I've been working on a personal project to evaluate the strength and efficiency of troopers and need to determine what powerful ARO and active attack pieces are most commonly seen on tables. I'm asking in this thread for users to post top 3 to 5 ARO and attack pieces that you think represent the meta you play in best. Functionally similar units need not be listed individually (for example a zero in suppressive fire and a heckler in suppressive fire could be consolidated under suppressive skirmisher). Any feedback you all could give would really be appreciated. FYI right now the representatives are: ARO - linked HI missile, linked kamau sniper, TR bot, suppressed skirmisher, and TO sniper. Active - TAG, linked HI spitfire, Skirmisher Red Fury, TO sniper, and linked LI HMG.
ARO- Mines, Flash pulses, Crazy koala's, Linked Kamau, various things under markers. Active - MSV HMG, Kriza/TM, Hardcase/Liberto, HI lead Fireteams, Warbands.
ARO - Core Kamau*, Helot* LRL, Jammer*, TO Proxy/Noctifier/Lynx*, Hacking (Oblivion mostly) Active - Haris**, Kriza HMG, Sheskin, Dakini HMG, McMurrough when available *Shavasti, Varuna, O-12 and Spiral are vastly overrepresented in our meta, in that order. ** Haris in general. Typically with a HMG, but a group of 3 being the most common push-and-push.
Haqqislam ARO - Al Fasid smoke grenades Haqqislam Active - Hakim SMG, Link team Khawarij rocket launcher, Link team Odalisque nanopulser TAC ARO: Antipode Assault Pack, vet kazak x-visor in suppressive fire, Spetsnaz in suppressive fire, minelayers, linked MSV frontovik TAC Active: Spetsnaz, Linked vet kazak HMG, Dog-warriors, Ratnik
But the best ARO piece in the game is Ryoken Unit-9 (Forward deployment L2, ODD) in suppressive fire.
AROs: Long-ranged Hard ARO with SSL2. Not just Kamau, but Grenzers, Grrls, MB MLs, Tysklon Feurbachs, Frontoviks and Phoneix also fill this role. Most lists still feature one of these to focus enemy attention. You could probably spit this into 2W and 1W options, but realistically I think there's a lot of overlap in how they drive list design (both in the owning player and in dealing with it). TR Bot. These are seriously common still, and for good reason. 24" secondary AROs. Usually things like Flashpulses and unlinked Panzerfausts; they provide a second layer of defence after the hard ARO has gone down, or in its absence. This is Flashpulse bots Daylami and other similar spammable ARO options. TO AROs. Posthuman MSRs, Noctifier MLs both are common. 'Suddenly ARO' is one of the most complicated things in Infinity to deal with. DTW carriers. Usually a third line of AROs designed to prevent alpha strikers getting into the squishy core. An absolute staple of many lists, usually a Warband's Chain Rifle, but CSU's Nanopulsars and similar also do good work in this space. Notably rarer AROs*: Hacking, unlinked non-TO ML/MSRs, SWC guns on Suppression Fire Attackers: Core linked HI HMGs. Classic brute-force door opener, that still performs well in a lot of situations. MML2 REMs. Often TR Bots as these are great swing role pieces that gives solid attacking options, but equally Bulleteers and Rui Shi are common. SK Assassins. Speculos, Fidays, Oni and Bran. They're powerful, and you expect to see them in a lot of lists they're an option in. Top-tier Warbands. Dogs, Uberfalls and Antipodes are common as a 0SWC rambo. Spec Fire. Common across a lot of factions as a 'how do I deal with this?' option. Notable rarer options*: AD, linked MSRs, CC troops without efficient Smoke or a Marker state, Bikes * It's not that these aren't seen, but more they're either limited to either particular factions or less common builds. It was hard limiting it only 5 options. The wider SE-Aus meta is quite diverse, so I've had to leave a lot of common things out. So 'SK Missiles' (Libertos, Hardcases, Imposters) could easily have justified a place alongside SK Assassins.
for me.. MSV2 core linked is one of the nasty ones. White noise and eclipse are not so common. TO with long range weapon. Better template ones, but MSR are also a thing, just usually not as powerful All other defensive linked core pulsebots, minelayers, jammers, perimetral and other delaying tools. total reaktion. Now it has more problems than time ago, but still, is a solid option, and works fine as a secondary spearhead and after that, expensive linked dudes, neurocinethics, and all other aro options.
