It's a wonder how every cut in every vanilla is met with "why is this unit getting the axe" voices, when we don't know sectorial rosters yet and most of the units not in vanilla will indeed keep to be playable in their respective sectorials. Speaking of Parvati and Sophotect balance, I'm curious how they'll go about it. My preferred solution would be to give Sophie improved Doc/Engi skills, with Parvati being a better fighter, but only basic Doc/Engi.
Because people just love to feel offended / wronged? Also, yeah, we know nothing about the sectorials (outside of the two new ones). Except there's only one source that could give us the relevant info: CB themselves. And so far they didn't.
Yes, sure, that's why we suspiciously get all the reinforcements plus the newest releases in every vanilla, for lore reasons; also removing iconic faction characters so you have to get into a new Sectorial you maybe didn't have before to keep playing them is also because lore and balance reasons. Who knows, maybe it is, but it certainly doesn't look that way. P.D: I don't think you know how miniature casting works neither, if we are gonna go into it
Because people love playing vanilla. Not everyone on the internet is 13 or enjoys benefits for pretending to be a victim. People expect reasonable continuity for their factions between editions.
Unsurprisingly people like to play cool miniatures and characters they were playing before without having to expand to a whole new army, and things like having half your characters in f.e. ALEPH belong to a different faction won't sit well lore nor aestheticwise (specially amazing how they removed an in faction sniper to include a mercenary sniper)
Well, your definition of ‘reasonable’ differs from mine, which differs from Errhile’s, from Stiopa’s, and, most crucially and critically, from CB’s. And since it is the Interwebz, yes, there is an element of histrionics involved in the complaints.
I know at least in my case, it's because I sometimes want to play Vanilla. ALEPH's pretty well known for its top-heavy builds, as much if not more than CA (since it lacks the affordable Warbands), so dropping all the traditional SP Rambos leaves a lot on the shoulders of historically capable but not top-tier units like the Marut and Asura. The main gains over playing pure OSS are Smoke access and a few tech pieces- though all that MSV2 will love the Smoke, it's certainly a big change for a very popular build style. As for Sophie vs. Parvati, the main problem is just the Sophotect being rather overcosted by comparison. The Sophotect costs as much as most other factions' basic Doctors and Engineers put together, and at the point you're paying HI prices you may as well commit for some combat stats by dropping a flash bot and get Parvati.
Any sufficiently large crowd will have its lunatics. Operating with "reasonable", of course, is not an exact thing, but the "reasonable person" standard is good enough for many jurisdictions and imho does well for the interwebs too. Based on previous meta changes, be they in Infinity (i.e. Uprising) or other war games, you can easily infer that people do not expect a third of the units in their army to be gone. Similarly, people do not expect products still sold at the store of the company to be no longer compatible with the game a month later, unless that is clearly communicated. But if this concerns you, we can replace reasonable expectation with the expectation of the average player and then the argument that CB's N5 Aleph changes do not meet the expectations of aleph players should be relatively obvious.
No, thank you. It would be gross. As in, disgusting and just wrong. People also complained that the Link Teams were broken and Sectorials were bad for the game - back when they happened in the original HS in the N2 era. I've just taken a count of the vanilla Aleph units of now. Skipping the ITS-only mercs, that's 77 entries (unless I skipped something). I'm of the opinion that CB's decision to trim the vanilla down is understandable. 77 entries in the Army I can agree being difficult to manage and balance. Therefore needing a trim. You are free to disagree with me. Bah, I'm perfectly willing to agree to disagree. Either way, there is a change coming to Infinity vanilla armies (and probably sectorials too, except we haven't seen the reworked sectorials yet). We can like it or dislike it (I've said it many times: I dislike changes, I'm not good in dealing with them), but it won't affect the very fact the change is going to happen.
I look forwards in my dark and dismal way, the marketing solutions that were evolved to tackle this change.
