After ITS13 dropped I had 3 missions on my shitlist to rework. Frostbyte, Looting and Sabotaging, and Highly Classified all have major issues under modern scoring frameworks and some of their ITS13 changes did not land for the better. The plan was to test changes to all 3 however as ill luck had it we ended up with open borders and a wave of filthy plague rats managed to get into the state and spread covid everywhere so I never got the chance to do anything about Highly Classified. All I can say is fuck open borders and fuck cricket, what a stupid sport that is. IRL woes aside moving on. I really liked Frostbyte in its initial concept, and while I accept some changes needed to be made such as how the datatracker functioned (this type of scoring is terrible in an age where guided fire is everywhere) the ITS13 result of the mission is terrible. Functionally the way Frostbyte operates is playing the mission is a mistake. Repeated testing showed that ignoring the mission almost entirely and just playing annihilation was the optimal way to play and lead to easy major victories. Put simply putting 3 points into army points killed is a mistake and leads to a positive feedback loop for dominating the center which nets another 3 points. It functions very much like the previous version of Frontline where simply focusing on dickpunching your opponent would net you a major victory almost by accident. Frostbyte for all intents and purposes is Annihilation which makes it quite boring to play and undermines the theme of the mission as well. I assume the classifieds were increased to 3 to try and encourage players to spend less time sticking the boot into their opponent and more time running around doing stuff but unfortunately there's just too many points tied up in murder. They also don't really manage to perform a function of allowing a player who's behind to catch up in range of scoring a defensive bonus, the 6pts tied to murder tends to put that out of reach. With that in mind locally we tested a few changes and ended up settling with the following: MAIN OBJECTIVES » To Kill more Army Points than the adversary (2 Objective Points). » At the end of the game, dominate the Exclusion Zone (2 Objective Points). » At the end of the game, have an active friendly Heating unit (1 Objective Point per Heating unit on your side of the table). » Destroy at least one enemy Heating unit (1 Objective Point). CLASSIFIEDS » Each player has 3 Classified Objectives (1 Objective Point each). The change was fairly simplistic in the end. We moved a point out of killing and dominating each and added a point for each friendly heating unit you have active at the end of the game instead of just 1 point for any active heater (we also designated heaters as friendly/enemy towards players based on deployment sides). Additionally we added a point for destroying at least 1 enemy heater. This achieved a few things: Reduced the value in just forgoing the mission. Playing full annihilation could no longer score a major victory. Players are encouraged to seek secondary scoring conditions There is now an immediate points reward for breaking an enemy heater which puts greater focus on playing the mission theme which I think is an important part of helping differentiate missions from on another. Additionally this is potentially a functional 2pt swing if a player breaks an opponent's active heater and reduces their score by 1 as well which puts even more value on spending orders to complete a mission objective instead of just dickpunching murder. The level of granularity in scoring was increased dramatically making it far more realistic for a player fighting from behind to score a defensive bonus for remaining in 2pts of the winning player. Personally I think the defensive/offensive bonus was a great idea to come out of the modern ITS scoring system and I really like it but more missions need to be updated in design to work around it. The changes proved successful enough in testing and we ended up running the custom mission at a local event.
