Aside: I'd honestly prefer to see all Hacking programs with at B2 DAM16 just to make it easier to remember. Carbonite gets DA Oblivion gets AP Total Control is Normal Trinity is +3 WIP and is renamed to Skullbuster to resolve confusion. Couple this with Deactivators that are ZOC, S1 Repeaters and maybe KHDs that Ignore Firewalls.
You literally said "Now I'm not saying that the KHD or Trinity specifically needs to be able to threaten Apex predators" and now you're complaining that I suggested something that doesn't threaten Apex predators reliably but is significantly improved vs mid-tier threats. Are you being intentionality disingenuous?
Take a vanilla faction as an example. Even if I don't need to worry about the threat of guided fire blowing my shit off the table, I can't effectively run many HI/TAG pieces against strong hacker factions. Saying "take an engineer" doesn't help shit when it'll cost me potentially 3-5 orders to simply get the fucker into range to fix a Su Jian or something, and I haven't even dealt with the repeater in question yet or even considered needing to beat AROs to get the engineer into position to fix anything. You can't expect a player to blow such a large portion of their turn to simply get their unit functional again, they'd be better off just trying to take a second one at that rate. Not everyone has the ability to have an in fireteam engineer always within 4" of their piece to fix it in a reasonable order efficient fashion. If the engineer could un-fuck and remote desktop reset a unit from any range, sure, that'd be fine. But they can't do that. You're ignoring the second half of that quote where I say there needs to be something else available that can threaten them. You were suggesting the 25% chance for the KHD alone was a reasonable option, which I do not find a reasonable proposition as a use of orders in the active turn.
I was thinking tinbots more than enemy repeaters. Removing Firewall from dep. reps. is something i'd be all for, reacting against repeaters has all kinds of shit outcomes especially when they are attached to actual units, I would rather see pitchers (and other similar weapons) move to be inline with grenade launchers as it also makes them not just shitty fast pandas. Deactivators are those things we all forgot about until this edition that saw infinitely less use than sniffers yeah? honestly just isolate an enemy repeater through your own, or bring back blackout. not a fan of exclusive access, makes apex hackers more of a nightmare to deal with if you are forced top fight them 1 on 1. Was this a problem with the N3 KHD or was it purely due to redrum? There were a few games where I intentionally did not use RR and just relied on old trinity and skullbuster and it was fine, redrum always skewed shit horrifically and no we have just replaced it with oblivion. still too much to remember and too confusing, just make it one program that inflicts a wound, isolates a target, immobilises it, steals it and spotlights it. Nice and streamlined. And while we're at it lets unify all the guns to have the same damage and burst.
The gulf between what makes a top-tier hacker and ones that are mediocre is too large, and top-tier hackers are not vulnerable enough to khds. Cranking the damage back up on khd programs is the solution I'd like to see, as well as a sober look at spreading high-quality hacking around more. It's not like Nomads don't have good shooting too.
IMO, this makes hacking too strong against anything that can't hack back that's not an Asawira or Jotum. I do not think it is good design to normalise hacking around BTS 9 units - what is the point of BTS when the damage values are adjusted to remove the protection, after all? There potentially needs to exist another "soft hack" similar to Spotlight that doesn't care about BTS so that you can debuff those really hard targets. Maybe "Trojan", a program similar to Spotlight that if successful removes BTS protection versus hacking? Yeah, it makes cracking a Jotum, Securitate or Asawira a two-step process, but it also means that DAM values can be brought down somewhat on particularly Oblivion so that casually derp-AROing a Cosmosoldat, Hulang or Gecko is less of an auto-success compared to now.
Shit's already too streamlined and it's already causing balance issues. To be brutally honest anybody who can't remember the current hacking programs and dead set refuses to use the hacking printout charts to resolve the issue should probably just accept that Infinity isn't the game for them.
