N4 wishlisting

I don't have a problem with fireteams, the mechanic is cool; but right now they let some good model acess good bonuses for too few points imo. I don't want MOAR NUMBERS, I want the players to have some good tools and think how to use these; not just get +1B +3 BS and go full yipikayei!. Relying in B1 ML to stop a fireteam only works when the FT guy is careless, and not everyone have access to the noctifer ML to surprise the FT.

N4 needs a living rulebook that can be updated regularily. The books can be used for fluff, cool stories, art... but the rulebooks are hindering this game. I don't want another 20 pages "FAQ" (aka patches) while still having a ton of rules issues without addressing because it would make the FAQs too big and the printed rules are sacred.

 

Something should be done in regards to fireteam compositions, right now it is an unbearable pile of "counts as", "can be part of", "up to" and strict "4+1" etc...
I cant imagine a new player jumping into all that and not being overwhelmed, especially on top of already labyrinthine Infinity ruleset.

 

Number 1: Combine all 3 threads on N4 speculation into 1 :P.

Actual number 1: I'm throwing my support behind a 100% digital living rulebook. Errata labeled as errata within the rules itself (with strikeouts and different colored font). FAQs only answering difficult to answer questions based on a cursory reading of the rules, or situations that the examples forgot to cover.

2: Condense CC skills into one table with different skills giving different benefits (not MODs). Give all troopers with CC skills a base burst of 2 (to further differentiate them from troopers with high CC value, but no CC skills).

3: Condense hacking. I liked an earlier idea where most hacking devices had access to similar programs, but the different hacking devices conferred different bonuses. Upgrades can still exist.

4: Rework how skill boxes are arranged in the rules. Differentiate between passive effects and active effects. Make the requirements crystal clear. If certain effects are contingent on further requirements, separate it out somehow. Indent bullet points that are contingent on previous bullet points!

5: Overhaul pricing. Nothing much new to add here that hasn't already been said. Some skills/stats are undercosted (*cough* mimetism *cough*), and some are overcosted (ARM, MSV1,...). Synergies need to be looked at as well. A combination of NWI and shock immunity should cost more than the individual skills cost alone.

6: Give TAGs some love. I really liked the idea of hacking counter-measures. Perhaps if FAT2 is reworked to provide +3 DAM instead of extra crits, TAGs could get that? Seems pretty powerful, though.

7: Settle the intent debate.

 

Personally if they killed crits completely but changed nothing else I would be fairly satisfied. If there is one thing the keeps pushing me away from Infinity is losing a game to a pile of crits. I get so motivated to play Infinity and then I get stuffed by game after game of crits and I walk away for a couple of months. I haven't played a game or bought a model in almost a year (partly because one of my chosen factions has been getting trash releases) because they game just ends up be utterly unenjoyable.

 

Paging @psychoticstorm and @Koni...

 

Personally if they killed crits completely but changed nothing else I would be fairly satisfied. If there is one thing the keeps pushing me away from Infinity is losing a game to a pile of crits. I get so motivated to play Infinity and then I get stuffed by game after game of crits and I walk away for a couple of months. I haven't played a game or bought a model in almost a year (partly because one of my chosen factions has been getting trash releases) because the game just ends up being utterly unenjoyable.

 

Ironically, a crit was what sold me on Infinity back when I had my first introductory game with the Red Veil set.

Only a wounded Hsien, a Zhanshi and the Khawarij are alive on the board. The Hsien is sitting on the objective behind a crate, the Zhanshi is covering the approach and it's the Haqqislam's player's last turn, so he has to get rid of both the Zhanshi and the Hsien to secure the objective. The epicness ensues and the Khawarij super jumps down one of those paper walkways from the starter set, onto a crate and into the street, surviving the Zhanshis ARO. He then spends the next order blasting the Zhanshi and closing in on the Hsien. With his next and final order, he walks around the corner, right in front of the Hsien and blasts him with his LS. The Hsien decides to go for the +3 rangeband with his pistol and gets the lucky crit, sending a bullet straight between the Khawarij's eyes.

