Note that any hackers that pose a threat to HI can try to either Isolate (HD+ and AHD) or Disable (vanilla HD) the bot. Both would take the Repeater down, isolation would also cause Pango to drop out of the fireteam and, moreover, effectively immobilize it for this turn. On another hand - they actually might not want to disable the Rep. If the repeaterbot is in link, then link leader is in repeater range, so they might try to isolate him instead and break up the team - risking a KHD attack next order, sure, but that risk might be justified here. Both of these cases are more of a concern to links with no tinbots, though.
While this is pure anecdote, in my first game using IA vs Tunguska, my KHD Haidao killed a Heckler KHD, Interventor HD+ and a Hollowman AHD. Felt good really.
One of my games against OSS was effectively won by a single Weibing, since I managed to push it past a Proxy MK2 AHD with the help of a linked Haidao, and got it on the other side of a building from a Dakini link and Asura LT2 HD+. Opponent couldn't effectively press forward because between 2 Zhanshi HDs, Haidao KHD and Zhencha AHD, whatever they tried to move up was toast if it was Hackable and they didn't have anything tougher than a Sophotect to dislodge it. While IA has to really go all-in on Hacking to be safe, it sure is nice that it has such powerful options that let it compete with the Protagonists and Asimov's Worst Nightmare. Reinforces that idea someone had a while back about needing to build for opponent, not mission unfortunately, since against Ariadna/Tohaa most IA lists that pop up here are overkill to a ridiculous degree. Anyone know what odds a Wardriver has against unprotected HI? It would be nice to know what is an appropriate defense against the less Hacking-oriented factions, should they decide to try their hand at infowar. I suspect a Daoying HD alone may work in such situations, but I have been surprised before.
If they don't hack you defend yourself with bullets. A Haidao KHD in a Zuyong link is still BS22 in his good rangeband, and you still have him in the link to do button pressing for missions and classifieds.
Agreed. And he's 2pts cheaper than the Engineer (who should probably NOT be in the link, but move up to fix EM or Glue)
Assuming Fairy Dust active and no EVO present. Also running with the half-truth that a unit spending their second short skill on Reset has already handed half a victory to their opponent for that order, so I'm not going to do active turn Reset-against-the-Gotcha results. Wardriver trying to active turn Gotcha a Resetting Haidao has 30% success chance. Wardriver trying to reactive turn Gotcha against a Haidao has 27.5% chance of IMM-1 for 2 turns, if Haidao does not Reset. Wardriver trying to active turn Gotcha a Resetting Zuyong has 24.54% success chance. Wardriver trying to reactive turn Gotcha against a Zuyong has 20.75% chance of IMM-1 for 2 turns, if Zuyong does not Reset. Wardriver trying to active turn Gotcha a Resetting Yaoxie attack remote has 31.88% success chance. (No firewall) Wardriver trying to reactive turn Gotcha against a Yaoxie attack remote has 26% chance of IMM-1 for 2 turns, if Yaoxie attack remote does not Reset. (No firewall) Wardriver trying to active turn Brain Blast a Brain Blasting Daoying has 41.13% success chance and 20.87% risk. (No firewall) Wardriver trying to reactive turn Brain Blast a Brain Blasting Daoying has 7.05% chance of UNC-1 and a 57.88% risk. (Firewall, Surprise shot)* Wardriver trying to Spotlight a Resetting <nearly any given IA unit> has 19% success chance. * On the assumption that the most likely situation this happens in is with the Wardriver being inside the Repeater of a Rui Shi or Lu Duan with the Daoying attempting to clear a threat before applying a Supportware. Most likely if the Wardriver is in the Daoying's ZoC, you're either losing badly or winning hard and it doesn't really matter other than for style points. Gongcheng with with 4 Yaozao is cheaper than a solo Haidao Engineer and more than adequate at repairing stuff and flipping objectives. A Haidao inside the link isn't all that bad. It has the bonus of the Engineer not needing an entire order pool to reach their target. The problem is, of course, that the Haidao is also HI and will probably be targeted by the same BS that the Zuyong/Rui Shi was and that while a Yaozao wouldn't be any different since it's a REM, it's also a lot more expendable.
