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TAGs get Tactical Awarness

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Marduck, Sep 2, 2019.

  1. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    Even that, I havent taken Sheskiin yet with Shas, and haven't felt I've needed to. No doubt she's good, but does she break the game? Not in my experience at least.

    I thought Kamau + Helots was the closest, though they kinda fixed that now anyway. So maybe we all just have our own thing we find a bit over the top personally.
     
    #201 Hachiman Taro, Sep 27, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2019
  2. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    High floor, higher ceiling, that's Mutts. They don't break the game until they're used by someone sufficiently competent to unlock their potential.

    FAT2, I'd describe as low floor, low ceiling. It is entirely a dice manipulation that requires little planning, but the yield won't increase as much as for many other units the better you get because the key to making effective use of it is to roll many dice, not position yourself well at the correct range nor versus the correct target.
    It's a bit like TR HMG REMs in that respect I think.
     
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  3. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    Id disagree with that assesment.

    If Ghazi were that good in the hands of sufficiently good players you'd see them at the top tables all the time. They arent there that much. More likely they seem broken when used well by players who dont counter them as well.

    Rolling many dice from bad positions against the wrong targets will likely lose you your key units FAT2 or not (and FAT2 only appears on key units, so that's one of its implicit mitigators). It can be a trap.
     
    #203 Hachiman Taro, Sep 27, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2019
  4. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Sounds like you're making the assumption that other factions don't have good players. Or that there aren't strengths that can be exploited in other factions.
    If this creates a kind of balance at high level gameplay, that still doesn't excuse the inherent issues with Jammers nor the fact that they're necessary to create such a balance.

    I stand by my assessment of ceiling simply by how dominating one of the Haqq players in my meta can be while floor assessment is informed by how often people say their Mutts die (this simply doesn't happen much for our top player)

    Both Ghazi and the current FAT2 profiles are designed to be stronger against tough units because they ignore a significant portion of a unit's toughness that one of the best ways to counter them is to spread out your points in several bodies.
     
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  5. theradrussian

    theradrussian Well-Known Member

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    You see, getting us to buy more models was the plan all along.

    But CB, we have magpie syndrome. We'll buy entire factions even if we use more elite lists. So please hear our please and help move to a better meta...one where points premiums for stats/skills don't get countered by bargain-basement stuff.
     
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  6. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    On the contrary I'm pointing out there are, and this creates a balance.

    If Ghazi 'break the game' when used by someone sufficiently competant, this balance would be impossible, because the game would be broken (ie non functional or at least unlikley to be won by someone not taking them). That's what broken means.

    Someone dominating with something in one meta doesnt make it broken. If it's the key factor in a disproportionate number of large tournament wins, it might be broken. That's not the case AFAIK with Ghazi.
     
    #206 Hachiman Taro, Sep 27, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2019
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  7. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    So the assumption, then, is that there aren't other broken units players can leverage (I don't know about you, but I'm not keen on a game where there is an arms race of the broken unit), though more likely we have different definitions of what a broken unit means. Broken means that the unit is responsible causing balance issues, is disproportionately good to its cost, or disproportionately dictates how opponents are forced to construct their lists.

    For me, a unit is broken if it is able to eliminate a play style by itself. Take a hypothetical unit that is able to kill any Ghost: Remote Presence on a WIP roll. This in itself is not sufficient to push the home faction to disproportionate win rate, but it would be enough to cause a disproportionate amount of exclusively non-GRP lists in tournament formats. This is enough to qualify as broken.

    Disclaimer: price is the means for balancing things. Anything can be kept in check by price.
    Ex.: The greatly maligned Hulang would be broken as hell if it cost, say, 15 points, even if it still had its current counters.
     
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  8. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    I guess I just dont see that the game is an arms race between broken things (I was a bit worried it might go more that way when OSS & VIRD were released, but newer releases seem to have settled back into the groove of some eye popping elements who's very real and more or less balanced limitations in context of their faction become much more apparent in practical list building or actual game play). There probably is a little power creep. But then like inflation, a little of that isn't necessarily terrible if well managed.

