Alke does less things and is less efficient than a Makhe. Sure, you can slap her in a Myrmidon fireteam, but why though? She does not provide much, frankly. Otherwise, there is little difference, since a Thorakitai fireteam can have both Makhai and 2 dactyls (the dactyls fireteam? 1-2 Dactyls anyways). And I'm certainly not slapping Alke with the TAG... That is not being aware of the problem, that is designing a new faction to be highly resistant to a problem all other factions suffer. In my book, that is not a solution, in fact it doesn't even qualify as a good patch, just a bad and short term one (which would go hand in hand with N5 being released next year, and we getting no more new factions, at most a new re-launch of one or two). Why? Because ignoring the problem is not solving it, the problem is either still there (in this case for the other outdated factions), or mutates (in this case, it would be to turn hacking into a meaningless mechanic, by allowing fully non-hackable strong units). BTS is the conceptual "non-bullets armor", so it also applies for less than friendly environments. Anyways, the problem may be that all hacking programs that work in HI, also do so in TAGs, and TAGs tend to have a minimum BTS of 6, with several going up to 9, not to mention the Firewall option from Fairy Dust, so of course the programs need "AP" ammo... only that burns the HI profiles. So, the problem I see is mainly that the pressure to make those programs work against TAGs, make those same programs exceedingly good against HI troops. The solution would be to simply normalize BTS for both (and maybe do something against the Breaker ammo vs TAGs, since then it would be the best option there), or change some programs.
That's exactly it. CB's current business model requires them to create a bad game, and sell new stuff while putting as little energy as possible into updating old stuff.
The basic changes to E-war that Infinity needs are pretty clear, and have been discussed here a few times. The list goes: Blackout: - There was an anti-comms equipment hacking program for a long time: Blackout. - It needs to come back. It could help deal with both Repeaters and Tinbotted hunkering hackers. It should probably not be super strong so it can target repeaters well, but be only a hail Mary or orders-intensive tactic against Tinbots themselves, since ITnbotted HI are not the problem, but hunkering hackers are. Icebreaker: - Agreed with @Triumph and others that KHD needs Icebreaker back. Hackers as only target. Halve Firewall, AP ammo, B1, DAM13, job's a good 'un. No-LoF Deactivators: - Likewise no-LoF Deactivators are a no-brainer and really, really need to happen. IMO a no-LoF Deactivator should probably still be affected by things like Mimetism even out of LoF to avoid making mines a wash for order requirements between players, but that's a matter of stats and playtesting. Nullifiers, Sniffers - Nullifiers and Sniffers should both come back. They were balanced just fine in N3 and would fit fine in N4. I get that they increase the number of gear profiles. They're kind of obvious design elements though that don't increase the mental load of the game much, once you're using a rules wiki to look stuff like Jammers up anyways. (Possibly) reset option for deployables: If one adds no-LoF anti-equipment gear (Deactivators or Blackout), you have to then determine whether to allow deployables to declare skills like a trooper (no movement though), giving them a Reset option to allow counterplay and make investing orders or points in laying Mines, repeaters, etc. worthwhile. This would be a key playtest question. EVO function increase: - EVO should be able to have a program up at start of game in exchange for a Command Token. This will help reduce the game's tendency to alpha striking, whcih has always been Infinity's fundamental design flaw. - Come on more-useful platforms, with linkability in some factions and better secondary purpose loadouts (guns or mines etc.). Second-string mines like E/M or cybermines would be an easy middle ground here. Hacker as skill not equipment(?) @psychoticstorm and others are possibly right that the Hacker skill should be de-nested from equipment as well. This would really need testing though. There's a really good design space for either: - An expansion book highly focused on updating the E-warfare side of the game, or - N5 being mostly N4 but with e-warfare updated (and armies rebalanced) It would also be a good opportunity to rework Biovisor to make it worthwhile (stripping both levels of Impersonation at once being the obvious fix). It's not that hacking is a -big- weakness for TLB, it's that it is one of their -few- less-strong points. It seems like a weakness when compared to, say, their shooting or midfield games which are very very tough. Like you pointed out the only hacking-related attack that's really even average against them is GML. Just like SP, TLB are so uber that you can only really hit them in the bits that are soft for almost every trooper universally.
