An Essay on Some Potential Over Performance Conditions of Spotlight into Guided Attacks

It's way easier to deal with bearbodes because only two factions have access to them. Open map, expendable group2, heavy HI with MSV, TAGs, peripheral screens all make bearpode life very difficult.

The only way to counter good GML is:
- Not fielding 20+ pts troopers without total immunity or marker state
- sticking your own impersonator next to important ARO piece to cancel missile strikes.

 

That's completely irrelevant to what I just said.

 

Well I thinks it is relevant. Personally I don't think that 400pts is a solution. CB just needs to admit their embarrassing mistake and nerf GML at the end of infowar killchain. Trust me, nothing else will work.

Look at the discussion in the PanO forum. No one is worried about PanO because PanO doesn't have good GML delivery system. PanO isn't a problem. PanO is the solution. Everyone should be like PanO. By nerfing GML damage, S-tier factions like vCA and vNomads would immidiately drop to A- or even B-tier.

 

It isn't relevant at all to what I said. The problem is alpha strikes as a core strategy are a dominant force that stagnate the game by causing it to revolve around this one strategy. If you nerf GMLs that doesn't fix the problem, people just reach for the next best thing they can get at delivering an alpha strike. The game is still stagnating around this one strategy, it doesn't matter if it's GMLs, Bears, Avatars, Speculos or whatever you still need to focus around delivering and receiving an alpha strike.

We literally eliminated GML alphas by fixing the alpha strike problem. I only linked a post that was related to literally over a year's worth of an entire community's experience of playing N4 and our observations from switching between point levels.

But sure, I should definitely trust this hunch of yours that it's all just a collective hallucination we've had.

 

And infiltrating repeaters. But yes, I know. I just don't agree that those are systemic issues so much as a profiles issue.

Agreed that the game has a bit of an alpha strike problem. The Pitcher thing isn't only an Alpha Strike issue, though, it is also remarkably good at grinding the opponent's offensive game to an absolute halt as well. I've seen TAGs get alphad off the table by a large range of things, including a lack of buildings to hide behind.
I don't think you can necessarily adjust the situation by going over each and every thing that is capable of alpha striking well and hard and nerfing them as all you'll have left after that is going to be Keisotsu. The basic premise of the game is that you have these big stonking order pools and that you CAN move a single unit around a LOT until it fails, and unlike Bloodbowl there is no stacking "push your luck" mechanic.

I think that it's better to adjust the worst offending tactics slightly, until they start playing more fair. Then you start addressing specific profiles. For example, no one in their right mind think a deployable repeater on a Kaeltar is problematic, but where does it start being problematic? At what combination of cost and ability portfolio is it a problem? Hunzakuts seem problematic, are Crocmen problematic in this regard?
Why is it problematic? Are Hunzakut an issue because of game mechanics or because TAGs are deployed too far forward? Yes, map design can absolutely cause and solve some problems. If the total reach of 21" that a Hunzakut suicide deploying a Repeater is an issue, then placing terrain so that a Hunzakut can't move straight forward and making sure there's cover for the TAG in the last 3" of the DZ to deploy effectively. If that's not generally possible it might be that instead of completely nuking a tactic as one to use to punish over-extension, then making it more feasible to deploy e.g. TAGs by introducing a "crouch" mechanic to let them have a lower silhouette can be a soft solution to a specific small set of problems instead of depriving the game of variation.
Lastly, it is possible that other solutions can be made work to allow players to have more tools to handle this. A Hunzakut doing that sort of run is generally speaking cut short by a well placed mine. Most of the time at least. Those mines require a dedicated profile to place which is not so great - a specialized and not generally available solution to a fairly general problem. If minelayers can deploy outside DZ without FD skills, then you broaden the number of profiles that can handle this. Additionally, if you let perimeter weapons activate on Camouflaged units, you once again increase the amount of profiles that can provide a specific protection against these sorts of attacks without removing the ability completely.

The other side of the coin is to look at what all of these tactics have in common and address those.
Why are bears problematic? They can spend 11 orders; 4-6 to get across the table, mostly ignoring terrain and smoking/tanking most AROs, and then have half the pool left to murder key units with their very much above average CC and DAM. Why are TAGs problematic? See bears - if you forgot to bring hacking. Why are Parachutist DZ problematic? They start in your DZ and while not as strong as bears, still better than most stuff in there and with lots of orders to use. Why are Impersonators so problematic? Well, they start in your DZ, usually have quite high CC ability, and can get to a target with impunity with lots of orders left for other alpha strike tactics as the imps aren't likely to survive. Why are ... see a connection? Maybe the max order pool is a bit too large.

 

I mean I agree, that's why you attack the root of the problem which is that focusing on an alpha strike is too rewarding as a strategy. Rather than needing to go and hit every offending profile with a nerf bat we found it was simply easier to make it less rewarding to alpha the opponent.

