I would have been perfectly happy way back with the first Human Sphere and all they did was make some sectorals have higher AVA on some troops and none on others.
My thoughts on the matter aren't that controversial I think. I slightly lean towards the game being better off for their inclusion, generally speaking I agree with the posit @barakiel makes that general access to strong ARO options shapes play in more interesting ways overall. However I think we can all agree the Kamau link is the most pushed by far and I think it's the only one people take issue with. One of the best players in our local meta fields PanO and has been playing VIRD pretty consistently as of late, so I have lots of reps against the offending fireteam in question (as Haqq no less, one of the least equipped factions to deal with such a threat). There is counterplay but without HD+ or eclipse smoke my own options are quite limited. Fidays and linked-speculative LGL fire have both served me well in the past but sometimes I do feel the range of solutions can feel too narrow. For example if you get a little unlucky and you lose your +3 fireteam bonus to a downed member (whether you were hoping to spec fire or try your luck in a FTF with your Asawira Spitfire) or your Fiday run goes sour/they deploy with it in mind, you've now lost your one tool that can solve the problem. Even though you made the right tactical response, there's no room for errors or bad luck so to speak and that can sometimes feel sour. Overall I don't think it's a problem, just wanted to offer my own sort of "uphill" battle perspective. I should also note that I don't think the solution (not that there's really a problem to solve perse) is to nerf Kamau or Linked MSV2 in general. I think a much more elegant fix would be wider access to HD+ and eclipse grenades even if it's expensive or uncommon, just so you have the option to bring extra answers.
Who is competing with the normal 'nade launcher for AVA. Sure, that's AVA5 in Imperial SS, but only AVA3 in Vanilla. So do I, but some armies don't have a good variety of tools to use, as @Ankaa points out: My ideal fix for this would be for every faction to have about the same total number of threat tools, but not necessarily the same mix of tools. So Nomads have HD+ and Eclipse and LGL and (something not an Impersonator). Haqq gets Eclipse and LGL and Impersonators and (something not HD+). etc
4x Daylami Panzerfaust Coordinating fire for ~28 points, 1 Command Token is one of the best ways to clear a Kamau. Even assuming the Kamau contests and beats one of them, the other three have about a 78% chance that at least one Panzerfaust connects. A 78% chance of slapping the game's best ARO with an EXP shot is better odds than you'll find pretty much anywhere else. Even if the Kamau tries to Dodge it all, the odds of connecting are still pretty good, and obviously you don't lose anything except the Order and Command Token spent.
Going back to my original post in this thread, every faction's got a solution, but they may not be used to leveraging it. The up-tech guys tend to have their super gunfighters, or gunfighter + Nimbus, or White Noise/Eclipse. The lower tech guys tend to be good at getting in someone's face Turn 1, or can coordinate cheap hard-hitting troops. Realistically though, anyone who puts 1 Saturation Zone terrain piece on the table is able to massively even the odds vs linked ARO opponent. If your force has an MSV1+ unit, a decent high-Burst weapon, and there's a forest on the table, you already have a pretty good solution.
I don't vote, cause I'm not sure. In a vacuum, it isn't good. I comparison to other changes in Infinity (FAT2/B5) it isn't that bad.
Having started to incorporate more terrain zones into my games, I can attest to this. Makes you start to reframe which units are useful, which ones aren't as great as they were when the tables had no craziness going on. Govads go from "why no Muyibs?" to "pretty good", and that's just one example of what even one forest can do. Something even like a river can halt a lot of the momentum of some of the nastier link teams by forcing them to spend a couple orders clearing it - which isn't the point of this conversation, but is related to part of the problem (hyper efficient link teams with cheerleaders backing super stars).
