The saddest thing to me about that list is that it's actually only half PanO. There are only 8 faction-specific profiles in there: 2 Karhu 2 Croc Men 2 Auxilia 1 Teuton 1 Helot The rest is generic Mercs that every faction gets. I'm not counting the Clipper and Pathfinder, because they're the same REMs every factions gets, and they don't even bring anything special like in Nomads, CA, or O-12. Liang Kai is also in O-12 and Yu Jing. But I don't want to derail this thread into the too-many-mercs-in-vanilla discussion again. Just wanted to point out that there's not a lot of PanO in this PanO list.
Hmm. But if they’re paid by PanO does that make them PanO? If they were born in a PanO territory and live in a PanO territory does that make them PanO? Would PanO know if they were PanO if they lived in PanO? Dammit can’t stop saying PanO. PanO. You’re correct at any rate. There’s a lot of mercs in the list which are available to other factions. Could still be fun though. I’ll run it at some point.
Edit: As another user pointed, they're actually slightly off because of Trinity damage. Chance for Zero to wound at least one Fusilier 58%~ Chance for Zero to fail FtF and fail save = 43%~ There is no Surprise Attack versus a linked Fusilier because of Sixth Sense. My math (that was done to supplement a statement that you made) still shows that your statement saying that it trivially kills both Fusilier is just wrong. It's also not a 30 points opportunity cost, it's a 10 points opportunity cost. The premise was that you're already taking a fusilier core to your list, so you're only paying 10 points to upgrade them. I took the Zero because it's the one you chose in your example, but regardless, most any KHD would be the same situation as the one above. The Zero is still probably the situation where the offensive hacker risks the least, because it's very cheap. And still, as I've shown with the odds, it's nearly 50-50, which is a very bad active turn order.
Ten out of Fifteen models are PanO Units, of the five remaining one can argue that is PanO Unit since it is the PanOceania specific Beast Hunter, but I can see it be debated either way, I am afraid the ship about mercenaries in Vanilla has sailed a long time ago.
Right, so it shouldn't be too hard to do the rest of the critical thinking on your own. Do you intend to respond to the rest of my comments? If not, I will be pleased to accept your concession.
Correct I think that if you set up your table to have all the vertical buildings in the mid field, specifically placed in a way that infiltrating repeaters placed on the top tier are immune to any form of attacks then you need to reconsider how you set up your game table.
So the tallest buildings should be placed in the DZs, right? Now how do you deal with the rooftop hackers and GML in the DZ? This is not exclusive to rooftops either, they just tend to be the worst offenders; a corner in a wall or interior of a building can be just as much of an issue. It is not exclusive to the midfield, as these terrain features are the same that allow for hiding hackers and misslebots in the DZ. You further this debate at risk to your own credibility. I'm going to keep posting the following comment until you decide to respond to it, specifically. This is where the discussion takes us: The videos I linked show examples of the current default style of table. This style of table is considered ideal by most players and tournament organizers. This style of table disproportionally favors strong hacking lists and GML alpha strikes. PanO struggles to take advantage of these strategies. PanO suffers in the tournament scene and the kitchen table scene, and players are left disgruntled. Eventually, disgruntled players leave the game.
@Triumph none of peripheral (servant), (synch) or (control) bots in this game have remote presense, which means that die to two failed saves and that engineers can’t use cmd tokens to reroll failed engineerings rolls to fix them. Interestingly enough, peripheral troopers with FTO profile gain remote presense. For example regular Scylla Charybdis doesn’t have remote presense but FTO profile does. PanO FO-REM is in my opinion one the better ones, because it doesn’t pay for abilities that might not be useful. Obviously the best FO-REM is the Haqqislam Rafiq.
Once more, with feeling, terrain is a third player, and if your setups are consistently unfair, look at them again and redo them.
As @Tanan pointed out: they do not have remote presence, and therefore only one unconscious level. The % of survival is quite low, as you need to roll 15+ two out of three dice to make him still alive. But even then that is why you declare reset with the servant bot: just in case the “automated reset due to dying” fails.
Oh look, more of this BS. Would you ever admit that CB poorly balanced the game? Or would you just blame it on players setting the terrain up wrong?
