Just as a minor commentary, you'd probably want the isolation to last for two player turns, or they don't actually have any meaningful offensive effect apart from some niche interactions against link teams and posthumans.
What analysis? I ran numbers to compare Eraser to Jammer. For posterity, here is literally everything I said in that post. My "analysis" was me explaining the reasoning of my earlier conjecture and explaining some of the mitigating factors of how powerful the mechanic is. I didn't put that there, because the modifier to WIP was encapsulated in saying they were linked. Yes, and I was discussing a different situation, a comparison to Eraser in the active and reactive turn. None of the numbers are wrong. So you call me out for "posting incorrect analysis" that is all completely true, and then turn around and make up numbers? Are you kidding me? Your inability to read does not constitute a strawman.
Opponents already refuse to come within 8" of my Mutts, so I'm not sure the link bonuses are the issue. Maybe it's that the holoprojector will make it hard to find and eliminate the jammer, or that Mutts don't last long due to extreme impetuous. Or possibly the most vocal opponents of linked jammers are also just opponents of jammers generally. Anyway, point being that I'm not sure the numbers are that important since an unlinked jammer is already pretty much 100% effective at interdicting an 8" radius from anyone who's not a veteran.
And dropping things from Suppression, and screwing with Hackers. But yes, that full combo is maybe a little too strong a nerf. There's a couple of options to ease it off. * Leave Intuitive Attack (keeps them as a good no-risk Discover option, allowing them to mitigate the strenghlth of marker states) * Leave them at DAM13 and make them just ISO-1 (more offensive utility, but less defensive strength) But I'm kinda ok with them not really having an offensive use. All the units they're on already have reasonable offensive tools. I also do think you're underselling the usefulness of the 'niche' role of stripping link bonuses. I'd be very interested by a Claw programme that only did that.
Or has Stealth. It's mainly the SS Jammer that expands their potential. One of the easiest ways to attack a Jammer is with a Stealthed Irregular trooper: use Regular orders to Move with Stealth until you're in a position to attack, Attack using another Regular order, this leaves you with a second opportunity to Attack / Recover if you fluff the first.
0.5 SWC and a Comms Equipment designation may be enough at the minimum when combined with general nerfs to some of the fireteam bonuses and a Reset fix. More complete participation in the Hacking game is always a good thing.
Apropos of this entire thread, I'm a little worried for people's blood pressure if CB follows through on their promise to make hacking more viable and useful against a broader array of targets.
Eh, absolute worst case scenario there is basically what Mutts already are, but vulnerable to KHDs and reliant on fat, fragile robots instead of Dogged Smoke-chucking close range death machines. Better case is a wide range of attacks and debuffs that finally allow for the very interesting Hacking combat to be useful and relevant in most games, instead of just using high-end Hackers as White Noise dispensers and KHDs as Specialist Operative. I'm optimistic about Hacking changes so far, we'll see what they do with it in Code One before making any real judgements.
That's reasonable talk. Instead, follow me on a flight of prophetic fantasy as we cast our minds a year into the future, where a thread entitled 'assault hacking devices are broken and too cheap' has just been posted, probably by someone who two years earlier had posted an equally lengthy thread called 'killer hacking devices are terrible for the game and should be removed: discuss'. (In case the irony here wasn't coming through: I'm optimistic about hacking changes too. I'm also someone who likes asymmetric gameplay, so I don't really have many problems with jammers are they are or might be. Ways to engage outside direct gunfights are interesting to me, and offer different avenues of interaction. I hope new hacking is good for this.)
I just want to quote this oasis of reasonableness in a desert of hypothetical. Without discussing optimisation, jammers fulfill a role which is valuable for certain lists and can exist in the game happily. The egregious middle ground current jammers exist can be tweaked without throwing the whole concept out.
Hacking has direct counterplay in the triangle of Hackable > KHD > AHD > Hackable, whereas the only counterplay for Jammers is non-interactive (avoid the Jammer or have the Vet L1 skill to completely ignore the Jammer).
