I'm a little confused by the importance of 'units'. The additional costs for each 'unit' and the 10 points for a weapon team can mean a 2 man lt mortar/at team is very expensive, at least for it's usefulness. A better definition of 'unit' would help, I'm assuming the added cost is to compensate for the initiative bonus of having lots of units. One way around is to group the HQ characters and small teams into one large unit and they split it up on the tabletop. This legit? (for example a WWII British Rifle Platoon HQ would be 2nd LT, PSGT, 1-2 Runners and potentially an orderly, as well as a 2 man 2" mortar team and a 2 man Piat team would be purchased as a 7 figure unit)


I think a short one or two lines for each attribute explaining how the rule works and the intent of the point cost would be helpful.

Well remember that a Weapon team gets extra firepower, on top of most times having a Heavier (more dice), weapon so they hit with a larger punch than what 2 or 3 Figs can normally do, closer to a full unit in some cases.

Lee

I would like the values in points go down for vehicles becuase as it stands now it very hard to get more than one in a 1000pt game

Vehicles are over priced or the armor is too weak. Vehicles currently become useless once i add infantry support weapons. Vehicles also are too weak when attacking infantry. The infantry will ost likely survive the shot due to medics and the roll. If a fireteam gets hit by a tank gun it should be devistating. Maybe no medic checks, you are just dead. Right now the way it stands after the tank fired, my infantry is firing back and will most likely pop the tank like popcorn. Either lower point cost of vehicles, add more armor dice, or make something for tank shock where the blast suppressed the fireteam or squad.

Thanks for the feedback on vehicles. We will most likely look at points adjustments versus rules adjustments, should they be necessary.

One thing to keep in mind with vehicles is that taking just vehicles up against just infantry is inviting trouble. You need combined arms for armor protection in today's world and we think that will be true in the future. The 1973 AIW conflict showed what motivated ATGM equipped infantry could do to a predominantly armored force.

This being a point system, we can't force players to go combined arms, but I can tell you that if I found out Shawn was taking all armor, I would be going infantry heavy

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"We're on an express elevator to hell...going down!!!"

Shawns a Bird man he going to take all the pretty planes Peggy will let him buy.....Mikey

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"All Men for the rights of Every man, every man for the rights of all Men"

We've been using the vehicle points to build one and then cut them points to 25% of the value. This seems to make them more inline with taking infantry. At 2000 points you can run 6 - 10 squads depending on how they are kitted out with 4 - 6 vehicles depending on what you take.

The biggest impact on vehicles is the type of support weapon or weapon class vs vehicles type. Heavy tanks aren't too tough if everyone has heavy support weapons.

agreed, it's not like those guys who live in iraq seeing a US tanks sat idly using AK's, they are definitely going to get as many RPG's and IED's :p

oh BTW, if this point system and scenario generator are going to get a new book on it's own, wouldn't we get the right to choose a 'sub' name for it's new book. I've got a perfect one on it

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Osama may be 'dead' but that doesn't mean the US Government can't bring him back 'alive' again :p

I have two questions about the points balancing system:

1. If I have a sniper team with a weapons team bonus, I assume I 'charge' it points for being a Sniper/Sniper Team, and then a second set of points for being a Weapons Team, or is the WT bonus assumed in the Sniper/Sniper Team points?

2. Is there a modifier for Irregulars, or is this take into account by their generally lower TQs? I can see a situation where regular Afghan National Army troops with a TQ of d6 could be 'cheaper' than irregular TQ d6 insurgents, due to the need for the insurgents to 'buy' Leaders.

Any thoughts on either of these issues? Thanks!

Infantry Armour & Support Weapon Costs
I feel armour and support weapons are overpriced. They cost as much as an extra soldier.

Now a soldier contributes +1 dice in attack AND defence when added to a fireteam.

Armour and support weapons contribute +1 in attack OR defence - they are only half as useful and should be worth only half the points. You can argue support weapons have a greater optimum but that is balanced by the movement penalties.

Weapons Teams
May I suggest being designated a "weapon team" be worth +2 extra troopers (to reflect the +2 dice bonus); halved due to the fact it is only useful in attack? (and can be easily lost if a member is casualty)
Adding a fixed weapon team cost does not adequately account for the advantage a d8 weapons team has over a d6 weapons team.

TL Modifiers
Doubling and tripling seems a bit excessive given they add only +1 dice.

