This would also mean that hypothetically something like a K1 sniper for example could now be set at a damage that makes them worth taking... Ever, right? Just as an example.
I wonder if we'll see a HI Adil profile to coincide with the new Betrayal sculpt, and if so, what sort of CC suite he gets then. (Save the spoilers for elsewhere, my copy isn't in yet)
It did seem that way as you incorporated comments beyond hacking, but I see your main criticism was people claiming yu jing is good at hacking. I don't really see how you can quantify Yu Jing access to smoke as lower quality than most. Looking at just vanilla, Its really only Nomads and Ariadna that come out tops, maybe tohaa depending on what you're wanting from smoke. We're pretty similar to Haqq and I'd argue somewhat better than Combined, Aleph, O-12 and obviously better than PanO. IA is much worse and I'd argue ISS has relatively reliable access to smoke - so mid-tier. And then yes, we have excellent synergy with smoke. Some of the best infact. Which I think balances that we don't have as much access as Nomads and Ariadna, who have very little means to effectively smoke shoot right now. Regarding hacking, I think Yu Jing's main issue is the majority of our hacking is assualt hacking devices. Which come on some relatively good platforms. But the current meta really screwed AHD over. Hacking is really in favour of KHD and hacker+ or models with special access to the ultimate programs - very few of which come on assualt hacking devices. Its hard to predict where Yu Jing will come out in the update. Theres a few things going on with positives and negatives. But this affects most factions. Personally I'm optimistic. As we trade our spammy playstyle for hacking and heavy infantry more, we are well placed to do that.
Considering the Crane Armor mini that's coming out as well, highly likely to see that HI profile, but likely not much change to his CC loadout.
Well the main thing being that HI Adil, being in Crane armour, will likely end up being pumped to PH13. Unless they end up dropping that physique in a painfullytpainfully attempt to game their own point system again, that monofilament CCW is going to either have to go or be improved in order to justify the increased cost of that improved stat line. Simply sticking his current profile on a heavy armour frame wouldn't be enough to justify its worth, he'd need a bit further distinction. Especially since Cranes are already starting to feel overcosted in the current state of the game.
Haqqislam has more raw sources of smoke Fiday, Bikes, Al Fasid, Husam Yasbir, Ghulam, Muyibs, Yuan Yuans. They have more linkable smoke options plus more varied deployment options between Impersonators and for QK, AD troops that can deploy smoke. Yu Jing is nowhere near close in terms of smoke access to Haqq. Our options basically begin and end at using multiple Monks, using multiple Kuang Shi controllers is often out of the question because they cost SWC as well. Similar truth for CA, Speculo Killers give them amazing options in terms of smoke deployment. The Speculo Killer starting in front of your DZ and tossing a Smoke Grenade at a board edge which then has Ko Dali arrive in it and start shit blasting everything with MSV2 is a noob stomper combo as nasty as Van Zant. I'll remind you we lost our precision smoke deployment that could work like that when Kitsune left. I lost the ability to have her pop up at an unexpected spot on the table and in one order deploy a smoke template a Tiger Soldier used to enter a board edge close to my opponent's DZ that was otherwise being covered by an ARO piece and then rip into their deployment lines at close range or come back towards my lines and surgically remove their attack pieces from behind. The problem in N4 will only compound due to YJ's smoke access basically being built around 1 profile on an irregular impetuous trooper which will become harder to fit into lists. We will struggle to fit the same amount of monks into lists to deploy smoke while we still lack effective accurate smoke that uses BS/PH 13+, as well as precision deployment options such as Impersonators and Infiltrators. You say O-12 has worse access to smoke than Yu Jing, but the opposite will be true because of this. In N4 it will be far easier for an O-12 list to bring 4 VGs, because they are regular and don't cause order group problems. Meanwhile Yu Jing lists trying to bring 4 or 5 monks will be penalised by having too many irregular orders, and they can't do the same with Celestial Guards because they cost SWC. EDIT: Not really related but I just noticed the Monks have a smoke grenade launcher that costs 1 SWC for the privilege of bringing a BS9 grenade launcher whilst losing their regular smoke grenades. Just funny to look at such a sad and worthless profile. ISS is missing the Impetuous smoke thrower which is a key tool piece, both because order efficiency options and also because those protect other impetuous troops such as Kuang Shi. Their entire list of options begins and ends at literally 1 profile that can go into 2 very specific core links. We do have some very decent platforms for AHDs, but still as @Mahtamori continues to point out we don't have the repeater network to make them truly dangerous or oppressive. Druze's main power in their hacking game is a core linked WIP12 AHD but a massive repeater network that locks the board down and is a bitch to get through, and any attempt to assault the AHD with a KHD makes you eat multiple AROs in return making direct hacking wars very dangerous or costly to pull off. It's the repeater network that makes them the force to be reckoned with because it's a massive force multiplier for their otherwise average or hell, below average, hackers.
Please explain? Is it just the fact that armchairs love pitchers? Before anyone tells me its the forward deployed peacemaker obviously hasn't played a peacemaker on a variety of tables. That thing is pretty awful at no getting shot up turn 1 if you try to deploy aggressively to take advantage of repeater coverage.
