Shoot of 0?

[tugunmojo]

I am stating up my son's Space Demons (think Aliens) and I was wondering if their Shoot is 0, would that deduct from their point value? I was thinking that a Shoot of 2 is 0 points, and not having a ranged attack would be a disadvantage.

Thanks in advance,
Jamey

[kealios]

I encountered this when building my K9 units, and posted it in the Drones section.

What this game needs is "FLAWZ"! Reverse-Modz-type abilities that allow negative points, thus reducing the cost of a unit by imposing vulnerabilities or strict restrictions on what a unit can and cannot do.

The problem with this is it allows even more Min-maxing, but I suppose if the points awarded were low (like 1 or 2 points per) and were limited to 1 per unit, it wouldnt get out of hand.

Personally, I'd like to see Shoot 0 or Skill 0 as Zero Points, and scale upwards from there.

[tugunmojo]

Flawz are an interesting idea. The only reason I mentioned it is that modern/scifi games are almost always "shootie"'games and having a faction that doesn't shoot could be at a disadvantage.

However, that being said, I haven't actually play tested the stats yet. I might find out that the perkz they have balance out pretty well. Besides, the point values are on such a small scale, it might really not be much of an issue. While I like games with balancing point systems, I'm really more interested in a good couple of hours of gaming!

Any official answer would be appreciated,

Jamey

[kealios]

BTW with my dogs, I just declined to buy a ranged weapon, saving on cost...

[tberry7403]

Check out the "Weapons Table" on page 49.

Third item on the list:
Weapon Class: Basic
Description: Weapons made for close combat. Swords, mace, axe... Also natural abilities: claws, fangs, etc.
Damage: 6
Cost: 1

Tim

[tugunmojo]

Thanks!

[inrepose]

Yes I think I need a note in the rules to say that zero cost stats don't cost anything to purchase.

[kealios]

Robin, any thoughts on the current points cost for stats, as compared to an escalating points cost for higher-valued stats?

[velsharoon]

I would also like to chime in to this discussion. Recently a lot of members of my club have been picking up 15mm sci fi, myself and another fellow forum member Tim Snoddy have led the way by choosing gruntz as our ruleset.

We have loved the game so far, the mechanics are spot on and on the whole the points values are fine, however there doesnt seem to be a reason to pick a lower shoot value for gruntz units.

Mathematicaly for the price of one extra point you get a large increase in chance to hit for eg why use shoot 4 when you can use shoot 5. I am not a powergamer by any means but it seems you really have to be a gentleman when picking your forces to make sure you have a good variety of squads. Playing everyone with the same high shoot is quite dull, but at the same time why handicap yourself by not doing it.

To me it suggests the increase in shoot value needs to have a bigger increase in points, perhaps similar to skills progression. This would lead to the army builder being more robust and we wouldnt feel guilty by choosing higher shoot values as the points would scale with it.

Is there a reason (gameplay or otherwise) this hasnt been done before? Maybe we are missing something, but its something I would hope would be addressed in the new ruleset, as to be honest it could turn out to be a deal breaker (we have considered house ruling it, and probably will if you dont change it, but we hope to stick with the ruleset as is in order to encourage other players).

[timsnoddy]

And here I am to chime in with my gaming buddies comments. I really like some things about the army builder but hate the points as written. I played a game last week with a Sahadeen force using the cards another forum member kindly created. My opponent played a terminator style army including a max sized mecha. I thought I was doomed from the outset but the way the builder is done meant the mecha destroyed anything it hit but it had a fair chance of missing and was easy to hit but very hard to damage itself. I lost but not by the vast margin I anticipated.

The weapon classification, damage, and ranges are all super. The limits on what weapons can go on what are great. The ability to stat up any model the USP that got me into the game. The relative cost of vehicles to squads seems about right.

I am frustrated at the moment by not feeling able to explore the full range of possible units. Shoot statistic for basic Gruntz squads seems the most glaring example. If I was a power gamer I would take max shoot and minimum skill. The problem is there in vehicles as well though. I pointed up some Mechas and a really rubbish scout one came out at 30 and a much better one at 33 which in a 150pts game means little. I would love to be able to field a mass of poorly skilled and armed troops and have a reasonable chance against a better equipped but because of points significantly fewer enemy.

Don't get me wrong no points system can be perfect but there needs to be much more differentiation points wise between good and poor examples of any given class, IMHO.

[zombie4prophet]

I've been toying around with the following modified tables:
Shoot/Assault/Skill
0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 /
-2 / 0 / 1 / 3 / 6 / 10/ 15/ 21/

The basis for this is of course the bell curve on rolling two six-sided dice.

