Minimum effort

Yeah, the last thing that we need now is more HI without what used to be the only ubiquitous advantage HI brought, and pretty much the prime reason for even using HI ( Barring the occasional case when the HI units of a faction are the only ones with certain types of gear/skills/stats. ), that being the second Wound.

Seriously though, if more and more HI become 1 Wound NWI dudes, then what really separates HI from the other unit types anymore beyond the extra E/M and Hacking vulnerabilities...? Particularly compared to MI units: MI on average shoot about as good as HI, have ARM about as good as HI, they just usually move slower and only have one wound, but aren't hackable.

 

To further illustrate my complaints about the Liu Xing's vulnerabilities not allowing it to actually do its job this is a table from tonight




Now I was presented with an opening to attack into my opponent's DZ with an AD troop via coming in next to the dark purple building in the top right hand side of the table. Even with opposition protecting that board edge from close range either clearing it before hand or simply covering the approach vector with smoke actually attacking from that vector was fairly simply given there was no MSV2 set to guard.

However what was present was a Mulebot. Mulebots have Repeaters. This bot was deployed up against the same building with the repeater bubble covering the desired entry point.

I had a Tiger so I was free to run riot down that flank which I did. Tiger Spitfire did a great deal of damage. Trying to do the same with a Liu Xing? Not happening at all. The repeater bubble meant he would've been stuck getting hacked the whole way by Laxmee, who incidentally was prone behind the sign further on from the purple building at the back edge of the table, presenting a second bubble of hacking to contend with (the Tiger walked up to her without contest and shot her).

On another note this is why I really don't put alot of faith in comments that the table needs to be overly saturated with terrain to stop a Liu Xing from functioning. It takes all of 1 piece of terrain near each flank for a repeater to hide behind and suddenly moving in to attack for a Liu Xing becomes very questionable.

 

I really like the idea of the Zuyong as NWI, it explains all these weird budget "not HI" that Yu Jing is now crawling with. Otherwise it just feels like a blatant discount, much like SMG or getting Hyperdynamics instead of PH stat.

I really feel that HI needs a discount. Think of something like a Zero vs a Mobile Brigada. 17pts for camo state, bulletproof forcefield and better deployment, or 34 points for 2W BS13. One of these things is not twice as good as the other and honestly is probably worse even before you consider it being twice the price.

 

Just make another zuyong profile with smg / chain for like 20 pts, up the BS from 13 to 14 of the shangji and add some minelayer here and there.

Make the yisheng and gongcheng count as zanshi for ft and it would be something

 

Was Laxmee the only hacker? If yes, what about ExplodeXing her to death? I mean, I did that a couple of time already and it works great (baring dice for Combat Jumping) - definitely needs to be considered as a functional possibility. People tend to cover their DZ with repeaters and hackers bubbles, but they don't often overlap meaning you can most of the time land on a hacker without being in any other hacking area.

I concede that the trick won't be doable in all games, but I see the Liu Xing as a psychological weapon: you need to land it a couple of times to see the deployment change on next games. Then, once they think they're safe against HI hotdropping, bring back the Tiger for non-hackable unit and rampage or profit from other failure in their new deployment.
Yes against über-opponent, it won't be as effective; but I don't know anybody flawless playing Infinity. If that's your case, then you're just outplayed by better opponents. :D

 

Linked Kaplan with an Adhesive Launcher was covering her so no wasn't an option. May have killed her but would've been glued in return most likely.

Also would've given a Warcor a free flash pulse shot.

 

Question is, is it a good or bad thing for the game that this kind of alpha strike is implausible?

 

There are much more powerfull alpha strike options in the game already, and they don't require you to potentially suicide jump a 10th of your list...

 

I wasn't playing this game, and I would have probably handled it poorly compared to what you did. But still, I guess you leveraged the Spit rangeband to be able to murder Laxmee without exposing to retaliation? That sounds like a choosen example of a precise situation where the Spit-Tiger is better than Shotgun-Liu Xing.
I do not doubt Liu Xing isn't the best tool 100% of the time. But I'm surprised you seem to always want to prove it is shit (while I think it's not). Just wanted to highlight this, now I know I'm on the unpopular side of the opinion there, and none of us is right or wrong - it's a matter of preferences, playstyle and gambling I guess.

Just wanted to bring some love for Louie. ;)

 

I want to love the Liu Xing.

