Several missions, Acquistion and Power Pack for example, wants you to be in base contact with an objective with a Datatracker at the end of the game. How on God's green earth do you accomplish this, especially if you do -not- have the last round, without eradicating the enemy completely? I have only ever managed to come up with two more or less solid strategies. - Use a super-Rambo, like Achilles, as your datatracker. My army, however, (Haqqislam), lacks such. - Use a TAG as your datatracker. I've won Acquistion twice by using the Maghariba Guard as datatracker, putting her in suppression by the objective. Now, I know you can always get points for controlling these objectives with other stuff than a datatracker, so you can use the customary airdrops, cammo figurers, etc. But that's not what I want to accomplish here. I want to actually succeed in holding the objective with my datatracker, without making the datatracker a TAG. Can it be done?
Well, there's Tarik. If you're using physical objective markers, going Prone behind them can usually cut down the number of fire lines that can see the trooper. A Tuareg in Suppressive Fire, taking cover for the objective marker, is going to be on -12 to hit before range bands, at the cost of having to start them revealed during deployment. Either of the S5 Heavy Infantry in Suppressive Fire are going to be a pain to shift. Defensive in depth - make sure every approach to the objective is covered by several troopers/mines so that anyone getting to the objective has to fight for every inch.
Smoke can help, covering the tracker with other stuff that needs to be taken out of the way works, but generally that still needs to be a pretty survivable unit, and/or it will take more than one to effectively block the way through.
The Asawira should to this job better than Tarik; she's smaller, and more resilient (due to Regeneration). A Lasiq (mimetism+x-visor+viral rifle) in suppression fire perhaps? One could try a Halqa (mechanized deployment), put her prone in total cover close to the objective, and then make a dash for it last turn...
You've really got to just make sure you put your opponent into retreat or leave him with too few orders to effectively engage your datatracker in anything but a frontal assault. That, or hope you get lucky.
If maximum Objective points generally requires HI and TAGs, can we read these missions as further attempts by the ITS team to restore balance to the meta game?
@Natsymir part of the truth is that some missions just blatantly favour or penalize some Factions/Sectorials. In Looting and Sabotaging you need to destroy a piece of Scenery with ARM 8 BTS 9 and 3 STR in CC or with D-Charges. While a proper CC troop can easily manage that in a single Order, with some Smoke even in turn 1 under the nose of their opponent's entire army - some factions will be facing a steep uphill battle just getting close to the AC2. Some of the latest additions to ITS are fun, but very poorly balanced and pretty much unsuited to competetive play. Don't get me wrong, I do like missions like Highly Classified where better Specialists and access to them is a clear advantage. Those however have a secondary means of winning by killing key Specialists and denying your opponent form scoring points. I feel like that is missing from Power Pack as well as Looting and Sabotating in particular. Acquisiton isn't my favourite mission either, but in the very least more reliant on a good strategy and emphasis on going second instead of dictating your Faction of choice.
