i think bostria mentioned that the troop plays a bigger role. I suggest the crit scale with the BS attribut
This is great. At BS 11 the chance is 5 % and then it increases with another 5 for every increase in BS. Good stuff.
They could update crits so that enemy targets equipped with jammers just reflect successful crits back onto you when you roll them, and enemy targets protected by symbiomates ignore the effect of crits! Also, when you spend a tactical awareness order, you get another order after that, for free, for every critical hit you rolled in the duration of that order.
Tying crit effect to troop type ( or worse equipment/weapon choice ) is unnecessarily complicated solution. I know this could potentialy kill 2 birds with 1 stone ( make troop types mean something in the game and fixing crit ), but it would require people to memorize multiple effects of crit ( instead of 1 ) and also check their list whenever crit happens to see which troop type made the crit. Crits just need to be simple and not autowound, how hard can it be to fix that... Also, FAT2 shoved how awesome it is to have a skill modify how crit works. Tying it to weapon/equipment is same thing. Potential balance nightmare. Crit is a core mechanic, it should work exactly the same for everyone, like movement. But whatever, I am campaigning for change to crit for over 2 years now, and as I said before, I will probably be happy with any change that doesn't involve autowound.
Crits should stay like they are. In a game where everything dies, nothing is OP if you kill it. Making crits less deadly makes stuff that can't be stopped more likely, and stuff that can't be stopped is broken. Messing with it potentially rebalances the whole game in a way that messes up years of balance tweaking, and could take years more to fix. Secondly tying crits to unit type in some way doesn't sound like a streamlining of unnecessary complication, which seems to be the goal of N4. That's slightly worrying (can CB just not help themselves?). The crit is a pretty elegant mechanic as is. Adding an arm roll and potentially differing effects is just more cruft that will slow down the game more. Lastly, if it has to change, I'd rather something like +10 dam than a dam 20 hit. That makes having cover (and some arm) important to saving a crit, and makes it easy to calculate (take flat 10 from what you'd normally need to save). And TAGs should not keep Tac Awareness if something like that happens...
Yup. Depending on how far it goes, a lot of the "how do we make high ARM attractive?" changes would need to be rolled back overnight. I think +9 Dam is probably the right point. It means that you'd need (after MODs): ARM3 = 20 to survive a Combi ARM4 = 20 to survive a Spitfire (so Alg in Cover) ARM5 = 20 to survive a HMG This means that a Jotum vs a ML crit is on 20s to save. That seems reasonable. But I do think DAM20 could work, depending on how Hacking is changed: most of the things that DAM>20 would make a difference for are Hackable.
Guys stop thinking of crit as a solution to killing high ARM targets, particularly TAGs! This is wrong! It hurts expensive 1W models the most. Also, like I said a million times before, if you need to rely on crits to counter TAGs and similar high ARM targets, then Infinity is not a game for you. This is what high DAM weapons are for, CC monsters and hackers ( who could potentially get even better at this in N4 ). So stop clinging to this wrong thinking you need crits to autowound or otherwise TAGs will be OP. It's just dumb. Like seriously, this literally means that your are saying TAGs are OP right now if you play a game against a TAG and you get zero crits against them. Potential to get autowound on a TAG is not a balancing factor at all. Just think how ridiculous this is.
Gotta agree with this. We deal with visual modifiers by bringing MSV or DTWs, Jammers with Veteran or Stealth, Fireteams with Nimbus Grenades and templates. High ARM is no different as an obstacle, bring a friggin' anti-armour gun, hack it, E/M it, Jam it or tie it up in CC. Use the counters, there's certainly no shortage of them compared to things like Jammers or Impersonators. I do honestly think that doubled dice on crits is probably the best way to handle this; makes them stronger against things like Dogged or 2W, improves the value of ARM/BTS by allowing it to be involved in more saves on average, removes the need for special-case crits for E/M CCWs and the like and makes the power of the weapon more important- DAM would play a role in crits and anti-materiel ammo would have an even better chance of really wrecking the target compared to now.
You’re missing the point. The thing is to always have a chance. Even when you are outplayed and lost all key pieces your average cheer leader has a chance of pulling out a hail Mary. The idea that no one is untouchable and every weapon at least in theory is dangerous to everything.
It's a good point, but unless they make a unit with ARM 11 as standard every mook with a pistol can still do that (Pistols are DAM 11 and the weakest ranged weapons in the game, some CC attacks are lower). What's more, the average relatively high-end BS12 MI can't be dangerous to an Intruder in Smoke (among many other situations) outside their good rangebands! Setting the generic "Bare Fists" CC Attack to DAM 11 N would allow every unit in the game, even the guys carrying non-lethals, to score a kill on a Jotum without an auto-wound or boosted DAM on a crit, which I think would retain the spirit of the rule without requiring super-deadly criticals.
Also, if you actually think for 5 minutes about crits you will also realize they can't do flat DMG 20 crits, because that wouldn't equally affect all weapons. Low DAM weapons would benefit far more than high DAM ones. ( which makes no sense, you pay thru the nose for those Mk12s,MSRs,HMGs why would they benefit less from this ? ). K1 especially would benefit greatly, as DMG 20 crits on this weapon would just mean crit on them is autowound like now. In my opinion, DMG bonus to crits is a way to go ( we used to play for a time crits are +3DAM ), because it's simple and still meaningful. Even if they removed crits from the game nothing would be untouchable anyway. Except Jotum in cover. So because this 1 unit in the entire game can be potentially untouchable ( and seriously if Jotum shoots your 5 point chimp with a pistol, Jotum should win every time because I paid over 100 points for him to do so ) we need crit to autowound ? That makes zero sense. If we disregard Jotum, then you already always have a chance, it's called rolling better than your opponent ( or him having a bad ARM roll ). And if we would change crits to do +3DAM for example, then even Jotum in cover wouldn't be invulnerable to pistols. But he would get to roll armor that he pays for heavily for, which seems very fair to me. And by the way you forgot about units that can stack modifiers against you so you can't actually wound them. This alone completely invalidates your reasoning. So we already have untouchable units in the game and I can't remember you mentioned having problem with them. If you are down to cheerleaders and enemy still has his TAG, you don't deserve a Hail Mary, you deserve to be tabled.