No, I'm suggesting that an average WIP13 KHD *should NEVER* be the go to option for killing Interventors and offering a generally available solution for less significant threats. Interventors die in a stiff breeze if you shoot at them and they're ridiculously obvious: building KHDs to reliably kill Interventors just breaks Interventors. Also, if it takes you 3-5 orders to get your Engineer into range of your Su-Jian perhaps A) you should invest in a Servant Bot and B) not overextend your SJ into a Hacking net. Recovering an over-extended SJ *should* be order intensive because the SJ is ridiculously cheap for what you get. Supporting cautiously used HI you can reliably have an Engineer within 1-3 orders of it.
@Mahtamori hacking has BTS 9 as the target because Interventors (and BTS 6 hackers behind firewalls).
The only time it's a bit of a shitshow is with the upgrades as they are profile specific and DONT GET PRINTED ON THE ARMY SHEET for some stupid fucking reason.
@inane.imp well a lot of us disagree. We don't think that Interventors should be unassailable vs. KHDs. The fucked up thing is it's a better idea to use Oblivion since it's higher damage and AP. This is backwards; Interventors should fear KHDs more than HDs. The only way to functionally have something that's better than a basic khd is to have upgrade programs, so that pretty much limits it to Nomad mirror matches and ALEPH vs. Nomads. I guess everyone else just gets to suck, despite paying the points for what used to be good hackers in N3.
In ARO, Skullbuster was typically only a % point or two behind Redrum if the opponent responded (with a rare few specific situations that I forget what they were where it was better than RR), Skullbuster was better than Redrum if your opponent didn't respond with FTF, so no it wasn't due to Redrum. Less experienced players used Trinity a lot more and it was more fine because Trinity was bad in ARO. Tinbots? They're funny things. In truth, they were nerfed in N4 as they no longer stack with Fairy Dust or Repeater Firewalls. It irks me something fierce that Nomads got the good Tinbots from a gameplay perspective, though. The great hacking factions shouldn't have great static defence against hacking as well. Also irks me that they're fairly crummy devices in vanilla outside of a rare few load outs good enough to be good active units even when solo. (F.ex. Shang-Jesus yes, Shang-Ji TinCombi no. Overdron yes, Unidron no.) Moving Pitchers to Grenade Launchers makes them even more reliable at sticking down in the opponent's deployment zone due to having a much longer +0 range. But yeah, most of all I'd like to take the deployed Repeaters down a notch or two. The Repeaters attached to Regular Orders are fine since it means you put more on the line to get the network across the board - more orders, more investment, and above all else you risk a lot more AROs to respond to it.
*Looks at Speculos, Tiger Soldiers, LX's, Fridays, Obiwans etc* Yeah, I mean. I definitely think an obvious Lt in a faction with 3 only Lt options per sectorial should be vulnerable to an average smuck with a KHD. You've convinced me. *Cries in Custodier* Interventors are in a great spot right now: but they're still obvious and extremely vulnerable, just not to Hacking. Average KHDs are solid right now at killing ~WIP13 BTS0-3 Hackers: which is most of them. To reiterate, a Zero KHD will kill most equivalent Hackers effectively.
