I know I know, it's another one of those threads. But honestly, it's not even that controversial, right? Hey CB, turns out that if you lower the cost of HI and TAGs even further with N5 without meaningfully taking anything away from vCA's cheap bottom end, they get, um, a little op. I even brought proof: Faction winrate lies at well over 55% (with a decent sample size), they consistently place 1st (more examples) and/or 2nd, and/or 3rd at most satellites, and (soft proof) I'm hearing increasingly more local players being frustrated of having to face off against CA all the time and not enjoying themselves because they're, well, a bit op. Not that it's a surprise: Everyone in Infinity is trying to fuel their most efficient pieces with as much cheap yet capable order generators as possible. So if you take that formula and crank it up to 11, you naturally get the most powerful army. Normally, you would balance that with some constraints elsewhere, but CA has none: CA has the most apex pieces in almost every category, with only PanO eclipsing their shooting with something like a Cutter or a Hetkari and maybe JSA eclpising them in raw-power CC. Everything else they're almost uncontested. But then, CA also has the most optimized cheap order generators. Ikadrons are miles better than every other baggage bot for just 1pt more, Daturazi are by far the best warband in the game (keeping MA4 without experiencing any price hike), Imetrons are some of the cheapest regular orders in the game etc., and they don't suffer AVA constraints on any of those pieces. Even their middle-priced pieces are best in class: You need more AROs? CA has the best TR bot. You need doctor/engineering support? CA has the cheapest doctor/engineer combo in the game that also moves 6-4. You need cheap hacking? Dartok & Bit&Kiss. You need throwaway pieces to clear mine fields? The Hungries. I could go on. And as I said, there are no constraints. Even in those cases where you're able to take out their apex pieces, they have enough capabilities on their cheap fillers or midfield to keep them going. They have no problems getting to 15, 16 or 17 orders, they are well protected against hacking and can reliably establish their own network with cheap, efficient pitchers, they have all the visibility control they could wish for, and they can't easily be outgunned or out-CC'd. Which means that most of the time, it's just not a lot of fun playing against them. How to fix it Easy: Give them some limitations. Let them have the strongest pieces, it fits the fluff. But then make it hard for them to fill their order pool. I mean, Military Orders, which arguably is much more constrained than CA already, has AVA1 on their flash pulse bots. Why does CA still have AVA2? Why AVA2 Ikadrons & Imetrons? Also: Price their pieces accordingly. Daturazi have no business costing as much as they did in N4 with the upgrade to MA4. Mimetism on a TR bot is worth more than just one point. So is having LFTs (+1B), MOV 6-4 and BTS6 on your S2 baggage bot. Why do Charontids have to be so cheap for what they do with all the buffs they got with the edition change? Again, I could go on. It doesn't take much imo. A couple tweaks, a couple limitations like everyone else, and we're back to an apex faction that still doesn't steamroll (almost) every opponent. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. I'll be taking questions now.
KCF and Shinden are honestly bigger problems at this point, but vCA is still a toxic mess for the reasons you've listed. Honestly, their biggest weakness is that listbuilding feels so mindless and boring. Everything kind of builds itself and I can't touch them for more than a few games before dropping them again.
I guess to me vCA being super powered is an Infinity feature, not a bug. It always has been super powerful. At least since N3. It had nerfs in N4 and still was good. Looking at the available data, I don't feel that N5 has made vCA even more unfair. Their winning percentage has always been high. It just is. Edit: I guess my question is why should this change? Can you point to a time in Infinity's history since N3 that vCA has not had such a high win percentage?
Because vCA has always been kind of a chore to fight, and quite frankly, they're also kind of a bore to play because everything is just spelled out for them. It's hard to look forward to playing them. There are more and more factions that pop up in tournament listings that I just dread going up against if I'm playing something not sitting in the limelight, now that a lot of the newer factions are toting some ridiculously oppressive gorillas.
I have played a couple of games against vCA, and yes, they are definitely hard to play against. I am trying to learn to select better troopers to fight against them, but doing so, when coming up against other factions, the purpose built list for vCA doesn't fight well against the remaining factions. (But that is my problem). One possible solution maybe, is to make CA and its sectorials maybe a 10 trooper only list. It still has the best tools to do the job, but is limited in how many orders it takes. Keep the TacAware and NCO troopers, but limiting them to 10 models only would make the offset for having the best troopers meaningful. Having top-tier troopers should make smaller sized lists playable. Because each trooper excels at what it does. This fits in with the lore as well. The aliens ARE better than us Humans. They DO have the better technology. They ARE so far from home they cannot afford large-scale supply lines to the battlefront in Human space. I look forward to playing against vCA again to see if what I have learned makes a difference. And apply Infinity Dante's guide about alpha striking the vCA first before completing mission objectives is worth performing.
