I was actually thinking of inviting Crystal and Sylvia over to do a special reinforcements vid. Will wait for the ITS pack to drop though, CB's attitude to the ITS pack is going to make or break reinforcements.
Indeed! But seriously, what are they going to really do? You think the ITS guys are going through their missions pack and dropping frontline, acquisition, the armory, quadrant control.... all these classic missions, just to make reinforcements fairer? I highly doubt that. Here's what I'm actually predicting: 1) Best case scenario: comm link points/SWC tax removed, multiple units per faction have access to commlinks. Dropping reinforcements mandatory (can't be held until T3) and probably at a lower points threshold such as 50. Some new guidelines from CB on how to run a normal 'non-reinforcements' list vs a list with reinforcements. 2) Worst case scenario: No changes at all to reinforcements. Nothing. All missions from previous season kept with maybe 1x new one and a few tweaks to missions. Free CSU/bashi swapped out for some other kind of free unit.
I think if CB go with option #2 then Reinforcements as a new play variant, goes the same way as all the other variants have gone, it fizzles and dies and Noone ever plays it again. That would be a pretty bad business decision for CB considering all the "effort" that they've put into developing Reinforcements so far.
I do not think an immediate reinforcements change will happen with the initial ITS 15 release, that would probably happen a bit further down the ITS season. The Reinforcements feedback thread is quite promising though, it is quite constructive in the things it identifies and highlights.
For some reason for a few players the faction wasn't showed, since data were taken directly from ITS Tournament's website. During the event it wasn't time to check on those players. However, if army lists are released by Corvus Belli, I will try to modify tables and graphs to have the whole picture. So, as @psychoticstorm indicated that is the reason of "not yet". I used that "wording" because I was checking with limit date to upload the list when I started to take data. Once the date was reached I didn't change the name for that particular column. For a miniature game to banish think will not be a good policy to follow, however, in balance terms it will be a good decision to remove some combinations of skills and troupes for the well being of the game. If players are aware that some revision will be done in time to time, I don't know, every 6 months, nobody will be truly unhappy, it will be complains (always does), but nothing serious, but balance game will be better. Always does. As an example, for this Interplanetario it was, I think, one of the reasons we saw so many SP. About the statement about SP being always there, so what have changed now to have people complaining... I will say nothing and a lot. First of all, if we take a look to others big tournaments, usually, as global the % distribution of armies usually are alike the one we had in Interplanetario, being maybe Nomads the exception if we go back until n3, but focusing on n4, with maybe not so to have half of the armies, the distribution was there. The thing about SP, changes were small but significative ones, Eudoros we could say is now better, plus now if SP wants to play a hacker in some of his FT, can use pandora, more useful and cheap than the mirmidom hacker, she is not only hacker plus carries medikit, which now is, we could say, better than doctors. Those 2 makes an extraordinary duo which can be decorated with until two others profiles to fulfil what the players wants. We should remind too fireteam's changes, where pure 4 members fireteams now have +1 BS, so now, Eudoro, Phoenix, while in a 4 members FT, shoots to 14 instead of 13, but not only, most armies with fireteams have low BS than before or they are expensive. For example, Kamau shoots now on 14 against falange, not to 16... if goes to 16 it means is using the expensive fireteam. If we think about armies without MSV thinks goes worse. Those are things we can check, discuss without having tables or missions in mind. If we try to abstract how tables could be, and what missions the Tournament had, then we can understand better why SP was a good choice: pretty much not being dependent of tables or rival to score in some matches because eclipse to 96% of effectiveness (if not face o face). Back in the past, things like ghazi were something never should exists, they didn't mean autowin for haquiss players, but it could be a really bad trip for the enemy if table was set friendly to hide then. So then they need a fix, now they are others things in need of some fix ,to better or to worse.
Yes it is unlikely that CB will make changes to Reinforcements very soon, but it does need to be done within a reasonable amount of time, maybe 3 months, given the amount of feedback they are getting about the problems with Reinforcements so far. Any longer than that and I predict Reinforcements will quickly find itself shelved.
