Personally, despite the speculations, I really hope to see very soon Varuna 'cause after uprising, my faith in CB has been shaken xD. Another important matter, smoke grenades for PanO, it's a shame we're the only one faction without., so, I hope Varuna could solve it.
I'd love to see another Stingray. They're one of my favorite aspects of Infinity. My thoughts, if I saw a shotgun-focused Stingray in the Varuna roster: TAGs with such a close-range emphasis are tricky, for a few reasons. The first is that we haven't seen TAGs with shotguns before. There may be a reason for that (I don't know what it is.) The second is that entering that 8-inch range with enemies is inherently very dangerous. 8 inches is the kill zone, where Hackers, direct templates, mines, +6 shotgun AROs, +3 pistol AROs, E/M grenade tosses, etc all exist. That's a scary place. It's dangerous for TAGs to be in that zone. The big silhouette, inability to go prone, penalties to Dodging, general vulnerability to close combat, etc are all problematic from a playability perspective. For me as a player, I'd need pretty serious incentive for sending a 60+ point TAG into harm's way, when the role could be handled with less risk by a Croc Man Boarding shotgun that's less than half the points, or a Bulleteer/Peacemaker heavy shotgun that costs even less.
New skill that ignores the -6 to dodge imposed on TAGs, stealth, and a BTS of 9. Suddenly you have a super agile Close range TAG that can sneak through repeater networks and dodge mines and template weapons with the best of them.
A TAG with Hyperdynamics would be interesting. It would let them reduce that TAG Dodge penalty, or offset it entirely.
I literally forgot the Clipper existed (shows how much I use it). "Proa" then or "Prahu", as they have outriggers it meshes with Holo 2 (or as you suggest, just Outrigger). The HMG and Fueurbach come to 30 points (the Feuerbach is basically all bloat on the Uhlan, even if it is slightly better in ARO) and Holo 2 AFAICT is ~4 points, the same as CH:Camo, so there is quite a bit of room for guns. HSG is 10 points, Full Auto L1 fills the same role as a second gun (no idea what it costs though). I'd want a DTW and I think flame throwers don't work thematically with Varuna, hence the Nanopulser (Pulzar seems to "big" for a light TAG). For long range punch I wanted something with limited ammo and without SWC costs (with the loadout I suggested, it's basically 0 SWC like a Gecko, but would probably end up like a Xeodron at 0.5 SWC). Holo 2 works out at ~4 points, the same as Camo (using the Holy Sepulchre knight as the basis of the calc), and it is exponentially better at dealing with monomines, E-maulers, Koalas etc. you just lose some of the protection against other attacks, a fair trade off IMO; if I wanted a marker state that protected from hacking, there is the Cutter for that (and the Uhlan in vanilla).
You aware that with new rules and Crabbot you can do it all (although possibly only once depending on your luck) with every REM TAG ?
Tiks have HFTs so a pulzar would strike me as on par. Im not sauing its a bad idea though. Its very close to what i want for a sval stingray series. I always envisioned that as a dual HS tag with a limited long range capacity, veteran and an abillity to close with the enemy. Maybe it's just the logical design gab in the stingrays. Then again we have the seraph and thats pretty baller.
Well mayby because just behind this mono mine there's an Antena your TAG want to control and you have few spare orders ? Not saying that's a great option, but for sure it's vialable (if niche) option if you really cannot lose a TAG (funny part, Crabbot has same chance of surviving Monomine as TAG).
You aware that it also would probably need a Multiterrain and 8-2 MOV ? (our current HS "totally not a TAG" has that properties, which actually enable him, not to mention access to dirt cheap order batteries)
6-4 and s6 is insanely fast. Dunno what ypur doing wrong but thag gets intonthe midfield amd rumbles plenty fine. It would of course depend on the rest of the list. Youd compensate for brutal short range power by taking your long range power elsewhere like nisse or hospitallers in sval or kamau and fusiliers in varuna. And please no dont tell me those are "bad" as well. I know they are not when used correctly. As to holo. Well ill leave it at i believe ive expessed my thoughts on that in the sepulchre thread. A tag with holo2 is pretty similar in that the opponent is going to hold when those holos rush roind a corner. And 10 is a long way to move.
As a guy who does Filipino Martial Arts and our teacher also blends in some Pencak Silat I would love this.
My friend and I had this same discussion, and one of the things we talked about for new Stingray ideas is Varuna's Stingray could be an AD Tag but emphasis on close-range weaponry. Theoretically, PanO would be able to make the technology for that (but that is up to CB giving PanO good things- which never happens as usual :P).
if the seraph doesnt get AD no TAG will again. The Exrah is gone and dead and thats something CB doesnt seem to want back in the game. Now we may get some other new movement rule that accompanies the new book which none of us has seen.
To be fair, a TAG with AD: Parachutist or AD: Airborne Infiltration might not be totally off the table (pun intended). But I do agree it's unlikely. Every time I look at the other forces with Remotes in mixed Fireteams it just makes me wince, knowing that it's less likely that Varuna will get that now.
