Probably something along the lines of "When acting in an ARO Troopers use Burst 2 rather than the usual of their weapon, unless the Burst of their weapon is usually lower than 2" With an example about a Missile Launcher. Then all the other rules which currently stand, that change or replace Burst value, either remain the same (Total Reaction) or are adapted to fit the new rule (Overclock).
Burst 2 in ARO for everyone would make it too hard to kill stuff on the Active turn (or rather, more resource intensive), and not much would get done. It would reward just sitting there and relying on AROs, AKA it would be boring. It's not really a problem with links because 1) they enforce a restrictive list building structure by design, and 2) part of the tactical fun of link teams is figuring out how to strip those bonuses from them.
Agreed, extra Burst in ARO is powerful and should not be widespread. The few profiles with Neurocinetics or Total Reaction exist entirely for this purpose and would be useless otherwise.
There are a lot of different ways that the active/reactive balance could be changed. For example, something like Suppressive Fire where you shoot full burst but with reduced bonuses could have been chosen instead of B 1. In fact, there are a lot of things that alter how AROs work these days, compared to what was in the 1st/2nd edition core rules. But if you want to do thought experiments about how core rules could be altered, the sky's really the limit.
Nope, that's a step too far for me. Winning/losing to dumb luck has no real bearing on player skill. As much as the better player will have planned to eat a lucky crit or seven, this is functionally no different than losing the roll normally and then failing an armour check. The only difference is that the latter will likely happen less and player skill has a direct place to play in mitigation of it through good use of ranging, cover, and other situational modifiers. You don't need a critical pass/fail mechanic to force unlikely results and on-the-ball thinking. And as much as receiving a lucky crit forces the player to re-evaluate and adapt it has the exact opposite effect on your opponent, handing them a freeby they neither planned for nor ultimately deserved. So at best, crits cancel out, forcing the receiver to think on their feet while handing an effort-free win to the perpetrator. But I don't think it is quite that simple either. In general, something as random and capricious as a crit don't really teach anyone anything other than "you can be fucked at any time, regardless of skill or preparation". This would be a fine lesson, but it is one the basic rolling system can teach as well (your bad-ass HI with an HMG rolls a 1, 17, 18, and 19 while their opponent rolls a 3, winning the exchange by unfortunate flub) and arguably teaches you better by also teaching you best practices (like using cover and manipulating modifiers). And while I'm fine with crits having some effect (my preference is still auto-winning a FtF and providing a +3 to weapon damage), I think their current effect is too polarizing and really only punishes certain kinds of units in the current meta. Some kind of destabilizing mechanic needs to exist to give AROs enough teeth to be risky, but right now they go far enough that only expensive, elite troopers are really adversely affected by them (especially those with more points in defenses). It is kind of telling that most HI and TAGs could have their ARM cut in half (and points reduced accordingly) and they'd come out ahead in terms of cost-effectiveness for dumping the excess stats. While this is true of other stats *cough*CC*cough* I don't think pointing that out is really a point in favour of punishing defensive stats with a powerful crit mechanic that ignores them (because not being quite as worthless as non-specialist increases in CC is just about the lowest bar one can clear). Either way, crits do nothing to help Infinity's skill ceiling and like most "equalizing" or "destabilizing" mechanics, actually bring it down quite a ways by limiting how much of a factor skill can be in every exchange. This is why most competitive games eschew RNG, because the more random factors play in to things, the less a player is able to use their skill to set themselves apart. I've seen games where legitimately worse players have won on the back of crits alone and they taught the loser no lessons for their troubles because they already were playing better than the other guy. I've seen armies tabled because one side rolled nothing but crits when it counted. At the end of the day, the crit mechanic only serves to lower Infinity's skill ceiling by giving worse players freebies they didn't earn with good planning. Good players don't need the handout given by crits and they learn little from receiving them that they didn't already know (i.e. don't put all your eggs in one basket, have backup plans). There is a reason 2nd Edition was all about non-interactive, reaction-free active turns using camo spam and why a good player could simply table a worse one with no casualties. But that environment no longer exists in N3 because there are so few sources of first-strike and out-of-synch actions. In 2nd Edition, good players mitigated the random factor of crits by simply winning before they became a factor, now that that isn't an option, crits only serve to lower the skill ceiling and little else. There are better ways to empower AROs without using the full crit system as it existed in 2nd Edition (well, aside from the more complex result rubric they got rid of). Good players will still win against poor ones, but the higher amount of chaos given the interaction of crits and FtF rolls means that skill caps out sooner and there is less nuance between various levels of skill (since RNG can account for a greater slice of the pie).
