Hospitallers got an unexplained discount during the Third Offensive MO rework which predates N4, they then got also got the N4 discount. Unfortunately CB is stubborn will not admit that they have the exact same problem Jujaks had and its their fireteams options are fucking dogshit. Jujaks went from awful to fantastic overnight, just required a change in fireteam options, Hospitallers are the same.
Weirdly enough, I can most easily point to some really old stuff for this- Haqqislam's Doctor Plus has always been free, despite being much better for the points. Cubes, as well, cost absolutely nothing, as does the Unhackable on some Ariadnan HIs. More recently, UPGRADE programs cost nothing or close to it, and Fireteams are one of the most powerful rules in the game and aren't reflected by points cost at all- they're a purely Sectorial privilege, with unusual and desirable link compositions often being more valuable than the sum of the troops in the army. I'm actually not opposed to PanO getting an improved shooting skill edge for free, as long as it stays in-faction and that Yu Jing get something too- maybe a straight upgrade on Martial Arts. O12 too, possibly- I don't actually think they have any unique bonuses.
Don’t get me wrong. I would love Yu Jing and O-12 to get some buffs cause I want my main factions to be the scary ones. But I was just wondering if there were specific factions that obviously got loadouts that felt undercosted across the entire faction. I think you are using Ariadna HI as an example since they’re not hackable? Am I reading that correctly? Cause if it is, boy oh boy do vet kazaks in a fireteam scare me. And if not, ignore that last part.
Would you mind elaborating on that? I've been trying to get myself to using Jujaks, but I'm just not seeing it.
Which yet again reminds me that special fireteam bonuses are an awesome idea that is severely underutilised
Their previous major issue was the fact that only the Shang Ji was allowed to start the fireteams, so the 1 Shang Ji in a link ate shit for some reason you were the proud owner of 4 guys that could no longer fireteam. The update that fixed that also allowed Ye Mao to jump into their cores. That was all they needed to go from "why the fuck would I trust these KBBQ retards with my precious Shang Ji baby," to actually making them a viable babysitter alternative to Zhanshi. Jujaks make great fireteam support material, they're a solid doorkicker that can be used to cover CQB fights that the primary gunner drives them up to because they have 2W, some armour, and can fork opponents with multi burst flamethrowers or an AP gun. That also makes them a decent first line of defense as well. Couple that with the option to put Ye Mao into their cores who have extremely synergistic options it was all they needed to be viable. The Hospitallers have reasonable stats for cost, they've been discounted so many damn times it's impossible for them not to be in a vacuum. If the game was built around pure teams only they'd have a reasonable chance of working, but it's not and CB are either too stubborn or too stupid to admit this and are content to leave them with an unworkable fireteam. Fireteam options are important, even a single new unit being allowed to join a team can make or break a profile. I am this close to declaring Gao is a viable option now. Yes, you heard that right, fucking GAO. All because he gained a new NCO that can fireteam with him.
In theory, Orc fireteams could have the sectorial bonuses instead of having so many versions of them around.
He means the difference between the initial N4 fireteams composition and the fireteams rework, not the difference between the fireteam rework and the recent reinforcement additions to fireteams composition.
You know, I actually really like this idea the more I think about it. With the tricky movement and more frequent use of the niche basic Orders being a keystone of PanO play right now, it would actually be a big aid to non-expert players to have improvements to those skills right there on the unit card, both for the power and as a reminder that they're there. Cautious Movement (+2") could be another good one.
