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Other, non-WE, formations don’t lose armour or initiative when damaged. To me, this is the most important aspect (preserving mechanical continuity).
Since WE is it's own distinct category in the rules, with plenty of (often not very intuitive) exceptions I must disagree here. Critical hits that permanently cripple WE (instead of just killing them) exist on e.g. Gorgons and Eldar Titans. The way I look at the Crippling Damage rule (as they are at the moment) is just a form of critical hit.
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New, relatively complex rules are needed, and the degradation doesn’t happen naturally based on existing mechanics (i.e. the change doesn’t depend on remaining DC).
Not sure what you mean by this?
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I’m not sure if degrading armour and initiative really reflect actual titan damage any better than existing EA mechanisms do, and I’m not sure if titans actually need to be easier to kill if they can be effectively suppressed (this could be debated, of course, so it’s the least persuasive—and I’m not trying to start a quibble-fest over it!).
For the solitary titan included in a list this might seem like overkill, but this is intended to try and deal with lists where you face several of them at the same time. Imagine showing up at a tournament with an air-assualty space marine list (no TK anywhere in the list) and facing a Gargant list... That's just not particularly fun. The basic rules unfortunately made the single Warlord or Great Gargant into an excentric curiosity, and the rules just collapse when you have more than that. The Gargant list for example has seen extensive playtest and it either wins or draws, and there needs to be ways of dealing with that.
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But that all doesn’t mean that it’s not an idea worth trying! I just find it more elegant the plasma way, and I don’t think a critical damage threshold is necessary to represent multi-DC units well. (Like I’ve noted before, another critical existence point doesn’t really help the existing critical existence failure issues a whole lot)
And my problem with the Plasma Point rules (as presented here) is that they will quickly become quite complicated and that they deal with a small aspect of the problem, not all the problems.
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As a compromise with some of @Mrdiealot’s points, I think degrading Assault performance with damage/plasma capacity works well. I’m not sure about the effects of blast markers; I have seen past discussions on the Fearlessness of WE causing issues, too.
Making CC and FF work with remaining DC might work, but then it's harder to motivate why that should be restricted to only big titans like Reavers and Warlords.
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One-shot weapons costing plasma might be considered a useful feature of the list. For support weapons, perhaps blast markers (or damage sustained) could suppress weapons systems like units are suppressed in formations? Or perhaps they don’t need extra suppression. I do think the ‘all or nothing’ suppression of titans is a bit wonky, though, but with main weapons needing plasma, this issue is lessened.
The problem is that they're still not easier to break, which is the way you get them off the objective you're trying to hold. Shooting isn't really the problem I think, Titans have pretty weak shooting to begin with.
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On the topic of Knights and other WE versus titans: this discrepancy is why I suggested another class of WE might be useful. Knights, Baneblades, Thunderhawks, &c. all seem to be supposed to act quite differently to titans. Are there any ideas for rules that might help these smaller WE that aren’t appropriate for big WE?
A lot of the weirdness for these types of units comes from them blocking line of sight from each other. RAW, you could use one the WE to give the others Hull Down against enemy shooting (I never play like this, but it's what the rules say). Associated with this is that they block line of sight for each other. My suggestion would be that they are transparent towards both each other and the enemy within the formation itself, and blocks LOS only when you try to see past them.
The second weirdness that bugs me is in the engage, where RAW you should roll each WE separately. No-one really does that because it takes forever. So it would be better to make the way everyone plays them the official way of playing them. I'm not sure we should extend it to DC3 WE, as that would include e.g. Warhounds. But maybe it would make sense to just say it applies to all multiple WE formations.
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as the appointed AMTL person, @Vaaish is already pretty supportive of ideas testing.
While I certainly appreciate what Vaaish wants to do with AMTL, and I recognize that it's an important list to get right, I argue that the problem is much bigger than just that single list. Traitor Titan Legions and the Gargant list have many of the same issues. Also, I would love to see more single Warlords being played in a large variety of lists.