He had no right of winning that engagement, but pulled it off due to sheer badassery. Point being: Crits do have a certain appeal as far as spectacle is concerned. They should, however, remain the exception and Fatality L2 is an absolute no-go in my view.

 

Can I get uhhhh this and a large coke

Yeah I basically only play vanilla ATM because fire teams are annoying to build.

 

I really don't get the opposition to nested skills. I really think Skills should be nested/named more clearly (for example, Executive Order, Chain of Command, and G:Mnemonica/Autotool should all be different letters of the same skill for organizations sake), but I don't really get why everyone is so weird about Morat (Religious + Veteran), for example. Vet 2 should be broken out just because it already says what it is on the unit that has it.

It's more an organization problem than a nested rule problem. For example, there should be one block of rules that applies to all Ghost rules, and then individual exceptions should be added in their own rules. Under this paradigm, Jumper and Mnemonica (and by extension autotool) could be moved to their own rules since they have almost nothing in common with other Ghost rules, and then G:Rem Presence could be the base skill for the remaining skills (Servant, Sync, and Marionette, all of which vary in how they apply coherency, for example.)

All CC chart skills could be merged into one rule entry with all the charts in one place (CQC Training: Martial Arts, CQC Training: Guard, etc) and the CQC Training skill could grant the normally nested skills (Courage and Stealth).

Speaking of courage, there's no reason for it to be a level of Valor except thematically, but one change I'd love to see is that skills with the same level numbering at least have somewhat similar effects. The biggest offenders in my eyes are fatality and full auto, where the level 2 effects can't be guessed at all from level 1.

 

I'd like to see fireteam bonuses redone.

For example;

You only get +1b if there is a duplicate weapon in the team, I'm pretty sure the +1 burst has always meant to represent multiple people firing their weapons at something but if there is only one ML then where did that other missile come from?

Fire SSL2 into the sun, as it stands this is an insanely powerful bonus that strips a lot of counter play, if it meant to show multiple people looking around then Fusi 1 is going to just as surprised as fusi 2 when a Spektr appears out of thin air and opens up with a shotgun. create a SSLX with only some of the points of L1 and L2 and some other odds and ends so that they can have ignore stuff like out of LOF fire.

Finally the +3BS, this just leads to stupidly high numbers and obnoxious gunfighters, though of the 3 bonuses this is the one that is for the most part fine. if it meant to be that there are more rounds flying around so the chance to hit is increased, I'd rather see it be like FA2 where it imposes a -3 that forces the other guy to keep their head down more.

 

Issue is without a crit system -ignoring fatality 2 issues- makes this a little too much like gw math hammer. Knowing that there is always a 5% chance something could beat you really makes a player think and plan and not be able to optimize the lists. Not saying great lists dont exist just that it hasnt become sit across from an opponent and know you have 0 chance of winning because you dont have the right counter to the spam they brought.

 

Okay I'm an old generation. I love guild ball but hate that they are all online for everything. No physical rulebook, no cards etc. Hate it... how about release a cool future notebook with reinforced punch holes or even plastic pages i dont care and then once a year you sell update packages with corrections on the pages and you can update your book.
Of course younger guys and okay with printing out paper can do all that it just use online tools.
Keep the crit!!!!! Yeah i have lost a game against a rookie when a crit killed shinobu in hand to hand ... but I want to deal with that and try to minimize those chances being one of the challenges.
Stop it with blocks of 3 being the modifiers
Terrain rules... simplify and then dont make optional. Add a lot of depth and real difficulty on the tactical level.
Kill vanilla makes very little sense in the fluff and for some sectorials leads to min maxing... leave that to worse games.
Link teams should be about flexibilty and order efficiency. Want that +1burst you must have 2 models seeing and in range of the target. Want plus 3 same thing...
Lvl 2 6th sense nope... just place your models to cover your six. Maybe allow for auto warning to allow teammates to respond or no modifier for suprise shot.
Hacking is a mess and less type of devices and more flexibility. Hacking has off and defensive. Assault strong attack programs but weak defense. Killer device all anti hacker and no blowing past firewalls. 4 to 5 programs per device except maybe killer ... killer maybe 3 or 4.
Retreat should not end missions just put challenges on the retreater.
Collapse weapons and differentiate a little more in range bands and damage. Dont be afraid of str 10 weapons(hello light shotgun) armor is pretty useless anyway.
Make tags better- lots of great ideas out there so I'll leave it to larger discussions but they have to be better.
Shotguns are too much. Either they are template from the gun and weaker blast or solid shot and big chance to hit but no more cone of death plus str and modifier to hit.
Jammers....nuff said.
Damage terrain. Like ... link team on top of building. Missile the building and cause the roof to collapse.
Auto and wills are point and army tweaks that bring a little more balance.
Keep inching the storyline forward.

