This. I find the "robust" MOD system slows the game down a lot more than Martial Arts does because already several profiles have so many disparate special MODs that it's hard to give the info verbally to your opponent and harder still to remember which weapon and skill had what MOD. Even something so simple as a Para CCW coming in two (three?) qualities is a bit of a miss, IMO.
Yeah, have to agree with this. It does not help that they don't seem to have any set convention for the order of listed special skills either, at least in the desktop version of Army, so you need to skim the whole laundry list of crud most CC units have in order to properly calculate the target numbers on an attack. Could use some standardisation and general cleaning up with those special skill tags.
Yeah, it's really not that hard to follow now. Although, for hacking, I'm missing program filters by device or by list (in Army, I mean).
Didn't see anywhere else to drop suggestions so thought I'd try here! The updated armies have overall been really incredible, and breathed a lot of new life into just about everything. My only issue is that the USARF Ohio Minutemen seem to have been totally overlooked. They've been a pretty bland option since their inception, and outside of the single ubiquitous AP HMG you'll find in Grunt links, they're almost never taken... and I want to take them, a lot. Given that they're supposed to be high mobility, upgrading them to 6-2 at the very least, would make them an interesting option in USARF, with some reasoning to take them over Marauders. This would be the smallest change to turn them into a unit that would at least get some consideration. This would still make them unappealing in vanilla though, especially compared to the Grey. If going further with the upgrade was an option, I'd suggest giving them X-Visors and/or Regeneration (or Paramedics, or Medikit (PH+3), anything really). All of their minis have a set of binoculars integrated into their helmets, and a medikit on their person, representing them with rules would go a ways to make them a very different unit than can be found elsewhere in Ariadna. I've played USARF since their inception, and written many guides on USARF, and I've almost never found a reason to take Ohio... which is a shame because I love the minis.
Guard may be a balance problem, and definitely is outrageously non-simulationist given the rest of the game. Making melee cheap is fine. It's hard to get into B2B contact. Comparatively, getting within 8" and LoF of an opponent really isn't. Guard turning CC into an 8" weapon that ignores BS mods is fucked. Your guard dog can jump 8" diagonally to kick off of snipers on rooftops and in buildings, ignoring their -6 Mimetism and Cover, applying all melee skills, and not even getting ARO'd from other units because your model isn't actually in B2B with the target. Super Jump, a skill that is explicitly the ability for a troop to jump incredible heights and distances without suffering harm, doesn't even let you move half that distance and still attack. Guard is basically a worse-written version of melee-statted sync units. Sync units are two units that act together. The Oznat with a Sync Preta is basically everything a Guard is supposed to feel like, except it isn't made incoherent by how it ignores the fundamental "use cover to avoid being shot" and "get into B2B contact with a CC unit to obliterate enemies uncontested" rules of Infinity. Guard creates another unfortunate situation: other CC units have a lose-lose-lose ARO situation against Guard units. After the Guard unit moves into 8 inch range, they can dodge (and die instead because of CC24 + Martial Arts), CC (and die instead because the Guard unit instead Normal BS attacks with whatever basic rifle it has), or shoot (and die instead because of CC24 + Martial Arts). While I would love nothing more than to see this rule disappear or be completely mechanically replaced, balance-wise it would be more reasonable at its current points cost if it was Mandatory instead of Optional. By being Mandatory, other CC fighters at least get to fight back against the invisible supersonic ricocheting guard dog onslaught by CCing from their current positions whenever they're within 8" of the Guard unit, even if the Guard is still enjoying total cover from behind a box somewhere. It might even better simulate the not-total control the Troop has on their Guard unit. I'd also like to see BS Attack mods apply to Guard-enabled CC attacks - if you're going to boomerang your guard dog onto a roof to vaporize my sniper, some level of difficulty in doing so would be appreciated. Plus, it would make CC20+ units feel like they actually have skill checks sometimes instead of "the target dies". EDIT: Related to Guard, NBW negating all CC skills instead of just Martial Arts might also help make Guard feel less obnoxious. See the post I responded to below.
It's not too hard to keep track of, you're right. It's just superfluous. Range bands simulate something (effective ranges given recoil and fire rate) and are a conditional factor for absolutely everything with a gun at any point in the game. Which is, y'know, almost every entity in Infinity. Martial Arts doesn't simulate anything a higher CC score or increased CC burst doesn't already simulate. In addition, CC is only conditional if someone else has Natural Born Warrior. NBW doesn't even negate all CC skills/modifiers, it only negates Martial Arts. Which further makes it feel vestigial.
