Let me see if I understand this: -NCA gets Aida Swandon, infiltrating shas criminal. -NCA confirms that killing an alien is not murder. Which is technically correct, in the same way that killing a human is not necessarily murder. See also: thou shall not murder. -Describes said killing as a path to Heaven, which probably means you guys aren't getting cube rezzed. Sounds like the Lazarus Order is gonna be busy.
Good point about the supportware, I keep forgetting that stuff exists! And yes, the way to win any firefight in Infinity is to be at your +3 range while your target is at -3, and then stack more mods on top of that. Say, cover, Camo/TO, Surprise Shot, etc. Though the damn Assisted Fire program does give a TR-bot a chance of hitting someone that's otherwise at -12 by ignoring cover. Not horrible odds, if I'm using the dice calculator correctly, even for shooting a Ninja over 32" (assuming said Ninja was revealed for other reasons): Active Player 21.69% Sierra Dronbot inflicts 1 or more wounds on Ninjas (Unconscious) 2.16% Sierra Dronbot inflicts 2 or more wounds on Ninjas (Dead) Failures 40.70% Neither player succeeds Reactive Player 37.62% Ninjas inflicts 1 or more wounds on Sierra Dronbot (Unconscious) 16.82% Ninjas inflicts 2 or more wounds on Sierra Dronbot (Unconscious 2) Not odds I'd want to take, when the Ninja is nearly twice as likely to take down the TRbot as the bot is to kill the Ninja. Does that mean that we're going to see some former-PanO dude with an impossibly big sword and awesome motorcycle to break things?
Outrage yes. Uprising... I'd vote against, simply because about only 12-24 pages are worthy of the time it takes to read it. There is a reason the "basic" sniper rifle (just Shock) is so widely used when available in linkable troops (Ariadna, Haqquislam). 0.5 SWC for a B2 high range weapon (essentially a +3, on top of the +3 to BS and +1 to B you get while linked...) is great to win FtF, which is what you want. They are more often paired with visors or other tricks than HMGs, so I suppose they include that extra cost... Pano and the Vedic sectorial agrees with you... Sadly, smoke is too "low tech" to such hyperadvanced and efficient armies! :p
Smoke is vastly overrated More efficient to remove troops that you would be bypassing with smoke by killing them with superior firepower.
Seriously the amount of times I see my opponent fucking about with smoke and quietly think "glad they're doing that and not shooting me with that linked HMG"
If they killed my troops looking at the objective with the linked HMG they'd be able to grab the objective, reduce my order pool and firepower and secure the objective more effectively against my counterattack.
Again, it's table-dependent, but more often than not there's only one or two good ARO troops overlooking the objectives. Both PanO and OSS are very efficient in removing such threats (OSS more than PanO, but let's wait and see for the Third Offensive changes). And if enemy has MSV2, as many good ARO units do, your Smoke does exactly nothing, except costing you orders. The only place that I'd really like to see it is Eclipse on the Teutons, to make advancing a bit easier for MO. But I have a feeling that whatever happens it'll be awesome.
Weird, usually most ARO troops don't have MSV2, it's considered an exception in our meta. Any level of camo or ODD is more highly favored. The good MSV2 ARO pieces tend to be Aleph though (Maruts, Atalanta, Agema's, Teucer…). They've got good durability, high BS skills, deadly weapons and relatively low costs.
In ARO you might argue that a BS mod applied to your enemy is more effective as - 6 from ODD would be applied to all their dice, whereas having MSV would only apply to your own single B1 ARO. The best ARO troops are typically Camo or TO Camo as a result.