 

Well rule details aside (screw jammers, Fat L2 (especially in core teams) to name a couple)

The thing i'd like to change are more in the "feel" of the game and certain category of units and reinforce their "fantasy" in the context of the game and universe

That is, Heavy Infantry, TAGs and Hackers, i feel like all three sort of fall flat.

The first two don't feel like they live up to their theme, especially with the proliferation of their natural predators and also competition with other, cheaper/optimized units and also pricing issues (W and ARM being overpriced)

As for hackers, at the moment it's pretty boring and feels more like some silly magic than "infowar" (i mean information warfare, not yelling about turning the frogs gay). To compare, the Pen&Paper RPG has a much more interesting approach where Hacking is another "layer" of conflict over the conflict that take place in the physical space.

Not that I have any clear and specific idea on how to achieve that or that anyone would listen to me if i did!:D

 

My crit suggestion previously was to make crits auto-wound but then count as normal hits for the rest of the resolution of order. For example, if you crit something on a 12, and your opponent was shooting on 18s and rolled 4,8,13,16, you would resolve the crit (autowound with your damage type), and then resolve the roll as it would if the 12 was a hit but not a crit( cancel 4 and 8, 13 and 16 would still hit as normal.)

Crits ignore armor, crits win f2f but don't autowound, crits autowound but are treated as normal ammo (this would be iffy because it results in situations where crits are undesirable), etc. are all other possibilities to make crits less swingy than they are right now. Crits are an important balancing factor in the performance of high-value pieces -- but I think sometimes they feel so high risk that it isn't even worth taking the high value piece that dies in one crit vs. six low value pieces that die in six crits.

I don't mind the unpredictability that crits add to the game, but I think the "counterplay" to crits has some bad impacts on the game (spamming more units / spamming higher wound counts). It's one of the reasons Tohaa's performance was and continues to be so strong -- multiple wounds is built-in crit insurance, and Tohaa gets more wounds for less points than almost any other army.

 

Like many have previously stated, I’d like a living electronic rule book, but I want to take it even further. I’d like the rules, profiles, faction/sectorial AVA’s, and fireteams entered in a versioned database. The database would be the truth data that Army operates off of, the wiki is generated from, and the PDF/ebook versions are created from. That way any update to the database will update all other products automatically and consistently.

In addition, the database could be supplied to the community to be used in apps like MayaNet. Eliminating updating the data would greatly assist app developers and encourage app diversity. The algorithm to generate list codes should be shared so that lists could be freely shared among the various apps, Army, and ITS.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

It's interesting to me how much some other people dislike crits. I think Fatality L2 is a bridge too far, but the basic crit mechanic is fine.

 

Yeah, this.
Crits make CC professionals functional and CC is still plan B in most games at best

 

Remember, we might see CC changing further, too. Personally, I think the idea of basic CC attack having a higher Burst - at least for units with some kind of CC skill - has a lot of merit.

Main problem with crits is that they're robbing players of the act of agency. They make for a great cinematic moments... but they can also sour the game for both players, especially when they happen more frequently in a single games. I've been on both ends of that, and it's no fun either way.

 

Stick to D20! No A! Dices D: