I would say it is much more nuanced than this, there are few if any factions that can rival PanO in a straight firefight, so much so that PanO can reliably have "Plan A" be shoot the world and succeed with it, many factions cannot have that as a reliable first option, the main issue is this is more prone to bad luck and when you start loosing your heavy firepower as PanO, the other elements of the force needs to put more effort.
I would push back on that "many factions" Aspect, as I feel one of the positives of N4 was that more factions can actually do "big gun go brrrr" and is not just for PanO. I think it would be better for PanO to lean harder into the superior technology with more and varied Auxbots, drones, and TAGs.
I brought up religion because it is a common thru thread among different forces in the faction. It could just be more different cultures. I would love to see a Gurkha unit.
N4 has done many great things, the change of critical has made both high ARM units relevant and specialized ammo important, in particular the change in fireteams has evened the play field, PanO can still have their oppressive fireteams, but now it is a choice and has a cost, you can either have the cheap firepower option that is at the same level with other factions usually pure fireteams or have the old PanO firepower, but at an extra cost. superior technology is a nice theme.
Gangbang pure fireteam are still a thing, and with the most powerful units of the respective factions. Just not for PanO and YJ that always seems to be created with a bonduary set in mind that is lost as soon as other armies are developed
Not so much, those pure, mixed fireteams end up tops at BS 18 (I think only Suryats can reach BS19) when a mixed PanO fireteam reaches BS 17-18 and pure PanO fireteams are a BS 19-20 usually with something extra. I think N3 mixed cheap PanO fireteams been at BS 19-20 was one of the biggest criticism the faction had.
So it's good... PanO have superior firepower and shooting capacity as long as they are alone. They suffer from Animosity. That must be the reason behind the name of ORC troops... Any frigging army can put down a Fireteam that shot better (and with scarier weapons wielded by scarier troopers) than PanO. That's good...
For example? It is not that I do not like having (non shotgun) BS 21 cheap mixed fireteams, or better/ more powerful weapon options in such teams, I mean multi markshman rifle is nice, but it could be much more. Right now the cheapest Suryat ML core (BS 19, MSV1, 2W, hackable) is 92 points, the cheapest Volkolak ML (BS18, NWI) fireteam is 72, the cheapest Bolts MSR core (BS 19, MSV1, Marksmanship) is 105, the cheapest kamau MSR fireteam (BS 19 MSV2 mimetism) is 109, the ML variant is 100 missing the MSV2, the barebones Fusiliers ML fireteam (BS 18) is 55. Could we have more? of course we could, how bad it would be for everybody else? N3 rants were massive and N4 PanO win rate does not seem to have been impacted massively from loosing the pure mixed fireteams.
There is a new ruleset => Fix some rules and limitation to create bonduaries to avoid abuse => Let's start new profiles or old revision => Order is PanO, then YJ, then the rest => PanO fits perfectly in those bonduaries, YJ too => Let's forget about it all when doing the rest of armies This is exactly the feeling when you compare mixed fireteams, reinforcement profiles, reinforcement composition and almost everything that was born in the last years. This is frustrating on the long run. It seems there was no "game scale" armonization since N3-release mass update...
For my money, vanilla is the best PanO faction, simply because it offer cheap aggressive units that are denied to almost every PanO sectorial. Krakots, liang ki, diggers and helots let you leverage impetuous agressive trades and templates. And (outside linkteam bolts and karhu,) tags are the best guns they have anyway.
I'm pretty sure the only reason the N4 rants aren't bigger is the forum scared off most people with the N3 rants- the current Hacking imbalance is the exact same issue as the Kamau at its worst (many if not most factions lacking convenient answers, requiring unintuitive play and uncommon system mastery to counter an extremely simple and cheap tactic). We don't need another N3 Kamau. From any faction. My honest thoughts on what the faction could use, is a few tools to prevent disruption. PanO can't bypass obstacles as well as any other faction, it needs to shoot its way through- which is the riskiest and most inefficient mission approach in Infinity, albeit with the advantage of degrading the enemy's own resources. Order-draining diversions like aggressive Hacking or dense midfields with Mines and cheap Template troops are often the straw that breaks the camel's back with PanO, leaving it without the resources it needs to score, and between actually losing troops when something goes wrong in active and the game's worst WIP values providing a solid chance of outright wasting a full Order the faction can be very luck-dependant. A more proactive tool to avoid or defeat that kind of disruption could be just what the faction needs to bring it back in line with its opposition, at least in terms of ease of use.
