You've literally been whining about how easy it is to kill your obvious Lts with Pitcher + Spotlight + Guided. BTW I agree with you that it's too easy. But don't act like it's not a weakness. Aside: I think that OCF and USARF have issues as sectorials that is mostly due to sectorial design issues rather than structural issues. These should be addressed.
The repeaters shit isn't a risk, why isn't your Interventor in Cybermask? If you're going second obviously think twice about massively projecting a passive repeater network up the table if you decided to bring the obvious LT, which again you probably shouldn't be doing anyway because if you play into a mirror match you're about to eat a pitcher/panda get an isolated LT anyway.
A Cybermasked Interventor can't make use of Repeaters. Cybermask as a defensive strategy removes my Interventor from the game. Sure I'll probably do it if necessary but if I'm planning on needing to do it for majority of the game then I'm better off just not running a Hacker. At which point, congrats. You've broken Interventors by making them mostly pointless to take.
Given that every Yu Jing player's Daoying hacker does just that but sits in Camo instead of cybermask, I'd say that's entirely false. They're still plenty useful in the active turn and they do ARO work when I've determined it's safe to be out of the marker state.
It's almost like the Daoying pays for an extra order whereas the Interventor pays for BTS to be survivable so they don't need to hide in a Marker state as often... Hmm... I wonder if that'll mean that they can and should be played differently? Yes, if I had an Lt2 BTS3 Hacker with Surprise Attack it would also spend a lot of the Reactive in a Marker state. But that's not an Interventor.
No, hacking and guided are literally chasing entire unit types out of the metagame right now, which goes back to my previous point of that encouraging everyone to list chicken with their own version of 15 camo markers + rapey warbands is bad for hacking armies and bad for the health of the game in general. They get to be WIP15, a bigger range of useful hacking programs, and exist in an army where they don't need a bunch of bonus orders to efficiently position a repeater network because they can literally throw them from one end of the table to the other. If you can't make that useful in the active turn then honestly you should consider a more straightforward, WIP12 faction.
So you're so 'Well don't take that then' ISN"T the be all and end all argument that you said it was two posts ago? That maybe other nuanced meta or network design effects are actually relevant? Again, I commend you for agreeing with me.
Nope, because hacking/guided is going to be noninteractive with almost anything. If I don't bring hackers you can still hack my REMs etc. Or just use missiles.
I didn't agree with you, you are just failing to get the point either intentionally or unintentionally. "Don't build your list with 1 vulnerable LT candidate" is very different from "Don't build your lists with any valuable hackable shit." Unhackable armies are bad for the game and anyone who wants to play a hacking based force. If your opponents start consistently dropping counter hacking camo spam into your hacking oriented lists, congratulations, you now have relatively pointless hackers and we're playing N3 again where you don't really get to hack anything. I don't think that's a good direction to push the game in. We don't want a metagame that encourages people to feel like building into more and more hard counters if we want hacking to remain a relevant and viable option.
Perhaps but 'Don't do that then' is almost always a crude answer to a nuanced question. So it's more similar than you are letting on. Guided has mitigation strategies. If you don't like it, use them. If that evolves the meta fine. Then I'll bring stuff that's good against not hackable / camo spam or whatever you find, and then we'll evolve again. The world doesn't stop going around what ever you do.
It'll evolve the meta to a bad place. Turning the game into list chicken and revolving gear checks isn't good for the health of the game. If you truly enjoy that kind of gameplay then I'd suggest Warmachine, although you might struggle to find people for it dependent on your location. Mk3 killed it in my area.
What, like deploying two Naga KHDs in front of your TAG? The world *does* stop if the meta becomes degenerate.
I can make it work in the active turn, but that doesn't change the fact that honestly Hackers are still mostly Reactive Turn creatures: most of the value from Hackers and Repeaters is because it forces the opponent to play their turn on my tempo. The BTS of Interventors allows them to be survivable in this context which is a massive part of their utility. Stripping that utility I may as well just run Jazz or Mary because they're better if what I'm really after is active turn use. Pitcher + Spotlight + Guided is a critical exception where the active turn potential of Hacking far outstrips what you'd get otherwise. Again, to repeat, I think that's an issue. Also the 100% best way to get a Repeater down in Vanilla and TJC is to use a Heckler with a Fast Panda, so it maps very closely to a Guilang Minelayer putting down their second(!) Dep Rep to enable a Daoying. TJC and Vanilla really don't have the reliable Pitcher support that you see in CJC/BJC: you *can* do it in TJC but that's only by taking a HM MR Pitcher or a Tsyklon Pitcher. Both of those options are viable but not as common or as trivial as the CJC/BJC alternatives as they come with their own (relatively significant) list building compromises. When you complain about reliable Pitchers + Interventors you're really conflating two different sectorials or specifically talking about 1-2 TJC list archetypes.
HO! Look out we got a Nostradamus over here. Got any stock tips while you're flawlessly predicting the future? Or maybe a sports almanac from the future?
I'm remembering the flame war that rose up around the Kamau Sniper in Varuna now. It looked a lot like this, except the Nomad players were pissed that they couldn't directly take on PanO's trivial investment in their strongest field with Nomad elites instead of vice-versa. I'm not convinced the Kamau was ever really good for the game; it zoned a bunch of factions out of the meta because of a simple gear check and led to rampant power creep across all factions to keep up, and I don't think the crazy Nomad Hack stacking is good for exactly the same reason. We are already seeing this with new MO, which features a BTS9 Stealth Veteran HI and can have a BTS9 Hacker under Tinbot, which even Tunguska can't. If this continues it will lead to a very narrow list of builds, usually in the newest factions, which can tick all the gear checks of a competitive meta, leading to a relatively constrained and solved game even despite Infinity's excellent base rules. This has been seen time and again in the wargaming community. I hate to say it, but Triumph's claim is backed up by more precedent than I'm comfortable with.
My memory of the Kamau argument was mostly "look, we get we can't out shoot it with anything except a Kriza. But it'd be nice to be able to use Hacking or similar to do something about it for everyone who doesn't have a Kriza or easy access to disposable Coords." I discussed, at the time, that an active turn only program that made the target fail the final Coherency check if it hit would be cool. I still think it could be. Then we got late N3 CJC and the answer became "you know what, Dirty Nomads is viable again and it's a good answer to Kamaus". But I agree with your premise, there is an arms race developing: I just don't think "make Interventors vulnerable" is the answer. I honestly think RP TAGs are driving the arms race, and the state of Hacking and the drive to non-interactive list building is due to how deadly T1 is to any LOF based ARO piece right now.
Look, I get we can't outhack it with anything except an Anathematic. But it'd be nice to be able to use Shooting or similar to do something about it for everyone who doesn't have an Anathematic or easy access to Impersonators. ;) Frankly, I can agree with your point about making Interventors vulnerable. They're meant to be the best of the best in the digital space, after all, and bringing one to bear in its intended environment should damn well be fun. But if they're going to have as much impact as top-end TAG and its support, the Interventor and its network should be calibrated to match in price and especially opportunity cost. You sacrifice a lot in a TAG list to be able to properly field and support one, including everything from Engineers to EVO Hackers, and this will often take up half your list before you've even thought about playing the scenario. Top-end Nomad Hacking doesn't really behave like this, primarily because its lynchpins are cheap while its support consists of the cheap Orders and forward Specialists you were bringing anyway. (the problem TAG lists also seem to behave this way, needing little support you weren't already bringing. The Avatar, Tikbalang and Cutter are standouts here.)
