Try making a thread like that on the General Discussion or the Founders Lounge and see what happens Maybe you'll prove that I have too little faith in people, but I doubt it

Yeah, you're right about the character slots. My mistake, sorry.

As for the SHs jump versus flight, oh we had a lively discussion about that with Quothe All in all, I was really pissed, but now it doesn't bother me as well. I still have one concern, though - the altitude. I would really like to see SHs being able to jump much higher than Marines or Orks, control and hang time aside.

Mostly basing it off of the fact that people don't seem to mind Eldar having more classes either, once given a logical reason for it. I don't like making threads in the Founder's Lounge; 99% of the threads there seem to have no reason to be there over General Discussion.

As for Swooping Hawks going higher than other factions, I do agree there. We're likely months too early to discuss that though.

Hmmm, a jump height similar to assault marines would be acceptable if we got a massive Skyleap-style jump on a longer cooldown timer.

I'm with you on that.

And that's a pretty good idea on balancing skyleap and jump altitude.

Wall of words, I choose you! *throws text at screen*
Going off of how assault jump mechanics are currently, how about this for the SH jumps: A short review, Assault Marines have 3 charges to their jump pack. 1 press they launch into the air, second press a small extension to air travel, 3rd press another extension. They can spend 2nd or 3rd point in a slam down attack to close the distance and make a shockwave on impact.

Now for swooping hawks with that system: They have 3 or 4 charges. 1 Jump goes into the air, another jump activates the glide mode, another jump to go to ground quickly and safely, (if 4 then 1 charge remains to jump again but not glide.) For the skyleap 2 or 3 charges spent (by holding the jump button down) to launch yourself high into the air, then 1 spent to glide, and another to return to ground safely.
As I understand it only exarchs have melee weapons. So with them players can have a gap closer like the Assault Marines have just minus the shockwave on impact. Could their grenade device function in that manner? Shoot a grenade, it goes off on impact then the SH Exarch lands there right after with spiffy Eldar blade ready. Or do the grenades only go directly under the S. Hawk?

We of course have much that needs to be revealed & answered and everything is subject to balance at all times. How fast can we glide around? How high? Will our wings awkwardly clip through things and be visible to players on the opposite side of the wall/whatever? How fast does it recharge? How many licks does it take to get to the center of the Webway? Eldar tech, how does it work!? (I just read a thread about shuriken catapults. I did not know they worked that way. There was also math that scared and confused my brain meat. lol)
Why I added the "2 or 3 charges spent" to skyleap is if we can recharge while gliding, if so I think just a recharge of 1 charge while gliding will be sufficient. Subject to balance of course but it could reflect eldar favor for mobility as well as give a charge to have a chance to get out of a jump turned bad without killing yourself from a high drop. I also thought about an enhanced jump function akin to the Autarch in Dawn of War 2: Retribution. While probably better suited for Harlequins should they ever be added or in smaller form to Howling Banshess. It acts as a controlled jump like if we wanted to only go up to a window halfway up the side of a building, we could jump then activate glide at that point rather than jump and fall to the window height then activate glide. Or just jump like grasshopper through tall grass. I just agree that SH should go higher than Assaults even if they'd need a loadout equip to do that. I also don't fancy the idea of it functioning like Planetside 2 jetpacks where you have to tap it to stay in the air. Maybe inspiration can be taken from Warlock's glide in Destiny.
EDIT: Video for reference

As far as grenade packs go, I think just dropping them right underneath you would be sufficient. The system you propose for the jumps itself could very well work. It's a playtest thing, and it'll be aaaggeeesss before we get to see the devs mess with that. So hard to wait!

"Feel" of the destiny jump seems about right, airtime and stuff obviously not ^^

Back on topic

Yes Eldar have more classes due to being more specialised.
Yes their weapons tend to be unique to the classes on account of that specialisation (shuriken pistols being the obvious exception).

However specialisation in the other race's classes will also involve carrying specialised weapons for each role, so the total number of specialisation options in each race could well still turn out to be the same.
Sure the Eldar won't have as many specialisation options per class, but they have more classes so it balances out.

The end result, the same number of weapon choices per race making the prices equivalent (and still too high).

Doesn't necessarily work out like that.