Nice summary. Yeah I think 'Any trooper with a deployment skill and a shotgun, good CC, mines or an smg', fits in the SK Assassins category, though it's hard with just 5 categories, ideally you'd have a few sub flavours. Same with linked HI HMGs. You could broaden that to any linked B3+ 24"+ +3 range band swc costing weapon. Or even leave off the linked bit maybe. Depends how broad you want to be.
But surely, if sub flavours are needed it should be possible to sift out which sub-flavour sort of represents what you'll find more often in your meta, unless that's not quite possible in which case that should also be an answer?
I would sift them out into a sub category apart from the 5 category limitation. Practically I find the attack pieces used are very diverse though, so putting impersonators with shotguns vs camo skirmishers with shotguns just depends more on what faction I'm playing that day. They're not that functionally different compared to a linked Hmg guess though there are important differences.
Yeah, the difference I see between Sk Assasins and Sk Missiles is whether you try to keep them alive for subsequent turns / to force your opponent to dig then out. Also the range of targets: Assasins can pretty much take out any unit in the game, if you put the orders into it. They also tend to have 'advanced'deployment rules: Sup Inf, HD or Impersonation. They also tend to be hyperspecialised as attack options, so are usually preserved for this role. Both Hardcases and Libertos you're probably OK losing to a suicide play while trading with them. Speculos or Fidays that's far less true of. Also, quite often, when present on the table, they're not used for major attacks. Bandits kinda sit between the two. They're good enough that you don't want them to be one way, have a wide target set. But they still need to push through the midfield, and are cheap enough that you can afford to lose them for a good trade. So they're probably more the premiere example of an Sk Missile more than they are a ghetto Sk Assasin. Both are present in our meta. But in terms of my gut reaction, I feel that Assassins are more of a list feature that drives gameplay whereas units like Libertos and Hardcases often end up being used for other rolls (both make good pieces to lose to defensive trades). So they're less a 'featured attacker' but rather more of an opportune one. My guiding factor was more 'what opponent capabilities do I go "I need an option to deal with X“ on an average Thursday night at SITH", which means I've favoured things that you need specific responses to rather than things that you should be able to deal with in the normal course of events.
I'm surprised noone mentioned the TO Missile as an ARO piece. It's much more scarry than the sniper (template or AP, EXP). The Swiss and Hac-Tao also add to this high BS, 2Wo and short range defense. Also as a reactive piece : any hacker SK with template or mine. MK2 hacker being the most scarry example (AHD so can hack any HI/Tag that come to close, both DTW and ITW, NWI)
@Mahtamori mentioned the Noctifer (otherwise, I certainly would have). TO + dogged on a ML is pretty fun if you stack it with a TR bot, for example.
The issue of sub selections becomes important for the assumption of who can dictate the range. Obviously a missile is less effective I. ARO if a camo unit with red fury can get within 24" and a boarding shotgun is less effective if you can't get within 8. Going further with this I'm trying to come up with metrics by which you judge the strength of an interaction. Would love to hear thoughts. The first metric is orders until resolution. That is how many orders, on average, will it take for one of the combatants to end up dead and who's favored. The second is advantage, which is the %chance you deal damage - % chance anything else happens. The third is risk factor, which is %chance you cause injury divided by % chance you are injured.
