spotlight is too strong in my opinion. either -3 has to turn back or must be useable in active turn only.
Spotlight's not too strong, Spotlight and SML are. It's the combo attack that needs a nerf. Adding something like the old U-turn to EVO remotes would add another mitigating factor (-3 to hit if the EVO is around to ARO with U-Turn, which would also break EVO supportware as a disadvantage). It would also encourage use of support troops which also make the game more interesting in other ways.
Guided attack on N4 isn't overpowered, it's a viable tactic when it wasn't on N3. Ah! and one more reason to use a TAG.
Honestly, removing or nerfing pitchers or GML is an option, but for factions such as Nomads which really lack the big top tier gunfighter options, how do you expect them to deal with hard targets/ARO pieces. Nomads are strongly lacking in top tier gunfighter because that is not what their faction is built around. The Kriza is an okay gunfighter at best and really struggles as soon as the enemy has any type of visual mod. So GML are really the only way to deal with the big nasties without doing other things such as ARO baiting through smoke/white noise which is a whole other can of worms. In essence, while I think SML are a little too strong, there are counterplays and Nomads don't really have other options do deal with things sometimes and are but around hacking as the defining characteristic of their forces.
To be fair, spotlight was effectively useless in N3 due to the -3 and active turn only. In N4 it is better but not overpowered because it doesn't kill anything by itself and the opponent can always try to rest out of it or Engineer it off.
It was viable in N3, just took a bit of specific set up and the non-persistence of Targeted meant it was not worth it on 5-point chaff that people filled their lists with. It was more like a scalpel tool to remove cancerous Fireteams. Come now, Nomads have some pretty great gun fighters. Like Szally, Puppets, Grenzers, Reverends, and the HIs. Let's not put the bar at Atalanta levels of stratospheric competence to be classed at "good" or Ariadna will be forever stuck in dirt league forever ;) Besides, it's not about the size of your BS skill, it's about how you use it. As it is, there's a few stuff that I think you need to keep away from Nomads in order to allow other factions to have a chance, primarily a few combinations of minelayer that I saw suggested in the Tunguska buff thread. I think it would be without saying that Nomads should have a few options for Minelayer DepReps if Pitchers are removed which would help against a subset of turn 1 assassinations, but that combined with Pitchers is a bit of a no-go, IMO.
So your opponent can instead of spotlighting it with that pitcher steal it and murder your shit with it?
My issue is the uninteractability of the strategy. Guy shoots repeater, you do nothing. Guy spotlights, you get a reset roll (a roll isn't by itself interaction, given how difficult it is to influence this roll). Guy fires missiles, you get a bad dodge (same argument). I'd love to see ARO against the deployment of repeaters as one countermeasure, both dodges vs appearance in ZoC and BS attacks if you can see where it comes down. Combine with a nerf to their rangebands and you have now given players a meaningful ability to interact with where the repeaters can be placed - at least via pitcher. What are the 'anti-repeater measures'? There are ways to clear or even punish repeaters after the fact, but little counterplay to the repeater+missile sequence. Best I've seen is "put a killer hacker right in front of the target" but on most boards that is going to award a single trinity ARO with the cost of losing clumped models when they win and spotlight. Second best is "deploy your missile targets further back" but that isn't accomplishable on most boards either. Super keen to hear anything else that can be used. So much this, honestly. Zero Dep.Rep et al can move+move, move+depoy and die to AROs, then watch the exterminatus with their dying breath. Very few defensive setups can stop this. But I'd argue this is more an issue with camo than with repeaters in specific.
What's a Reverend? As for the HI with a handful of exceptions (EVAder, Kriza, Vostok, RGs) they aren't that great (and funnily enough still need to leverage spotlight and pitchers so they can shoot on reasonable numbers) and/or have the damage output of a lobotomised fusilier with a stick.
What the hell is this with Nomads having weak gunfighting? They've got some of the best in the game, along with just about everything else they do.
People think that, because they're using circular logic. "Nomads are good at hacking, therefore, they *must* have other things they're bad at."
I think the argument is while they have some of the statistically strongest shooters in the game, they don't have the raw order efficiency or efficient link teams (outside of CJC) that other factions can put up. For example Teutons and Hollowmen both present BS13 Spitfires carried by HI, but Teutons can run 2 extra orders through it due to NCO and LT2. They don't have the ability that say IA or CA can do where they run 14 orders through an attack piece. While you can stick a Kriza or Vostok in a Hollowman link, is it as cost or order efficient as say a link consisting of ORC+Karhu+3 Fusiliers? But yes, statistically a buffed Vostok can dumpster most things short of a TAG in cover.
Not that I think that the quality of gunfighter was the primary point of neither my post nor that of @MattB89 so let's not get too stuck on that, okay? With the homogenization of factions that happened along with N4, there's very very few factions without strong long range gun fighters, strong skirmishers, strong snipers, godlike CC creatures, more direct template weapons than miniatures, etc. If anything the factions that were good in each category missed out a bit. Hacking's one of few aspects that still have a very clear and intact pecking order. Reverend Moiras HMG specifically, but all Reverends are good gun fighters even if they're fragile for their cost. Without getting into details, I think you've set the bar a bit too high to clear for any faction.
Kriza is just mimetism now which makes him way less effective against various msv linked pieces Kusanagi is non-ap spitfire Gecko is limited by rangebands and can be possessed Szalamandra is cool but still a manned tag compared to pano tags and swiss guard or sepulchre, hac tao, omega, achilles, avatar/sphinx just going by other vanillas thats not a good bruteforce selection, on par with haqq and ariadna who traditionally also dont rely on gunfighting favoring skirmishers warbands and droptroops
Sure, you've *only* got a B5 Mimetic Heavy Infantry that still outperforms everything you listed against linked MSV2. I'm very sorry for you, clearly Nomads need help. I'll just be over here, enjoying being basically forced to swap my NCA for Vanilla PanO because NCA needs to use Hackables to complete objectives but can't attack or defend against a good Hacking list whatsoever.
Swiss guard without using suprise attack has 64% odds of doing a wound to a Orc, compared to a kriza's 54%. The Swiss guard is also a bit better vs MSV2, thanks to bs15. The Swiss is quite a bit better, not to mention the other models fatherboxx mentioned. The Kriza is ok. At his price point I'm more interested in a gecko.
They're good against mediumweight Hacking lists, but Corregidor or Vanilla Nomad Hacking-focused lists (or just about anything with Pitchers and some Hacker quantity that gets first turn) will lock NCA down completely. Its options for working under Repeater coverage that it can't KHD its way out of are so bad that it's not worth playing the faction. It's a lot of fun in most other matchups, though. ...Yeah. An ORC. The Kriza's better at cracking linked MSV2, I think the Swiss still beats it against MSV1 but the margin gets very narrow. My point here is that it's a bit rich to complain about top-end gunfighting ability when your entry outperforms a Swiss Guard at anything, let alone the game's second-strongest class of ARO. It would be like me whining about PanO being rubbish at Hacking if they had access to a combo that dealt with, say, very high stacked BTS better than anything the Nomads did.