Using the ITS Stats page (https://stats.infinitytheacademy.com/unitPopularity?faction=aleph), you can see what was lost in popular Vanilla Aleph list in the conversion to N5. Below is the ALEPH unit list ranked by popularity (by percentage of vALEPH list that used that unit) in the last few ITS season and I marked if they REMAIN or were GONE. Posthumans 91% REMAIN Netrods 90% REMAIN Lamedh Rebots 83% REMAIN Yudbots 63% REMAIN Libertos Freedom Fighters 63% GONE Shukra Consultants 42% REMAIN Myrmidons 42% REMAIN Warcors, War Correspondents 39% REMAIN Beasthunters Free Guild 33% GONE Atalanta, Agêma's NCO 31% GONE Diggers, Armed Prospectors 31% GONE Probots 30% REMAIN Maruts 29% REMAIN Penthesilea, Amazon Warrioress 27% REMAIN Achilles v2 (Corintian Armor) 25% GONE Zayin Rebots 24% REMAIN Dart, Optimate Huntress 24% REMAIN Danavas Hackers 23% REMAIN Eudoros, Myrmidon Officer 23% GONE Nagas 21% REMAIN Dakini Tacbots 18% REMAIN Agêma Marksmen 16% REMAIN Samekh Rebots 16% REMAIN Machaon, Myrmidon Doctor-Officer 15% GONE Daleth Rebots 14% REMAIN Motorized Bounty Hunters 13% GONE Hippolyta, Amazon Officer 12% REMAIN Thorakitai 12% GONE Andromeda, Sophistes of the Steel Phalanx 12% GONE Ekdromoi 12 % REMAIN Myrmidon Officer 10% GONE Deva Functionaries 9% REMAIN Dasyus 8% REMAIN Garuda Tacbots 8% REMAIN Parvati, Circle League star 8% GONE Asuras 7% REMAIN Sophotects 7% REMAIN Scylla, Steel Phalanx's Sergeant 6% GONE Achilles 6% GONE Monstruckers 6% GONE Krakot Renegades, Morat Fugitives 6% GONE Hector, Homerid Champion 6% GONE Phoenix, Veteran Myrmidon Officer 6% GONE Ajax the Great, Myrmidon Officer 5% GONE Knauf, Outlaw Sniper 4% REMAIN Yadu Officer Shakti 3% GONE Authorized Bounty Hunters 3% GONE Hoplites 3% GONE Aïda Swanson, Submondo Smuggler 2% GONE Armand 'Le Muet', Freelance Killer 2 % GONE Agamemnon the Atreides 2% GONE Acmon, Sergeant of Dactyls 2% GONE Apsaras 2% GONE Arjuna Unit 2% GONE Thyreos, Thyreophoroi Mobile Regiment 2% GONE Drakios, Steel Phalanx's Sergeant 2% GONE Dactyls 2% GONE Yadu Troopers, Tactical Assault Teams 2% REMAIN REM Racers, Mercenary Hacker-Pilots 1% GONE Dawon Tacbots 1% REMAIN Nesaie Alkê, Thorakitai Warrant Officer 1% GONE Rudras GunBots 1% REMAIN Maximus, Optimate and HexaDome Legend 1% REMAIN Teucer, Steel Phalanx Sergeant 0 % GONE That is a LOT of RED. It will be interesting to see how ALEPH players will adapt to such large changes.
Everything looks like a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works. Things tend to look clearer when you talk directly to the people who make the thing your talking about though. Reinforcements for a faction showing up in all that factions army's, who would have thought it.... Nobody's forcing you to use the minis you have for a sectorial of the army you probably already have most of the units for either.
I’m pretty new to Aleph. I haven’t even played them yet but slowly getting figures. Of those that are now gone from vAleph, there’s not many that I was putting in my lists. Phoenix, and Pavarti were the only ones that I would miss. The rest not so much at all. Most of the key things are there. Proxies, Danavas, Deva, Asuras, and Myrms are in most of my lists.
Ultimately, there are a few things that must be understood, first and foremost is the fact that Generic List is now a limited Sectorial and not "every miniature ever produced for the faction plus all mercenaries that even remotely make some fluff sense to be there". Secondly but equally importantly the most vocal and in this case most numerous voices and feedback in N4 is that Generic factions are more powerful than sectorials and that sectorials need to have more units unique to them. N5 will be an entirely different landscape from N4, and while I agree we do not have enough information to decipher the new landscape, and I am sure the first four weeks after we have all information will still be in a constant flux as people try to decipher the landscape, judging any and all the information we have with N4 as the standard, is not a good idea.
Fully agree to most of your points. I even raised the point of needing a new approach to Vanilla at an Interplanetario Q&A session like 5 years ago. But I do get the strong urge to share a very deep disappointment with the Aleph rooster. Many units that I frankly wouldn’t consider running in the N3/N4 context remain (Yadu, Thyreos, Penny, Maximus, Knauff, all the reinforcements stuff) while other beloved pieces are gone (Atalanta, Ajax, Thorakites, Machaon,…) even on top of loosing Achilles. Reading the rooster from an N3/N4 framework quite frankly says the faction is dead. I see some potential to run somewhat interesting Marut lists and that is about it. This stings particularly as Nomads or CA have kept all the cool toys and you can still play the best N3/N4 builds in N5. This can of course all be fixed regarding power level (e.g., Yadu profiles worth playing, some obscene Nomad units being nerved,…) while some personal preferences we’ll habe to swallow (e.g., Knauff is a fine sniper but running Atalanta is part of the factions identity to me). I am honestly worried and might stop playing Aleph after playing then as my main faction since N2. Hope articulating this on the form triggers some kind of sanity check with CB.. and of course happy to be positively surprised when N5 drops and we have actual context.
When you say "even remotely make sense" are you referring to Atalanta and Hector or to Hawkwood, Knauf and Samsa? Because some of them make a lot of sense and others make 0 sense, but guess which ones made it into the list I'm totally in board with trimming down vanilla even if it's painful, but so far the changes to vanillas have nothing to do with lore or gameplay and everything to do with maximising profit