First, you’re underselling catastrophic failure. It’s why Intruders vs Shock AROs are nervous even when you’re on stupidly high numbers and conversely why Tsyklons are comparatively so reliable (ARM3, Shock Immune and 3 wounds to kill). This assumes a combo with a healer, which for a lot of things should be assumed. Kamau for instance are particularly nasty because of how hard they are to kill Dead. So taking them Unc is important, but taking them directly to Dead means they don’t collect $200 have an opportunity to make you fight them on subsequent turns. The Kamau vs Core linked Feurbach Tsyklon match up is instructive: the numbers you often need to look at are Stun vs 2W. That’s often just as, if not more, important as 1W (+ Engineer) vs 1W. By way of an alternative example, running a 3-core Moira HMG brute forcing a Grunt Sniper makes me significantly more nervous than brute forcing a Frontovik Sniper. This is also part of the reason T2, EXP, ISO and IMM-2 AROs are so strong: a singles failure can often be unrecoverable. Second, you’re underselling templates in how they affect movement. To avoid inadvertently exposing secondary troopers to templates you often need to play less efficiently. You can probably add this as a factor onto the ‘orders to deal with’ metric. At high level play, most players can avoid inadvertently having secondary targets hit by templates, so it’s really an order tax rather than a lethality buff. Probably around 1/5 of an order over a non-template equivalent.
ARO Deployables (Mines, Perimeter Weapons) / Marker State (Camo / Impersonator) / Flash Pulse bots / Warcor / Kamau / Noctifer Active Sheskiin / Achilles / Intruder / Camo Skirmishers - - - - - I personally cut every direct, non-marker state ARO piece that cost more than a flash bot. My usual ARO game is Minelayer Speculo, Double Noctifer and Mines / Camo in the midfield. I protect my DZ with template saturation via Taighas / Ikadron. Active turn shooting has gotten so efficient, that outside of the Kamau (and even then it falls apart miserably to White Noise or Dazers) traditional standing ARO piece are going to take very little orders to dislodge. Camo and Impersonators usually have a guaranteed amount of orders they’ll waste before having to rely on dice. TO ARO (Missile Launcher being my favored one) are still the king of ARO imo. It’s the only way you get to dictate rangebands in the reactive turn and if you outplay your opponent and play smart, you actually get some of the best ARO odds achievable. They can easily turn a game around on a single dice roll and between -6 mods and 1W+Dogged (or 2W), they’re usually standing longer than other pieces. Switching to this playstyle has cut a ton of variance from my games as I rely a lot less of my opponent playing poorly and me rolling good (which is what traditional ARO hope for). My win-rate has significantly gone up since.
I'm just brainstorming what metrics allow me to compare a large swath of interactions to each other in a meaningful way. I want to be able to tweak single variables and still compare apples to apples. Obviously some things may not be able to be captured and will require me to think outside the lines but I think the analysis is still valuable (even if I can't account for things like using orders to move a link team to not be hit by a template ARO). The different situations generated by incapacitation vs death is one I go back and forth on. I've been leaning towards incapacitation as of late but it may be worth it to look at catastrophic failure as a metric. Unfortunately I don't think most tools are going to be able, on their own, to take variables like multiple targets being hit into account. The purpose of the analysis is to get a better sense of how straightforward face to faces go down on a macro scale, and hopefully the results help decision making overall but are going to require some critical thinking to use data effectively. The assumptions I'm using for this data are that (in general): - Offensive success is removing a target in an efficient number of orders, ideally without taking a large risk. A unit that removes a unit more quickly at lower risk is more powerful. - Defensive success is a little more complex but I define by the ability to cause an opponent to waste a disproportionate amount of orders to remove you if forced to engage. A unit that reliably forces a larger number of orders to be spent before it cannot fight is more defensively powerful. Obviously the second part of this is that it also has to project a credible threat so the enemy unit doesn't just walk past it.
Yeah, I don't think you really need to account for hitting multiple targets for AROing pieces: ARO templates are largely an order efficiency tax vs quality players. Honestly, you could probably get away with a 1.25-1.5 factor in wounds generated for active turn templates: the vast majority of the time there hitting only a single opposing trooper. I think in terms of metrics both likelihood of incapacitation and likelihood of unrecoverable incapacitation are important. It depends a lot on what you're comparing: for example, largely the fact that a Garuda has 2 Unc states is irrelevant, because it's usually going to be impractical to repair them whereas the 2 Unc states on a TR Bot, Rui Shi or Tsyklon is very often quite relevant. This is also important in terms of ADHL and EM 'kills': recovery from them is much more effective/efficient than from an AP+EXP hit.
