@CabalTrainee Some missions score on points. So killing ~90pts of something that can't fight back is useful often enough to be relevant. You can always break the link for a Coord. It's often a good choice. You don't need to deploy MLs on towers and TAGs are often large enough targets that a couple of orders Moving will get you into LOS. This BTW is before you look at linked ML with mobility skills (Hollowmen), who have absolutely no issues exploiting their ML against most things even when they can shoot back. I've done this with core-linked HRL (Wildcat vs IMM-1 Cutter inside the trigger area of an EMauler), core-linked ML (Alg Leaning Out vs Stunned Squallo I'd caught out of position due to an ARO Stun), Core-Linked HI ML (Grrls vs a few different things, albeit nothing spectacular), I should have done it vs a Hsien and instead lost an unlinked Tsyklon Feurbach (I'd only -6'd it). Only reason I haven't done it with a Core-Linked MB ML is lack of game time with that list and targets (it's a lot harder to effectively do this to LI/MI AROs which is what I mostly faced last time I was playing). Sure those aren't all linked ML, but it's illustrative of the broader point I was aiming for: "high lethality low burst primary ARO weapons start being extremely useful aggressively when you don't need to worry about the enemy shooting back". TBF, though, generally I do anti-TAG combo attacks with BSGs or Warbands: the biggest issue for these troops is DTWs, so getting a Stun/IMM off first opens up options, and they are relatively easy to get into position.
There's language that exists along a spectrum that goes something like 'this model is powerful -> very powerful -> overpowered -> broken' that implies a shifting burden of responsibility for the speaker's success against that model from them to the developers. If you're saying something is 'overpowered', for example, there's an implicit judgement there that the designers have made a mistake and it's their job to fix it. This has always struck me as a relatively useless way of thinking about things. Just apart from the fact that when taken in extremis it retards personal growth, it seems like an awful end goal to have a game that is updated and changed by the developers based on unvetted internet hot takes. Like just fucking imagine how much more of a shitshow these forums would be if the power of everyone's personal factions scaled proportionally to how much and how loudly they complained about things. (Fun fact, I don't actually have to imagine, because I was around for the Privateer Press community-integrated design experiment. Excuse me while I have a post-traumatic incident.)
Have you been visiting the Nomads forum recently? Because there is an opinion there that power of factions is influenced by how loudly the whining is.
I'd say it's more explicit. Well, optimally they should judge the power level of things in Infinity by playtesting, but I hear people at CB don't play Infinity much anymore, tbh, and sometimes there's a problem when the developers stop playing their own game, to where they lose sight of how the game's actually played. CB is finally coming around to the idea that people play very cautiously with their lieutenants in the last couple years; I remember Plebian talking about how there was a big disconnect from what CB thought to how the game was actually played in this regard. Someone yapping on the internet doesn't mean much, *unless* nobody's actually objectively evaluating the game elements in question. Moreover, with respect to your idea that understanding an overpowered game element is a useless way of looking at things, I just have to say you're wrong. If you understand that your opponent is using an overpowered interaction that the designers didn't understand themselves, you should assess that and make it a priority to deal with if you're going to win the uphill battle you're going to have to face.
In relation to this, people bitching about power levels is how you end up with a faction getting chain nerfs for nearly a year straight without any trade offs leading them to to become completely unviable outside of super swingy builds that were going to get nerfed in the next update.
I've always found Devs that use community sentiment to provide general guidance but ignore it for specific mechanical changes is a good balance. Take the Crits change. * Widespread community feeling that crits where too strong and undermined defensive stats. * Specific mechanical change implemented that addressed the issue, but without community participation in the process. It's the difference between unvetted internet hot takes driving dev cycles and using the community as a source of data.
But you could also get a situation where the community's common wisdom (i.e. Cryx infantry being too damn good in MK II) is ignored for far too long.
Pre-nerf Body and Soul is my personal bar for 'ok, possibly the devs fucked up here a little bit'. Ah, those were the days. Fortunately, Infinity's core mechanics provide a robust insurance policy against that kind of imbalance materialising. Warmachine's MTG-inspired design roots meant that Body and Soul was literally unbeatable by entire factions nine games out of ten with a player who understood the matchup at the helm. A similar level of game lockout is pretty much impossible to reproduce in Infinity without significant additional elements (terrain, player skill, luck) being heavily involved.
In this case, SSL1 Jammers are quite literally broken because Reset wasn't designed with it in mind, and are able to score repeated uncontested hits against nearly any target under certain common circumstances- something that isn't supposed to happen in Infinity N3 without an extreme positioning advantage. While the Jammer design space certainly has the potential to add a lot to Infinity, the general consensus is that their proliferation actually hinders more than it helps in terms of variety in lists and tactics since nearly every list has to bring specific counters to this one tool, which are distinct from what you need to solve most other problems in the game and which are often somewhat rare or limited for many factions. This type of situation does warrant an intervention by the developers as ultimately their goal is to sell models and books, and having three-quarters of your products become relatively useless in actual play is likely to start costing sales; just look at the Shang-Ji, a very significant model for the Yu Jing range that almost never sees use anymore because it doesn't have a niche to justify its increased price. While players can ultimately get the best experience out of finding existing ways around problems like this in the short term like you suggested, making sure feedback on widely disliked elements is actually seen is still probably a good idea. We know CB's testing process isn't all that robust thanks to the SHIELD programs, and there's a lot of areas that could see some improvement that most players are aware of by now.
