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Tactical Window homogenising armies

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Triumph, Sep 4, 2020.

  1. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Just to clarify what I mean here; it's not that T2 needs to be nerfed, but that it needs to be treated like DA ammo and, just like N3 Viral or N3 Plasma, it's a bit too strong for a full burst weapon without said weapon coming with a hefty points cost and/or SWC.
    So if a T2 rifle is as cheap as they seem, they would be fine if select fire between Burst 3 AP and Burst 1 T2
     
  2. Panzerschwein

    Panzerschwein Well-Known Member

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    I'm too self-conscious and want to keep T2 Rifle as it was.
     
  3. Kreslack

    Kreslack Unknown Ranger lead the way!

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    I feel if you wanted to do that you'd have to re-evaluate all the AP weapons in Ariadna and swap many if not all of them over to that version T2. I don't want this at all but getting T2 HMG's under that system would be pretty sweet on the reactive turn.

    Though regardless of that I think that DA is a significantly better round for dealing with any single would unit. It has double the odds of actually bringing them down. And multi rifles do get 4 ammo types. AP/Shock at B3 and DA/Stun at B1

    I think full burst DA on multi snipers only became a problem because of how many outstanding and cheap MSV equiped links could get them.

    So far I there isn't any linkable T2 sniper's or any with MSV, but that could change in N4.
     
    #123 Kreslack, Sep 14, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2020
  4. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Nah, it'd be like the Tesseum version of Multi Rifle; its existence wouldn't invalidate the cheaper, simpler, versions that are afforded the rank-and-file.
     
  5. SpectralOwl

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    T2 is stronger on an N4 crit than DA but weaker on regular attacks, and should probably be costed like Viral as it's about as effective if Viral simply becomes DA/BTS/Shock for N4. And both Viral and T2 Rifles should probably be about the same or more expensive than a MULTI Rifle as their vastly improved ammo is compensated for in active versatility and a slight boost to close-in effectiveness. Rifle ranges are still pretty bad so they don't warrant SWC, but advanced ammo is definitely as good or better than MULTI in almost all circumstances (only massively protected targets like Jotums in Cover or selectively immune targets give an edge to the MULTI) and should probably be costed as such. The difference should still remain though, Haqq and Tohaa's near-monopoly on Viral while Ariadna has so much AP and T2 is a remaining point of faction distinction. I'd like to be genuinely incentivised to take a MULTI once in a while though; there are very few units I'd bring one on if I had a choice of MULTI Rifle, Combi Rifle and Viral Rifle and that kinda sucks when that adaptive technology is meant to be one of the reasons to play a high-tech force.

    AP is still outstanding and only proliferation of Vostok-type immunities can take that away from Ariadna's advantages. AP HMGs let your main gunner double as your TAG answer and are very sensibly restricted to factions that can't Hack their way out of a paper bag, or very expensive centrepiece units like TAGs themselves.
     
  6. Kreslack

    Kreslack Unknown Ranger lead the way!

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    I'm very glad this is not going to happen. As I still think this would make most T2 weapons almost pointless, you might as well just give those units multirifles. But if it was too happen, plasma better get the same treatment. I think full burst rifle with blast templates with ARM+BTS saves is insane. I would have like to see the blasts dropped or given the save B1 treatment for blast mode. and make the weapons more common across CA.
     
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  7. fatherboxx

    fatherboxx Mission control, I'm coming home.

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    The most high-tech weapon, SMG!
     
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  8. SpectralOwl

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    The balance factor is that they are costed at one point shy of a HMG, judging by the Q-Drone, and contribute to a profile sometimes getting an SWC tax. They're actually a lot like LRLs in that regard, though a little stronger and much more heavily taxed and regulated.
    Just don't look at the SMG, it's how you end up like most Yu Jing players.
     
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  9. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    I know this is an older post, but Koni confirmed specifically in a Facebook thread that the change primarily was a balance decision.
     
  10. MATRAKA14

    MATRAKA14 Well-Known Member

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    Veteran wildcards are quite trivial to deal with.
    Apart from that I agree with your point. Probably, TAK is one of the best if not the best designed sectorial recently added to the game. They look super strong from the outside but they have clear and fair weakspots once in the table. The more you play with them the more you see the reason of each design choice, and for the most part everything makes sense.
     
