Adapting the Guijia a bit to make a Blue Wolf Guijia on as near even footing as possible with a Jotum where both are in cover and optimal range, ARM 7 and TI would make the Guijia have very near equal performance against a Jotums. (Jotum will have a ~6% better active turn chance of damaging that Blue Wolf) This might sound crazy considering the price difference until you realize that the Guijia is going to be considerably weaker to small arms fire, thus justifying the much cheaper cost. I.e. Yu Jing deploy these to combat the heavy Jotum presence and it'll work by sheer attrition until Pan-O changes their tactics from superiority fighting to guerilla fighting. It's another deep change, though.
Pls no. Don't do them dirty like that. On serious note: Zuyong are perhaps the last things in need of fixing here, TBH. This. This I can get behind. I have a feeling the latter would be useless due to the former essentially tossing the Hulang out the window by the sheer power of being the almighty Daofei. Would also make it the first FA1 unit in the game. On a sidenote, am I the only one here that finds it weird how Full Auto has two levels, but the only units that have it use both levels...? What's the point of the first level if everybody has both already...? Okay. I can buy the first two, as those do have actual legitimate applications ( The amount of which is highly debatable, although. ), but the last part? I dun get it-
It's really about saving a few points, to make it much easier to put a little more support into your army for the pain train. It would save about 10pts per link team, and that's just assuming Tai Sheng, TA Tinbot, and TA HMG. Then you're spending a little more on the Zhencha (maybe 2pts) and Haidao (however much BTS3 costs, maybe 2pts). It also makes it clear that all the 1W+NWI HI are built off of the Zuyong mass production chassis. Oh. Might also drop the TA profiles, make it the Shang Ji who all have TA natively. While I don't like dropping the Zuyong to 1W+NWI, it's more about how the army balances out. If I could have every model in the IA with 2W without costing an arm and a leg, I'd do that. But you need to keep the link team cost down to about 150pts (give or take 10), and that means making the Zuyong a bit cheaper. If the Hulang was set up to be your CQB beatstick and occasional objective grabber (aka Shikami lite), I think it would still have a role. Might need to adjust what Daofei profiles are available in the Invincible Army, though. Maybe push the Daofei in the IA more towards ranged destruction, let the Zhencha push buttons. The Hulang would be CQB destruction and the occasional button, just like the Shikami. Basically, I want each of the HI to have a specific tabletop role, like what CB did with the various Knightly Orders.
Sorta feels very backwards to downgrade the Zuyong to fit them instead of them having fit the Zuyong in the first place. Now I don't want to sound like an MO player, but amen to that.
I mean they've done that. The Shang Ji and the Teutons are both designed to be shelf dwellers superceded by cheaper HI.
Well, yeah, so would I. But that would make every one of the 1W+NWI models 3pts more expensive. You'd be short an entire order, and that's bad for army building. That's not a valid role!
Personally, I'm fine with Zuyongs as is, both for Vanilla and IA. But that's just me and my HI ways. I mean... painting practice is also a role they can fill.
Openly crazy wishlist here, but maybe just remove Tactical Awareness as a skill and bolt it on as a bonus to the entire HI and TAG classifications? Surely the giant power armour full of tech that makes it suddenly vulnerable to Oblivion would also allow increased coordination, and it would stop the insane disconnect between what works in Infinity fluff and practice- hordes of barely trained conscripts are actually better than the elite, high tech model espoused in IA and PanOceanian fluff because the way Orders work makes them better at tactical coordination somehow. It would also help Ariadnan HI that aren't Kazaks serve an actual role in their factions, and somewhat defray the opportunity cost of bringing TAG armour.
Adding more orders to the game also ends up making games take longer. It's an interesting fix, and with all the units out there that game the system for their second(ish) wound these days, adds a decent advantage for the inherent disadvantages that HI face in EM and hacking vulnerability. You'd also probably have to give IA more redesigning than it's already hurting for to make up for the shift, and that's going to be rough.
I get where you're coming from, @SpectralOwl , but keeping TA limited to specific SWC-costing models means it can be kept relatively cheap and be handed out as an enhancer ability (a skill or gear that is better than the points suggests). If it were applied across board, you'd have to look at how crazy the most extreme examples would become, such as Swiss or Samurai lists (16 orders spent on getting Neko across the board? That's a lot of dead turn 1 melee), and set the price point after which profile benefits the most from it.
We'd be very lucky to get a berserk guijia, can I get a T2 ccw on loan from Ariadna? I think Id be bringing the guijia frequently with that combo. I also agree getting an SWC discount guijia LT is the definition of minimum effort and it would be playable at 300.