Yup. In theory, making them Comms equipment would allow some counterplay, but in my opinion not enough. I heard an interesting suggestion from someone, that using a Jammer should impose the Targeted state on the user, which would allow counterplay via spec and guided fire. Perhaps both those things together would be enough?
There's no interaction between KHD and Hackable, so a KHD doesn't care whether you're hackable or non-hackable, so there's no rock-scissor-paper mechanic at play, only two situations where there's a trump card to use against a specific trooper given the reason that there's no advantage difference between (for example) a Hac Tao with a KHD and a Hac Tao plain MRifle if they face off against each other (albeit, tactically the KHD still has the advantage due to button pushing). I honestly think that Oblivion makes the balance for certain Hackable units out of whack. For REMs this is not much of a problem, as I think it's fairly evident they receive a substantial discount for this vulnerability, but HI and TAGs that don't have mitigating factors, such as BTS 9 or marker state, a bit crummy. There's also the fact that Oblivion is so much stronger than other anti-HI/TAG hacking programs. Possibly making it 2 turns would mitigate it, but if Oblivion is to be on par with e.g. Basilisk it also needs to be Resettable. (And, because I can't stop typing, if it's Resettable then maybe AHDs should also go down in price so that they are accessible) P.s. I actually think that White Banner has been designed specifically to make use of the overpoweredness of Jammers for N3 at least, they've got a lot of good profiles but it's very hard to make good lists that aren't protected by Jammers. It's like "we know, this is your Proxy-equivalent, you're meant to have 1+ in each list"
Isolation is crippling, maybe almost on par on IMM2 (wider range of targets and looses the order, but a bit weaker effect, the trooper can still deffend himself or enter suppressive fire, and is not a null state), stronger than IMM1 (the weakest clippling effect in the game), but weaker tan unconscious (you loose the order, it cannot deffen itself, counts as null state at the end of the game). Oblivion is the strongest hacking effect because the other effects are awfully bad (apart from KHD, but again, KHD kills, so it applies an stronger clippling effect). Yes, possession is tough...but is one of the less applied effects in the game. TAGs are almost not fielded, even against non-hacking factions. KHD will kill the AHD easily, and line troopers can destroy also the repeaters without oposition, so the TAG can be freed from ARO menace easy. And if tryed in active turn, there will be not much remaining orders for abuse the possession. In the end, is more theorical than practical), and IMM1 is the less crippling effect in the game (ironically from what has been said here, reset can be declared almost for free in ARO when you are IMM1, so is easy to remove, and only a little problem of order spending if you get IMM1 in your own turn. But with all of that, isolation is not so tough and meta-bending as other skills in the game. Maybe the problem is that it helps to make some units more nasty and metabending, but not by isonlation itself. Also, people don't want to take into account the psicological effect of having a clippled trooper in the table, a dead one is worse, yet it is assumed to be lost, the isolated one isnt.
Ah good, I'm finally reading comments about Jammer, not personnal attacks and bold fonts. bueno bueno
You and I tend to have very different evaluation on heavy infantry, so for that reason I am curious what you'd prefer if you had to choose; a cheaper AHD where Oblivion would be removed or a more expensive AHD where the other programs inflicted IMM-2 instead of IMM-1?
I directly think AHD (And offensive hacking apart from KHD) is underperforming in active, and oblivion is the only redeeming hacking program, so a cheaper one without oblivion would just be as bad (or even worse) as it is now, but I know that applying IMM2, the way it works now, is too much. Maybe an IMM2 for only 2 turns (As the one applied by electric pulse) or a limit to the number of times you can try to take out IMM with reset (if you fail in active, you cannot try again, like the discover rolls), or a cumulative malus for each negative effect on you (so an isolated and IMM1 HI could do reset like now, but with a -6, for example). As it is now, is not doing is work in active (in reactive it does against most HI, not against stealth ones), but too much power is not needed.
Making Jammer users hacklable against Sword and Claw would be a nice way to allow a wide selection of units to be a counter. Only Ariadna comes to mind as beeing still problematic in that case. They would maybe need something else.