I don't think I've ever even thought about getting more than 2 of any given HI unit in Yu Jing, AVA 3 is plenty enough and AVA 5 of the Zuyong is crazy stuff. I'd argue that the Nimbus profile simply is too expensive for the gimmick it provides, not unlike that Orc Guarda profile people gloss over when they say Pan-O can't smoke objectives to push them in safety. Edit: Thank you, Hecaton
So I'm like pretty sure the topic of this thread was: "Do you think the addition of strong MSV2 sniper models to cheap core linkteams was a good decision?" not "Can a PanO player theory craft 'easy' ways other factions could theoretically list tailor for mediocre results vs a Kamau to try to justify it?" I'm talking about the Kamau specifically because I think that's really the problem. I haven't faced a Haidao, which seems a strong piece but not so problematic - the extra potential swing in mods with mimetism on top on on Kamau + Sixth sense level 2 makes it more so I think. Even a lot of the offtopic 'suggested solutions' leave a little to be desired anyway IMHO. Like requiring the Kamau owning player to both be going second and deploying it (poorly) where it can be seen by 3-4 long range strike troopers in their own positive ranges (ie not exploiting the range of the sniper) probably worth (often much) more than the Kamau, which then coordinate and probably all die as a result. Cause it's not like Varuna doesn't have other cheap strong ARO units that are likely to have LOF to 3-4 things coordinating against a sniper that has a large LOF across the board. That's one thing missing in this conversation largely. Kamau might be more ok in another sectorial, but Varuna gets a lot of other strong things that synergise with it too, including a lot of things PanO traditionally seemingly deliberately hasn't had to keep their firepower in check, and yet they up the ante on firepower if anything, rather than sacrificing it for other toys. Beyond that is the fact that these suggestions essentially just take for granted that everyone now has to specifically tailor against it. Well of course you can tailor. That doesn't mean it's good. Just the fact that you kind of have to against just that one thing makes it pretty likely it's not really well balanced. The fact that even the suggested tailorings by and large aren't great just makes it worse. The truth is we don't know the end result of this, and it's not going to break the game. It can be played against but for now it's kind of pushing up hill, and it needs to be specifically countered for like basically not much else in the game. It seems like this and a couple other things have taken the game to a place where there are basically faction power tiers now, at least for sectorial, with a few outliers at the top end, and that's not great in a game that didn't really have that before. There are other things to read into it. Like, yeah it does push towards more elite lists (both because linked MSV2 sniper destroy warbands smoke reliant hard, and the things you need to counter it are often quite elite too). But it also pushed towards specific builds being the one optimal way to play, when you'd hope mixed links done well might actually do the opposite. If anything I think the weakness of the Kamau isn't that you can tailor against it ('cause well, duh), it's that it's inherently a swingy piece. So if you can threaten it with a piece with a positive expected outcome in a 1on1 (even if it's not by a huge margin, because you basically need a ridiculous effective B5 BS16) that changes what the dominant outcome is, and therefore forces a good player playing with it to either play it in a less dominant way (win for you, if marginal), or play for an expected loss (win for you, if swingy). Once it's gone or more defensively positioned, it frees up the board for an actual game much more. And if that expected loss outcome becomes the meta, the meta changes, and we get new releases that shake things up more, and who knows where that all ends up. So my answer is, no it doesn't seem like a good decision overall, because it's fairly clearly power creep, and unevenly distributed power creep between factions that makes the game less well balanced overall. Though it probably has some benefits in shaking up the meta, and we don't know where it will go in the end.
What I'm getting from this is far too many players are playing on rubbish boards. No sniper should be able to dominate an entire board from a DZ, if they can you need to go back and learn what constitutes "enough" and "appropriate" terrain.
You would probably be correct if the Sniper Rifle's range band was a bit more punitive at short range (like the Missile Launcher is), but a Sniper that's difficult to handle at 32" is not less difficult to handle at 20" and if your board covers so much that there's no problem navigating all the way to within 16" of an elevated position then you've probably got some bigger issue with terrain.
...but it's not going to have any better a time of defeating the cored MSV2 sniper (let's face it; Kamau) than an HMG, which you'll probably have in your arsenal because normal snipers are favourably dealt with using HMGs. Snipers are nothing new, but I do note that a bit over a year ago, the issue was that people played on too dense tables, effectively devaluing snipers as a weapon group.
There is no probably whatsoever, you can (and damn well should!) have a board where the range bands of a sniper rifle aren't devalued without it dominating the entire thing. If you haven't got the tools to engage the Kamau (or any linked MSV sniper for that matter) at range but you try anyway, when there are plentiful and widely available alternatives, then I don't really know what to say.
Yeah, the issue really lies with how people can use ( I am guilty of it) the mix links which will have two purposes: great ARO, cheerleading. And you won't care with moving them up the board. In CJC the MB ML with 4 alguaciles, in Ikari the tankoML + keisotsu, in VIRD the Kamau sniper ;) So attributing where lies the issue is hard for me: mix link teams or msv2 into the link?
Except if the spitfire wielder is a better shooter than the HMG one. It is not a common thing but in Aleph, Marut is quite uncommon while Achille is very popular. And outside of the Marut, the HMG wielders aren't exceptional. The Dakini is good against Fusiliers but won't win a FtF with linked Kamau. And for JSA, it is even more relevant.
I disagree. Unbuffed dakini may, but linked and buffed (by apsara or hacker) have better chances of winning than losing. And if you have dakinis, you have probably a HD+ which can help a lot vs MSV-2. So vanilla Aleph/OSS should have the means to deal with it.
You don't need to dominate the entire board with your Kamau. You've got Helots to cover other angles and Fusiliers to guard your back (and nearly 200 points of other stuff in addition to that). It's sufficient that the Kamau guards an important lane or two for it to effectively dominate a board and make it incredibly hard to get within 16 of it.
