Remember that you always have to leave room for "glass cannon designs", great variance in the capability of a unit, from the one extreme where the unit is only capable of tanking damage (doesn't exist in Infinity) to the one where almost all points are ploughed into their shooting. Infinity's approach to unit design is to start with a glass cannon and work from there. The sturdiest pieces is a glass cannon with some Scotch Brite for added support. Arguably, the "classic example" of the 10-order Su-Jian for less than 120 is in reality a skew build as well. As far as game designs are concerned, it is on the far end of the spectrum and it's meant to go down like a sack of shit if it encounters something that counters the skew. Arguably, the skew counter in this case should be getting an AD trooper to either kill the Kuang Shi off or pull them out into the open and AROing them down. The case of flash pulse ARO putting the Su-Jian into a state where it can't perform, however, comes from a different issue I do believe. As someone wrote in the poll thread; changing some things may result in a lot of other consequences. Now that was written in context of altering points, but altering points formula is probably the safest way of changing the game balance. In this case we have the ARO mechanic where the active turn advantage is so strong that it's tactically unsound to leave most decent fighters on any form of long range ARO duty, so instead people get the cheapest thing with a Flash Pulse they can find and use those to slow things down - a) because it doesn't hand their opponent critical pieces and b) because they have to slow their opponent down somehow. Note that if you do leave insufficiently super-buffed snipers or HMGs out, you run a serious risk of losing them which increases the opponent's chance to be able to leave strong, real, fighters on ARO without this risk for the rest of the game - because the strong ARO pieces are also your strong attack pieces or they occupy resources that could have bought strong attack pieces. So, in conclusion, the game basically has to have soft one-BTS take downs like Flash Pulse because of how orders and ARO work. It is up to the players to make their lists to have a plan B, C, D... or to accept that plan A is a high-risk high-reward. (As with everything, as long as CB leaves enough room in sectorial design to accommodate lists having a believable alternate plan B+)
Reading all this comments seems like 16+ orders are something too powerful to balance without the 15 cap. But in fact I have not seen USARF, hassasin, cha, vanilla haqq or in a lesser extent vanilla ariadna win a tournament in a really long time. But even with that they are the ones that will be affected with this change. I say this is more about things that annoy players rather than breaking the game. USARF and CHA are designed to work with 16+ lists, and if they are redesigned to play with 15 they will be something different, and we will loose the variety they bring to the game. To play those armies you have to combine your troops and be smart with them, of course you have more orders because there is no aquiles or spearhead troop to walk around, you have to combine your foxtrot your grunts and your marauders to surpass troops way stronger than yours. And for me there is a lot of value in that. If USARF becomes another 15 order army with a Frankenstein redesign that could even not work for them, well, then why bother with USARF to begin with.
I think that is not entirely true and it varies from faction to faction and even internally with list comp, some lists care less while others may be vulnerable to it. For example a Tunguska list running Smoke and White Noise really doesn't care in that regard, they can bypass any ARO piece with impunity if they need to, you can't threaten to lock the board down against them with a Kamau for example.
TBH, if someone runs smoke, white noise, eclipse... your cheap-ass ARO pieces have accomplished their task as far as they're concerned in slowing your opponent down. It costs orders and skills to stick smoke down and it's usually not something you want to leave out to ARO in order to get down, either, as a single roll versus 4 are always bad odds. Besides which, a Tunguska force running stuff like that sounds like a decently balanced non-skewey list and the archetypical list that you don't want to leave anything competent out to ARO against.
I'm hoping for a non-Frankenstein redesign, personally. Play up that combination angle with lots of diversity in capability at a moderate points level and easy access to forward deployment to ease the Order cost of getting your combos set up, with fast quality Warbands to balance out the relatively poor elite hammers of the force. A redesigned Devil Dog in particular would go a long way.
If devil dogs and blackjacks become spear heads that will be already a Frankenstein redesign because those troops are clearly support pieces for the rest of the army. Tell me how are they supposed to bring down a top tier aleph or CA list with the same amount of orders without drastically changing their troops to become drastically more powerful individually. Additionally tell me wich role have to fit all those cheap troops in that list, like hard cases (designed to be the cheapest camo infiltrator), foxtrots (designed to be the cheapest regular infiltrator specialist) etc (Not trying to sound mean)
I think you missed the point I was making there. If you have access to counter measures it means you can in fact leave out actual gunfighters to do ARO work without the fear of finding yourself in a position where you can't get through space, into closer rangebands, or onto an objective, because you're locked down by a powerful long range ARO piece. Counter measures do cost orders but that's not the point there, you don't really care if it costs you a couple of orders to throw smoke on a console to let a specialist whack the button under the nose of a TR bot if it's going to win you the game.
I don't think I missed the point. I was making an argument that there are several armies that rely on killing ARO pieces and that it is suicidal to make heavy investments to leave strong ARO pieces out against them. An army that just smokes and avoids the AROs entirely is, effectively, besides the point both figuratively and literally. P.s. though by all means, do discuss how particularly Eclipse makes for a non-interactive game (even though it does tend to be found on elite units and is a very strong way to increase elite unit survival to the extreme) and makes it hard to put up a last-turn defence - though my post might not be a good starting point for it.
