So our Daoying LT hacker profile will not be an autoinclude anymore. I think thats in general a good thing! Will be interesting to see how this will effect his points costs. I took him 100% of times for his LT order buff of the RuiShi and the jump on Tigers or Lius. He might actually be more useful in IA now, because they can leverage the NCO on TaiSheng. Will also be interesting to see how the Guilang and Zhensha hackers will get played, as they have the role to stop enemy HI/Tags now. KHD are still good. I think these are good changes overall.
I mean... unless the Control Unit gets to be the first/only human non-REM EVO :p EVO REM will probably be mandatory for any serious HI or REM force (so basically anything Yu Jing) which is my concern because that seriously impacts IA's Fireteam options
I mean they always did, but Zencha was competing with the FO profile for cost, and his shock vulnerability made it risky biscuits with Trinity being on the table from KHDs. Guilang AHD was always a legitimately good profile. I use that one regularly. Given that the HD is basically the AHD now I think it's wrong to say AHDs are removed from the game because what actually happened was HDs were removed and AHDs were renamed. TBH I use lists without Rui Shi/Lu Duan more than I do with in N3.
While I feel this provides much needed simplicity and clarity to the hacking device roles, I feel I'm just not going to engage with hacking outside of bringing obligatory KHD to protect my HI. I'll definitely experiment with all types and need to know the available platforms but I feel this requires more of an investment into hacking if you want any output. No longer can you just dip your toes with an HD here and there. Odd side effect is that the EVO in a list will highlight you're probably taking drop troops...
I wonder how necessary Fairy Dust is going to feel with the likelihood of increased hacking. We've (probably) still got our tinbots, but the firewall will be useful for independent operators or if the tinbot carrier goes down.
If your enemy has enough hacking presence to crush your tinbotted link packing whatever hackers inside it as well, that EVO hacker is going to last about 1 second longer after that. Probably not worth the cost of bringing one unless you brought it to do something else.
Just to go on a quick tangent, it just occured to me that buffing the Guijia's CC capacity to a significant degree is actually in some aspects in the age of more prevalent hacking, a huge nerf. The better the Guijia gets the harder it gets to keep him under control by stacking models in B2B and grounding it from running off because he gets better at beating the shit out of them in CC. Use multiple Yao Zao now I guess? We've lost exorcism as a counter hack too now.
Like Buffing remotes, since the EVO HD is now the only source of buffs. I like that the Controlled Jump program now does both tasks, defensive and offensive.
Don't look at leaked profiles that way. HD is now cheaper, most likely old AHD price, even if we now how to pay for Lt2 it's +4 points based on asura profile.
I believe Daoying Hacker LT2 will still remain a prime LT choice, especially when combined with NCO (which me might see added to some more profiles). She's still a WIP 14 specialist LT with Camo, but she might lose her MI Forward Deployment in N4, which makes her less safe. I do like the streamlined hacking in general and particularly the utility shift towards EVO hackers. With Assisted Fire being such a strong supportware, Fairy Dust likely becoming a necessity for HI focused lists against hacking and Controlled Jump being an offensive and defensive tool in N4, we will see that Pangguling a lot more often, I'd wager. Some of the jank lists I liked to play towards the end of N3 will seem a lot less janky now. Lu Duan pretending to be four Pangus could become a staple defensive strategy when going second now.
Can't find an image of that, but from what I can glean from /tg/ the LT level is also 1 and not 2, which to me indicates that this is riddled with old data
If the leaks are to be believed EVO pango is down to 15pts. From what I can see LT hacker is +1pt but -0.5 SWC. Sniper is +2pts -0.5 SWC
It makes sense. N3 AHD is 5 points, HD 8 so -3 points. Asura lt+1 and spitfire is 4 points more expensive than asura with spit but has .5 swc discount. This way daoying lt+1 with new hd being 0 swc and +1 point makes 100% sense. Sad thing is that YJ has to pay for lt+1 now.
Right now I don't know how I feel about the hacker changes. I've never wanted to take an EVO in YJ. Fine for my "cheap" armies like Ikari, which was almost a must for my Yuan Yuan and Team Pro for my weird fireteams. But right now I can only see the Combined EVO being used. Even before it was good because it at least had a weapon. But I kinda like they simplified the programs.