Fleet should temporarily improve the using Eldar's move speed. While active, Accuracy could be reduced. Spoiler Dire Avenger Move Speeds Base / Fleet of Foot Forward: 7.5-ms / 9-ms Strafe: 6-ms / 7.2-ms Back-Pedal: 4-ms / 4.8-ms Sprint: 15-ms / 18-ms Battle Focus could give Eldar a lower Bloom percentage when moving and/or reduce how much their speed is decreased when firing/aiming. For example, when a C/SM/Ork moves their reticle could bloom by 33.4 to 50%, while the Eldar would only bloom by 25 to 33.4%. Even with their weapons' naturally lesser accuracy(S.Cat vs Bolter) they could have similar on-the-move performance due to the S.Cat's lesser on-the-move-bloom and lower recoil. If necessary, the lower bloom could be applied only to Forward/Back-Pedal movement, with Strafing receiving the same bloom as other the factions' weapons. A good thing about ADA in this game is Cover limits the situations in which it can even be performed, requiring players stand further back from their chosen cover and thus leaving them more vulnerable to AoE weaponry and more exposed on their flanks. Yes you can, if you translate them from one game type to another. You can even use Weapon and Ballistic Skill. For instance, a Bolter is Strength 4, 24" Range and a SM's BS is 4. Each point of S is 3.4 DMG/cm spread, as Imperial Guardsman(S3) is used as the base for 10 DMG. Using a system that rounds DMG to the nearest 1/10th, S1 must be 3.4. Bolter with S4 should have a 13.6-cm spread at 24-meters but the spread is reduced by BS to 3.4-cm spread. Multiplying the Bolter's 24" Range by the SM's BS 4 gives a Max DMG Range of 96-meters, the point at which the weapon deals the least damage. Divide that range by 2 provides another sharp damage drop at 48-meters. SM has a Weapon Skill of 4 and so has a 90-degree targeting arc. Ork with Choppa has a WS of 3 and so has a 120-degree targeting arc. While this does enable the Ork to hit more targets per swing than the SM it also makes them more likely to hit objects nearby and recoil off them. Toughness is a scale of 1 to 10, so each point of T = 10 HP. Armor Save is a scale of 1 to 6, so each point of AS = 16.7 Armor. Wounds act as a multiplier for HP/Armor. SM with 3+ AS, T4, W1 has 66.8 Armor and 40 HP. A 13.6 Base DMG Bolter(S4) would require 8 Bolts to Down the Marine. Bolter TTK: 1.75-sec, 8 Bolts, 0.25-sec Fire Rate Health DMG would be modified by Strength vs Toughness. For each point of Strength above/below target Toughness +/-10% DMG If Strength is 2x or more than target Toughness +50% DMG If Strength is 1/2 or less than target Toughness -50% DMG. A Bolter would deal 13.6 HP DMG to a Marine/Ork but 15 HP DMG to a T3 Eldar. Armor Penetration can be use as it is supposed to be; to Penetrate Armor. An AP3 Power Sword would be able to deal 16.7% of its damage through a SM's Power Armor directly to their HP. An AP2 Plasma Gun would be able to deal 33.4% of its damage through the PA, which actually allows it to Down the Marine before fully depleting their Armor. Spoiler Bolter TTK vs C/SM: 1.75-sec, 8 Bolts, 0.25-sec Fire Rate, 30 Bolt Mag Bolter TTK vs Ork(default 'Eavy Armor)/Eldar(Heavy Aspect Armor): 1.5-sec, 7 Bolts Bolter TTK vs Eldar(Aspect Armor): 1.25-sec, 6 Bolts Accuracy: 3.4-cm spread at 24-meters Major Damage Drops: 48 and 96-meters Shoota TTK vs C/SM: 1.26-sec, 8 Rounds, 0.18-sec FR, 45 Round Mag Shoota TTK vs Eldar(HAA): 1.08-sec, 7 Rounds Shoota TTK vs Eldar(AA): 0.9-sec, 6 Rounds Accuracy: 6-cm spread at 24-meters Major Damage Drops: 27 and 54-meters Given Ballistic Skill+1(total of 3). TTK advantage to make up for accuracy/range/recoil disadvantages. Avenger S.Cat. TTK vs C/SM: 1.242-sec, 24 Shuriken, 0.054-sec FR, 120 Shuriken Core Avenger S.Cat. TTK vs Ork: 1.026-sec, 20 Shuriken Accuracy: 4.5-cm spread at 24-meters Major Damage Drops: 36 and 72-meters Eldar/Astartes weapons should be asymmetrically balanced with Eldar having the advantage in close and C/SM the advantage in long range. Completely untrue because you can create base mechanics for what you do have that when applied to the missing classes/factions/etc. etc. makes their creation/balancing process much faster, ultimately saving great time and resources.
@Zaeryn, we completely disagree on basically everything so I am going to go ahead and not respond anymore. I don't believe that your math models accurately account for the massive differences between TT and live action play. You constantly underestimate the complexities of both statistical analysis and game design to the point where I think it is disrespectful of the developers. Additionally, the developers are making a huge game with tons of features and don't have the time to read pages of statistics by people who they have no reason to trust. They do listen, but only to easily digestible opinions and polite opinions.