I feel like you have a lot more trouble from guard units than I've experienced playing them. I've had andromeda die from losing the face-to-face roll against an aro, and from misjudging the distance b/c the enemy was outside 8. Like many attack units, she's a lot easier to tackle when not her turn, or by just giving her a shotgun template to the face. She's no more dangerous than other cc units that can dodge into combat easily. It just makes her and her fat base useable finally, after some very frustrating experiences in N3. Your suggestion to change it to a no-LOS attack is even weirder to me. The Los requirement makes it awkward to pull off against good aro units for me. I think your change would make it even nastier against other units. I would just need to get within zoc of a fire team, then whenever it activates, I can choose my target from a member of the team that can't respond, like some super crazy koala. Unless you mean the guard would attack every possible aro, like some super template? That's a trade I'd gladly take. Yes superjump is bad, but that's a reason to rework superjump, not nerf guard. As for your suggestion that it's the least simulationist of the skills, while I can't speak to the Alpha's chappie bot, I see no reason that Voronin's doggo or Andromeda's cyberdog can't perform any of the wall scaling trick attacks we know the malinois can pull off today.
We're talking specifically about Andromeda, right? As far as I can remember, she's the only unit with both Guard and infiltration. Guard is very nice for defence on something like an Alpha, but the issues raised in this thread are about Guard being used for attack. I agree that Andromeda is very strong. Sure, it's possible that she can lose a F2F, but it's extremely unlikely - her Guard attack is about as close to an auto-kill as Infinity gets when not in silhouette contact. (And the fact that the player might misjudge 8" isn't meaningful. Game design shouldn't rely on distance-judging skill as a balancing mechanic.) There are also very few units who want to put shotgun templates on her in the active turn. Thanks to her NWI, for most attackers the most likely outcome to a shotgun attack is that she suffers one wound and the attacker dies. So yes, she is very strong, but that doesn't mean that she's OP. She's only available to a small number of factions, and every faction has different strengths and weaknesses. Time will tell whether the factions with Andromeda are OP (I doubt it, but haven't played against them enough to have much of an opinion), but the fact that they have one very strong unit doesn't, in itself, bother me. That said, from a narrative perspective I agree that Guard makes no sense. If Andromeda AROs with her robot dog attack, I can smack the dog with my CCW and for some reason that injures Andromeda. I'm not fond of that interaction, but I suppose it's not the only unrealistic rule in Infinity.
Yes, I must admit this was written after losing 130 points of troops to auto-kill orders from an Andromeda. ;w; Gameplay-wise, it was absolutely my fault for letting it live after forward-deploying next to my deployment zone. I still feel the way I feel about the simulationism aspect, though. Superjump regaining automatic fall movement (but having it just be free downward movement) would definitely help a lot. My suggestion may have been miswritten - here's the main thrust: Guard becomes Mandatory. This means that all units in ZoC can choose to CC it if they're in LoF+ZoC. When attacking a Guard unit from behind, I guess this reverses the ARO trap that the Guard unit originally posed for other CC models. The other consequence is that a CC unit within ZoC can always CC-ARO without auto-failing depending on the Guard unit's action. The other tweak is "Guard-dependent (ie: not-B2B) CC attacks suffer from BS mods like Mimetism and Cover". This would open up the Guard unit to much bigger modifiers (cover + mimetism, EG). It would create situations where the CC skill could get modified below 20, which would be a nerf to the skill overall. That being said, the more I think about it, the more I have to admit this would probably just nerf it to a point that it doesn't feel special. This could be left out. It's one of those things alongside Total Immunity that I particularly dislike because it breaks the internal consistency that Infinity has established. Both "troops" dying from a single wound is definitely on the list of things I don't like about it, even if it puts said unit at a disadvantage. I suppose that both Guard and Total Immunity are pretty rare skills, so they can get a pass for being written in straightforward ways that break the game's simulationism a little.