I agree with this in the case of SP - where everyone is mimetic, at least 1W NWI Shock Immune, good at CC, and packing smoke. Against SP, even if you bust down a Phoenix on ARO, it's not like you can start rolling Monks or Morlocks into them - unless you've got some very very strong/specifically built close assault options (top tier warbands like Zuleyka, UFK and Bears, MA+NBW CC units like Nahabs), you don't really have an effective vector to attack SP if they aren't posting AROs - outside of GML. They also have stealth to bypass repeater nets, and are broadly unhackable. For TB, they are reliant on a bunch of hackable stuff most of which doesn't have stealth, and once the Prime goes down sure it's not like their DZ defense is bad, but there's certainly angles for most close assault units to make fetch happen. They don't have a Tohaa/HB/vHaqq level of DZ defense. I also think you are maybe overstating their midfield a tad. Moonrakers and Striders again aren't bad, but... ehhh, there's stuff that can crack it. It doesn't strike me as potentially frustrating as say, the vNomad midfield with Morans, the vAri midfield with Chassuers and SAS, or even the Starmada midfield with wildparrots on Sarkos.
That's a pretty big if though. Bringing down the Prime is one of the hardest things to do against TB, and not every faction has the tools to do it.
It's def not easy to do, but I think a proper MBT will eventually grind it down (granted, it's not gonna be order efficient), and as already mentioned you can GML it. It's def one of the best hard AROs in the game, and I think realistically it's gonna be able to guts to cover before you can shoot it down - but I think it's also a bit of a load bearing piece. SP can afford to have Phoenix die on turn 1, I don't think TB can afford to have their Prime die without getting some really significant value from it.
I play midfield Nomads and WBA these days. I am envious of TLB's midfield game because Moonrakers are an amazing roadblock for cheap, and they are available alongside very good HI camo troops (with NCO even) -and- Hippolyta -and- a better Ninja. These elements exist in other armies, but the combo of Moonrakers and Striders is solidly better for the points than Zencha, or even Zencha and Guilangs in vanilla. This is because a Strider and 2 Moonrakers is way better than Zencha and one Guilang for defense and then ablative offense. And this is way way better than a Zencha and 2 Long Ya IMO, unless your opponent likes to walk things with low Burst weapons down big open firelanes. And all of these do have Stealth (as do the Hellblazers, if the TLB player is lacking other assassin units). A Nightshade end-ran my army two weeks ago and ganked my Lt., much more effectively than a Ninja thanks to Super-Jump... and didn't even have to use the drop bears but had them. Then you've got Hippolyta, who can fire out of the link and go wreck stuff, or start on her own. And gives Eclipse to the link... and still be a pure link. Thing is TLB have plenty of other strengths than the Prime. Take the Prime out, it will take you pretty serious effort. The rest of their army is about a trooper up on yours because they're undercosted. You still have to deal with all that. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying TLB have definitely got the strongest undercosted-and-super-optimized advantage in the game, even more than SP. Playing 5-10% uphill (undercosted about 10-25 points across a full 300-point list depending on what they're taking) and -also- having the faction be super durable and have great internal synergies is a real pain.
There is a point where the de-nesting becomes unhelpful. Several units have already reached that point, in my opinion it's getting very hard to get a grip on what units actually do. With the suggested new hacking programs, which I honestly don't agree with (see below), some units like Nourkias or Shang-Ji Hacker will have an absolutely silly amount of skills listed. Hacking Devices work fairly well right now and considering how many units are sharing certain skill sets I can see the opposite being helpful - re-nesting common combinations. Blackout currently does very little that Oblivion does not already do better. The big difference is that it can target comms equipment on non-hackable units, such as Morans or Tohaa Diplomats. However. What you guys are suggesting is all to do with stuff that are already hackable with Blackout, you don't get Firewalls hosted on non-hackable units, Icebreaker. (Your suggested values are very significantly worse than Trinity and only barely better in ARO) Hacking/magic design in this game is too barebones to support this type of escalating damage warfare. It's very flat in design, essentially it is completely binary when it comes to your positioning while only rolling hard dice at each other with facing, relative distance, etc, not mattering. This is not a good system to expand on without making a very major overhaul of the system. IMO, it's a lot better to keep it in its current supporting role before such a time, which means you need to look at interfacing with the hackers using the full combined arms the game has to offer. Considering that... No LOF Deactivators is another suggested change which may be enough to make massed repeater play unattractive enough to get the hackers further out on the field where you can deal with them using other means. If this turns out to be sufficient to correct the system, all you'll do with over-adjusting is to have another one of those Jammer nerf*5, N2-style TAG double nerf, or Grenade Launcher nerfs where one one adjustment was enough, but two to five were made. CB just gotta do adjustments a bit more often than every 8th year.