Bad rolls can and will be min-maxed by a player to the point that they actually don't change a plan significantly. In fact, the reason a crit is so swingy is because of the decisiveness of the effect (auto-wound). Often, a crit will typically win a face to face as well. Most of your other points rely on statistical liklihoods nearing on decimal places. Winning an entire game on the back of crits against a good opponent (ie. someone who can and has come prepared to get critted) requires not only quite a few crits, but to get crits in decisive moments where odds of crits are sub 5% (burst 1 vs B4-5) Most competitive games which eschew randomness are often dominated by "meta", and the game is almost entirely skill based. I don't think we need to refine the game to olympic levels of niche competition to still consider the game and its ruleset competitive or that skill is not a large factor in determining who wins. The less you focus on crtis, the less you might notice them "totally dictating the result of the game". I think there is probably a non-trivial factor in the psychological crtis have one a game result as well, people who get critted are much more likely to feel hard done by and start giving up or making irrational decisions.
I think the psychological factor of crits is a significant driver behind threads like this one. And I'm not pretending I'm immune to this; I've gotten completely demoralized after a round of early crits and had it negatively affect my play for the remainder of the game.
The more I play, the more I tire of crits. But in a world without crits, how would we handle stats over 20?
This is basically where I'm at. After playing this game since release back in 2005, I find crits sort of fatiguing. I don't feel joy when I get them. When they happen to me, especially in cases where I've otherwise outplayed my opponent, they actively annoy me because they made my skill in the situation null and void (while rewarding bad positioning or sloppy play on my opponent's part). But at the same time, AROs are kind of toothless without some kind of chaos (or alternatively reliability, such as that found in links, Neurocinetics, and TR) injected in to them (because giving more dice and control over modifiers to one player sort of takes most of the risk out of things). Further, crits are basically how CB made CC at all worthwhile in N3 (though even then, only with specialist skills and values over 20... so still not really fixed, especially not for units that put the points in to it without going all the way to making it useful). Ultimately, if crits are the only things making AROs functional and the only reason to use CC, then I think that's more indicative of an endemic issue with the system itself than an indicator that crits are an important mechanic (especially considering that they do it in such a random way). If anything, that makes crits more of a band-aid solution to a deeper issue in terms of the reaction system, action economy, and the value of defensive stats. This is why my easy first potential fix would be to keep the trump card aspect in the FtF roll while merely giving it a +3 damage bonus instead of ignoring armour. This would keep its main perk (giving ARO's teeth) while getting rid of the main downside (devaluing high-cost armour stats). CC would suffer a bit of course, but even after N3 I feel like close combat isn't in a great place (and largely still isn't competitive in most cases). But yeah, after all these years, tired of crits is a good way of putting it. I've seen them turn fun games in to slogs, I've seen them drain all hope from a new players face, I've seen them allow bad players to win against good. I've never seen them have any sort of positive effect, the only memorable moment they created was seeing a game in which on player rolled nothing but crits (and it isn't a fun memory) and the only reason they seem to be around is to provide a band-aid fix for some under-performing sub-systems. After a few of decades of wargaming with dozens of different systems, that's a clear indicator that something isn't working and that crits as they currently are probably weren't the best solution.
