In all fairness, man, if you want a constructive discussion, at least make the effort to represent other people's opinions accurately. It has been repeatedly stated in this thread that people are not asking for 2-3 full combat group hord lists, but for Ariadna to have the chance to bring 1-2 more units than the rest as a faction defining feature. What you think of that is another question, but I ask you to at least refrain from strawman arguments. It's not helping anyone.
I just want to say an emphatic "Thank you" to @MATRAKA14 for being able to articulate so well both the feel of what Ariadna should be, and how it's lacking in its current state.
We're also not saying that Ariadna can't have high tech solutions, just that their version of high tech should feel asif you gave someone from the '70s a Tesla without the computers, they can probably get it working but the path to get it there should be... interesting.
We weren't talking about Ariadna this time, we were talking about a possible way to recover CHA and FRRM and play with the lovely figures we have, because CB is clearly not bringing them back soon, nor giving us the possibility to play with them with N5 rules If you are not willing to understand, is not my problem
I don't post much on the forums, but I've kept up with the thread because I keep making wistful glances at my USAriadna troops gathering dust on the shelf, so I thought I'd chime in. Those design caps aren't exactly as hard as you'd like them to be: SWC can go above that limit, and only for certain factions or certain lieutenant options. E.g. Joan, Priya, Hsien, Neema, Sonya and Hatamoto. Peripherals of all stripes push the amount of models above 15. Tactical Awareness, Lieutenant +1 and NCO allow for more than 15 orders per turn. So, given that you can have 300pt armies with more than 6 SWC, more than 15 models and more than 15 orders already, I'm not sure I see the logic of hamstringing Ariadna in the name of 'hard design caps'. Off the top of my head, here are some directions to take Ariadna mechanically. Not saying these should all be implemented (and especially not all at the same time), are all good, or are all perfectly thought out, but you wanted outside the box... It wouldn't be beyond the pale for Ariadna to have a skill on certain Lieutenants for +1 max troopers, or +1 max combat group size, for example. The latter especially is unexplored design space. Have a 'battle buddy' skill which lets troopers take faction basic infantry as 'peripherals'. E.g. a Tankhunter with peripheral Line Kazak. More bodies (and someone to watch your six) without more orders. Emphasises organisation and teamwork. Alternatively, let basically everybody Duo up freely and in an ad hoc manner. i.e. break and reform without any cost. Speaking of teamwork, lean into command skills - Tactical Awareness, NCO, Counterintelligence, CoC, Strategos, No.2, Warhorse, etc. Give greater access to minelayer. Heck, have a Minelayer (2) or even (3) skill for more expensive troopers. More advance deployment, or even bring back Mechanized Deployment. Make other factions burn orders to get to you. Defence in depth. Doors and Corners. Give Ariadnans additional bonuses while in cover (via new skills). This helps the reactive game by making it a slog to clear out defensive troops. Build it into a levelled Warhorse skill. Off-table artillery via forward observers? A reinforcements skill - bring in more troopers mid-game after you've taken some casualties. Troopers could 'respawn' through your DZ edge. Designate a reinforcement arrival point at the start of the battle so the opponent knows where they can come in from. Higher PH scores, more paramedics (Paramedic +3?), better ARM (fewer Minutemen, more Mormaers), more access to foxholes (and make it a short skill, or even a short move), more Mimetism via ghillie suits and the like. Ariadnans have made it this far by leveraging the skills they have. Hug cover, move carefully and be tough to kill. This is not a license to stick NWI and multiwounds everywhere - they don't have powered armour or cybernetic bits. If you can't have toughness, then you better be consistently winning FtF rolls and be putting PanOceanians in graves on the first attempt. Heightened/exclusive access to Viral and T2 ammo, Autocannons, Attack mods and SDs. Hand out disposable support weapons like candy on Halloween. Emphasize elite stats and big guns over tech. Personally I'm not keen on the big monsters and massive suits of armour vibe that Ariadna is going towards, but heck, give them a tank (like the German Wiesels, maybe?). You've got vehicles now, so no excuse.