My usual Ariadna army is MRRF so I'm a little less familiar with the specifics, but I'll try. First off, Devil Dogs aren't so much a spearhead as a very fast and durable (especially against traditional ARO pieces thanks to its Total Immunity) standard Warband that doubles as a midfield sweeper, with access to Sensor and G:Synch. Blackjacks reprise their current role with scary Infantry-deleting sniper rifle or big machine gun to clear out less extreme targets, as well as being a big fat heavily-armoured brick for the situations in which that helps. I'm assuming "CE" is CA here. My idea for countering 15-order AI lists with big beatsticks and cheap orders is to have your own stuff already in position and hidden either under camo or behind DTWs when the game starts. Infiltrating Grunts or Shotgun Foxtrots can threaten the likes of linked OSS Dakinis from order 1. Devil Dogs get into position early with their Frenzy to Sensor out Nagas, Proxies or anything Shasvastii parked in the midfield, where your Marauders and Foxtrots can outgun or out-trade them. You'll still have to play around the likes of a linked Kamau, but a linked HMG should still be able to handle most things you can't smoke out. Access to linked APHMGs provides ways to deal with the Marut and the CA's TAGs, though you may have to trade a Foxtrot FO on a coordinated Forward Observe or use the Wardriver's Spotlight to get a good shot through the Sphinx, Achilles or the Avatar. Airborne Rangers and Van Zant can use any holes in the enemy's table edge to flank while Marauders can exploit gaps in the front just as easily, bringing a self-contained Smoke trick. Lastly, the low price of many of your options means you will be hitting 15 orders if you want to, all of them seriously contributing if used well. With one of the HellLois hot-cold game answers indicating that AI Beacons may be going the way of the dodo, it will be much trickier for those armies to so trivially max out on orders. A Hardcase with new DTW can punish the lighter varieties of list that will be able to hit the limit, the Foxtrot's LGL can hurt midfield links, and the low price of both plus the Hardcase's Ambush Camo means you can bring along enough of them that taking down your Specialist pool of Foxtrots isn't usually going to be a path to victory for your enemies. I may have missed the mark completely for how you play the army, but I expect to do something similar with my MRRF that can't take attacks nearly as well in exchange for improved Parachutist game and the weird, fun equipment the French profiles get. The difference as far as I see it is the extra ARM staying power and accessible DTWs USARF gets in exchange for being a more stand-up-and-fight type of army, as well as having the bikes and Devil Dogs handy to put down Smoke and exploit weaknesses instead of relying solely on AD.
well, there is a problem there. TJC can, or TJC needs to do that? order cost is important, because it is a faction with not so high order count in the fist place, and the TJC player is spending 50+ points, plus maybe specialist (it can be the smoke thrower, or an elite melee unit, no cheap warband), plus orders for placing repeater (because WN, there is no possibility to bring smoke and WN in the same fireteam) and I am not counting orders to do mission. The investment is high (maybe higher than that ARO), both in orders and points. But if they don't go that way, they need to rely their only AD to hunt them down (raoul) or go direct gunfight, which is not so good idea because most of the list is worse in that but it is a counter play to a most abusive counterplay (at least for some factions). That linked MSV2 need more ways to be dealt with.
Yeah you are missing the point. You were saying it's too dangerous to leave your main investments out on ARO duty while I'm saying for the right faction or list comp it's a perfectly fine option. A Guilang with a shotgun can take chunks out just about anything or any link team, it's just a matter of can you get him into position to do that. Smoke can enable that, so it's reasonable for me to leave a Mowang or a Daofei locking an important area down in SF, and if he gets killed I have plan B. Unlike disposable soft ARO options they have the potential to kill enemies that attempt to dislodge them. Risk vs reward.
So, have we traded sides where you're arguing that the situation with flash pulse AROs is fine and I'm arguing that it is not? I'm thoroughly confused here...
Continuing this, the other big exception to this would be the likes of Swiss Guard, Hac Tao, Gamma or big MULTI HMG TAGs. They're on the extreme end of cost but they can be a pain to deal with for all but the most specialised countermeasures, especially if we consider N4's crit rules, since they have enough ARM and Wounds to sit and fight for several orders and even score a kill or two before withdrawing into full cover with minimal damage. It's important to watch out for those rare AP SWC weapons, though.
I don't think at any point I said flash pulse AROs are fine? I don't think I was talking about flash pulses specifically at any point.
Okay, so going back to the point. Why would you leave a Mowang or Daofei in suppression fire for long range ARO duty? This is what confuses me, I wrote specifically that it was unrewarding putting expensive units on long range ARO duty because most of the time the opponent will be able to outgun them. Being able to smoke around them is a way of dealing with them as well, but surrendering the long range threat also means you're going to need increasingly more smoke to accomplish this, if you can even smoke against such AROs. This is basic Infinity order maths and what reinforces that these flash pulse REMs have a spot to fill and why Stun is in fact an excellent ammo to have in game, even on cheap models*. I just don't get what it is you want to say. * Although, there's a whole different conversation to be had about their Mimetism
I wouldn't necessarily leave them on SF mode at range, but depending on what my opponent comp is yeah sometimes I leave mimetic/TO stuff standing just to take shots. Going back to USARF which is relevant in this thread, my regular opponent leans heavily on cheap short range attack pieces. Desperados, Foxtrots, Hardcases etc. This is the kind of opponent that lacks MSV, and by standing my troops I can better contest and prevent smoke, threaten discovers at longer ranges while the retaliation at a distance is relatively weak.
I think it depends on how the unit is actually merchandised. If it's a 3 pack with some decent sculpts and stats, it could just be Tunguska's verson of Riot Grrls or Moira's or something like that, thematically. Stats wise, who knows until we see it of course.
I don't understand why Tunguska. They totally look like Bakunin weird-silliness. I like it but want them where it makes a little more sense.
The cheerkillers work for me fluff wise, I think they are meant to be the mean kids of corrupt bankers and the like. Think mean spirited kids that are joy riding with their parents money.
