Changes I would personally make to N4

Playing a hacking heavy faction and against opponents that leverage, I haven't found it to slow down the game at all at least no more than any other ARO.

It's also a lot faster to resolve than any other ARO as it is just the attack roll as the beginning and end of the sequence, no need to displace models from dodge or failed courage, no arm saves, no need to make the guts check.

If its taking too long to do or resolve that's probably down to inexperience which would lead to other aspects also slowing the game down, unless you mean it is more irritating to constantly deal with it, than it actually slowing the game down.

There's also very few factions that would be able to output enough hacking and hacking coverage for it to be as impactful as it appears from your comments, and even then they probably aren't taking more than 2 spotlight capable hackers at 300 points and have the repeater coverage which is obvious and can be circumvented through maneuvering around them (if possible).

 

Sure but unless their army is mostly hackers the amount it slows the game down is negligible, at least no more than intruding into an area infested with camo.

 

haven't been able to get many n4 games in as much as i like so cant be too in depth with rules. i just liked the flavor of the previous edition that separated the characters skills from what their equipment

bring back ammo types (the change caused so much unnecessary FAQs to patch new issues) and equipment such as TO cammo, i-koh and ODD but list them in profiles like they did for the n3 vet kazak profile. also add a new fragile trait that mimics the old rues for taking fire/continuous damage or EM

eg:
equipment: TO cammo (hidden deplyment, mimitism -6, camuflage, fragile)

 

I'd argue the issue here is that because ARM's value isn't linear and the distribution of ARM values is severely cramped. Perhaps unnecessarily cramped. Partly because the system isn't using a "toughness" step which reduces nuance severely. There's very little practical difference in protection between full fledged heavy infantry and a naked raving lunatic (in a group of naked raving lunatics so they can get cover)

I mean, ARM 3 doesn't offer much protection in practice compared to the above lunatics - particularly not when Medium Infantry routinely have the same amount of protection (or better). What if the treatment that Mobile Brigada got for N4 was applied to all Heavy Infantry? ARM 3 and lower is for unhackable armour exclusively.

Still doesn't really change that the system only has about 15 different combinations to express toughness considering how under-utilised the wound and STR characteristics are on infantry and that it's trying to cram big stompy robots (aka TAGs) into the mix which kind of prevents heavy infantry from going much higher than ARM 5.
Then there's the issue of how ARM 8 (in cover) is the intersection point after which the bell curve that is ARM just shoots through the roof.

 

No thank you. Fireteams are enough of a mess with the amount of "count as" and wildcards and other freebies. If anything, we should go back to more restrictive fireteams

 

Good point. Changing the ARM scale from linear:
LI (ARM1), MI (ARM2-3), HI (ARM3-5), LTAG (ARM6), TAG (ARM7-8)
to (slightly more) sigmoid:
LI (ARM1), MI (ARM2-3), HI (ARM4-6), LTAG (ARM7), TAG (ARM8)
should be enough to really make Heavy Armour feel Heavy with a Round Down to AP or AP halving cover bonus to offset the bump to high ARM durability.

If you bumped TAGs to ARM8-9 to retain the differentiation between current ARM7/8 TAGs then I'd recommend also including the other proposed AP trait.

This would make higher ARM models better against N ammo but more vulnerable against AP whilst in cover. It would also make medium ARM HI slightly better against N and more vulnerable against AP whilst in cover but comparatively better than LI/MI in cover (which isn't really a distinction at the moment).

The biggest change of both these traits would be that cover is no longer the guaranteed protection it used to be if AP hits the table.

Would give an interesting choice then: now it's no longer DA for ARM3-, AP for ARM4+. Any model in cover is gonna have its day ruined by AP.

This doesn't take into account toughness based on W/STR/Immunities/etc. of course. I do agree that more could be done to differentiate and delineate the "toughness" classifications.

 

Tohaa approves and supports your suggestion. JSA too.

 

I think there's significant room for overlap between light TAGs and heavy infantry given how light TAGs differentiate from Heavy Infantry in other ways (namely universal TacAware and +1 DAM on BS Attack and trending towards much faster movement).

Now, a completely outlandish suggestion; What if each unit had a lot more wounds?
Even lower ARM value differences become more significant the more you roll on them. Just to pluck some completely random numbers from the air; what if the Jotum had ARM 7 and 10 STR? What if the difference between Yu Jing HI and Pan-O HI was that the former had higher wounds and the latter higher ARM than the other - e.g. Hac Tao ARM4 W6, Swiss ARM5 W4? Basically, move more towards hit points as protection than hoping the bullets bounce.
Okay okay, so we're now talking about something that is about as much Not-Infinity as if you were to make extreme alterations to the ARO system (e.g. what if everyone had "total reaction"?), which means a fairly complete overhaul of a lot of systems.
Outlandish, as I wrote.

 

Whaaaaa?

 

Ah, right. Functionally the same, technically different.

 

While I understand the reasoning, I don't like it: one of the interesting things that Infinity has against other wargames is that even your "hero"/powerfull troops can die very easy. Something like a Jotum with STR 10, that also comes with powerful weaponry and high BS would become nearly unstoppable as it will still win most of the FtF rolls and, if damaged, can be safely repaired. Right now, even the mightiest TAGs can fall in one shot if they catch an unlucky missile in the face.

 

Yeah... but it kind of takes specialised weapons to deal with a Jotum which used to be my main gripe with 40k.

