For sure, but the game has been moving away from narrative structure and more toward tournament play for a long time. We no longer have the ability to breach walls, doors and windows don't exist anymore, etc. Why is this holdover still floating around?
There is a difference between faction balance and narrative structure. Yoshinori Ono, the guy who basically saved street fighter, once said that you have to design certain things to be unbalanced. If every character was the same you wouldn't be playing Street fighter, you would be playing Karate Champ. Some factions doing certain things better than other factions is the entire point of having factions. The narrative structure is just there to support those faction differences. So once you start breaking those design decisions, it breaks the faction balance and feels bad because of the supporting narrative. They are linked but they aren't the same.
Even pointing out statistically improbable successes is valid and valuable. Stating, “here are some of the ways I’ve had success on multiple occasions, plus that awesome outlier that was amazingly cinematic” has value. Of course, it presumes folks are looking for actual possible strategies, rather than simply agitating for radical change so that they strategies they feel they “should/deserve” to have are incorporated. What’s the hoary old forum chestnut? “It’s not…”
Having things that excel in different areas doesn't mean they aren't balanced... Balanced means that while things may win by different means, and some may be strong or weak to certain things, that when played against an aggregate of opponents they have equal chances of winning. "It's balanced because I once rolled a crit!" That's the stupidest line of reasoning I have ever head. You can bring up examples, but you should also recognize the statistical probability of the event.
Yes. In the first step my question was rethoric. But time has moved on, Nisse are now linkable, not very flexible, but they are (and there are better snipers out there) and they still very good for an extraordinary price especialy compared to modern units ... but I drift away. The point is: While I can understand that a Alguacile or Kempetai is taxed with SWC for being Lt. because this armys/factions/sectorials should be driven to other Lt choices than the typical line trooper, that comes in pairs so its still a 50/50 chance to kill the wrong humble line trooper. And I can understand while a camo lt is taxed with SWC (Guilang for example, who only taxes the sectorial, not the faction ... AND which has not an actual miniature) I totaly fail to understand why a troop like the Nisse has to pay SWC tax for Lt. (to be honest, I not tried that hard). Orc gets removed 0,5 pts SWC tax on tinbot profile. Overpowerd auto-include Bulleteer gets a price raise and old, never changed, always solid Nisse is still expansive and has to pay SWC in SWC greedy sectorial/faction (ups - maybe here is the reason?). Sry for bloating the post ;-) I think that should be removed - at least in Svarlaheima Winterforce - the home of the Nisses. Same goes for similar troop types/taxes.
The WIP check at the start used to be private information, you didn't reveal the target number. So 1 Nisse and 1 Fusilier would obfuscate the LT. Now that you tell people the target number in N4 you can't do this because they know whether your WIP12 or 13 when you roll, so they'll know which is the LT. It was one of the bad changes of N4 IMO.
Indeed. But better no SWC and given the Lt status away, than 1 SWC and give the Lt. status away anyway. But line troopers with SWC-Lt.-tax can still do the 50/50 or more game - this is what I mean.
Pointing out that they're misrepresenting other people's arguments isn't attacking them; your desire to protect Mao from the consequences of *his* insults is more of an attack on other forum members than anything I was doing.
It's amazing how the CB white knights have finally arrived at the ultimate argument to deny there is any kind of balance problem in the game: "lol, just crit, bro" And actually arguing that with a straight face and getting mad because people are not buying it. The Kool Aid is real. I really feel bad about PanO players choosing almost the only faction where fluff and "faction character" still enforce pretty heavy limitations gamewise while other factions can just have their cake and eat it too while having to read players from those factions dismiss their well argumented and reasonable grievances as "salt", but then I remember what happened with Uprising and realize nothing has changed (except the fact Bakunin should have been Uprisen if we go by fluff and didn't because fluff limitations are only enforced for some factions, so they are now basically a 2 for 1 Sectorial)
I am pretty sure that this was not what has been said, so why insist on pushing this? As far as Bakunin goes, If we go by fluff, except if you have a really advanced copy of the latest book and know what the story is, I do not think anyone knows what happened to know what the fluff is, let alone what should have happened.
