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After a few games with BS Attack(Guided)...

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Ugin, Apr 18, 2021.

  1. TriggerPuller9000

    TriggerPuller9000 Poverty Orde Wingate

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    Agree with every point you made. To the point - a combination of various rules changes in N4 (changes to Guided, Hacking, Remotes can now hide more easily using Prone, Firewalls, etc.) have improved the power curve of this mechanic beyond anything that we see elsewhere. In a game where a ~60% chance of success is considered pretty good, and usually carries some risk, a mechanic that has a greater chance of success at zero risk, and unparalleled efficiency, could be considered problematic.

    Every game I play against a repeater-heavy list with Guided turns into a game to solve THAT problem before I can actually play an enjoyable game of Infinity. Now, at the end of the day...have I lost those games? Not disproportionately so at all, but it did sidetrack an otherwise enjoyable game into an exercise of avoiding chucklefuck whackamole in the following turn due to this poorly balanced mechanic. YMMV heavily depending on table setup as well.
     
    #101 TriggerPuller9000, Apr 28, 2021
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2021
  2. TheDiceAbide

    TheDiceAbide Thank you for your compliance.
    Warcor

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    Yeah, I haven't come to the conclusion of it being OP, but it does feel like learning to play against TR bots and MSV2+Smoke in N3 at the very least. I suspect it will occupy about as much mental space as either of those once we develop some good counter-play.
     
  3. SpectralOwl

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    I'm not sure counter-play exists here, given how easily all aspects of the Spotlight process can avoid granting AROs and the overwhelming advantage of stacked Firewall. Best I can come up with is Hidden Deployment to snipe the Pitcher carrier when they move, which isn't reliable at all.
     
  4. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    I find unless I'm playing camo spam regardless of whether I have other counter measures (like -6 Tinbots etc) it makes my first turn of the game Annihilation regardless of the mission being played. I'm very much forced to spend the turn going hard trying to remove either the guided weapon or the hackers that are setting up targets for it.

    I don't think that's a healthy aspect for the game in the long run.
     
  5. miguelbarbo84

    miguelbarbo84 Well-Known Member

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    I'd make Guided(+3) and Guided(+6) options to be able to review each unit/faction independently, increase costs proportionally on each option, and make it Disposable, or maybe Disposable(3). That way you can still use it almost like nowadays if you invest in it (instead of investing in other powerful plays) but if you want it cheap it becomes a bit of a coin-flip, and order intensive again.
     
  6. TheDiceAbide

    TheDiceAbide Thank you for your compliance.
    Warcor

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    Yeah, I mean personally, I just haven't got enough games in with them to think I have a strong enough opinion to call them OP. They're a very new and different element to the game that we all have to learn about. I remember the first time I faced Steel Phalanx, I thought they were OP as hell and unbeatable. Same thing the first time I played against TR Bots, then MSV2 + Smoke, then white noise (which countered my MSV + Smoke, lol). I'm more inclined to think it's one of those things... All of which felt just as oppressive before I understood how to play around them.
     
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  7. Rocker

    Rocker Well-Known Member

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    The difference here though is that once the Spotlight succeeds the tactic is utterly boring. No positioning your models, just "Activate Droid and bomb". Nothing to do at that point to counter it. So to have a chance you either have to invest heavily in hackers yourself to stop the Spotlight attempt (something not every faction can do) or go camo spam (again not available to all factions). The fear of being spotlighted in your active turn also completely shuts you down and prevents you from playing the game.

    No movement or tactics in deployment required anymore. Why even deploy the table and models? Just let each player roll a d20 5 times to see if player 1 beat player 2 and call it. GG.
     
  8. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    But it preserves the idea that Nomads are superior to other factions at hacking, which is apparently more important.
     
  9. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    You could say the same about non interactivity getting shot through MSV + Smoke (or having an Impersonator deployed next to your Lt).

    I dont mind the idea of Guided shots being Disposable though- maybe 5 shots total instead of 5 shots per turn (which feels arbitrary and extra complexity anyway). Disposable (5) would be cleaner, and be an ok handbrake. I feel like more Guided bots should be linkable then though, to give them another use (ARO).
     
  10. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    In the case of the MSV+Smoke combo, you at least get to dodge without malus, and you can use your dodge or guts move to try to exit the fire lane. Unfortunately, against a guided shot, your dodge is at -3 most of the time. What's more, even if you do manage to successfully dodge or survive the shot and use a guts move, you cannot exit the range of the guided launcher. The only way to remove the targeted state is through a reset, which would give the guided launcher a free shot.

    Concerning an impersonation run, if your Lt isn't in a marker state, you can position them in contact with an obstructing contingent of warbands, or, if you're deploying second, try to wait out the deployment of the impersonator to deny them their most efficient run.
     
