AoS 2 - Kharadron Overlords Discussion

[novembermike]

7 minutes ago, stratigo said:

Honestly, the dudes writing AoS don't.... uh... care that overmuch about balancing things. They simply don't. But a large portion, I'd dare say the majority, of people playing AoS do care about balance and want to see armies able to play with each other without one side having a dramatic advantage.

 

 

I think this is true of the people that originally wrote it, but the team that's doing it now seems decent. 

[WatcherintheWater]

19 minutes ago, Rachmani said:

The real question is honestly what good rules are. Because I have the feeling that everyone thinks of something else, when discussing good rules.

There are three parts of what I would think of as good rules:

• Rules that match the fluff - I think the rules for the units & skyports match the fluff pretty well right now. The boats don't, though. Biggest thing I want in the new book is rules that encourage 2K armies to have at least 2 or more boats.
• External balance (power level of this book vs others) - Think this is OK right now (under the 2019 GHB). KO seem like about an average army. 48.3% win rate in the HWG stats. I actually care the least about them getting this right in the new book, because it changes with every GHB.
• Internal balance (most units in the book are useful and there are a variety of good builds) - I think this is the biggest issue with the current book. Almost all the competitive builds are Zilfin, and focus on Khemists buffing Arkanauts & Endrinriggers (and sometimes Thunderers or Skywardens). There are a lot of Sky-Ports & units that are almost never used (Nar, Thryng, Gunhaulers, Endrinmaster).

How to achieve those things is definitely a matter of opinion.

Edited January 2, 2020 by WatcherintheWater

[Rachmani]

@WatcherintheWater

I agree. On all three parts.

That‘s why it‘s in my opinion much more important that an army has rules that you want to play with, that you have fun with. The external balancing can be adjusted, but a boring ruleset you‘re stuck with for a looong time.

[stratigo]

30 minutes ago, Nick907 said:

Of course the game writers care about balance. We are getting a revised book... why would they revise the book if they didn’t care about balance? 

What about the yearly General’s Handbook and point revisions? 

What about the faqs? 

Some of these complaints are just silly and bitter. 

Not all the writers are the same on every product. The people writing the AoS battletomes are more interested it what they think is cool and less what they think is balanced. And, like, that's fine. Necromunda has the same ideal, and I adore playing necromunda. KO also were not done right in their first book, that's why they'd get a second. And GW's a business and business interests dictate rotating battletomes every few years even when there isn't a writer that has passion for a project (Not aying this is the case for KO, I haven't heard anything about passion or lack there of about KO).  

 

The people writing the rules for AoS want the game to be more narrative and cool and zany. And, well, I don't think it's working for AoS, but it isn't an invalid approach to game design. They're not bad writers or bad designers for wanting to focus on cool interactions and thematic powers before considering how it tips the power scale of a unit or battletome.

[Nick907]

These are not mutually exclusive ideas. A ‘cool’ play style does not necessarily mean a less balanced or unbalanced one. The game designers and writers are absolutely interested in making a balanced game because a balanced game is more fun and sells better than a ‘broken’ game. The problems come from the unintended consequences of various themes, abilities, and point costs. Gamers are very good at exploiting holes that designers over look or fail to predict.

Same thing happens in politics, Congress didn’t foresee the housing bubble when they created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they assumed getting Americans into homeownership was a good thing to do. This was done with bipartisan support. It wasn’t until the foreclosures were already too wide spread that investors realized that wouldn’t be collecting on those 30 year mortgage numbers. Still, Congress had acted with positive intentions. Oops!

The good news is that KO came out on the low end of performance, and designers have had 2 years to play test new ideas and listen to the community. I’m sure this very forum has been checked and double checked multiple times, and the likelihood of the designers failing is significantly lower than it would be for a new army. Hindsight is 20/20, and we have that in our favor now. It’s going to be a good time to be a KO player, and we should all be excited!  

[Walrustaco]

26 minutes ago, Nick907 said:

Same thing happens in politics, Congress didn’t foresee the housing bubble when they created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they assumed getting Americans into homeownership was a good thing to do. This was done with bipartisan support. It wasn’t until the foreclosures were already too wide spread that investors realized that wouldn’t be collecting on those 30 year mortgage numbers. Still, Congress had acted with positive intentions. Oops!

Huh?

[Nick907]

3 minutes ago, Walrustaco said:

Huh?

Unintended consequences.

[Walrustaco]

1 minute ago, Nick907 said:

Unintended consequences.

Wha-

[Nick907]

19 minutes ago, Walrustaco said:

Wha-

Fannie Mae is a mortgage conglomerate, it buys mortgage debts from banks and incentivizes banks to lend more. Freddie Mac takes that debt and fractures it into investable securities and derivatives. If you buy a $200k house with a 30 year mortgage, most of your payment will be interest against that $200k principle, so that after making payments for 30 years you’ll have spent more like $400-$500k (depending on your interest rate). People and businesses can invest in that difference by purchasing shares of securities and derivatives.  When the housing bubble burst in 2007, it was because so many new homeowners had defaulted on their payments that it was impossible for those investments to payout. That’s why banks were poised to fail and employers had to downsize and retirement funds were depleted. 

