces an element of instability and random chance. Unlike Chess and Draughts, those pieces will always take the piece they are trying to do so, (hmm imagine chess with a combat mechanism). The greater the spread of results the more difficult it is to try and balance it. Although it certainly could be used to fine tune some of the probabilities. Though I think some of the complaints we are seeing are less fine-tuned “this should work 3 times in 10 rather than 2 times in 6” and more fundamental. One of the things that irritates me about D&D is natural 20s those effects can be bizarre.

Outside of this discussion of balance, I personally, prefer the D6/D3 mechanism better than the old D3, D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D24 etc. mechanism. I think it is far simpler, though a more simplistic approach can sacrifice balance and the ability to fine tune. It is a game philosophy and I think it is less of case of trying to form improvements for existing players, but to make it more accessible to non-players.

---

I think it is a bit disingenuous to say GW doesn’t care about balance. I agree that it does look like there are cases where it is poorly executed, which may end up being the same thing ultimately and could just be me getting caught up in semantics.

It also seems strange that GW do seem to leave some units “broken” or at least less useful than other units in the codex. Especially when you consider they have fairly regular tournaments and games at GW HQ and have all those data points to work from, the lists, the results, how different armies interact with each other. There is some vast amounts of data to be mined to highlight potential deficiencies that could be incorporated going forwards.

I am hoping that with the new weekly WD that this marks a more agile and rapidly responding GW. Whether or not it will be I don’t know. But there are things that can and should be done quicker, like FAQs, consistent responses to rule questions via email (every so often we see a rule interpreted in two different ways by two different staffers). All of those sorts of rule queries could be banded together added to a DB and a new FAQ published monthly.

Though I am not sure how comfortable I feel about point changes being introduced via FAQs/errata. On the one hand, I think it would be good and shows a rapid response to the issue of balance (since points is the main mechanic to adjust balance). On the other it would be frustrating to have to check for the latest FAQ every time you write a new list.

Hmm, that was slightly longer than I had expected it to be. But I now have the idea of chess with a combat system!

[daboarder]

I think it is a bit disingenuous to say GW doesn’t care about balance. I agree that it does look like there are cases where it is poorly executed, which may end up being the same thing ultimately and could just be me getting caught up in semantics.

It also seems strange that GW do seem to leave some units “broken” or at least less useful than other units in the codex. Especially when you consider they have fairly regular tournaments and games at GW HQ and have all those data points to work from, the lists, the results, how different armies interact with each other. There is some vast amounts of data to be mined to highlight potential deficiencies that could be incorporated going forwards.

I am hoping that with the new weekly WD that this marks a more agile and rapidly responding GW. Whether or not it will be I don’t know. But there are things that can and should be done quicker, like FAQs, consistent responses to rule questions via email (every so often we see a rule interpreted in two different ways by two different staffers). All of those sorts of rule queries could be banded together added to a DB and a new FAQ published monthly.

Though I am not sure how comfortable I feel about point changes being introduced via FAQs/errata. On the one hand, I think it would be good and shows a rapid response to the issue of balance (since points is the main mechanic to adjust balance). On the other it would be frustrating to have to check for the latest FAQ every time you write a new list.

Hmm, that was slightly longer than I had expected it to be. But I now have the idea of chess with a combat system!

look wolf you've got some really good point on the limitations of designing a system using both a wide range of possible permutations where each permutation is constrained by a very limited set of variables, particularly when small changes in those variables drastically change the final outcome.

But your opinion on what GW is trying to do is just something I cannot agree with. This is the company that not only left the trygon tunnel unchanged (it doesn't work and has never worked in a non-FW book) but also repeatedly stripped that same army of any of the benefits they gained from an edition change at one time or another (yes nids have at one time or another been refused access to ANY of the positive changed from 6th, be it allies, fortifications (practically) or now psychic powers.). That is straight up not caring about balance and there's no way to realistically claim different.


As to your hope that the changes in the last 2 months will lead to a changed GW, well let me put it this way.
You know how you and eldargal have that point you make (and its a fair point) that those who go on about GW's financial demise year in year out. Well the hope that any change they make will be consistent and positive and lead to an era where they actually work with the community and give feedback is just as old and just as naive.

Ultimately theres probably some social scientist or psychologist floating around getting off on this community, because regardless of your viewpoint, be it positive or negative, we all expect different results from the same situation day in, day out.

[Wolfshade]

Sorry dab, I didn't want it to sound like I was totally disagreeing with what you say. I think you make some very good points and it is very frustrating how these sub-par units get carbon copied into the new dex without any reason to take them (either through a rule change or points reduction), certainly they are not balanced either internally within the codex or externally with the rest of the game, otherwise there would be reasons to take them/not take them (depending if they are op or up).
I think this lack of improvement shows a deficency in the current play testing regime, either that or they have run out of ideas of how to balance a unit/rule out and so have just given up.

I think that the hope may be a case of hope over experiance

As I say, perhaps the issue is over semantics and the use of literal rather than functional usage, for which I appologise, unfortunately this is something that permeates all aspects of my life not just being a keyboard warrior.