There is a formula, but I'm guessing the result of that formula is not the definitive cost of the unit but an approximation of the final cost. That result gets modified based on some subjective criteria applied by CB and that is the real secret. But again, it's an educated guess based on the comparison of units with similar profiles.
So not a formula. Just kind of a ballpark that they hope works out based on them not even playing their own game and getting all their suggestions from a small local meta? Perfect.
A discussion about any 'formula'. You need to break the formula here and there to keep things balanced. Going back to Warhammer Fantasy Battles in ancient editions a goblin wearing a shield, spear and light armor cost exactly 3 points according, compared to a human wearing the same spear adn light armor that costed 6 points. But according to formula, that goblin with worse Leadership (-2 points), worse Initiative (-2 points), and worse (actually, negative and self-harmful animosity) rules (-1 point) should cost 1 point. Why the 3 point cost instead of the 1? Because the formula in warhammer breaks down the closer to the extremes you got, and a 1 point spear wielding goblin with light armor would make it literally OP... much in the likes of bringing 30 troopers to an 300 point battle of Infinity specially when crits were auto-wound . So this mean that formula is not a sacred thing to be kept and preserved at all costs. But more of a guideline, and it needs to be tweaked here and there giving things for free, or charging extra, to certain units with the aim of making all options equally fair and not having things so underpriced that you have to include them no matter what, and neither things so overpriced they underperfom their weight.
Yup! I get that English isn't your first language and sarcastic insults don't necessarily translate across language lines, but that's how it is.
If that was the case you would never see the 15 models limit cap, or point cost been raised preventing more models to be played. It is obvious CB cares about the game and balance, you may disagree with decisions, but assuming decisions are driven by sales is illogical.
Increasing the number of models would fundamentally break the concept of the game, and make it unplayable in the reasonable time limit.
Correct, but if the incentive for everything was to sell more models, the hard limit would not have been enforced. And it is a N4 decision.
I must say, that's a strawman argument... People own dosens and dosens of infinity models, often hundreds, so extra bodies on the board would mean little difference for the bottom line. This artificial model limit was introduced as a bandaid solution to cheap models which are hard to balance and spamming breaks the game and ilicits negative play experience for the oponent. The issue is more with the fact that poor/useless (gamewise) models exist to be sold alongside good ones, or to cater to people who want to complete the faction/sectorial or are just hopeful that they will "make it work" if they try... It's a tough industry...trying to consistently profit and grow the company while having your customers be happy and satisfied. Understandably, with miniatures, people don't just have to buy them... they need to invest a lot more, mainly their time so it's easy to start feeling negatively about the whole afair when things get power crept or neglcted, while on the other hand the company needs to constantly produce more and make money to stay in business and hopefully grow.
I disagree about the model limit, because the model limit is something that was discussed a lot for many years, and a few playtesters made "unlimited" lists to tournaments to illustrate the point, it may seem like a "band aid" but it was something discussed and experimented for a lot of time. Regardless my point was and is, if CB was driven to sell as many models as they could, they would not make the decisions they make for the game.
Personally I would love to play a game with 25-30 infinity models, but it's a different game, this ruleset and mechanics don't work in a 2h window. Yeah, that's the balancing act. No need to get into this further.
Infinity works fine at 20-30 miniature count because unit complexity goes down as points are spread thinner. Since you make less complex decisions, move fewer miniatures per orders, and deal generally speaking with repeated tasks, it does scale decently as long as you don't massively increase points limits as well. The decision to make cover easier to determine also helps greatly with this. But... infinity has a lot of highly optimised very low-cost units and those will reign supreme, and simply spreading your capabilities over several bodies means it's a lot more difficult to knee-cap a list in a single order, not to mention that factions are unevenly designed in this type of unit because you're not meant to skimp on the heroic super humanoids. --- I'd love to see further passes on units; preferably skipping over units that no one complains about or has any problems with, of course.
Aaaah yes, the good old tournaments in the polish meta, back in N3 days. Not a single army with less than 27 orders. Damn how I dont miss this time
We've actually been discussing just going back to 2 full groups and Limited Insertion order protection just to change things up and allow factions to exploit some of their cheaper troop options.
It allows for a lot of units that have been devalued by the choice restriction to come back into considerations. A lot of haqq models don't feel great to take if youre factoring it as part of a much smaller order pool even with the cost savings. It was also one of the biggest issues with bikes that warbands in general became a much steeper opportunity cost, a bike troop has a hard time being seen as disposable when it costs at least two to three as much as a regular warband unit (faction depending) and costs a slot. LI just brings more list variety to the table. Few factions benefit from mass tac awareness to offset smaller lists. Much of the time it feels like if you're not 14-15 models on the table you're at a distinct disadvantage to overcome, so the drive is to put as much in the list as possible. A change to order stripping could help level things out too. If someone has 10 or fewer units they only lose 1 order, 11-15 2 orders and 16-20 strips 3 (if you play with that extra).
TBF this really became an issue when mix links became more and more common. The linked highlander swap was wild.
I don't really see the issue as being in that direction. Cheap models with templates are still extremely powerful. If anything, going to 15 troopers at 400 points is a better improvement See, I'd read this as a downside to any mitigation of the Order Cap. Every faction has expensive high-end units - usually more than it honestly needs - to dump surplus points into, so saving is always an advantage, but I think a lot of armies would suffer from having to really reach to hit 20 orders. Allowing more orders on the table also favors Alpha Strikes, as it gives you more activations in which to kill enemy models and still be able to pull back to a defensive setup. At minimum, AVA for things like Flashbots would need to be revised in a ton of places, and/or the price of Irregular and/or Impetuous models armed with template weapons would need to be comprehensively audited to bring it more in line with what they actually do,
