If nothing else, the Zero Pain pseudo-hackers seem like a reasonable choice for Highly Classified and Countermeasures, which I'm guessing will still be in ITS 12. You need a hacker for those missions. Spiral could instead take the Wardriver or Brawler HD, or Aelis KHD, and those would also be reasonable choices since they can, y'know, hack. But given that Spiral has no repeater network at all, it makes sense for them to have the option of just not playing the hacking game at all, and buying a 12-point pseudo-hacker instead. Assuming you decide to bring a pseudo-hacker, Zero Pain isn't useless... quite. If you have to move through your opponent's hacking area to reach an objective, you'll use it. A Wardriver resetting against a Trinity(-3) ARO from a Barid has a 39% chance to take a wound. If the Wardriver uses Zero Pain instead of reset, the odds drop to 26%. That's a significant decrease, but 26% is still too big a risk, so you won't move through the hacking area at all except as a hail mary. Likewise, if the Barid decides to hunt you in his active turn (which is totally possible in Highly Classified or Countermeasures), Zero Pain might force him to spend an extra order or two, but that's the most it will do. The Wardriver is still getting murdered. So yeah, Zero Pain isn't totally useless, and will be used in any situation where the pseudo-hacker would otherwise have reset. But I'm not sure that it's a significant enough improvement over reset to make very much difference in outcomes.
I believe that in most cases, instead of saying «something is useless» it is usually more correct to say «I can't find the use of something.»
...or they're saying "I can see how this is useful, but there are <list> that are more useful for similar or lesser investment and I'll be investing a lot of resources to make this thing useful when I could get a thing from <list> that can more immediately or with lesser investment be useful as well or sufficiently useful that the benefit of bringing the original thing is not a very good choice, so it is in my opinion of less use" But it's shorter skipping to the last few words :) (That's not to say they are correct nor incorrect, but that the safe assumption isn't that someone is saying something is literally useless, but that they're saying they don't find the value to be very big)
It's really a Cost / Benefit question. Hacker w/ just Zero Pain seems to be ~Specialist Operative in Cost (0-1pts). A Wardriver Hacker is an Alg with Combi swapped to BSG, 1ARM swapped to 3BTS, + SS, + Flash Pulse. That's ~2pts worth of upgrades. So on that profile Hacker w/ Zero Pain seems to be ~0pts (yes, that means by my calculation the Wardriver with HD gets a 1 SWC but ~3pt HD). So for the cost of the upgrade the fact that all it really does is give those factions an option for getting ITS bonuses in missions that benefit Hackers makes sense. The bigger issue is that Wardrivers aren't actually great for that role because they don't organically get themselves up the table: you trade a lot of order inefficiency in moving them around for order efficiency in pushing buttons. They could do with something like Duo in at least one of the sectorials they appear in so that they can Fireteam with a lone Wildcard 'bodyguard' to improve their efficiency in their role.
True, I can't imagine taking one just to get, say +3 to the button-pushing roll in Domination. You'd much rather take something like a Kumotail which will automatically follow an attack triad up the table, so you more than gain back any extra orders you might have to spend rerolling a failed button poke. And will also be a useful doctor/engineer. I'd imagine they're only really useful for Highly Classified and Countermeasures. In those missions, I suspect I'd still rather take the Taagma pseudo-hacker so as to put it in a triad. But, options are good, the Wardriver is there for players who want to save points, or use their triads for other things, or already have 3 Taagmas, or whatever. Doesn't matter if it rarely gets taken. How often did Wardrivers get taken in N3, anyway?
What do you mean? If Pi-Well is the target of a hacker, what can Zoe do to avoid it? I think she can't do anything at all
Totally unrelated to the point you are making but who in the hell uses FOs to give the targeted state? The FO skill is difficult to use and hard to land since the odds are that anything you'd want to use it on will beat your FO skill in a F2F and leave you with a dead FO for your troubles. I guess Ariadna may give it a shot once in awhile because they don't really have access to Spotlight but the FO skill is pretty much trash, EDIT: Holy Necro Batman, I didn't realize the thread was this old when I replied.
I agree that it isn't common, but I got owned by an FO here: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/four-asawiras-in-virginia.39288/#post-392626
Wow. Nice to see an FO actually getting something out of being an FO other than the ability to push a button.
I've had an Aleph FO REM walk across the table, marking far too many poor little OCF targets for the Guide Missile REM to kill as well :( The new cover rules really benefits FOs moving on roofs
When the target is hiding behind a tinbot (epecially if it's -6 or if it has ECM hacking) and/or has high enough wip to reasonably reset against you successfully, its also B2 to spotlight's B1 so is a little more reliable and as you don't need to se up a repeater a little more efficient. TO FOs are good for this.
Well... combining mimetism, surprise attack and cover bonus, you can easily build up some MODs to win f2f. That's how I managed it with Spektr FO.
Lasiq forward observer with X-visor at 40 odd inches is rolling with 14's minus cover and/or mimetism... it's done pretty good for me.
Pi-well from out of the targets good range triangulating FO is an OK one too. Basically anything with strong visual mods can be worth it.
If you run the math it's actually pretty decent in F2F when applied by mimetic -6 skirmishers, I find it's useful even on my mimetic -3 ones. Things like Ninjas and Spektrs can use it to mark hard targets they otherwise couldn't really threaten with a combi rifle, and they can often work their way into a position they can tackle the target from outside their good range bands or even from the rear. I also use it in Vanilla, I'll toss an FO Guilang into the grouping for a combined order when I'm spamming panzerfausts at something with a coordinated order.
Camo infiltrating Skirmishers are particularly good bc the can often just move-move into something's back arc as it holds. No ARM save against FO means it's particularly good odds if you can get a normal roll with a rear shot etc on it.
Pertinent to this thread, some cute players from an event in Sydney on the weekend: Rolling Forward Observer 3 dice on 14s with a marskmanship puppetbot vs a hollowman core linked missile rolling two dice on 13s to set it up for a kill then finish it off with a missile (could have been 3 dice 15s but a remdriver had to die to save me with a shotgun ARO in reactive turn one) zero pain's mere existence forcing all hacking attacks away from BTS3 Zoe and into BTS6 Jazz, who tanked them like a champ and kept my much more important hacker-and-engineer piece alive
If you had Zoe would Pi Well have been better odds? One less die but mim -6 and potentially triangulated if you could catch it beyond 40" puts the Hollowman on 1's or 4's and doesn't even need marksmanship.
I did have Zoe, but PiWell was in a different part of the table and had other essential duties. The puppet was much closer and could get within 24" more easily :) As for the actual math of success, it's really tricky to quantify but I think yes the mimetism gives PiWell and edge compared to the puppet's Burst, and higher native WIP. But I haven't run the math - the N4 calculator couldn't calculate forward observer rolls last I checked it.