This right here very clearly shows how we approach the game from such fundamentally different viewpoints that there's not much point in me adressing the rest of your points. For me those kind of games are the most fun and memorable, regardless which side I'm on. I am confident that CB will continue to put out a great game and that their change to crits will be an improvement on an already great game. Take care, mate!
Oh boy. 0. Expensive models with low ARM tend to be hurt by crits most of all because it forces them to lose the Face to Face, because for low ARM models the odds of saving a roll are stacked against them so the auto-wound is more a foregone conclusion than it is for a high-ARM model. You've got Doctors to counter-act them going down like sacks of shit to random crits and their relatively low cost compared to multi-wound models if you don't want to Doctor them. 1. "High DAM weapons" is a shift in typically +2 points. High DAM AP weapons are rare. 2. CC monsters currently rely on Crit because many of them are wet paper tissues of damage. DAM 12 on a Ninja - tickle me will you? 3. There is a very limited amount of Hackers you can field, if facing certain TAGs do you just concede if you lose your Hackers because you'll need to win an average of 20 Face to Face rolls to take down a standard MBT? 4. ARM gets better the more you add to it, particularly since the target number for complete 100% resistance is between 12 and 15. Under the DAM distribution that guns have it's at around ARM 11-12 that things start getting ridiculous (that's with Cover). Going over the damage potential of the Zeta, I noticed that a very significant amount of wounds taken are always crits, regardless of which weapon I went over the numbers with. If you only exclusively remove the auto-damage effect of crits, a Zeta will effectively increase in effective STR by over 200% and the Zeta is currently a chassi that's not considered very optimal. This is a extreme value problem that creates skews unless counter-balanced. 4b. Why do I mention ARM 11 (aka 8 + cover)? Mostly because that's where I personally think ARM starts being worth the points you pay for it in the current system - crits and all included. So yes, it actually is all about TAG balancing, because it will cause a very very skewed situation. Which is not to say that the current situation is ideal nor that it can't be improved, I actually don't particularly like crits as they are, but I consider them a necessary evil because of some of the extreme values situations that this game currently has. Let's not argue based on misconceptions, though.
Eh, it can happen to even the best of players sometimes- you don't make your ARM saves while your opponent makes all theirs, your TO ambush whiffs every shot and the table lets your opponent outrange your DTWs. It's always worth letting a smart play and a little luck get a player back in the game, keeps a losing player doing something even when completely outmatched- you're almost certainly not winning with half your army gone, but if that one guy with a Combi Rifle in the right spot can knock down a key piece you can at least make your opponent work for their victory- or even deny it if they've inadequately protected units needed to score. Having that capability is a key part of keeping the game engaging in a one-sided matchup, and certainly not something you'd want to throw away for no reason if you can avoid it.
I am in the camp that crits need to change. We still need crits to prevent a horrible decline into mathhammer app(after amm if there is always a 5% chance you get whooped math is at best theoretical) I think you can look at this in a couple of ways...crit wins and beats all attack rolls. Not bad in an aro situation. My combi just lucked out and made the tag with an hmg flinch. However, not useful in the active turn. Adding 10 to the strength of a hit is okay but really who cares that makes a pistol str 21 so not terribly different than what we face now. It gets worse with a real gun. I'm not sure how they'll resolve..I am sure that most of us wont be happy with it. As far as the tag situation goes... tags need to be redesigned. Either they are just super hvy infantry and need lower points (and jotum lower armor) or they need to be things that will fundamentally change how we play. You will need to take anti tag weapons if you think your opponent will take a tag. Missiles, rockets etc. Should a combi rifle be squashed by an autocannon carrying light tank ...yep they shoul . Should they be able to crit dodge and stay alive ...yep to that too. Maybe crazy heroics allows for a h2h attack crit to always wound a tag...sticky bombs?.... yeah. If course this leads to tags needing a revamp in the other way...more points maybe less wounds- not sure how. All I know is a change is welcom . Shinobu running in and chopping a guy who then rolls a 1 crit and kills her outright is really bunk and this stuff happens too often to keep the game fun. Not to mention the whole crit fishing from the abomination of fatality lvl 2....
I don't get the argument about the Jotum in cover being untouchable. Even if for some reason you have no anti-armor weapons or hackers in your arsenal, there are still several tactics to use against it. Tie it up in CC. A handful of cheap warbands could keep the thing busy all game, even if they don't kill it, they can tie up something many times their point costs. Or you could hunt down the TAG's order pool, kill off its cheerleaders. Or ignore it and play to the mission. Yeah a Jotum in cover is a hard target to remove. A 100pts of well positioned miniature should be hard to remove. Personal, I am fine with crits, it is a simple easy to remember mechanic, but I don't think they are necessary for balance. The problem with crits is Burst. If my amateur math is correct, a Burst 5 weapon has about a 23% crit chance. And then there is the bullshit of Fatality L2. I think in the big picture crits could use some work, but whatever they do I hope they don't make things more complicated.