PanO is interactivity in its approach. Every other factions aims to reduce their interactivity with the other. You can’t approach list building with PanO like how you would approach list building with Nomads. The two are not the same. The other factions lean toward Asset focused list building I.e I need ro be able to advance up the table freely so I will take X unit with Smoke to enable that. PanO is effects focused - I need to generate this effect to enable me to advance freely. What units allow this? Usually it’s TAGs. So how does PanO achieve non-Interactivity - List construction that forces heads down. You’ll find - Your opponent posts 2-3 hard AROs 1 of which will be a direct threat to your TAG (Missile Launcher/FB Core), 1 to Tarpit it down (TRBot). Everything else is there generate delay at range. (Warcors/Flashbots). While taking a TAG may not be everyone’s ideal party. It is listed in the PanO fluff as their primary method of warfare. Establish Firepower Superiority which forces everyone to keep their heads down. Objective claims in early game are realistically there to generate a response from your opponent to get them to commit and leave those units over-extended from which you then remove them from the table. Many armies will have a bigger defensive chaff screen because they have no hard edge. Just gotta unwrap this to get to the soft chewy insides. They rely on this defensive screen to bubble wrap their active pieces against bigger sharks. Exploit their willingness to throw smoke by having your own close assault elements in the list - Take the Peacemaker, Auxilia FO, Shona, Knights, Liang Kai, Max, Seraph or hell MSV. You need no smoke if no one is looking down at them because the biggest gun on the table might get them. But yes PanO plays a 2 player game compared to everyone else’s 1 player game.
Just checked the army app to get some references, and I was delighted to see that instead of trying to treat the festering wound that is (vanilla) CA, Corvus Beli have decided to print more of the affronts to human dignity that are linkable hackers with their own pitchers. I'm curious where you're pulling this from, I haven't seen infinity stats for a while, since that batch of TTS stats that had vanilla CA with like half the players in the game. That's an actual question, Infinity stats are hard to find. But those never happen, because of the active-reactive swimg. You just need to cap firepower, then what matters is dealing with your counters. 1 point of BS doesn't make a Salamander meaningfully worse than a Drago, because both nuke generic ARO pieces that aren't specific counters. That one point of BS isn't letting the drago walk through a hacking zone or survive a hit from a Speculo mono CC weapon. I view the active turn yaogut, the Dartok, Gakis, and Ikadrons as more of a problem than a reactive Suryat. Whatever ARO peice is in the free pure core is going to be a pain to deal with, but I don't see that as the crux of the issue with MAF. Going second I think Dartoks are the bigger issue. Sure, as long as that close range is exactly 8.1-16" and you have an open route to cross the midfield (from your DZ) in a sensible number of orders (which you have less of). And I don't even think PanO is better at that, because you're spending real units to make the attempt, not a 7 point xenomorph or morlok to go maybe make something happen. Sure, but they gave the new Auxbots to O-12. The army already has good enough TAGs (but so does everyone else), the problem stems from the fact that a TAG struggles to be any better than its support, and PanO has weak engineers, hackers, and skirmishers. And drones are nice, but only aggravate the severe weakness to hacking the army already has. What PanO really needs is a rule to set your power armor to airplane mode. It doesn't even nessicarily do that, since they can place pitcher repeaters and reload with 1-2 orders, and a lot of placements (rooftops, behind buildings, etc) will require you to burn much more than two orders to get line of fire, and then potentially fail to kill it, especially if you need to use something like an SMG, which will be out of good range. What do you see that looking like? Because the distruption is usually hacking, but it can look like a lot of other things - Speculo Minelayer with a mine locking down your dedicated ARO, mines (as you mentioned) - bad WIP means dealing with a lot of cammo makers can be an issue given low WIP and a lack of cheap expendables to make Discover attempts, though at least that feels more manageable. Yes. This is the crux of the problem. Being forced to accept risk on every action and give the enemy a vote is a insane downsight when the game is currently structured such that other armies remain equally or more effective when they can avoid it. You loose non-interactive options in exchange for being slightly better at direct combat (or almost as good as CA). For