I would honestly take any Core that allows me to have the Hsien HMG as pointman. Baos, Pheasants, anything. That weird CBL that has a Crane + Zhanyiung + two Wu Ming + Hsien Core is really bad, but the 17 BS, 14 PH, 4 ARM, MSV2, 5B HMG is godly. Maybe take the Zhanying Haris a step further and give them Special Core: up to 4 Zhanying + 1 Hsien. Would love that.
I know. And Lunah is a merc while Sun is an Aleph robot with feelings. So, let me get this straight, your argument against that mercs are stealing design space from Yu Jing natives is that there are a lot of mercs occupying that design space?
My argument is they're not stealing any design space, there's plenty of room for everyone. There isn't a hard designed shortage for no Vis Mod models in the faction, and they're all very low AVA so they're not in danger of being overly spammed in a list. Nor are these models over saturating any particular role. There is no reason you could not design a Mimetism Pheasant for example and not make it a distinctive and unique entry worthy of taking next to any of the currently existing models. I could literally slap Mimetism on the Red Fury Haris profile in exchange for CoC and this would be your dynamic. Dakini: Cheap buffable cost effective gun fighting remote Garuda: More expensive more accurate AD gunfighting remote Pheasant: Can't be buffed but I can prone, unhackable, and get link bonuses Lunah: I crit on 19s and I can safely attempt a TR bot removal once. Miranda: I have the best vis mods, I'm a specialist, and I get a cool flavourful duo. They're all different. They all inhabit different places despite all having vis mods. Basically, it's all in your head that there's a "bloat" problem. There's plenty of room. ISS has alot of unit entries, this is true. But alot of their unit entries are character based and have 1 or 2 actual profiles, ISS has 8 character entries. Between that and ISS's basic support, that accounts for 17 out of 33 units. That's literally half the army that has little to no options available. There isn't a saturation issue.
That's a sad thing to read when at some point ISS was infamous for being one of the few sectorials capable of fielding mixed fireteams....
I think only the agents should become wildcards, Zhanying, Pheasant, and Crane. They might make a few other things wildcard like a remote FTO type thing but that's about it. Also, i doubt they'd allow any of them to be in a Kuang Shi link.
Yes, from Human Sphere there was a pretty large police-state feel to YJ. N1 didn't really mention much about the Japanese, just had a short blurb about the Keisotsu (who basically traded 1pt of BS for V:Courage and a cost break) But there is an immense difference between a police state and broadcasting War Crimes. China today blocks just about every site showing that infamous picture of a dude standing in front of a row of tanks, or even pics suggestive of that infamous picture. 'It never happened' is how an effective police state works things.
Like, I'm ok with that. The mixed links have been highly popular in terms of providing more flexibility to players in building and player lists, and effective at getting otherwise more niche models into the fray. Making the game more fun for the rest of the players in other factions is at the end of they day a good thing IMO.
The Hsien should get wildcard, it fits thematically. "Why are you here Mr. Voice of the Emperor?" "Big E says dude, I'm point man on this op." On the subject of messing with profiles, the Haidao should drop free agent for Veteran.
Makes him jammer immune sure, but doesn't fix his issue of getting immobilised permanently by E/M weaponry so it doesn't make the linked Engineer anymore viable. Jammers are just gonna hit someone else in the link instead most likely your big gun HMG anyway because that's more important to isolate. Removing Free Agent for Veteran makes him straight up worse in Vanilla. Not really seeing the benefit here. Ehhh no I don't think this is a good idea. Being able to whack the MSV2 BS14 HMG into any link you like probably isn't a great idea in terms of balance. At the very least it'll cause all sorts of issues with him invalidating the Crane and it'll make creating useful Bao even harder.
Hsien and Bao both have MSV2 and giving them wildcard would violate an unwritten rule: no smoke and MSV2 in the same unit. Don't know if CB has already broken that rule, but they've been fairly good at avoid it similar to "no sensor and medium to long range weapons"
There are more than you would think. Big ones being Kamau, all remotes , and for example things like specters. That said, sure if you’re using them in tandem with other ammo types it’s not really a problem. It’s just kind of annoying to have to think about it haha.
And I totally agree with this design philosophy. I will, however, totally stop caring about not breaking this unwritten rule if CB are actually insane enought to link a B5 BS16 FAT:L2 Spitfire, which looks like is most likely going to happen with RTF, at which point I will actually finally start joining the bandwagon of people demanding a re-work of the crit rule because I find such a thing much more cancerous than anything ever introduced in this game thus far. As for the topic of this thread, I don't much agree with almost nothing in this thread. I've kept playing ISS for several years now because I keep making different kinds of lists, due to all the choices available to me, so I don't understand the issue of bloat, although there could certainly be removed things like irregular Bounty Hunters but not the rest. I like that Aleph is a power that dispatches units for the secret services of the hyper powers, like PanO and YJ, so I find their profiles totally justified in the sectorial. Furthermore I think it's insane that people don't use the Crane Rank link and some of these posts makes me wonder if they have even read his profile, especially comments like "I wish he had an HMG instead". My dude, there's a thing called X-Visor, in a full link the Crane Rank Spitfire still shoots B5 BS13 in the 24"-32" rangeband, there's nothing except -6 visual MOD units that you can't beat with those dice.
I usually take my Cranes wth Multi Rifle. It's hard keeping the CG alive, though. The soft, very soft, underbelly of the link.
Oh, yeah they will die for sure. Luckily I've played Imperial Guard for over 10 years so I'm totally jaded to loss of line infantry, as long as the tank is alive. I consider it the same with the Crane Rank, with him being the tank. The Crane doesn't need 4 extra dudes to be scary in a firefight, they are simply a bonus. Still though, getting close and telling people you have B3 Nanopulsers never stops being hillarious to me.
If there's one thing this thread has been good for, it has made it painfully obvious actually which players actually field Imperial Service regularly and which primarily complain about it on the internet instead. Imperial Service is doing just fine. They're about the end of the list for factions in need of a "revamp."
I don't think anyone is saying ISS suck, but there are a couple of units like bao that are very obviously sub par.
@Triumph Hes not saying anyone says ISS sucks, he's saying someone obviously never really play with them or have a very weird perception of how units works. Especially if people sound like they don't know the Crane Rank has an X-visor, his most iconic equipment (except on the hacker, which is why I actually don't like that specific profile, I think it's a sin that he has neither Sensor nor X-visor).
I wouldn't want to get caught with my trousers down making such guesses. What the sectorial is and what a person wishes it would be are two different things. You imply some of the posters think the sectorial is weak, but I don't see anyone making such claim.
