That's a Locust, guys. That's a better Locust in Hassassins. The fix for the 15 order fix is to take a decidedly high tech stat line and smack it in the traditionally low tech army to try and solve the issue of they don't work well with 15 orders. I can't say I'm a fan and this is just a ham fisted fix for a ham fisted fix. I don't think this is going anywhere great for the game.
It's really unfair to start talking about the sky that way until we actually have N4 profiles for comparison. As far as it being high tech there's not much fluff left within the N4 rules it would seem, so instead of looking at it as he has TO/ODD, he may just be very very sneaky/agile. As a Hassassin would be.
I still want to wait for N4, or at least details on other armies, before passing judgement. Could be that there's a general trend towards more elite or durable units across all factions; certainly nothing in Starmada came across as cheap. As long as the high-tech ones maintain their edge, low-tech ones maintain their economy and Tohaa stay gone I'm fine. Hassassins can have their shoddy N3-Locust knockoff, it means Ghazi might be fun to play against.
The counter point that I expect coming from Pan-O players pretty soon, if low tech armies can have this and are being granted even more MSV2, where the fuck are our smoke grenades?
I don't see it as homgenization. I guess I see the Shujae as an enhancement of the typical Haqqislam and Hassassin playstyle (strong mid field control with units that hit hard). The locust is the weird one to me. It always stood out for PanO as it was unit that played differently than what PanO was used to. It was a toolbox with d-charges and hacking devices or drop bears and grenades. I was always surprised how few PanO players seemed to appreciate it.
No marker state in a DTW-filled midfield, rubbish support in faction. Only specialist was an AHD, again with no marker, in a KHD meta. It's actually a nice killer unit, but you must go first with it or be blessed by the terrain gods and PanO LTs suck at winning initiative. As a result it's rarely used, since it's unreliable in tournaments. Quite a few PanO players think it's picking up Hidden Deployment in N4 thanks to overlap with Nokken in Sval. The Shujae's a pretty good fit for the Hassassin roster, way better support than PanO can give it, so it may not be murdered Turn 1 and actually do the N3Locust job properly.
As I understand, you are displeased about a unit from a different edition being a better version of another unit in a different faction and edition, either on it's own or because you have proclaimed it as a "high tech unit" that doesn't belong in what was a low tech faction. Which all stems from the tactical window stuff which is all a preference thing and I have no need or want to argue those. Am I mistaken?
Your attempt to justify it with fluff is missing the point. There is no fluff justification coming into this. You could clone a cutter statline into a biological Tarik V2 who's taken even more drugs, it doesn't change the fact that you're basically sticking a Cutter into an army that traditionally doesn't get that and has a trade off by access to different low tech equipment which is partly a factor of game balance. So if we're ignoring all that and homogenising armies with the same equipment and tech levels where does that leave us in terms of game balance? How long until it's just Green Space Marines vs Blue Space Marines?
Its mainly about every faction getting more samey, because Tac Window forces the former Horde Armies to get better stuff.
Increasingly cramped design space due to ever-increasing faction count doesn't help either. The squeeze from above represented by O12 has me more worried for my PanO than Haqq picking up some Skirmisher-lites with ODD, because it means CB's less likely to alter my force upward to maintain relative gunfighting superiority over the newly-promoted Space Arabs, which means we'll keep being defined more by what we lack than what we have.
I think @SpectralOwl did a good job explaining the issues from a PanO perspective that I could see myself taking for granted. I just don't think the Locust/Shujae comparison is the best example of Homogenization. The Shujae is not radically changing the Haqqislam playstyle. One could make the argument that the Mutkar and Shakush are major changes for Haqqislam and give them some more brute force options. But still, PanO plays vastly different than Haqqislam. When Pano got Zulu Cobras, was there a concern that PanO was losing their faction identity?
Not really, because Zulu Cobras aren't 5pt warbands. They're mid cost Camo skirmishers Pan-O already had in their roster, just a different type. I'd be concerned if Zulu Cobras were Irregular Hunzakut clones.
Factions getting stale? Self-imposed limits on design space resulting in samey units across factions? Such an unexpected result of designing the edition without factions like CHA or Tohaa in mind.
I think what I'm misunderstanding is the use of high tech to mean better stats and equipment, because to me high tech/low tech is all fluff.
You do know how revolutionary Zulu Cobras were for PanO, right? They actually did not have regular camo except for Uhlan and Nagas in SAA. The PanO forums were singing their praises with VIRD and the new options the sectorial provided.
It still doesn't sit right in my mind, Ariadna/Haqq still have units that top stat line stuff outside of BS 15 which is a rare privilege, not just a low tech faction exemption. Haqq already has TO, the bs 13 on stuff has definitely been on the rise for them since Ramah, but it is a super soldier force you'd expect some premiums.
I was worried, but I stick to NCA because they match my preferred theme pretty well. I'm happy for those who enjoy VIRD, it's at least an interesting way of applying the equipment-heavy design and hard ARO PanO is meant to enable, but I don't want them touching my corner of the design space with a ten-foot pole. I can see that the space is there to build into, especially with O12 eating the elite section out of house and home, but Ariadna with REMs and blue paint just isn't my game and I'm perpetually worried that there'll be more non-Kamau problems I can't outshoot with a Swiss.