    As for broken being something that invalidates a playstyle by itself, I'm not sure there's a troop that does that. Again Kamau might come closest to me. But then, by that definition scissors, paper and rock are all broken even though that game is perfectly balanced. It's a different thing to say you dont like RPS as a design paradigm (kinda my initial objection to Kamau, now more mollified) than to say the elements of it are broken. Those elements work in concert, ergo they are not broken. Broken is a thing that doesnt work.
     
    #208 Hachiman Taro, Sep 27, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2019
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  9. Azuset

    Azuset Well-Known Member

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    Even if there was a gun pointed at your head you still have a choice.
     
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  10. Azuset

    Azuset Well-Known Member

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    Serious question. Is Infinity a true a rock paper scissor game?
     
  11. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    Interesting question. Depends a bit on yor definition but while Infinity has some RPS-ish elements (eg white noise > MSV > CH visual mods), essentially I don't think so (and I'd prefer it not to become more so). Infinity is too execution based to be considered true RPS I think.
     
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  12. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    It's becoming more and more like that.
     
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  13. Andre82

    Andre82 Well-Known Member

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    Aspects of the game can be, but I don't feel it is a issue at this time. This is not really a bad thing imo. It helps keep the meta (what little we have at this time) self correcting. If rock is starting to be the dominant strategy, people are going to start taking more paper. Now making good hate can be hard, or go to far
    Also RPS can be a pretty interesting game with the correct variants as Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor showed me.
     
  14. Spellbreaker90

    Spellbreaker90 Well-Known Member

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    Counter strategy are not bad game element. The problem arise when there are only hard counter that need other hard counter.
    Until you have answer to a problem and that answer just make thing easier and not auto win the game is in good state.
     
  15. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    Which is exactly why Jammers are bad design. The "hard counter" is Vet L1. Assault hackers are better because there's a soft counter in the form of KHDs.
     
  16. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    I feel like this must have been covered in the last eleven pages, but there are multiple soft counters to jammers. For example:
    - use of stealth bypass the jammer areas or to close in to melee (either to kill or just stop the jamming)
    - using irregular models to save the irregular order for after a successful jam attempt to kill or engage the jamming model
    - use of marker states, mobility skills or unique deployment skills to bypass jammer areas (obviously tricky against the full weight of a haqq list but sufficient for dealing with spiral/nomad/pano jammer elements
    - incorporating the possibility of isolation into your operational plans (e.g. in many scenarios like quadrant control or frontline being isolated doesn't remove a model's value provided you can keep it alive; more technically you can also position so that even if a model's expenditure of orders ends, it's still in a valuable defensive position - you can also factor in possible guts moves from the jammer hit to maximise this in a way similar to how it's possible to ignore flash pulse AROs in orders you want to stand in but end prone)
    - just having high BTS

    Not all of these are faction-agnostic (it's not fair, for example, to tell an Ariadnan player to just take higher BTS elements) but a bunch of them are.
     
  17. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    The problem is that these soft counters don't work as well as they ought to.

    I think that the fact Veteran prevents isolation is evidence that CB believes this as well -- you don't introduce a hard-counter mechanic in a game designed around soft counters unless it's necessary (or at least you believe it to be).
     
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  18. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    Veteran was in the game before jammers were. It was just less common (and more expensive).

    I don't think jammers were the reason TAGs got tactical awareness. I think the real reason is the cost you sink into these models. A TAG will at best cost 1/4 of your army, and at worst cost half of it. Having it generate two orders seems like a good decision to make it less of a dangerous investment.

    That being said, I don't really like the extra cost tacked onto the Light TAGs. I don't think it's such a horrible idea, but I also don't think it was needed.
     
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  19. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    This is a subjective thing though, right? We're all each of us just one data point.
     
  20. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    I mean is veteran even a hard counter to Jammer? It absolutely defends against it sure but it doesn't remove it from the game in the Rock Paper Scissors sense. A lot of theses arguments rely on shakey mutual understandings.
     
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