crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
|
Post by crimsyn on Nov 10, 2017 19:46:17 GMT
So, I've been thinking about immunities a lot lately. Frankly, as they are, they're stupid. Now, they work for certain factions such as Cygnar and Menoth, so I'm not saying they need to go away. However, here's the problem. Immunities dont just grant an armor boost. They give ACTUAL IMMUNITY. Absolutely no damage from the typed attack. There aren't any corresponding weaknesses, either. As such, theres absolutely no reason to bring a typed gun. Its punishing to do so. Its not like its a gamble where you hope you run into a model that has a weakness to your gun type. You're just hoping that your opponent wont have any immunities. I don't believe this makes for very balanced gameplay. By this logic, there is absolutely no reason to bring a non-magical weapon just in case you run into incorporeal models, yet people take them literally all the time. On the flip side, models that have immunities pay extra for those features, which don’t come up every game. Assault Kommandos are a little more expensive in part because they are immune to fire and acid, and not every list I drop them into has the mass fire and corrosive weapons that they just sluff off. If there is no reason to take typed weapons because they might not be effective if your opponent has immunities, then by the same logic there is no reason to take models with immunities because your opponent might not bring weapons they are immune to. Further, weapons that do do typed damage often have a built-in bonus effect. For example, most flamethrowers and fire breath weapons also have continuous fire, lots of electrical guns have electro-leaps, etc. Having a bad day once in a while against enemies wearing asbestos suits is the price you pay for the ability to set swaths of non-asbestos wearing dudes on fire. Keep it the way it is. Besides, it’s not like people are whining that Assault Kommandos are OP and need nerfs.
|
|
demonic
Junior Strategist
Posts: 649
|
Post by demonic on Nov 10, 2017 20:12:13 GMT
alright, a lot of people had huge text things and I didn't feel like reading all the way through them so I'll skip to my thoughts on the ideas of immunities and weapon damage types.
First, corrosive effects are SUPER effective against metal IRL, so much so that we have had to make special alloys and chemical coatings to fight against just daily corrosion from the chemicals in the air. On the other hand, flesh has quite a resistance to basic corrosive effects. It takes highly toxic acids and bases in order to break down the chemical compounds in the body. What flesh is weak to in comparison to metal would be radiation and poisons.
The immunity idea, as a whole, is actually rather interesting, but I do believe they are horribly screwing up weapon damage types. Basically, if a weapon has an elemental type, it's a weakness, not a strength. If that element can apply it's continuous effect? it's a strength. However, there are many weapons throughout factions that are, as an example, corrosive base that cannot effect models with corrosive immunities, yet do not have any sort of corrosive advantage against models that aren't... It's these weapons and abilities that need to be looked over. If I strike a jack with lightning, I should be able to disrupt it, yet I can't if my lightning ability doesn't say it has disruption? I get part of it, an electro leap that auto disrupted every jack it hit would be way too strong against jack spams. However, if the original weapon can't disrupt the first target... why even make it electrical base? so that you can hit your own units with it?
|
|
bacon
Junior Strategist
Posts: 134
|
Post by bacon on Nov 10, 2017 20:51:58 GMT
I like how immunities are handled in CoI, 1 less dice on damage roll. This is exactly the change I would want to see. Every time I see people propose this I always wonder why people think druids of orboros deserve to be made even worse. I think that for the most part elemental immunities are fine. Its only a problem when factions/themes have a way of handing it out to multiple models/units (outside of feats) that didn't have it before, skewing immunity across a whole army.
|
|
|
Post by Blargaliscious on Nov 10, 2017 21:02:56 GMT
Immunities are fine. In reality, though, we should consider Immunities to be "significant resistances" instead to accomodate weapons of certain design or significant power.
It makes sense that factions that are heavy into certain types of weapons would have immunities to those weapons built into them from a safe-handling perspective and to mitigate friendly collateral damage. The simplistic nature that Warmachine / Hordes handles it is fine to keep the game from getting bogged down, and the -D6 damage that is in CoI is a complication that is tolerated (and required) by the scope of the game. Some of the ideas that others have proposed are neat ideas, I just think they add an extra layer of complication to playing and balancing the game that we don't need.
