Opponent goes first. Shoots a pitcher someplace, sometimes on crazy numbers with links and infinite ammo with baggage. Spotlight through pitcher. Boom boom till dead on BS 18 and a -3 to dodge. Theres no "U-Turn" or similar program. Hackers can't really intervene in this process unless they are the one being attacked. We've all heard the "sky is falling" and "wah speculative fire" arguments before, and I'm not trying to go that route with this thread. But honestly, not really sure what the counterplay is other than some variation on "it costs orders, twiddle your thumbs and hope it doesn't work" (always a shitty counter, and less effective now with the buffs to the strategy) or "take marker state stuff" (also a poor counter if it is the only one!) This is all a 10,000 foot view thats obviously lacking some nuance, but I'm not seeing an immediate answer to it in my current understanding of N4 rules. Anyone care to elaborate or give some ideas on how to deal with it?
From my N2 experience, the biggest thing is spreading out enough that templates can’t hit multiple troops. They are limited to 5 shots, and if they have to re-acquire a lock after every kill, you can really eat into their order pool. If they target a TAG with ECM, you may actually be better off resetting to shake off the lock than dodging to avoid the missile.
The template seems more "ZoC sized" than actual template sized now. You can mitigate the damage per shot, but can't stop them from shooting you as far as I can tell.
Not sure what you mean. From BS Attack: ► This BS Attack always applies the Impact Template (Circular) Trait, even if the weapon used does not have the Trait. And you still need to center the template on the primary target.
Its like a metaphor. Everyone within the pitcher's range is at risk. Hence you can scatter to mitigate the damage of individual shots but not really to protect any given dude.
Yeah, the main counterplay seems to be a combination of deployment, dodges and guts to limit the effective casualties. Unless your opponent pulls the extreme big brain play of reserve dropping their guided weapon platform (honestly, a possibility, but still) you should know the tactic is possibly coming and deploy accordingly. At that point the option for the missile player comes down to the choice between a conventional attack or a safe but low-payoff one. At list construction, maximising the number of troopers with sixth sense also helps. CSU are in a lot of sectorials, for example, and of course links retain this benefit at least until the link leader gets a missile dropped on them.
You can also push KHDs a little forward across the edge if your DZ so any pitcher that drops has to contend with killer hacker AROs, but this is not the threat it was in N3 and may just result in your KHDs getting zotted by enemy trinities from behind firewalls. Oh, final note: lots of fireteams can have tinbots now, which helps mitigate spotlight attack effectiveness on your biggest asset if you're a sectorial player.
Right, but they still have to land spotlight on a model in order to target it. And if that model is killed or resets, then they have to land another spotlight before they can shoot another guided shot. In the extreme case, achieving their maximum of 5 shots requires 5 spotlights, which is 10 orders right there, plus however many orders it cost to set up the pitcher in the first place.
And spotlight is a B 1 FtF WIP roll with no modifiers, so you’re not going to be reliably landing it in a single order.
So its twiddle thumbs and pray. Not a big fan. Especially since for the most part, most troops are more or less equally dead to the tactic as a lot of stats and abilities don't affect it. I know that overall the damage is limited but man, the uninteractivity of it does not lend itself to interesting gameplay. Here we go. KHD can perform at least a possible ARO through the repeater to target the spotlighting model. As a Tohaa player mainly I don't really understand hacking. I agree that it most likely just gets the KHD killed but its something at least, particularly with a marker state KHD or one with BTS and Tinbots. And unlike with the missiles and marking themselves, generally abilities and stats you take can affect this part of the engagement, so it feels like you have some agency at least in unit selection.
It's a big step up from Speculative Fire at least; Core Emily is still hitting out to 32 on 10s with no setup or counterplay available beyond Hidden Deployment ambush or hiding half your army under a marker. At least Guided requires setting up a Hacking Area, successfully scoring Spotlights while fighting through local Hacking defenses and then running the boring Face-to-Face rolls. I've run several Clipper lists in PanO by now, I can confirm that it's so order-intensive in active turn that it has to essentially replace your conventional attack options or objective play for that round, even running with an intact 15-order list against Ariadna. Perhaps a faction with Pitchers can do better, but off the top of my head only a Tsyklon can land those across the whole table so putting up hard ARO, especially Marker or Hidden Deployment ARO, should work against most factions and lists- multiple Pitcher units in a list aren't common outside Bakunin, and the sacrifice of a Hexa or Clipsos could invalidate half the opponent's SWC and a third of their points put into a really good Hacking network if they've gone all-in on that for a plan. Having multiple Hackers in the vicinity of your most valued pieces can help too; the enemy needs to deal with them in order to safely use Spotlight or Oblivion, which means if you have several targets they're down to Carbonite or a KHD. It's worth it for an opponent to spend their whole turn setting up a guided shot to wipe out a linked Kamau Sniper or the like but they're not going to be happy if all they can do is remove two Fusilier Hackers, especially if you can Oblivion, Spotlight or murder their own Hackers in turn. So far from what I've seen N4 really rewards efforts to seriously win the Hacking fight, and I'm usually bringing a GML-bot of my own to threaten the opponent if they don''t prioritise my Hackers as threats.
Actually, spotlighting is not so order heavy i think, doesn't mean it's too strong though. Once you have you hacking net up, with deployable repeaters, porcher/pandas for those that can or actual repeater models a lot of factions Can deploy a reasonable hacking area in the middle zone. Then it's spotlight ARO Season, of course you have to take into account that if the target are HI you might want to Carbonite instead or Oblivion etc. Otoh even with Spotlight AROs (which gives a nice bonus even without guided missile launcher) you have to commit into the strategy, you easily want 2/3 HD minimum, then you need KHD to defend them, so you're bringing less Big weapons other than that. I really see this tactic more as a deterrent than an actual rampage tactic. And i am more scared of the targeted state in itself than the actual missile launcher, he's clearly more viable now than before but having a +3 mod on BS/comms Attack is juicy now that you Can have it in ARO Edit : i actually did not provide many info on counterplay, mostly because a lot has been said already.
I've considered playing a bit with the guided missile now that it's become available as a wildcard in linkteams in OSS (and some other sectorials like Varuna). In a core linkteam it's both a scary ARO piece as well as something that can absolutely destroy other links through guided fire and increased burst with improved BS.
Outside or what everyone else has said, Hidden deployment also seems good to keep your best stuff safe. Also, and I haven't read the rules on this, can you spotlight camo tokens? If not, that too.
Just eyeballing some math, if you're both WIP12, that's a 16% both fail, 24% spotlight fails and reset passes, 24% reset fails and spotlight passes, and the remaining 36% is split 50/50, for about a 42% chance. The number of orders it will take on average is roughly the inverse, so maybe 2.5 orders per spotlight on average? Odds get better if you're WIP13-14, but I'm pretty sure those would still be under 50% per order. In either case, you're looking at generally 4 orders or so per guided hit, and that's after you get a pitcher down (which is hard if you're not a Nomad sectorial with Pitcher + X-Visor in a core link).
What's the math on a FO marking something then? In OSS we've got a Garuda FO droptrooper now which I am interested in attempting with the guided missile.
I'm told the @HellLois interview on White Noise (I don't listen to the podcast myself) suggested that ITS12 is going to be more mission oriented than kill oriented. That suggests to me the mission designs will be order intensive to complete them, that's how its been in the past. If that's true you may find the best answer is to ignore them. If they kill stuff they kill stuff, they're less order efficient than conventional alpha strike measures. If we actually wind up focusing orders on the mission objectives it becomes less imperative to ensure a key SWC weapon toting model doesn't eat shit and die too early in the game.
