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Is this healthy for the game?

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Zewrath, Nov 17, 2020.

  1. Knauf

    Knauf Transhumanist

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    Nomads can project their repeater coverage in many ways and better than most, but it's not as trivial as you make it out to be. If you can just shoot a pitcher across the table to cover your opponents LT regularly and reliably across many games, your terrain setup sucks plain and simple. If you can walk your heckler unopposed into panda range of your opponent's LT regularly and reliably across many games, your terrain setup sucks AND your opponent has no skirmishers, mines, total reaction bots or other means of defense, which is a ridiculous notion.

    Starmada have a perfectly capable (unhackable) Epsilon MSV2 to counteract camo markers closing in. They also have Andromeda, Casanova and Crushers, all of which have FD/Inf. and are unhackable, to contest the midfield. TR bot is also an option.
     
    #121 Knauf, Jan 21, 2021
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2021
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  2. eciu

    eciu Easter worshiper

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    CMON ASoIaF is now getting (in something like 2 months?) a big update and rebalance which's one of the primary goals is to tone down the "alpha strike" and general "one-shooting" the units. They aim to give more time for units to fight and be engaged with each other.

    Maybe Infinity also need such general pass and "toning down" the maximum effectiveness of some tools ?
     
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  3. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    I think you actually need to have a dose of L2P. It is utterly trivial even on a heavily cluttered table to get repeater coverage all through your opponents DZ with linked pitchers either from your DZ, or with 1 or 2 moves to get LOF to a necessary spot. If you think otherwise you are living in some weird fantasy land where you have some insane table set up that features the wall of legend that the 45th president promised the chosen people he'd build running across the middle of the table.

    Back in reality though, here's some pictures of tournament tables from convention tables that I picked at random off a google search. These are from Adepticon, and they're all super fucking easy to fire pitchers across the table with minimal effort expended, or deploy Heckler pandas for that matter.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    These are from thediceabide's blog. These are not unique, I see tables like these from lots and lots of events in my news feed all the time. Even my own tables in my local meta, which are way more cluttered than most of these, are not hard to project repeater coverage into your opponent's DZ.
     
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  4. Teslarod

    Teslarod when in doubt, Yeet

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    Hecklers having FD1?
    value

    Fastpanda's having 8" range after moving?
    neat

    24" no man's land?
    fairly standard

    Triumph ma boi, casually forgotting how people don't deploy their Lts on THAT side of their DZ border, pretending THE OTHER GUY has no idea what he's talking about?
    priceless

    *Your level of inexperience*
    My sides man! How do you keep coming up with these amazing jokes?
    You got a real gift there.
     
  5. Knauf

    Knauf Transhumanist

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    These tables do look decent (even though I'd prefer a bit more verticality here and there) so that's not the issue then. It's your opponent conveniently being completely inept at counteracting the most obvious and pressing danger to their LT, not having any measures in place to stop you in any way.

    That and a Kriza in a Hollow Men core, which is something I do object to.
     
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  6. Benkei

    Benkei Well-Known Member

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    The point of my rant still stands even if nobody addressed it: command deficiency is a weakness, no doubt about it, but the rest of the factions also come with their quite glaring weaknesses, so how come Nomad's weakness justifies having strong (and in some cases overpowering) game for everything else, all the toys, and also ridiculous FT compositions?
     
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  7. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    You could compare them to Onyx, which has a similar issue with easily identifiable LTs and no CoC.

    And Nomads come off very well for that comparison.
     
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  8. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    How do you counteract "long bomb a pitcher, spotlight, guided?"
     
  9. WiT?

    WiT? Well-Known Member

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    By moving up the chain to the next step of the arms race. Multiple guided missile platforms and/or Impersonators to protect your own guided missile platform from exterminatus.
     
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  10. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    A bunch of issues would be soft addressed if entering more states than just suppression was allowed as strategic CT.
    Sticking a Cybermasked KHD next to a valuable link makes them highly resistant to template attacks such as Guided
     
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  11. Knauf

    Knauf Transhumanist

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    - by deploying your vulnerable LT in a way that makes those pitcher long bomb attempts a -6 range band

    - by placing ARO pieces that will deter the fire team from strolling out into the right spot to acquire LOF

    - by placing skirmishers/impersonators upfield to deter said movement or trade their ft bonus away

    - by placing a (possibly hidden) KHD closeby

    - by fielding decoy LTs or Holomask units

    - by fielding a CoC unit

    - by doing any combination of the above, to have multiple layers of protection for your LT.

    Of course, these vary depending on what faction you play and some will definitely have it worse than others. It also depends on initiative, deployment order and table setup, which will inevitably help or hinder your plans. I just disagree with the notion that this is some sort of inevitable uber strategy that can be replicated reliably, let alone trivially across many games, because there are just too many variables for that to be true.
     
    #131 Knauf, Jan 22, 2021
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2021
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  12. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    If you think it's practicable to reliably precent your opponent from being able to get within 32" of a point that's within 8" of your Lt you must have the most godlike defensive game ever.

    KHD doesn't really help because now the KHD had to hack an Interventor through a firewall. Good luck with that.

    The rest of it, about obfuscating yout lieutenant and so on, isn't really relevant.
     
  13. Knauf

    Knauf Transhumanist

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    How convenient indeed!
     
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  14. Kai Wren

    Kai Wren Well-Known Member

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    The Pitcher does look pretty oppressive, especially for groups that can link it.

    I feel like giving it Smoke Grenade Launcher ranges might help with that.
     
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  15. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    I don't think improving the 16-24" and 24-32" rangebands nor enable it to shoot past 40" will help against links putting Pitchers into the opponent's DZ on turn 1. The grenade launcher changes was a nerf to smoke launchers because smoke launchers wants to put smoke nearby, typically not from one DZ to the other. As an artillery role it kind of was a buff.
     