Druze are good Hackers, with BTS, decent WIP and Pitchers. Brawler AHDs are cheap, but decent for the job of uncontested ORC-freezing. They've also got the full high-AVA REM spread, almost as good as PanO's, and their forward Specialist of choice, the Hunzakut FO, even has DepReps. There's no Ninja KHD equivalent for actually getting stuck into the enemy network and murdering their supportware gimps, and no White Noise, but otherwise Druze are barely a hair's breadth behind HD+ factions.
So from watching Druze operate in the local meta, the good Druze player tends to hack, the inexperienced one does not. Druze naturally build into a high hacking presence. All of their hackers except the EVO build into their core link so none of them are dead weight, bare minimum they serve purpose to continuously refill their amorphous core link to maintain fighting advantage. The EVO doesn't link but it's commonplace enough anyway because Druze generally have 3-4 REMs that benefit from Overclock. The Peacemaker is an ass to dislodge provided you don't play on badly open tables and the Auxbot actually has some ability to defend it. Burst 2 Heavy Flamethrowers are not the easiest thing to work around. Even if you kill it it tends to force trades or soaks orders instead of just allowing enemy lone specialists (like the KHD Ninja/Bandit) from quickly slapping buttons and running away. They have an expansive repeater network. Their have a high number of REMs that pack repeaters so punching into their DZ with anything hackable is difficult. Though you scoff at them Pitchers are big deal, they make pushing into the midfield with hackable attack pieces problematic, even those with solid Tinbot coverage. A Haidao feels good until he's trying to move and then has to figure out how to deal with 4 AROs trying to fry his brains out. Pitchers give a player the option to fire out a repeater from distance to lock a model/fireteam down, and then just ignore it. A Mowang is a great attack piece until it gets trapped under or blocked off by a pitcher it can't reach. Their hackers have SSL2 because they can core link. Stealth doesn't help, all it takes is one shitty 17pt Brawler forcing a reset to avoid an Oblivion and suddenly targets can get lit up by the rest the hacking group. People who don't foray into the hacking side of the game don't tend to understand how powerful repeaters and numbers (cheap hackers) are in establishing control, because they approach the game from a perspective of perpetually slicing the pie gunfighting where you only take 1v1 fights. In hacking fights, you either fight nobody or you fight everybody. The more hackers you have down with the more repeaters it becomes exponentially harder for the active player to penetrate the network because of the issues of hacking have low burst values. Druze have order efficient repeater coverage, their multiple links with pitchers can get multiple repeaters spread out per order, they start with heavy repeater coverage on the table, and they still have the option for dirt cheap infiltrating camo specialists who carry repeaters. And to reiterate again, they tend to have alot of hackers because they're both dirt cheap and they work as building blocks for their link teams or defense network. That's N3, now the fun stuff of N4 is coming about because Druze are seeing a couple of buffs in this department: Spotlight ARO changes and permanent Targeted debuff. Obviously this is pretty interesting for any faction that has a hacker. It's extra interesting for Druze because guess who core links with a Smart Missile REM? REMs can prone. Increases the amount of annoying places the Peacemaker can dig into Gromoz is getting buffed Overall are they as good as Nomads at hacking? No, but their answer to a superior hacking force is shelling the Tunguskan PH10 nerds with a core linked X Visor Grenade Launcher. Are they a more competent hacking force that can lock down or play area denial with far greater ease than Yu Jing? Most definitely. They have the ability to more easily bring a superior number of hackers with superior equipment and a far larger repeater network.
I appreciate the thorough write up! I hadn't actually considered EVO in druze which does push them into the critical mass of hackers that start marking it worthwhile and the 100 points spent for the basics of this hacking net don't feel completely wasted. In N3 though, facing too many non-hackables or an open table bones you VERY hard. So I do look forward to trying it out in N4. I don't find pitchers awfully reliant but if you're still packing a 5 man link when you need them its not too bad odds to get one down. There's a few ifs in there, particularly when talking about druze. REM going prone will be huge for the peacemaker. I honestly can't imagine the rat warrens you need to play on to have places that thing is in total cover from more than maybe 2 angles, and certainly not where someone can only engage it within 8". I missed the gromoz buff? whats that about?
She's got a regular HD so in N4 she's gonna pick up carbonite, oblivion, and if the Kappa hacker getting cheaper is anything to go by she'll get a points reduction too. Pretty good value on wild card trooper with a pitcher.
They drop pitchers on 18s at 16", that's about as good as you get for a sure thing in Infinity. I dug through random uploads, that was from an Armoury game I think 2 seasons ago? Yeah if I stick a Peacemaker right behind the objective room you could come down past the grey building on the right and shoot it through the open stair well but that's the thing, the Peacemaker isn't alone on the field. Yeah he'll have open attack vectors he can't protect himself from. So use the core linked MSV2 sniper to cover those vectors. ARO pieces including repeaters aren't infallible defenses, the goal is just to cost more orders than it's worth to get past them.
