Typically you're firing the pitcher out of a 5-strong core fireteam. Both the pitcher lob and the missile shot are likely to do what they need to do in one order, it's just the Spotlight that might take a couple tries.
Did I also mention the part where I risk absolutely nothing to take down 1 or 2 of their most powerful pieces? and if it survives it is easier to brick it if it is already hackable. On nullifiers and those types of effects, They are something i'm happy don't exist anymore, as they were just an extra layer of non-interaction and if they still existed or came back into the game it make hacking even more non interactive than it already is.
They were situational, so fine, except in the case of The Grid where they stopped your opponent from completing the mission.
I think allowing units to ARO against the repeater and treating hacking through a repeater like activating multiple troopers at once for AROs would be a potential hotfix too. It would help limit the amount of damage an overly aggressive repeater could do if any mook could attack the repeater and kill it while also not completely kill the option and require major rebalances to things built around carrying repeaters. Also makes alot more thematic sense for a fireteam to have at least one person shoot the fucking pitcher that lands in the middle of all of them rather than all standing around it picking their noses and wondering what it was.
Persistent Spotlight ARO is one of the best changes in N4 If not the best. At last hackers feel a little bit useful against low/non-hackable armies. It adds another layer of DZ defense. Lighting up an attacker, so all your dudes get an effective +3 BS against him, is pretty cool new option that goes beyond binary "you're dead or I'm dead" of most infinity interactions, feels very hackery, very spec-ops cooperation. Around here we don't use GMLs (some don't have a mini, some choose not too, some are just casuals) and there is zero issue with spotlight, it just adds some depth. Try agreeing not to use GML for a few games, see if there is any problem with spotlight. You have problems with GMLs? Nerf GMLs, add a defense against them, you can remove them from the game for all I care, if they are such an issue (don't know, don't use), but don't you touch my aro spotlight, that I use from top of a building to make a rampaging Ragik a little less cocky. The only thing I'd do is make it B2 (after nerfing or removing GMLs probably) so it is somewhat useful in active without a GML.
This was already covered earlier in the thread in regards to what if we nerf/remove guided as a fix, the answer is Oblivion still causes balance problems and pushes people away from playing hackable stuff. For the record I also prefer persistent Spotlight staying as a feature rather than reverting back, but guided isn't the only culprit causing issues here.
Wait, you didn't use Overclock in N3? That made hacking feel pretty excellent against low-tech armies, especially before the Total Immunity change.
Then again the issue is oblivion not spotlight. And touching spotlight won't solve oblivion. I'm open to oblivion nerfs, or counterplays. I am just fighting against people trying to break spotlight, when what they want to achieve is nerfing GML: Didn't play N3 much. Burned out quick, wasn't my thing. Anyway, I like my hackers to be useful on their own, doing actual hacking, rather than a walking buff to a rem (GML or another).
Overclock was faction dependant, not everyone had enough REMs like CA that could benefit from it. It also didn't solve the problem of HDs/HD+/AHDs generally felt like a waste of points in N3 if you played into an unhackable faction which the spotlight changes help alleviate in N4. There's also the aside that a player feeling limited to playing a relatively non interactive buff game with his hackers having no purpose in a list beyond spending an order each turn to put up Marksmanship or something just wasn't particularly compelling as a gameplay mechanic on its own. The idea is to make sure their space magic can interact with the opponent to make sure it's interesting. The issue is complicated, you can't hit Oblivion too much or suddenly it starts bouncing off Avatars and BTS12 Knights. A big issue we're facing is hacking was dumbed down too hard. CB streamlined shit too much, and now we're facing a problem of things like Oblivion feels oppressive because it's very easy to put on the table and there's often not much certain factions can do to effectively defend themselves against it, to the point where the solution is to build your list in a way that it can't be touched or is very difficult to be attacked by hackers. Which leads us back to the N3 problem of hackers playing into matchups they feel like they're not very valuable in, something N4 was supposed to try and fix.
