I'm not concluding the Liu Xing will be bad because of Explode, I'm concluding that we'd be deluding ourselves if we expect Explode to be fantastic murder machine even if it interacts optimally with the Order Sequence. I'm concluding that the vast majority of the work to make a Liu Xing worth it will have to be done by the Liu Xing itself and not Explode, just like the Caskuda.
Well put. A few thoughts about how the numbers stack up reveals that a dodging enemy will probably avoid a wound three-quarters of the time. For actually killing things it's on the level of Speculative Fire, but what it does do is make the enemy dodge to save their units and forces them to fight the Liu Xing on a fair field or risk losing half their army, instead of just trying to blow it off the board like they would do to a Tiger trying the same stunt. If it's treated like a Deployment Skill that denies shooting AROs within the Drop Zone it looks a lot more potent than treating it like a one-shot circular Antipersonnel Mine. Of course, I may be wrong, but it makes me feel happy and that's what this thread was supposed to be about.
Depends if you're treating it as a quasi-historical document or as sci-fi allegory. Granted, commercially produced background setting material isn't high art, or necessarily have a high literary pedigree, but that doesn't mean it can't be attempted, or even recognised (even if it isn't intended). The rise of a right-wing, authoritarian populist political force; the demands of national sovereignty and independence from a trans-national collective organisation; and the distorting lens of a media which appears transparent but has its own agenda and serves its own ends; all these are easy to draw parallels with regardless of the socio-political situation. That's what I mean about a matter of taste - either you recognise that, or you (quite consciously) don't.
Only if you're running a single-wound LT that the Yu Jing opponent can identify and you flunk your rolls sufficiently, which for a bog-standard Alguacile (or similar) LT means 22,5% risk if our assumptions regarding the template is true (D13, Shock, allows Dodge to avoid). Up to 29,25% if you allow Liu Xing to drop behind your back. For comparisons sake, Emily in a link has 11.57% chance of doing the same, increasing to nearly 20% if she moves up to mid-field, with the caveat that this is repeatable until Emily runs out of orders and without exposing Emily to return fire. Wu Ming can do a similar, but at lower probability due to lack of X-visor and due to not lobbing E/M. (Many basic troopers can do the same as Wu Ming, but need to get across mid-field due to low starting BS.) If your opponent gets a sniffer or Com-sat REM close, such as a Meteor Zond or simply moving Chaiyi-like REMs up, they can affect significantly increased odds the odds for a Wu Ming link increases to 27,25% (35.8% for Emily link using normal grenades) from anywhere on table. If you've got a Son-Bae, those odds increase further to 58% Depending on placement, a Tiger Soldier or Crusader can affect similar odds to a Liu Xing using only marginally higher order investment and a flamethrower, but at a lower cost and no risk of being arrested by Hacking. The likelihood of this type of drop being possible is lower, however, given that mook LTs tend to be watched by more competent troops. Running a mildly competent infiltrating TO martial artist such as a Ninja up the board to murder a select model is costly order-wise but has very high odds of succeeding at 66+% (using Monk stats because I'm lazy) since Discover and tend to offer a graze period of 1 order. Running a Fiday or Speculo has even greater odds of succeeding at even lower odds of being stopped by AROs due to the one-two nature of IMP-1. In short: killing LT on turn 1 is nothing new. The only thing that's new is the delivery method being unusually risky for odds that we can only assume to be fairly low. In order for these odds to climb towards the odds that Emily or a Fiday enjoys, the Explosion would be required to have the same timing as Explode L1 (meaning it can't be dodged) and to have fairly high damage. Even denying Dodge, if the explosion is only Dam13, we're still looking at only 38% of killing the mook LT on a drop if the mook isn't allowed to Dodge, and that's assuming you've got Assist Transport up and opponent has no normal Hackers. If we increase the damage profile to be identical to a single-shot Missile Launcher, we're still looking at odds lower than a Speculo or Al-Djabel, both of whom are less expensive - with the important caveat that neither are typically able to have 60%+ chance of killing several models. Although a shotgun is pretty close and a normal Fiday can bring a mine to the party. TL DR So, in summary, this is not something that's unique and nearly regardless of how Explode LX is implemented, it won't be as deadly as something cheaper that's already in game. And it all hinges on being able to identify the LT. And that the LT is not a HI or NWI (with shock immunity?) model. And that the opponent do not have too many hackers.
Yaaaay psuedo analysis. My favourite was "climbs to the odds Emily enjoys" despite her having less than a third of a chance to execute. Besides Fidays/speculo, none of your examples are even remotely close to as easy to do as just placing a template, and significantly more order intensive. Infact your varying qualifications of what might be considered a feasible Lt hunt makes it hard to actually see a point amongst the words. The presence of hacking and the likely ability to dodge the template is going to mean explode isn't as reliable as a fiday, but that's ok because fiday/speculo are Premier Lt hunters bar none. What this block of text doesn't do is apply a consistent comparison. I understand youre trying to just compare explode is isolation, but by bringing in a variety of dissimilar skills and then showing said skills to try use multiple orders or even multiple different units for synergy, this becomes a one sided comparison. Sure, explode might not be as effective as spending 4 orders setting up a sat lock, and then moving to the midfield and using spec fire. But it's only 1 order. It's significantly cheaper to potentially end with the same result, and the efficiency has value all of its own. If we're going to start talking about multiple orders, an explode followed by a boarding shotgun to the face has very good odds of killing something. Even a kirza boracs, we've got a 20% chance to get a wound in followed by 45% chance winning a face to face against the pistol. This goes up massively if the unit failed to turn around from the drop. For 2 orders, that's not fiday good, but it's significantly better than anything else you could do within two orders that I can think of.
