So I have been firmly in the camp that crits are fine for the game. The build risk into the DNA of the game. There are so many amazing units that are literally balanced out by the fact you can kill it and it's no longer overpowered cus it dies. In saying that CB has now confirmed Crits are changing so the question isn't if but how? The best answer I have seen is that you auto succeed but the auto wound effect is replaced with a Dam 20 save. What does this mean? It means warbands are effectively hit as bad as previously. It means cover still matters. It means armour is still relevant with a jotum in cover still having a very decent chance of saving. But without a jotum or other heavy tags being invincible if you make it auto success but save as normal. Da and similar ammo would work the same as now. The crit that now auto wounds once and saves normally, would be DAM 20 once with normal saves for the rest. (Mono/k1 could equate it to dam 20 so it still kills things which it did when it crits and the units with it really rely on the auto kill too. ) I still don't think crits need to change. But if they do this is the healthiest way of seen suggested that's still cleaner without messing with the DNA. Of lethality built into Infinity. Hot take or hot air?
I think it's a good notion. I know I'd appreciate ARM a bit more if Medium/Heavy Infantry in cover suddenly had a 30-40% chance to save against a Crit. That's pretty good, but not so good that it stops Crits from being "the great equalizer". That proposal feels very consistent with the mechanics of the game.
Auto wound on crits is dumbest mechanic in the game. I have several players here who actively refuse to play crit as written because they feel their enjoyment of the game suffers greatly because of it. I wrote a dozen time on the topic. I will be happy whatever change they make as long it doesn't involve auto wounds on targets.
Personally, rather than making the dmg 20,I'd just have a +3(and +6 with fatality) dmg on the crit, combined with the automatic f2f win, since that makes ARM and cover matter, but it also makes the Weapon matter more. Get crit with a pistol, you can survive it, even if you're in your underoos in the open, but if you take a beer can sized bullet from a TAG's HMG, or you eat a rocket designed to kill tanks, then your buddies will be scraping bits of you off the scenery while looking for your cube... I'd also change AP to a straight - 3 as well, possibly with APlv2 being - 6, because right now it's a bit silly that it's less effective against lighter armour, and it's more consistent with how other mods work.
As I have pointed out previously, crits are one of the greatest "luck" contributors to a relatively low-luck game (I won't go into why the game is low-luck again unless necessary). Most of the mods suggested this far to crits reduce it's luck effect, or put another way, make the game more predictable. Predictable favors the better (more practiced) player in a game where the best players already have 85-90% win rates. I hope that whatever solution they come up with doesn't shift this balance too much in favor of the better player. There's nothing more demoralizing to a new player than realizing they are going to lose every game they play because the club players are just more practiced.
I passionately disagree. But we know it's changing, so I'm trying to find the least awful compromise.
interesting change, though i don't know how to feel about it. crits are still lethal but on the reviving end there's still a chance to salvage the situation. though i feel there will be a slight slowdown in the game.
I disagree with this--my personal view is that compared to other tabletop wargames, infinity is actually medium-to-high luck (relatively speaking with other games, remember), especially when we are talking about competent, higher level players playing against each other, and not specifically weaker players trying to overcome more skilled players by way of massive RNG variance. I agree with you that the best players rarely lose against weaker players, and that's because there is a decent amount of risk-mitigation in this game. Crits aren't the only thing that make this a medium-to-high variance game. In my view it's the impact of the LT roll, the random layouts of tables at an event, faction matchups, high-stakes individual rolls like impersonation or AD drop attempts, or the impact of several failed WIP checks or armour saves on one dice. Player A can make slightly better decisions over the course of the game relative to opponent B and easily lose if the important dice rolls blew one way. That's just part of what we sign up for, and it definitely keeps things entertaining, doesn't it? ---- @deltakilo The crit change suggestion sounds really reasonable to me. Bear in mind that they could implement that, but still wreck things, by not addressing the change it would have on the dynamic between high burst weapons and heavy armour. However it would be refreshing to play a new version of infinity in which the big tanks see a ton of play while the smaller flakier stuff gets left at home for a change. I would play an Avatar a lot more confidently, that's for sure.
There is an offhanded mention in the Cancon video about the troop profile having more impact on the new crit mechanic, so that does imply that either the skill or weapon of the shooter will be more important, or that the defender will get some manner of save. Hoping for the simple save option, but CB might still pleasantly surprise us with some more variety in how crits are delivered- especially if it keys off something like Troop Type.
Mostly agreed.. Only thing is I think the DAM should be something like +8. That way a crit from a pistol is much less scary than a TAG hmg crit. Wearing a leather jerkin and a TAG hits you. Only cover gives you a chance. But that's shifting it from only slightly less deadly than autowound to the majority.
This idea really rings with me. I'm hoping that the crit effects by ammo type remain despite the streamlining of the rules. As it can keep the viscous and illegal nature of stuff like shock ammo. It also has the opportunity for debilitating effects outside of merely dying when it comes to the exotic ammo types such as adhesive or stun. Such as reducing ph or movement even after the effect is cleared, joints got gummed up! Cruts can also involve a smaller damage boost but the cancelation of cover bonuses. That +3 armor adds up. I'm sure the idea of a crit is hitting vitals or the head or somewhere unarmored.
