Ok, I didn't had my silhouette templates at hand, I just gave a kick glance to Tarik with Knauf by his side and thought "more or less same height" (a constant gripe of mine since Achiles 10th anniversay edition is how the templates are ignored by Corvus' designers, and the Samaritan Umbra did not change my position...). Anyway, S4 is shorter than S2, while S5 can be taller than S2. My argument is that still, a S5 model uses a 40mm base, while a S4 uses a 55mm, and both can go prone, thus making Tarik easier to hide. Add the 15cm/6'' Tarik can move as a cautious movement, against what Andromeda can (2/3 of that numbers)... I must say that, simply put, she shouldn't have NWI: it makes her horribly expensive and gives little more durability... taking it away for Camo state (of which she already has stealth...) would give her much better options, and even discount her enough. Giving her Impersonation, however, would make her another kind of fish entirely, since her not being kitted for assassination all that much, she could be the "will always deploy for sure in the enemy's side of the table, and she's a Specialist". THERE she would have a unique role in both Vanilla and the Greek Army, be justified in that she infiltrates deeply into enemy territory to grab intel (thus the "sophistes" title), and would get use of that extra order; again losing the NWI trait, of course (maybe "Regeneration" instead, for the doggie taking the hits sometimes and surviving?).
Still, Tarik and Andromeda are the bigger winners here since both are generally solo operators who can benefit from bonus rambo orders, whereas the others are either not moving or are part of fireteams. And lets be real - if you bought Andromeda and spent time painting her, you've been longing for a good reason to actually use her competitively.
If they were all balanced before, then giving them uneven benefits now is making them unbalanced. And the factions that got nothing (NA2, Tohaa, CA) are even worse off. We're not looking at the individual troopers; we're looking at the faction as a whole, and the factions benefited very unevenly from this event. Plenty of people think any criticism of them, no matter how well-founded, is rude, and use that as an excuse. No. ITS should be balanced with a method other than sticky notes, a blindfold, and darts.
While it's true tha factions benefited very unevenly from this rule, you make two mistakes when comparing the benefits globally: 1. Infinity balance is so delicate it can be thrown out of balance by providing a single model with extra Order > I'm sorry, but I can't think of a single model with this buff that would completely unbalance the game. At best it would hurt internal balance, but external? No. 2. Giving a moderate bonus to underperforming models will not hurt balance. Furthermore, in these cases the bonus is such that only Tarik could even approach being considered changing the balance at all. As has been rehashed multiple times, it is at best a marginal bonus to the rest of them at best. Now, I think this is a major missed opportunity. This could've been awesome (without hurting balance!), but poor choice of characters unfortunately made it a non-issue. Yeah, no. People have been plenty critical of CB on these forums. Problem is in way and volume the criticism is delivered.
It unbalances the game, perhaps not egregiously, but it definitely does. Not all of these characters are underperforming. There was clearly not a consideration of balance or gameplay with the characters that were chosen. Not even fluff, really.
I'm sorry, but no. When was the last game you played? Choice of characters was made according to their statistics from Army. I think they made a mistake when choosing start/end dates and Tarik got taken in because the period included time before he had Fatality L2. Now, could the bonus have been more appropriate to the characters selected? Oh, yes. Could they have removed Tarik from the list? Yes. But did it affect much? Nah. I'll see Tarik some more now, but even that - theres far more pressing problems in the ruleset than this. The rest no-so-much (which is a shame, but ha well).
I think most of the criticism stems from (this is not all serious, only semi-serious) Loss. My character got taken away for a period of time and when it got back I didn't receive anything for it Envy. Haqq certainly received something! Sadness. I was trying to forget Voronin/Andromeda exists. Thanks for reminding me. So boiling it down: Unless the compensation is actually going to get used for all factions, please don't disable characters or provide blanket bonuses like this in the future. For all but one or two characters, it isn't worth it with this bonus and for the one character where it's worth it it depends very much on which missions we're talking about (which is, in my opinion, fine). (As to this season, and since most of the affected characters won't ever be DataTracker regardless of how many irregular orders you throw on them, a suggestion that risks wrecking havoc, is for the Backdoored characters to provide the irregular order passively to the DataTracker, provided the Backdoored character isn't the DataTracker.)
Basic game theory will tell you that this blanket benefit was only ever going to be seen as unfair. Extra orders are force multipliers (in this case only applicable to the unit in question). If the power level was X then it is now 115% of X (or whatever the precise number is). This is bad because it is more of a benefit for characters that are already good rather than what you are more likely to want which is to make the poor characters better and give less of a buff to the powerful one. In essence, you actually want a scalar value less than one and then an additive value to bring further parity. Of course, this all assumes that factions are balanced to start with and that isn't true so I understand that making all these characters equal in power may not be the desired outcome. However, when you release them as a package that is exactly how they will be compared by your player base so you either take a negative publicity hit and rely on players trusting your judgement (given Uprising now is probably not a good time to try this) or you accept that actually these characters did all need to be balanced against each other after all.
Fluff wise, yeah. Tarik was the head of the illegal cloning plan done by Haqquislam, creating mini-Caskudas to sell as delicatessen to Ariadna, where Voronin was the main organizer and consumer. Andromeda was investigating around, Xi Zhuan was caught after being ejected from the Consulate after Wotan's Debacle, and Kusanagi was going there to "explain" to Tarik why is such a bad idea to sell those fan-propelled drones to the Nomad Nation, specially to those deployed with Moiras nearby. It's all tied to fluff! Nevsky's fluff, though XD Can't agree more
Apologies for not reading the entire thread, but your post came across as "this is why you're wrong, thus i must be right". Those are not mutually exclusive, hence fallacy fallacy. But the fact wether or not something sees play should be pretty easy to prove with lists people have made. If you can't find any vanilla lists with him after looking thoroughly, like how Andromeda isn't even included in any list, then Triumph has a point. If you can find several, then you have a point. So, start posting links/quotes to posts with him in a vanilla army? This smells like "my local meta is the entire world" incidentalism anyways. So, argument about that's resolved, let's see some lists in which he's featured. I bet it's easier then finding one for Andromeda.
Could Tarik benefiting the most from getting an extra order as a Data Tracker be a balancing point for the Haqqislam mission in the Kurage campaign being Limited Insertion?
I’ve only wached the Haqqislam video so far. How do the other faction’s missions line up with their extra order Data Trackers?
I mean, nope, but Kurage is brought to us by the same people who brought us this, roughly at the same time. Chances are, considerations were made. Also, I forgot to watch Haqq video yesterday. Haqq can only participate with LI lists? Heh. I mean, I could write a LI list for HB of course, but looking at it I'd struggle to justify playing HB over other armies.
Fear not, it for sure just a chalenge for the Swords, if you not want to - you not need play Limited insertion or the suggested mission at all. Just fight for your nation the way you feel right!
No, it's just that the mission that represents combat around the main Haqqislamite base is limited insertion for both players.
Assuming Datatracker rules will be used there, it means Tarik can use 12 orders himself. Or let the Fiday die (after using orders, or forcing the enemy to waste orders) and still have 11. Sure, you go "Tarik Lt Datatracker + Farzan COC + Fiday" and possibly a Hakim or so as a core...