While I'm not the biggest fan of the mechanic, the current Crit system's impact to ensure game balance should be pointed out at least once. Some people, mostly those in favour of a drastic change, seem to be unaware of the ripple effects for the game as a whole. CC for instance is viable right now thanks to Crits. A CC23 troop with MA3 not only Crits on 14s but also turns a rolled 1 into a 7 (A lot of people seem to be unaware that CC value >20 is added to your Roll regardless if you Crit or not). A CC troop with about a 1/3 Crit chance, mediocre PH and without a DA/EXP CCW like a Myrmidion, relies on higher than normal Crit chance to make him scarier than a Contender shot. Everything with Berserk and AP CCW or things like Fidays lose quite a bit of value if you take automatic Wounds on crits from them. DAM +3 doesn't cut it. CC also isn't a standalone mechanic, it interacts a lot with things like guns to shoot stuff out of the way or to keep options open as well as i.e. Smoke or Marker States to provide a reliable delivery mechanism. Without autowounds from Crits a Jotum or Avatar is suddenly very hard to kill in CC and multiple times more resilient against Normal Ammunition (LSGs, Rifles, HMGs...) for free. Regular (Combi)Rifles are deadly weapons right now, for anyone who doubts that take a look at a few of @barakiel 's battle reports. They're more than enough to keep the same Jotum or Avatar from roflstomping through your backline of cheerleaders on his own across several turns. While not being an optimal solution at either short or long range, basic guns and Linetroopers are currently always available to pick up the slack, even after a streak of bad luck. I'd like to keep the status quo that a 10 points troop is an actual threat to everything in the game in his +3 Range and Active Turn. Speaking only for me personally the impact of bad luck and eating seven crits to the face on a games outcome has been fairly minimal. We all blamed Crits for a situation where in reality, a badly executed plan or missing backup might have been the real culprit. But let's face it we don't always objectively judge our own mistakes in the heat of a moment. I do not lose many games and spend significant time with the game. After putting in the time to analyze my own losses, for the most part the other guy simply played better overall. The most important thing is to never give up until it is over, a lot of missions can at least be tied, even from a very bad position. Not playing the mission properly has far more impact than Crits on the game. Putting the other guy in Retreat by accident has lost me more games than bad dice ever have. CB's entire point value system would break and need a complete rebalance with a change to Crits. While it might not be perfect, pricing overall is in a very good place. Most changes blatantly disregard that costs aren't adjusted by hand but by a formula. Be it extra CC value, situational Equipment or Fury discounts - those are the things CB manually adjusts to balance the troop, not their costs. What GW does - readjusting point costs without changing the Profile - is impossible in Infinity. Changing Crits changes or breaks the formula and requires a compete rebalance and adjustment in point costs of pretty much every Crit related stat and Skill. Pretty much every troop in army could be affected and drop or increase a few or a lot of points. So keep in mind any change to Crits is a lot of work and will most likely require hundreds of hours of playtesting as well as a new edition of the Game - with the added risk for CB to destroy the game balance and skew things towards a specific playstyle, something they've been doing their best to avoid with every new ITS season.
I don't think anyone is arguing that crits are not working as intended in CC. I'm certainly not. The reason crits make so much sense in CC is that they capture the 1) lethality of close combat weapons and 2) the wide disparity of CC training and skills reflects how that is much more likely to have wide differences than shooting training. An Oniwaban with a Monofilament weapon popping out and deleting a guy is fine -- it generslly takes more orders than shooting and should logically be more deadly. On the other hand, it both doesn't feel good gameplay wise and doesn't make sense in the game setting that my one random pistol shot at a Jotum in ARO has a 5% chance of instantly doing damage to it. CC is reasonably lethal. There's a reason my Ninja should be critting most units about 1/3 of the time. There's no reason Tarik should be critting with his gun with the same frequency as an Oniwaban though -- it's not good design. The problem is having different ways of handling crits in CC compared to shooting feels strange, and handling them differently for the active and reactive player feels equally prone to bloat.