While the simplistic nature of how the Immunities works is fine for a a lot of the weapons, there is one aspect that the rules do not take into account that needs to be addressed: kinetic energy.
Let's say that a Protectorate Sunburst weapon crew (or the Flame Belcher on a Vanquisher) is fired at a Khador Assault Kommando. Because those two weapons are fire weapons, yet the Assault Kommando has immunity to Fire, no damage is done even though something slammed or exploded into the trooper. Does this make sense? Take it to the extreme - if the biggest and nastiest dragon with fire breath were to breath a massive gout of super-heated flame at a target with immunity to fire it would ignore it and walk away - according to the rules.
I think that some weapons, on a case-by-case basis, should be given a rule that says that when the weapon directly hits a target with an immunity to the type of attack (Cold, Corrosion, Electricity, Fire) instead of taking no damage it takes -D6 damage due to the impact of the weapon. In extreme cases the weapon should get a special rule that says the type of immunity in question has no effect due to the extreme nature of the attack.
|
|
|
Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Nov 10, 2017 22:03:57 GMT
Immunities are fine. In reality, though, we should consider Immunities to be "significant resistances" instead to accomodate weapons of certain design or significant power. It makes sense that factions that are heavy into certain types of weapons would have immunities to those weapons built into them from a safe-handling perspective and to mitigate friendly collateral damage. The simplistic nature that Warmachine / Hordes handles it is fine to keep the game from getting bogged down, and the -D6 damage that is in CoI is a complication that is tolerated (and required) by the scope of the game. Some of the ideas that others have proposed are neat ideas, I just think they add an extra layer of complication to playing and balancing the game that we don't need. While the simplistic nature of how the Immunities works is fine for a a lot of the weapons, there is one aspect that the rules do not take into account that needs to be addressed: kinetic energy. Let's say that a Protectorate Sunburst weapon crew (or the Flame Belcher on a Vanquisher) is fired at a Khador Assault Kommando. Because those two weapons are fire weapons, yet the Assault Kommando has immunity to Fire, no damage is done even though something slammed or exploded into the trooper. Does this make sense? Take it to the extreme - if the biggest and nastiest dragon with fire breath were to breath a massive gout of super-heated flame at a target with immunity to fire it would ignore it and walk away - according to the rules. I think that some weapons, on a case-by-case basis, should be given a rule that says that when the weapon directly hits a target with an immunity to the type of attack (Cold, Corrosion, Electricity, Fire) instead of taking no damage it takes -D6 damage due to the impact of the weapon. In extreme cases the weapon should get a special rule that says the type of immunity in question has no effect due to the extreme nature of the attack. That seems needlessly complicated to fix an immersion problem that's not even close to the most ridiculous scenario in the game. This is a game where you can turn trees into pirates after all.
|
|
|
Post by welshhoppo on Nov 10, 2017 22:35:07 GMT
I think that for ease and to cut down on the time to play (as the majority of the important matches are on a clock.) Immunities are fine as they are.
Yes it's quite weird how models immune to fire are somehow immune to the blue fires that Archangel's spit out of their faces, but it's much easier than adding or subtracting dice every time it hits something.