But it's far too vulnerable on the drop, when YJ High Command should have known that you don't send HI into someone else's base without hacking protection. Just give the stupid thing Deflector L2 across the board and it'd be a lot better.

 

The Tiger first murdered 2 Kaplans, a Warcor, Mulebot, and Palbot attached to Avicenna. Then had a peak behind the sign and killed Laxmee last before running back behind the building he started at to hide.

The following turn the Tiger dug at his backline on the opposite side of the table. Killed Chimera that had tried to kill him last turn and failed (through shooting it couldn't make CC). Managed to cautious move past Securitate AROs. The fact that I had more than 24" meant I could open up on units out of cover on 10s up to 32". One of which was an unlinked datatracker CSU. I also had a crack at a Securitate I knew was the LT but it managed to crit dodge out of trouble.

Keep in mind that while fighting at these rangebands out of -3 and 0s the Tiger still holds a significant burst advantage coupled with Mimetism which the Liu Xing lacks unless you get the very very expensive version, and even then still no Mimetism. This coupled with fighting units that are also not particularly excellent gunfighters or fighting at ranges that are bad for them means they can't really hit the Tiger effectively. The datatracker was burst 1 trying to fend off the Tiger at -3 for range, and -3 for Mimetism. He's 1 dice on 6s the Tiger is 4 on 10s he has a real advantage there.

The fact that I had that range to get a counter kill on the datatracker saved my ass. Bottom of turn 1 my Datatracker Yan Huo took 3 wounds after declaring dodge against an Auxbot that suicided into my DZ to fire off a flamethrower hit. 3% on those odds but shit happens.

I don't want to prove it's shit, it's just shit. I'd really like it to not be shit. Unfortunately it has a massive weakness Yu Jing isn't equipped to cover which makes it a really bad option. If you all you did to fix the Liu Xing was remove its HI name tag so it lost hackability the model would actually be serviceable. I still wouldn't be over the moon about the profile, it's very bland, but it'd be decent enough to be considered competitive for Yu Jing to include regularly.

Impersonators can more reliably start where they need to alpha strike what they need to, and they come in (unhackable) multiwound varieties now and can even do shit like start with mines in the middle of your link team or cut a 100pt TAG down in one hit. Tigers and Liu Xings don't break that scale. If you think the Liu Xing has got real alpha strike potential then boy are you gonna have your mind blown once Shaas and Tohaa get the hang of their new shit this year.

 

Not my actual question. However, on reflection, it's okay to like games with powerful alpha strikes - after all, another competitive scene kind of made its name with that. It does explain the differences in opinion, and that's okay.

 

Well, again, the Tiger/Liu Xing is not even the most powerful alpha strike in this game.

 

It's more a question of why are you worried about the possible potential of buffed drop troops upsetting game balance while a potential even greater than that is already present in the game through other skills and models? Either it's fine and it won't matter, or it's already broken it's not like you can ruin it much more.

It's kinda like worrying about the ramifications of allowing Infiltration as a skill to roll to deploy on the enemy side of the table, meanwhile Impersonation is doing what it does.

 

A friend of mine came sixth at the Cardiff Firestorm Satellite Event a month or so back, he used the Liu Xiang extensively and effectively with Explode LX causing a few casualties.

In high level tournament play, it's used and is effective. I don't think you can reasonably call it shit when it's performing well on that level.

 

We've got the math on that to show Explode is a really underwhelming attack. If what he was doing was literally just dropping it on stuff then we can say statistically, he just got lucky. That does happen, not disputing that fact.

 

Or it could just be that the local meta and match ups of the even favored the Liu Xing.

Such as lots of Ariadna, perhaps?

 

Plausible, the army counts do vary wildly from tournament to tournament. The French satellite that just passed had a grand total of 1 Ariadnan player. Comparitively the Australian satellite had 18 Combine players representing 25% of the playing field alone, we ran extra games of CA for the locals travelling to that one to help them prepare.

 

We've also now got repeated tabletop experience to show that even if Explode LX doesn't kill anyone the way it affects the ARO declaration is substantial and it can be certainly used to exploit bunched deployment. The mathematical power of the attack is clear insofar as it doesn't actually cover any of the other impacts the Liu Xiang has on the psychology of the game and real-game environments. And those impacts are real and substantial. That you might have a Liu Xiang is something that sits in the opposing player's head and changes their gameplay.