Attributes
Some traits may need to be costed per figure not per unit. I.e. advanced 1st aid is more useful and cheaper to a 6 man fire team than a 3 man fire team.

I.e. a 3 x d8 (21pt) fireteam must spend +15 (or almost 75% of the original cost)
A 6 x d8 (42pt) fire team spends the same +15 (only 33% of the original cost) to gain the same % increase in survival odds.

Negative Traits
As I think has already been mentioned, units with negative traits should get a points reduction - they should be cheaper than standard troops without annoying quirks.

Vehicles and ATk
I play with few or softskin vehicles in my games but as pointed out, A/tk points are valueless without enemies to kill; and armour is invaluable if there is no anti-tank to oppose it. Balancing is impossible without 40k style army lists - ugh!

However we can simulate this to a extent:

1. Give vehicles a set point value.
2. However, Anti tank weapon cost will vary according to enemy armour.

Example:
Enemy armour makes up 0% of enemy points cost <---------simply pay cost of normal support weapon
Enemy armour makes up 1-33% of enemy points cost <---------pay half price for anti tank
Enemy armour makes up 34-66% of enemy points cost <---- pay usual price for anti tank
Enemy armour makes up 67%+ of enemy points cost <-----pay double price for anti tank

So if there are no enemy armour, then anti tank weapons are simply glorified support weapons, and thus cost no extra. If enemies have only a small portion of their force armoured, then anti-tank weapons are cheaper. Agaiinst a majority-armoured enemy, anti tank weapons are more valuable and their cost goes up to reflect this.

This would not work in a competitive sense but since this is simply to balance jointly-constructed scenarios and pick up games it would work as a rule of thumb.


Vehicle Cost
The percentage will vary depending on your vehicle costs (personally I think they are a little high - how many vehicles do you anticipate using in a platoon-size game, and what % of your total force points should it take up?) I imagine you'd want to make a platoon-size unit (6 or so fire teams) able to have 3 APC-value vehicles, which should balance roughly in value with the troops themselves.

Spending 20% of your points cost on your mechanised troops and 80% on their transport seems a bit skewed.... how much should a generic APC cost compred to 2 x d8 fire teams, for example?

I can't help with grid and artillery etc as my games tend to be simple (I am trying to convert ex-40k WM players)

God Bless

Hi Shawn,

just to say that i've now picked this up and we will be introducing it to the local gamers over the next few weeks/months.

Jed

going to be trying this iver the next few days, just a quick question

what is the ideal points value you see games been played at, so 1750pts for a game of 40k, what would be the size you see FoF been played at in a night of gaming? 1500? 2k? 3K?

will help to know when building scenarios with it


rik

We've had our first tries in trying this out.

The points for vehicles were calculated in the usual way, but halved in the end, which worked nicely.

Also, the difference between D8 and D10 troop quality is very large in game, while only small in points cost.
We upped the points for a TQ D10 soldier to 15, instead of 7, which balanced out nicely. The extra undefendable rolls of 9 and 10 over a D8 is very hard, and we will still use D10 troops very sparsely.
I remember a battle where two D10 fireteams wiped out about 4 or 5 enemy D8 fireteams, while not taking a single casualty.

I also noticed the ineffectiveness of vehicles against infantry. Four dice is never going to do anything against a regular fireteam with about 6/8 defence dice.
As it stands, my two man Medium Gauss Machine Gun team is waaay more effective than my Walker with energy cannon. I feel upping the AP values of vehicles to 6-8 is more interesting.
We noticed that we were playing two seperate battles. Vehicles vs vehicles, and infantry vs infantry, both completely ignoring the other.

I also have problems with larger fireteams getting relatively better and cheaper than smaller. We houseruled a max size of 4 man, or 5 if assault team without RPG's.

There seems to be an error in how the Excel sheet computes the costs for support weapons. The costs after applying the TL multiplier are added to the base costs, making e.g. TL2 support weapons 50% more expensive than they should be.

It's not clear to me how the points balancing system works for airstrikes; the PDF says to calculate as per vehicles and modify. However, scenarios often specify a limited number of attacks by specifying the aircraft's weapon load. Does the cost of the airstrike(s) apply to the aircraft, or to the strikes it can generate? I assume it's the aircraft, because for vehicles it says to calculate the vehicle's most expensive attack. This makes a difference because in a four-turn scenario an AV-8B with two bombs yields two attacks, but the same plane loaded with four bombs could attack every turn.