Becuase that way, when it's shot you can Doctor it slightly more often, if you can actually get a Doctor anywhere near it! It's a pretty fair ability on anything non-NWI or Dogged, good for ARO pieces. The reason the Kamau is so BS is that only the sniper has the expensive MSV2 and that it can be involved in a Fireteam of dirt-cheap Fusiliers. If you had to put it a Fireteam of other Kamau like most units pre-TAK having it would be enough of a points drain that you couldn't cram all of Varuna's other defensive options into a list and still have a credible offensive plan without actually risking the Fireteam. New Sectorial design is much, much more responsible for the recent imbalances than any of the admittedly gross rule combinations on any single unit, with the lone possible exception of the fluff-and-mechanically-broken Kriza Borac.
Sure, but why should the Kamau be immune to shock? Cheap abilities are bad for the game. If something is so niche or situation that it costs one point, everyone should just have it and it might as well not exist.
+1 BS is 1 point. All those cheap abilities add up to a complex whole with multiple minor changes between units which are meant to make every faction unique. Cheap abilities are most decidedly not bad for the game just because they are cheap.
You've used an attribute not an ability as an example. And there's no reason for a Kamau or anything that is not identified as shock immune in the shock rules to be shock immune. It's a garbage rule. Why is a grunt shock immune?
It is Shock Immune because it has equipment that protects it from Shock. This is presumably because whoever was in charge of in-universe budget wanted their troops to not be killed outright by Sniper Rifles, Mines and the like but didn't want or couldn't afford heavy powered armour. As for the BS example, this is becase I was demonstrating the relative importance of small bonuses instead of being a pedant. If you really need other examples in the ability category; Stealth, Forward Observer (and Specialist Operative), _Terrain, G:Remote Presence, V:Courage. All of which can drastically alter the capabilities of a troop in conjunction with their other abilities. This is as far as I will be drawn on this subject, because it will clog up the thread again. I would like for N4 to kill Specialists off entirely for Scenario design, and instead use Specialist Operative to denote scoring models if they want to keep the only-some-models-can-score system going. It's a little easier to understand than flipping through the list of ~8 skills that let you score in this game, and there's no real reason not to denote the very important "Use This to Win Game" trait separately if you're trying to reduce confusion in the rules.
I don't think Shock Immunity (edit: as is discussed here; on one-wound troops) is a big gameplay issue, considering that outside Haqq it doesn't do much more than more reliably cluster Doctor Helper Bots near certain units (Haqq's Doctor+ makes Doctoring so reliable that Shocking targets matter a whole lot more). In general it would be good to reduce Shock immune profiles, though, for the simple reason that having too many where it doesn't matter much makes it harder to remember what is immune and what is not.
Yup. Or Total Immunity on Uberfallkommando - no big deal. On Karakuris- huge deal, and should cost much more.
Once again, Total immunity is a bad rule in general. There is no reason for dog warriors or Karakuri to be less exploded by an anti tank missile than anything else. If it is mutant healing factor, give them regeneration (and make regen suck less). If it is damage resistance, give them higher ARM. If it is durability, give them higher W/STR. If it is tenacity give them levels of courage. Total Immunity is pure rules bloat and should be deleted.
I wouldn't go that far. But it needs to be costed appropriately, and shouldn't work against nonlethal ammo/E/M.
This is more an ITS issue than N4, and is it really that hard to read an extra paragraph in the ITS document that denotes what a specialist is, and a Line in a mission description for relevant bonuses? This is something that would just be improved with significantly better layout. Getting rid of the specialists in regards to mission design is just going to result super boring missions that are just annihilation with extra steps (which has already happened in the transition from season 10 to 11), that don't offer any interesting planning or decision making and will unnecessarily advantage the direct fire orientated factions and skew the game further towards hyper efficient gunfighters in fire teams running the table.
I've never played any of the Campaign or Dire foe story scenarios, can asymmetric missions be balanced in Infinity?
There is already a thread in the ITS subforum where these arguments have been made, since this is definitely an "ITS problem" not a core rules problem.
For the most part they are overly complex and have too much book keeping for ITS, but it's less about asymmetrical missions (though it may be possible) and more variation in mission types and objectives so that everything doesn't come down to move+shoot+stand in an area and win. Have you played annihilation, frontline or Biotechvore? They are the definition of boring. One shouldn't be done to the complete exclusion to the other, and as for more mission orientated scenarios it depends on the execution. missions like the grid, and comm centre fall into this category as they are just pop smoke, press button, profit (Though more likely an issue with smoke as a mechanic or the platforms it is most frequently on than anything else). Where as Tic Tac Toe, Engineering Deck, Frostbyte, and Unmasking are good examples of this as the firefights are a means to complete the mission as opposed to the mission itself, it's down to you to decide which are necessary firefights to take to accomplish this (if any) as opposed to just throwing HMG rounds at the opponent and tabling them. But more importantly these missions mean that as long as you still have a specialist or two and a handful orders it doesn't matter if your opponent took down every single assault piece you have you still have a chance of pulling out a win, and solving for that is often way more fun and engaging.
Still think supplies hits the sweet spot between moving around, rolling WIP and shooting. The purpose of the objectives is to make you move where you wouldn't normally go and to attack who you wouldn't normally attack to keep things exciting. The effect of terrain on each mission makes it so variable as to what is a fun mission and what isn't. The difference between supplies with markers representing tech coffins, and supplies with LOF blocking terrain representing tech coffins alone is huge.
We actually have rule in our community to that effect, where regardless of what is physically on the table all antenna/tech coffins/ consoles/ etc. are S3. Makes things so much better.
Re: Shock Immunity, I really think it should be a thing on any one wound units over a certain cost that don't have V:Dogged or V:NWI, and most especially on Medium Infantry (it honestly out to be included on the chassis for MI in most cases IMO). It makes investments into higher cost one-wounders more easily recoverable via doctoring.
