Making 15 the baseline

I agree that the hard fifteen trooper cap has produced a much more solvable list building envirommemt - I've felt the same thing Maud'dib describes and I'm a vanilla player mainly so don't even have wildcard business.

I remember an idea banging around before N4 that I'd like to return to, maybe as an event variant or ITS seasonal rule. No hard cap on troopers, but a maximum of 15 regular or irregular orders generated in a turn - especially with Daylami clocking in at enough points now to preclude the obvious skew list that I'd have expected in unlimited insertion events a month ago, it feels pretty viable.

I might write up some framing for the rule as an event variant and run it in a narrative event or something as a test.

 

I think the best solution is always going to be recosting of troopers to bring up the floor, with everything else being some variation of "how many undercosted troopers can my army support logistically". Thats still a playable paradigm to function within but I think its inherently less interesting than simply using balanced troop costs. For people saying "no shit sherlock", the reason I point it out is because if we pursue variations on tactical window that are 'better' we never actually address the root cause of these problems.

If I was to suggest an alternative to the 15 order cap contained within the combat group system, it would be to make all troops in the second pool cost +1 per slot. Your eleventh model is +1, twelfth is +2 etc. A sliding scale of escalating costs that will reach a more natural equilibrium than flat 15 or even flat cost per slot.

Re; some of the prior ideas, SWC probably won't do the job as mentioned before (my main ariadna opponent barely took any guns and always had 20 models, my Nomads had like one Intruder and 21 models) and Command Tokens are not so hot IMO because they have the same effect as a 15 order cap in that they telegraph the existance or nonexistance of off-table troopers.

This is a really interesting post that I felt the need to comment on.

While I support consolidating the statline (a lot!) I dislike the idea of making troops roll simply to take movement actions. Reminds me of rolling for Run in 40k and stuff - pointless RNG and added processing time for player actions.

Would be a damn good idea to look at the discount skills, and also the discount versions-of skills and stats. Dodge+3 for example is really shit design given that its effectively budget PH.

Guts could recieve a MOD if the trooper took more than one hit, something like that. Courage as a +3 is more interesting because it doesn't have the weird non-interaction with religious. But I think one of the main issues with WIP is that it costs a lot, isn't all that useful, and quite crucially does not vary much between elite and chump troopers. If you take a 50pt button presser it should press the button pretty fucking well compared to a 10pt button presser.

I like the idea of more troopers as specialists. Pretty much everyone as a specialist unless they have a specific rule preventing it - this would be applied to things like warbands and perhaps to heavy SWC troopers and elite attackers in order to keep one of the main anti-rambo mechanics in place. Would be a points discount ability.

 

My personal take is that the mixed fireteams are a much bigger culprit than the 15 order cap.

 

I’m thinking in list ideas rather then factions/sectorials.
And what happened imo with the 15 order cap is, that all list types blend into a grey blob.
We lost so much flexibility through the third Limitation model cap and it reduces for me as a person who likes to build and optimise lists a lot of fun.

 

Active Player has running the clock, only switched to the reactive player if he needs to long for a decision.
If there is a rules question to the judge, the time is stopped.

 

You would lose all your active capabilities and the aros would be idle. Never happened as far as I know.
If one player wants to use a clock, you have too. I used the clock in my regional tournaments less offen then I used it.
Mostly it is enough to know you can’t abuse time play.
And if a player would abuse it and is common knowledge, he would have to play by clock all the time.
For me a win win situation.
I ask my opponent before every game if he want to use the clock or not and after that, it’s a Gentlemans agreement for play fair for time issues.

 

Units that would be meant as literal throw-aways (like Kuang Shi) could be made Peripherals and attached to units that conform to the price equilibrium.

What I would be worried about still is that without very cheap units, the very expensive units are difficult to get to work. It's not a problem that goes away as the spammy lists get more expensive and it's not a problem that's solved by stacking more tacaware on them. Orders are always going to be king and limited insertion style lists always volatile.

 

Infinity in its most basic form is a resource allocation and management game, and the order pool is the most crucial resource, I have observed many times that (almost) full combat groups equalize player skill, assuming in a theoretical experiment player skill tier 1 to 3 with 1 been low and 3 been high each tier separation would need a combat group to equalize skill so a tier 1 vs tier 3 player would be roughly equal if tier 1 brought 2 combat groups and tier 3 only 1, of course this is just an observation but given how I see players who always lost with one combat group win with two versus the same opponents using one group, there is something there.