Can't confirm that personally. What makes you say that? I never have the same problems against Shinden and Kestrel that I have against vCA. Both of those factions are strong but have clear limitations. They are nowhere near the power level of CA imo. Not sure how that's a weakness. Plenty of people don't seem to mind. It's also noteworthy that I've seen quite a variety of builds already. It's not like they're monobuild. No I can't, but why should that be a reason to keep it like that forever? Note that I'm not saying CA should be weak – they should be strong. Otherwise none of the story would make sense. But from a game balance perspective, they should also have weaknesses. "Try to kill my apex pieces with your non-apex pieces and hope for the best" is not a weakness. I don't think you have to go that far. Limiting their cheap bottom end so that it's naturally hard for them to get to 15 units (or at least vary their list building more than just 3 apex pieces, 2 hackers, and cheap chuff) would be enough imo.
Like they did with the Netrod nerf? I think aside from some very specifically egrigious units getting Immunity ARM (this should NOT be added to Parachutist DZs, TAGs, or the best unit in the faction), simple and small things like removing the flashpulse from the Ikadron and removing Haris from the Combined Army Fireteam are small, but ultimately meaningful steps. There are other factions approaching vCA and Bakunin level of strength. vYJ and IA got pretty significant upswings, KFC is ridiculously strong, Shinden not far behind (and reasonable minds may differ on if they're behind or in front), Hassassins are once more an apex faction, while Morats also got a very big upswing. Big nerfs are not welcome. I feel like ISS missed the mark in terms of competitive strength and I'm sure others are also going to miss the mark, but aside from the Ariadna family, there's very few factions left behind and forgotten.
Oh yes, increse the points of ca, like givin more things to Imetrones like templates o move 6-4 to ikadrones, etc
At the moment I am not entirely sure about satellite results but more importantly the winrate at the stats site as it combines N4 and N5, it will clear with the next ITS, but for the moment we can only use the individual tournaments like the ones you listed. Generic CA is definitely more robust in the N5 transition, as its units can survive more, but I am not sure what and how it achieves these results. Definitely though if the lists are a model or two variant from each other, there is definitely a problem.
Not sure what those limitations are. Or that they matter. Kestrel is a monstrous defensive (and offensive) beast that makes the Varuna castles of old look pedestrian. Shinden is just cracked, in part due to the god-king that is the Hatamoto (it is actually insane that CB felt the need to nerf UKR and then put out something that made him look mediocre at his very best). Troopers like him and the Crux are absolutely insane, but the Hatamoto is notable because he combines such a ridiculous combination of discounts on top of his already peak efficiency. N5's power creep is something else. I was saying that somewhat sardonically. They're extremely strong, but it doesn't feel all that interesting to actually put together or play. You can toss in different flavours of overpowered bullshit and it'll handle slightly differently, but, at least personally, it feels lacking in any sense of identity outside of being the 'overpowered bullshit' faction.
and they have incredible range. there are so many options . it s nice thing when other factions have the same. but not. i cant know what will i face when playing against combined but can guess easilly against aleph vanilla.
Reading this, having a peek from the outside into the state of the game, I find it funny, that former horde factions now bring the same or even less orders to the table, than the most elite faction.
I was pretty interested in those stats. Wow, the same graph is showing Varuna Immediate Reaction Division and Spiral Corps with ten wins each, and Acontecimento with seventeen! That's impressive given the factions don't even exist this edition. I know, I know; it's because it's aggregating all of ITS season 16s data which included games played in N4. But given Combined Army was proportionally strongest in N4 and much has shifted since then, you really need an N5 exclusive data set if you want to make claims about their win rates that remotely approach 'proof'.
Not gonna contest that the data is contaminated by N4, but by now the majority of ITS16 games has been played with N5 rules. And, given CA has the biggest data set available, the fact that its winrate hasn't gone down at all is still a pretty solid look into the state of things imo.
I feel like it is obligatory to point out that some of the factions have a weak statistical link to their performance due to low number of players and games played with them. Things like casual events, "handicap" faction choices, or the likes are going to more highly influence factions with low number of games. E.g. it's a bit early to tell if vJSA is strong or not. And as you can see from the presence of Caledonia, this is partially polluted by the season straddling N4 and N5. P.S. if you visit that site, keep in mind that CB's changes to Army with the N5 release wrecked the list analyser part. The unit data has no N5 data, it is all N4 at the moment.
