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External army balance issues in N4

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Zewrath, Jun 2, 2021.

  1. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Unless that's a +3 on the dice as well as the stat, I don't think that's going to make one iota of a difference, and even then it's not a very tangible advantage, plus in my opinion the disadvantage isn't in the relative number of units between lists. IMO, what the old "counter-intelligence" style thing missed was that limited insertion style lists suffer from increased alpha strike vulnerability - it's more about an increased need to protect the bodies than to protect the orders.

    That said, I think the real way to address that particular problem involves making all unit choices below 20 points suspect and taking a hard look at what it is people get to inflate their body count (e.g. Flash Pulse REMs) and what people avoid (e.g. FO REMs) and why - what value - those troopers bring.
    Wouldn't surprise me at all if the first steps towards solution is to make sure there are no non-peripheral units at 10 pts or lower.
     
  2. Knauf

    Knauf Transhumanist

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    The concept of giving LI lists a strategic advantage is a good one, I think. When @Matamori says that their biggest worry is to protect against alpha strikes, going first and/or dictating the terms of the engagement seem to be viable approaches. In theory, their lower unit count should also suggest more capable/durable units on average, which should be able to resist alpha strikes more reliably. In practice, that's not necessarily the case, of course, but the general idea is sound. More options to "dig in" and resist via increased command tokens, multiple suppressive fire/support ware uses at the start of the game could be the right way to go about it.
     
  3. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    I'd definitely be more interested in playing limited insertion if, instead of an ITS rule that made it even better at attacking, there was one that made it better at defending. Like if spending a command token at game start activated multiple strategic uses rather than just one, or if the effect of strategic use tokens was increased.
     
  4. RolandTHTG

    RolandTHTG Still wandering through the Night

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    "Limited Insertion lists may activate one strategic use without spending a command token" would be an interesting thing to try out when my local group starts back up.
     
  5. the huanglong

    the huanglong Well-Known Member

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    It's generally hard to go over 15 orders without using units that abuse broken cost mechanics. No one actually thinks a galwegian with a chain rifle is only half as valuable as one with a rifle, or less than half as valuable as one with a shotgun. Why do we put up with it, and twist the game around enabling it with arbitrary order caps?

    Cheapening attributes need to go.
     
  6. Muad'dib

    Muad'dib Well-Known Member

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    Another significant change to (1) from N3 is that spotlight isn't removed at the end of each Player Turn. I think just reintroducing that clause in the rule would fix a lot of the wonkiness with Spotlight AROs, reset, and GMLs. ARO spotlight would still be useful as it gives your other units a bonus to shoot during their subsequent AROs, but it prevents the -3 reset penalty snowballing and "free" GML attacks on the following turn.

    I concur regarding the ubiquity of Oblivion, if it was limited to HD+ and there was a less severe alternative for regular hacking devices (maybe one that just disables comms equipment, but just spitballing), I think it would have less of a warping effect on the game. Oblivion imposing a -9 to reset also seems extremely harsh - I don't often run heavy infantry as QK, but anytime I've tried to bring an Azrail I find them immediately pitchered, oblivioned, and carbonited. I feel like any BTS 3 HI without a tinbot is a sitting duck if you go second and ends up completely useless for the rest of the game due to the -12 reset penalty. A few potential solutions:
    • Reduce Oblivion's reset penalty to -6 and optionally remove the reset penalties for spotlight and carbonite - turning your armor suit off and on again shouldn't so hard.
    • Allow command tokens to automatically pass a single reset roll during your turn (but after tactical phase, assuming CB still want loss of lt to be a thing, meh)
    • Allow the reactive player's Command Token: Strategic Use to include activating one EVO program of their choice.
    I see a lot of disconnect between the various rule sections of N4/ITS Season 12. One of the big ones is the implementation of tactical window, while at the same time increasing the proliferation of tactical awareness and NCO. Airborne and Hidden Deployment coordinated orders also became less efficient as the models lose their own order if they enter the table using a coordinated order. For factions like QK, which have no non-TAG tactical awareness, no +1 LT order profiles, and no synchronized peripherals, tactical window is effectively a 15 model/16 order hard cap. For factions like Aleph, with Hector's +2 regular orders and lots of G:Jumper and synchronized peripheral options, they can easily have 20 models on the table and 17 orders. QK and similar armies that previously relied on quantity to offset a quality deficit are effectively outgunned, outmaneuvered, and outclassed right off the bat. This feels antithesis to both the purpose of tactical window and the play style that these factions have historically emphasized. I really wish that CB had just imposed a 2 combat group cap and balanced everything else on points.
     