In either case, it's a suggestion that'd require a huge amount of further design, so it's hardly anything I'm suggesting should be happening and I'm suggesting it more as a point of discussion; mainly how most games that have a more hit-point style system tend to have a lot more soft-effects to soften targets up, get them to face the wrong direction, etc (while 40k has buckets of dice and significantly more powerful special weapons). Infinity is shying away from those effects I think because they are mostly pointless - Dead state is the best kind of "crowd control" in a game and when Dead state is easy to inflict more subtle ways of crowd controlling your opponent tends to be pointless.

Now, I'm not saying this is a direction CB should take, far from it, but I will say that one of the game's primary drawbacks is that for a game with a very high lethality - each Infinity match takes frickin' long time to play. With high lethality, the games should be equally short so you can more easily have another go.

 

It's a drawback of the game being more collaborative than other game systems. You spend a significant amount of time conversing with the opponent to make sure you're on the same page i.e. "I wanna move here, you're happy none of your models currently have LOF to that spot?".

Lethality aside it's simply a quicker system to roll a bucket of dice at your opponent's models and let god sort them out, no input from your opponent needed. Quicker doesn't mean better though.

 

I saw an idea for fireteams in some other post that I thought was cool. Fireteam: Core has to be all the same model (ie all fusiliers), while Fireteam: Haris is a combination of any three Haris enabled models in your army - more or less fireteam: triad. Replace Wildcard with "Counts as" for characters and its pretty straight forward and gives you a choice of power (core) or flexibility (haris). I am unabashedly biased towards haris/triad style play though, its a great sweet spot between pure skirmish and big unwieldly core blobs that are not fun to use.

I would also love to see SWC deleted and just converted to points, and a general points cost in models based mainly around the idea of raising the cost of an order. The latter is less necessary now with a model cap but I would certainly prefer it to that method of reducing spam which has been put into place.

I adore this idea. Placing 'virtual' mines or some such that only impact hackers brings another layer to our abstracted cyberwar. Dunno how practical it is but man that is so cool.

Huge nope vote from me. I love the high lethality of the game. Really dislike bullet sponges and have found that to be a major turn off in the latest editions of 40k which I have been playing around in. I would be open to the idea of TAGs specifically sometimes exceeding 3 wounds, but even then with the crit change I don't feel that is super necessary.

I think that the slowness comes from the high lethality, high impact nature of every action coupled with the ARO system mostly. An artifact generated by the precise type of gameplay that many infinity players want.

Though part of it comes from having to work out lines of fire which are occasionally a pain in the ass, or moving core blobs. God I hate doing that.

I feel thats too expensive, even with more +1 CT models. I prefer to use a points tax rather than a CT tax as this is even softer than what you suggest - like if the 11th guy was +1, the 12th was +2, the 13th was +3... easy enough for ARMY to calculate or you could make it a slot purchase system which might be easier on the calculations. Would lead to very organic 'settling points' for different armies or styles of armies in a way that less granular systems do not.

 

Las TAG I killed (not a Jotum, another PanO TAG, but I can't remember what it was) took it down with a combination of Mines and a Clipsos shooting its Combi Rifle because the oponent was very good at taking out my best weapons. I was lucky with the ARM rolls, yes, but I only had to be lucky 3 times. Had the TAG had something like STR10, it would've been impossible to take it down.

Las week I was watching a couple of friends play Star Wars Legion, and it was painful (and a bit boring) watching whole squadrons shooting at the Jedi/Sith heroes and slowly chipping away their health pools.

 

Burnt state should come back or apply a similar penalty to mimetism and camo -6 reducing it to mimetism -3 and no camo until repaired.

This mechanic was very important for low tech factions when they faced very strong units like avatar, cutter, sphinx etc.

For example it was an essential resource for MRRF where the AP ammo is almost non existent.
It could also give a well deserved little push to usarf.

 

Scaling up wound count would have been a good N3-N4 transition point and would have brought Infinity closer to other wargames, but CB and community seem to like lethality as a main balancing (or "balancing") tool for the game. As a result we have a massive devaluation of non-cheap 1W drop troops in the current shotgun template land.

Shame it did not happen but I understand it would have required a bigger overhaul in numbers everywhere rather than the modest N4 cleanup.

Heh you probably haven't seen clones with fure support melt tanks in one shot
Force users there have 6-7 wounds, thats only moderately more than a full squad of basic dudes (4 to 6 depending on upgrades) but they are immune to pierce (auto-wound mechanic on sabers and snipers) yet when they dont have dodge tokens, their saves are 4+ just as a basic stormtrooper unit.

 

IMO, it's the decisions that take time, not the conversation. Infinity is extremely decision-intensive with a fairly large number of options possible per unit and a fairly large number of choices per activation given that you'll have choices to make during your opponent's activations as well. On top of that you also may have to scrap your plans mid-order and make new decisions based on new information such as a Hidden Deployment trooper popping out or an opponent taking an action you didn't plan for, etc.

I think this, as thinly as I outlined it, is what causes the conversations and what causes the time sinks. The conversations are a means to deal with them rather than being time sinks. It is also, I think, a primary cause of engagement with the game and it raises the stake. This isn't bad at all, but might possibly have anti-synergy with the lethality.

So, I dunno, with the lethality I'd like to see some means of speeding the game up. And you can't really do that by limiting the number of units on each side because lethality causes some pretty hard snowball issues when you're limited in number of units to pick the slack up.