Okay good point. Leaving hacking devices as nested packages is a wise idea. Blackout currently does very little that Oblivion does not already do better. The big difference is that it can target comms equipment on non-hackable units, such as Morans or Tohaa Diplomats. However. What you guys are suggesting is all to do with stuff that are already hackable with Blackout, you don't get Firewalls hosted on non-hackable units,[/QUOTE] Incorrect: What Blackout would most help with is repeaters on unhackable units, and/or deployed as equipment. But you've got a good point: an existing tool could do this. Just expanding Oblivion to allow it to also target any unit or deployable bearing comms equipment could work. It adds text to the program description, and some odd use cases maybe, but no new stuff. ARO is exactly the intended use. But you're right, it does need to be buffed to be useful in the active. Adding AP ammo to it (as well as the proposed halving of Firewall value) would help make it a useful single-shot attack. Would definitely require playtesting of course, but it's an option to make things like Sixth Sense Tinbot -6 Jazz less oppressive Expanding the options to cover obvious design holes (such as Tinbot linked Jazz in the faction with Morans and xvisor pitchers) is not an inevitable rabbithole of expansion, if playtest is done well to reveal any -new- holes that result. A fix for oppressive pitcher play is needed, to offer a decent e-war counter against the pitchers themselves. Blackout or expanding the target list of Oblivion is the least-intrusive option for that, IMO. You are drawing the conclusion without actually playtesting the fix. It should be considered, and tested. Your argument against the fix is based on nerfs to things themselves, not adding options for counterplay. We're not saying nerf pitchers or repeater-bearing infiltrators. We're saying add another form or two of counterplay against it: forms which require orders to perform, but are not as easily denied by the repeaters themselves. You are probably correct that -both- Blackout/expanded Oblivion AND no-LoF Deactivator might weaken repeater area-denial tactics too much. Figuring out which of those choices works best alone, and then seeing what happens if both are added, would be the playtest goal. I think that Deactivators requiring only ZoC would still require an order or so to position and an order to use against a midfield-blocking repeater, making no-action or low-action repeaters (Morans, pitchers) still worthwhile. No-LoF Deactivators' effects against mines would be a bigger, much more serious thing to test. If mines' Mimetism applied against that No-LoF attack it would help even that out... but that's a rules exception to add. Heartily agreed!
I will agree and disagree, packing hacking programs in hacking devices does compact the information, but one could make the same argument with all weapons, why not have "infantry package" and replace "Combirifle, Pistol, CCW" for example. Denesting hacking skills would theoretically allow a single or two program hackers, or hackers with unconventional program selections, something we already have for a few select hackers, why not have all of them that way?
Maneageability. Also, the current lineup of hackers with Upgrade programs is the exception, the only one with a device and a specific set of programs being Kiss, while on the other side we have Mary Problems with 2 hacking devices. Now imagine writing the lineup for an Asura, for example, stating every single program in her printed list entry. Unless you want "datacards" that take half the page per unit like certain company does nowadays, I don't see it being much of an improvement, frankly.
And how that differs with any trooper that has a load of guns and equipment in their profile? it does not, also as I said this could mean we could have hackers with two or three programs instead of standard 4 or could have 4 programs per hacker but expand the list of programs and not have them all with the same programs having hackers with support programs to do when there is no target instead of all having spotlight for example. There is some potential in such a proposition, treating hacking programs as weapons, it can be used beneficially, it can be used in a wrong way.
Tell me, do you want to play a wargame, or an RPG game with a spreadsheet per model? I agree. Bloat is bloat, no matter the label in the stuff. You know, removing all basic pistols and CC weapons from the profiles would solve several of the issues that make cheap, disposable troops such a threat to much more expensive ones, and remove 2 entries for a loooooot of units. So new players would have the time of their lives with gotcha! moments all the time. Great way to get new players into the game! Learn a 150 pages of rules, and then go to check all the time the list of programs those three hackers in the enemy list carry around, unless you care nothing about winning or not because you are here to roll dice and get crushed! Great design idea, truly... -.-U
My point is, it has virtually no difference from weapon loadouts, and after all Infinity is a game of 15 (or so) models, not a mass combat game with 100 or more models to juggle around that need to have everything abstracted to a single stat with a dice number just to get the game going. Some granularity would not hurt and since we do have models with more than 3 weapons and way more models with more than 3 abilities, I see no reason why we could not have hackers with 1-6 programs listed as weapons, we already have a few anyway.
... or we could get rid of like... 1/2 the weapon profiles... "Ariadna, you have Rifles, which are just like the Combi-riles everyone else gets, but the short range barrel plugged with these "FU" stickers. Haqq, you have Rifles too, but they all include a shotgun, which will make everyone hate you." "Why don't we all just have Combi-rifles?" "You shut your GO!#@MN MOUTH!!!"
