No, it's not. The Cutter has Stealth in the "leaked" profile. That Bolt profile is pretty clearly unfinished. I'd expect to see more shift around there. We can't draw those kinds of conclusions from what we've seen so far, especially given the Beta state of what we have seen.
all we can talk about is the beta build ... because we don't have anything else ... and it's bad news for MO, that all. losing the santiago KHD is like for VIRD losing the kamau sniper or for TAK losing the vet AP HMG as for stealth and magisters ... well I'm not gonna explain what does stealth for HI units ... I'm afraid they want to stop the mix of stealth and no stealth in the same FT and puting stealth as obligatory; ofc just a speculation
Which is actually good from the game design pov; no sectorial should rely mostly on a single trooper. There should be multiple starting points to list building, without autoincludes. Not that I'm particularly thrilled looking at the changes. I'm not gonna pass final judgement before seeing the full version next week, but for me it seems that CB still doesn't really know what to do with PanO in general, and MO in particular. I expect it to be perfectly playable in N4, just not very interesting to do so. And I suspect this will be the final straw that will make me abandon the faction and focus on my other armies.
I think bio immunity is changing from just being Shock Immunity lvl2, this has happened to a few units including Dart in that leak they're all shifting off bio immunity to shock immunity.
I bet its only "choose ARM or BTS" against Biomunitions now. And Schock Immunity just lets you ignore the special effects or clearer, makes the hit count like normal ammo, like Total Immunity supposedly does now.
What makes you think they don't know what to do with MO? Not an attack, genuinely curious. If there is a chance to be negative about MO I want in on it lol I feel they do know what they want it to be (pile of knights, WAAAGH forward essentially), but generally have not been very good at implementing it. What we've seen from leaks is essentially price cuts (smaller than most HI?), loss of a key profile, gain of a sick profile thats also perfectly vanilla playable and not really a "MO thing", and expansion of the TO SGT profile to be even better. The final piece will be links, especially where Magisters and Joan are concerned, but I haven't really seen great design shifts towards the MO end goal in these leaks.
Speaking about MO particularly - it feels to me that aside from "PanO's HI sectorial" they don't have any particular end state locked, they just throw ideas around and see what sticks. Some of the patches are rather superficial (throwing in Dart and Tikbalang), some are solutions in search of a problem (Black Friar, FK/KoJ), some counter sectorial's weaknesses so hard, they become an autoinclude (Santiago KHD). Units that weren't particularly problematic - like Montesa or Sepulchre - receive a sweeping, completely role-changing makeovers, while problem spots that were communicated for ages - Spec. Sergeants linking, Teutons, up to a point Seraph's Auxbot - remain unadressed. The whole sectorial feels clunky; there are many good parts, but they don't go together very well, and some cool concepts can't be fully realized, because there's no proper support structure for them. Don't get me wrong, I think that MO is perfectly playable. But its shortcomings and restriction make it hard to have fun using the sectorial.
Disagree on the "many good parts". There's usually that one good link or centerpiece who ends up having to carry the entire remaining weaksauce Sectorial on it's back and that whole concept holds untill you start poking a little. N4 has a lot of work to do and it seems we're just getting all the previous stuff cheaper so we can fit an actual army into 300 points. Rather than fixing Teutons, Infirmarers, mixed Links, Order Sergeants, Lt situation or any of the other things that could have used a look. After killing the Hospitaler + Magister Link for the Teuton Link (which is 0 Teutons + Magisters and Santiagos), it looks like they're now killing the Santiago's selling point and try to fumble out another rework. Oh well, it is what it is. Hostpitalers are so cheap by now they might just work as a Core link on their own.
Hospitallers with Joan being cut in price doesseem very appealing. At 175 points with Joan, HMG, Doc and 2 BSG you have the ability to fight at all ranges, Joan got Fat1 so her Multi is going to hurt more and with other price cuts you can probably hit 14 regular orders without too much trouble, while having good offense, ARO and objective grabbing.
Yikes now that you say the number out loud I take it back. 175 is still too much for my comfort zone :D Especially with the Lt in there. Next to some of the TAGs out there I'm hoping for something around 130-150 with a couple Magisters in there.
It's still a BS 17 HMG and PanOs most hard to kill Lt. And with 7 point Fugazi (maybe more Ava than 1) and Warcor and Techbee it doesn't seem that expensive to me. Forgot to mention, De Fesen does look pretty bad still. 51 point for the same thing as before, but no Trinity on top of his HD. Went down in price, but I don't feel like he justifies his cost, since you likely won't bring a repeater network and KHDs to protect him from other hackers.
I have my fingers crossed that De Fersen will keep Trinity so he is effectively the linkable KHD that we lost via the Santiago.
CB picking Trinity rather that Redrum has me optimistic. Indulge me for a second there. B3 is fine, good in Active, not so much in reactive, in line with a Rifle. I'd like to see it lose Shock and Drop damage to 14, maybe in exchange for a +3. That way BTS 6+/Firewall matters and KHDs don't just turn HI Hackers into walking weakpoints in a Link. Carbonite/Oblivion still have breaker, so there is a reason to use one of those rather than a KHD against a HI Hacker Moreso something like the KOJ stacked to BTS12 is going to be pretty resilient to Hacking. Still carries a Combi around for some reason, so the rest of the kit better be good.
In terms of Military Orders, what's actually going on with Magisters, and what is going to happen to Fireteam composition, are our two big unanswered questions. But with what we know I'm pleased that: 1: The 15 order environment means they aren't trying to fight uphill against armies with double their activations. 2: The HI points reductions mean that the bulk of their key units are more affordable. 3: The changes to Order Sergants mean that their support is better. 4: The changes to Crits mean that they are going to be harder to manage for opponents. 5: They are less impacted by the changes to hacking than many other forces, especially with their light use of Remotes. Personally I'm psyched for the new KotHS. I just hope that there's still a midfield LGL option, that's always been a favorite element of Vanilla PanO (even if MO were never very good at supporting it).
The real word of hope would be "We're deleting the Military Orders from PanOceania and creating a NA2".
Seeing how the KotHS shakes out as an S5 will be fun... and the changes to the other Orders will be interesting. I do kind of wonder if Starmada will be limited to specific KoS profiles.
Yeah, that would be terrible and trash the entire setting for the sake of one individuals personal vendetta. Hopefully it'll never happen. On the up side, the creator of the game and sole person responsible for the choice agrees with me!