|
|
crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
|
Post by crimsyn on Nov 10, 2017 23:38:12 GMT
While the simplistic nature of how the Immunities works is fine for a a lot of the weapons, there is one aspect that the rules do not take into account that needs to be addressed: kinetic energy. Let's say that a Protectorate Sunburst weapon crew (or the Flame Belcher on a Vanquisher) is fired at a Khador Assault Kommando. Because those two weapons are fire weapons, yet the Assault Kommando has immunity to Fire, no damage is done even though something slammed or exploded into the trooper. Does this make sense? Some models, such as Azrael, take that into account by having the initial attack not have the typed damage but it still has the continuous effect attached. If the fluff is bothering you, then consider the following lesson from D&D -- a hit on the dice doesn't necessarily equate to a hit in the fluff. Consider the question of a lightly armoured rogue and a heavily armoured fighter. They can both have a similar Armor Class stat in D&D, the Rogue by virtue of wearing light armour and dodging a lot of attacks, and the fighter by virtue of wearing so much heavy armour that enemy attacks just bounce off. If, as a GM, I have a gerblin attack the rogue and miss, I will narrate it as the gerblin swinging wildly but the rogue being too fast for it. If the gerblin attacks the fighter and misses, I might narrate it as the gerblin's sword bouncing harmlessly off his shield. The same goes for a hit with an AoE attack. It's not necessarily a hit in the sense of the shell catching someone directly in the chest, but the mortar team or whomever was making the attack had their shell on-target. Perhaps that means that the shell landed right at the guy's feet, or close enough that he's directly catching the brunt of the explosion, but not necessarily hitting him in the face. At the end of the day, though, Warmachine is a game which is not intended to be a realistic simulation of combat (or if it is, it is totally and completely failing at it), so trying to apply real-world physics usually ends up hurting your brain. In extreme cases the weapon should get a special rule that says the type of immunity in question has no effect due to the extreme nature of the attack. In that case, outside a few casters who specifically buff elemental damage, wouldn't it be the same as not having the element? "This attack is a SP8 fire spray--" "I have immunity to fire" "I have immunity to immunity fire" Or should we also add that in extreme cases, like, say, Torch, he is equipped with so much asbestos plating that immunity to immunity to fire has no effect due to the extreme nature of his armour? How far down this rabbit hole of immunities to immunities do we want to go?
|
|
|
Post by davycannonhound on Nov 10, 2017 23:54:00 GMT
By this logic, there is absolutely no reason to bring a non-magical weapon just in case you run into incorporeal models, yet people take them literally all the time. Not necessarily, because you can add magic damage to weapons with relative ease. You can't add or take away damage typings, on the other hand. Plus incorporeal is much rarer than damage immunities.
|
|
|
Post by davycannonhound on Nov 10, 2017 23:57:42 GMT
It makes sense that factions that are heavy into certain types of weapons would have immunities to those weapons built into them from a safe-handling perspective and to mitigate friendly collateral damage. The simplistic nature that Warmachine / Hordes handles it is fine to keep the game from getting bogged down, and the -D6 damage that is in CoI is a complication that is tolerated (and required) by the scope of the game. Some of the ideas that others have proposed are neat ideas, I just think they add an extra layer of complication to playing and balancing the game that we don't need. The problem I have is factions that are drowning in shot types but don't have any immunities. Thats why I suggested a weakness system as well. The factions that are immune to their own weapons will still have a leg up on the factions that aren't, however the factions that aren't wont be completely curb stomped in that regard either.
|
|
|
Post by davycannonhound on Nov 11, 2017 0:00:24 GMT
blue fires that Archangel's spit out of their faces And somehow the Archangels aren't immune to their own weapons. Considering the produce fire from INSIDE their own body, I think the outside of their body would fare just fine.
|
|
|
Post by welshhoppo on Nov 11, 2017 3:20:12 GMT
blue fires that Archangel's spit out of their faces And somehow the Archangels aren't immune to their own weapons. Considering the produce fire from INSIDE their own body, I think the outside of their body would fare just fine. Well we aren't exactly immune to the stuff that our stomachs produce. Also it depends on the type of dragonfire. Maybe the Archangel produces vast quantities of explosive gas, and then exhales them and uses a little spark in its mouth to set it alight.
|
|
crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
|
Post by crimsyn on Nov 11, 2017 4:31:32 GMT
By this logic, there is absolutely no reason to bring a non-magical weapon just in case you run into incorporeal models, yet people take them literally all the time. Not necessarily, because you can add magic damage to weapons with relative ease. You can't add or take away damage typings, on the other hand. Plus incorporeal is much rarer than damage immunities. Relative ease? In my faction, there is one eight point merc unit available to us that grants magic weapons, and it's another four points for an attachment if we want to make it friendly faction. That's it. And that unit isn't even available in all the theme forces. So I guess no one should ever play Legion of Steel? (not to mention the absurdity of the notion that there is no reason to bring a model that is ineffective against, what, less than 5% of the stuff on the table?) Also, I don't know what your meta is like, but I've seen a lot more Gremlin Swarms, Blackbanes, and Machine Wraiths lately than I have Assault Kommandos, Croak Raiders, and Tactical Arcanist Corps.
