Ability to equip orks units with up to 2 items

[ArachnidOverlord]

I thought this would be a good alternative to make use of excess influence that can occur for the orks; along with being a way to buff orks a little bit because they seem to under perform sometimes.

Allowing infantry and light/medium vehicles the ability to equip up to 2 items would add to their "looter" sort of feel and allow you to give units a little bit of uniqueness.

I can't really see this breaking the game because unlike heroes you can only equip 2 items instead of absolutely decking out your megaknobs or something.

The limitation can still allow for you to provide a decent buff of your choosing all the while maintaining a high risk of still losing your investment in that unit.

[Jey]

There are some cheap consumables items that will definitely have huge impacts.
A Temporary shields on Boyzs to raise them up to 7 armor to absorb OW, for example (or on Meganobz to raise them to 13 armor).
A Blind grenade to cripple an enemy infantry unit.

There's also the Omniscope on Tankbustas which represent a +25% damage for Tankbustas (which is pretty huge, let's be honest).

Add to that the possibility of passing items around to not lose them when an unit is in dreadful position.

I really don't think it's a good idea.

[GreenBeanN1]

I am not really an ork player but the warboss can hit hard but even fully equiped will die from time to time. Well another 500-600 influence down the drain.

[Katitoff]

What is wrong with the WAAAGH buff that utilizes excess influence already?

[ArachnidOverlord]

Originally posted by Iffu:

There are some cheap consumables items that will definitely have huge impacts.
A Temporary shields on Boyzs to raise them up to 7 armor to absorb OW, for example (or on Meganobz to raise them to 13 armor).
A Blind grenade to cripple an enemy infantry unit.

There's also the Omniscope on Tankbustas which represent a +25% damage for Tankbustas (which is pretty huge, let's be honest).

Add to that the possibility of passing items around to not lose them when an unit is in dreadful position.

I really don't think it's a good idea.

And chaos infantry can get every single mutation on infantry getting 17% more attacks, 2 more accuracy, 25% more health, 2 more armor and 1 more movement. All the while still being open to marks and icons.

Giving a team of tankbustas 25% more attacks and 1 more accuracy per say really doesn't blow them out of the water, they'll be more powerful sure but compared to chaos icons and mutations it's not much.

Meganobz are pretty good infantry for the orks admittedly but you get what you pay for.

I just find orks to be the weakest faction because their units are easy to kill, in a tile based game an army of 1 range units doesn't work very well. Tyranids have way better heroes and damage overall.

To be realistic comparing orks to chaos this buff will help but won't break anything. If anything maybe disable things like consumables so you can't spam blind grenades or heals but besides that it'll be fine they need a buff.

[dexgattaca]

Jokaero's better have all casheir's open.

[ArachnidOverlord]

Originally posted by dexgattaca:

Jokaero's better have all casheir's open.

Yeah distribution would be a bit strange, maybe orks could visit any owned outpost to equip stuff instead of solely jokaero ones.

[Jey]

I think you are mixing up completely different things.

First, chaos infantry cannot get all the boons when they are created.
The +2 armor for example is T9! It's so endgame, even if you get the boon, your infantry will still be slaughtered!
Meanwhile you don't need to reach a specific point in time to get a specific item. You can buy them anytime you want as long as you have enough influence (and with Orks it's not exactly an incredibly difficult thing to do)

Second, these boons are obtained through killing and are random.
Even if we close our eyes on the overwhelming amount of time to research all boons, we DEFINITELY can't close our eyes on the overwhelming amount of killing required to get all boons.

And we can't even more close our eyes on the fact that killing units expose yourself to a big problem : You can get yourself killed.

If you believe having infantry with all boons is the norm, you probably need to stop bullying the AI, and either play a higher difficulty or play against real players :P.


But even if we somehow were willing to close our eyes on the cost of boons, which honestly if we reach this point we might as well just start saying whatever we want (like really, we're so far in the domain of the imagination that anything goes), we can't close our eyes on other things :

-Boons cannot be passed around. If you accidentally threw your fully boonified (yes. Boonified.) unit in the midst of OW, you can't just give your boons to another unit.
If your hero is in a bad spot, you can't say "Nah it's fine, I'll just save my boons by giving them to another unit".
However you can do that with items.