Total Immunity TAG would be ridiculous. The Guija should get Duo in IA so you can put a Haidao with it, that'd be cool.
Problem is, there are already cost-effective TAGs and HI in the game that don't need any buffs. Another free order for Achiless, Kriza or Squalo? Yeesh... TA for Zuyoungs and Suryats, mixed links with cheerleaders for Orcs, Suryats, Brigadas and Shangji aimed to spice up vanilla HI who got outclassed by better choices in their factions.
Fair enough. I honestly forgot TA worked in links, which is silly since I have played the Zuyong core before. I actually consider the cheerleaders to be the problem, not the solution- they're only there as ablative corpses to give one or two guys a buff and Specialist presence. It doesn't fix that the supposedly superior choices are wholly outclassed by their point value in militia, thanks to how links and orders work. But enough of my pontificating. I'm here to provide minimum effort fixes to the Invincible Army's most problematic profiles! First off, we need to consider Vanilla. This means no links are allowed. Alternatively, Tohaa is Vanilla, so EVERYTHING is allowed to link. Next, we need to find what makes the profiles problematic. So far, this seems to be summarised as "ARM, PHY and CC cost way too much for how rarely they are used". No problem, we fix the PHY issue on things like Shang Ji by making Combi Rifles into Throwing Weapons. Actually, even better, we fix the TAGs and the plainer HI in one fell swoop by always making damage scale with PHY, CCW-style. ARM can be improved by sneaking onto Army's host servers and swapping the "ARM" and "W" labels while nobody is looking. CC is more difficult; it may actually require a rewrite of The Rules themselves. Specifically, to reflect the fact that real human soldiers (and, presumably, aliens) possess an advanced tactic for melee combat known as a "charge". This allows a soldier, even from a full sprint, to perform a Close Combat attack against a foe, with a damage bonus from their Physique and Silhouette Template to boot! It is much like the existing "Assault" skill, but can be performed even when Line of Sight is not available due to a special sixth sense known as "object permanence", which allows humans to acknowledge and act upon the presence of friend and foe alike even when they are out of immediate view! With these simple changes, Infinity would be fixed forever, OK? OK. While the above is something of a joke for levity's sake, Sixth Sense L3 (Object Permanence Edition) might actually work for TAGs. By their very point heavy nature it would prevent slowdown compared to the same value in militia, and being able to ARO against every order the enemy makes would be an interesting tactical option- combine it with Kinematica, and a TAG could re-position quite easily on the enemy turn to get out of danger or threaten an advance. Could be fun to try, at least.
Can we just give hi a discount for being so fucking vulnerable now that everyone else gets the hi perks without the cost.
Either give HI a discount, or alleviate some of those weaknesses. 'Cause seriously... it's fine if they're the only ones who have two wounds, barring doggos, but... for some odd reason 2 Wound not-HI not-Doggos exist now, so that sort of calls into question teh entire advantage of HI-
I'm hating the 1W+NWI HI now. Nothing worse that your Haidao taking two wounds and the doctor standing right next to him can do nothing but pray to the ancestors.
That would be nice. (Or increase the cost of unhackable HI... ) How would you cost the vulnerability to hacking? I know it's strongly meta-dependent as to it's effect on the tabletop. Trying to reverse-engineer things is a bit complex, since you really need to compare the Veteran Kazak BSG (35pts) to the Haidao BSG (23pts once you drop the KHD) since both have BTS0. Veteran Kazak BSG is 35pts. take away 2pts for Mimetism (see Moblots), though it might be a little more since VetKaz are BS14 not 13. Now we're 32/33pts. I think BS13->14 is 2pts, so that's 30/31pts. How much is Sixth Sense L2? I know it's expensive, Securitate dropped a LOT when Tunguska came out and they lost SSL2 (does anyone have the early N3 unit PDFs?). Tough comparing Zhanying to Celestial Guard, the Zhanying is +2CC +1BS -1WIP +1ARM. Yeah, I don't like it either. But it's the obvious way to make Zuyong (and Tai Sheng) ~2pts cheaper across the board. This would save 6-8pts in the Core team, and make a little space to give Zhencha Shock Immunity (maybe +1pt) and Haidao BTS3 (+1pt) without completely blowing up the rest of the IA force structure. Making Zuyong 1W+NWI makes it obvious that all the lite HI are built off of a Zuyong suit. Zhencha are Zuyong with a camo cloak and infiltration training. Haidao are naval Zuyong. Liu Xing could be Zuyong with jump wings (though I'd rather bring Tigers back into IA and make the LX really good). And so on.
I really don't like that idea, it just seems like sacrificing even more to make up for shitty design from earlier. No other faction is going to have to give up their real HI due to fuck up sectorial design.