TBH the more I think about it, the more I believe Guard should be an Entire Order skill like Berzerk, requiring LoF. That way the "auto-kill" situation do to AROing in a non-interactive way. Guard is declared, you can Dodge or Shoot of CC and you know it is still a F2F. So Guard would work as a "Berzerk"-like ability where you don´t need to leave your cover to engage in CC. GUARD (ENTIRE ORDER) Attack, CC Special Skill, Optional. Requirements The target must be within the user's LoF and ZoC when this CC Special Skill is declared. Effects Allows the user to declare CC Attack as an Entire Order. This CC Special Skill can be declared without being in Silhouette contact with an enemy. The target cannot benefit from Mimetism, Cover or other rules or skills that affect BS Attacks, but yes to MODs applicable to CC Attacks.
That's pretty clever! Solves that particular problem with it for sure. The lost order efficiency would be a nerf of another kind (since you no longer have a 12 inch threat bubble for auto-kill CC as long as you can draw LoF) but who knows if it would be necessary or not right now.
Question about Protheion. You can inflict more Wounds than a model has remaining, right? So if you D-Charge a line troop in CC and hurt it 3 times, you would recover 3 wounds, right?
I've been thinking about TAG durability. I think something that really hurts TAG tactics and feel is that if they end up in a firefight on the reactive turn, they are basically guaranteed to die. This was an issue in N3 and it continues to be an issue in N4. Despite their appearance and stats as armoured units, TAGs can almost never be used as defensive tools. I think that two problems contribute to this most. The first problem is that TAGs can't really make use of Suppressive Fire, and thus there are few firefights a TAG can stall out on the reactive turn. TAGs are huge, even compared to other "heavy" units, and this means that your typical board opens them up to sightlines all over the place as they leave the deployment zone. On top of that are the more obvious threats - CC masters, hidden deployment hackers, and Repeaters. It's best to keep a TAG well within your half of the table - perhaps even in your deployment zone - but Suppressive Fire as a tool depends on your ability to force threats to fight a given unit within Suppressive Fire range, and one's DZ is not typically a viable Suppressive Fire location. Together, these points mean that a TAG is usually AROing at B1, which ultimately means they aren't going to win ARO fights. This plus their armour should open up the option of using a TAG to take a wound or two to waste your opponent's orders, but that's where the second problem comes in. The second problem is that TAGs being huge and unable to go Prone blocks them from most mechanics that other troops use to not become Dead during the reactive turn. Because TAGs cannot go Prone, most forms of Full Cover also provide a vantage point that an opponent can shoot from. Because being shot from above cannot be escaped by moving horizontally, a TAG's Guts check cannot save it from future overhead shots. Worse still, when a TAG inevitably goes Unconscious from being visible on the reactive turn, it's still the same height. It doesn't matter that you brought an Engineer, because your opponent is going to spend one more order to finish off the TAG with Normal rolls. Unlike other troop types, leaving a TAG behind something half as tall as it guarantees that, if an opponent can hurt it, they can kill it. So your average TAG huddles behind whatever stranded piece of bigger-than-S7 terrain exists on the table, praying it doesn't get flanked because two inches is absolutely not going to get it in Full Cover from the enemy's firing spot. Typically, TAGs behave in a more cautious, timid faction than similarly priced HI or camo LI. While the Wounds model might get removed in Reactive turn by taking 3 hits in one order (or two hits, if it's been hurt already), the TAG will be removed by virtue of being visible. Good testing/feedback is describing problems, not proposing solutions. I imagine giving them some sort of "taller Prone" option could help, as would less restricted Guts movement for TAGs.
I'd go with "feature not a bug" on that one. Sure, a Prone state now that REMs can duck and cover would be nice and not wholly unwarranted, but sounds like you're describing the weakness that other units are meant to exploit. I'm already having huge problems dealing with Avatars as it is and I've had matches swung heavily in my favour by my Guijia just taking a beating and shrugging it off.
I'm not saying that I know someone who's laughing manically about the idea someone is suggesting making his double Jotum lists better in Reactive, but I'm fairly sure that that's only because he hasn't seen this suggestion yet.
Nobody said it had to be a straight buff. Other things could change, like them losing Tac Awareness or going up in price again. I just would rather see TAGs taking reactive-turn fire as a regular occurrence, instead of that just being the point where they die. Maybe I'll feel different if I get some TAG games in during n4 and I find this isn't a guarantee. But as I understand things, it mostly means I should continue to hide armored behemoths in my deployment zone because they're usually either alive or completely dead.
