Doctrines should increase unit's resource cost

Achernar

What I wanted to discuss is why don't Doctrines affect unit's resource cost? Right now a squad of Tactical marines or Rangers without doctrines cost as much as the one that is fully stuffed. The one doesn't create any problems, in fact it might be underperforming, while the other is a nightmare to balance.

In my opinion Doctrines should increase how much req and/or power you pay for the unit. Want grenades on your tacticals? 10 power per squad. Want to fire on the move? 5 power per squad. Howling Banshees are mediocre without doctrines? Reduce their base cost, etc. Should fix the opportunity cost of not stacking doctrines too.

What do you think?

Martin

I made a similar suggestion that doctrines themselves should have a cost, not certain which solution is better. In one way your solution fits better with relics initial doctrine design, because giving doctrines costs makes them very similar to upgrades. On the other hand it might be more complicated to balance the cost being on units since the cost grows as the match progresses and depends on how many doctrined squads you build.

Dullahan

How do you propose applying this evenly/fairly across all doctrines?

For example, should global doctrines like Healing Scrap or Webway Holofield have a cost? Or Blessings of the Omnissiah?

I realize that stacking doctrines is meta, but I don't think it's especially powerful. The main reason people do it is not because the doctrines themselves are overpowered, but because they're already planning on using that particular unit en masse and more doctirnes makes them better. You could stack doctrines on say Shadow Spectres, Big Trakk or Lootas, but I doubt anyone would say doing so is overpowered because the doctrines for those units are pretty balanced. On the other hand, units like Landspeeders with a full stack of doctrines can become massively more powerful compared to regular landspeeders, but they'll still die to a simple Tankbusta with a bomb squig.

Likewise, would you distinguish between Army Abilities (Doctrines on elites) versus Army Doctrines when calculating the cost? Should Tac grenades be free if you bring Assault Terminators with their command ability, but cost money if it's in a doctrine slot?

I would say the issue with Tac's is their cost effectiveness, hiking their cost to 500 req would help with this. Rangers I do not think need to be tweaked but I haven't had enough matches vs sniper spam to judge it fairly.

Katitof

Which doctrines?

The ones which give raw stat boost?

The ones which change slightly an ability?

The ones which provide new ability and in extreme cases, the ability to counter units own counters?

Sorry, but you can't throw all doctrines into one bag and call it a day, they have extremely wide spectrum of usefulness and impact on the unit.

Achernar

@Martin said:
I made a similar suggestion that doctrines themselves should have a cost, not certain which solution is better. In one way your solution fits better with relics initial doctrine design, because giving doctrines costs makes them very similar to upgrades. On the other hand it might be more complicated to balance the cost being on units since the cost grows as the match progresses and depends on how many doctrined squads you build.

The cost will grow proportional to the amount of benefit you get from the doctrine, as it should. I don't see a problem here.

@Dullahan said:
How do you propose applying this evenly/fairly across all doctrines?

By having an individual cost increase for each doctrine? It doesn't get more fair than that.

@Dullahan said:
For example, should global doctrines like Healing Scrap or Webway Holofield have a cost? Or Blessings of the Omnissiah?

Global doctrines could be turned into an upgrade.

@Dullahan said:
Likewise, would you distinguish between Army Abilities (Doctrines on elites) versus Army Doctrines when calculating the cost? Should Tac grenades be free if you bring Assault Terminators with their command ability, but cost money if it's in a doctrine slot?

Command doctines work just like normal ones so I don't see why they should be an exception.

@Katitof said:
Which doctrines?

The ones which give raw stat boost?

The ones which change slightly an ability?

The ones which provide new ability and in extreme cases, the ability to counter units own counters?

Sorry, but you can't throw all doctrines into one bag and call it a day, they have extremely wide spectrum of usefulness and impact on the unit.

All doctrines.

Yes

Yep

Especially those.

As I said above, the extremely wide spectrum of usefulness will be reflected in doctrine's cost. Not all of them provide equal benefit so they won't cost the same either.

It sounds as if you're afraid of something, as if the game will somehow become worse by having more control over the stuff that proved to cause balancing issues.