  7. FlipOwl

    FlipOwl Well-Known Member

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    Strong agree!

    I mained CHA in N3, and would have continued to do so in N4 if they hadn't removed the SAS lt. I could never see the reason why the costs weren't flipped between the chain rifle volunteers and their rifle armed counterparts. There should be some limit where troopers with low BS start paying a premium for a DTW. The same goes for Galwegians, of course, although they have mostly been replaced by Cameronians in N4.
     
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  8. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
    Warcor

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    Trading a Thorakitai is 1/15 of your list.
    Trading a Daturazi is 1/15 of your list.
    Trading a CSU is 1/15 of your list.
    Trading a Bashi is 1/15 of your list.

    You may "lose more points", but they're still your disposable troopers.

    You're losing a bit more of an investment, but this is a perfect example on how you adjust yourself to the matchup. There might be situations where trading your Myrm down is going to be the correct play. Also, ALEPH has plenty of other ways to mitigate alphaz

    We can't spam beyond 15 anymore, point cost is a list building limitation not a in-game limitation. Outsise of quadrants missions, your trooper's post cost serves no purpose. You need to stop thinking about it and think about what is the best use of each troopers in the given scenario.

    You might have a bit less effective points for trading a Myrm than another player would have trading a Volounteer, but you got some other strengths to lean on.

    "Elite" versus "spammy" factions isn't a thing anymore. This isn't N3, it's a new edition, adapt.
     
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  9. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
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    Outside of OP, there is so many changes suggestions in this thread that are accompanied with absolutely no explanation on why they'd want to see a particular change, or the expected impact of them.

    I'd be really interested to see why and how the suggested change would impact the game in the eye of the people that suggested them.
     
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  10. wes-o-matic

    wes-o-matic feeelthy casual

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    Trading a TAG or your LT is also 1/15 of your list, but it's not generally a good trade in any meaningful way. I get what you're trying to say, but at the same time not all trades can be treated as equal opportunity cost, not because of points but because those points reflect something about the amount of harm you suffer when you lose that trooper.
     
  11. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
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    I mean, I thought it was obvious in the discussion that you're trading your most expendable trooper. You're trading your "13th, 14th, 15th trooper". You're not trading your best active turn piece.

    What I'm trying to illustrate is that the fact that your faction's 15th slot is worth more points than another faction's 15th slot is not super relevant.

    A bit part of reactive turn is that you're going to lose stuff, you want to lose your most expendable stuff first.
     
    #131 Diphoration, Jun 7, 2021
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2021
  12. wes-o-matic

    wes-o-matic feeelthy casual

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    Yes, but what portion of your list slots your most expendable trooper represents doesn’t map to expendability (meaning, acceptable loss). If you need a metric for expendability then points costs are a better fit, and N4 hasn’t changed the fact that some factions have better (usually cheaper) options for acceptably expendable units to include in a list.

    Points cost isn’t just a listbuilding limitation, it’s a useful shorthand for the impact a given loss has on your pool of resources. The post you were responding to also differentiated between good and bad expendable profiles, which you sort of seemed to gloss over? Like, yes, everything’s 1/15 of your list (or 1/14, 1/13, 1/12, 1/11, or 1/10 if you brought a LI list) but the more expendable troopers some factions can take allow for a “crumple zone” in their lists that’s preferable to what other factions get, and that affects balance between factions. A Liberto and a Keisotsu are both 1/15 of a list and similar points, but one is way better at being a crumple zone trooper than the other.
     
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  13. Teslarod

    Teslarod when in doubt, Yeet

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    Disagree on the tierlist drifting apart.
    On the contrary. As @Diphoration laid out 15 slots serve as the big equalizer between Factions that could previously spam cheap, expendable troops with high impact (like Ariadna with Galwegians and Haqq with Mutts) and those that were absolutely shafted because they either could not (Druze), or their take on it was garbage (Morats).
    Having your TO Skirmisher being equivalent to 5 enemy DTW + Smoke wielding Warbands in points (that handily serve as counter in a combat scenario) and no restriction on the other guy being able to do just that was jarring.
    15 Slots of Morats are still nowhere near as good as 15 slots of CA, but at least it's not 15 slots of Morats vs 20 slots of Ariadna levels of bad anymore.