Basically the idea of getting people into houses was a nice idea, but instead of bringing economic prosperity the lack of foresight lead to global recession. Similar problems can arise in game design when designers are too ambitious or lack foresight, leading to a broken game. Luckily, GW has already made those kind of mistakes with KO so chances of them happening again are much lower. 

[Sesom]

Are you accusing the KO of offering junk mortgages?

[Nick907]

1 minute ago, Sesom said:

Are you accusing the KO of offering junk mortgages?

Read the code closely and never sign up

for an adjustable rate mortgage 

[zilberfrid]

4 minutes ago, Sesom said:

Are you accusing the KO of offering junk mortgages?

That seems like a thing for them. Long contracts, minute writing, lots of money changing hands.

[Kramer]

7 hours ago, cofaxest said:

It's not about rumors. I just wanna try to use confirmed in preview rules and predict optimal concept for our units role on the battlefield

Referring to our earlier conversation...

weren’t you trying to keep your expectations low as not to be disappointed? 
because I’ll promise you now, it’s not going to be what you consider ‘optimised’

2 hours ago, Rachmani said:

The real question is honestly what good rules are. Because I have the feeling that everyone thinks of something else, when discussing good rules.

Asking the real questions. Don’t know why someone would consider mawtribes bad for example. It doesn’t come with an automatic win option but for me that’s a plus. Not in the Facebook group though😂

 

 

 

[TheadTheOgorSlayer]

just wanted to run a possible conversion idea by my favorite group of metal dwarves

if you saw an army of looted houses with flying squigs holding them up (think the movie UP but with squigs instead of balloons), loaded with guns and brimming with goblins, would you  be terrified? 

totally not a silly grotbag scuttlers conversion

on another note, they are lead by a grot (preferably a fat one) on a throne using the same genius method of advanced aerial travel

im unsure what to do for a counts as ironclad, maybe a bigger house with flying manglers? 

[cofaxest]

7 hours ago, Kramer said:

Referring to our earlier conversation...

weren’t you trying to keep your expectations low as not to be disappointed? 
because I’ll promise you now, it’s not going to be what you consider ‘optimised’

My expectations are already low. But I'm hope for the best)

[Phasteon]

I hope we get some new infos to talk about or we will soon discuss what a good discussion is 😛

[Kramer]

1 minute ago, Phasteon said:

I hope we get some new infos to talk about or we will soon discuss what a good discussion is 😛

I liked my discussion with @cofaxest if that helps form the definition  . Different opinions, nobody backing down, ending up with understanding of the others vision. 

what we really need is a set of discussion rules. Which of course can have amendments and footnotes. This code could then be enforced to the letter. Except for one sixth of us, who read More between the lines. But alas there is just no discussing with some people. 

[Beliman]

42 minutes ago, Kramer said:

what we really need is a set of discussion rules. Which of course can have amendments and footnotes. This code could then be enforced to the letter. Except for one sixth of us, who read More between the lines. But alas there is just no discussing with some people. 

Guys, we have a winner!! You have a place on the Geldraad!!!

[Kramer]

11 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Guys, we have a winner!! You have a place on the Geldraad!!!

haha, I’m just gonna grab this opportunity to push a Kharadron Novel. Read code of the skies. Great stuff about the workings of the city councils and the intrigue that even in duardin societies happen. 
 

[Gecktron]

40 minutes ago, Kramer said:

haha, I’m just gonna grab this opportunity to push a Kharadron Novel. Read code of the skies. Great stuff about the workings of the city councils and the intrigue that even in duardin societies happen. 
 

I agree. Great book. It explores how a sky-port works, shows us more of the code, female duardin and super heavy sky-vessels. 

[Kramer]

54 minutes ago, Gecktron said:

I agree. Great book. It explores how a sky-port works, shows us more of the code, female duardin and super heavy sky-vessels. 

Now that you mention it. Yeah both protagonists are female. 

[5kaven5lave]

There’s only one way to solve all these rules conjecture discussions:

MAN READS BOOK

My soul is prepared. 

[Kramer]

14 minutes ago, 5kaven5lave said:

There’s only one way to solve all these rules conjecture discussions:

MAN READS BOOK

My soul is prepared. 

What does he normally with two book drops? Same release day or spreads it out. 

[mikethefish]

1 hour ago, Gecktron said:

I agree. Great book. It explores how a sky-port works, shows us more of the code, female duardin and super heavy sky-vessels. 

It's the best KO black Library fiction piece so far

[Gecktron]

3 minutes ago, mikethefish said:

It's the best KO black Library fiction piece so far

I also really liked the audio short story "Guns of the black eagle", as it features Barak-Mhonar.