Why would a unit ever not turn around from the drop? Either they pass the dodge and face wherever they want, or they pass armour and turn to face.
I was totally thinking about when both models fail, but explode is auto hit so you're right they will get a turn around regardless.
Can you help explain why they would get to turn around regardless? If they failed a change-facing ARO @ PH-3 from template from outside of LoF, then passed a subsequent armor roll to survive, they have declared an ARO during that order, right? A qualification for turning using the WARNING Rule is "The trooper cannot be activated by Order or ARO in the same Order." I guess it's possible they could choose to fail guts IF they can move somewhere to improve cover. But if not they can only go prone, without the ability to change direction. What am I missing?
Are you applying the daaaaanger zone clause of the Guts rule to gain movement? If the troop is inside a danger zone, such as the Area of Effect of a Special Skill or a weapon that uses a Template or that requires no LoF, it must move up to 2 inches in order to try to exit the danger zone, or declare itself Prone if it can prevent further Attacks that way. I assume that in the next clause you all play it that the "if the player desires" infers that you can ALWAYS move even if you can't get out of the "danger zone" from that movement? I was always under the impression (from previous rules threads) that if you can not reach better cover you don't get to move at all. If none of the previous cases apply—because a 2-inch movement is not enough to improve the troop's Cover or make it abandon the danger zone, because the troop cannot go Prone, or for any other reason—, then, if player desires so, the troop does not move at all and performs no actions.
According to what rule? You can only use Warning if you didn't ARO, you can only move from Guts if you can improve cover. That is true if you were shot from behind outside of zone of control and so you could not declare change facing. But in the case of the explode circular template, you can always declare change facing.
The first rule you quoted states you must only try to exit the danger zone, not that yiu have to be successful. The prone clause only matters if doing so would prevent further attacks. This is different than the normal clause for Guts rolls which states you must improve cover because these are for attacks which ignore cover.
Interesting, all the threads on the previous form and this form dealing with using guts to move said you had to improve cover to use that movement. Example threads: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/guts-roll-prone-and-change-facing.2021/#post-33026 http://infinitytheforums.com/forum/topic/33783-guts-roll-movement/?do=findComment&comment=714496 If the troop is inside a danger zone, such as the Area of Effect of a Special Skill or a weapon that uses a Template or that requires no LoF, it must move up to 2 inches in order to try to exit the danger zone, or declare itself Prone if it can prevent further Attacksthat way. If you get landed on and CAN exit the "danger zone", which is likely given the circular template size, I totally agree, in fact I think you must do so if you failed guts. Im asking where does it say "If you get hit from out of LoF and survive you get the option to turn to face." I've never heard that... Is it the "try" and "if the player desires so" letting you move no matter what to TRY to exit the danger zone? I'm all for this, just want to know what would let me do it legally. If none of the previous cases apply—because a 2-inch movement is not enough to improve the troop's Cover or make it abandon the danger zone, because the troop cannot go Prone, or for any other reason—, then, if player desires so, the troop does not move at all and performs no actions.
Do me a favour, Alphz, try to take my posts more at face value than ascribe whining to it. You accidentally quite a bad strawman by missing the TLDR and the post I reacted to. So let's put it more clearly: Explode is piss-poor at hunting even the weakest LT. Unless the implementation makes ExplodeX is extreme (but somehow I don't see undodgeable EXP templates happening). Toting it as an argument is lazy and is informed by fear, not probability. To re-iterate from my earlier posts on the topic: it's the LIU XING who has to do the heavy lifting, not Explode. Explode will nearly guaranteed be like Van Zant - psychological warfare. So as Yu Jing player I'm preparing to stick Liu Xing down where he can get good shots, not where explode will cover the most models.
I understand what you're trying to say, but I don't think you're saying it well. Youre trying to answer a specific strategy that explode will be looking to kill masses of troops. But then you make broad statements like "gimmick" and less deadly than cheaper skills. So you're talking about the application of a skill being wrong, but then jumping straight to the skill just being plain bad. Which as can be evidenved by replies to your post is misinterpreted as explode having no value and the Liu xing being basically a worse tiger. You're trying to isolate explode as a single interaction, but as soon as you try make comparisons you bring in other skills, combinations and users. Explode is sufficiently deadly if the model doesn't dodge. If the model does dodge, explode is potentially allowing you to drop in LoF of a target without risk. Explode is more like a deployment skill than a weapon, kinda like impersonation. It also potentially then giving you at least two orders of shooting to kill said target. Which ties back to your other statement, "cheaper skills are more effective" which I don't think you did a good job of making fair comparisons to actually validate - hence the psuedo analysis criticism. I'm not trying to call you a whiner, but you seem to be trying to rationalise a predetermined conclusion. Rather than come to a conclusion considering all the variables. That's likely to be because writing out full analysis on forums is tedious, but it could also be because hating is contagious and there is no shortage of that.
To be fair, ELX is probably going to be the total definition of "gimmick." It's likely (like, 99% likely) that it'll be a one use ability (ie, when Combat Jumping) so it's either going to be super powerful, which will make it a very attractive option; or it'll be mediocre, and be a 'style' type skill that has little actual impact. Either way, it'll be about the attention it draws, and not about whether it's actually good or not - the perceived ability to do it is going to be important, and hopefully it'll actually be a half decent one-use ability instead of being a crap marketing tool ("Look, it's the Caskuda 0.5! Look how unique Yu Jing is!"). Urgh, I really wish CB had just told us what ELX does (as the book is almost certainly already at the printers, so the rule has been written and set), rather than leave us hanging (again) with a key unknown.