CC is already fundamentally different, though it is hidden behind design instead of expressely stated in rules: * In CC, the active player does not have the advantage in burst * In CC, the active player can not manoeuvre to gain an advantage * In CC, neither the active nor reactive player can take it on the chin and then Guts out * In CC, a limited number of weapons have special functions (mainly all pistols and e/m ccw) * CC is the only attribute to reliably get over 20 without very special circumstances. The result is that in order to gain an advantage in CC you must have a better statline and/or special abilities meaning tactics stop once you get to melee and go straight to predetermined dice rolls. There are a number of (fairly comprehensive) changes that can be made to avoid this - increasing burst to 2 (with proper CCWs having 3) and seriously compacting CC values is one way. Respecting facing is another. Adding effects to Guts is a third. And so on. Let's not get too deep there. Bottom line: simply stating in the CC rules that crits are more lethal in X way wouldn't be very strange. Another way could be to put that under "attributes over 20" where you tie it to the value rolled and a roll of 21 or higher simply is more lethal (and bam and you've made it work for a small range of Marksmanship LX models in extraordinary circumstances as well) Still, and this does need repeating, there's a few models with ARM and BTS high enough that they become nearly immune to bullets and the game is too small scale to rely on rare equipment to take these on. So due to scale of the game, pistols and knives do need to be able to damage these - it is an unescapable fact.
Funny, that people think ARM cost is too high. In my opinion if you drop Crits like they are now you would have to make the price for ARM even much higher. Nowadays so many more players play HI or TAG lists. And as a Nomad player every time I had to face those I was lucky to have 2-3 hackers with Morans on the table. Otherwise it would have been very hard to me to deal with it. Without AP penetrating things or E/M what could I do? HMG Dmg 15? With cover they get so much ARM they laugh at you and you waste orders. Even CC with PH Dmg is a thing they laugh about. These are all things that happened in my matches. WuMing, PanO TAGs, MO HI... nothing to laugh about for me. Even my hacking has to suffer from these damn high BTS values. Oh and those TinBots + Fairy Dust, EVO Hackers etc. Like I stated before, I truely believe it is well balanced right now and every change has to consider so many things afterwards. @Teslarod described it even better. And this game would get boring without. It would be nothing more than Chess with some dices.
Regarding shooting at high arm models without crits seeming futile. I wonder if that argument “proves too much”. Consider the case of ODD or TO camo. It is very expensive order wise to try to shoot these models without specialized gear like visors or template weapons. Heck with the right set up regular line troopers can’t even roll dice against them when they are in surpression fire behind cover. Yet this defensive attribute is not affected by crits like armor is.
Except for when you stack -12 and the line trooper can't shoot back, you have an equal chance of critting vs any form of camo/ODD as you do a high ARM target.
It was just an example that this game balance is way more than just Crits but Crits are a part of it and you will open the gates of imbalance if you get rid of them. :( Just like @Teslarod wrote very well.
Sounds great. We've still got the entire hacking mechanic to deal with TAGs, and TAGs are proportinately hurt the most by crits as they pay for all the ARM that gets ignored.
Like I said earlier. If anything, you can always address particular cases. For example, if you feel CC will be exceedingly gutted by a change like this, you can always re-introduce the auto-wound rule or anything else as a CC Attack only rule. Or something along these lines.
As someone who does not like crits, allow me to disagree that Hacking is even remotely a viable method to efficiently handle TAGs. With regards to TAGs, the problem is their high survival, not their low survival, in regards to changes to crits. TAGs stand in the way because they are extreme profiles.
They are extreme skew profiles in only one aspect of the game though, which is active turn shooting with only a few being decent ARO pieces as well. They are really weak actors in the infowar with no way to deal with even regular hacking device skirmishers or pitchers out of line of sight. I think it's surprisingly easy to punishingly hack tags, it's a low risk high reward situation assuming you can get your Hacking area over them, it just costs a bunch of orders to do. A bunch of orders you would have otherwise have had to spend to shoot them over as they pass ARM saves I don't mind that one type of units act as a really powerful Rock that demands a neglected Paper to be considered during list building. It's a slightly derailing point, but I really don't think having no hackers and being unhackable should ever be a BENEFIT for a faction.