This entire post.. just.. what. I mean, don't get me wrong, I can tell you love 40k what with your passion for it but just.. this entire post leaves me with only one expression, why? Why would you want the developers to translate values from one game to another and then use those as the values for the weapon statistics in your game rather than their own creativity and interpretations?
It's called "not re-inventing the wheel." The basic rule book and codices have hundreds of pages of rules and mathematical models which define 40k mechanics.
And yet those codices & rule books have flaws and allow for cheesy & broken army builds, they also dictate situations in a game relying wholly on turns and dice rolling, I'd agree with you if this was a table-top game, but it's not. If you don't want to re-invent the wheel then you'd be even more in favour of not implementing systems like this, this is an action game and more than that a third person shooter, you cannot extract arbitrary meaning from rules for a table-top game, very roughly convert them into meters and other usable values and expect the balance to work as well as in table-top or even provide a satisfactory gameplay experience.
Weapons have power levels on TT and video games. Armor has ratings. Factions have different combat styles. Why make new things up when it has already been done. Why change the way people expect the game to play by ignoring those rules. Why are Eldar as tough as SMs. Where is anything close to their battle focus? If they improved the faction/game by doing it their way that would be great, but I am not seeing that. I'm seeing Eldar as slim SMs that can't shoot.
You cannot extract the "power level" of a weapon from table-top nor the stats without extremely rough guesswork and estimation and even at that, it will result in a very iffy weapon balance and state of overall class balance across the board and likely result in numbers and stats that developers cannot even use in order to implement into the game without further guesswork. Put it this way, the codices are full of issues with overlapping strength/ws/bs stats and various other issues that do not accurately represent the case, Marines are meant to be stronger than an average man by a large margin yet only have strength 4 to a guardsman's strength 3? and apparently Eldar Storm Guardians are strength 3 yet so is a guardsman despite Eldar being stronger & taller than regular humans? hmm.. almost as if the data is extremely inconsistent and contradictory. This is not an example of something that has already been done, make no mistake, this is the first attempt at making a game that solidifies how each faction fights, what their capabilities and specialties are, so when making a third person shooter action video game you will unfortunately have to focus on things that can be done realistically and throw the overly complex numbers on display here to the side and just decide how you want the weapon to function and set it up in such a state, after which you can tweak it to get it just right, throwing a ridiculous amount of numbers at a developer without any real understanding behind it, just spewing the stuff, won't get anything done. Can't address much on the Founder's server & asymmetrical balance but do know that it is being carried out in the background, plenty of work has already happened and plenty is still coming.
There is no arguing with this (well maybe the 2x part, but that's just details). Eldar are DEFINED by 3 things. 1. Their basic troops are Highly Specialised. 2. They are typically Glass Cannons relying more on damage avoidance than soaking it up. 3. They are FAST! If you want to successfully adapt Eldar to a computer game you absolutely need to make the player feel like all 3 apply. Marginally quicker 'vault over cover' animations and flips simply won't cut it. They need to move faster as an absolute minimum simply to reflect the lore.
These numbers are not overly complex its normally 1 to X. Normal humans and their weapons are normally S3, T3. If you use that as your 100% then SM are 33% tougher and stronger than humans, but my impressions is that the game was designed around SMs so with their S4, T4, I would rather say that humans are 25% weaker. That is still quite significant. Melee damage dealt by Eldar should be 25% less than SM. They should be 25% weaker. Eldar have Battle Focus that is run/shoot or shoot/run. That does not necessarily make them "faster" because SM can run. But that power needs to be brought into the game by either allowing Eldar to run and shoot at the same time, which is most likely more difficult because it breaks the infantry class, or just up the speed of the Eldar run so battle focus changes from Move, Run & Shoot, compared to SMs Move, Shoot to Move x2, Shoot. That seems powerful yes, but their melee is 25% weaker and their durability is 25% weaker. That is the asymmetric balance. Now if you throw in orks, they are 25% weaker than SMs, should be as tough as SM but lack the armor, so they would be less durable, but in their melee they base as 2 attacks to SMs 1. How is that going to be implemented, that is orks. The asymmetric balance does not come through war gear like the devs are leaning to. The asymmetric balance is in how the factions are played. SM/CSM base. Eldar glass ranged cannon. Ork glass melee cannon. As for all the war gear, its in the codex also. Bolter is S4 melta is S8 and ignores armor. Lascannon S9 its a heavy so you cannot move and shoot (snapshot only) but where is that cooldown? In a TT I can shoot 1 lascannon shot the same time I rapid fire a boltgun. In this game I can practially empty a boltgun clip buy the time I get two lascannon shots off. Boltgun and Bolt Pistol have the same strength, not in EC. Plasma Cannon, Plasma Gun, Plasma Pistol can kill on a get's hot, where is that? Plasma Cannon cannot move and shoot in the TT but in EC it can. People talk about balance, there is balance in the TT but is not being implemented. Plasma is an important one. It is very strong. There is so much plasma out there to counter the MoN. The reason its there is that the balance has been removed. The "gets hot" kills you is not there so it adds all the benefits of high strength plasma without the balancing penalty. If players could get killed on a "gets hot"--let them do it themselves through overcharge, kill them. These are all the rules that TT are familiar with. These are the feel of the game and can be used for the design not balance. Balance is tweaking values. Design is making the Eldar fast glass cannons.
