Another new character, another new NWI + Shock Immunity

So again the problem is that being an HI doesn't have any inherent advantages now that everyone and their dogs have pseudo 2W, but it sill carries penalties (hackable and higher cost for skills) because reasons (those reasons being probably that CB doesn't care about revisiting their "formula" even when it's not working). This is also compounded by the fact that ARM is overcosted and pretty useless.

Enter all the new optimized profiles with all the advantages of HI and none of their penalties because they are not HI.

 

beign hackable is a minor problem, at least in n3. Beign realist, hacking is one of the less used features in the game, and hardly to see an abussed one. The problems of HI are more related to the scaling of their skills costs, not for hacking (which in n3 is not so cheap as some want to believe). That same problem has been carried by lots of MI that are not fielded as much, they pay for attributes/skills more than what they can profit off.

HI should have a discount because they can be hacked? that seems ok to me, but then, hacking should be cheaper than its in n3 (and seems that in n4 it is cheaper, so I am ok with that discount). If hacking remains somewhat expensive, there should not be any discount: someone is paying for an specialized tool to deal with those units, asume it. Its like asking for discount in ODD units because MS2 exists, if one is cheaper, the other should be too

NWI+shock Inmunity should be cheaper than 2W HI? depending on what is the discount HI could get from beign hackable. If its 1-2 points, I don't thing NWI+shock inmunity should be cheaper, their difference in game is not so much in reality. Also, there are NWI+sock inmune 1W HI, wich should be cheaper than both because again, hacking

 

Except having an ODD already gives you an advantage that MSV counters, while being hackable gives you 0 advantages, so hacking is not really needed vs HI. That analogy is so flawed it shouldn't even be there.

Also, you say people pay for hacking to face HI, but at the end of the day HI are not different from other troop types, and they can be faced with similar tactics. Hacking is not needed to confront HI, and when people do pack some hacking is mostly because of other reason, mostly utility; have you seen any AHD lately or often? Why do you think that is?

Bottom line is HI have all the vulnerabilities other troops types have and then some others specific to their troop type while they don't present any specific advantage over non hackable troops.

 

BWAHAHAHAHA

No.

 

well, it was just an example. Being HI usually comes with a second wound (which was the main point of discussion, 2W vs NWI+Shock inmunity), I just wanted to bring a paralelism about how discounts should work in my opinion.

Also, you don't need MSV2 to deal with ODD, there are other options, that doesn't invalidate my point. I just pointed that hacking is one of the options to deal with HI. But I agree, people field hacking due to utility most than hacking, that's why hacking is so underperforming.

great arguments there. Can you point me some tournaments dominated by hacking the same way we have seen with, for example, linked msv2? (not only them, just to point something).

 

Look. You and I clearly play the wrong factions. I should be playing Nomads and you should stay the hell away from them. I don't because I've taken a critical look at their miniatures and parts of the fluff and said "thanks, I hate it", but I won't ever deny that their general gist supports my preferred playstyle.

Meanwhile, you seem to play in a meta that don't recognise the value of hacking or how to apply it. You seem to expect hacking to be a tool by which you spam them in list creation and then set up turn one and then beat your opponent into pulp - like an HMG. Hacking is more subtle than that. Hacking is, particularly at higher level of play, an area denial tool. By virtue of denying area to certain units, or making moving into it very risky, you garner tactical advantages.
The value is in making the Liu Xing not land next to your LT.
"But oh, Hacking never did anything in this game" Yes it did, it made the Liu Xing land off on the side outside of cover and spend 3 extra orders before it started shooting and one of the differences between a great player and someone with a lot left to learn is to recognise this fact.

With N4 hacking increasingly looking like an unsubtle powerhouse, I'm starting to get terrified about future game balance.

 

Game earlier this week: turn one, my opponent moves up a Hunzakut and deploys a repeater tucked in a corner, overwatched by a linked HMG, within ZoC of my Tikbalang,

Now I have to spend orders moving someone into position to shoot the repeater while also avoiding the HMG and the Hunzakut. In the end it costs me about two orders and one line troop to remove the repeater so that I can start my turn properly. An ARO that eats two orders, without losing the ARO piece, is very strong.

Hacking is definitely important, as @Mahtamori says, as an area denial ARO. No hacking attack was ever declared in that game, but hacking was still super important to the outcome.

