Depends on what you do with it. It will mean that a camo KHD will have a better time when they get there. But reducing the effective damage of a hacker that's hacking through a Repeater may mean that aside from Spotlight, just sitting in the DZ may not be sufficient return on investment for the somewhat more expensive hackers. Don't necessarily need to do a quad-nerf a'la Jammers ;)
Why should AP HMGs threaten ARM6 as much as a regular HMG threatens ARM3? Because we need to be able to hurt shit in this game or the game doesn't work. This was easier to differentiate before when we had more types of hacking devices to spread programs between. But because CB fucked up and dumbed it down too much we are in this situation where it's much harder to differentiate between models have different guns (programs) in cyberwarfare and we're sort in the situation where everyone is attacking with one of two different types of programs. Essentially hacking warfare largely means you're armed with one of two guns which makes shit much harder to balance effectively.
Look, there's a lot of pent-up annoyance in the community over the Nomad as faction design goes, but can we either get over that or move it to a thread of its own? Using Nomads as examples here is natural because it's on topic both how Nomads are designed to be strongest at hacking and how Nomads have some of the most extreme examples of rules interaction. But Nomads are not alone in this and if you've got grievances with this design you don't fix it by tackling only Nomads.
For AP to work sensibly it'd have to be a negative mod to ARM. I'd prefer it that way, so you don't have bullshit at ARM 3.
It's one of those mechanics that are designed to do a job in an easy and simple to understand manner... but you get what you pay for. We get a very simple and easy to understand game mechanic at the expense of a better tuned game experience a more complex one could potentially provide, such as assigning individual AP values to weapons, but obviously that comes at the expense of more book keeping.
Because it's a shooting game. I don't think that everything with a hackable trait should be hackable easily/reliably. 9BTS is Avatar-level-BTS. Avatar, the pinacle of alien technology, the terror. I think that hacking an Avatar should always be a hail mary. For me it looks like the main problem seems to be BTS9 hackers, because reportedly few armies can attack them back trough the vector that they use - making them probably too comfortable to sit back and kill you from afar, making for a uninteractive experience similar to speculative fire. The solution would be to reduce BTS9 hackers (Interventor and KoJ) to 6. What right does some fleshbag have to higher BTS than an Anathematic, anyway?
There's the potential for it to get hard to keep track of, especially since N4 seems like it's chasing the needle on the value of ARM by addming more and more AP HMGs and AP Spitfires. If AP spitfires, AP rifles and AP heavy pistols and BSGs were only ever ARM -3 and APHMGs/MSRs were only ever either ARM or 4 I'd trust the community to stay on top of it. It would need such a big price overhaul to be worth considering at this stage though, especially given the AP proliferation this edition.
I think you're going to be relatively alone there wanting hacking (space magic) to be comparatively inferior.
I just remembered how I used to phrase my gripe with the uneven Hacking back in N3. Where the difference between a good shooter faction and a bad shooter faction was a few BS and a -3 MOD, the difference between a good Hacking faction and a bad Hacking faction was like one side not having SWC weapons. I feel that's as relevant as ever with more Hackables and more that can be done with Hacking despite the limited program list, since both range (Repeaters and Pitchers) and direct face-to-face power (Upgrades, Tinbots, stats) are usually lower. Maybe there's space for a real Hacking HMG or Missile Launcher in the game now, at a premium in points and SWC, to be made available more widely as a Hacking analogue to the big weapons we bring to fight TAGs or heavy MODs head-on. At the least dedicated infowar troops like the Interventor or Barid need to be proliferated more widely due to the increased relevance of Hacking in general, factions which aren't carrying around the HD as a secondary weapon on a platform built for shooting are at a big advantage for now.
Not exactly inferior but supportive. I would prefer hacking to be something that helps you solve problems rather than outright solving them (trough oblivion or GML). I'd rather have more programs with "softer" yet meaningful effect on the game table (like cybermask, white noise or spotlight-minus-GML). Easy to land programs that stun, programs that discover markers. Stuff like that. I might be relatively lonely in this sentiment but I do believe this would be an easier to balance yet potential more interesting tactically (definitely more than pither-spotlight-GML).
