Nice to see that melta bombs come in aircraft versions.


So which of the options should we go for? actually thinking on it @Mechanis is each level of commander type mutually exclusive with the other levels of that type e.g if we take Force Leader we can't take Force Captain?
No, you can have both Force Commanders and Force Captains if you want. Just keep in mind that they have the same ability at different strengths, rather than actually different abilities.
 
Stel'iy-Rann, since we've already committed forces to the search, and Oaths of Brotherhood/Tears of Isha seem like the best two options.
 
Given how outnumbered we're likely to be, and what Mechanis said about us later getting the option to automate production, I think we should get the best commanders we can.

This is also likely to not trigger Peaceful by having less experienced officers make tactical mistakes that get people killed

I'd be tempted by;

[ ] Force Captain
[ ] Warsinger Captain
[ ] Warlord
[ ] Warseer Commander

And I want the Khainite Warlord in particular as part of rehabilitating Khaine on his aspect of Khaine of the Last Hour.

Also worth nothing that we can have two HQ units in a detachment, unless I've misunderstood something, @Mechanis?

We're likely to take time to ramp up our armies, so starting with the best officers while our forces are still small and fragile makes a lot of sense to me.
You can, in fact, take a maximum of four HQ units in a Detachment if you want to go heavy on them; though this locks out one potential Elites choice and Troops Choice. But it's worth noting, I think, that having a spread of different training times might also be valuable, so if you need to raise hosts in a hurry you have a supply of 'common' commanders.
 
[ ] Force Commander
[ ] Warsinger Commander
[ ] Warlord
[ ] Warseer Commander

looking at the tactics involved, this is a good setup.

going to all in will cripple our Warrior Action Points, when we definitely want to get to work on a iterant Brigantine.
 
No, you read that right. Light and Heavy launchers are both standard Naval weapons.
Well. Good to know heavy launchers are just way better in exchange for costing way more?

I feel like ciaphas cain might have biased me to think meltas are way stronger than they actually are if the infantry ones can only handle light vehicles lol.
 
The fact that both types of torpedo tubes are regular naval weapons makes turning our Lance Sloops into torpedo boats a bit more complicated.

Fundamentally the Sloop hull has fewer potential weapon slots compared to a Cutter in order to make room for the Heavy Weapon slot and the Heavy Weapon slot only turns into 1.5 regular weapon slots (a regular naval weapon battery has 2 weapons while a heavy can only fit 3 weapons) if converted to handle regular naval weapons.

We're either going to need to redesign the Sloop hull as a whole to be a better torpedo boat, settle for a substandard torpedo boat, or scrap that plan entirely and turn some other hull into a torpedo boat (probably the Caravel).
 
Personal opinion, we should do

[ ] Stel'iy-Rann | A Pearl Without Price
The small craftworld of Stel'iy-Rann is the senior-most of a small coalition in which the craftworld Nacretinei was a member, yet that Craftworld has seemingly vanished without a trace, and the party they had stated their intent to send to the Aeldmoot made no appearance. Stel'iy-Rann and the other three minors craftworld of that coalition have grown concerned for their fate, now, and would certainly welcome the resources of your own coalition in the search for their missing compatriot—an easy door to draw them into your sphere of influence

this turn seeing as we alreaddy spent actions to look for them i believe with 2 seer ap and this being in the winning plan

-[ ][WARRIOR] Have 4 Combat Brigs, 12 Battle Carracks, and 20 War Ketches accompany the 3rd and 5th Scout Fleets, the 3rd Heavy Fleet, and the 6th Line Fleet of Zahr-Tann, they are to serve as a Liberation/Rescue/Search force for Nacretinei once we've coordinated with their allies and gathered the data we can.
 
The Burden of Command

How you structure your army's command going forward will in no small part be affected by how you structure your Headquarters units and which of the available options you elect to take. Training of these units is time consuming—one does not make a general overnight—but each offers a Detachment level bonus ability, and a second for Warhosts if placed as the Headquarters Detachment thereof. Note that the magnitude of this bonus depends on training time for the unit—longer training periods provide proportionally more impactful abilities.
Big decision here, likely to color our faction's entire attitude toward military operations as a whole moving forward. Each commander unit type is likely to have a distinct philosophy toward warfare, and obviously the longest-trained units are likely to be the most capable and therefore their opinions on how war is best waged are likely to dominate. If we leave out one of the options entirely from our four picks, then their attitude gets written out of our military doctrine.