-Boons don't have the same effect as items. I already mentioned the Blind Grenade for example. Halving the effectiveness of any infantry unit for 2 turns is extremely powerful.
On a hero it's way too costly. You can't use one of your precious 6 slots for that. And your support heroes cannot get in melee to do that, that's just asking for them to die.

"But we could just say consumables are forbidden."
What about the + influence item? It pays for itself and just needs a huge upfront payment (and Orks can do that).
Do we forbid them too?
What about research items?
Jokaero weapon?
What about Axe of Blind Fury on Tankbustas (pretty sure that'd make their busta bombs twice as efficient against land speeders/scout sentinels)?

Where do we draw the line between what item is ok and what item is not?

We can't even say "Well Axe of Blind Fury has an important cost", because once the Tankbustas used it, they can just pass it around to protect it.

You can find a huge amount of flaws in giving items to basic troops.


You're talking about "25% attacks and 1 accuracy", but I think you're wrong. I doubt people will spend 120 influence on an unit (and especially not on the attacks item due to Waaagh! in my opinion)

However adding +1 AP (40 influence) on a Meganobz or +1 accuracy on Tankbustas can have huge impacts and that's pretty cheap. It's made EVEN cheaper by the possibility to just pass it around after the units used it and exposed itself.

I just find orks to be the weakest faction because their units are easy to kill.

I don't think it's why Orks have trouble, it's an eco issue rather than a units issue.

Furthermore by adding this 'specificity' you're going in direct opposition of one of the Orks mechanics : the Waaaagh!

Spending influence on items means no influence for Waaagh! . I don't think it's a really good idea to create a mechanic that will either make obsolete another or be made useless by an already existing mechanic (and really, I already know how it will end up : The cheapest item with the most effect will be used to buff some units, making the mechanics mostly irrelevant except for some specific match up. And normal units will be used to pass around items to the heroes, of course).




Overall, I really don't think the comparison with chaos holds, and even if it did, I don't see why other factions should face an Orks buff because somehow they had one aspect that was less efficient than Chaos.

[ArachnidOverlord]

You can sort of exploit the boons with researching only the ones you deem "the best" along with use of demon princes.
Especially if you're lucky with free ones but yeah otherwise you need to do it the old fashioned way or stick close to a chaos lord (you can get multiple at once).

I never knew you could pass equipment around after it has been equipped though. I thought it was equipped until you sold it kinda thing. What they could do is make it cost an action to transfer items but admittedly you can move it from one unit to another etc.

But yeah good point, the pool of equipment for non-heroes maybe should be a lot smaller.
Maybe only Armplas Bracers, Entropic Locum, Omni-Scope, Concealed Weapon System, Endurance Implant, Powered Gauntlet, Volcanis Shroud, Zoat Hide Jerkin, Aegis Harness (if it still exists), Dusk Blade, Forbidden Knowledge and Mourning Blade of Lazaerek.

As for waagh, I thought it was based off of how much you were fighting. I guess they changed that a while ago though to be based off of influence to army size or something.
They could always reduce the influence requirement for waagh or maybe make non-purple equipment on non-heroes cheaper.

Economy is pretty important too in this game though so they could maybe do something about that, whether it's cheaper units or faster build time. There's only so much you can do about economy if you keep pumping out garbage though cause then you're just feeding the fire.

Either way I think orks need a buff. Whether it's making individual units better or tweaking the economy.

[Jey]

"You can exploit the boons by using a T9 hero with a prohibitive upkeep, and having access to any research you need."

Excuse me, but I really want to make something sure, you're comparing using a resource you have in abundance without any specific investment with an expensive hero (it's 7.5 upkeep), requiring either extreme luck or a T9 research, being able to add a random boon to one unit every two turns at best?

Additionally if you "only research the best boon you want", your units can't stack all boons (since you don't have them all, duh).
If you have all boons (Once again forgetting the extensive amount of time required for it. And for the Daemon prince), you can't choose the one you want. You'd need one hero lvl 5 or more per unit for what... 10 turns? To add all boons?