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  11. TriggerPuller9000

    TriggerPuller9000 Poverty Orde Wingate

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    I agree with the notion that the game will be more homogeneous but possibly for different reasons...

    Early in N3 generally mixed fireteams either weren't a thing, or were very limited (e.g. Hafzas to lower the cost of Jannissary fireteams...Enomotarchos teams). Since mixed Fireteams became a thing, we now see almost all Sectorials can bring a total paste train unit a back him up with 4 schmucks for a very cheap price. Once that happened, the game became extremely heavily skewed toward the active turn even moreso than before. You didn't need to bring 200 points of heavy infantry to make a pain train...you could do it on the cheap with one power piece and 4 dweebs. In short, AROs became less meaningful due to mixed Fireteams, and now pretty much everybody has one.

    Footnote: ARO versions of the mixed fireteam do exist (the most egregious being the Fusilier-Kamau turret) but they're the exception rather than the rule.

    In N4, what we've seen is a heavy-handed modification of rules and points cost, all in the favor of increasing the viability of TAGs. IMO, as someone who has been playing for a long time and seen a lot of meta shift, TAGs will be more or less auto include. Several factors at play here - points reductions, incremental buffs retained from prior seasons (increased damage, tac awareness), core rules changes favoring TAGs to include crit changes, but also changes to how Immobilized, Isolated, and many other core rules work all work in favor of TAGs. And, with Tactical Window, your option to play high MC armies is out the window so you might as well bring your TAG.


    This isn't a complaint but more an observation of game power shift. Infinity isn't really about setting up strategic AROs and laying suppressive fire anymore. The power creep toward active turn domination ensures that you're almost always better burning your opponent's orders than shooting back when facing down a TAG 4-5 dicing you on 14s or 15s with its extra Tac Awareness order, Specialist pilot profile, and Fatality from the last couple seasons of ITS buffs (who, even if you crit, will still bounce the hit almost 90% of the time), or a skewed mixed link shooting you with 5 dice on 18s.

    It's kind of a shame, because Infinity used to be a pretty cool skirmish game where any schmucky line trooper could, with a little luck (5% of the time), be a hero.
     
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  12. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    Did it though? I think the most game-warping applications we saw of mixed fireteams lean towards Reactive Turn -- the Kamau MSV2 MSR (and his little brother in Acon), or to a lesser extent, the Dakini MSR. The really big active-turn game-warping link was the Rui Shi + 4 ABH link before they ruled you need a Zuyong in it since it was a Zuyong core. None of the additional active turn applications made nearly as much of a difference or were so meta-defining as the Kamau.

    And we can look at tournament play to see how this played out. If you look at top performers in tournaments for the end of N3, OSS and VIRD were very dominant factions. Many of the other over-performers weren't really armies that needed to rely on these kind of incredibly strong mixed links (vanilla Aleph and Tohaa didn't even have them, and have consistently been top performers for basically the entire lifetime of N3).

    I don't think this has changed, has it? A schmucky line trooper with a Combi has the same odds of landing a crit as they always did. If anything, you're relying on him more than ever now because you can't just take 10 line troopers and use them to fuel every other vector of attack in your list -- there's not room for that in Tac Window. (I also dislike the change to Tac Window, coming from primarily playing 2 armies that I find most viable at 16-18 orders, but the first thing that's getting cut from my lists are line troopers).
     
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  13. Barrogh

    Barrogh Well-Known Member

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    I don't think that much has changed for basic troopers rolling random crits. Extra save means it isn't guaranteed to scratch the target, but it also means enemy can suffer 2 wounds from a single hit, especially low ARM/BTS pieces. One of the selling points of 2W active pieces in N3 was that they were guaranteed to remain alive and active no matter what in a firefights against variety of reactive pieces. This is no longer the case against anything that rolls to hit.
     