For Guard/Soak
10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15
1. / 3 / 6 / 10 / 15 / 21

This is not strictly based on bell-curve results as these numbers versus an assumed average of 4 for any stat are gut feeling same curve to represent proportional 'worth' of top stats.

Mental

4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10
-2/ 1 / 3 / 6 /10/ 15/ 21

This is arguably the most undervalued stat as it has a major impact on the game.

Remember that GruntZ divide by 2 so

Shooting - 6, Assault -4, Skill - 0, Guard -13, Soak-13, Mental -8
Elite troops come in at 25 points plus weapons.

Shooting - 4, Assault -2, Skill - 0, Guard -11, Soak-11, Mental -6
Militia troops are 7 points plus weapons.

This will really increase the costs on vehicles and what not when buying stats, but I need to play test whether or not the elites are worth approximately 2.30 times the militia. (Weapons being equal it would be 32 points, 14 points). I think they probably are.

It gets trickier with vehicles/mecha and the high end stats are probably so over-valued as to be impractical, but they are better for creating classes of GruntZ.

[timsnoddy]

Dec 8, 2011 16:30:57 GMT -5 zombie4prophet said:

I've been toying around with the following modified tables:
Shoot/Assault/Skill
0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 /
-2 / 0 / 1 / 3 / 6 / 10/ 15/ 21/

The basis for this is of course the bell curve on rolling two six-sided dice.

For Guard/Soak
10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15
1. / 3 / 6 / 10 / 15 / 21

This is not strictly based on bell-curve results as these numbers versus an assumed average of 4 for any stat are gut feeling same curve to represent proportional 'worth' of top stats.

Mental

4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10
-2/ 1 / 3 / 6 /10/ 15/ 21

This is arguably the most undervalued stat as it has a major impact on the game.

Remember that GruntZ divide by 2 so

Shooting - 6, Assault -4, Skill - 0, Guard -13, Soak-13, Mental -8
Elite troops come in at 25 points plus weapons.

Shooting - 4, Assault -2, Skill - 0, Guard -11, Soak-11, Mental -6
Militia troops are 7 points plus weapons.

This will really increase the costs on vehicles and what not when buying stats, but I need to play test whether or not the elites are worth approximately 2.30 times the militia. (Weapons being equal it would be 32 points, 14 points). I think they probably are.

It gets trickier with vehicles/mecha and the high end stats are probably so over-valued as to be impractical, but they are better for creating classes of GruntZ.

Great work. Certainly on the right lines. I am not that good at actually crunching stats. A points cost modifier of 2.3x between milita and elite would not seem too far off to me. I also wondered if some modz and perkz should cost more for more expensive units. For example is "let rip" really worth the same to a small weapon specialist as it is to one armed with a much larger weapon.

[zombie4prophet]

Tim,

The quick answer is no way, the value of modz and perkz are off, but the big problem in most point value calculators is synergy is very hard to factor in.

For example, "let rip" and "mimic" or something like high Shoot, strong weapons low everything else with "let rip" and "melt away" you create a situation where troops with low survivability have the perk to surprise an unwary opponent by melting away into a prime shooting location and then letting rip.

This will likely get clarified in the redacting GruntZ 1.1 by saying melt away uses an action, but I sure wouldn't want to play against a min/maxer like that, but if it is a tournament setting, you'll get those clowns. I suspect that is the purpose of only 1 Perk except in extreme cases.

My preference would be to arrange Perkz along the lines of 2 - 7 points and add them after the division by two has occurred. I tend to do the same thing with weapons and I've adjusted the GruntZ values accordingly. I also feel that a premium of paying +5 points and the 2nd Perkz cost is an effective way to cost a second perk. I only allow one squad and attachment per game to break the one perk rule, except for medics and engineers.

Anyway, I have been plugging away at modifying the costs, I just need to play test to ensure it works in Game.

[timsnoddy]

Thanks for all the hard work, I hope Robin is listening. Yeah, perkz and weapon cost after dvision is definitely the way to go.

[inrepose]

Yes I am listening . Thanks for these considerations on the stats. I have been working through the points again and hopefully taking most of these thoughts into account. Most of problem stems from the fact that I wanted units to cost a points factor of 8 through to a maximum of 50. This was aimed at delivering a very quick and easy system with low numbers for ease of setup, rather than the usual SCI-FI games where armies might be counted in the 1000's of points.

However this has resulted in some issues where the differential is very low for some stats, so it feels like there is no benefit to taking a lower stat, especially where rounding breaks the math. So hopefully the newer updated points will address this by making a bigger difference to the incremental steps for each stat. It won't be perfect but hopefully closer to being balanced.