this thesis to be sound design, PanO would need to have the strongest anti-bullshit in the game... but you give that up as well for your -1 WIP & occasional +1 BS. MSV would need to be cheap and ubiquitous, rather than kind of akward and restricted. BioVisors would need to come free with every Fusiler. You'd probably need a Fusiler/Crossier minelayer profile for some warband defense as well. I was kind of joking about airplane mode, but is there really anything wrong a Tinbot (-9)? Sure, it's hard for all of the niche fetish OC character hackers trying to blast you with polaris missiles from across the board, but maybe hackers have it too good. Hackable, hackable, hackable, none of you are free of hacking. But yeah, those two characters in exclusively SWF who aren't PanO are less subject to the faction restrictions. Except that Liang Kai apparently forgot his smoke bombs. This just isn't true. In my experience, the most common ARO piece is a Morlock or a Taigh or some other degenerate with a chain rifle watching a corner from behind a wall. Second most common is a linked infantryman, also behind a wall. Hard to shoot them with artillery weapons. Sure, Tikblang will sometimes be able to climb somewhere and get an angle, because Tik is the GOAT, but I've found that relies on my opponents making positioning mistakes more than anything else. Seraph is what I belive the kids would call L + no Mimetism + Ratio + no AP ammo + you should kill yourself by making double moves in open air and taking unopposed gunfire NOW + burst 4 + easily hacked + weak kung fu. It's probably better in TTS where you can scam people into playing on pre-configured maps where you've manipulated the terrain to be perfectly spaced for the super jump. I guess the basic takeaway is that when you are as good as AntipodeanBolt you can make it work (not sarcastic), but great players of any game can gimp themselves with all kind of weird restrictions and still do well.
Currently pretty much every faction have shooters as good as Pano does. We need to look beyond "raw" BS, which is "old trap", it came from N2, and partially from N3, but the true is for late N3, the most average BS was 12, and even Pano doesn´t have majority of BS 12, 13 or even 14, now with last addition profiles maybe this have changed, I didn´t the maths; and yes, we have "high numbers on profiles with BS15, but when you only can deploy 1, that superiority means not so much". Firefight now is more about "skills","burst", "damage", "menace" and "resilience", and of course "point and swc" cost, than BS, a tendency started with the infamous "spetznat". Were Pano has a Multi Snipper Rifle, others factions have "Plasma Snipper Rifle", on a cheap platform, like unidrons, or in a "heavy one", with "albedo", yes, a TAG. Or others have "ML" in a "total immunity" "IP" with a cheap pure fireteam, or "relatively low BS of 13", but +1Damage, AP and Continous Damage... or a way to put "burst 6"... Plenty of factions have access to "AP" with medium long range and burst... Pano has HMG Damage 15... So, even when I could agree "Pano shoots better than average" if your "damage" isn´t as scariest others... This is why "Karhy FB" is so hated... Because it has "burst and damage" (but in a extremely fragile platform, to loose the f2f usually means "dead"). Pretty much agree, some things went a little out of control, but even "Morats" which keep all bonuses aren´t too hard to fight, only a few profiles. Well... For Vainilla, which have the highest win ratio for now, isn´t too relevant https://stats.infinitytheacademy.com/ Only 63 games for a total aprox of 12500, not even a 1% from the total... This is close to "play with your friends, report", 5 victories, 100% of wins, best wins ratio. I even played 12 games with Winterforce and only lost 1, but "never crossed paths with SSA or Bears", started pretty much all games, so... Funny thing, for me is the opposite, play Pano is to Play sectorial army, even if I could agree, the argument is "Pano is better" but using all "non pano units" which are, in fact, in other many factions.... Hard to admit that :( Sadly. Pretty much agree. The problem with TAGs for Pano is they are too many threads and less space to "defend it". A bearpode, or McMurrow can kill your tag and you can do nothing. You left "flash pulses as ARO" not even orders need to be expended. You left your visor to avoid smoke... then probably "enemy Skirmishes" can put it down or "the HMG", then they can go for your TAG... So, probably you will loose "3SWC points" and you still have to deal with that troupe when your turn start. I think the worse thing in Pano right now is the "lack" of surprises, is really easy to predict what you will face, what profiles will be in a Pano list. This is a problem. However, I still find fun playing Pano, only I low my expectations and I choose my "list" for those models I want to play, not other reason allowed.