Not actually the case because you weren't running combi-armed Fusiliers anyway. The opportunity cost is higher than it. Nope, it's significant. Nah. What do you gain? Nomads aren't restricted on using hackable units to aggress and frequently don't.
I was actually, this was exactly the basis of the argument. But you are just firing on every front and pushing the argument in directions that is completely different every on of your posts, so of course you'd lose track of the argumentation. The non stop goal post moving are really tiring.
A game can be poorly balanced and still be enjoyable. Infinity has been around for what, 20 years now? It’s doing fine with sales and CB are expanding into other areas. It’s clearly doing well enough despite any imbalance. Games Workshop has been around far longer and as salty as I can be with them, their game is still going strong and it’s as unbalanced as all hell. I’ll still play it though, its a game, it’s fun. If it’s taken too seriously then I feel that you’re missing the point. Certainly discuss the imbalances, do so in a polite manner, explain your point of view and also listen to others, even if (sometimes especially if) they disagree with you. This way, the game developers may take notice and changes can be made. Or not. Sometimes a game is what it is and it won’t really change. Even if it’s ruleset is based on something written in the ‘80’s. You get back what you put into wargaming. If you know the game is unbalanced you should be better prepared for it, accept it for what it is. That way at least you’ll enjoy the game experience. Or not. And if not, there are many, many other Wargames to play, all with their own idiosyncrasies and imbalances. Once again, if you are this angry about a game, perhaps you should take a break and try something else, something that brings you some joy.
It's also worth noting that if a simple solution to a "problem" is at hand, is it really a problem? Does that truly make the game imbalanced? If terrain is a "problem", but one where we can set it up however we want (save for Objective Room missions, which still have oodles of flexibility), is it really a problem? And if (regardless of the probabilities, since it is a game with chance involved) for any given "issue" there are folks relaying experiences on both sides of it, is it really an "issue", or merely a complaint? "Me not having the tools I think I should" =/= "game design issue". It may simply be that a given army is not a given player's style/fit/temperament/what-have-you, and that's OK. It doesn't make it poorly designed or mean CB doesn't know what they're doing. And, to be frank, bordering on direct, if the game were dragged down to a place where all the armies are 99% the same, just with different minis, levels of discontent would remain the same, merely directed at a different thing.
See that bit at the top? That's the problem. Ultimately, as much as both sides can whine about terrain placement and KHD hit rates, PanO into Nomad Hacking is BORING. And so reliably that tournament players stop focusing when they see it. Either something about PanO's advertising or its design is wrong, because the people who play it are visibly not enjoying it to the degree other players are making it a list consideration.
If a simple solution to the problem of PanO's vulnerability to hacking was at hand, none of us would be here debating it. Terrain is not the problem, the way hacking interacts with terrain is the problem. It doesn't matter what terrain you use or how you set up a table, the issue is practically unavoidable; it is an inherent problem with how hacking works and PanO's inability to respond efficiently. When it comes to balancing a game anecdotes don't matter; data matters, probabilities matters. Personal experiences do not counter empirical evidence, in this case. We are "complaining" about a legitimate balance issue, which has plagued the faction since N3.
@PhDeezNutz I said nothing of the above, so why you put words were there are none? What you posted from memory is an excellent tutorial on how to set up a table, I suggest you watch it and follow it, a table were the highest buildings are on the deployment zone, don't ask me why you posted it, and a TTS table, TTS is a genre of its own. As for them been the "typical tables"? far from it, they look nothing like the tables we play here, nothing like the tables posted today from that latest Satellite and probably nothing like the tables other experience in their games. So I think we can conclude that aside from some generic guidelines there are no common or typical tables, that is an illusion the standardized digital tables of TTS has created to at least some players, and those infinite reproduceable tables have shaped a particular meta that will not be experienced outside of the TTS experience. Concluding, the game table itself is an actor in the game sometimes as prominent if not more than the players, it is up to the players, or the tournament organizer to make sure the table is challenging, but not favorable to one faction or player. I really do not know why I have to say it third or fourth? time in the same thread?
