We literally saw it happen in the battle report, the Jujak LT got hit by Oblivion, it's unchanged. Aside from "gaining cyber control" against factions far superior at hacking is a pipe dream at best, the point that was being discussed was being put into LoL as the second player on turn 1 via Oblivion. There's very little you can do about Nomads hurling a linked pitcher up the field and isolating your LT if he happens to be hackable, doubly so if you're a Vanilla player and at least linking into a tinbot isn't even possible (or you're a sectorial like ISS trying to use an unlinkable LT like Sun Tze).
The crit change also isn't something I'd weigh into heavily skewing things toward HI either. So long as crits cancel out higher rolls, they'll always strongly favour cheaper bodies. The new change actually helps cheaper models survive more often. I consider it a wash. Really, unless more is to change, I'm expecting HI and other troopers with the hackable penalty to be in pretty much the same spot they were in N3, if not worse off due to the changes in hacking.
This is true. Under N3 a 2W unit can at least guaranteed withstand a single critical hit while a 1W trooper was straight up doomed. In N4 the 2W trooper now has the chance to go unconscious, while the 1W trooper has the chance to get past it unscathed.
A poor chance to get though unscathed. Yes theres more variance but on average low arm units are very likely to die to crits. Before in N3, a crit would just send that 1W model unconscious. Now it can outright kill them. Meanwhile a 2 wound HI thats unlucky and fails both wound rolls can still potentially be healed. At worst it might force another order from the opponent to finish the HI off. The biggest benefit is to very high arm units like TAGs. A Jotum in cover is basically immune to Dam 13 normal ammo. Crit fishing with rifles and HMGs isn't going to work.
You say this like we're a faction with good doctor options, we're even worse off than Pan-O in that regard.
What? Yu Jing doctors are good enough. You usually only want to heal units with long range weapons in or near your DZ anyway. That comes up often enough especially when using HI as long range AROs. On another matter, how would you feel if Hackers could defend their teammates vs hacking attacks like back in N2? Either that or maybe just stop Isolation from causing LOL. As in the LT HI would become irregular but the team wouldn't suffer from LOL. Because I still quite like the idea of beefing up basic HD devices to make even your cheerleader LI hacker a potential hacking threat. It would improve the hacking game of Pano and Yu Jing.
Most chaff troopers aren't worth wasting orders on to doctor up anyway. In terms of the investment of points and orders to deal with them, it scales highly in the cheaper troops' favour, since there's less incentive to invest in actually protecting them, as you really have less to lose. They now just get that perk with even greater (no matter how slight) chances of being able to keep on keeping on. Also, being Yu Jing, I don't run Doctors. We get one, and it's the bare minimum. Not worth the points or order investment.
IA would kill for a linkable doctor, just saying. WB wouldn't turn it down either. Isolation not causing LoL is fine with me, that said unfortunately we know it does. I don't know if improving the hacking game of YJ/Pan-O is the right way to go about it, at least offensively anyway.
Guilang (hero of the state empire) hacker can turn a few heads. But I wouldn't necessarily call it a strong hacking presence. It's an extra perk on an already incredibly good skirmisher profile that people don't expect you to put the extra investment in specifically because YJ doesn't have much of a strong hacking presence. And also because it comes at the cost of losing that insanely good FO option. You definitely don't take it often. The Daoying hacker is obviously incredibly good, but not usually in the contexts where you'd be applying hacking as an offensive tool.
So does an FO. And it can fire WIP 14 Mimetism MSV1 flash pulses in a positive rangeband across the entire table all game long, too. Losing the FO is a huge opportunity cost, it has won me games. For YJ's lack of solid doctors and (up until recently) engineers, they've got the market cornered on truly incredible FOs, the Guilang being one of the absolute best in the entire game.
Are we talking about Shit Dickram or some other unit? Because I don't qualify him as a solid Engineer.
Oh, definitely not Krit. He manages to be bad enough to make the bog standard engineer look good. I was referring primarily to Monstrukkers. They may be available to everyone, but they're damned good, and easily the best engineer available to YJ. The new Ye Mao engineer also looks okay. It may not be Yu Jing's engineer, but it's still a competent choice, which is better than everything we've had before (and after, unfortunately).
Why does the guy who wants to make a HI force work deserve to lose because hacking but not the guy who wants to make a LI/MI force work? What unfair advantage do HI get that the first guy needs to be very wary of hacking but that other guy doesn't? Because I can't think of any with the advent of a bazillion NWI + Shock Imm LI/MI with better stats than HI lately Also, what makes you think CB wants to push HI? Because they say they do? The N4 battle report showed us hacking is getting buffed and HI are not dropping in price (at least not YJ ones) so I fail to see how they are pushing HI Also the crit change, as stated, doesn't really benefit HI so much, specially not the YJ ones when they have a Grunt's ARM (Hulang, Liu Xing, Zuyong, Zhencha, Tai Sheng, Krit, HaiDao, Jujak are all ARM 3). I fail to see what advantage warrants an extra weakness to hacking for those units with their shit stats that are worse than most non hackable units being released lately for the same cost or less.
I think they're trying, just not very well and with a big focus towards pushing new stuff rather than fixing the old stuff; O12's HI is extremely solid across the board and competes well internally. Hacking also did need the help, especially on basic devices and AHDs to bridge the gap between the "fancy" Hackers and the rest. It may seem rough but that power boost means a few Zhanshi or even a well-played Wardriver can actually take on an Interventor now.
Please go over to army and check the PH on our last HI, specially the ones meant to be linked, then come back to us. Or don't bother, I'll tell you: it's mostly 11 or 12. In fact, I just noticed Jujak went from PH12 in N3 to 11 in C1 That's precisely the problem, our HI no longer have HI stats, but they are hackable just the same while NWI/No shock non hackable units with "old HI" stats keep popping left and right
Hackable should give significant points discount. Bigger than frenzy ever did. Linked riots save around 20 points with downside that doesn't do anything in link. Sure, being hackable can be mitigated by tinbot, linked khd or fairy dust, bit tinbot costs even more points, khd is not always an option and yet again it cost points, and fairy dust requires an order. And after all of that you still can get hacked sometimes, or reset for half of your order. For that 30point discount across entire link seems fair.
The poor PH of YJ HI is also compounded by the plethora of YJ pseudo-HI that go straight to dead. Mainly an IA problem It will be a small boost for the 5 elite HI but definitely not a big deal and definitely not for the HI links that don't benefit from it.