But actually, buffing supression fire would not affect FA because they are different things. They just took off that interaction because the complaints of certain part of the community. The FA malus is not the same as SF, if not, why would weapons that cannot SF apply the malus?
If CB did stuff because people complained, there'd be a whole lot less debate about certain units. I did get a like from Koni for suggesting that it was due to playtesting together with other MOD-imposing skills on upcoming units, so I feel fairly confident that's why they changed it. If anything the changes to Posthumans shows us the cycle for complaint-based changes is a few years and not a matter of months like it was with Full Auto.
I might have missed your point here a little, but based on my experience with other games I'd say that if the Infinity community developed an expectation that CB would reliably change models in response to players complaining, the amount of complaining would rise stratospherically.
Possibly, but my point was that Armihaul has been defending a few units in this thread that catches flack a LOT, yet they're still unchanged years later so CB clearly doesn't change things based on people's complaints.
CB have reacted from comments and complaints of the community before lots of times. And the fact that some testers sayd that the -6 of FA+SF was intended and the great thing about it, just the day it was shown, is a good proof that the later change was because the complaints that raised weeks aftee it hit the tables
If you say so, but I still say the evidence is fairly overwhelming that "community complaints" just simply don't inform any of their decision other than on a geological time frame. They might listen to specific groups of people (whom I suspect are overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking Warcors), and it's likely that these are the ones who managed to form a seeming consensus, but as far as I could tell the amount of whining about FA's MOD stacking during Suppression Fire was fairly minimal on the English forums.
You kinda have a point. I've seen more complaints about the change to the Zondnautica and how it's a transforming bike rather than the bike just drives itself* than complaints about SF/FA stacking... *Though in fairness I wrote 99% of them myself.
Re: changes due to complaints, it seems more frequently that CB changes them either very quickly when noticed (for example, the changes to FT:Core rules), which indicates to me that the changes are based on things that didn't come up in playtesting (or at least that the balance team/person wasn't aware of), or they basically don't change things at all. Things like the Symbiomate rework are definitely the exception and not the rule.
Yeah, the changes to the FT: Core rules were weird, because they didn't really help balance, and happened super fast. The SymbioMate changes, OTOH, were made very grudgingly - it kind of makes me wonder how much CB really cares about balancing factions. Are Tohaa supposed to be higher tier than most other factions, by design?
Hmmm, something else that could do with a change in N4 is taking away the bit where you can't put mines down next to enemy camo markers. It'd make for much better counterplay against them with things like mine dispensers.
Going back a to previous point, a lot of discussion has been seen about the Gamma, Epsilon, and the relative utility of troopers that have HMGs over Spitfire-like weapons or lower burst, hard hitting weapons like an MSR or a Feueueurbach. Make HMGs Burst 3. Probably drop points to the cost of a Spitfire. Maybe tweak Fireteams at the same time so that they're not dominating the long range, get rid of the +3 BS probably. HMG remains the best long range attack weapon, but the gap is closed, and troopers like the Daiyokai, Kiel-Saan, Scarface etc will see more play as burst 4 becomes more valuable.
It'd need play testing, but you bring up an interesting point: Is the active turn player too powerful? At the moment, units on ARO are often little more than speed bumps. There's very little purpose for expending large numbers of points in strong defensive units because they're often overwhelmed by the sheer number of dice the active turn player can put out. Five dice is a lot. Five dice on seventeens or below is absurd. Maybe limiting the burst on HMG's is the answer. I'm personally for making all units fire back in ARO with burst two.
I like how powerful the Active turn is, defensive games are boring games in my opinion, but I think the HMG is still that little bit too dominant even after the N2>N3 nerf.
I don't know... in the current game balance, I feel Spitfires to be in a fairly good place. They're decent weapons for the price I pay, but not a priority to take. HMGs on the other hand are a priority, however, both in terms of return on investment, but above all else because it's one of few ways to combat decent ARO pieces while maintaining some sort of advantage - and I think removing this risks having the game devolve into a have-or-have-not situation where either you have (access) to pieces capable of rounding the ARO obstacle or you don't and will have a really bad experience from a game. With that said, I think they can make the range bands on the HMG and snipers sliiiightly worse. Maybe experiment with moving the HMG sweet spot 8" out and reducing the Sniper's sweet spot to a 16" wide band instead of the current 32". I think that'd give the Spitfire-class weapons more relative power.
You don't see them maybe because most of those changes or reactions from complains only occur depending on who are complayining, and no, are not warcors. Bue well. That's is something will not changez and lot of people is not gonna accept anyway
This is what troubles me, we already have factions that struggle due to lack of HMG access like MO. A toning down of HMGs, with a corresponding reduction in the effectiveness of top end ARO pieces, feels like it would be healthier for the game. Too often when I'm writing lists I find myself asking if I've brought a good enough HMG, often at the expense of weapons like Molotoks and Spitfires that are frankly more interesting for the game as they need to manoeuvre and can't just shoot DZ to DZ with full effectiveness.
HMGs were toned down in n3, now are in good spot. There are also tables were they are not so needed. For long range there are still other weapons like the MSR.
