Btw the premise of this whole thread is comparing the N3 Locust (who wasn't supported well by that framework) with a N4 Hassassin unit (much better environment to make that work). That's complaining about apples past expiration date being less appetizing than fresh oranges... From the limited info we have N4 Locusts will be significantly cheaper (side grade CC and Marksmanrifles got cheaper), could gain Hidden Deployment or Limited Camo + Mimetism (-6) and their whole kit could just see a rework or be flat out better suited to fill a niche in N4. If anything both new Hassassin troops make me optimistic the midfield is going to become a much more interesting place where Camo Markers aren't the ceiling. Neither of them has a B4 gun either, they're more of a Draal "class" Skirmisher, finding other ways than Marker States and Spitfires/HMGs to be effective.
just about the topic and homogenization, a little unpopular opinion here At the beggining of ITS, most missions were determined by who had the post powerful lieutenant to push buttons and kill over, which could do all missions. Pano, aleph and EC were on top with a huge margin. Sometimes, instead of a big lieutenant, those factions used the tactic of "kill all you can during turn 1 and 2, do the missions during enemy retreat", so some players made that any mission became anihilation. Then CB decided to take out lieutenant specialists because that was absurd, and to put "last turn on retreat". Those factions started to call about homogenization and so because everyone would go using the same tactics (which time showed was not true) Then, missions started to be won by using a high number of specialists. Nomads, ariadna and haqq went to tops instead for a few ITS, and the previous ones started to make complains. CB heard those complains and started to make changes little by little. First, they gave a lot of cheap specialists to those factions. Which was ok. Later, "objective missions" got more "shotty-shotty" aspects because some factoins "had difficulties" on certain missions (while they got ahead on the shotty ones). Some factions complained latelly that they lacked punch and were given a bit of punch, which make the shotty ones complain again, specially about homogenization, loosing identity and so. Now we got this last ITS with a biased status Now, we will start a new edition, with a nerf to horde factions, which were not the ones ahead. More like the elite ones abused the pool system because they got cheap things thanks to those years of complain and CB giving them what they asked. And now they got a nerf to other factions while they were more successfull, and still dare to criticise about homogenization. If as a lot of players say, CB heeds their fandom, and if infinity is getting an homogenization, certain players are part of guilty in this. Even if the main culprit is CB for heeding mainly the same groups.
Fluffwise i welcome the fact elite assassin faction will be actually using new elite assassins and not a horde of dudes in rags with communication jammers and cheap RPGs. For your worries about TO camo access - there is a 5 year time skip, I am sure Old Man could get some for his best agents. Also locust has more unique gear in drop bears and wildparrot and a hacker profile but Triumph being Triumph ignores it for some arcane reason
You're missing the point where it's about game design not fluff here. The technology gap has been used as a mechanic to create different playstyles, so unless N4 is pushing the tech ceiling to allow Pan-O to rise with MSV4 or Mimetism -9* as Hassassins catches up, you wind up with everyone at the same tech level which homogenizes their play styles. *I don't think we're getting Mimetism -9 or MSV4, I'm just illustrating a point.
how is having an ODD trooper in any way SAME TECH LEVEL as the faction with Swiss Guard and Cutter and Bulleteer and Multi weapons and speaking purely game design, it is just an additional -3 mod on top of mimetism (that anyone has) on a 1w trooper
Because it's a point of game design that was very deliberately kept apart to create distinct and varied play styles, rather than everyone going with the stack MOD shootymans go BRRRRR. They smuggled the Fasid in a portable toilet for operation Red Veil, maybe Hassassins have a very sneaky portable toilet for the TAG too.
It has always been a game of stacking mods, even for lower tech factions, prime ariadna attack pieces (Vet, Spetsnaz, Paracommando) rely on -3 when firing hmg - just as a Dakini or Q-Drone does (units that have been in the game forever) Game (if we are talking PURE GAME DESIGN) sees only 1 natural bs difference between Farzan shooting someone from camo with a rifle and stacking -6 and shujae shooting someone with the rifle and stacking same -6 because no surprise
That might be true if some of the most important targets you need to crack open in the game were actually affected by surprise shot. Yes, this is pretty much the hallmark of someone that doesn't understand the game very well. You know we're in a thread discussing a change brought about by people spamming the ever loving shit out of units that don't stack MODs because warbands were ridiculous in value with the specific sectorial we're discussing having probably the most hated one in the entire game. Right? Libertos were probably one of the most disgustingly good value models added during the entirety of N3, and their value has nothing to do with them stacking MODs and everything to do with them being aggressive and cheap.
Are you seriously going to throw a markerless FD2 Burst 3 effective range 8-16 unit at a linked Dakini Sniper as your plan A opening surprise shot is extremely important on Libertos, as is its marker to get into favorable ranges and into cover/catching opponent without cover - which is all mod stacking and arranging FTF in your odds you dont understand the game and its balance, you just whinewhinewhine about the most inane things
Given smoking it into its rangeband is a viable and relatively low cost option for Hassassins, yeah I mean it's not a bad one. It's 48%-19% in the Shujae's favour. Just for further context, if you downgrade the ODD to Mimetism in N3 it causes a huge swing to 38-30% odds instead. I'm not sure what your argument here is, do you think it's a bad gunfighter or something? I mean if you were dumb and sat back and fired in bad range bands I guess... It's really not. Libertos are so cheap you don't care. They're irregular, they suicide at stuff if they kill great if they don't oh well, you care about as much as when any other warband suicides on stuff. They're so disposable they're regularly referred to as a "crumple zone" by the forum's dahshat players where they get thrown in the way to absorb orders and die. If you attack someone with the Libertos normally it's without Surprise Shot anyway, you throw a mine around the corner first then follow up with the shotgun. There is more to Infinity than just stacking MODs. For the moment anyway.
