I'm quite new to Infinity and I like the low-tech, but tough and tricky feel of Ariadna so far. However, I keep reading everywhere that Ariadna has trouble with higher techs as well as smoke. Could anyone please elaborate on this as well as how you handle these? I'm fine with the faction having weaknesses, but I'm curious if they are weaknesses with answers or those you just suffer through while slamming your own agenda harder into your opponent. Thanks in advance!
Basically you haven't got tools like hidden deployment, white noise, hacking or eclipse smoke to deal with Aquila guard/hac Tao/Achilles equivalent level of problems, but we do have a stack of regular smoke and cheap expendable beserk options as well as some good guided missiles (antipode/van zant/dog warriors) etc. What you need to use depends on terrain and enemy force but you just have to approach the problems differently than other factions
May I add that Ariadna lacks MSV2 and therefore has a hard time countering armies that rely heavily on smoke covering their advance.
Ariadna has its own version of hidden deployement : putting down 15+camo marker with a quarter of them fake and a quarter of them being explosive (emauler, mine) One of Ariadna vanilla main strengh is its camo offensive piece. Many defensive fireteam can now negate most of these piece advantage (msv to cancel camo, ss with 5 people fireteam to cancel surprise shot) so they are hard to deal with. No real solution for that. If a 5 man fireteam is blocking a LoF you need acess to, even a Spetsnaz HMG will have a hard time getting them out. Ariadna also tend to favor HMG as a long range weapon so long range TO ARO piece (swiss guard, TO sniper) are often a big problem. Main answer to that is either : don't face them (you have smoke for that) or go short range with a skirmisher (very table dependant) Short range tech piece are less of a problem. We have plenty of short range weapon they don't like (chasseur flammer, scout emauler) or cheap troop we can exchange (highlander, hardcase, antipodes). Remember : TO, DDO... hate flammer + chasseur can delay ARO in ZOC (sacrifying a chasseur to burn an Avatar DDO => worth it)