Yeah as far as I understand it this discussion is about an interesting add-on for friendly play. Not some new official rule that will require rebalancing every list. If both sides agreed to use it, no worries.

did I misunderstand the intentions here?

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This I can fully get behind. Hell, I don't think marine lists should have access to titans at all; Marines working with titans is very much the exception not the rule, and the Codex Astartes list is supposed to represent an average Space marine deployment.

Not entirely. However if we get something that becomes popular we might consider adding it to the list.

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-Vaaish

In no way should this ever become official unless it was across the board everywhere. A Warlord should work the same everywhere.

Including it in the AMTL list as a friendly play house rule section, sure thing though.

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While ideal, I'm beginning to lean away from that simply because it shoehorns the AMTL list. Reavers and Warlords aren't considered all that good in their standard patterns, yet nobody seems to want to agree to change them.

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-Vaaish

I am with Jimmy and others on this - spitballing is fine, but any changes to the actual rules and game need to be applied universally.

And I also disagree that the titans aren't considered all that good in their standard patterns. This is highly dependant on what they are being considered against, and the way the rules work. It is not so much that Reavers and Warlords are poor, rather that Warhounds are too good. (they are under-costed and IMO the first step should be to restrict all armies to 0-1 singletons though this is highly unlikely to happen ).

Get rid of singletons entirely; WarHounds are deployed in pairs and so should be bought in pairs.

Actually, leave single WarHounds for AMTL list only; give 'em that one unique thing.

i think a great deal of titans already aren't very good, so making up rules that further reduce their effectiveness without a massive cost decrease is kind of pointless.

seriously many lists have titans that don't work at all already, don't make the rest of them bad too.

deeper titan rules are cool, don't get me wrong. but i'd go in the 'improving them' direction instead of the opposite.

they ruin your activation count so bad they're already stupid difficult to play on a standard map imo.

How about a blanket rule for War engines of important damage on 5+ when hit, then roll on the following table:

1: no effect
2-4: 1 extra DC of Dmg
5-6: critical as described.

Criticals therefore occur slighty less often, but War engines do take more DC of dmg on average.

This would allow to increase the firepower of war engines universaly, making them both more shooty and more vulnerable, which seems to be what you want to do here, no?

In any case, I believe further development of Titan rules would be fantastic, and that your inititaive here is 100% in the right direction. Perhaps they could result in a dedicated supplement with a set of optional rules for players to use if they wish.

I understand E&C had worked on such a project. Have you looked through his work?

Edit: I would be very interested in such a project and could provide any number of playtests, if you wish.

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Huh, I'd go for the opposite sort of approach. The problem as I thought Vaissh described it, is that a titan's offensive power dosen't decrease with damage, unlike a normal formation (which looses both stands AND has some of the remainder suppressed).

Titan Suppression: when a titan has a greater number of BM then remaining DC, it may only use half it's weapon systems in any turn(rounding down). This represents the Tech Priests diverting emergency power, conducting repairs or sheer system damage.


I chose rounding down becuase it makes the warlord much more durable than a reaver, which seems correct (and warlord represent a much bigger point investment)

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This basically adds an extra critical to the titans which I'm not really sure is warranted. As MadDoc says, the problem isn't so much the durability as the lack of firepower degradation as the titan takes damage. All the way up until the unit is destroyed, it functions just as well as it did at full health. The point here is to spitball a means of reducing the firepower either as the titan takes BM or as the titan takes damage to the hull.



I appreciate the sentiment, but this is really a off the wall side idea and I'd much prefer that testing happen with the actual AM lists rather than this at least for the time being.



I like the sound of this, but I think it really screws the reaver. It's a considerably larger titan than a warhound but under this rule it effectively puts out the same firepower once it starts collecting BM. Granted it does take more before something happens but the effect is the same. Of course, rounding up does the opposite giving the warlord the short end of the deal.

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-Vaaish

Well, to build on Maddoctor's proposition, you could use: (wording to be improved)

"When a war engine formation has more BMs than remaining DCs, it suffers from a -1 modifier on all its shooting attacks".