@Phlyk Correct what you say is a discussion that is done within the design limits, this is what I want to see more been discussed.
Do you think that Araidna bringing one more model (or two) would change the fundamental issues been raised in this thread? it will not be even a bandaid, what in my opinion people really want to argue about is Ariadna has been left behind in the design space and needs to be updated to the current era design, the N3 era were volume of dice can carry you out of trouble is gone and a more variable skill set infusion is needed, maybe Ariadna need more hidden deployment units, maybe the need bigger surprise shot modifiers as they have good ambushers, maybe they need units that can over infiltrate better, maybe some of the suggestions by @Phlyk above +3 on medikits does not sound outlandish for Ariadna for example and I had never thought about it. Its a big and multifaced discussion and I personally think that focusing on how to get more tropers giving orders in a list is the wrong direction to look at.
+3 PH to ariadnan medikits is a nice idea Lt +1 or +2 troops i dont think it's asking for an imposible thing. Ariadna already has commlink +2. And as stated above, we are not asking for 3 complete Combat groups. We're asking for the possibility of playing 8+8 or 9+9 and all the in betweens. Minelayer (2) or (3), yes please, and more variety in mines, like T2 mines, adhesive, DA, etc etc I would love to see a regiment of dog warriors, or hybrids, expecialised in stealth, with CAMO werewolves/wulvers
You could also hand out Dogged to more profiles (Scouts, Streloks, Frontoviks, Hardcases, Rangers, for example), representing the Ariadnan fundamental unwillingness to give up the fight. Having a faction with a lot of 1W Dogged troopers without shock immune would go some way to making "Shock" a relevant ammo trait again.
I don't know. I don't play Ariadna, so I'm mostly just an interested observer and not arguing for any one side here. I just asked you to not misrepresent other people's statements in order to more easily dismiss them. You know, in the spirit of constructive debate culture some people are trying to bring back to the forums.
That would be intresting. How valued is Dogged considered in N5? especially for mid to low high priced units?
Dogged is a skill that needs an additional durability skill to be relevant. Let's look at the couple of imho good dogged profiles: Unidron - Somewhat cheap - Remote presense, shock immunity - Plasma carbines - Dogged - Duo and flexible haris options in vanilla. Core options in Onyx. Sforza - Holoprojector - Immunity (ARM) - Surprise shot - Dogged Noctifer - Hidden deployment - Camouflage - Mim-6 - Dogged I would argue that if the troopers above lost one of their amazing durability skills (Unidrons lost remove presense, Sforza lost Immunity (ARM) or Noctifer lost hidden deployment) their dogged would become pretty much irrelevant. Just look at USARF Marauders. No one is afraid of them because they lack other defensive skills besides dogged. I say it again. Ariadna players need to stop clinging to the past. Your shotgunfork faction died with the bearpode. You need to discover your faction again just like everyone else. Like look at vCA. Are they grieving that Ana+B&K list is no longer dominating the meta? No they aren't. They are trying new things and winning. That's something you should do as well.
Depends on the role of the unit. If it can do its job in one turn, it's a handy skill for absorbing some bad luck on offensive profiles. Like Tanan mentioned though, it's underwhelming on more fragile and inefficient defensive models that could easily just take more than one Wound at a time- and between multi-damage ammo and high offensive Burst on increasingly-optimised gunfighting profiles, that's getting more common than ever. It's also not great on offensive profiles that are, to put it bluntly, inadequate in the first place. Absorbing some bad luck on your Marauder Spitfire just lets you throw even more Orders down the drain trying to shift Atalanta with your rather power-crept unmodified BS12. Dude. "Stop being sad" makes kanluwen's takes look nuanced and tactful, and I am utterly sick of seeing it on this forum. If you want to help, try some new things for Ariadna yourself and report on them if you find them fun. There's eleven pages here of people's analysis of the faction they have and finding it completely inadequate in all regards in comparison with its peers. Infinity will always be fairly balanced thanks to its well-designed core system, but that often hides some egregious failures in specific faction design. Case in point, Ariadna is effectively 5-10% worse (or more, in certain areas) at literally everything in the game except throwing Grenades than the Combined Army, and its position only starts to look good if all the key units in a CA list have been removed by favourable trades, allowing Ariadna's wide lists to shine. That's one hell of an ask for an intended-to-be-balanced matchup.
