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This is the reply to a similar question in the topic linked to a few posts above.
Originally posted by ANSWER_MOD_nealhunt
I am somewhat concerned by the proliferation of suggestions that involve significant increases in list flexibility.
From a background perspective, human thought is supposed to be rigid and dogmatic. People do things a certain way because that's the way it is done. They don't tweak around with stuff. That's heresy and in the 40K-verse the threats of it are very real even before considering the attentions of the Inquisition.
It seems that increasing flexibility often boils down to balance through allowing min-maxing, i.e. "well, this price and these stat lines would be balanced if we could just optimize it by being able to take X, Y, and Z rather than just X."
I would rather see fewer flexibility-related 'fixes' and more changes that directly address the perceived problems. Leave the dogmatic, structured feel.
I think we dissagree here marine wise. The marines are always held up as the most doggmatic on a macro level (fleet arm, chapter size, squad size, company size etc) but least on a tactical level. Currently the epic lists have that somewhat about face. The guard are in many ways far more flexible tactically in how they can build formations.
Fluff wise they have rigid set ups, whereas marines have variable formation sizes, composition, use squads from different companies together, even innovative vehicles (with the AdMech often horrified at the marines level of inovation). All the background stories have disperate formations, odd numbers of vehicles and so on.
This idea is not realy a fix for any balance related issues. Indeed I can't see any power ups for marine formations within it. It is a slight variantion on what currently exists, indeed it is a step down in terms of building really big formations.
Now its easy to see why certain things are the way they are for marines. It makes sense to have formations in an 'air' list to conform to what can be deployed. There is further macro level restrictions on what they can have. Game wise marines gain disproportionate benifits from increases in formation size (as long as its synistic). The idea of the marine formations fits both the macro feel and the operational constraints (with two squads of assault marines in a company having 4 strong assault formations as the main formation type encountered makes sense and so on). Its the additions that should give a feel for the tactical flexibility.
Look at a tactical company currently - it can have if it wants to be an armour force a variable number of razorbacks and rhinos, 1-2 vindicators and a hunter. Why not change that to 1-2 armoured support vehicles (appart from the whirlwind for balance). Enough forces seem to have them fluff wise.
Armour wise if the tanks are equal why not mix them? I personaly have stuff in multiples of threes and have a fair number of odd vehicles. I can't see much min maxing in a formation of 4-6 vehicles for 275 to 425 points. Do people mix say their annihilators and destructors together? They prefer to field them in single type formations min max wise. I can already field under the proposals a formation of 4 predators, 2 vindicators and one hunter, and thats not even transportable by landing craft.
If the vindicator gets what it needs to be equal to the predator destructor (and that is in my view a 25cm speed and ignore cover FF attack) there is no problem with the above change. If predators are meant to be better options than vindicators then it doesn't work.
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