Exactly. Play the game to your strengths, rather than bemoaning everyone else’s and trying to play in their space.
The biggest issue is the "unknown" gap in this, but unless tournament players get more active in submitting lists, we cannot eliminate this statistical void. But from the set of statistics we have, PanO and her sectorials is doing quite well, and this needs some explanation.
More or less correct, PanO is a faction that will force interactive gameplay either the other faction wants it or not, it is PanO's greatest strength and weakness, is that direct gameplay involves attrition, and it can happen to both sides, yes, PanO is theoretically better geared to win such direct interactions, but luck is a factor one cannot dismiss. I am sure all PanO players have a few games were all their heavy weapons despite been extremely favorable to win just died, but on the other hand when things proceed normally PanO does massive damage to the opposition, deleting key elements. But the main thing to keep in mind is that you cannot and should not try to play PanO as another faction (and likewise you should not try to play other factions like PanO).
I’m not a great player. I make stupid decisions all the time. What I do know is planning - The difference in results that I have between pick up games where I’m just rolling on Fluff around and find out compared to Expected order budgeting and areas where I want things to be at various turns is massive. I have had situations where things have just failed or turned against me due to dice. Uhlan rolled on a Kappa Sniper one game - Both crit so went cool lets try that again. Kappa crit again. Ok the odds of him doing it again are unlikely and so I repeated this twice more copping the same result and my Uhlan goes down due to low rolls. This is followed up with moving my Haris with my only machinist at the time. (How good is getting 2 more engineers in NCA). Dislocating it from going on an attack run on a Bixie / Beta trooper Haris that I wanted to spool up. Opening it up to a lateral run on it by a Bashi. Next failure after the next. It happens. It feels crap when it happens. So I get it. PanO’s too and bottom end are so much closer by comparison to other factions. Those peaks and troughs don’t look different to each other. A pure Fusilier 5 man can fight some of the biggest targets. Able to punch on with say a Marut on even numbers (sans Burst).
Honestly, any number of things, likely taking up more than one unit and heavily dependant on where CB wants to take the faction. My favoured "quick-fix" options for NCA (I'm far more familiar with that Sectorial than any other) would be an inefficient but elite KHD hidden deployed in the DZ to discourage overly-aggressive Repeater games locking you out early, and more access to Auxbots to improve the piece-trading game outside of Fireteams. A better option would be to fully rebuild the faction from the ground up, with a clear and consistent vision for how PanO is meant to work and design that supports it- either doubling down on the faction's vulnerability to disruption in exchange for superior shootout performance (for real, not the piddling 3% swings we usually see now) or compensating for the lack of Warbands and Skirmishers with unique tech that can actually force engagements; not too long ago, MSV2 served that role. Quite to the contrary. Bringing the level of movement mastery that PanO forces you to learn into a faction like WhiteCo is like night and day; sure, you're not able to clear a super ARO castle as easily, but combining those tricks with efficient Skirmishers, Smoke and far improved Hacking feels like you've taken weights off your game. I used to play Vanilla Yu Jing, MRRF and Bakunin back in mid-N3, and since I switched to NCA I'd say it's made me a much better player, as on the occasions I've switched back to one of my other factions with the lessons I learned with the much worse NCA I usually ran away with the game. Those same movement tricks can work wonders with a Tiger Soldier, especially with all the Orders saved by having Skirmishers already in place to score, and learning to make do with Hexas and Locusts has given me a far better idea of how to Hack efficiently than playing with the Custodier and Zoe ever did.