|
|
|
Post by davycannonhound on Nov 11, 2017 4:38:04 GMT
alright, a lot of people had huge text things and I didn't feel like reading all the way through them so I'll skip to my thoughts on the ideas of immunities and weapon damage types. First, corrosive effects are SUPER effective against metal IRL, so much so that we have had to make special alloys and chemical coatings to fight against just daily corrosion from the chemicals in the air. On the other hand, flesh has quite a resistance to basic corrosive effects. It takes highly toxic acids and bases in order to break down the chemical compounds in the body. What flesh is weak to in comparison to metal would be radiation and poisons. The immunity idea, as a whole, is actually rather interesting, but I do believe they are horribly screwing up weapon damage types. Basically, if a weapon has an elemental type, it's a weakness, not a strength. If that element can apply it's continuous effect? it's a strength. However, there are many weapons throughout factions that are, as an example, corrosive base that cannot effect models with corrosive immunities, yet do not have any sort of corrosive advantage against models that aren't... It's these weapons and abilities that need to be looked over. If I strike a jack with lightning, I should be able to disrupt it, yet I can't if my lightning ability doesn't say it has disruption? I get part of it, an electro leap that auto disrupted every jack it hit would be way too strong against jack spams. However, if the original weapon can't disrupt the first target... why even make it electrical base? so that you can hit your own units with it? Fair point. I was thinking specifically of nickel, which if memory serves is fairly resistant to acid. Agreed with the latter.
|
|
|
Post by davycannonhound on Nov 11, 2017 4:43:41 GMT
Not necessarily, because you can add magic damage to weapons with relative ease. You can't add or take away damage typings, on the other hand. Plus incorporeal is much rarer than damage immunities. Relative ease? In my faction, there is one eight point merc unit available to us that grants magic weapons, and it's another four points for an attachment if we want to make it friendly faction. That's it. And that unit isn't even available in all the theme forces. So I guess no one should ever play Legion of Steel? (not to mention the absurdity of the notion that there is no reason to bring a model that is ineffective against, what, less than 5% of the stuff on the table?) From what I've seen, the amount of models that can give out magical damage is absurd. Sure, not ALL factions have easy access, but a lot do. Honestly four points for an attachment sounds great. Again, I will re-iterate the fact that it is possible to give non-magical damage weapons magical damage. It is not possible, however, to take away a weapon's damage type (or give it one). As it stands, incorporeal models are much easier to counter than models with immunities.
|
|
crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
|
Post by crimsyn on Nov 11, 2017 4:59:27 GMT
Relative ease? In my faction, there is one eight point merc unit available to us that grants magic weapons, and it's another four points for an attachment if we want to make it friendly faction. That's it. And that unit isn't even available in all the theme forces. So I guess no one should ever play Legion of Steel? (not to mention the absurdity of the notion that there is no reason to bring a model that is ineffective against, what, less than 5% of the stuff on the table?) From what I've seen, the amount of models that can give out magical damage is absurd. Sure, not ALL factions have easy access, but a lot do. Honestly four points for an attachment sounds great. Again, I will re-iterate the fact that it is possible to give non-magical damage weapons magical damage. It is not possible, however, to take away a weapon's damage type (or give it one). As it stands, incorporeal models are much easier to counter than models with immunities. Actually, that attachment is to the eight-point merc unit (A&H), so it's twelve points total if you want to make them friendly faction and get the rest of the benefits on their card. Anyways, the notion that incorporeal models are much easier to counter than models with immunities is laughable. ALL factions have access to an abundance of non-typed attacks. In fact, almost every single model in the game has a non-typed attack, be it a gun, a melee attack, or a magic missile type spell. Almost every single model in the game can kill an Assault Kommando. Probably something like 90% of the models in the game can't kill a Gremlin Swarm.
|
|