I was looking through the white banner army to get references for this, and I saw the Dokkaebei cyberteam profile. I want to formally retract anything nice I've ever said about Yu Jing; they are now part of the "hackers with their own pitchers problem". Obviously, they get upgrade programs for more free shit, this time Spotlight, since hackers having no counters is clearly good game desgin, and can join a link with a tinbot (-6). And Carbonite with extra damage, because God forbid you be allowed to have counterplay options like fairy dusting a BTS 9 Veteran model. I'm curious as to what link option would make them good when they still have no Vis mods. Only thing that comes to mind is pure crossier core, but then you need to figure out something else to do about your smoke weakness. Nomads and CA, obviously. Anything with an UPGRADE program is a freebie, Bakugon has more UPGRADE hackers than not. Bit & Kiss is the most egregious example, being built entirely on upgrades and bust mods, but the Stgimaton at 58 points is a joke as well. Sure but are those stats you ever actually want to pay for? Infinity absolutely has a dead zone for stats where something is good enough to be expensive but actually reaching the point of having the best odds of winning an active gunfight. That's why gear and skills matter a lot more than raw numbers, and Hospitallers are absolutely hopeless there. 30 points for a rifleman who doesn't do anything else still isn't good. Jujaks actually fill the door kicker role a lot better; they're cheaper, they're faster, and the basic guy gets a rifle plus a hevy flamethrower. If you want to make them so, you'd need to load them up with anti-shenanigans tech. Having a Tinbot (-6 firewall) is pretty much the bare minium, but you need to brach out; sensor, discover (-6), tinbot (biometic visor), and so forth is what they really need to see play. Pretty much all they have going for them is stealth, but a repeater covers such a gigantic area that it isn't hard to force someone to need to declare skills that break stealth in your hacking area. Put another way, MO struggles to fit enough answers in a list, so a unit with good stats that isn't helping you not die to hackers, or Impersonators, or camo spam, or smoke just isn't going to cut it. This is good. A few other possibilities Something that lets you either dodge comms attacks or apply dodge moves on a reset, so you can potentially edge out of hacking areas the same way as dodging and guts moves get you away from shooting Discover (-X) so you can make discover attempts at a reduced risk Tinbot (Hacker: UPGRADE: Trinity (Neurocinetics) The other thing, which isn't as well supported by the current rules without jank, is dealing with the problems of everything in PanO trading down - some kind of skill or equipment that reduces the damage inflicted by template weapons without the exorbitant cost associated with actually having an ARM stat increase. Something like "Blast Padding (-3)" or Blast Padding (-6)", which applies the relevant MOD to the damage of template weapons used against the trooper with the skill. Significantly lowers the odds of losing an HI model to a (dogged) flamer warband at less than half the cost in one order, and provides niche benefits aginst GML strats, making resetting out of the spotlight slightly less suicidal.
Having Knight of Santiago and/or Black friar counting as pure Hospitallers would provide them with a significant buff, yet non completely broken. Take Joan, that is basically a suicide move to have as a Lieutenant against any semi capable hacking Sectorial with pitcher. Would she be protected by a tinbot she still would have 20% of being isolated against a hacker with WIP14. Now you could be saying: but you can already have a Santiago with Joan. Yes you do. 84 points just for those two units resulting in having a dirty core. Yepeee! Would the following Clean core be totally OP? Joan Multi Combi Santiago hacker with tinbot and Combi De Fersen Black friar HRL Hospitaller with HMG Yes it would be super powerful with insane dakka and good hacking capabilities. But: - super slow - still very much prone to hacking - E/M Grenade would wreck havoc in this… - … whopping 197 points core! And you still need to field in a midfield and 10 additional units. I do not consider this OP at all, and the Crusade fireteam is far from giving that output. That is to say at which point the Hospitallers FT is totally non viable for a Core
They need more flexible fireteam options. If you push Infirmarers to Wildcard, and then give the Hospitaller link tag to them, Santiago, Konstantinos, and fuck it why not the KoJ while we're at it. That would let them put 150ish point pure team HMG onto the table if they wanted it. I'd also give the option for 1 Teuton to join the Hospitaller fireteam, giving them the option for a cheap tinbot if they want it or NCO but trading off the pure team bonuses. The other thing I would also do is probably give the Hospitallers an Engineer profile. A) The sectorial needs more engineer options when they're playing with HI, and B) Hospitallers were actually responsible for a large amount of fortifications built in the Holy Land so it's somewhat on theme anyway. Unrelated to the Hospitallers I'd probably also make the Knights Fireteam able to Haris and also make some FTO Sepulchre profiles to go with them. Hospitallers only have 1 truly questionable stat, and they have a 7 point discount from Frenzy on top of the other discounts they have. In a vacuum their stat line vs cost is fine. Their CC capabilities aren't stuck in the bloat stat area. It's above 20, they have a decent weapon to go with it, and melee skills. Just because you don't usually leverage them offensively doesn't mean they aren't useful, they're a defensive deterrent. The Hospitallers are at the critical mass point where they're strong enough to take warbands attacking them off the table as an effective strategy. Knights can do things like hold objective rooms, comparably say a Jujak who is also great at doorkicking is also hyper vulnerable to getting covered in smoke and beaten to death by a Monk. A Monk could single handedly wipe out a room of Jujaks, statistically it would die in the attempt trying to clear Knights out of there. MO CC bloat is a problem but not on Knights, it's in places like Black Friars where you're paying for stuff like CC17 on its own which is worthless or Shock CCWs and CC18 and MA2 on Knight Commanders. That's where they need to stop paying for garbage. The Hospitallers do have a bad stat but it's the BTS6. BTS6 on a non hacker HI is in an weird place because CB made some awful design choices on N4 hacking, you pay for what is functionally BTS3 vs budget HI which are practically getting the same benefit out of BTS3 which goes to BTS2 against Oblivion which is the hacking program they actually care about.