 

hacking can be useful? of course. CC in N1 could be also useful. That didn't meant that its cost/efficiency and usefulness were anywere near good. With hacking, you pay a lot for a sometimes-denial tool, that, in most games, its denial is not so powerfull. Actually, KHD are powerfull, while HD are more "utility" and AHD mostly deppend on the enemy list (if they have hackables, and how they plan them more than the AHD itself).

So, a dude spent a hacker, a repeater and a fireteam to check your TAG... You yourself need to show that there was a need of a fireteam to deffend the repeater (not just an ARO piece), I am pretty sure that the other player spent more points in stoping your Tik, that the tik cost. And in orders, sending other dude might be the same as he needed to put the remote, or even you needed fewer orders than he needed to. When something needs more points and orders to "check" (and not to destroy) something, I cannot see it as "powerful".

As I say a lot of times, most of this comes from percepcion. Hacking is just a little nuisance most of the games, and a few times, it works more than expected, sometimes because great moves from the hacker player, sometimes because poor moves from the deffending player, sometimes good/bad luck (deppending on which side you look). Most of the time is not relevant at all in the game. But those few times hacking works better than expected is the reason a lot of people that don't use hacking remember.

My meta might be biased, I know, that's why I started to look also how people did in other places. And what I saw in interplanetario or the EIC is far for "powerful", more like "anecdotically powerful". As a nomad player (that also played aleph, yujing or pano to some degree, but mainly nomad), I have to deal with a lot of stealth dudes that make difficult to hack, various kind of terrain density (not so dense to be a warbands dream, not so open to be a shotty dream), so advancing is possible, but not so easy to just spend 2-3 orders and have the repeater in possition, and the enemy only needs a KHD (which is really powerfull, that't the only hacking that works as intended in n3 IMO) to send to hell most hacking opossition. But always that I see "hacking is powerfull" is from a few anecdotes, more than a continous effect.

 

Why the hell would you "defend the repeater"? You have to spend a reasonable amount. The repeater is there to force your opponent to overspend. It's disposable. The whole point of hacking is that you can force overreactions by good repeater placements, so if you overreact setting it up you're handing your advantage to your opponent.
Sure, some lists won't be as vulnerable - they'll have a useless order group with throw-away warbands. Adapt. Cut your losses and find a new way to make it profitable. Or don't. Siphoning a bunch of orders from the second order pool means you won't have to deal with as well placed smoke and it's not like you spent too much on it.

Now with N4 you'll also be able to Spotlight stuff that moves near it to be extra annoying, meaning you can use hackers and repeaters to guard against non-hackable units by stacking advantages.
Set your repeaters and pandas up near corners where you may have to take AROs against and profit.
Hacking is strong in N4 even without Oblivion+Carbonite negating units wholesale.

 

...that's not a situation where Hacking is a problem.
Your opponent spent Orders and built a list with at least one Hacker and another troop with a Repeater to get access to that move.
It took you 2 Orders to clear it safely without risking your Tik. Two cheap ARO pieces can do that without setup.
If you failed to do that your choices were to use a KHD of your own, kill the Hacker with Spec Fire, AD or an assassination piece like Dart.
And if all of that fails too your Tik still was far from guaranteed to successfully get hacked on ARO while Moving and resetting out of the Hacking Area.

Even IF your Tik gets hacked, Hacking is non lethal and you should have access to an Engineer since you're running a TAG. Again your opponent did spent points and Orders to put you in a pinch, why should you be able to press a button and get out of it for free? You have the option to Move+X outside of the Hacking Area and just clear the State with your Engineer if the opposing hacker, makes his WIP roll and you fail the save.

If the same list was playing a N3 tournament vs Ariadna or Tohaa most of his Hacking would have been wasted while your TAG has free reign (but still gets threatened the old fashioned way by flat out damage).

 

If the repeater is not defended, any random dude will destroy it fast and then the TAG is free. And most of the games, sending that dude will need less orders to destroy it than the enemy to put the repeater in possition. Also, carbonite+oblivion on the same miniature means several orders spent on it and have the reset fail (which is usually 1vs1 dice because is used in ARO, if cc is not safe to asume winning the roll with so much malus, hacking is even less safe), or at least 2 hackers at once plus a repeater (70+ points mostly). And I doubt anybody will fail so much to move outside the zoc from a repeater with those 6" or more: usually, if you win the reset, you get out of zoc in that order, so the hacker usually only has one chance to ARO hack before needing to put another repeater.

for N4, we will see. It looks promising, but who knows. There are still a lot of things we don't know. Also remember that it seems also that isolating (the only strong and mostly used feature of hacking) could be taken out with reset, so a non-lethal high-order spending tool might become less punitive, which means weaker. Or not. We will see when we play it.