Yeah, and I think you can move all 4 helperbots with one order! But I'd rather have the somewhat-better-protected (and much better looking!) Haidao. Yeah, and given my local meta, there's a lot of EM and glue I gotta deal with, so I'd rather have the Engineer a little farther from the Priority Target, I mean the Pain Train.
Yes they can but.... Space Ranger is right. You can have multiple. But the rules for G:Servent say you can only activate one helper bot at a time.
It's about order efficiency as much as them helper bots actually being able to provide a small modicum of assistance such as limited AROs, locking people in CC, and so on.
Yeah, Haidao KHD's a total nutbuster. It did got slightly shunned with his BTS 0, and people were RAEG status about it; but that was more than enough. This guy's becoming a major threat to our adversaries. He can send bullets to their face, works tremendously well with our favored Guilangs, in IA, he'll gonna hack more actively with Panggo support. Best profile, if not only, in recent releases
I'm not happy about BTS0 (seems downright strange for a non-Ariadna HI), but I'm much more annoyed about how many models are 1W+NWI+Shock/Bio Immune. Or not even Shock Immune, in one case... I mean, of all the new units, only one was 2W (granted, +NWI). Everyone else was 1W+NWI. That's not exactly what we'd been expecting for "the HI sectorial", you know? Overall, I was pretty happy with the Haidao, both KHD and Engineer. MSV2 Sniper isn't bad, either. Technically, that saved 3pts over a Zuyong Engineer, and I'd been concerned for a long time that Zuyong were each about 2-3pts too expensive to make a Core Fireteam. (Zanshi Engineer is +4pts over a Zanshi, and every other Engineer is +4pts over the respective Line Infantry, so a Zuyong with Engineer and D-charges should be 31pts) I just was not expecting CB to design units with all the HI vulnerabilities, and maybe half the benefits in most cases. In one case, NONE of the benefits.
*scratches head* If by RAEG you mean possibly the most lukewarm reception of Third Offensive, then sure. I mean, what Section9 just wrote is the most passionate exposé I've read on the topic.
If I had to choose between more expensive HI that had 2 wounds so I could spend orders on bringing them back, or getting discounts for having 1 W + NWI + bioimmunity/shock immunity I'd take the latter. If I run limited insertion, I would rather spend those orders moving up, shooting stuff and pressing buttons than doctor my unconscious models. If the price I pay to have more tools to do that is that I forego the ability to put models out of unconscious state, then I think that's a fair trade. But then that's just my opinion.
I don't recall anyone being mad about the Haidao. Certainly wasn't on my radar, especially not after getting blindsided by the Guijia that kind of took up a large chunk of focus. The Guijia shows how out of touch Corvus Belli are in some respects. Makes me think they're looking at shitty statistics they're not parsing correctly and extrapolating garbage information out of that. Need to actually do more hard testing rather than screwing around with whatever it is they're doing instead.
I played possibly one of the worst to go against for hacking on the weekend. Bakunin. I did get hacked a few times, Unfortunately I lost my Haidao KHD to a Riot Grrl missile early. I did get Reboot going but it didn't help much. I got immobilized twice and had to spend orders to reset. Some things were bad decisions on my part having nothing to do with hacking. I got stomped pretty badly though. I tried my own hacking against the RG but they had a Tinbot themselves. All the rage nowadays lol. Fortunately I did immobilize one of them. but that's about it.
I just don't trust doctors anymore to include them in my lists. They have without fail consistently killed more models than they've saved for me. So the psuedo-wounds thing doesn't bother me much from a gameplay perspective. It's mostly just thematically odd, and sucks to be in a position where we don't get any discounts for being hackable.
Except that I just showed that 1W+NWI+Shock Immune is all of 3 points cheaper than straight up 2W. That really works out to the difference between taking a pair of Weibing combi+FO bots and a pair of 8pt bots.