Now Looting and Sabotaging. Disclaimer here while we did put the mission through some paces we did not get to do as much testing or iterations of changes as I would've liked due to the previously mentioned covid situation breaking out (again, fuck open borders and fuck the cricket). So issues with Looting and Sabotaging: Mission balances varies wildly between factions with some factions/sectorials having incredibly limited and shit options to even attempt to score. I strongly believe any mission that has a very restrictive and unique profile based scoring requirement needs to implement special rules to assist armies in having scoring options. Bringing back panoplies providing D-Charges is a must for this mission. There is a poor focus on mission theme. Playing the mission, while integral to scoring, tends to be an afterthought. In most games you either rush down the enemy AC turn 1, or you make a last ditch effort on turn 3. For 2 out of 3 turns you're primarily focused on just killing stuff or implementing area denial. There's not alot of focus on running around smashing breakable objectives. In cases where the first player gets an immediate break on the opponent's AC, their game plan just turns into pure annihilation and area denial. This, in my experience, is alot less fun for both players because now they're functionally playing two different games instead of competing in the same race. It can also be a bit of a negative experience for second player if their entire game is then literally just trying to push through a crapload of mines and chaffe units being tossed in their face to bleed them of bodies and orders. ADS is a stupid rule that exists as a bad bandaid for stupid reasons. It can't be attached to something this integral to the scoring for the mission. With that in mind we changed the format to push the mission agenda by giving each player 3 ACs to go after and returned the panoplies with the rules for specialists to pull d-charges out of them. To help preserve the nature of the mission throughout the entire game and prevent a focus on a first or last turn blitz, the AC2s were granted a special rule where when one was damaged the remaining became immune to damage for the rest of the player turn. This means for maximum scoring a player needs to keep playing the mission objective the whole game not just one turn. Initial iterations of the mission revamp had points attached to destruction of the ACs, this proved to be sub optimal. Instead scoring was changed to be purely focused on wounds dealt to enemy AC2s at end of the game allowing for greater scoring granularity, for the same reasons as discussed in Frostbyte. The AC2's stats were changed to 3W, ARM4 BTS3 and given Immunity (AP). This increased the stretch of viable units needed in greater number to hit more objectives. Warbands and Skirmishers such as Bandits armed with DA CCWs become viable, while the top end units carrying the AP+EXP (generally speaking D-Charges) remain statistically unchanged still hitting vs ARM4. The Automated Defensive System rule was fired into the sun, where it belongs. Seriously scrapping this crap was the first thing that happened. This ends up looking like this: MAIN OBJECTIVES » Each wound missing from an enemy AC2 at the end of the game (1 Objective Point per wound). CLASSIFIEDS » Each player has 1 Classified Objectives (1 Objective Point). EDIT: TAGs kept Armoured Fury for this mission. Simple, but the game turns into a frenetic hit and run as the players attempt to attack targets of opportunity across the stretch of the table. Getting 3 wounds on an AC2 turn 1? Simple enough. Keeping up the momentum as you bleed orders and bodies turn 2 and 3 while simultaneously trying to slow your opponent down? Less clear cut and where I hope the mission decides the game. Splitting the AC2 into 3 separate units while also time gating player's abilities to damage them also means that there's less balance issues around potentially over the top pieces like Andromeda, it resolves her massive tempo swing issues with the base version of the mission nicely. Now as I said we didn't get to test this one as much as I would've liked, and the final tuning would've been for exactly how far forward to situate the AC2s. Ideally I want players to in most games be able to push 4-7 points for a standard match. The scoring system of 5pts for the offensive bonus and no longer needing to stay 5 ahead of the enemy means we can set up missions for tighter scoring parameters rather than requiring it to be relatively easy to hit 10 points. Again, I think this is a great change in the scoring system and makes it alot easier to design more interesting missions so I hope it sticks around.
At first blush I like these changes and you've put a lot of thought into it. Definitely agree the new scoring system is great and should stay. More missions need to leverage it for sure!
I should clarify this is definitely not just all me, most of our local group like @Tourniquet have been involved in the process just most of them aren't active on the forums.
The old Frostbyte used to have 2 points for killing the enemy Datatracker (aka Snow Ops). This actually made the mission more than just a mildly annoying Decapitation since you had more control over and some extra limitations of what kind of profile the Datatracker was. Note that to destroy an enemy heating unit, a heating unit has to be identified as enemy/hostile and it also puts the trooper doing this action at risk since they'll be destroying the thing that protects them. This makes your score dependent on your opponent scoring which is unfortunate design when that happens. Additionally, it forces more interaction with the ADS... Alternatives could be for the consoles to have ownership properties and grant 1 point per owned console, or to score by controlling (being the only player in base contact with) more active heating units than your opponent as this encourages destroying the heating units based on the game state rather than mission dictate. On a related note: Blizzards are annoying in their placement. The requirement for the area to be clear just makes it impossible to place them on most if not all tables. If they instead followed the rules for how smoke propagates (or reversed, anything above the template with a clear path to the "sky") they'd actually see some use on the tables. A more lenient placement may also mean you can reduce them to one each so that the table doesn't get filled with the things.
Just a random thought, but what if instead of ADS the protection system was an Eclipse trait similar to Albedo? This discourages players from using the AC2 for cover (where terrain choices allows it to grant cover) since a missile shooting someone covering near it could hurt the AC2, and it prevents Guard from being too abusive without basically invalidating the likes of Shona from harming it.
