It's mitigated heavily by the fact that losing a KB or a Su-jian, you're losing a very large amount of operable ability. That's the biggest difference between a really good cheap model and a very good expensive model in a gaming system where it's fully possible to lose said expensive model in a quarter of an opponent turn. So, yes, if you can't get an angle on the KB or SJ during your active turn, they are OP, but get that edge and there's a real risk of your opponent's list falling apart. Can't say the same for a Kuang Shi, Mutta or Proxy. (Generally held as the three most OP units in game, depending on who you ask a bit)
The notion of the new Sectorials having a lot of power creep is a poor theory, especially when you compare a Nomad unit to a PanO unit as your example. Kamau vs Wildcats? That's just differences in design ethos and faction design, not simply "one is better than the other." Kamau are similar to Bagh Mari, who have been around forever. The new Sectorials are loaded up with limitations. A lot of the old Sectorials continue to shine just because the simple formula of Chain Rifle + Smoke + Impetuous, which is immensely valuable for performing a multitude of roles, is largely lacking from the new Sectorials (all but TAK.) This combines with some other strong game mechanics that are missing from the new Sectorials (abundant antipersonnel mines for example, which the new Sectorials can't access except for TAK.) This results in most of the new Sectorials having some game mechanic "blind spots" in area defense and denial, which old Sectorials can exploit. The first TJC game I saw after they came out, an experienced player was really excited to get his Securitate and Kriza Borac doing some work. Some Makaul came up the table on Turn 1 and just absolutely ripped them apart. I think it's a pretty apt metaphor for a lot of the issues the new Sectorials have to work against. Could just as easily have been Kuang Shi, Galwegians, a Cameronian, Mutts, Daturazi, etc.
I wonder how Kuang Shi, Galwegians, a Cameronian, Mutts, Daturazi, etc would go doing that against a competently deployed linked Kamau Sniper with helots and zulus to screen it. Poorly, I suspect. I didn't really say or mean that there is absolutely power creep in all the new sectorials (I more meant those examples would be good ones to reference if you wanted to make a power creep argument, and you could) - and I think Tunguska would be a counter argument to it (and in my opinion seems like a less well developed beta test of the new more flexible paradigm that seems to be being developed that doesn't give such an obviously strong result). The best builds played well from some older sectorials can probably even still compete to a reasonable extent. And I don't even necessarily think it's a bad thing within limits - for example @inane.imp's thoughts about it providing richer, deeper play options is a good one. Equally, done poorly it could become banal with a few combinations becoming absolutely the best, and therefore specific builds more ubiquitous. Hello netlists, maybe. It seems to me that Varuna in particular, and to some extent OSS and TAK really push the power curve in terms of powerful and efficient options when you compare them to older sectorials, given things like how efficient dakini or kamau in fireteams can be, especially when given a single profile with all the things you would want on it, and allowing it to wildcard into a cheaper base team, (also taking into account if that specific profile potentially allows you to control the game in your opponents turn, and how much skill it takes to do that), then adding them to faction defininingly powerful troops that already were near the top of the power curve (like post human and cutters). It's just a whole different paradigm to what has gone before. Frankly, simply dismissing that seems to me misguided, at best.
Of all of the new sectorials, I think only TAK really missed the mark. -Tunguska has some very big holes. It ditches the great Nomad midfield almost completely, and has nothing that trades upward well. Yes, it can punch well, but it does so as does any PanO setorial - with firepower, and not with assimetric trading like many Nomad things. -OSS (My favorite faction even years before it was released, mind you) is strong, but hell, it is *cluncky*. Everything is too expensive, and it has very little build in order efficiency. It has some serious deficiencies as well - CC is terrible in general, and in particular when you have ITS missiong that need anti-material CC. Most new things are... ok. Posthumans are broken because posthumans are broken. - IA is strong, is very much poised to be played in Limited insertion, has a pretty good variability and is completely vulnerable to hacking. Hacking can make or break the setorial - yes, you can have a deflector 2 on your links, but you *will* fail those rolls from time to time. And it only takes 1 failed roll to loose your protection. - TAK... kinda checks all the boxes. It has disposable troops, it has good specialists, it has great firepower, it has a hell of a camo game... Its the only point where I really think CB made a setorial kinda overpowered. - No one even talk about the NA2 setorials. They are all decent at least, but nothing too great or overwhelming. Emily aside, they all reside in their niches and do well within it.
I'd agree that VIRD and TAK definitely push the power curve of Infinity. Especially TAK. Like all talk of tiers in this game, however, the margins between sectorials is so slim, this doesn't imbalance the game. Instead, like others have said, it proved a rich, challenging, environment. This is a big part of why I love Infinity. @barakiel I agree with most of your assessment, but I think this: ... is a poor way to judge any opinion of the game. There is so much complexity, that first games are often error porne and not very reflective of respective power levels. Players need time to synthesize new tools and practice.
The purpose of the anecdote is to highlight an ongoing issue, namely that traditional tools for area denial are a problem for some of these new Sectorials. Powerful active turn choices don't provide any innate defense against older gameplay mechanics, especially with regard to smoke, templates and Close Combat, where all the new Sectorials except TAK are fairly weak. I think this vulnerability is particularly extreme for TJC, where their Jammer choice (clearly a design focus for their defense) doesn't fit as easily into their lists as many other defensive choices in other armies. The question of defense is an issue that exists regardless of relative player experience, especially given the earlier dialog that the Kriza Borac is erroneously powerful enough to represent "power creep." @Wyrmnax When you say "missed the mark", do you mean that TAK is a success? Based on your examples, you seem to think TAK is healthy. I also think they're healthy... I found myself thinking of new sectorial weaknesses and vulnerabilities (little smoke, few direct templates weapons, mines only available on expensive units, camo only available on expensive units, few cheap Specialists) and I realized that none of these apply to TAK.
