you'll find out after you play that MO list you are planning a few times. Betcha it winds up eitherr Hospitallers+Joan link, or Hospitallers+magister link Do something different and make it work and I'll be impressed then Play it for a year, I dare ya
Oh, okay, people, he's just another pano hater. Move along... Don't waste time. On topic: I honestly think that there should be more specialist options on knights. One per order. Hospitaller Docs Santiago Engineers Montesa FOs Sepulchre CoC or spec operative This way there wuould be a choice between combat specialists or regular ones. Point cost tax and order / confrere knights thing would restrain this from being OP.
Because PanO is awash in sectorials. We're looking at five of them, and every time you buy a model that is 'the same, but X' you question why. For the record, I don't want any sectoral to have this problem.
Oh, like how all my JSA lists are a Bushido link of Domaru and Tanko? Because that was, more or less, why I chose to play them? Or am I supposed to be upset by this and create threads in the JSA forum to call it poor design? As to being a PanO hater - I'm not. I have 2 strong NCA players in my Meta. One of them is basically top 3 in every tourney. I am keen for Varuna to come out because I think Kamau links look fun and hard - also, because I'm downright jealous of a bunch of PanO profiles. But you're welcome to discredit me and disregard what I say on the basis that it doesn't align with your world view.
It's pretty much impossible to avoid having this problem though. You hit the nail on the head - 5 sectorials. If you don't want this to continue, you should, arguably, be making a thread asking to limit sectorials.
Where does all this "your faction has so many advantages" come from then? Besides pano i have usarf and jsa. Two sectorials that are pretty limited each in their own way. Still they somehow are much more interesting to field gamestyle-wise. (But ASA is my one love). Pano players may be bitching about internal balance etc. But the main problem is that there are messups like the infamous auxbot and ye olde boltes that really are messups but haven't been fixed in years.
Quite the opposite is happening with NA2 though. The discussion on NA2 troops linking with our remotes has happened though. What I want is Voltron. What I have is one good right leg and three weaker right arms.
Honestly? I'm all for it. I'd rather see Varuna postponed and existing problems with PanO fixed, than getting new shiny toys and leaving older ones as they are. But the problem doesn't really stem from the number of sectorials. It has roots in the lack of creativity and "every sectorial needs access to the same tools" type of thinking. Showcase: Kamau and partially Black Friar. Kamau are basically better Fusiliers. Better BS, Mimetism, sniper with MSV2, HRL/SMG combo. That's it. Aside from a significant increase in firepower they bring nothing new to the vanilla and to their future sectorial. Again, we end up with unit that can do "move+shoot" very well... and that's it. Now imagine if they were remade in the spirit of units like Muyibs or incoming Frontoviks; elite, expensive LI, a toolbox unit that provides new functionality. In this case it could be a SWAT team, primed for urban assault and non-lethal takedowns, giving Varuna stronger antiterrorist vibe. No Mimetism, but higher ARM, possibly some BTS. No heavy, long range weapons (save for a Multi Marksman Rifle somewhere), but CQB loadouts like SMGs and Boarding Shotguns, Stun grenades/LGL's, Adhesive weaponry (maybe a new DTW, small Adhesive teardrop?) SWAT-type Auxbots. No MSV, but X-Visors (like the original Kamau) and Biometric Visors. Point costs starting somewhere at 25-28 pts (depending on what the basic loadout would be) and going up. Effect - a unit completely different to other available tools, providing us with new functionality, while balanced by lack of heavy weapons and high point cost. In case of Black Friar - MRifle is a very good loadout, exactly the kind of things we're asking for, and if you'll look at this thread you will see PanO players are perfectly fine with it. MSR on the other hand - it's just an MSV2 sniper. It brings nothing new. And while it gives both MO and NCA access to long range MSV2, it wasn't really necessary. I understand the point of not giving the sniper Albedo, but I'd really rather see a second loadout with both Biovisor and Albedo, and a different, shorter ranged weapon. Add to this the various fuckups people mentioned. CoC AD, which must sacrifice either one or another expensive skill for the other one to function. Seraph, with it's "iron ball and chain" Auxbot. Useless Teutons. The list goes on. Again, it's pretty easy to see that the designers are more fascinated by some factions, and as a result they're more creative when making something new for them, while PanO gets things purely for the sake of balance, without the same level of attention and creativity behind the design. It really feels like someone watched a Hunger Games marathon, and then was asked to design a Peaceforce faction. I think it's partially rooted in the earlier days, when PanO's +1 BS pretty much across the board gave us a strong advantage, and allowed for breaking ties. Since PanO is so powerful, then we shouldn't give them too powerful skills and equipment, right? And so we end up with a faction that has exactly one basic playstyle, with its advantages being eroded by newer additions to other factions, and without effort on the designers part to do something about that - provided they actually see the problem. It might very well be that they consider their approach good, and see our constant complains as whining for more toys. After all, that's exactly how some players see it.
Allowing more knights (engineers!) to bring Palbot squires for B2 CC. Allow the Seraph to deploy an Auxbot, instead of trip over it. Provide a way to get knights into CC. Have a unit unique enough ALEPH asks for a loan.
You make some valid points. You also make them without saying "checkout this bs thing over here Nomads get" or the sarcastic "But we're the hyperpower" sarcastic response that is copy/pasted through this thread. I thank you for that. This thread seems to go pages at a time without actual discussion of what could be in PanO. @Rey made a good point before about Knights and flavouring specialist types to specific orders. (Just a shame it was an afterthought on a post accusing me of being a PanO hater.) But prior to that we had 2-3 pages of argument over the semantics of Dart being available to Shock Army vs being "a PanO troop".
My only problem with Nomads is that they're the equivalent of player characters and there's a lot of heart and creativity behind their design. But that's not a problem with a faction, what they're getting isn't OP and fits them well. It's a problem with the designers, which should put the same effort into every faction design. "Hyperpower" on the other hand is just a piece of fluff that shouldn't mean in-game domination. We want this game to be balanced. It can be translated into gameplay in a number of ways without actually hurting balance, just like Haqq medical prowess or EI VooDoo Tech.
PanO remote pilots are wip 10 base, only the engineer becomes a 13 and that’s actually pretty big standard for our usual specialist choices without being a 20 point regular engineer. The big benefit of our remote pilots is that they can hop out, eat a mine and our TAG can reset back into action provided it can pass a wip 12 check. That’s not stellar. By a long shot.
Nothing preventing anyone from dragging it to a fourth page. /irony 'How to fix PanO' without borrowing from someone else's toybox then? I'm looking at what happened to YJ in the last year. Their +1 CC has never meant less. At this point, I'm almost more terrified of the cure than the disease.
Let's not get into YJ and they utter lack of faction identity or niche besides being clowny evil villains
It was said a few times that part of Yu Jing's thing is being the basic faction, Jack-of-all-trades; they're actually well balanced and flexible (well, at least before Uprising. I consider taking away JSA without immediately introducing IA a major fuckup on CB's part). And yeah, they could use some positive fluff instead of more and more of that "totalitarian state" thing.