I'm sorry, but you're completely out of touch with the game if you think that's an "exploit" or something abnormally strong.

What they could do is make it cost an action to transfer items

If heroes do the same thing, it's a big annoyance to current hero builds which like to use a support hero to buy items to a frontline hero occasionally.
If heroes don't, you don't have consistency. It's bad.

Either way it's a "solution" to an issue you created. It's hard to find it worth the time.

the pool of equipment for non-heroes maybe should be a lot smaller.

Why those?
You decided that those were not disrupting balance? How did you pick them?
I already said the Entropic Locum and Omniscope were definitely a balance issue.

Meanwhile Forbidden Knowledge will never be used on an unit, because 160 influence for 1 level on a normal unit is so expensive it's not even a "choice".

I completely forgot about Zoat Hide Jerkin, but +3 HP is completely broken. It's +3 HP per model. Enjoy your boys with +100% HP, I guess. Even for 80 influence, I'm convinced it's more than worth it.


Furthermore, even if we somehow manage to make a list that is interesting (so no Forbidden Knowledge) without completely breaking the game (so no Zoat Hide Jerkin), how do you explain it to a player?

Why can his units only buy some items? Why those? Where can he find a list of all allowed items since they don't follow a specific rule?
How do you manage the transfer of items?

You force the game to make several exceptions to current rules (For example you either can buy all items or none, you can't restrict the choice currently), which is bad for consistency. It makes the game more obscure and hard to understand.

And since you restrict the items so heavily, you're not even using the "items" features. You just want some buffs to your units.



Instead of asking for "I want my orks to be able to buy an extremely restricted panel of items, forcing the game to lose consistency on a whole feature for this", you could just ask for some upgrades that increase some stats and have the same effect with a much easier way to balance (Which units are affected by which upgrade, which tier is the upgrade....) and no consistency breaking.

As for waagh, I thought it was based off of how much you were fighting

It has always been a function of your influence stock and your influence upkeep. The exact values and effect of the Waaagh! have changed, but not the core behind it.

They could always reduce the influence requirement for waagh

You're asking for a complete rebalance of the faction now. We're openly in dream lands :P.

maybe make non-purple equipment on non-heroes cheaper.

Nice, so I can buy my rare items on my boys then transfer them to a hero, I guess :)

. There's only so much you can do about economy if you keep pumping out garbage though

Orks don't have garbage units.
They have amongst the strongest early units. Their issue is losing steam as the game progress (due to lack of neutral units to kill for ore/influence and attrition slowly getting them) and not being able to reach fully upgraded Battlewagons/Dakkajets or spamming Gorkanauts.

[Chilli Dog Dave]

the issue i have with orkz is that they have a very bad early game when it comes to dealing with neutrals, a bad start with them more or less kills their faction.
i am refering to the lack of ranged weapons till flashgitz.
just being able to spawn shootaboyz or sluggaz would be a huge game changer, maybe add in a shield consumable for boyz called "lucky toof" that makes the next overwatch attempt on them 90% less damage, may only be used once per unit.

later into an ork game its down to not enough fights to upkeep their demand, easy solution to this would be when you get high enough into research tiers you can make boyz(if above suggesion is taken, slugga+shoota boyz) have no upkeep costs, no production costs and moral protection from hero units is one tile longer so you can start actually doing what orkz do best.
turn the battlefield green.
maybe make ork fungus grant moral protection as well and late game ork units wont fall off as hard and allow you to basically throw boyz at a problem to keep into a perpetual fight, and if lucky toof is added they will even have late game functionality as meat shield similar to how in tabletop weaker orkz or grotz are used as meat shields.

could go a little further and make warbosses and mega nobz act as WAAAGH conduits in that they can activate a warcry later into the game that grants moral immunity, grants influence for each non-vehicle ork unit in its range and allows them all to move one tile further for the next 3 turns on a 7 turn cooldown.
the goal of bosses having this is to chain reaction a WAAAGH push while also giving non-tank units a reason to exist (heres looking at you dakkajet spam) to both serve as pushing mechanics and resource upkeep, after all if the above boy/shoota+slugga changes were added you would have a large desire to great lots of units over spamming endgame tanks and the moral protection of a full WAAAGH charge means you can safe and happy throw orkz at a problem till it either falls or weakens, the orky way.