    N3 hacking was an utter shit show at the end. Ever increasing KHD powercreep with better and better programs on increasingly cheaper and more efficient Hackers, devalued any sort of Hacker paying points for survivability without having at least Redrum for defense (or better Lightning/Maestro) led to the few useful AHDs to be gamechanging abberations in an environment where you were basically completely 90% sure a sane opponent wouldn't run one - to an extent where actually running one without the counter nearby ironically anded up as a flat out accidential gotcha play.
    N3 Hacking was a level of rock paper scissors bad N4 doesn't even scratch from below.

    I don't like how N4 turned out and I'm not here to defend it on an emotional level. Crit changes, CC changes, Hacking changes, HI changes, MI changes (or lack thereof), AD changes, lack of Infiltration roll changes, handing out deadlier ammunition like candy, Wildcards galore, not changing LoL, lack of support for going 2nd to counteract the Active Turn powercreep, lack of Fireteam changes while crippling Sixth Sense as the only defense against the ZoC Smoke trick.... list goes on.
    N4 is an utter waste of the opportunities for a new edition at about every corner.
    But nontheless, being utterly unsatisfactory in terms of realized potential, it's still a step forward in the wrong direction that ends up a slight improvement.
    More stuff is playable, something like 55% up from 45%. You can actually run choices that do not just fill up your list in the most efficient way and can customise even optimal lists. The death of 20+ Order lists makes the game vastly more enjoyable to play over the slogfest it was before.

    Basically agree on all your points afterwards. Guided is a shit mechanic for the same reason rolling for Infiltration or AD is. Singular die rolls changing the game drastically outside of high risk FTF rolls should be limited at every opportunity. There's enough of that going on with significant restrictions like low burst (PZFs) or low range (CC/Jammers) threats. Doesn't really have to happen during deployment or before you even got to have a turn, by your opponent basically playing a turn 0 instead of a turn 1 dumping Pitchers on something and gambling on a favorable outcome with minimal risk.

    Oblivion is the old KHD problem painted yellow and sold anew. Same principle - what's the point of defenses when the offense can always expect to punch through quite easily?

    N4 Order distribution encourages shitty playstyles that are detrimental to the game. Do I think 13 Orders in a single combat group is silly? Yes. Do I think it's OP? No. It promotes a murderhobo like gamestyle where you put too many of your eggs in one basket to have it bite you when, not if - when, it fails.
    Tac Awareness and NCO shouldn't be gunner Orders either. Imho these should have been available to create desireable filler Profiles that can utilize these Orders for mobility and mission related purposes, they shouldn't solely exist to get more bang out out of your Linked AP HMGs and TAGs.
    With basically every army getting significantly cheaper on high value models like HI, TAGs and random pricecuts like Shinobu, Acon Regular Hacker, Flashpulse Bots etc I strongly disagree with the statement of any army struggling to hit 15 slots. Most armies stretched themselves to hit the magical 17+ minimum slots in N3 and the same would be much easier using N4 point costs.

    Repeating myself, I don't like some major N4 features any more than the last stages of N3's powercreep (IA vs Dashat) but I do think it's better overall or at least less bad.
    Controversly I also graduated hoping for a significantly better game and will happily settle for a game that's enjoyable if you work with the tools in context of the framework.
     
    #133 Teslarod, Jun 7, 2021
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2021
  14. Muad'dib

    Muad'dib Well-Known Member

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    Speaking to this a bit more, you are correct the the point value of the 15th slot trooper is irrelevant, but the problem I see with this cap is that the quality of that 15th point unit varies widely by faction. Some "disposable" units are durable enough (either due to face to face modifiers, naturally high PH, or above average armor) that they take more orders to dislodge than others. Previously, the approach for factions lacking durable disposable ARO or trade-up trooper was to bring extras so that if the first one dies you can send in another. That's not possible in the current edition. Particularly now that every irregular order you bring means you automatically lose a regular order.

    If I'm at 15/15 troopers in my list and have 15-20 points left over, I am forced to try to "upgrade" one or more existing troopers. That upgrade may not be more durable that the profile its replacing, so you don't gain much in the way of burning enemy orders. In N3, I would have instead taken 2-3 irregular units, which has the effect of improving the survivability of the rest of the army as the irregulars can either provide ablative AROs that the enemy has to go through before they reach your main force or they can be used as disposable attack pieces to clear mines and enemy aro pieces. This is very important for light infantry factions that can't rely on multiple wounds and good armor saves to save them from a bad face to face or template dodge roll.