I agree that the reset interaction with SSL2 doesn't seem like the rules are functioning as intended (similarly to how the LOF rules weren't functioning as intended, before CB addressed it with a fix). This is how the word 'broken' actually should be used. The issue is that the word is far more often used as a synonym for 'overpowered', which is the direction this thread has headed in. I'd like to see that specific interaction fixed (and fix the similar breakwater ARO issue while they're at it), because it's non-intuitive and a tick to explain to new players (my hopeless dream for N4 is to have no rules interactions that I need to preface with 'bear with me, this will get weird' when explaining to someone who hasn't encountered it before). So while I don't per se have balance concerns about it (at least in terms of balance for competition, since in a competitive game you should not usually be declaring reset often against a jammer because that implies you walked into a jammer ZOC without a plan), a game that wants to be good needs to be intuitive and understandable regardless of balance.
You could substitute B&S with almost any of their themes, Cryx had more playable themes than any other faction (especially when youre on the receiving end of it from one of the top players on a regular basis), with some not having any. But as you said the core mechanics prevent the game from being solved to the point where you don't need to play the game, and for the most part infinity is incredibly balanced. However this balance does mean that when something is order of magnitudes above the average power level of the game or a rule is broken it sticks out like nothing else and people latch on to it hard (as this and threads like it demonstrate).
"Nothing is overpowered, just git gud. A few interactions might be somewhat broken, otherwise nothing is overpowered, people who say things are overpowered have no argument they need to git gud" This thread is gold to me. It's gone so many different directions at this point that it's fascinating.
Do they, though? Do they provide a robust insurance policy against it? Look over the most commonly occurring mechanics complaints and the most common feature of them is that they are about abilities that ignore or diminish those core mechanics. SSL1 Jammer - FTF mechanic disabled Jammer in general - FTF mechanic significantly reduced with no consequence to attacker Hackable (non-hacker) vs AHD - FTF mechanic significantly reduced with no consequence to attacker AHD in active turn - this is a power scale complaint Kamau in Fireteams - this is a power scale complaint Cored X-visored LGLs - FTF mechanic significantly reduced with no consequence to attacker Sixth Sense in Fireteams - ironically enough this ensures the FTF mechanics can always be used, but is also a power scale complaint Change Face Shenanigans - FTF mechanic disabled Bolts - this is a faction internal power balance complaint Crit mechanic - ARM/BTS mechanic disabled Everything can be boiled down to being a power scale complaint, of course, where pricing is used to parry the performance increase the ignoring mechanics causes, but generally speaking denying the player a sense of agency is not a good idea and the simple fact that Warhammer took the novel approach to almost always give the player an ARM roll - a sense of "I can do something to stop this" - has been held as one of the bigger secrets to its success.
I agree that it is more constructive to use the term 'broken' to mean 'not working as intended'. If it is used synonymously with 'overpowered', it just gets harder to identify the real problem. We do that better if we separate things we don't agree with in the design clearly between these categories. In the instance of jammers, using this specific terminology it is clearly Reset that is the broken component that needs to be fixed to get the game working. The reset skill is the only one that can protect against comms attacks, and we know since before that as it is written, there is a massive loophole that prevents it from functioning the way most of us would like it to function. Whether having a non LoF weapon with fireteam bonuses is too powerful is a different discussion, and one that I think can only be answered after testing it for an extended period of time. One may have a gut feeling about it, but I often find that things that I think look good on paper don't work as well in practice, at least for me. I'd like to say that I will agree that it may be overpowered if it forces me to play differently from how I would otherwise play against anything else in the game. The thing is, that i already swing a wide berth around jammers in other armies, and hackers if I'm using HI or TAGs, and as long as I stay outside of ZoC it doesn't really matter if it's burst 1 or 2. One other issue that I think we should discuss, perhaps in another thread, is the question of balance at different skill levels. Something might be weak at a high competitive level, while still being very difficult for new players to deal with. For that reason I think it would be good if we as a community could start to compile a sort of guide with various 'moves' and solutions to common situations in the game. I think it would be helpful for the growth of the community, both regarding introducing new players, and helping intermediate players advance in skill.
Jammers make me think about how can guided ammunition be fixed in n4 without becoming long range jammers (in terms of interaction, f2f rolls and attacker safety) but with killing capabilities.
For clarity: Body and Soul was a balance fuck up, not a mechanical clarity fuck up. It's strength was such that whole factions' only solution to it competitively was to hope to dodge it. That level of power is presently impossible to replicate in infinity.
Body and Soul seems to be a specific deck type with infinite synergies not specifically attributed to a specific card and somewhat reliable to start, but beyond that I can't actually see what made it strong as MTG is a bit too opaque to me. Unless my surface level look at it misses the mark completely, I don't see how that is a relevant comparison to make now that I look into it simply because MTG has a core design philosophy regarding synergies that Infinity doesn't have*. I assumed it was a specific card like the good old tomb that was responsible for skewing the deck. * Well... it does have that in the core mechanics, but it is a very under-developed section called "Supportware", so let's hope they don't buff EVO Devices even further in N4