In this matter, we will have to aggre on disagree anyway, as I say, it ends to perception of things. Also, related with the meaning of "powerful" in this game.

 

So how did that story with LX stealing ARO from hackers then whacking them with landing blast without them being able to dodge go?
Okay, that was a bit off-topic, but tbh it was one of the weirder examples here.

 

Don't know what to tell you. If you aren't able to pick a spot for a repeater that an enemy have to spend more than 2 orders to get to, then you should probably avoid hacking.

The whole point of using hacking like this is that it's really strong defensively. You spend AROs locking them down. Specifically AROs you wouldn't have if you weren't a hacker. They're literally free orders, dude.

Now, Carbonite can be used offensively to tactically get attacks with normal rolls, but Isolation doesn't do too much and is thankfully still B1.

I'm sorry Hacking isn't the Bright Collage from Warhammer you were expecting, but even there Second Sign of Amul was one of the most potent spells you could cast and that's only like 3 single dice re-rolls average per turn.

 

The landing attack is one of the weaker attacks in the game and hacking transport is for many hackers greatly preferable to dodging, while not actually terrible odds for those who get suckered into it. The defense against it was also made better by the simple fact that AHD didn't have HTA.

This isn't a big brain play you are aluding to, its biggest benefit is to make your opponent deploy weirdly.

In N4 things have changed. We don't yet know (at least I don't) if HTA is still in game, dispersion is no longer in game meaning a failed PH roll has greater (or sometimes lesser) consequences and most importantly Dodge can now Engage making landing on Fireteams MUCH more dangerous to the melee-incompetent Liu Xing.

Now, as a foot note; with regards to this thread, the hackable issue is universal to all hackable units not just Louie. REMs (in N3) had supportware, but HI and TAGs need to compensate for it with their own stats.

 

that spot might need more orders. Usually is not that the enemy needs 2 (it was just a way of talking, remember that I also said that the repeater will need 2-3, which also isn't realistic), is that the enemy needs fewer orders to remove the repater, than you need to put it. And they are no free orders because most of the time, you have spend those orders first. That (being free orders) only happens when the enemy doesn't know that there is a repeater/hacker in their ZoC (they forgot, their fault. It was camoed, that might be a wrong move or their fault, we need to see all the table. Or it was a TO, which it was the hacker player outplaying the hacked player).

Carbonite can be used offeensively? of course, but when you move away the hacker/repeater/dude that put the repeater (just to not loose that asset too soon), you give the enemy a free reset with no-malus. That's a lot of chances of beign free of that carbonite that you spent some orders to place (to me, that is far from powerful).

Isolation is, of the 2 powerful effects from hacking, the most notorious. Is hard to take out (you need an engineer) and is crippling. But also, is one of the weakest crippling effects (the dude can still deffend himself, or even go SF if needed). The other powerful one, possession, depends a lot of when you have done possession: in active in your lasts orders is a waste of orders if the enemy has a token, in aro instead is powerful, but you being realistical, a possession in aro will only be achieved if it done by a TO, or if the enemy does a really bad move. That is powerful but circumstantial. 2 effects, one that is in reality not so cripling, and the other circumstantial, that is also far from "powerful" to me.

I am not comparing it with WHF, I am comparing the points and order spending into hacking with other tools in the game. As I say, it is useful, but man, powerful? if we are going to do ad hominem, I could say that maybe you havent done any good defense against hacking, but that argument will still be a fallacy, that's why I don't like to use them, so please don't do it with those WHF or meta claims. Is not healthy to the discussion.

 

If there are no good spot, then don't waste orders on it! Or pick a better side next time.
Don't spend orders on stuff that makes no sense for the situation at hand just because you invested a tiny bit into it.

 

As I said, we well have to agree on disagree there. Our definition of "powerful" differs too much

 

I don't think we're disagreeing?

Yes obviously, like any other ARO, there are ways to deal with hacking. Like any other ARO, it's purpose is to eat enemy orders, which it did. My point is that hacking is in fact an important part of the game, contrary to some posters who were arguing that it's so unimportant that the "hackable" trait doesn't even matter. I was giving an example of a good player making a good play that used hacking effectively in a game.

 

who said that "hackable" doesn't matter? saying that "its a minor problem" is not the same as "doesn't matter". There are more problems for most HI and TAGs, that are more important in my opinion, than hacking is. Also I pointed my reasons to why I think that way, while only got an example that is not so usual to see in the table (and that I am not sure that is so valid)