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The definite N4 Comments, Suggestions, Ideas, wishlist's and Bugs that need fixing thread

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by psychoticstorm, Aug 6, 2019.

  1. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    IIRC, Shadowrun had one of the better indices. It indicated where the Core Rule was first (in bold), and then where it was referred to in other rules.
     
  2. colbrook

    colbrook Grenade Delivery Specialist

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    Try the Infinity Helper app, it downloads a searchable offline copy of the wiki, much quicker than using an index IME.
     
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  3. shokeyshah

    shokeyshah Active Member

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    Basically a repost because someone didn’t like me posting this in a faction specific thread.

    My wish is for critical rolls. Keep the automatic cancellation of all opposing rolls of whatever target number, but change the effect of the crit to still allow the other trooper to save ARM or BTS with a -3 MOD (inversely to save against +3 DAM).

    Or put another way, a crit does not automatically inflict a wound/stun/isolation but it does make one much more likely than it would otherwise be. This would mean a line trooper can still critically save a poor defense or whatever, but it is harder.

    Basically I just want to roll saves against all the criticals I see, even if they are failures.
     
  4. Abrilete

    Abrilete Well-Known Member

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    It wasn't about "not liking", just that this is the thread created by the forum moderator specifically to address suggestions like yours.
    In the Tohaa sub-forum no one would pay attention to your message.
     
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  5. sorniak

    sorniak Well-Known Member

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    I don't like crits too....and I also think they should be weakend...buuut I can't agree that autowound is the worst part of critical. In my opinion that rises multiwounds models a little bit higher. And lately there is so little competitve lists without swarm-building... I'd keep autowound, but not winning the face-to-face.
     
  6. Stiopa

    Stiopa Trust The Fuckhead

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    Multiwound units usually have higher ARM/BTS, so they have easier time passing that save. And crits' autowound is exactly what kills TAGs and elite HIs for most people: "why would I pay for a ton of ARM, only for it to be critted to death?"

    I think that crits should simply automatically win FtF, without imposing any additional modifiers. This would also mean that dedicated ammo, like AP or K1, wouldn't have to compete with crit effects.

    For the active player main cost of getting critted would be losing an order without gaining nothing, this is already a significant drawback. For the reactive player it'd nullify all points spent towards placing an effective ARO trooper. Also, any unit surviving the crit would fall under the Guts Roll rules, making V:Courage more valuable.
     
  7. sorniak

    sorniak Well-Known Member

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    It is one-way logic. One crit is not going to kill TAG. But will kill one wound model. High armour doesn't mean you won't roll some low numbers for ARM saves. Getting crit is unfortune, but ... if it won't win face-to-face, that would leave the model who critted with a chance to still be damaged, what might save orders, balance the game and add some wow-cinema-effect when guys are shooting each other to death...

    Leaving crits to win face-to-face without autwound will improve statistics for surviability of HI on something like 15%-30%....which is still dice festiwal. Till the moment, when shooting statiscs will not reach 85-99% it always will be random.
     
    #1207 sorniak, Oct 31, 2019
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2019
  8. Stiopa

    Stiopa Trust The Fuckhead

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    First of all, there is no defence against crits. You can use good strategy and tactics to combat snipers, ODD, TAGs, ets, but you can do nothing against crits. This means that getting critted is pure bad luck with very punishing outcome, which makes the player feel like having no control whatsoever over what is happenning. I consider the "cinematic" argument to be false in this case; such instances are simply not fun.

    Leaving autowin but not autowound would give back some control to the player. Now you're able to plan for crits and guard against them by investing in more resilient units. It would make high ARM values more valuable, and since the general feeling is that ARM is a very expensive stat, even to the point of being overcosted, it'd make the game more balanced. Right now the only way to guard against crits is to field multiwould models, but this makes you pay for their high ARM, which does exactly squat against crits. This is the main reason why NWI is so useful, it's a second wound that doesn't necessarily come with expensive ARM levels.

    A counterargument would be that making crits autowound but not autowin would also grant control in terms of investing in BS, burst, and modifiers, but those things come into play much more frequently and are much more useful than ARM is. You're making BS rolls all the time, while ARM/BTS roll means a snafu. And when things go south you want to rely on the stat you've paid points for, not just look at it getting bypassed by a botched roll.