I'm ok with that, I really am. But nerfing spotlight won't solve any of those issues apart from nerfing GML, which can be solved by actually nerfing GML. Apart from the above issue, nerfing the only program that can be reliably useful against low-hackable lists would put even more incentive to run low-hackable lists. So it would deepen the problem that people describe here not fix it. Just imagine that there is no GML, but spotlight is B2 in active. It would help with another thing that people complain about here - oppressively stacked and linked ARO pieces. It is that +3 from marksman that makes a linked Grenzer sniper go over the top. If you can throw a repeater and reliably spotlight the guy to match his BS advantage then it is a viable play, even if order intensive. So you suddenly have and additional, interesting way to deal with them (apart from gear-checking by including Kriza or whatever), that is not always the best ("do I really need to burn 2-3 orders to get that +3?"), but sometimes tactically a good idea. Weighting pros and cons of a play on the spot - the exact opposite of brain-dead. Maybe one could even use a similar mechanic to somewhat solve the Oblivion issue. You can make Oblivion sligthly worse, if Spotlight lowered the target defenses. Easy target? Oblivion straight away. Interventor? Spotlight him first then oblivion/trinity him. Easy target - less orders, hard target- still doable but more orders. Of course non of the above would be a viable alternative if GML worked as it does now, because if you actually went to all the trouble to target someone you might as well blast him into the ground, but this is not a Spotlight issue, but a GML issue. I'm really open to discussing how N4 hacking can be made better. I just think that nerfing spotlight is exactly the wrong direction.
N3 hacking was too complex for no good reason, with lots of redundant programs etc. N4 is a lot closer to right in my book, although it does look like Oblivion got a few more buffs than it needed for what is a very nasty program.
That's the point - methods of attacking the opponent at zero risk to yourself should not be reliable, in a game where face to face lethality is generally the selling point. Infinite Spotlight ARO -> Guided Missile takes very little advanced tactical thinking to pull off and punches far disproportionately above its weight class in terms of gameplay and efficiency. Other purposely-skewed mechanics like the Smoke + MSV mechanic requires orders spent on maneuvering...the Guided attack against targets Targeted in the reactive turn is one of the most efficient ways of removing models in the game - every order you spend on it, you are shooting, at zero risk to yourself, with zero orders spent on maneuver. Vs Achilles, a model with high PH and good ARM. Active Player 60.97% Custom Unit inflicts 1 or more wounds on Achilles (2 W) 35.69% Custom Unit inflicts 2 or more wounds on Achilles (1 W) 9.22% Custom Unit inflicts 3 or more wounds on Achilles (Unconscious) Failures 15.03% Neither player succeeds Reactive Player 24.00% Achilles Dodges Custom Unit Precisely where this mechanic belongs.
If you want GML in a bin then advocate for binning GML. Why kill Spotlight with it? Spotlight without GML does not break the game one bit.
The irony is N4 in reality didn't actually do much to cut down the amount of unique programs out there that people need to remember. Just take a look at how many hackers are running around with non standard program combinations or N4 style unique programs and/or built in ECM for MODs, and given that CB is only going to add more of them as time goes on I honestly don't really think this argument of simplification actually holds any merit at all, I mean shit how many people do you think are currently aware Laxmee has Fairy Dust as an upgrade on her hacking device? I'm fairly up to date with hackers and I still needed a reminder last week that Danavas hackers have a special Oblivion. That said I'm not even talking about the individual programs here when I speak of dumbing things down, I'm talking about how hacking plays as a game mechanic. As @Tourniquet has pointed out he as a hacking oriented faction has gone from including a large roster of different hackers in his list that are all designed to operate in tandem, support each other, and handle different targets, to moving towards building around one or two terminator-esque uber hacker, usually in a link. That to me is the dumbing down and oversimplification problem that N4 has caused in a nutshell. The Hacking game has shifted from a variety of models to one model solves all problems.