No, you missed that I was specifically addressing the commentary about lacking a fluff justification, and avoiding commentary on the game balance entirely. I haven't been playing long enough, nor have I played enough Haqq—much less HB—to be an informed commenter on the question of how balanced it is (or isn't) to give this unit the equivalent of ODD. Do you say other people miss the point a lot? It seems to have come up in this thread a couple of times, but to me it just looks like people talking past each other. Maybe I'm missing something. Anyway. In my (very limited) opinion, faction differentiation would be a good reason for CB to be more heavy-handed about sectorial-only profiles. For example, in this case restricting the Mim-6 to HB and reducing it to Mim-3 for vanilla Haqq would help push HB as a more elite stealth attacking force, without nudging vanilla's profile lineup that direction. It's potentially harder to justify in the fluff, but if we're talking purely game design and differentiating factions, the fact that vanilla gets access to almost all of the profiles of every sectorial means that vanilla lists are inherently more likely to experience faction identity dilution whenever a new tool is added to any sectorial's lineup (outside of fireteam rule interactions since those are inherently sectorial-locket; see linked jammer trash fire threads). That's all I got. The discussion has been interesting to follow, though. There are at least one or two aggressive Haqq players in my regional meta, and I'm keen to know what they'll be using to brick my face in once we can play more IRL.
Oh sure, although I'm not sure how much CB really care about the fluff when they do this stuff though. They regularly retcon things to suit their aim at game balance, and often the presence of units in sectorials is left completely without explanation. White Banner is a pretty good example of this, there are many characters that have no discerned reason to be in the sectorial and some of the AVAs are downright puzzling.
I like the idea of every/most faction/sectorial having a viable TAG just on the basis that TAGs are fkn cool. I don't think having 1 decent TAG steps on the toes of the likes of PanO with several amazing TAGs. Or combined with their premium TAG.
Side note on that one - looking at current ITS missions they really seem to like the option to create TAG centric missions. Wasn't exactly fair in N3 with some Factions having access to the Avatar and some stuck with Anaconda/Scarface. Won't be fair in N4 either if the theme for those remains "keep your TAG around for 3 turns", but nontheless I'd rather have better TAGs than the Merc ones available where possible. Generally speaking the missions that favor a certain troop type (i.e. hunting Party or Frostbite) are interesting ways to shake up listbuilding a bit, an imbalance in choices for a particular troop type for certain Factions/Sectorials would be more manageable across a 3 or 5 game tournament. Also helps if they cap the special troop type portion to 3 OP, so you can still win by running a list that doesn't play that part of the mission and focuses on countering the other guy and getting the other 7.
It's not just TW. CB started handing out tweaked versions of once rare and identity-defining tools to more and more factions at least a few years ago, doing stuff like giving assault Nisses to Haqq, action-flavored Fidays to Tohaa, heavily mixed links with reliable active piece to everyone etc. I'm pretty sure that even without TW becoming a thing we would eventually see elites entering ranks of "horde" armies and sleek, optimized troopers becoming the norm everywhere else because that just works (and apparently sells), having actually different armies be damned. Not sure if it's a bad thing, considering some people like having access to most playstyles without investing in different armies, to each their own, I guess, and it's up to CB to see who to cater to in order to stay in business. But hey, at least we'll probably see another era of spectacular faction/army balance statistics. Hard to go wrong when everyone has the same tools, give or take, with stat gaps between mud and elites averaging around 15-20% difference - in a game with such a huge session-to-session variance thanks to most things being just one roll away from some dramatic result, one way or another.
you can allready look at the data collected out there. Factions as aleph are ahead of order number than other factions less "elite". Some pano players affirm that all their lists start with the 3 pulsebots, and so. Elite factions having access to cheap orders (or more like "more of the cheap") orders than other not so elite is a problem in that regard. the other problem I see is that those "all for everybody" is not true at all. Some factions got more from others. Why did some high-tech factions got jammer and EM? Those were tools dessigned for low-mid tech factions to face against higher tech factions. Why did elite factions got so cheap specialists during this time stealing the not-elite factions advantage (while retaining their in the shotting side)?. The factions that got more benefit from "stealing" (or what it should be called) other factions are almost not affected by TW, but the factions that are more affected, need now to get access to those steals if we want a balanced game.
That's kinda the point, the process is gradual and created trends in competitive metas that we haven't seen before when some armies got strong points previously not associated with them. Right now CB is continuing to do so for other armies (and, to be fair, that was not the only thing CB were doing lately; certain designs are hard to describe as anything but straigh-up power creep of optimization, even though decisions that comprised those make some sense in the vacuum). Once (if?) the process is complete, old pride of having balanced representation of armies will likely come back. Hard to imagine it won't happen when armies are slowly turning into reskins of one another. Edit: On faction balance. Balance is means to an end. Diversity of characters/factions in games exists to create diversity of gameplay. Balance of power only exists to keep those factions enjoyable and their playstyles "real" - hard to have fun while you don't get to play your gameplay because it is being piledrivered into ground every time, and hard to claim you can play this or that way if it doesn't work, right? Balance is completely meaningless if diversity doesn't even exist.