  14. SpectralOwl

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    I tend to find my shmucks do quite well when I actually spend orders on them. I'd argue that the crit changes just brought ARM-heavy designs in line with MOD-heavy ones, since your Alguacile Combi couldn't get his 5% shot against my Hexa on the other side of the board anyway. The solution is the same as it always has been; move to get your good range and cover, deny the enemy theirs. TAGs specifically are only a little less spiky in performance than they used to be, since while they have amazing durability against Combi nerds and CC guys with noodle PH and a Shock CCW, E/M and AP Ammo and CLAW-style Hacking are all stronger than they have ever been before. I would argue that there is definitely an active-turn bias, to a greater degree than before, but I want to wait and see ITS scenarios before making further judgements since second turn has historically been much stronger for scoring purposes.
     
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  15. iyaerP

    iyaerP Well-Known Member

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    The difference is that in the 'I hit on a 1 and crit on a 2" scenario in N3 compared to N4 is that in N3, that crit actually mattered against high armour units.

    Like in N3, me critting the Avatar and dealing him a wound with one of my grunts was a 1/20 chance, 5%.

    But in N4, with crits being affected by armour, that chance is instead 1/200 (2 armour saves that each need to roll a 1 to fail, ), a 0.5% chance.

    I've been in the scenario of "all my good shit is dead, I'm fighting the Avatar with rifle grunts and light shotgun doctors." That ability for the crits to actually wound saved the game for me in N3.

    If I found myself in that scenario in N4, it would just be an automatic loss as soon as my blackjacks and fireteam went down.
     
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  16. Xeurian

    Xeurian Well-Known Member

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    Couldn't you drop smoke, engage and then work on the scenario?
     
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  17. miguelbarbo84

    miguelbarbo84 Well-Known Member

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    Well, in N3 I've been in the scenario where I invested a third of my list on a tag, managed to keep it alive while killing all my enemy's good stuff and then lose the game because a lucky crit from a shmuck finally sent it to unconscious and I don't have enough orders to advance and score with another troop.

    I'm glad I can consistently win in N4 if I assume the risk of such investment and outplay my opponent up to the point where he has 100 points and 7 units left and I have 150 and 4 units left.

    But it's a matter of taste I guess
     
  18. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    ITS11 is very kill oriented. The removal of the 9 objective layout missions, Rescue, etc while making things way less of a headache for TOs did push the remaining missions away from button pushing towards mudering the enemy. Supposedly that's going to swing the other way in ITS12 but we'll have to wait and see.
     
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  19. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    I bloody well hope that those terrible missions don't return (except Frostbite. I liked Frostbite and so did most of my friends). The most epic fail of a mission I've ever had the displeasure of playing (besides Highly "random is cinematic" Classified) is the one where you need to fetch a civvie from the opponent's DZ edge. In a game where I could move forward and shoot almost every order, I was still unable to bring both the civvie and Datatracker back to my DZ using a 14-order TI list while my opponent in spite of having Tai Sheng's powered stiletto heels pushing his face into the dirt still was able to smoke the civvie on my side and steal it home to near-tie me.

    Missions really really have to accommodate for enough orders to deal with some AROs and indirect threats such as Repeaters that often can not be cleared easily in a single order, overly belligerent foes (like me), or such. If not, certain specific units become too powerful otherwise, usually specialist skirmishers or eclipse wielders that can just skip most of the order waste, opt out of most of the ARO game, and simply do their thing.

    Simply reducing Panoplies, awards for killing specific units, skipping freebie repeaters, and missions that tally VPs in any way should do it. And also keeping objective placements in mind for effects;
    When objectives are along the central line; it's okay for opponent to be able to flip them (see: Supplies)
    When objectives are in the opponent's half; completing it should be a done deal (see: AC2 destruction or killing Designated Target civvies)
    When objectives are in your half; these are the ones that can be more exotic like delivering a payload. (Obligatory "Push little kart!")
    And avoid combining them.
     
  20. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    Your guess is as good as mine as to what will happen. I'm sure there'll be some well thought out missions as well as some really stupid ones and it'll be down to TOs to decide what's good to run as usual. Like I said to my community if too many are shite I'll just mix in good ones from older seasons.

    I'd prefer not to but if we have rubbish that's really not needed like 3 variations of the same quadrant mission (Supremacy, Safe Area, Quadrant Control. Fucking wrrrrryyyyyy???) I'll probably start bringing back older stuff like Frostbyte.
     
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