For which you should be using a proper example. Namely; not someone brand new to a brand new sectorial.
Already addressed the relevance of the example. Not sure what's up with you, but if you don't like it, move on.
The problem is that you claim the very notion of the new sectorials having power creep is a poor one, and support it by vaguely generalising them, and then narrowing that generalisation down to examples with the new ish sectorial that doesn't really seem to display powercreep overall (although it has some strong elements, as it should). But a lot of the generalised statements don't relate to the specific sectorial examples that actually prompted the discussion, and your argument ignores that. TAK (as you noted) OSS and VIRD don't appear to have any issue integrating area denial, for example. In fact, they have great tools for that IMHO. Giving Tunguska as a specific example as a stand in for all of them doesn't work, because Tunguska doesn't really seem to be an example of power creep, at least to me. Whereas the other three are much more likely to be, pending further play experience / new releases.
Add in telling people to go away when they call you out on this, and I think that was very well said.
Of course I'm vaguely generalizing them. This is an inherently vague topic. The notion that power creep exists or doesn't exist can't be proved via data, and is entirely subject to personal opinion. As a result, I'm giving my opinion, based on the premise that each of the new Sectorials has gaps in their capability which limit their overall effectiveness. I gave an example from TJC to highlight this, and more examples exist among the remaining Sectorials. That being said, I also don't particularly care if the point is proven or not. Standing on the premise that warbands are bad because a linked MSV2 exists is flimsy logic.
Standing on the premise that the new Sectorials aren't power creepy because they lack warbands is flimsy logic.
I still think vanilla PanO got the most power increase between the revised MO profiles and the new VIRD stuff.
It's a good point though that Vanilla almost by default gets power creeped when new sectorials are added (by having more options added, some of which are likely to be strong, and differently strong to what is there already). Tunguska particularly so because it has a lot of things that are naturally good for vanilla (3 different sources of non linked b5, for example - and Jammers, characters, counterintel etc obvs).
Less so in this release because of faction specific profiles and well managed AVA (AVA1 Helots limit the Synergy with Joan). It does feel like they did move away from different SWC pricing for Vanilla vs Sectorial though: I can't think of anything off the top of my head. This is a solid way of limiting power creep in Vanilla while allowing interesting deisgn in Secotorial. Re: Vanilla Nomads. The two biggest changes have been Krizas and Puppetmasters. Krizas I absolutely think are bad for Vanilla design and should suffer an SWC tax (as discussed earlier) and Puppetmasters mainly change the relative power of particular lists (ie they mainly make 12-14 order lists stronger vs high order count lists rather than making the faction significantly stronger overall). So Hecklers, for instance, largely do things that Nomads already did well so they at best offer only a marginal increase in power to the faction. It's similar in this respect to Kamau (who in Vanilla mostly do what other vanilla profiles do with slight differences) although, admittedly, more significant (particularly in an environment where Repeaters are a double edged sword). (For the record I do think that Vanilla Nomads has benefited a lot from Tunguska's release: it went from being arguably the best Nomad Secotorial to being probably the best Nomad Secotorial. But I think that's more reflective of the fact that I think the other two Sectorials have been dropping back in the pack since HSN3. Ultimately vanilla Nomads was a top tier faction before 2018, and it remains amongst the top tier of factions). Re: Warbands. There are some interesting warband-esque profiles that were released in Puppets and Helots. Both provide a density of relatively expendable AROs. I think part of Tunguska's problem is that Puppets are too expensive for a primarily defensive use: most of the expense comes from the fact the Puppetmaster is extremely vulnerable on the reactive. Unlike Helots they're designed much more aggressively. The result is that Tunguska is short on expendable speed bumps: AVA2 Transductors, no FO profile on Securitate, no forward deployed Minelayers. This is absolutely the type of ARO that I cover with Zeroes and Morlocks in Bakunin or Moran's and Jaguars in Corregidor.
No, I do not think that TAK is a success. All the other setorials have weaknesses that compensate the setorial advantages, TAK has none. I think that is a problem - I use "CB missed the mark" in the context that TAK is actually a bit too strong and flexible for a setorial.
I honestly think VIRD is one of THE most overrated sectorials in terms of power. I think waaay too many people have sat down and gone full autism on the calculator and focussed on nothing but Kamau ARO with MSR. It's actually quite easy to disassemble the link by using an infiltrator/AD and kill one of the goons, where you then proceed to kill the Kamau with your normal attack piece, with trivial difficulty. The rest of VIRD is actually quite expensive and falls apart quite quickly when they lose a few important pieces. Especially now that me and my friends had a chance to play against them at a major Satellite tournament. I was thouroughly unimpressed by them (and these weren't shitty meme lists, they were every strong pick you'd expect from a competitive enviroment). I can think of a bunch of armies that are way more obnoxious to deal with on top of my head: Vanilla Haqq & Nomads (equally OP at this point), Tohaa, ISS, NCA, Vanilla Aleph, TAK and OSS