I have done both so many times... Jujaks great at cleaning, not so great at holding when smoke and monks are involved.
Okay, but that completely misses the point; their stats are fine, but I do not care about their stats. They lack MODs, order economy, or special equipment that solves the problems every panO sectorial struggles with. To put it another way; I am stranded on a deserted island with a Lamborghini, and your trying to sell me a Mercedes. Is it a nice car? Sure. Are you offering me a good price for it? You very well could be. But I would never choose to buy it when I already have an even nicer car, and what I really need is a boat, or some food. Pretty much the only selling point of the unit is Stealth - otherwise every Hospitallar profile totally fails to solve a problem the army has. For the same 31 points as a MULTI Rifle Hospi, you can buy a MULTI Rifle montessa, who is a better gunfighter most of the time on account of the Mimetism and so only really looses out on Stealth in exchange for being much faster. You can buy that weird MULTI Rifle Black Friar, who is circumstantially a worse gunfighter and looses a wound, but also can help counter smoke, has a fighting chance in situations where the Hospi would be helpless, opens up a lot of tricky plays with drop bears, and can at least theoretically make big plays with Albedo, though that is niche. He isn't hackable either. You can also take any Trinitarian, which is a radically different unit, but adds a ton of capability for tactical play and does things that MO generally isn't very good at. Being a mediocre shooter at the same range band where the Tikblang of Montessa is a great shooter simply isn't something worth paying for in at any reasonable price, and Hospitallars don't even pretend to be anything other than a mediocre shooter. That's the problem with them. Can you get them to a reasonable level if you spend twice the cost of most TAGs on them? Sure, but you could also take a Clausewitz Uhlan (yes, it's a different sectorial, but dumping the whole list into one core makes the difference a lot smaller) and have almost the same numbers, cammo, an actual plan to deal with heavy armor, and a plan B. And the Ulhan is mid. Don't forget the classic HD missile launcher/HRL. Honestly, I'm not sure it's even that good. Consider the following: It's slow, moving no faster than a racing fusilier but with all of the headaches of pure core movement In a 300 point format, it will effectively force most enemies to put their heads down, but then what? That's not really something PanO (or any other army which can play on the active turn) really struggles with, but you have nothing left to go in and attack the guys hiding behind walls - a Teuton harris will eat up most of your remaining points, so your left with... post-nerf Peacemaker? Solo Impetuous Teutons? The Friar is a weak point for Impersonators, (Beserk) Warbands, and so forth, but doesn't really have a good alternative in-faction The ARO Presence is weird. Including Joan makes it seem like it really wants to move forward, but then you can get inside the range bands of the HRL, and breaking guys out to go in Suppressive is both command token and order inefficient. De Ferson's hacking would normally help, but you have almost nothing left to lay down a repeater network. It seems like a ghetto version of the super morat core, so better game design - but as long as the KotHS and Tikblang exist "shooting good on active turn in HMG rangebands" is pretty much the only thing you aren't worried about.
You're missing the point entirely, the discussion was about Hospitallers and their point costs/discounts, not MO's competitive viability as a whole. Making a fireteam adjustment to make an otherwise unplayable unit that has playable stats, actually playable =/= what you want. What you're after requires a top down overhaul of the sectorial. I'm not saying it's not needed, but it's outside the scope of what we were discussing in regards to the Hospitallers specifically.
Could after all their time hanging out with ORCs and Karhu on Sval decide hey we should bring some FV with us next time the Church calls us up. Giving KH HMGs and FB to play with