Yes I felt the same way about it. Unfortunately the current state of the N4 meta with a heavy presence of guided missiles and difficulty for some factions to deter aggressive repeater placement means it's too hard to implement with certain match ups breaking it as a mechanic. I did mention it before, but in our revised version the heaters are already designated friendly/enemy based on table sides without needing to be activated for that reason. You don't need to break an active heater to score. On the ADS we decided to allow it to stay for this mission because it wasn't as integral to the scoring as Looting and Sabotaging and we figured more time with it in a testing situation was fair. However I'd still completely support removing the rule entirely it's an unnecessary and poorly thought out rule in general. Initial drafts utilised the consoles for scoring, but ended up going with the heaters as a scoring mechanic because it differentiated it better from the many other missions that already use consoles to score plus it helped promote a stronger mission theme. On touching heating units (or any scenery pieces in this mission) for scoring I'm personally a bit against it because it puts units in vulnerable positions to be shot at in a mission that already rewards the opponent for shooting them with army points killed. I feel like that's going back towards putting a bit of a positive feed back loop into murder. Yeah I agree that would be a really good change.
Definitely a possible idea to solve the situation in some missions. In this case we just went with a solution that just prevented Guard from getting out of control in the first place by just making the scoring mechanics not cause a massive tempo blowout from a turn 1 Guard usage.
The multiple AC2s pretty much already keep Guard (and lets be honest you mean andromeda) in line, as on a half decent table and an opponent that has put in any amount of thought into defense she will only be able to get at one of them (then the shields go up preventing more damage), meaning she dies shortly after in the opponent's turn only scoring 3 points which is more than fine (I tested this while playing SP for a couple of months). The revised L&S is more a puzzle than it is the usual turns 1+2 murder spree into crack the objective on turn 3, as every turn is a case of picking a route, figure out how get through the defenses to get the attack piece on target. In addition, after playing the revised version of this list far more than is healthy, the major theme is redundency and trading points for OPs and largely ignoring anything else.
As for Highly Classified, while no revision has been yet been devised but it is probably worth pointing out the main issue of the mission and discussing that. The priamary issue with HC (and I dont care what else you say, everything else is fine and manageable and superior to that shitshow countermeasures) is that it does not play nicely with the revised scoring schema of ITS13. The primary scoring criteria of "At the end of the game, have accomplished more Classified Objectives than the adversary." being worth 4 points is a major problem, assuming none of the few 2 point cards are in play or have had their criteria met means that at the end of the game the minimum possible point difference 5, meaning that it is near impossible to get the the defensive bonus. Meaning there are no close wins/loses, its either you lost hard or you didnt, and the new (and much improved) scoring schema gets ignored.
I have been throwing around an Idea to rework Highly classified such that you get more secondaries and score less on the have more cards done criteria. CHANGES: 1. At the end of the game, have accomplished more Classified Objectives than the adversary. 3 points. 2. 3 secondary Classified Objectives, worth 1 per. REASONING: 1. Decreasing it to 3 means that it is still worth more than the tie on cards but makes the maximum point difference 4 meaning defensive bonus is back in play. though it may be worth dropping it back to 2 and the tie to 1 and add another way to get points. Which I have some ideas on that I will go into later small incremental changes are the name of the game here but the scoring in this mission is more a math problem than a problem with any specific mechanic. 2. In addition to being a point sink it allows for more cards to seen (providing you dont pull duplicated 8 out of the 20 cards will be seen), filtered and accessed. This allows for a little greater consistency and to let you have greater control over the mission before lists are picked which also means you dont have to front load all the specialist types into one list so allows for a more balanced list pairing. DUMB SHIT: If scoring were further reduced given the focus on classifieds and messing with HVTs I'd put some of the left over points in getting an enemy HVT back into your DZ.
Also full disclosure, all testing has been done at 400 points, with an amount of thought in regards to how it works at 300. But given how much 400 fixes a lot of the issues with the game at the moment making playing at 300 is just incorrect and incredibly frustrating.
Just going to plug inane_imp's Clighly Hassified (that I like to call Top Secret) as a way of making Highly Classified more interesting; major change is that each player selects two classifieds each with simultaneous reveal for all of them where the extreme version will be played for double points if two of the same card is revealed. Still needs to address scoring. An idea to make the mission more organically competitive is to award a bonus point for being the first player to score a main objective, however, this needs to address how to deal with the new classifieds where there are classifieds that are scored at the end of the game and I can't currently think of a good way to do that.
