Dunno how you play, but my copy of BSF came without an animating Machine Spirit, so the players have to do the stuff the "AI" dictates... And changing the AI for a GM tends to become a TPK quite fast... I would bet more for Aristeia mechanics than regular Infinity ones, to avoid NPCs to run wildly into a Suppresive Fire field of 2-3 characters...
I was meaning the CB "signature" of rolls having a risk to both participants. In both Aristeia! and Infinity whenever you attack the defender has a chance to inflict damage in the other direction. Also BF just wasn't a very fun dungeon crawler, we got halfway through the campaign and completely lost interest. That's what I'm hoping the main difference will be with Defiance.
First, after rerreading my last post, I think it came plainly wrong, and I'm not talking only about the tone. What I meant is that, regardless of the iconic "downtime" present in GW main games (AoS & 40k, since Kill Team and Apoc, for example, alternate unit activations), in BSF and other games with "AI" the players still need to perform all the "NPC" actions, drawing of cards, etc..., thus there are no "downtime" for the players, only for the player miniatures. The second point is that a game desiged for "AI" opponents tends to have meatwalls because it is assumed that the "AI" decisions will be suboptimal at best, and maybe one in five NPCs will get to hit a player character (in contrast, games with a GM like Pathfinder or D&D have "bottled encounters" with enemys quite similar to player characters in terms of taking damage, dealing damage, and sneaky tricks), this coming from the lack of input to those "AI" in the games, which are in truth more akin to preprogrammed authomatons. Now, if the game were to follow most of Infinity's mechanics, a simple way to win would be to set up 2-3 players in Suppresive Fire, and using only the fourth one to open the way, advancing quite carefully, while the NPCs would eat a lot of bullets on each activation, because the "AI" would have no way to adapt its outputs to the situation. On the other side, a human controlling the NPC side could make use of all the resources designed for a suboptimal output and try to get a more optimal one, for example in BSF it was not strange for a group of guards to do all kind of actions, meaning one to three shoots against the players, while the rest would waste their activations trying to charge (regardless of distance, weapon, or traps laid along the path), retreat, etc..., while a human controller would simply focus fire on a single player character (usually the more fragile and/or biggest threat that can be removed in a single volley), and let it become an attrition situation.
I GOT MY INFINITY DEFIANCE! well part of it!.... what could you expect from the DLC era? game by parts
I really wish there were some ALEPH heroes as well especially considering that ALEPH is under direct supervision of O-12 specifically used against the Combined Army threat... just saying ;)
An ALEPH troop going in that sort of mission would be an elite unit. And those are at potential risk of capture and are a risk for ALEPH infiltration by the EI. It's probably safe to think they did think of sending ALEPH troops, but crossed that idea quickly. Might be one in the future for fun though.
I suspect more heroes will be added as SGs, so i think we will see a ALEPH hero in the game (just a guess, not based on anything...)
I'm fairly sure Bostria said that all the factuons will have heroes, there's just only 4 in the core set. He didn't say whether they'd be new heroes or existing ones converted to Defiance, though we know that we'll see some existing characters as NPCs or baddies (Valk, Messer, Aida).
That's what Posthumans are for. Immune to sepsitor, can jump back to another body, the perfect weapon for use vs. the EI.
Oh sure, you'd say that, with that pic. But perhaps YOU are sepsitorized already and are trying to get others corrupted! *says the Space Oni*
It doesn't look like there's any troop equipped with sepsitor or sep-plus among the enemies according to Infinity rules and all Nomad hackers are equipped with Cubes while Aleph is equipped with Cube 2.0 that may or may not have special rules for the purpose of the boardgame itself... plus Achilles decapitated the Avatar ;)... just saying LOL PS: the TAG on heels doesn't have a cube ;)
And ... what everyone is forgetting here: Aleph "recreations" and Posthumans hardly qualify as "Heroes". I mean, my toaster isn't a hero, is it? SCNR
I wouldn't mind seeing a 'declared dead' Aleph character, like Odysseus. (Yeah, I don't know why CB named Perseus as the long-MIA Aleph character when Odysseus is the classic example)
Our coffe makers are definitely heroes, every damn one of them -.- Cube 2.0 "improves" on the original cube in that it does not require you to go to "save point" rooms (the off-site backup is nearly always up to date as long as there is net coverage). Aleph's favourite feature, however, is "self destruction if sepsitor effect is detected", at least of the connection... flagging the off site backup for deletion (or at least dump into a cold storage disk to not be reinstanced until a cure is found).
Odysseus is an interesting idea... or the Spartans for that matters with the rule that if Sepsitorised is detected they run and self destruct in the face of the enemy ;). Oh yeah... my company's expresso machine is my everyday hero ^_^... and who was that decapitated the Avatar again? I keep forgetting LOL
