As someone who has had 8 of his 10 units killed by crits in a limited insertion game, Crits are fine. They feel epic and should stay that way. Crits are one of my favorite parts of this game and keeps that feeling of danger when playing against an opponent. The challenge of having to come up with a new plan after losing a key unit is one of the most entertaining things about this game. Also always having that 1 in 20 chance to actually hit makes it feel like you still have a small chance even if your army is on the verge of being beaten.
What’s wrong with criticals being auto hit but not auto would? Just make them ingore arm and bts values. I think this is the best “compromise” without changing the rule entirely. It makes no difference for cheap models but against metal behemoths (tags) it will make a difference that is still very cinematic. Spoiler: Not serious suggestion Also make it so that when rolling the armor save and you roll exactly your armor value then your armor gets destroyed. There are infinite rules in infinity so implementing just a couple more won’t hurt the game. Besides, from a mathematical view: INFINITY + 2 = INFINITY
as others stated, units already pay a significant premium for their ARM values, specifically smacking them and only them with the crit stick pushes spam and relatively devalues units like HI and TAGs compared to ARM0 or ARM1 units and the like. Realistically it would probably also be another nail in the MI problem, given that HI and TAGs can conceivably shrug a crit where as an MI will get jobbed, and wont even get the use of their primary defense stat.
To be fair, the change above wouldn't make it worse for units with higher ARM, it just wouldn't improve them at all.
It would make it worse relatively. Amd thats the point. Especially since at the moment they are all costed based on a flat critline
Well, if units are already costed based on the assumption that save stats (ARM/BTS) will occasionally be ignored, how a situation would be different in a case which will still have crits ignore said save stat? I haven't checked math obviously, but I don't think that this change will make low ARM units much more survivable for their cost than high ARM ones. Especially when that's already the case in many situations right now.
because saves are ignored across the board. It normalises regardless of who it applies to because it applies to all at a flat value. When you suddenly have units taking 2 different affects based on if they had ARM or didnt have ARM then its different
Does it really help high ARM models more than low ARM ones, considering you ignore ARM entirely anyway?
What you have right now is that 2+ wound models have a major benefit against crits compared to others. An HI, TAG, or other particularly sturdy troop can already take a crit and keep going. If you got rid of auto-wounding it would shift that bar even further, where a TAG on a rampage would be even less concerned about crits from defensive fire than it already is.
Thats a fair point. I think it isnt irreconcilable with what has beem said before. It pushes the two ends of the scale
Auto-wound should stay for crits, as well as FtF-auto-win. Imagine Tohaa players saying: "Oh, I see you have made 4 hits on my <insert annoying Tohaa trooper name>, including a critical (!). That's nice, the mate will eat those 3 regular hits, aaand here's a successful ARM for the crit. You're welcome".
no mates should be removed from the game, Ive played tohaa and even I think they are nothing but a detriment to the game. Honestly as a Tohaa player i dislike them more, they make games so boring
Symbyomates are an outlier to the rest of the rules and can be considered the “anti-crit” they take any player agency and tactics and go “lol no I’m fine” Using them as a basis for not changing a Criticals is not a productive argument to make
The same could be said about TAGs having extremely high ARM/BTS values and multi-wound troops. You want your Big Badass Robot to be badass, so you expect it to perform accordingly and be able to shrug off a hit or two before going down. Having a Big Badass Robot that dies to any random shot would be not so badass, right?
I think Mates are part of the game for the very same reasons crits are -- that is, balance. Individually, Tohaa aren't as fit for prolonged firefights as some other factions' units, so instead of having a vast range of heavy infantry or TAGs, our army specialises in the ability to create an unlimited amount of 3-part Voltrons fit for specific mission. But our fireteams are much more vulnerable than Core fireteams and are much easily disrupted (remove a single Triad member, and all the Triad bonuses phase out), so we rely on bio-tech such as Symbiont armour and mates to balance that weakness. I've been thinking about making Mates restricted to certain units via Special Skill. Mostly, you want a Mate on your 2+ wound troop such as Gorgos or Rasail, because a single hit with a Flamethrower can strip them from their Symbiont armour. I agree that Mates are a very powerful option, so maybe having Mates available to a select list of profiles instead of any Symbiont-clad troops will help with balancing.
Tohaa soam cheap 2w or 3w units. Ones that usually arent packing the downside of multi wound units. Their trade off to that is lower stats across the board. Mates are gravy to that and all they really serve to do is exacerbate the limited choices of the army already.
I don't think Tohaa are nearly as vulnerable as you describe them, @n21lv . Most factions don't get a whole bunch of HI and the one HI you get, Ectros, are essentially a Shang-Ji that instead of going Unconscious has a Zhanying undressed Muyib pop out - trading the slightly lower ARM for a better gun, a "Haris" and a worse DTW. Now, Shang-Ji aren't anywhere near the most efficient HI out there (quite the opposite), but on the other hand Ectros beats Shang-Ji by a mile. Add in that effectively the 1-wound Symbiont profiles all have roughly similar stats and abilities as 1-wound profiles of the same cost among humans, but with a rather special bonus "unconscious" state that humans simply don't get, I don't really see where the idea that Tohaa are fragile comes from. Particularly since that extra profile isn't vulnerable to being bypassed by Shock the way Aleph and all their NWI profiles have to worry about. Flesh out the number of units so Tohaa starts looking like a real vanilla faction (currently Tohaa has about half as many profiles as other factions like Aleph or Combined) and you will get out of the only faction disadvantage I see them having, which is unit variety shortage (i.e. the major weakness that sectorials face)