Active turn Guided Missile is fine. It fits the game thematically and is perfectly balanced - it takes a bunch of orders in the Active Turn to set up that interaction. It provides a "Plan B" against units like Grenzer and Kamau snipers who are very difficult to beat Face to Face, or units in the midfield on Suppression Fire + visual mods. In the right situation, a good player can have a great return on investment using Guided. And it fits that spec ops coordination theme you said you like - units *working together* to achieve a goal. Spotlight ARO takes zero critical thinking to set up. Simply deploy a shitload of repeaters, and laugh as your opponent tries to figure out how to negotiate the absurd tapestry of bubbles. Your turn, blow away 5 models at zero risk to yourself. It is peak smooth brain gameplay.
This is a valid take. I have only three replies: 1. Not everybody here seems to agree that active Spotlight->guided is fine, so it might not be. I wouldn't know as I don't use it (or anybody else around). 2. Personally, for some reason, a hacker behind a wall feeding his friends some targeting data so they are better prepared to deal with an attacker appeals to me more than a hacker being an artillery extension, but it's an aesthetics/fluff issue so hardly negotiable. 3. Just removing spotlight aro would mean that: hackable armies are still very afraid of hacking (oblivion/carbonite), while un/low-hackable laugh at you for wasting points on hackers unless you brought a GML. Which is exactly where hacking was in N2. And I didn't like that either.
Yes, and the community will glom on to the reliable, non-interactive parts of the game; it's the designers' job to excise them. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who have realized that they like this super-safe method of approaching the game without the awareness of how bad it actually is for the design space. The central problem here is that skeeting repeaters everywhere does not come with enough risk. In N3 that risk was KHDs; in N4 KHDs are nerfed to the point where they're a joke. Buffing KHDs to the point where accidentally lobbing a repeater on top of them at least gives a hacker pause would be a big help. But you have substantial portions of the community saying that an Interventor should be unassailable to KHDs because they're supposed to be the best hackers around, and that, frankly, is just entitlement on the part of the players involved.
I've found that Hacking gameplay tends to run more smoothly and has created more engagement in my relatively low-Hacking meta (we don't have any Nomads or CA I play against on a regular basis), though our Ariadna player has complained that there's very little he can do to avoid Spotlight. Having the smaller list of simpler programs and a standardised system for handling states has been an improvement in most regards. The core rules, as is usual, are quite good in N4, so I'm more inclined to blame whoever designed the armies for our current bind. You certainly don't see one uberhacker doing all the work in NCA or even OSS, it's a problem localised to a very small number of poorly-thought-out Sectorials and Vanilla Nomads.
You can still be the best hacker around and still be threatened. In N3 where KHDs supposedly killed the hacking side of the game, my interventor very rarely died to an enemy hacker but there was still enough of a threat there to make me second guess a line of action. Not the case in my experience, our Pano players tend to just run or two in a fireteam behind a firewall (namely the Kamau hacker and Bolt hacker) have them do all the heavy lifting and maybe have a sneaky TO hacker waiting in reserve. OSS has more or less died here as while they do have some of the top teir hackers out there they dont have the threat projection that other factions have. Hell our pano players are the biggest contributors to the GML spam in our meta, followed closely by the druze player.
I think that if hackers are oppresive the better way would be to nerf their most oppresive aspects (like GML and Oblivion), not necessarily making their counters harder, because: A) Relaying on hard counters is exactly where gear-check inflexible lists come from ("they might have a grenzer/kamau sniper so I need a Kriza HMG, they might have a linked inteventor so I need camo KHD") B) If some factions get very effective hacker killers then factions without tough hackers will feel locked out of hacking and cry for their version of interventor level hacker, and if everyone will have interventor level hackers everyone will want very effective hacker-killers. Factions will become more samey. Having said that I'm much more interested in KHD ignoring firewalls (or other buff you guys have in mind) than nerfing spotlight. I've joined the discussion specifically to fight against the idea of nerfing spotlight aro which I think would break more than fix. I'm very open to discussing alternatives.
