And the pilots use some kind of devices that allows potentially letal biofeedback. Which means that said devices would need to be really more efficient for the army to allows such a risk :)
I don't want to hijack the thread with off topic stuff derivating from a bad joke nor being pedantic but you might be surprised how devastating real life hacking can be, including for personnel and operators. If I'm not too lazy, I will open a dedicated thread in the appropriate section. ;)
Bit off topic here, but... How does one obtain that text box that appears underneath everything one types...? Like the one you have qouting Section9?
This is the crux of the question. When I started playing it was at the tail end of ITS8 and it was kinda annoying how you *had* to build specialist heavy for pretty much all the missions. Nowadays I find that the missions offer a good balance between specialists/button pushing and killing/area control. Perhaps it is the case where you've been playing the same missions over and over again and got the impression that the pool is more limited than it is? I have a local TO that always adds biotechvore to the mission so for a while I didn't even know there were about 20 missions to choose from :D Seriously, though, what you see as a bad thing might not be that bad. The thing here is that the missions have changed to allow more playstyles. I see that as a good thing.
I like Biotechvore. It forces you to stop being complacent about your cheerleaders. (Stop hiding your juicy little lambs so I can eat them) It does do bad things to vanilla vs sectorial balance, though.
Biotechvore is a auto decision to play Tohaa. It's one of that missions wich punishes vanilla factions.
Did your TO draw the public Highly Classified missions when he announced the missions at the tournament, or did you draw at the table? I find Highly Classified isn't so bad in a tournament setting if the public classifieds are 1) available to every table and 2) known ahead of time at list building. If you draw the missions when you show up at the table, it's terrible for a competitive environment.
I like Highly Classified. It is not an easy mission, but manageable. I take (at least) one specialist of every kind and when the objectives are revealed, I use those specialists who are necessary to accomplish them and the other specialists change their roles to offensive and defensive pieces. Why don't you like it?
Making things like Test Run a major part of scoring means that it can create degenerate situations where you actually don't want to hurt your opponent's troops, which is obnoxious. Also, there are many classifieds which are near-impossible for some factions to achieve; Identity Check or whatever it's called for CHA means they have all of one profile which can accomplish it. Classified objectives in general are also very vulnerable to runs of bad luck on dice randomly screwing one player. Put simply, too much randomness that takes the focus off of skill.
I find Highly Classified to be a great mission. It puts high demands on having a variety of specialists, and the type of specialists impact your ability to succeed, and not everything is about pushing buttons. In general I find that Infinity suffers from its specialists losing significance. The no-name ‘specialist’ ability being the worst.