Since there are a number of people who are new to Tohaa jumping into the Spiral Corps pool I figured I'd make a little list of the things your Symbiont Armor troops lose when the Armor is taken down. It's important to remember these things because they will effect your game. Draal: -1 BS, -2 PH, -1 ARM, -6 BTS, Stratuscloud, and Hyper-Dynamics L1 Kerail: MOV drops from 6-4 to 4-4, -1 PH, -1 ARM, -3 BTS Kiiutan: -1 PH, -2 ARM, -3 BTS, and Hyper-Dynamics L1 Kosuil: -1 WIP, -2 ARM, -3 BTS, and Bioimmunity Rasail: -1 ARM, -3 BTS, Nanoscreen, and V: Courage Le Muet: -2 ARM, ODD, and Forward Deployment L1 Kiel-Saan: -1 BS, -2 PH, -4 ARM, -6 BTS Neema: -1 BS, -2 PH, -3 ARM, -9 BTS, and Kinematika L1 Things like the Kerail no longer being able to keep up with his battle cats, or the Draal going from BS 13 to BS 12 are extremely important to keep up with. I've had a unit lose 1 to their BS stat cause me to get an important Crit in a game. I have also had the loss of ARM/BTS be the reason I failed rolls against damage.
One thing to remember with the Draal is that if they've already activated their Stratuscloud equipment, losing their armour is not a cancellation clause for the Stratuscloud state.
Not to get technical but theres no change in practice for Armand losing Forward Deployment right? So we could drop that from the list as well.
Since this thread seems to be about the overall effects of Symbiont armor, here are some perks that come with it: - though your inactive profile only has a wound attribute of 1, you count as a multi wound model when it comes to shock special ammunition. - as far as I know, losing your symbiont armor changes the Type of your HI and MI to LI, this should lead to Neema and the Kiel-San not being hackable anymore. Im not quite certain on this one, though, and would like to see someone confirm - you can shed your symbiotic skin by expanding a short order, thus getting rid of your symbiont armor. While this sounds ill advised, since you,ll lose wounds and the buffs it provides, it also cancels states like immobilized. It won't come up often, but ist worth keeping in mind.
That is correct but for the wrong reason. The Inactive Symbiont Armor profiles are not hackable because they do not have the hackable characteristic, not because they change the unit's type from HI to something else. This is an important distinction because while the hackable characteristic is currently assigned to only three classes of units (TAG, REM, and HI), there is nothing precluding some of those units from not having the characteristic (Ariadna HI for example) or from there being units in the future who are hackable but not one of those unit classifications. The hackable rules are kind of a mess right now though, since hacking programs don't actually specify that the unit have the hackable characteristic, only that they are REM/TAG/HI which is not very consistent...
The Inactive Symbiont Armor state is LI for all Symbiont Armor units. This does make any that were hackable non-hackable. In Sprial Corps that is only Neema and the Kiel-Saan. For regular Tohaa it was Neema, Ectros, and Gorgos. The problem with "Easymode" is that it's not correct in Spiral Corps. The Draal keep 1 ARM and the Sukuel isn't even a unit in Sprial Corps. It also doesn't help new players to the army who are trying to understand the units that they have never used before.
No Sukuel in Spiral Corps (unfortunately...what a great profile) But I did buy the missile launcher model when I found out that they're getting discontinued right away I'm going to use it as..... Ummm something.... Not sure yet
Actually... They're no hackable because you can no longer target them with (most) Hacking Programs due to them being the wrong unit type. And not having the Hackable Characteristic.
Good god the rules for this are made in the most cumbersome way possible. Why not just have all of those programs target things with the hackable trait? Because RAW the hackable trait is pointless right now. That could also fix the nonsense with unhackable HI getting E/Md, it could work on things with the hackable trait rather than with certain unit types.
Hackable is just a reminder, I'm not sure what the issue is. EDIT - and Cybermines trigger off the Hackable Characteristic, so it's not pointless.
So there are two redundant mechanics that are not interchangeable and aren't used consistently throughout the rules and you don't consider that an issue?
Sometimes you can hack non-hackable troopers (non-hackable HIs for example), and sometimes you cannot hack hackable troopers (HIs with a Killer Hacker Device). That can be rather confusing especially for new players. (For the record: that was very confusing to me, but I am not a good player...) You can label this incosistency. (Not overly precisely, though.)
For the first one, only for Programs like Spotlight, that explicitly say they can be used on anyone. For the second, that's because Killer Hackers aren't general purpose devices.
Indeed. For experienced players that is pretty trivial. For a rookie, that is one (two) more things to keep in mind - in addition to the plethora of rules in place simultaneously.
Exactly zero hacking programs actually target things with the hackable trait, apparently. That's a huge internal consistency issue, just based on the use of basic terms... Why not just do away with the individual unit distinctions for TAG/REM/HI on the hacking programs chart and just replace them with "hackable"? There's also the issue of E\M working on thick leather right now, and changing that to affect the hackable trait would also be important. The thing is, there's only 2 rules right now that actually rely on the hackable trait, as I mentioned before and you added to. Cybermines and Holo2. Why not clean up all of these things into one rule that all of those things can rely on? The current form isn't consistent or intuitive.