    Regarding TAGs - sure, one crit won't kill it. On the other hand one crit against E/M, or a lucky hacker can disable it in one order. This is the reason people don't take TAGs all that often - their defences aren't good enough for their cost. Removing autowound from the equation would do a lot to change this.
     
    #1208 Stiopa, Oct 31, 2019
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2019
  9. sorniak

    sorniak Well-Known Member

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    Arm roll against e\m, exp ammunition is scary for tag, even without autowound.

    Overall... I had some veeery unpleasent games where opponents were high rolling ALL arm saves, till some crit broke through. I had games, where 6arm guy was getting wounds in cover from rifle, without any crits. I'm not sure that crits alone cause all that issues you've described in your post.

    Looking forward to test the cirt-theory :) though in my local community. Ill try to convince my opponents to play "either autowound or autowin but not both" way of critting. Thanks for different and supported point of view though ;)
     
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  10. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    A Wu Ming with Combi has 34.5% chance of damaging a Maruts, while the Maruts has 7.4% chance of damaging the Wu Ming.

    Both in cover and at 10" range. What might surprise you is just how dependant both of them are on crits. Maruts damage rate is 50% crits and for the Wu Ming almost half of the wounds caused will be derived from crits. If we remove the auto-wounding effect from these numbers we have:

    A Wu Ming with Combi has 17% chance of damaging a Maruts, while the Maruts has ~6% chance of damaging the Wu Ming.

    Because of the way the ARM system is designed in Infinity, critical hits are integral to maintaining lethality rate of this game. If you remove this, you'd probably have to increase the effective DAM of all attacks to tone down the high ARM of Jotums, Maruts, and Avatars in particular. Or drastically increase the general availability of E/M or ADH weapons that bypass those rolls, but that has some very unfortunate effects such as making the heaviest TAGs invincible to units that don't have these weapons.
     
  11. deep-green-x

    deep-green-x Well-Known Member

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    My preferred change has been that Criticals either
    • Win the FTF roll and beat all openents dice.
    • OR
    • Cause an automatic wound but that die no longer gets counted in the FTF resolution
    The player chooses one of these options when they roll a critical.

    How this works on the table for bookkeeping.

    Option 1: Autowound

    The die showing a critical is lifted from the table and turned into an automatic wound on the target. Making it easier to see that it no longer takes part in FTF resolution.

    Option 2: Autowin

    All opponents dice are removed from the table. The die showing the critical (and any additional dice rolled by the player who caused the critical) remain on the table and are treated as normal hits (provided they are equal to or less than target number).
     
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  12. darthchapswag

    darthchapswag Shandian Strike Team

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    Interesting idea although wouldn't this lead to the scenario of trading wounds? The critted unit would take an automatic wound but likely win the remaining FTF, especially if it was the Active Turn unit and that was the ARO unit's only die.
    I feel like this loses the intent of the mechanic if you could still end up coming off worse despite rolling a crit.

    Then there would be the bizarre situation with how it interacts with non-wounding rolls such as dodge and smoke dodge.

    Have you playtested this at all in your meta? I'd be intrigued to hear how it worked on the table.

    Ultimately, I still believe Autowin but no Autowound is the most elegant solution to improving the crit mechanic.
     
  13. deep-green-x

    deep-green-x Well-Known Member

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    @darthchapswag

    I have tried it in the past (back was when I had time to play regular games, before the coming of the children, in the long long ago...) and it felt like a more fair and interesting way to resolve criticals as it introduced some player agency and thought into the process with a small amount of risk for the player.

    It comes down to what is best in the situation for the player who rolls the crit.

    Do you take the automatic wound and trust that your unit is in a good position with ARM and cover to survive any hits you now take.

    Or

    Do you trust that your units choice of weapon and chance to cause wounds is worth giving up the automatic wound so that your opponent will need to make more saves.

    This suggested change to Criticals also now rewards good setup and weapon choices. Since a unit placed in a tactaicly advantageous position, good cover, ARM and weapon will want to maximize the chances for their shots to do damage.