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  16. Teslarod

    Teslarod when in doubt, Yeet

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    Well best you can do for a Pitcher is BS11/12 + Fireteam at up to 24". Disposable (2), so you'll need some Baggage at hand to make more than 2 tries (or risk ~20% catastrophic failure).
    After that it's FTF rolling with your WIP14/15 Hacker vs whatever WIP the target has.
    Then you'll have to have something with Guided alive and in your list and start rolling single 18s vs Dodge-3. Max 5 attempts per turn (that part is usually plenty but can screw you vs a TAG with Guided ECM no problem).

    Looking at Corregidor for an Example:
    2 attempts to stick a BS11 Pitcher BS11 in a Core Link after MODs 79.75%
    WIP14 Spotlight assuming WIP13 target Reset 47%
    BS18 vs generic PH10 LI Lt 78% (72% with Sixth Sense)

    Chance to get it done in within 3 Orders:
    29.23%
    Realistically you're looking at at least 5 Orders spent to get above 50% success chance.
    It's all single dice rolls so very high variance.
    Add a Firewall and Sixth Sense to your Lt and you're looking at 6 on average
    Make the Lt a HI with a Firewall in a Core Link and that's the entire group 1's Order pool to pull it off somewhat reliably.
    Add a CoC and it's flat out terrible
    A TAG with Guided ECM isn't dying reliably either or can at least still be repaired afterwards most of the time.

    Or don't deploy your Lt more than 4" away from the back edge of your DZ and accept your TAG will have to walk a bit forward before it see's action.
    Also has to go first, going second you can counter it by taking out the Hacker, Pitcher or whatever provides Guided Firepower. Both are gonna be quite vulnerable to AD, Impersonation and Spec Fire and you only need to get the one that's easier to kill. Failing that you can deny the Pitcher LOF with an ARO piece, Spec Fire means it needs to be in 16" to have the same odds as above. A Swiss, Noctifier, Hexa or just a bunch of Caterans and decoys covering as much space as possible should do it.

    When it works it's annoying for sure. But the other guy has to invest a lot to get the whole combo and it's far from efficient in the end.
     
  17. Kai Wren

    Kai Wren Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, looking at it, you're right. For some reason I was reading it that pitchers went out to 48" too. My bad.
     
  18. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Spotlight is a bit shoddy in active turn, as Teslarod writes, huge risk of it being a bunch of wasted orders and considering that if you spent nearly all of your orders just to get your opponent into LOL you're basically gambling on having a turn where you're largely in LOL yourself - particularly against sectorials with Tinbot FW-6 available. It's when you start spreading those Pitchers around a lot, blanketing the mid-field and sticking a few down the enemy's throat and using them to tactically remove threats or putting units into the position of "if I move I'll get spotlighted" so that you can basically just delete half their army each consecutive turn that it gets difficult to deal with properly.
    Not to mention that the tools available to remove the repeaters themselves are even more limited now that Blackout is gone and that grenade launchers were nerfed at short range.

    I feel like particularly vanilla has a problem with this tactic.

    As ironic as it is, fireteam bonuses are one of the primary drivers for why this is a problem while fireteam synergy is the primary means to mitigate it -.-;;
     
  19. TriggerPuller9000

    TriggerPuller9000 Poverty Orde Wingate

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    100% agree with everything, and wanted to highlight this main issue. IMO being able to perform Spotlight as an ARO, and being able to maintain Targeted state on an unlimited number of targets via Spotlight, lie at the heart of this problem. It goes beyond just throwing repeaters into your opponent's DZ.

    I have zero issue with an opponent spending orders to long-bomb Pitchers into my DZ, or risking a model's advance up the table to drop a Repeater, then spending a bunch of orders to get Spotlight and Guided off in order to assassinate a key model.

    I take issue with any game mechanic that encourages disengaged play with your opponent. Spotlight ARO -> Guided isn't a mechanic that is impossible to defeat of course, but it is the most monotonous, uninspired, obnoxious mechanic in the entire game. "Those games" reduce the complexity of an otherwise phenomenal skirmish game into a game of "avoid the bubble." I'd go as far as to say that, if it becomes the norm, I will find a new game. It's a trash mechanic.
     
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  20. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    I still think the issue is the Guided part of the interaction, not the Spotlight part. Guided turns a soft debuff into an existential threat. Removing ARO from Spotlight removes a lot of defensive value from Hacking: Hacking being universally useful is a good thing, and needs to be retained.

    Dep Reps changing to S0 from S1 and consequently being easier to hide doesn't help.

    So:

    Remove Guided and change Smart MLs to be basically HGLs with AP+DA ammo. Or something similar to directly nerf Guided efficiency. This only punishes the Targeted + Guided interaction leaving the beneficial aspects of Spotlight as an ARO fully in place.

    Another alternative is just make Targeted get removed at every State step. This reduces the efficiency by turning it back into an active turn requirement but also significantly reduces the deterrent effect of Spotlight AROs absent Guided.

    A third alternative is to reintroduce U-Turn onto all HDs/HD+s/EVO HDs and Hacker (Zero Pain). This punishes Tohaa and Ariadna, so opinions differ on whether this is a good idea or a great idea (/jk).

    A fourth alternative is to reintroduce Nullfiers and have Targetted have no effect within a Nullfiers Area of Effect. Doing this in concert with U-Turn could make sense.

    Of these the first is the simplest and most directly affects the troublesome interaction.
     
    #140 inane.imp, Mar 8, 2021
    Last edited: Mar 8, 2021
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