Fidays, Speculos Killers, Jan Staar, Oniwabans, Shinobu Kitsune, Hypolita, Eudoros, Mc Murder Face and several others beg to differ from this statement. Jokes aside. Infinity IS a shooting game. But there are CC specialists in it that can reliable do what they're suppose to do.
we dont want that. We want than once we reach CC, have the advantage of burst and damage, and not risking all to a single CC dice vs another single CC roll or worse, a burst from a BS weapon
You have advantage already, I am not sure the extra B is needed, then again extra B in fixed DAM weapons (for example pistols) in the active turn is already a thing.
Any (or at least most of them) dedicated CC specialist has a better odd of FtF against any non-dedicated CC specialist that a dedicated shooter against a dedicated shooter. The fact is a single dice vs many 'feels bad' is just pure psicology.
A single roll for CC is not reliable. And, the most basic troop with the most basic weapon, a rifle, can kill anything in the game with a single order, but a CC specialist usually cant without crits
Burst is king, good CC troop should have B bonuses instead of CC 30. And I don't understand why in N5 we still have MA chart, the only nested skill in the game, especially since so many troops already have CC+3 or other parts of MA on their profile. Only point of MA in N4 was to be countered by NBW lol.
NBW in a small selection of troops was colorful and interesting. But now it's become so widespread...
Martial Arts could be decomposed into "CC Attack (+x Dam)", "CC Attack (-3)", "CC Attack (+3)" and "CC Attack (+1B)". We could then lose the MA chart entirely, and open designspace for combinations of those skills that are not currently captured by the five MA levels. NBW could be rephrased as "Attacker cannot use abilities that modifies the "CC Attack" skill against this model. or, even better, be toned down to "CC Attack (-3)" and "CC Attack (-1B)", clarifying that B cannot be reduced below 1.
I thought along the similar lines, with writing it down as "Martial Arts CC +3, CC -3, CC DAM +X" (perhaps also CC B +X). In cotrast to CC -X, CC +X etc that does not result from MArts skill, to keep it interacting with Natural Born Warrior or potenitally other skills that could interact with Martial Arts. De-nesting it could also give CB greater flexibility in Martial Arts bonuses: someone might have multiple Burst, but no CC bonus. CC Dodge could also be benefited by certain Martial Arts. Keeping MArts as a nested, tabelarized, levelled skill is rigid. Also, the only reason to have MArts as a separate skill is to keep skills (like NBW) that interact specifically with MArts.
You can de-nest and keep NBW. Just have NBW be "enemy units may not modify CC rolls while in base contact with this unit". Whether or not it should be less widespread is another issue. With regards to the burst I think the design direction of Denma/zellenkriegers is a good compromise by having the weapons provide burst mods. Low strength weapons provide +1 burst in CC, high strength do not. Gives you options depending on what you're trying to fight. Keep CC Attack (+1 B) as a skill reserved for few CC specialists otherwise. CC does need a little bit of a boost though, not that I want to go back to it but moving from autowounding crits in N3 significantly downgraded their power level in a lot of ways.
Unfortunately we know that Martial Arts is still a thing because it's on the Domaru profile card that Bostria shows in a video. Along with CC23 and a change of the CCW to AP+DA. Note: It has set PS=4 (Dmg 16 in N4). I'm guessing it's already taking the PH+Martial Arts +2 Dmg into account.
My complaint about the CC situation of late N4 is that Martial Arts and high CC value has a huge points cost associated with it and they have started to saturate the game with cheap NBW monsters for virtually free.
I think it's a result of continuous patching of the CC system (this is speculation of course, so at least it's on-thread) Someone decided B2+ didn't make sense in CC... so we have to make CC really high... ...but there's also no cover or Mimetism in CC, so there's no way to modify CC rolls... so we have to add Martial Arts... ...but there's no MSV to counter MA in CC... so we have to add NBW... ...but there's no DTWs to counter all that and make it so you don't have to roll to hit in CC... so we have to add Berserk... It just feels like they hitched their wagon to a certain concept ("CC must be high to make sure you hit") and have been patching it ever since...
Oh but B2 absolutely makes sense in CC. Except you need either explicitely stated CC B+1, or MArts, IIRC, L5 nowadays (used to be L4 in previous editions, if memory serves me). CB has introduced it ages ago, MArts with extra Burst have been around since N1. ...on so few models once could probably count them on the fingers of a single hand, and that hand could probably as well belong to a lumberjack with a drinking problem. Except - for some reason they don't divulge - the decided not to make it more common.
The idea sounds interesting. However, I have a feeling we're going down the rabbit hole of counters and counter-counters. Smoke to block LoS. MSV to counter Smoke. Chaff to counter MSV. ...add to the fact MSV also counters Mimetism. And White Noise counters MSV. Also, Eclipse Smoke to counter MSV (while still blocking LoS). And Albedo blocking MSV. ...add that we're working on 10-15 model "armies". Having counter and counter-counter to everything (if at all available in your army) clogs the list, and leads to repetitive lists. So either these would need to be waaaay more prolific, or they should be trimmed down significantly, I guess.
I forget if this is an N4 thing or an ITS thing, but it'd be cool if we could get a 20 model limit, two full combat groups, and make one combat group lists immune to getting their orders stripped again. I think it'd give more variety in list building and help out factions that have cheaper models not be railroaded into a small number of builds.