That is, indeed, very true. I don´t think we lose this "Saturday evening, 3rd round"-missions, because...well... we kinda need them. They are straight forward and simple and they don´t hurt anyone (too much) when played, although some would classify them as "boring". But sometimes you want to play a game of "who has the bigger stick" (what sounded unintentional sexual. Appologies) I am not a huge fan (especially with end-of-game-scoring) but hey, they exist. its fine. I could imagine that maybe there is a list of "reinforcement comfirmed" missions, that you can pick when playing a tournament with reinforcement only. Question is, if that comes from the ITS-team or, in last instance, from the player base. I would highly prefer first, to not felt like beeing left alone with the "problem". Imho the ITS team always had a good hand for mission (and also for special rules, like buffs for bikes, or FD for MI units and the lot). Yes, there where some ugly childs aswell (looking at you, Hunting Party), but most of the time it am happy with the seasons. +1. I also want to repeat the idea from someone I cannot remember to give Commlink to units that are otherwise not the most picked units out there (infarmers, lobos, Odalesques, apsaras, and the lot alike. Maybe even some underrepresented profiles from otherwise solid units, that get a weapon downgrade...) Mmmh the main problem I see here is: Infinity is a game of just three rounds. If you cannot deploy in round 1 (at least as first turner) and you are not allowed to wait till round 3...well... Plus we are speaking of 40% of your army, thats not just a little shock troop like in other systems and Games. Basicly this would reduce the arrival of reinforcement to Round 2 of the first player and round 1 (after beeing alpha striked) and round 2 of the second player. Maybe someone could argue to give the first player the option for 3rd turn, but... dunno... This is one amazing arc back to topic if I ever saw one :-D It´s quite remarkable, how some little changes can elevate a unit from nearly unplayable to autoinclude. Eudoros for example was a unit I rarely saw ever, due to 1 wound NWI without shock immunity. With the inflation of shock ammo (SMGs) Eudoros (and with him everything else with NWI and no ShockImmunity) dropped in value. Now Eudoros got his "real" 2 wounds, combined with STR (which means no re-rolls for engineers), the better MOV, some smaller changes and the universal change of Fireteams made him so much better. then SP got some new faces like Hippolyta, Pandora and reworked atalanta, some with avarage impact (Thyreus, hoplites, Agamemnomnomnom) and a handful of discontinued, that no one realy seem to miss (Diomedes, and this... journalist guy... ) Plus: HD Agemas gave SP some serious ARO power (which they already had with atalanta and Phoenix, but now it´s omething you cannot see) I think SP got a serious (and needed) buff but nothing that ascent them to OP-status in all missions over the board.
Banks don't touch jack in their software unless they absolutely have to, invites errors that could cost them far more money than a little user-unfriendliness. If this game were run like a bank's internals we'd be playing N1 with lawyer-level error handling and a few new profiles.
Don't you think that asking for a ground up rework in less than a month from initial release, without the new ITS missions been released and all that in August that has not even finished yet and was occupied by Interplanetario is a bit fast?
Going back on topic, while the distribution of Bakunin and Assault Subsection are similar in Krakens and Prodigies the results are not similar, I wonder if the reasons for selecting them were similar or different, for example performance related versus new stuff.
I think that these tests had to be done before the reinforcements update, by the corvus belli staff; and don't do an update without any playtesting and wait that the customers, who pay for this game, do this work for the company.
The organization staff and the judges attending Interplanetary told us that both Pulpi's and Kraken's players were a random population of both satellite winners and regular attendees. So you can presume an equal skill level floor on both tournaments. Therefore, given the SP and GML-centric lists population you can presume that the results would follow a poisson distribution with a stochastic random walk. In fact, if you collide both populations of Krakens and Pulpis, what you get is the following top 10: 1 Weran - Nomads (30 points, winner of final round) 2 Skynight - SP (30 points, loser of final round) 3 Cayren - CA (26 points, 44 OPF) 4 Iro - CA (26 points, 43 OPF) 5 Dementor - SP (26 points, 38 OPF) 6 Nyper - SP (26 points, 33 OPF) 7 Arkhos94 - Haquislam (25 points, 45 OPF, 9 OPA) 8 Kamcord - SP (25 points, 45 OPF, 22 OPA) 9 Melmak - Kosmoflot (25 points, 39 OPF, 15 OPA) 10 Sir Leigbah - CA (25 points, 39 OPF, 19 OPA) I do not have the full lists available of all the players in that top 10. But chances are that we have 4 GML lists, 4 SP lists, and 2 Alpha Strike lists. I know for sure that Melmak's was an Alpha Strike one, and I am in doubt if Arkhos94's archetype was centered in alpha strikes. Or, as you can say, 4 U/R Splinter Lists that wins by a non interactive combination. 4 Caw Blade Lists that wins by having best table interaction perfomance and tempo. And 2 Aggro Vampire decks that depredate on the U/R lists by winning the iniative. Given that the GML population lists is much bigger than the SP lists, as it consists on all Nomads and CA altogether, the Top 10 is following a normal distribution with a random stocastic walk between the populations. My perception of that the current situation of the game is akin to the Caw-Blade era of MTG is therefore reinforced by taking a look at the Top 10 of the tournament. Chances are to see if this perception is also shared by the player base and the developers.
That is an interesting point, though I am not sure if I can say both groups had equal skill level on the lists, if things were equal I would expect Assault Subsection to be more prominent in prodigies top 10/20.
I apologize, but while I know that SAA = Shock Army of Acontecimento, SEF = Shasvastii Expeditionary Force, OSS = Operations Subsection of the SSS, and SP = Steel Phalanx, neither I nor google can figure out what SSA is supposed to be.
Pardon my Spanish-bias. SSA is "Sub-Sección de Asalto" (ASS in english). Which indeed it is SP or Steel Phalanx, in opposition of OSS, or Operations Subsection (SSO in spanish). Editing my post for better clarity.
I think a hotfix for the commlink points cost is quite reasonable. I really wish CB had released a couple of reinforcement compatible missions with the rules; almost all of the ITS14 missions are unplayable with reinforcements. I don't understand why we should have to wait over a month for a couple of functional scenarios.