That's fine, as long as something else exists as an option for everyone to tackle them or at least defend against them. And don't say "bullets" because this shit: is fucking stupid. Your average opponent doesn't have a Fiday, they can't just waltz through your ARO/mines/Hacking network and punch the Interventor hiding on a roof (potentially in a marker state or a fireteam) in your DZ in the face. That's not a reasonable expectation. Put a mine near the Interventor and it's probably not going to suffer an Oniwaban or a Tiger, and as for the Liu Xing why fuck is that even on the list? He's the least of your problems the dipshit is hackable. You'd better not say explode because that's a fucking awful % of success versus a dodge. A) The servant bot is also hackable and isn't going to reliably recover shit that's stuck in a hacking zone. B) The problem is not the Su Jian over extending the problem is the hacking network for some factions being anywhere on the fucking table because linked pitchers are fucked up. C) The Su Jian isn't incredibly cheap. It's 54pts for the Spitfire version. That's pushing into competing with Daofei and Hac Tao territory who are decidedly not cheap options. Now you could say "always retreat your Su Jian to your DZ after using it" ok that's a valid comment. However now we're back to meta and balance and posing similar questions to N3, why would I as a player consider a very hacking vulnerable Su Jian versus Shang Ji-sus who gets TacAw and a directly super useful Tinbot-6? Or why would I not resolve the issue just by doing the same thing as N3 and reaching for camo units again first, it's a very minor upgrade to push into an NCO Hac Tao or a Dao Fei. The above is the main reason my Su Jian has been largely idle this edition. It is incredibly hard to justify it over reaching for one of those other 3 options first and it's 100% due to issues of it feeling overcosted due to hackers fucking with it versus taking other options that are potentially cheaper, and definitely much more resilient and flexible against hackers. If I had in faction options to help it deal with hackers, like N3 it had KHD buddies to help it cover its weaknesses this wouldn't be an issue. However in N4 I lack the support to make it reliably work. So why take it when it's costed against other options that are similar in value and require less support and effort to make them function? To be clear the Su Jian profile is definitely good in a vacuum, but when applied to the meta game it flounders because of apex hackers and its lack of factional counters to combat those issues. If I had the option to pay the 2pts it cost to whack a tinbot-6 on the Su Jian profiles we'd be straight back in business with it.
Like I wrote, it's dumb to design the game around these units as the expected baseline. Trinity works really well as it is, provided you don't set unreasonable expectations, are ready to alter your game plan according to your opponent instead of demanding to be able to head-butt your way through everything, and go for the intended soft targets or use it for Cybermask or the unit's own native abilities instead.
@inane.imp it should also be more effective than a regular HD at dealing with an Interventor. It isn't, and that's a problem. What defines a good hacker is more BTS than WIP or their type of device, and that's a problem because not everyone has the ability to kill BTS 9 hackers in infowar, even if they's from a faction with supposedly good hacking (i.e. Combined Army). Besides, just hang out in Cybermask with your interventor... I don't see why Nomads nees the carebear treatment with their Lts when there's plenty of other factions that have to worry about them being killed too, potentially with a pitcher + spotlight + guided that is impossible to stop.
You're using circular reasoning to say that KHDs are intended for "soft targets." Given that certain hackers got AP on their Trinity, I think it's more a matter of faction favoritism than anything else.
Circular in what way? I think it's pretty linear reasoning. Design stuff to work well on the hardest targets and the softer targets won't be able to compete on equal terms. And yes, we know that Nomads get all the toys, so what's your point about AP on Trinity? Don't try to out-hack Nomads, unless you know the player doesn't like hacking. Simple as that. Stop running into walls.
That was only a valid response when it was largely possible to straight up ignore hacking. Hacking right now is extremely impactful, if you can't build to ignore it (like SEF or Yu Jing spamming camo) then you have to be able to reasonably compete in it. You can't make it super strong and then also render entire factions helpless against it, this will lead to awful imbalances not to mention make it a pretty fucking boring one sided mechanic. You want hacking to be reliably impactful, but not because your opponent is literally helpless during response. Infinity's tagline is that it's always your turn and you're not just rolling armour saves like that other dirty game. Well that's not fucking true right now when you're a faction that can't hack (or hacks like shit and as you say don't bother) and is getting shitblasted by some WIP15 asshole on the other side of the table because when your only option is "reset" that sure feels like just rolling armour saves. I also do not think it's a great plan to encourage a primary counter being a skew list either. Skew lists, and potentially going further to encourage skews to fight skews is a road that leads to solved matches and a less interesting game. Warmahordes played out like that enough with list chicken between skews (or even just a regular cryx warcaster vs a skew designed to fuck with them) deciding games before a single dice was rolled, it wasn't a good thing for the game in the long run.
