The only thing that can without either a Core Link bonus or MSV is the Dragao. If your benchmark for "adequate" sits around the level of PanO's single biggest gun you may be playing the wrong faction.
Keep in mind that the AP only reduced the Orc's ARM by 2. It's better, but not hugely so. Once you link the Kriza, it's 63% to wound the Orc (assuming @toadchild 's calculator is doing B6 correctly - not sure if he's updated that part of the code yet). A linked Vet Kazak has AP, but one less burst, and is 64% to wound the Orc. So against a linked HI, the linked Kriza performs equally with one of the best linked shooters in the game. The AP will start to matter more against TAGs where cutting ARM in half becomes more significant. But you were talking about linked HI.
Yes. The person I was replying to asked about a linked Kriza. Look further up the thread to find the odds for the unlinked Kriza against the same linked Orc.
Yes, as that discussion started in the first place - in the absence of ultimate (or at least EXTREMELY RELIABLE) direct fire pieces Nomads are left to rely on indirect tricks
I think the thread has come full circle and gone back to be almost on topic. Amazing. White Noise to zone a Kamau/Grenzer/Bolt Cored Sniper would be a lovely option to have for those lists when you don't want to feel forced to use an Aquila or Dragao (only ones I've found that can manage better than 40% odds without likely having to use Eclipse or Marker state methods to get close enough).
There's plenty of factions which don't have tricks which don't have firefighters better than the Kriza though. So I don't think you have much to complain about. How do you think vanilla Ariadna deals with that thing? Also, did you suggest thay a defensive hacking play with a 5% chance of success was a good counter?
"It cannot reliably kill the litteral best ARO in the game, woe is me." The Avatar also cannot reliably kill a linked Kamau.
Objectively, it's a problem, but the problem is that the Kamau MSR wildcard is too good and not that Nomads' shooting is not good enough.
Back to the point of the thread... I've found the SML bots to be utterly oppressive in every game I've played against them so far. Part of it feels like they're the new MSV+Smoke, or TR Bot bugbear that all of us had to learn to fight against when we started playing Infinity. On the other side of things, if you have a way to distribute repeaters, you absolutely should take a SML bot every time. It is incredibly easy to get Spotlight off these days, and resetting out of it can waste a lot of orders, while KHD are weaker at killing enemy hackers than they were previously. I don't think I have enough data to say it should or should not be changed, but it occupies a huge amount of head space every game so far.
Maybe a mitigation to SML is to take more Tinbots/Engineers in link teams or in general so that Targetted can be removed more easily.
Removing the targeted state by engineers isn't really mitigation, by the time that's relevant the stuff that's been targeted is already dead. Tinbots and by extension ECM hacking and firewalls are great mitigation (a -6 tinbot is often enough to dissuade someone from trying with hacking anyway), problem is not everyone has access to tinbots and ECM hacking or on profiles or wildcards to be useful, and the most common instance of Firewalls is Fairy Dust which you can't currently start the game with it up, which if you could would help immensely (at least on high value hackable targets, LI and MI are still SOL).
Yep, B6 works fine. So long as it doesn’t give you an error message, the burst calculations should be accurate.
I dont disagree with you. Its felt a bit oppressive in games where its gone first against an unprepared opponent at times. But my experience is that this is way more true when it does get first, and when it doesnt its a bunch of set up and resources for stuff that isnt that good as it could be if you're not alpha-ing. So it's a bit reliant on dicing the Lt roll and also wanting first for the mission along with a number of other things (opponent having keystone models it can kill, not being spread out, ECM guided, getting repeaters down, spotlight off etc). If you go second components needed to make it work are probably taken out by the time you act or its already not what you need to focus on anymore since your opponent has given you their problems to solve, and youre down on pts and orders to spend not on the mission. Guided bots dont make great ARO pieces. So I dunno if its ok or not in the end. It hasnt auto won games Ive seen but it has been impactful and occupied significant mental space in games it went first. But then, so do impersonators, pheroware, AD etc. We're just more accustomed to some of those.
I just feel it has a huge part of NPE (negative play experience) for the opponent. The same is sort of true for speculative fire, but it gets saved by the -6 MOD, making it a not very reliable tactic. Maybe remove the +6MOD to Guided?
I wouldn't remove the MOD entirely, but if it got dropped to just +3 it would be consistent with the MOD targeted provides in every other circumstance. That feels like a good way of putting the brakes on lightly for guided strikes.