    I should point out that the rest of the existing critical mechanisms remain the same.

    For example, just like now a critical with a non-lethal weapon or skill cannot automatically wound. In the case of a critical with a Dodge or similar the obvious choice is to cancel all opponents dice since a critial on such a skil provides no additional benefit.

    Criticals can also still cancel, using the same format as my previous post:

    Autocancel: If both players have rolled one or more criticals as part of a FTF roll then all dice are removed form the table by both players and nothing happens.

    I'd encourage anyone to give this rule change a try and report their experiences.
     
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  14. sorniak

    sorniak Well-Known Member

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    Can you elaborate, please, a little more on those humber. Who is active and reactive, what weapons/burst?
     
  15. Stiopa

    Stiopa Trust The Fuckhead

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    @Mahtamori or it'd force players to think about anti-TAG weapons, instead of fishing for a crit with a Combi. Wu Ming with Combi has no business hunting TAGs. Wu Ming with Multi, more so. AP, K1, AP+DA, AP+EXP - most armies have access to them. Then there's E/M, Jammers, hacking, Adhesive... we have enough tools to deal with TAGs without resorting to crits.
     
  16. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Wu Ming with Combi also has E/Mitters.

    What I'm digging at is that other games have tanks that require you to use anti-tank weapons and when the game hasn't been designed from bottom up with that in mind it skews heavily the factions with limited anti-tank or uneven anti-tank. Even games that have been designed in such a way gets really weird when a majority of units are just not very dangerous to a particular subset of other units.
    Above all else, what I think has contributed to Infinity's success is that all units ARE dangerous to all units.
     
  17. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Wu Ming is the active unit, both in cover, both at 10", Wu Ming has 5man core.

    Looking at active turn Maruts isn't quite as interesting :p
     
    #1217 Mahtamori, Oct 31, 2019
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2019
  18. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    Crits are fine. It's Fatality L2 that pushes it over the top. Full Auto L2 makes the Kriza too good of a shooter for its points cost. And the new Total Immunity makes those units far too durable for their points.

    Whoever's been designing skills recently needs to stop. Unfortunately we have no indication that CB understands the problem (or even reads a thread like this, it's huge).
     
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  19. SpectralOwl

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    Problem is, they simply aren't. Being able to stack a -12 BS modifier renders more than half the opposition in the game useless, which can usually be done by Suppressive Fire TO or ODD in cover or stacking Smoke and MSV2, both options being typically available for about 30-40 points. Is it unreasonable to expect investing a similar amount into armour should require your opponent to bring harder-hitting weapons in the same way that Smoke and visual modifiers require MSV2 and Sensor networks to compete?

    The issue with ARM as a defense is that skills with soft counters available are usually discounted, but despite ARM having possibly the most counters in the game (AP, K1, Monofilament, the existence of BTS, Critical Hits) ARM 1 costs about as much as Mimetism for about a 5% chance of not being wounded, sometimes. And this cost only goes up for each additional point. If you ever need proof CB have no idea how useless that stat is, check the Spec Ops builder; in XP, frickin' ARM 3 is worth as much as a second wound.
     
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  20. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    You need to stack -15 MODs when you're reactive because your opponent can pick range and shoot in their +3, though in active turn MOD stacking is a valuable tool versus TR HMGs but often a waste of orders against lesser targets. Smoke also has more counters than just MSV2 in melee or simply overwhelming the smoke-applying trooper, in addition, smoke often denies combat it doesn't make only one side invulnerable.

    Yes, there is a huge discrepancy between the cost of ARM below 8 and Mimetism, and the fact that cover's ARM MOD doesn't have much in the way of counters - not to mention that mimetism helps you win FTF which is preferable from avoiding losing, but we're talking about the most extreme cases of ARM here, not the tin foil extra protection that a heavy infantry has over a Designated Target's business casual. We have 3 or 4 units where ARM gets stacked so high that the essentially logarithmic distribution of ARM breaks the points investment curve and starts heading through the roof and unlike the Great Wall of China, the Jotum's ARM value can be seen from the moon.

    If we didn't have those TAGs (or any TAGs!) then, yes, removing auto-wound part of critting would probably work decently.
     
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