My mistake, the math there checks out so I take your point, it is possible to design a programme that is better against high BTS targets than other hackers. But since the programme you propose is basically Oblivion, why not simply move that programme (and give it +3WIP/make it target hackers only) to the KHD? I suppose that may make it even better vs Asuras and EI aspects though. As with comments above I don't see why you need to be able to reliably brick a KoJ or a Jotun at all? One's a 50pt HI and the other is the size of a house. Pop spotlight on them and shoot them with conventional weapons, neither of them have any penalties after all. Going further down that rabbit hole: do we need to have new deployable weapons that are good specifically against high PH targets? Do we need AP template weapons to deal with high ARM camo troops? High BTS is perfectly reasonable counterplay to hacking in the same way that high PH is to mine spam. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to AHDs returning (as long as they were compartively rare), it's not exactly going to make the Jotun useless, I just much prefer the things Rejnhard is suggesting: hacking should be a useful tool that's all. Right now, it seem a bit more than that for some factions.
Because Veteran hackable targets exist. Oblivion can't affect them. The entire point of hacking is to be able to affect these targets in a way that doesn't require direct engagement. The idea is for the plucky underdog Nomad to wave their fingers and emit space magic that stops the superior combat Pan-O goliath unit, while the Pan-O player curses them for being a cowardly nerd that can't hold their own in glorious combat. This is why some people are bit miffed that Nomads lately also shoot so well they kind of make alot of other factions look like a bit of a joke in a direct gun fight. You might have noticed these complaints come up in the thread.
The entire point of hacking is to add tactical depth and entertainment value to the existing rules of Infinity. Infinity is a lot of pages of relatively finely tuned rules about shooting people effectively and moving to shoot people effectively. Hacking which doesn't interact with these rules much, but rather replaces them with completely different kind of combat, will have to add a lot of rules (programs, skills, exceptions, virtual positioning) to be as interesting tactically as shooting. I'd rather have hacking that adds another dimension to the shooting game instead of trying to replace it.
You're missing the point that hacking is supposed to create an avenue for asymmetrical warfare. The entire point is to be able to engage an otherwise flat out superior combat unit in a way that they can't directly compete in, because otherwise the specialist in question would likely get their ass kicked. Which in turn encourages the combat unit to seek support/hacking specialists to help them deal with said hacker. If you don't like that, well, tough, I guess.
Not sure what your point is there. Apart from Yadu, Bolts, Securitate and Govads, there are no veteren hackers (as far as I remember) outside of Morats, all of these (except Bolts) would be easy pickings for Trinity as it stands... The point of hacking (and the Nomad faction's love of it) is to give yourself an unfair advantage. Spotlight, stunned, white noise etc. are all unfair advantages even if you can't immobilize or isolate the target. It's also not the only dirty trick the Nomads have either (an asshole with a gluegun walking on/appearing more than 8" behind you and shooting you in the back has the same effect, usually with less effort and the same risk too). No-one is arguing that you should be invulnerable to all hacking programmes, just that high BTS should protect you from some of the worst aspects of it.
Druze, Shakti, and Yadu also exist as veteran hackers, but that's hardly the point. CB is constantly adding new shit to the game. There is no guarantee we don't see more added to the game later or existing hackers pick up veteran later. Bolts are also decidedly not easy pickings for Trinity either, BTS6+ a Firewall they're actually pretty annoying for a standard KHD to tackle, averages 3-4 orders for a WIP13 one to stick a wound on them. Like I said that's not the case, the point is to create the ability for combat ineffective guys to punch up against superior units. I get that people get upset that their fat terminator shit gets picked on by these nerds but that's exactly what their job is both mechanically in the game and in the fluff.
Big +1 on the "Hacking as a supplement to shooting, not a replacement" idea. I'm hugely in favor of this. In N3 Tohaa, we could pick between the different pheroware, getting either damage, Isolation or a really efficient one that just did stun. It was a really interesting decision to be made regarding effectiveness and effect. I used that stun one so much, but never heard it talked about on the forums, so obviously different people can have different preferences which is better than just more or less effective versions of the same abilities. I'd love to see hacking do shit like "-3 BS", Impair movement, take control of a unit for a single attack (similar to TAG possession) and so on. Make it so REMs are susceptible to the more potent programs like the friendly fire one, so they feel different to HI. I really disliked the old hacking, where it was just "pick the program that was mathematically the best". I'm really cagey about letting hackers cut through BTS - the stat is there to make them hard to hack. Could give them a program that has AP, and its effect is to reduce the target's BTS ("Compromised" state or something), so you could use other abilities more effectively. While I agree that a big voodootech TAG should be hard to hack, I strongly disagree with the idea of making Interventors weaker to hacking. Its meant to be their thing. Its the only thing they do and they're damn expensive. I think the fleshbaginess or lack thereof is better represented in the fact that the Anathematic can get its brain fried multiple times before it keels over, and human hackers generally cannot.
