I still maintain that my only problem with IA in N4 is that the units are either great or hard to justify, and expensive, so the variety of playable lists is lower than I’d like. Adding a slew of new units isn’t likely to help, but adding some sectorial-specific profiles and maybe a character Daoying wouldn’t be amiss, and some profiles could use a little help. Zuyongs - I’d like TacAware on more profiles, particularly the boarding shotgun and multi rifle as they’re interesting weapon options but hard to justify taking over other loadouts. I’d also like a profile with a spitfire since the only high-burst weapon they have is the HMG, and I’d really like to be able to run them as an active link in closer rangebands without resorting to a wildcard or combi rifle. Would also accept profiles with smg, breaker combi, grenades, or disposable weapons like flammenspeer or panzerfaust. Yan Huo - Courage plz. And something to justify the multi HMG, maybe MSV1 and NCO on that profile? Haidao Red Fury - NCO? TA? MSV1? Veteran? He could use something, he’s awfully fragile despite being a HI gunfighter and I basically never see him in lists. Daoying - More weapon loadout options, a MMR CoC profile would be interesting, as would a FD profile with minelayer and a multi rifle or something. LT(+1 Command Token) would make sense in a sectorial that can do a lot of link rearranging, and would also complement more midfield-centric lists; I’d like that on a FD profile to represent an operative trained to manage infiltrator teams that rely less on links and more on coordinated orders. Zhencha - A minelayer with AP mines or something. It’s super weird that Guilangs exist and both Krit and Hulang can minelayer, but the signature IA midfield skirmisher cannot. Whyyy. Hulang - Why doesn’t he have frenzy or impetuous on at least a couple of profiles? In the fluff these guys are literally loose cannon ex-criminal tunnel fighters and door-kickers IIRC. Nobody else in IA ought to have frenzy, but come on.
You've got him; it's Lei Gong. Veteran of the Daoying. Awful representation of the strategic mastery of these superior officers, IMO, but honestly a fluff-accurate Character Daoying would almost certainly replace the actual Daoying in almost all circumstances due to how CB minmaxes Characters up the wazoo these days and the Daoying causes enough internal balance issues as it is. I wanted to make special note of this comment. Courage is weirdly rare in IA, so it would probably make the Yan Huo stand out on its own if not really competitive, but in order to have an edge over its competition it needs to make better use of the reactive turn or do something seriously exotic.
I don't value the E/M grenades all that much, to be honest. PH 12 is a bit unreliable and the range in which it kind of hits is a bit low to take care of most threats that an E/M grenade would solve, making it useful against basically only Sepsitor users. Smoke Grenades would be make the faction perform better and would make the unit perform better. This is far from the top of the list and not on the list of things that need fixing, IMO. A lot higher on the list for Hulang is the movement so they can keep up properly with Zuyong/Shang-Ji/Guijia. And for the record, the only IA unit that needs correcting beyond the tweaks that all factions need is Yan Huo.
Yeah, outside of the Yan Huo, I don't think anyone has any good reason to be complaining about IA. ...although it'd be real cool if they go the Daofei...
Thanks for reminding me Hulang are a PH 12 close combat heavy infantry. Absent Daofei is a good enough reason to complain about IA. As long as Frenzy discount exists these guys should have it. Lei Gong is a garbage representation of everything, ESPECIALLY Lei Gong. His Aristeia! profile is built around two themes, transformation and smoke. Yu Jing currently the leaders of voluntary transformation in the game, yet he doesn't transform. Nor does he have smoke. And the fact that some tacked on Garuda wings can turn into a death ray in Aristeia! is dumb as it is, but seeing as it's his defining characteristic, they could have used tome imagination and given him a Plasma Sniper Rifle or something in combat form. As it stands he's just a bland, highly-optimised wildcard bandaid to elevate WBA and IA from unplayable to trash hand in hand with Shang Jisus.
Give the Hulang's weapons, PH only matters for dodging and tossing grenades (and resisting para, after failing the dodge)
I don't approve of the design philosophy that says "Lets give this power armoured military shock trooper less physical capability than a half naked augmented human irregular, because we are gaming the damage value with mono". It sucked for N3 pheasants and it sucks now.
Give hulang EM ccw and ph 14 or give him +3 to dodge and leave the Mono , and eclipse and he will be really really good. Lei gong is such a strange profile. He is meant to be a daoying but in reality ge isn't.
He's the laziest shit ever. INVINCIBLE lord doesn't even use a fully fledged, iconic invincible suit, instead Garuda wings slapped on a female Daoying body. Daoying, who entered the game as 4-2 medium infantry strategists, now somehow the most highly mobile johnny on the spot point and click in IA and WBA.
It sucked for the Pheasant because the Pheasant had a LOT of other duties, none of which combined and all of which were basically more expensive than they are at present. I think this gaming the value is highly interesting, and Hulang is very close to making it work well and Adil does it better. With that said, the design direction that Yu Jing has taken recently makes this approach to melee a bit odd for Yu Jing and is more something I'd expect to see from Aleph or Combined. For Yu Jing I'd like to see some actual raw PH come into play so that this one single faction advantage that we can perceive - kinematica - can be used properly. And as a small aside, Adil is close to what Wuji suggested for Hulang...
Nah. Regular smoke. Partly because it's about damned time we had a HI with smoke and partly because Eclipse is weird for Yu Jing - both too strong and not quite useful. (Also, I abhor specialists with Eclipse as really bad design) Is he Daoying, though? I thought he was a one-off super special gladiator LHost having absolutely nothing to do with the command and control schools of the Daoying.
In his fluff he is described as alumni of the daoying school so he is ought to be a daoying. But he was casted to be the face of yu jing in aristeia. He wears a modified daoyingarmor with this strange wings...
Is this in Aristeia! somewhere? I know his armor looks very much like Daoying armor, but other than the cosmetic resemblance there's not much reason to consider him one. Given that Qiang Gao is wearing a compact version of the Mowang armor design (he should be S5, change my mind) I had kind of assumed that the visual design of Aristeia/Defiance characters ported into Infinity shouldn't be taken too seriously. I've got one more IA wishlist thing to add; right now Zhencha are AVA 4 but if you take them you've basically built a bad midfield skirmisher list with low SWC use and no camo minelayers. It'd be nice to give them some SWC weapon options, even if those profiles were FD+8" rather than Infiltrating. Note that I'm not saying Zhencha are bad, I'm saying that using their full AVA is kind of a trap and I don't like that kind of sectorial design. I don't want IA to be able to do everything, but I would like it if all of the profiles felt like viable includes in a decent non-dysfunctional list at full AVA. A simple way to check that is to build around max AVA and see what level of stupid you get when you're done. AVA 4 Zhencha sounds cool, but you've spent half your points for four camo troops with either a BSG or SMG+Pzf and maybe a couple of them are hackers with a basic HD. None of them have NCO or TA in a faction that almost depends on some combination of those to avoid unfeasibly low order counts. I wrote in another thread that a Liu Xing profile with NCO would be nice, and stand by that. It's not OP in a faction that has competition in the form of multiple other highly viable NCO troops, and it's a way to funnel more Orders into a unit that, by being part of your list, is further limiting an already constrained order pool. Sticking it on a variant of the Specialist profile would emphasize that trooper as an NCO dedicated to playing the mission rather than gunfighting. No, it's not hyper-optimized, since you won't get as much mileage out of him as you will Krit or a Mowang, but there's the potential for it to be worth it.
