Well, I would say to make their counters *stronger* rather than harder. Do you feel me and get the difference I'm trying to make?
Giving trinity a damage bump by 1 - 2 would be the quickest and easiest if people dislike the idea of it ignoring firewalls, the main weakness of the program comes nnot from it's ability to win a F2f but sticking the damage after, and with BTS generally being higher and less granular than armour and the cover equivalent typically being difficult if not unfeasible to circumvent then damage values should be spiked a bit to reflect this. for the record I would also give carbonite a damage bump of a point or two as well, it's currently less useful than trinity.
This is the second post on the thread but it's worth bringing it back to this. The design philosophy for these two factions seems to be different than the rest.
So, concrete fixes coming out of this thread: U-Turn should come back as a minor nerf to GML spam. -3 to Guided ammo as an ARO makes GML less of a slam-dunk, still worth it but requiring more orders. Maybe just on EVO remotes, to give incentive to diversify HDs (or at least make Paper as appealing as Rock and Scissors). Some form of Icebreaker is needed on KHDs. AP, maybe Shock. Differs from Oblivion in being lethal. B2, maybe DAM 13-14. Would make AROs from KHDs actually worth a damn, and also diversifies choices in the active so that Tinbot linked hackers aren't impossible to dislodge, just difficult/risky.
Cool. Now we just need to convince CB to change the rules in a way that hurts the first or second most popular faction. Honestly I'd just suggest giving Trinity AP as a rule.
Facebook encourages emotional one-or-two-sentence replies. It's also linked to our real-world personalities in a way that makes everything too personal. I'm glad our hobby's main discussion area for in-depth thought isn't Facebook.
No, as in literally the admins of the main English-language facebook groups won't let this conversation happen.
That's fairly normal for PanO throughout my time playing, the faction tends to have its HDs on fairly expensive platforms that don't really stand a chance against the capability the big players pack incidentally. Compounding the issue is the fact that they usually make poor scoring Specialists (the ZC KHD is the big exception here). As such they're an unreliable skew, but you'll still want some around to protect your Hackables for a few orders, so you bring one or two plus mystery room for a Hexa or Croc. My old N3 NCA standby list had 2 Hackers plus an EVO and that was heavily skewed towards REMs which made great use of Overclock, while my favourite Bakunin archetype went with 3-4 Hackers and no EVO. These days I tend to build my NCA into TAGs and bring along just the EVO and either a Fusilier or Bolt to clear Possession or a Hexa KHD if I'm gambling on going first, while my Bakunin tends to build in basically the same way it always did. I've tried the Peacekeeper GML list for NCA, it works well against armies that can't Hack but I don't like how lean the points left over for shooters are in the archetype if the Hacking network fails.
They already did. N4 hacking affects Pan O elite troops worse than most. Also, "hurts" Nomads is overstating it, when you would also be handing the same tools to them. I think everyone's going to end up agreeing that GML needs a mild nerf at some point, whatever faction they play. Perhaps you should just encourage good ideas rather than finding a way to be negative about the prospects even the most obvious and basic fixes, while simultaneously demanding fixes yourself. This will overpower KHDs in the active turn. If the rules are being touched, touch them to put the better solution in place, which int his case is an Icebreaker-equivalent.
Interventors being basically invulnerable to KHDs is a thing that helps Nomads. Changing that would hurt them. Some Infinity players really like noninteractive play, and it's a problem. I don't see them getting on board with that. I've been encouraging ideas all thread. But my point was, what's the point of summing up the discussion? We're not writing the rules, CB is. You know, I really disagree with that. Why do you think it would do so?
Each one being a comparison between two troopers and two troopers only, but you knew that when you posted and chose to ignore it.
I'd argue in support of KHD with AP ammunition and a way to effectively negate deployed repeaters. As has been highlighted multiple times, the mechanics for Spotlight ARO, GML, Oblivion, firewalls, all work well in isolation. The issues come from their current interactions and the imbalance in faction access to mobility (deployable repeaters, pitchers, units with hacking devices, etc) and lethality (upgrade programs, high WIP/BTS, tinbot, etc). Mobility and lethality can vary but need to be balanced. If the best hackers struggled to get their units in position to have effect, that's fine. If a faction had average hackers but great mobility for inflicting hacking attacks, that's also fine. Unfortunately, the two seem paired together more often than not, exaggerating the differences. AP ammo on KHD reduces the lethality of an attacking force and restricts mobility by cautious use of repeaters. The damage is still almost the same for low BTS hackers (meaning they're not worthless), it doesn't effect firewall mods (so your investment was still worthwhile), and doesn't negate high BTS completely. It does, however, threaten (but not guarantee success against) high BTS hackers from exposing themselves through excessive repeater networks. This succeeds at curbing the lethality and mobility of an opponent. Neutralising DepReps is pretty self evident and has been discussed before. If the opponent has a way to increase their mobility, you should have a way to reduce it. Especially if that increased mobility is tied to certain factions rather than being a list design choice. Could also be used to develop identity for hacking vulnerable armies that you don't want to give good hacking while retaining some defence. Discussions to be had about whether the Trinity gained AP or a separate program and how exactly DepReps are neutralised.
Just a random thought on the topic of Trinity's damage; ARM/BTS are worth more the more you have, there isn't a huge difference between BTS 0 and BTS 3, but there is a very significant difference between BTS 6 and BTS 9. (It's about the risk of failing the roll, the higher your protection the more each individual point is worth) Maybe one of the problems we're having is that the importance of BTS has increased to the point where seeing BTS 9 on units costing less than 70 is starting to become a problem? Perhaps BTS should normalise to similar value scaling as ARM? Increasing the damage value is primarily going to punish the low-BTS hackers, and with the rest of the game's systems being designed such that DAM 14 against ATM 0-3 (prior to cover) being decent values, this is not current unreasonable. What is strange with BTS is that there's no correlation between BTS and the price of the unit like there is with ARM - striking a high-ARM unit will yield high strategic (and probably high tactical) returns, while striking a high-BTS unit might be tactically equivalent of shooting a Taigha. Not only that, but we're seeing an influx of BTS weapons.
That's exactly my reasoning for why Trinity should have AP rather than its damage increased. If I had my druthers, of course, Kerr-Nau would have K1 ammo Trinity (Damage -2, BTS=0), but that's a separate thing.
I'm not trying to be cheeky or argumentative, but I honestly can't say I clearly do. Could you explain the difference a little?
FB groups tend to be overly concerned about what they perceive as "negativity", even if it's constructive at heart.
Keep in mind that Trinity isn't the only program that's got issues. Carbonite is similarly forgotten and downtrodden while Oblivion is the oblivious King. Causing Isolation on REMs and HI with DAM 16 (!) when these units typically have a BTS value of 3 and can't fight back against it in a meaningful way is fairly insane, meanwhile Carbonite being stuck at the normalised value of 13 though it should be the tactical tool you reach for in order to stop these units but it's hitting like throwing a wet paper towel on people by comparison to the stopping power of Oblivion. Simply normalizing BTS values downwards so that light infantry and warbands can't expect much higher than 4 and BTS 6 is the realm of powered armour with 9 seen only on TAGs (and then only on one or two of them) would have the effect that Oblivion can be reduced in damage and Carbonite can become useful. This would have issues with the Avatar, since the Avatar is immune to the TAG-only hack, unless its BTS got reduced to more mediocre levels. As is, if fixing things with exotic ammo, they'd all need to be AP which is like... why?
hacking in N4 is cool, a great change indeed, now corvus just need to give the tools to play hacking to the other factions, not just nomads.