Let's say you prefer using heavy melee weapons over ones that swing fast. Let's also say we're looking at 2 scenario's: Indoor fighting (less mobility needed) and outdoor fighting (more needed).

As a Space Marine, I can just buy 1 heavy chainsword. For outdoor I equip jump pack, for indoor stormshield. Done.

As an Eldar, I have to buy 1 weapon for my Banshee, and 1 for my Warp Spider (they're not in yet, but feel like closest analogue to jump pack). That's twice the amount of weapons bought for the same roles to be filled.

You could argue I need to buy the stormshield, but that's an assumption (it could be a default alternate loadout option), and that's a piece of wargear anyway, not a weapon. Both my banshee and warp spider will need wargear, too, so I have to again pay for wargear twice to customize to my needs.

So no, I do effectively have to buy twice the weapons to have the same bases covered in many situations. In addition, let's simplify and say that we have 2 equipment categories (for example, weapon + 1 piece of wargear), and see how buying extras affects the variety of builds I can make with the same amount of purchases, alternating purchases between the two categories.

Assault Marine Start: 1² = 1 build
Assault Marine after 8 purchases (5 choices in each category): 5²=25 builds

Banshee+Warp Spider start = 1² + 1² = 2 builds
After 8 purchases (3 choices per category per class) = 3² + 3² = 18 builds

As you can clearly see, each new purchase for the factions with a lower amount of classes racks up a higher amount of new potential builds unlocked.

These two points are obviously oversimplified for analysis sake. Don't get too stuck up on the specific examples chosen (maybe you don't agree with the class examples I picked for instance; there's hundreds more I could have chosen, so that wouldn't be much of a counter-argument), just look at the general point. It should be quite clear that a single piece of equipment is just lower value to Eldar than to others.

not exactly the same concepts but heres a thread I made earlier that addresses this issue albiet from a different angle
http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/rts-pricing-equality-across-factions.40804/

That may or may not be true, it's too soon to tell.

For starters we may simply be seeing the generic weapons for other races and class specific weapons for the Eldar at this moment, which is giving us a false impression.
Later on, when more weapons are released there could well be a number of similarly generic Eldar weapons (Power swords, Shuriken pistols, Plasma grenades) that will be used by a greater number of classes, and similarly a number of highly specialised weapons for other races that are class/role locked.

Secondly we have no way to know if the other races specialised 'role specific' weaponry, (being more widely available,) aren't going to cause several lines of a race's development tree to converge on specific roles.
What I mean by this is that a Space Marine sergeant, a SM captain and an Assault Marine may all have access to a powerfist, but as a result all of these are forcing them away from a general 'jack of all trades' freedom and locking themselves into a very specific assault role thanks to the character point cost in equipping these weapons.

Additionally you are assuming that the Eldar weapons don't have overlap, however they do.
A Dire Avenger's weapons can be used by an Avenger, an Avenger Exarch (minor hero upgrade similar to sergeant) and possibly an Autarch, while the same could be said for a Banshee's power sword, or a Scorpion's chainsword, or even a Hawk's lasblaster.

Each weapon is tied to a role, but in the case of the Eldar each role is very much specific to a class.


Edit - It's very unlikely that you will as a Space Marine, "just buy 1 heavy chainsword. For outdoor I equip jump pack, for indoor stormshield. Done."
Since Stormshields are Terminator weapons whereas jumppacks are not usable while wearing Terminator armour.

They've said that the Assault Marines will have the option to dump their jump pack and get a shield. You're right though, it might not be a "storm shield", but Astartes have a variety of non-terminator shields at their disposal. So I used the wrong name, but the idea holds.

I don't think it matters that some weapons can be equipped by exarchs too, since that system exists for Space Marines as well.

As for the rest of your post: Certainly, some loadouts for space marines will specialize them, but this doesn't reduce their total flexibility. It just locks it in for one life, until they switch it. In a game where 1 character slot let's you play every class in your sub-faction, I doubt we'll see any sort of branching specializations of the classes that's irreversible. It doesn't mesh with the rest of the game as revealed so far.

Of course, it is very easy to imagine a way they could implement the system to avoid these issues. But that's what this thread is here for, to make it more likely that these 'potential' issues are thought about and avoided.