long post but i love orkz by design but gladius way of dealing with orkz feels like one of the weaker faction of orkz in the game series because tanks and such are far more useful than the green tide of units, orkz have always been a sort of zerg sort of faction with a sprinkle of tactics while the tyranid have been more of a start slow and grow to the point of being hard to contain.
currently it just feels like orkz get a strong midgame momentum then just completely drop off once super units start coming into the game because their earliest units start becoming useless and the midgame units start dropping to easily which sort of feels right but the ace for orkz is that the early game units were always useful through out matches of the different games do to their effectiveness at being meatshields late game and disruptors if ignored for bigger targets and with things like Dawn of War 1's Warboss WAAAGH cry they became faster, stronger and hard to demoralize making even the first unit effective

[adozu]

Huh? Orks are one of the best at early clearing, imho second best.

[ArachnidOverlord]

Originally posted by Chilli Dog Dave:

the issue i have with orkz is that they have a very bad early game when it comes to dealing with neutrals, a bad start with them more or less kills their faction.
i am refering to the lack of ranged weapons till flashgitz.
just being able to spawn shootaboyz or sluggaz would be a huge game changer, maybe add in a shield consumable for boyz called "lucky toof" that makes the next overwatch attempt on them 90% less damage, may only be used once per unit.

later into an ork game its down to not enough fights to upkeep their demand, easy solution to this would be when you get high enough into research tiers you can make boyz(if above suggesion is taken, slugga+shoota boyz) have no upkeep costs, no production costs and moral protection from hero units is one tile longer so you can start actually doing what orkz do best.
turn the battlefield green.
maybe make ork fungus grant moral protection as well and late game ork units wont fall off as hard and allow you to basically throw boyz at a problem to keep into a perpetual fight, and if lucky toof is added they will even have late game functionality as meat shield similar to how in tabletop weaker orkz or grotz are used as meat shields.

could go a little further and make warbosses and mega nobz act as WAAAGH conduits in that they can activate a warcry later into the game that grants moral immunity, grants influence for each non-vehicle ork unit in its range and allows them all to move one tile further for the next 3 turns on a 7 turn cooldown.
the goal of bosses having this is to chain reaction a WAAAGH push while also giving non-tank units a reason to exist (heres looking at you dakkajet spam) to both serve as pushing mechanics and resource upkeep, after all if the above boy/shoota+slugga changes were added you would have a large desire to great lots of units over spamming endgame tanks and the moral protection of a full WAAAGH charge means you can safe and happy throw orkz at a problem till it either falls or weakens, the orky way.

long post but i love orkz by design but gladius way of dealing with orkz feels like one of the weaker faction of orkz in the game series because tanks and such are far more useful than the green tide of units, orkz have always been a sort of zerg sort of faction with a sprinkle of tactics while the tyranid have been more of a start slow and grow to the point of being hard to contain.
currently it just feels like orkz get a strong midgame momentum then just completely drop off once super units start coming into the game because their earliest units start becoming useless and the midgame units start dropping to easily which sort of feels right but the ace for orkz is that the early game units were always useful through out matches of the different games do to their effectiveness at being meatshields late game and disruptors if ignored for bigger targets and with things like Dawn of War 1's Warboss WAAAGH cry they became faster, stronger and hard to demoralize making even the first unit effective

This sounds neat and could also be good.

Are you going to tear it apart like the god emperor as well warmaster Horus Iffu?

[Chilli Dog Dave]

Originally posted by adozu:

Huh? Orks are one of the best at early clearing, imho second best.

Umbral and fliers are the main core early game blockers, i'v more or less instantly lost a match due to an early blockade of umbral neutrals blocking me into my corner

[Jey]

Originally posted by ArachnidOverlord:

Are you going to tear it apart like the god emperor as well warmaster Horus Iffu?

Do I really need to? These propositions are so removed from my view of the balance, I'm not sure there's a point.

[RindFisch]

I don't understand why Orks would need an additional influence dump in the first place. They have one of the best hero lineups in the game, IMHO.
Just recruit more Wierdboyz and Warbosses.