Buddy, your argument is that Yu Jing troops with +1 BS and minus skills and stats means no smoke. It rings rather hollow. They're already trading in for that +1. It's not free. PanO for a long time has had issues with the devs pulling a choke chain over +1 BS and now theres tons of things out there that have eaten away at that paradigm. Yu Jing has the Hac Tao, Hisen, Mowang and Tiger soldiers. Nomads have Kriza and Intruders. Ariadna has the Vet Kazak. Haqq has the Mukhatar and Tarik. Combined has its aspects, sphinx, sheskin, gwailos and sogorat. Aleph has Pheonix, Atlanta, Asuras, garuda, Achilies and Marut. O-12 has epsilon, gamma and omega. All if these are excellent gun fighters that I can name off hand and they each present their own advantages and trade offs. The Vet Kazzak can bring 2 extra dudes easily for the price difference between him and the swiss. He also has 6th Sense lvl 2, ap hmg and in sectorial, can bust out a 5 man link putting him at BS 16 with burst 5 for a marginally higher price than the swiss but with more orders. You are so narrowly defining what makes for a good gun fighter to give your argument any credence that of course PanO will fit your only description.
All these spears being broken over measly 1 vanilla BS when skills and skill combos that give from 3 to 15 effective BS are so abundant it's not even funny.
Again, why does every faction has to have everything? The point stays the same: "if PanO needs smoke just because Aleph and Yujing have smoke and MSV 2+, then where is the Nomads/Haqq/Ariadna TO HI with ARM5 and/or the BS15 Troops? If every faction needs everything, why not make them all the same?" Can't there be differences between factions? Is PanO unplayable without smoke? No. Does PanO need smoke? No. There are many Sectorials without the Smoke+MSV Combo. If you need cover, Eclipse is the better option anyways. While playing Nomads, I prefer Eclipse for cover because PanO has ... 6 different troops with MSV 2 or 3 available.
PanO neither needs smoke, nor would it be broken if having access to it. I'd still prefer not getting it, in favor of different solutions. What we could use is some Eclipse in MO, to allow our CQB HI to close into their preferred range. I fully support the argument that factions should be kept as unique as possible.
We already have Smoke. On a troop that was pretty good in N2. But its unique capabilities are now tied to a BS10 Auxbot, which is a very tough sell in N3. If you take a 50 points dude for Smoke access he should do the Smoke thing a bit better than 10/13 if the usual 5 points dude can do it on a 17 with his free Impetuous Order. The simple fact that it is tied to an Auxbot is great in itself. Opens up a lot of easy ways to create access. The G:Sync Spec Sergeant would love that little bugger to provide a reason to exist for him compared to Auxilia. Having Eclipse on a non CC Hi like Orcs to make use of their high PH would be another interesting way to fix 2 problems at once. Each of these options rains on the GSA's parade... but he's already struggling anyway and wouldn't mind some attention in N4.
Yeah but the Kazzak doesn't look as cool as the Swiss. Your points are now invalid. On Smoke: I agree with others that factions should be kept separate, but I'd love to have Eclipse on at least another model or two. Not even regular smoke, just Eclipse.
You're talking about a copy paste unit, not a basic piece of equipment that has fantastic battlefield application. It makes PanO look stupid to ignore white noise, smoke and eclipse smoke. You dont think PanO should get regular smoke? Fine and dandy over here. But give us some sort of battlefield crafting ability.
Tbh I'd love something crazy and new for N4, now that I'm thinking on it. We don't get Smoke, sure, but it'd be cool to get something completely different that still helps with battlefield control. Something more high tech. Imagine deployable walls, with full cover and half cover versions. Slap a name like "holo-wall" on them, give them a custom silhouette, make printable paper versions, and let third parties go to work with cool third party acrylics. It'd be neat. Or maybe make an auxbot that does that (basically flavorfully "unfolds" into a wall), with it being usable by Auxilia or others in place of their normal bots. Then add that pairing to some other units.
Remember: When PanO was created, having higher BS than your opponent automatically broke ties in f2f rolls. You both rolled a 9? The PanO unit tended to win, because of superior Ballistic Skill. That isn't the case anymore, so the "PanO was a mistake" comment doesn't really have much context anymore. Borrowing from another thread, most factions shoot pretty dang well right now, and most of them have abundant cheap camo and/or smoke as well. I don't think PanO needs smoke, but needing to solve every battlefield problem with gunfire definitely limits PanO's design space. People wonder why PanO ends up with Wildcard Mimetism BS13 light infantry, and the answer is because we don't have smoke. If a faction needs to hammer their way through all opposition, and has no way to passively pursue mission objectives, then it's no surprise that PanO's design space feels constrained. VIRD helped us break out of that, by creating a force that denies area and defends very aggressively. Once again this is compensation for not having smoke, White Noise, cheap Camo, or other ways to "passively" pursue missions...
I think it's important to make note of the evolution this game has gone through. It's not easy to make balancing fixes to a whole faction when the thing that is being tweaked is the factions unique stat characteristic. N3 has shown that even though PanO lost the tie breaking advantage, they still maintained a strong showing at tournaments. I really like where CB is going with their most recent design decisions. VIRD is a very unique take on PanO's play style without adding in things that have been traditionally excluded (smoke and warbands). The NCA update has also improved their list building options. They can still do what they have always done, but now have more flexibility with bolts and Aquila. I hope N4 just continues along the same line. PanO has felt more characterful than ever.
Yeah, small stuff tends to add up, especially if it stacks multiplicatively. +1 BS, FAT1, having a built in tiebreaker and Mimetism each matter on their own. But hand them all to the same Profile and they get significantly better. Slapping all of these Upgrades on a BS11 trooper, you get like a 50% better gunner for 5 points of investment.