Dahshat is similar to Druze. They also have Hunz, Gromoz, Brawlers. They don't have the Pathfinder but they do have cheap Ghulam with Deploy-able repeater and E/Mauler. Then also Zhencha AHD. Also Goromoz can be in a team with the Zuyong TinBot B. Haris or Core.
It's not the size of your smoke it's how you use it? Smoke really does have two different criterias; how easy it is to access and put it down and how well you can exploit it afterwards. The main difference between Aleph smoke and Yu Jing smoke is, largely speaking, community consensus, in my opinion. Yu Jing was the first faction to gain access to Smoke+MSV2 and since then we've decided that Yu Jing is THE Smoke+MSV2 faction, only CB stopped releasing smoke for Yu Jing almost immediately but kept it up for other factions. Arguably I would say that Aleph has better smoke for Tactical Window as I rate Celestial Guard smoke launcher quite low on the reliability scale (there's just something really awkward about the grenade launcher when it comes to putting down smoke). Aleph also has Eclipse which is supreme for safe button pushing, but on the other hand Yu Jing have more accessible MSV2*. I'd say that which faction is stronger very much depends on the player, but I can see some clouds regarding vanilla Yu Jing due to having an over-reliance on irregulars for putting down the smoke (Yu Jing is fairly well equipped for building low order lists so will probably have more room than many other factions to waste on irregulars, so don't take that as dooming and glooming) O-12 actually has really great smoke access. Varangian are far superior to Shaolin in terms of putting down smoke, not only because of the higher PH, but also because you don't need to put them in a dedicated support group to do it. O-12 also has great MSV2 in the form of Epsilon who have both HMG and MSniper access which in my mind makes them a bit of a pocket Hsien. The fact that they don't have anything comparable to a Rui Shi weighs lighter in a smoke comparison due to the nature of the Rui Shi's speed and weapon which makes keeping up with smoke supply difficult at time. Haqq just straight up has more smoke than Yu Jing. Lots more smoke. While Djanbazan* should never be underestimated given their good weapon options, I do think Yu Jing have better opportunities to exploit smoke* than Haqq does. Haqq does suffer a bit from the same clouds as Yu Jing when it comes to their smoke sources and while an Al'fasid will be unaffected by it, most of the other smoke sources that Haqq has come in the form of irregular and impetuous that are probably going to be harder to justify in a Tactical Window setting. I also don't think Haqq is quite as good at rolling with this as Yu Jing is and I think Haqq may see their smoke use go down compared to Yu Jing as a result, but we'll see what the Haqq players come up with. IA is trying to be MO and MO is trying to be IA. That might be a bit mean to both, but the end result is that neither has smoke and both factions kind of want it. ISS has fantastic smoke access. Not due to AVA nor even that they're an auto-include for most players, so much as that you can put them into a Core which makes them extremely reliable and that ISS has excellent opportunities to exploit this smoke not to mention that a reliable Smoke Grenade Launcher is a lot more compatible with the Rui Shi. I'll even go so far as to say that ISS is the best at smoke there is. Currently (you never know...). -- AHDs screwed HI over too much so they implemented KHDs which screws AHDs over too much so they're overhauling hacking and now we don't know whether the improved hacking programs have an internal balance mechanic or not. It really makes it hard to tell. One thing for sure is that AHDs got screwed hard during N3 and I don't honestly think this happened to Yu Jing more than anyone else I don't actually mind improved hacking programs too much as long as they make it harder to gang up on hackables using Repeaters. If I have to deal with an AHD sitting near the mid line isolating and threatening my HI with improved Oblivion that feels more fair than having to deal with a HD in a link in the opponent's DZ, a KHD in HD somewhere (there always is one), and an AHD or two in marker state bugger all else than where I need to go but the opponent stuck down a Pitcher on the other side of a planter... then it doesn't matter if the hacking programs are strong or weak, the sheer weight of AROs is going to screw me over. Drifting off topic, sorry. I am, too, optimistic about N4. Our quasi-N4 tournament really fed into that optimism. People dared take high-ARM stuff and rely on it for the first time in years and at least I didn't feel immediately screwed over as soon as someone rolled a crit (regardless if it was against a Zhanshi or a Guijia). * Not Bao. Unlike Djanbazan, Bao have bad weapon options and bad fireteams.
Finally had an in person game! We played Safe Area and he was playing Bakunin. And boy did I get trounced! lol It was mostly my fault with ok deployment though but most of it was the murderous Bran Do Castro the biggest figure/profile i'm jealous of! (Come on CB this guy is the Monkey King! He should be in YJ) He did successful infiltration into my half of the table up on a building with the TR bot, prone (I forgot you can actually super jump in camo :( ) He killed two TR bots, my engineer, and my Hundun in turn one. He eventually died to my Ye Mao. My biggest mistake was not taking a full 5-main core of Zhanshi with jammer. I had no defense against BDC. The TR bots could only use electric pulse because he made sure to always camo before attacking them. He was also prone all of the time except when he did super jump (in camo) to the next building. So he essentially break danced his way through my defenses. It was all down hill from there when the Chimera, Morlocks and Riot Grrls came in. It was fun to get to play an actual game though.