Now we come to the main discussion, 15 orders are indeed arbitrary, but everything is arbitrary in a rules perspective, what they do offer is a more competitive and stable environment for list building, you can build a list knowing what the theoretical limit of possible models and orders are in a list and this helps from both players and design point of view given the possibility of the 40 models list is not an option, same goes with the 10 vs 20 matchup limiting the order pool disparity to at worse case scenario twice the size more but usually it is only a couple of orders, this rewards skilled and experienced players, who have a better understanding of the order economy and risk reward management.

Is it better to have the line drawn at 15 than 13 or 20? I would say yes, (even though most of my N3 lists were 18+ models) because it is in an uncomfortable middle, enouph to give options in a second group or two smaller groups but not enouph to have two full groups at play.

 

It's exactly uncomfortable.

You can't play two full groups. You can't play a single group with many armies either, because LI doesn't give you protection anymore, too much of a handicap for those factions. You have to play 10+(3 to 5) or something awkward like 8+7. Your Troopers are either too cheap to conveniently make a decent list (e.g. CHA, MRRF) or too expensive (e.g. Morats).

It's a worse experience listmaking than in N3.

 

This is what creates a good gameplay experience and separates skill levels, restrictions that do not allow players to have everything they want.

 

No, not at all. Restrictions to the point of most lists / factions being solved equations is about the worst thing that can happen. And it in fact completely flattens the skill levels and provides the worst possible gameplay experience when taken to the extremes, because everyone plays those same optimal lists and it results in "netlisting".

 

Ah maybe I should have explained my idea better, I meant the roll was to evade the attack, the move would happen as it is now. So anyone who moves has the choice to dodge, and anyone who moves twice dodges on two dice. And ARO dodges would just be moves (with a doge roll built in to avoid damage). I worry about how it might slow the game down if reactive players are moving but it might end up more fun, who knows. ARO duty might be more tactical and less suicidal, which would be good if we were trying to lower model counts. I feel like more CC would happen if things could ARO by moving straight at something. S5 multiwound CC beasts would become more threatening to Rambos because each time they spend an order and fail to bring it down, they are bringing it a meaningful distance closer, there'd be a more options for zoning.

 

I'm pretty sure the "solved" feeling of list building this edition has very little to do with the 15 dudes order cap, and more to do with the dramatic increase in gear-check situations and their objective power. Like, when you have only 1 gunner who could reliably challenge some kind of ARO head-on, then it's the only one you pick for long range gunner situations, period. This one is a particular pet peeve of mine, but it works for hacking, GML and so on.
Long-story short, we've lost a lot of granularity in list building when a large bunch of units became unable to do the job they seemed to have been designed for because of the systemic arm-race.

 

Given the vast disagreement on even what constitutes a good unit, or how unit should be played, I do believe that fears for cookie cutter lists (netlisting) in Infinity is remote, that been said if that was a problem it would have been seen in the previous editions.

 

You can't say "if that was a problem I would've seen it in N1/N2/N3" when the problem is what's been changed in N4.

 

The "unlimited" number of troopers allowed in a list, is but a variable, given most "horde" lists of the previous editions centered around 18 orders, if the system had an optimized order number and unit selection it would have already been revealed, so far the best we have seen is unit combos and even then these are dependent on local meta.

In theory limiting to 15 gives a restriction, but limiting to 20 does not change the criteria of been limited, so a 20 order list would fulfil your criteria of optimization and leading to netbuilding.

 

Nope, you're still missing the point, as you're not taking into account the limitations of 300/6 AND 15 Troopers (not orders) influencing each other, which would've been way less limiting at 20 troopers (practically a non-factor).

 

I am not missing any point, I am using your criteria to your proposition, why is 20 troops limit a non factor when people used 30 and 40 troops lists? we have requests for literally 5th combat group be allowed in the army and it was not from one person, any artificial cut to an unlimited parameter is an arbitrary restriction and if under 20 models is what the majority used, it does not change that 20 troops limit would fulfill your criteria.

15 troops limit in my opinion gives enouph room to make lists and gives enouph stability to make the list building part of the skill set, yes it is restrictive and restrictions make good players and challenging games.

And this is what makes a good gameplay.