I am inclined to try and include one of each of the four options instead of, for example, deciding that we need multiple levels of Force Commander/Force Captain training so that we can deploy them either somewhat or more heavily trained; this will give us the broadest set of possible bonuses even if it might be slightly more practical to be able to have our leaders be able to choose their training time on an as-needed basis.

Warseer Commander has no choices to be made about it, so that's easy, at least.

For the rest, I'm inclined to day we need exactly one of the lowest training time options- if we have a need to rapidly create a huge number of military forces it could be important to churn them out in a single turn, but I don't think we're going to hit that kind of desperate situation that often, so having more than one at the lowest tier is robbing ourselves of the larger possible other bonuses. And since we want to be able to one-turn these it's either Force Commander or the Khaine-priest line. Of the two, I'm inclined to say Warpriest is preferred on the lowest level because their detachment bonus is for preventing retreats and routs at all instead of mitigating them after they've happened, which I like more. Also we absolutely want every warhost to have the ability to cancel critfails, but probably won't need to cancel lots of critfails in short order, so having numerous low-level Khaine-priests makes sense.

Then it's a question between mid and max for Force and Warsinger Commanders/Captains. I'm moderately inclined to go for max training time on both of them for the larger bonuses simply because we're angling toward elite forces and that demands elite commanders to perform as best possible, but I'm open to other opinions.

This vote would look like:

[ ] Plan Cheap Priests And Elite Everything Else
-[ ] Force Captain
-[ ] Warsinger Captain
-[ ] Warpriest
-[ ] Warseer Commander
 
Based on what Mechanis said; I suggest:

[ ] Force Leader
[ ] Warsinger Captain
[ ] Warlord
[ ] Warseer Commander

A cheap Force Leader that we can produce in larger volume for milita and second line unit.

The Force Leader costs half as much as a cheap priest, which means we can make twice as many, which really matters when we need detachments in volume.

The rest being the best possible so that we can invest in making our detachments extremely well lead.

Another thing to consider about Warlords is that other characters may be able to inflict penalties that make crit fails more likely. Against such enemies we'd really want a Warlord.
 
Last edited:
The Burden of Command

so a thought here, when selecting how long to train these I think we should keep in mind when they would be used. For a bread and butter commander who will see use in most skirmishes? probably skew low so we have enough. For commanders who will mostly see use for pivotal battles? skew high because when we use them we will need them to perform.


aside from that, I do think with our present focus on small but elite forces we would not go below 2 turns for any of these commanders. When your an elite focused faction you need good officers more than you need a lot of officers.
 
[ ] Force Commander
[ ] Warsinger Commander
[ ] Warlord
[ ] Warseer Commander

looking at the tactics involved, this is a good setup.

going to all in will cripple our Warrior Action Points, when we definitely want to get to work on a iterant Brigantine.
Given that Warlord takes 4 turns to make I would go with Force captain who also takes 4 turns instead of Force commander
 
aside from that, I do think with our present focus on small but elite forces we would not go below 2 turns for any of these commanders. When your an elite focused faction you need good officers more than you need a lot of officers.
One important thing is that we do not need 1 of these guys per army (warhost).
We need 1 of these guys per detachment.

Warhosts can have between 2-16 detachements.
So, you know, that adds up.
 
so a thought here, when selecting how long to train these I think we should keep in mind when they would be used. For a bread and butter commander who will see use in most skirmishes? probably skew low so we have enough. For commanders who will mostly see use for pivotal battles? skew high because when we use them we will need them to perform.


aside from that, I do think with our present focus on small but elite forces we would not go below 2 turns for any of these commanders. When your an elite focused faction you need good officers more than you need a lot of officers.

I wonder as well if it might be cheaper in future to develop less well trained versions if we start with the most highly trained versions.

Also, if officers do have any passive benefits, such as to training, or can serve as minor characters who can use artefacts. Or accompanying Heroes on adventures, them being more capable might be very useful.
 
Well. Good to know heavy launchers are just way better in exchange for costing way more?

I feel like ciaphas cain might have biased me to think meltas are way stronger than they actually are if the infantry ones can only handle light vehicles lol.
They do take it from an easy "eh, throw it on there" to actually maybe having to think for a second, at least on the less expensive ships (like, say, Escorts, who generally like bringing torps). There is a pretty major difference between a cheap torpedo slinger with a couple of tubes, and a "I will delete your Cruiser" murderboat with like twelve, after all.