    It came up in a recent after action discussion with my opponent that tactical window also degrades the value of doctor/paramedic units. As each player nominally has at most 15 orders (barring the tactical awareness and +1 LT order shenanigans I mentioned in a previous post), if you spend more than a single order to revive a downed trooper you've lost tempo because you don't get their order back until next turn and you could have used those orders to kill an enemy trooper and degrade their order pool instead. Without tactical window, an 18 trooper list against a 14 trooper list can afford to spend 1 or 2 orders per turn reviving allies (effectively investing in order economy) to maintain a tempo advantage for the last turn of the game, while trying to attrit the lower order count, but likely more elite and durable, opponent.

    I've played 20-30 games in the past 5 months and I think we've gotten to the 3rd turn in maybe 3 of them. In all the others, the game was over by turn 2 as I either removed my opponent's powerhouse pieces, leaving them with only cheerleaders who couldn't complete objectives, or they've decimated my army to the point that I've only got 3-4 regular orders vs. their 10+. I've only played light infantry factions in the past, but I'm really struggling to stick with them in N4 since the deck feels very much stacked against their play style.
     
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  15. QueensGambit

    QueensGambit Chickenbot herder

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    I'm not sure the concept of "light infantry factions" really applies anymore in N4. Haqq is using Asawiras and Azrails. Ariadna is using Vet Kazaks and such. Lists with lots of LI in them are still using HI as the heavy hitters.

    Then again, I was never convinced that "light infantry faction" was a real thing in N3, either. Haqq was supposed to be the Light Infantry Faction, but to achieve that they just assigned the LI label to units that were actually fast MI, like Muyibs and Mukhtars.

    Either way, in N4 I'd agree that it's not realistic to build lists around LI. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of opinion, I suppose.
     
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  16. WiT?

    WiT? Well-Known Member

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    I love that this discussion is happening. Been playing for a long time, since well into 2nd edition (like 8 years now?), and at no point has my interest in the game been lower. This might have something to do with the local meta shrinkage too mind you, but then, why is that happening?

    If we are going to have Rock Paper Scissors gameplay, then the core paradigm of that dynamic should not be whether you have access to the particular tool (gear-check) but whether you can apply the tools which should be much more accessible, cheaper and prevalent in every army.

    If you think of Starcraft 2, we have a game with a hardcore competitive community that has excellent balance and has gone strong for a decade. In that game, there are strong things. But since players can built their units as they play, once they discover a strong thing, they can build whatever counters exist for their faction (and every faction can counter every thing). Then it becomes a game of applying those counters.

    I played some games of 400 points a few years back. The game transformed from "do I have the tools" to "I have the tools for everything, can I apply them? Can I eliminate my opponent's tool for this job which he can also afford given he has 400 points, then leverage the ensuring advantage?" The game felt totally different and certainly preferable in this area at least.

    Imagine an 11 Point MSV2 Fusilier. Busted? No. More game vs camo? Yes. If the Haqqislam Engineer could have a sensor for +1 point. Here's a cheap hedge against what some would call an oppressive strategy. If some models carried "Chaff" or something to help impair guided missile attacks in their ZoC for 1 point? And you could take one of several different vectors for this ability in each faction? Move the game away from gear checks to "gear application checks" and a lot of these problems will go away.
     
    #136 WiT?, Jun 8, 2021
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 8, 2021
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  17. Tourniquet

    Tourniquet TJC Tech Support

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    This is largely due to the current fireteam insanity and the fact that it has basically impossible to maneuver a lot of 1w pieces in the game as they just get pinned by idiots with DTWs (and by extension shotguns, fuck that change) and can't engage them effectively, though with the warband spam last edition it was still an issue but you also had more bodies to mitigate it.
     
  18. WiT?

    WiT? Well-Known Member

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    When this thread gets locked, would it be ok to remake it under the original discussion point?
     
  19. WiT?

    WiT? Well-Known Member

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  20. Zewrath

    Zewrath Elitist Jerk

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    Honestly, I’m not adverse to the idea of mixed fireteams.
    But I have come around a bit to @Teslarod ‘s idea of not giving full link bonus to the member who isn’t truly that unit.

    My primary change would be to remove 6th sense from the link bonus, where at 4th link bonus you would be immune to surprise attack, shoot back through smoke with no penalties etc. But without them actually having 6th sense.
    The only difference would be, that they don’t destroy Stealth through Repeaters.
     
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