@SpectralOwl Being 5% worse than CA doesn't sound that bad. I would argue that TAK was far worse (compared to CA) in N4 than it's now. Why this meager 5% inefficiency is a problem in N5 but far bigger inefficiency wasn't a problem in N4? If anything all Ariadna players should celebrate that the TAK is relatively more powerful than ever.
We dont want to go back to N4 and Shotgun forks (which every faction had, BTW) we want to go back even farther PS: not all people like TAK, in fact, several players had said that they are a bit tired of Ariadna being too kossack centric
Sir, I played MRRF. Additionally, we're not talking about being 5% worse than CA, we're talking about being at least 5% worse than CA, at everything. And it really is the low end; when it comes to shooting into Mim-6 (the worst case I know of) the swing hits about 25%. Incidentally, the price difference between a Noctifer w. Missile Launcher and a Tankhunter with the same gun is 1pt. 29 for the Tankhunter, 30 for the Noctifer. This is, to put it mildly, hilarious given the capability gap between the two!
@SpectralOwl I don't think that Ariadna is 5% worse than CA at everything. Only in the relevant stuff in the current meta. For example, CA is lacking cheap and effective midfield camo troopers, but this is meaningless because you don't need camo stuff in N5 because shotgunforks are gone. Who knows, perhaps CB releases an new ITS document in few years where cheap camos suddenly become valuable. Remember how sensorbots suddenly became autoinclude when they got tacaware. This can happen to other profiles. I still say that this is still significant improvement for TAK and I'm happy about it. As I stated before, the game has never been so balanced as it is in N5. 5% difference is insignificant and new releases (which will be invalidated in turn) will shake the meta. While tankhunter ARO and active turn pieces aren't that effective compared to Noctifers, the LT and CoC option are something that Noctifers sadly lack. Tankhunters also have (order intensive) mines if you believen that mines are good in the current meta.
Maybe skirmishers could become valuable if CB decided to stop invalidating them with its exclusion zones in most missions... I'm still waiting for a mimetism -6 exclusion zone, just to see the reaction of other factions having such a one sided handicap Tank hunter mines are worthless, because the tank hunter job is to remain hidden until you get a nice target to use his gun. If you reveal it to place a mine in your deployment zone it becomes useless. Tank hunters and scouts are too expensive to aro. And even then it's probably going to fail against any decent guner. Honest tip after many years of working in the gaming industry, digital and physical. Your players will allways be great for finding what feels wrong, but suck terribly to find the specific solutions to the problem. Easy quick solutions become expensive hard to solve issues down the line. (Universal 15 model cap without any proper case by case adjustments was one of those.) Confirmation bias is very comon when designing games and receiving feedback.
I've played Looting and Sabotaging with NCA before, think it may actually have been worse than the oops-all-exclusion-zone tournament I took MRRF to. Not having Warbands or melee Skirmishers was harsh. That said, that mission would have been dreadful for MRRF at the time too; I think even Duroc couldn't score with his AP CCW so it would have been down to the Anaconda Punch or the hero Dozer. It does raise a point though; if mass infiltration can be game-warping enough that it needs to be prevented in certain scenarios, what should Ariadna's pivot look like? Bikes, camo, brute force fire superiority, or back to piece trading with templates?
I think "punching up" might be one of the better "archetypes" we could fulfill, if we look at FRRM and more specifically the Zouave it wasn't anything special stats-wise but their ubiquitous DEP (now probably a Panzerfaust) made it a serious reactive threat to things that would otherwise fight it without question*. The same thing with the abundance of T2 ammo in Caledonia and TAK, taking what would otherwise be jobbers into a serious threat for our more advanced peers. *I will forever fondly remember my first tournament game ever where my lone Zouave crit an Avatar to death in two orders.