I mean, you're still talking about a rifle-sized gun that will put unpleasantly large holes in, say, a Chimera. The things are reasonably competitive with plasma weapons at close range, after all, they just lose out at ranges longer than "short."
 
Hmmm...

Given the details we got, I think this would be a good spread.

[ ] Plan: Headquarters Draft Picks
-[ ] Force Commander (2 Turns)
-[ ] Warsinger Commander (3 Turns)
-[ ] Warlord (4 Turns)
-[ ] Warseer Commander (3 Turns)

It's a good spread of abilities with a good spread of training times. Force Commanders are our "General Purpose" leaders who have good results but aren't necessarily exceptional, Warsingers for our heavily mechanized units, Warlords as general "Elite Warhost Masters", since their special rule seems to make everyone else's Special Rules work even better (Warsinger Commander auto-succeeds at any non-Crit Fail, Warlord rerolls Crit Fails? Hellllloooo there synergy!) And Warseer Commanders actually need 5 turns in the oven, but auto-passing Init tests is great in itself, fantastic for forces that hit and fade.
 
One important thing is that we do not need 1 of these guys per army (warhost).
We need 1 of these guys per detachment.

Warhosts can have between 2-16 detachements.
So, you know, that adds up.

I'd stick most basic detachments with a Force Leader, and then give things like the Armoured Detachment I prototyped before a Warsinger Commander, and the Heavy Gravity Shock Infantry Detachment a Warlord Dommander.

Simply because individual detachments can vary very wildly in cost.

You then put a Warseer Commander in charge of the host.

You might end up with ten line infantry detachments lead up a Force Leader and one of each of the above, simply because it's the very valuable detachments on the sharp end that need that help.
 
You can, in fact, take a maximum of four HQ units in a Detachment if you want to go heavy on them; though this locks out one potential Elites choice and Troops Choice. But it's worth noting, I think, that having a spread of different training times might also be valuable, so if you need to raise hosts in a hurry you have a supply of 'common' commanders.
Hmm.

Can, for example, Force Leaders be promoted to Force Commanders, with a reduced time cost? Or cross-train, for example Force Leader to Warsinger Leader?
 
One important thing is that we do not need 1 of these guys per army (warhost).
We need 1 of these guys per detachment.

Warhosts can have between 2-16 detachements.
So, you know, that adds up.
Oh, even worse. The standard detachment organization can have 2 HQ squads without taking any optional slots they compete with others for, and up to 4 if they're willing to take less Troops and Elites. So outfitting all our existing 114 detachments (if I've counted correctly) will take at minimum 114 commander units and possibly as many as 456.

And that's before putting anyone on the Warhost command level and without raising any new formations whatsoever.

We're going to be playing catchup on training officers for centuries at absolute best.
 
I think missing persons cases are the most urgent for diplo, so these are what I'm planning to vote for.
[ ] Stel'iy-Rann | A Pearl Without Price
[ ] Lal'c-Tann | Oaths of Brootherhood

If people think Lal'c-Tann is less urgent, then I'd replace it with Saim-Hann, which explicitly says it's a limited-time offer.
 
The whole point of delaying the assembly of our diplomatic corp was specifically so we could address missing persons cases which were high priority in our estimation. So we should do those, and then unfuck our diplomacy for the other stuff. The other people will... probably... keep till then.
 
The Force Leader costs half as much as a cheap priest, which means we can make twice as many, which really matters when we need detachments in volume.
Half as much as the cheap Warsinger. The Warpriest also costs 1 turn.

Do we want our basic detachments to have higher morale and be less likely to break, or to suffer less casualties when they do break and when destroyed by other means?

The Warsinger detachment-level special ability is only applicable when using advanced tactics; unless those are things we want the entire Warhost doing on the regular we won't need them in the numbers required to make the cheap version desirable.

So outfitting all our existing 114 detachments (if I've counted correctly) will take at minimum 114 commander units and possibly as many as 456.
That's a lot of Warrior AP.

And it comes out of the same pool as clean-sheet designs of chassis and hulls. Ow.
 
Last edited:
I think missing persons cases are the most urgent for diplo, so these are what I'm planning to vote for.
[ ] Stel'iy-Rann | A Pearl Without Price
[ ] Lal'c-Tann | Oaths of Brootherhood

If people think Lal'c-Tann is less urgent, then I'd replace it with Saim-Hann, which explicitly says it's a limited-time offer.
while time limited it still takes a few turns, I think that getting brother back is more personally urgent quest
 
Back
Top