I wanna say about 80 percent of the time I find myself maxing AVA on them. But for the most part the mission dictates what profile I take. Which do you like? I think initially a lot of people cried fowl when the Kappa hacker was revealed to be 15 points, it's funny because the Cyberghost is so much more applicable. Theres an interesting dichotomy between the two. Oh yeah. Favorite profile? Big time. The alpha in particular is weak to this. something to keep in mind if you're attending a tournament and don't know what to expect I mostly agree – depending on table it may not be necessary to hide the Sirius bot. the heavy riot stopper is a pretty threatening ARO. I almost never include the CoC in lists – it's still a dead give away when you tell your opponent how many orders you have, though it would be interesting to run the Alpha as an aggressive specialist depending on the rest of your list. Might be a little wonky but I'd be willing to try it. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on why you're so attracted to the CoC profile
Lynx sniper. Love popping them out to kill stragglers in Fireteams or pop people trying to do cautious moves. Two of them makes it possible to cover a lot of angles and they become greater than the sum of their individual models. I have tried using Ninjas like that before, but they're a teeny bit too expensive to make a good list besides them. CoC vs LT is a dead give away when you tell your opponent whether it has Strategos or not :) I'm more thinking along the lines of, if you bring an Alpha, maybe get a different unit to be LT and have the Alpha CoC & Counterintelligence them. It'll still be obvious it's a CoC and a high priority target, but your list will not necessarily fall apart when it dies because your real LT can be a faceless Kappa or a hardy Gamma. It depends on how your meta likes LT hunting, mine doesn't but they will kill an LT if opportunity presents itself.
Alpha LT are a nice LT choice.... You have madtraps team, Monstrucker with mines, and hell... 2 reserve troops, send Hyppolita near him or put a lynx Operative... So, you can made Alpha's deploy perimeter very strong also... That Varangian monsters. Pray for your drooptroop or infiltrator if dosen't enought to survive with a nice sample 0-12 safe deploy listed... Alpha can engage easy with that s4 base. Alpha CoC i think are a nice option if you run with Zeta TAG LT now... In ITS11 with TA order and a mission with DT extra order. But without this extras, strategos2 are a sweet and cheap, very cheap Lt and nice profile to denfend himself in a CQ scenario deploy, and yeah strategos2, better than Shukra in OSS for 1 less point in their same role onfield.
Just be careful about planting friendlies too close to the Alpha, infiltrators could use that to their advantage by positioning themselves between the alpha and friendlies, where template weapons (eg. Lt Shotgun) won't work.
Careful, though, if you engage vs. someone good at CC they will just CC attack you to FtF your engage.
Considering you're able to angle the shotgun blast... you'd have to deploy your Alpha prone and deploy a considerable amount of assets around to make the infiltrator able to affect being immune to shotgun blasts.
if the Alpha is prone and the infiltrator/impersonator is prone, you don't get many angles to work with.
The more I use the Sirius the more I am impressed by it's utility. I really want to like the Gangbusters more then the Sirius but I keep getting more mileage out of the Sirius. Anyone else finding this to be true, or are the gangbusters MVP for you? You know it's kind of funny. The problem units I would normally point at for being just better then other factions equivalents, like the Kappa Hacker, or the Omega Unit still tend to be overshadowed by other options.
I have a profond love for their Siriusbot before all. A big giant repeater on foot with heavy glue launcher and mimetism is quite a thing for that cheap. Add their master and you have quite a good combo, even if I still lack some experience with different loadouts to get the best out of her. Same goes for the Gangbuster: he didn't prove quite well yet, but I feel like it's because I'm not used to MadTraps generator units.
Yeah the sirius has been MVP in almost every game I have played so far. The red fury version is the best MSV hunter I have ever used when combined with a cyberghost, and it eats links for breakfast. 2 gangbusters and 2 sirius teams might become mandatory for me
Which loadout then for all 4? (I agree on that team compo too, even if I tend to prefer Combat Jumpers, specially in this ITS season)
Depending on mission, for most missions I would bring 2 KHD gangbusters, except in those where specialists give points to the enemy, in which case they would be rifles (shotgun profile is entirely useless). As for the sirius, I would like to bring at least 1 red fury, but all of the other profiles are also great. I would be less likely to bring the AHD though just because I would be worried about giving away free AROs with the bot when hacking. I would probably stick to shotgun or FO if I need more specialists
If they hack the bot they aren't counter hacking your hacker, meaning you can mess with them in all kinds of ways, or the it's out in the open about to be shot in which case either a mistake has been made in positioning or it's there to get repeater range in which case you probably have already written it off and don't care. The AHD Sirius can put any hackable target in a really awful position when it comes to figuring out what it's going to do for it's ARO (Dodge, Reset, Shoot) that I find it invaluable. But that may value may vary on how many REMs, TAGs, HI, etc. you have lurking around your meta.
Great point, I just rarely use assault hackers in general since my meta is pretty light on hacking targets (mostly just HI, and with ludicrous BTS) Another thing i realized today is that the Sirius is a great answer to the Kamau sniper everyone seems to freak out so much about. Drop white noise, move the bot out to glue the team and shoot the Kamau, he can either: Dodge and risk getting shot by the Sirius (hopefully with a red fury) Shoot the bot so the other link members can shoot the Sirius and risk getting glued, plus eating red fury for free It's a win-win
Sirius AHD is really meta dependent, but can be pretty potent against the right opponent. She's even more vulnerable to KHDs than the hacker Gangbuster, though you can really flood the field with hackers between the Sirius AHD, 2 Gangbuster KHDs, and a Cyberghost which can add to her defense since she deploys so closely with a repeater. Its too bad she only packs an SMG. I may have written it in this thread somewhere before but ill post it again – FO is my go-to. Makes a great Liaison Officer, boarding shotgun is a great weapon to start 20 inches up the board both offensively and defensively, and she can score a decent amount of cards between D-charges/FO. She's a very well rounded troop. The Red Fury is a also a great choice too. Mission depending I'm always reaching for the FO or the Red Fury.
I'm generally going with the FO Sirius as well, partly for all the above reasons, but also because it's not necessarily the best idea for the entire midfield to be packing SMGs - mixing it up gives you options. :)
The vulnerability and high BTS argument I often find is a non issue, thanks to it carrying a repoeater and being backed up by 2+ KHDs mitigating the former, and leveraging program ammo types and that most most HI only have 3-6 BTS (which isn't really that huge of a problem) dealing with the later. Given the recent TAG rework, and all the sectorials that are getting a random HI thrown in with their line infantry fireteams, the value of the AHD goes up. In addition to this there are also increasing amounts of REMs in fireteams it's hard not to find a valuable hacking target. But I understand why people shy away from it for the most part, and as I pointed out in my original comment and has been said by others it is meta dependant, if your meta is nothing but Tohaa, Ariadna, VIRD, and RTF then it's value is going to drop somewhat. As to the FO, it being a FD LO and a mostly unhackable specialist (they can still brick the bot) are it's main draw, and it does this well. but i often prefer the Omega FO for LO duty if I can afford it. Side note, I really wish that they didn't slap so many SMGs on the specialist profiles in O-12, it makes them incredibly obnoxious to use at times.
I second that, I really dislike having that many SMG as I don't like the weapon... Kappa hacker for instance is sadly a miss because of that, and when you make the bill, you end up with enough specialists pieces, but not so much long range weaponry compared to other factions. I played two times with O-12 and found myself easily out of options because of this, the general loadout calls for a very aggressive middle-board playstyle.