No one says, “just Crit, BABY!” but rather play PanO as it is, rather than bemoan what you think it should be, or move to a faction that suits how you wish to play more. To use the specific example presented (Jazz), the counsel has consistently been, “attack using your strengths, rather than on her chosen field.” Insistence on being able to face her and other similar threats in Quantronic combat is silly. We’re not going to be able do that. The examples folks have given have been of lucky victories against her in Quantronic combat, with more consistent success using our tools (shooting her or her mates in the face).
The question is, does having to rely on that method make them less competitive compared to other factions? If it does, then the faction needs help, whether it's boosting that aspect or bring up others. That's the important part. Is the faction balanced against the others such that you can play competitively into any of them.
How do you attack her using your strengths? She's going to be well hidden at the back. And the problem is having 2 morans extending her hacking area without risk. Two areas of 8" radius is enough to cover most of the gaps available to move your troops past the mid table, so HI, TAGs and REMs are going to suffer. Those morans are probably going to be prone on a rooftop, so hunting them is going to be very order intensive or almost impossible. You have a crazykoala you have to dodge, then if there is a ladder you are lucky. If you have to climb you will get a shotgun to the face and you are already targeted too probably. Even if you bring a troop with climbing plus or super jump, if the opponent did a good deployment there could be some sniper ready to shoot when you get to the top of the building, so you have to solve that first... but maybe you can't because your main shooter will get hacked if you try. Or you can just ignore them and try to go through another path. And that's probably going to be lots of orders. The thing is that she is cheap, can bring a very useful second troop with an extra order, or even better complete a fireteam and get sixth sense. Anyway, she is a Nomad and they usually do stuff like that. So ok. But that's a problem you can't really solve by just being good at shooting. And Pano players can get stuck very hard on a table like that.
I think you nailed it taking as example against nomads, but isn´t the only one. When the time to "trade" pieces comes, is when Pano has to cry. Every time I play Pano I find myself that I only have plan A. No plan B. I said it several times. It will be the same as in order to play for example "Kosmo" bearpode should do all the work,or for Hassasin if we could only to be confident that fiday did the work (most of the time in active and reactive turn because the same pices are the ones thant have to do the work). Maybe the problem is that is what CB wants for Pano maybe in a way to keep a faction "simple". A new player can buy Pano, understand that you will win if you shoot better and dices allow you to, then after a while, when it becomes bored to win or to loose in that way, newcomer will move to another game or will remain on Infinity but moving into another faction. But if this is the idea to keep Pano narrowed to one aspect to the game with the idea to keep ip simple... I think is really wrong. I play Pano, mostly Acontecimento or Winterforce lately (I move betweeen many armies outside Pano, haquiss, Ramah, Hassasin, o12, starmada, sso, jsa) but I have to do some mental work before because I know I will suffer in the moment any roll get wrong or my expensive ARO didn´t manage to delay the attack pieces of the enemy. Or I find myself "praying" that my expensive ARO only gets unconscious and not dead, and later, if I spend orders to heal it, the outcome will not be dead. Pano need some love. I mean, all Pano, not only MO (which usually gets at least a couple of reworks every Rules Edition, not a very good sign).
As you've been told time and again and just ignored, "shooting Jazz in the face" relies on your opponent being bad at the game as Jazz is one of the most easily hidden units in the game as she has 0 reasons to ever show her face. Anything that relies on your opponent playing badly is not a good solution and at the very least the presence of Jazz and similar units warps the entire game and puts PanO players on the backfoot just by existing; that's not good game design. Also this is compounded by the fact the way to win at the game at the moment is playing in a non interactive way and refusing to f2f as much as you can so you don't get fucked by RNG. This ends ups being another nail on PanO's coffin as this is mostly achieved via LoS blocking, hacking thru repeaters and asymmetrical trades using cheap templates. I find it funny that while the game slogan is "it's always your turn" this edition seems to encourage playing in a Warhammer-esque way.
I just spent half an hour writing a detailed argument, then deleted it because I realised there's a far better way to fix our issues with being unable to leverage a shooting advantage against inconveniently-positioned targets. The problem is- and this cannot be overstated- GRENADE LAUNCHERS NEED THEIR RANGEBANDS BACK. Those things are pretty much designed to fix this exact problem. Sure they're not much fun, for either team, but better five Orders spent grenading Jazz or three for a Moran than half the game being reduced to a tedious slog for one side.
