Grunts vs. Grunt Specilist

[godsgopher]

I was playing with the Barracks builder and tinkering around with some ideas for my Japanese troops when I noticed what I feel is a major dependency. Comparing a six man squad of grunts to the Grunt Specialist I noticed the Specialist is more expensive for the exact same stat line and weapons.

Example: Grunt and Specialist

Shoot: 3
assault: 3
Guard: 11
Soak: 12
Mental: 7
Skill: 2

and I did a Specialist at Medium giving it 6 HP same number of hits as the squad. All were armed with a Projectile Rifle at 2 points. So..

Grunts = 7 Points
Specialist = 11 Points

However even if these two units were equal price they are in no way equal in abilities. For example the Grunt six man squad has 6 rifles where the specialist only has 1. In addition while both groups have the same number of collective HP they are not equal in survivability. It will take 6 successful hits and 6 successful damage rolls to kill the grunt squad (assuming they don't go into condition brown and run off the table) However in theory a single Hit and a single high damage roll can kill the specialist even with 6 HP.

Therefore I can only conclude that the math underlying these units is deeply flawed. I'm prepared to accept the Grunt pricing and therefore look at the specialist as having the flawed point value. For the grunts the pricing is for a group of 6, but the specialist is only one unit. Or said another way the value per grunt is 1.6666 vs. 11 points per specialist. The idea behind the specialist it to bring unique group affecting abilities or heavy special weapons to the battlefield. However Medic, Engineer, and Commander are only a 4 point value. But your adding this to a base cost far far above the price of a grunt. This means adding an actual heavy weapon is only going to make your specialist even more point heavy while having less of a survival chance than a squad! Better to just take said heavy weapon in a squad. 

I'm going to play with the math a little and see if I can figure out an alternative. This post is just to start a discussion of what I see as an issue, or to discover that I have missed something vitally important in the rules that accounts for the massive point cost.

[Mr. Harold]

You're right of course, there is a discrepancy

But, if you're not using your specialist to a) represent a special unit or b) take advantage of the specialist's abilities it doesn't make sense cost wise.

Specialists are the only units that can be engineers or medics.

They can use cover more effectively (can be smaller targets)

Can take specialist weapons.

All those things mean you have to pay a premium to use them.

I'm going to look side by side at the two unit builders and see exactly where the points differ, but that's always been my thoughts on them, and I've used them to pretty good advantage. Of course, you bring up some good disadvantages too.

[godsgopher]

I do encourage you to do so. In my own research using identical stats and fixing the multiple Hit Points at 6, the same as a standard grunt squad I see a 3 point difference. This means the specialist is not only more expensive. But also with equal weapons possesses 1/6th the firepower and while technically being equal in the amount of damage it can absorb, realistically as a single model can be expected to take multiple wounds per hit. I think you will be fortunate to survive two or three hits. 

After playing with the point costs a bit I think the best answer (Well the simplest for those without a barracks program or spreadsheet) is to add a finial point modification of /2 to the total point cost. So using my example above 11 points = 5.5 which rounds to 6 points. I'm in no way happy with this but its a start.

[Mr. Harold]

I think the issue is that they're not designed to be gruntz squad replacements. They're designed to be "specialists", either as a medic, engineer, or a very heavy weapons team.

Put a specialist heavy laser FA on a scout specialist and you have a pretty powerful distraction/AT unit.

[godsgopher]

To my mind that begs the question. What is a specialist worth? I feel the point cost should be shifted in such a way to reflect the value of these specializations (Medic, Engineer, of Commander) rather than calculating the majority of the point cost on the units abilities as though it was a full squad of troops. I believe a specialist ought to cost according to its specialization or weapon. A battlefield medic might be worth 15 points (assuming my previous 11 point example + 4 for Medic) however the initial example of a solo guy with a rifle is obviously over priced.

-Medic, Engineer, and Commander are under-priced
-The base specialist value is being calculated like a squad even though its one target. this leads to an over priced unit.
-The "cost" should be applied to the specialization or weapon, not the general unit.
-I hesitate to say the weapons are too cheap, but maybe some of them are. A Spec. Heavy Plasma Gun is 3 points. A Laser Rifle is also 3 points. However a Spec. Laser Gun Full Auto is 5 points. And that is fine I think.

I'm considering a point recalculation as follows. Instead of an overall 1/2 reduction in price, modify the Sub-total by 1/2 then Weapons and Perks are full price. This reduces the cost of the unit but keeps the value of its specializations and lets you tack on the cost by what the unit actually does. Not forcing you to assume that a specialist is expensive just because its a specialist.  

[Mr. Harold]

I like your line of thinking... i'll have to mull over that a bit.

[godsgopher]

I had an additional thought about the cost of weapons. I realized this morning in the rush to get to work that all the pistols and rifles are priced for 6 of them. So a Laser rifle will cost you 3 points but a Medium Projectile only costs 1 point! This means the value or a standard gun should be 1/6th but the 'support' weapons should remain as is because your buying an individual weapon.

[inrepose]

It is more about the Specialist being able to take different weapons and to act independently. So if you bought 5 specialists you could split them up across the board. Mostly it is all about potential to carry the specialist weapons like snipers etc which the normal Gruntz can't take because they are restricted to the non-specialist weapons + the squad attachment. So yes like for like with a basic Specialist and a Grunt it will look wrong but the potential to take the better weapons and a few more hit points pushes up the base cost.