Come to think of it, they may be just handling crits the same way D&D does; auto-hit and doubled damage dice. Easy to calculate, easy to resolve, still factors in ARM/BTS but gives a unit a chance to put down a big target they normally couldn't by applying an extra wound. Only tricky part is big TAGs being basically immune to some troopers unless you can flank them.
Y'know, if they changed crits to ignoring ARM/+X Damage/extra wound roll, then made Shock be an automatic wound on a crit rather than it's current effect, I'd be OK with that.
I REAAAALLY HATE the idea that troop type plays some effect on crit interaction. (The idea that for instance warbands don't crit as easy or if they do it's less powerful) is clumsy and it hurts units like SP that don't need it. Having to know oh I crit with X unit so the effect is X is messy. I'm hoping it's something along the lines of damage as discussed because the crit will natively affect elite things less severely than low armoured things compared to now. So they achieve the goal of slightly toning down warbands. Slightly buffing armour and tags. Which I think is where this should be. My main concern is tags being almost immune to small arms fire. The day I engage in a firefight where my opponent can hit and I'm not worried about it is a failure for the game. I think you should have a bit of nerves when you decide to engage. You should win, but you also know things can go wrong and great players know that and either risk mitigate (Why use a tag to kill that model and risk it this order when my tr bot is more than capable) or have backup plans for when things inevitably go wrong. My sheskiin got crit the other day top table at cancon. It sucked and it definitely hurt. But I took a couple of minutes to compose myself and on balance it didn't matter. Lethality is the great equaliser, I hope CB is very aware of this.
Thanks for chiming in Vaul, and for all your great videos. As far as the overall luck level of infinity, the 85-90% game win rate I noted is for the best players in a given ITS season. That is, people playing high-tier ITS events consistently performing better than others at those same events. This _is_ measuring performance against competent, higher level players, not just against weaker players at a weekly game night. It suggests that a skill difference among good players is reliably observed, even with the variance of luck. Given the consistency of the performance of the top players, it suggests that luck in total plays less of a role than we'd like think. You're always good to point out decision-making fallacies in your videos to help people improve their play by making the right decisions even when they don't pan out with the dice, and I think crits are similar. We are prone to blaming bad luck (from any source) when the game was probably (though obviously not always) decided by skill. Based on that 85-90% win rate for the best players in the game (who presumably are almost always higher skill than their opponent), we'd extrapolate that (very roughly) 20-30% of games are decided by luck. Maybe that's too much. Maybe not. Another way to put it: if your typical three or five game ITS event doesn't have an appreciable element of luck in it, if it's just a measurement of relative player skill, how many new players are going to want to play in ITS? Totally agree there are other sources worth looking at within the luck matrix. High impact rolls are an interesting issue, as are things like table lay out. Faction matchup is an interesting one, and if we weren't so close to the N4 shuffle I'd probably be trying to dig into that more. Point is, I'd argue if you're going to cut back crits we should be looking at other, more palatable ways to _increase_ luck sources, not decrease them.
This is already pretty much possible- anything with BS12 or less and no MSV in a bad range band can't hurt ODD/TO in cover, and a Ryuken or Hexa is much cheaper than a Jotum, Marut or Avatar. There's no effective difference between (possible hit, impossible wound) and (impossible hit, possible wound), the result is still an invincible unit. The solution here is, as always, positioning; even without an auto-wound crit mechanic, no unit more expensive than a Flash Pulse bot is incapable of wounding every other unit in the game if they catch it out of cover, barring changes in N4.
Definitely agree that AP should be flat ARM mods and levelled. The way it is now is just one more push towards low quality units (just like crits are).
As grumpy as this might sound, but... Haven't we discussed this several times in the N4 suggestions thread and isn't this news item covered in several of the threads with attached videos where Bostria mentions it?
I think the changes to the crit mechanic is important enough to have its own topic. I like the idea that ARM/BTS still matters a little bit on a crit. The tricky part is to write the rule that "a little bit" is not too much while still keeping the easy to play rules of the current mechanic.
I always considered crits as part of the game as a whole, so it never bothered me a lot. More than once I decided an engage taking in mind critical rates, in both active and reactive turn. So.. it's a rule like the others, never been really angry about it However, I always advocated my interpretation on the criticals, to "balance" in some way the luck factor. A conditional critical could solve several issues and discontents in the community, leaving the weight of a well-placed crit still consistent. - If the critical roll would win the F2F, it's an auto-wound bypassing the armor like the actual rule - if the critical roll would not win the F2F, it's an auto-hit, but an ARM/BTS roll is still needed. In this way all the consideration of a firefight would still be relevant in case of a crit - higher BS, higher burst would mitigate the weight of the crit - but at the same time the "lucky shot" that saves a misplaced unit against an heavier and more skilled piece will still be present.