Delivering a big alpha no matter how you achieve it is all about gaining and controlling momentum. If you dial back that momentum gain the problem naturally resolves itself. You could try and attack every problem profile in the game, or you could just up the points limit and allow players to put more combat effective stuff both offensive and defensive instead of chaff on the table.

I am hoping that the reinforcements mechanic they're adding later in the year is going to do something like this. From experience I can say it's effective as a solution.

 

I'll have to take your word for it on the 400 point games thing. It's hard to get people to move out of the 300 point frame of reference and essentially the only person locally friendly to the idea has said they'd also want the combat groups to go unlimited at the same time, which to me is mostly making more of the 300 point dynamics.

Issue is how you dial back momentum, though. I think it's achievable without removing a legitimate tactic from the table (when someone gets FO going it doesn't feel at all as bad when Guided starts hitting). Most of the time it's about showing restraint when designing units, though CB seem to increasingly want to show no restraint what so ever. E.g. Jaan Staar is primarily toxic because he's got Impersonation and Symbiont armour, the solution is to not design Impersonators with Symbiont armour, but CB is unlikely to not do that. In other words, some adjustments might be needed.
Total Immunity might need the soft counters from Stun back, Impersonation might need to dial the forward deployment back one DZ, Pitchers might need to become technical weapons and not get burst bonuses, TAGs might need to learn how to crouch, Supportware may need to be a Command Token option for player 2, Perimeter weapons to work on camouflage markers, Deactivator may need the No LOF trait, LT order no longer break fireteams, fireteam integrity reform work in any states phase... sorry I'm drifting into general patching. You get the drift.

I'd love to see like a mid-edition balance pass that tries not to go overboard, but to smooth some tactics over a bit. Get them to be used, but not abused.

 

Pitchers are fine. Spotlight is fine. Guided is borked. It's a low cost, low risk, high reward setup and one of these things needs to change. There needs to be a decent ARO counter to it. I propose the EVO. It has been in that role before, but why not let it ARO. Bring back U-Turn.

Hell, you could give TR bots an air defense mode. That would be cool too.

 

I am still not convinced 400 points will not develop their own alpha strike issues and that the only think they will achieve is just making the cheaper profiles obsolete.

 

Literally been playing it for years, it doesn't.

 

While I haven't played 400 points, on a theoretical note that would not obsolete the cheaper profiles at all. Instead of looking at an average cost per unit of 20, the average cost goes to 27 points. This is not such a big leap in budget that it's impossible for most factions to find units considerably costlier than that.
For every Böjg, Gamma, Aquila, Shakush, etc that you add to your list you are forcing yourself to "downgrade" two or more units to the "line infantry*" or "warband**" brackets. Two TAGs and you're reaching for the Fugazi next, but you can still reach 15 units if you stick to mostly/entirely cheap support units. Oh, you went for three TAGs. Well I guess you're playing Limited Insertion at 400.
With the sturdiness of units going up a small amount it is true that Chain Rifles stop being these godly punching-up weapons they are at 300 or below, but it's not like the value of smoke and CC or E/Marat goes down as the number of costly but CC-mediocre heavy infantry you can expect to face goes up.

* Fusiliers and their peers, not Yan Huo
** Mutta'wiah and their ilk, not Myrmidons

 

Yes, but given it has not seen widespread usage, we do not know how a wider majority can break it up, things change drastically when something leaves a small community or a few players and is used by thousands.

 

We went from an alpha strike based style of play (including GMLs, our meta saw practically every list that could run GMLs was running them at 300) only to find it actively does not work very well at 400 points as an alpha strike option.

The biggest difference whether or not you attempt to alpha is it doesn't more or less decide the outcome of a match on turn 1. The order count does not increase compared to the amount of combat effective bodies hitting the table. My average lists are doubling HI/Pseudo HI counts from 4 to 8. Meanwhile Combat Groups were already pretty much maxed out at 14-15 units at 300 points, it's a simple fact that the amount of potential aggression from orders did not increase at the same rate as combat effective models were making it into armies.

You can still use an alpha strike piece turn 1 but the focus on it goes from "I will dominate this game with this move" to "I will remove this problem unit from the game because I don't want to have to deal with it during the match." This is a healthier state for the game to be in.

Meanwhile you literally have no basis for your argument. I'm not even demanding that you test things here, you literally haven't even made a theoretical point of discussion just said "I think this for for absolutely no reason at all."

This is correct.

I still play 5 point monks at 400 points for White Banner, I'm just not incentivised to frequently play 4-5 of them like at 300 points and will instead use 1-2 instead. Same for units like Taighas, Flash pulse bots etc. They still get taken but they're not auto include or even taken at max AVA.

Meanwhile there are many profiles, units, and even entire fire teams that never see play at 300 but are legitimately good options at 400.

We actually see triple TAG lists that still bring the full 15 units, but they're specifically the budget ones more like a Sphinx+Xeodron+Overdron or 1 big TAG and 2 Geckos.

 

Hm weird, that is how I play Shaolin's in White Banner at 300 points.