However, if you follow that line of thinking, as others have mentioned in this thread, you do lose the only advantage of War engines in the first place: resilience to attrition (small amounts of damage).

For example, standard pattern reaver has considerably less firepower than a Leman Russ Company (about 1/2 to 1/3) and is considerably less resilient (6 DC vs 10 LR) even after having factored in shields. It costs the same.

As advantages it is fearless and has 1+ initiative, which are considerable advantages. It is also much better in close combat, which is pretty relevant considering both formations are usually BTS.

However those advantages are clearly not enough by themselves. The edge the Reaver currently has vs. Leman Russ companies is due to the resilience to firepower commitments not sufficient to kill it entirely.

If you were to implement something like this, you would have to either increase Firepower or reduce point cost (I would favour the former).

The overall alternative, which was behind the above proposition, was to make War Engines less resilient than they are now. This diminishes the overall Firepower necessary to bring them down entirely, which in turn adds value to smaller amounts of firepower, which may yield comparable results to what you are trying to do.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

This partly comes up due to AMTL just being boring to play and frustrating to play against. In my discussions with my regular opponent this really comes down to Titans don't put out enough damage to be scary most of the time, they are hard to kill and yet nothing really happens to them until you kill them, and they don't really do a good job holding objectives since most of the time they try to position between two due to lower unit counts and even if they do try to take one, most of the time there's little reason to fear closing in enough to contest the objective.

I think that durability wise titans are about right. They should be tough to kill most of the time. Ideally I'd see titans get a significant boost in damage output combined with a rule like what we've been discussing here and an increased ZOC.

The goal would be a tough to kill unit with formidable firepower that could lock down a single objective if they were stationed on it but that could still be countered even if outright destruction wasn't possible.

Since most titans spend a turn or so moving up and then sitting for the rest of the game, I don't see -1 to hit really being that useful as a mechanism. It's easily countered with sustain and many titan weapons are 2+ and 3+ to start with anyway. Reduction in the number of weapon systems capable of firing is a better mechanism to reduce firepower. The question is how best to go about this.

I do kind of like Doc's suggestion since it has the effect of "crippling" the titan once the DC get low enough. My concern is that damaging the titan enough to see a result might difficult.

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-Vaaish

As mentioned, I fully agree with your initiative to make Titans more manageable, and by the same token, increase their firepower without increasing their point cost (which is a sensitive issue).

The problem with a "weapon system" is that it is very reliant on the specificities of the model. As the problem you mention is not only an AMTL issue, but can be an issue with all War engine Heavy lists, in a lot of lists "weapon systems" can be hard to identify. It also is a new game concept. Until now, there have been no mention or use of "weapon systems". At best there are some "weapon options".

I have not done the math, but perhaps a good math person could calculate the resulting firepower of standard pattern titans with the Maddoctor "weapon system" mechanic, and the -1 to-hit mechanic?

MD system:
target in the open
Warhound: 1.66 MW, SF or 2.66 AT
Warhound double: 1.33 MW, SF or 2 AT
Warhound sustain: 1.66 MW, SF or 3.33 AT

-1 system:
target in the open
Warhound: 1.33 MW, SF and 2 AT
Warhound double: 1 MW, SF and 1.33 AT
Warhound sustain: 1.66 MW, SF and 2.66 AT

For the warhound, the firepower is slightly better with the -1 mechanic, with the notable exception of sustain orders, which seems to be the way you find Titans played usually. I don't believe the difference can be emphasized all that much without playtests.

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LorddotMilk is correct, the -1 or weapon system subtraction are mathematically similar. The former is much, much easier to implement, and avoids finicking around with questions like 'are carapace defense lasers a weapon system?'

For simplicity and streamlinging, I'd prefer LDM's approach. It also avoids the rounding conundrum. Both methods may have the unintentional effect of encouraging sustain fire, further slowing down a slow list (when movement dancing is one of the more fun elements of EA).

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