  11. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    Yes there are mitigation strategies vs those things, as there are vs Guided (spread out, use marker states, use ECM guided, have your own hackers to slow down getting spotlight off with counter hacks, use sixth sense to get flat dodges, use models that can surivive one hit to get a normal roll reset out of targeted, have multiple threats with redundancy rather than few key ones etc). You're just more used to the ones you're more used to.

    Guided is a good way to kill something specific (like an Impersonator is), with a fair bit of resources put into it (more than an impersonator) but its not killing a lot of models and tabling anyone first turn like say an Avatar can. Thats the trade off, and it is weak against a distributed, redundant and or marker state focussed defence.
     
    #111 Hachiman Taro, May 1, 2021
    Last edited: May 1, 2021
  12. FlipOwl

    FlipOwl Well-Known Member

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    What if the Targeted state was only valid for one attack, i.e. being cancelled after being used either for getting a bonus to hit or for launching a guided attack?

    I think that this would mitigate against the use of guided by adding a tax of at least one extra order per shot. It would make the use of targeted against direct fire targets less efficient, but in my years of playing infinity I have seen that happen exactly zero times. Use of spotlight for objectives would be unchanged.
     
    toadchild likes this.
  13. wes-o-matic

    wes-o-matic feeelthy casual

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    Reset ARO could also be permitted to FtF a Guided attack roll while in Targeted. Which would require the least rules rejiggering, I think?

    If that seems like it would be too big a nerf to Guided then maybe Reset at -3.

    Either way, it seems like the thing that’s the most out of line with the rest of the game’s FtF rolls is that Dodge vs. Guided currently doesn’t have a chance to produce a definitive result for the defender—normally if you succeed on a Dodge you get to improve your position against the attacker, which doesn’t work with Guided, and the ARO to improve your position (Reset) isn’t FtF so you’re eating a missile if you try it.

    Reset as a FtF ARO vs. Guided would bring it back into line.

    Edit: Bonus side effect, high WIP LTs are more resilient to guided assassination attempts.
     
    #113 wes-o-matic, May 1, 2021
    Last edited: May 1, 2021
  14. SpectralOwl

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    I'm still calling this a Pitcher problem, personally, with minor add-on problems from some unhackable Repeater carriers and easy forward DepReps. I don't think anybody is complaining about the actual Forward Observe skill, and even top-class Infiltrating Hackers or AD Hackers are shied away from since they often need to take on the enemy Repeater network head-on.

    Radical idea: have Repeaters declare Hacking Attacks as if they were other Troopers in the army list. This would both make Repeaters activate, and therefore allow AROs which makes them weaker in active turn Pitcher/DepRep dives (particularly relevant here since it lets more aggressive deployments shoot Repeaters that would threaten their backline), while also limiting the quantity of stacked AROs in reactive allowing Hackables a bit more freedom since they won't have to face AROs from the whole enemy list's Hackers should they need to pass under Repeater zones.
     
  15. csjarrat

    csjarrat Well-Known Member

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    They were amazing in n2, nerfed in n3, back to good again in n4. They'll be back to shit in n5, don't worry about it lol.
    In all seriousness though, there are counters to it. Also, orders spent on spotlight, repeaters and such are orders that aren't getting spent on capping objectives. In an era of 15 order generating minis, that's a pretty big deal.
    Smart missile bots are pretty defenceless and all factions have pieces that can flank or hunt them or the designators
     
  16. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    Yep. Nobody finds Transductor Zonds a scary vector for Spotlight/Guided. Still is wild to me that units with REMs can be hacked when they move into range, but deployable repeaters (and pitchers) are immune to that. So Pitchers are *better* and easier to deploy.
     
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  17. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    We can all go through the motions of one side saying this is too strong and the other saying that it's fine because there exists any form of counter, but this is the first time I've used a mechanic when playing N4 and felt it was way too strong. It's one thing feeling that way when you're on the receiving end and you don't have to go through the motions of building a list and making compromises, which usually ends up that when you're actually using the tactic yourself you start seeing the opportunity costs, the order costs, the positioning costs, and so on.
    Like a TR REM. Felt OP has heck when I face it across the table, but after spending a bit of time with the game and trying them myself I've ended up not using them all the time because they're not actually as OP as they felt like when I was on the receiving end. Or Impersonation, which actually was exactly as ridiculously strong for so few points as I felt it was, but I was able to appreciate that Fiday has a very limited operational range in a way I didn't experience before.

    Spotlight from Repeaters is good. It's very good. It's a free range band upgrade, and we spend a lot of orders during a game fretting about range bands. To play with massed Repeaters which makes moving TAGs, REMs, and HI around a pain in the butt for the opponent, and to mass hackers enough that the opponent can't effectively use Hackers, is really powerful. It did in fact feel terribly OP and it had basically no limitations on operational range nor the order waste that it forced on my opponent.
    And, I have never faced someone doing it to me yet...

    And here's the kicker:

    I barely spent any orders on the Guided Missile Launcher across the 5 games I've abused this tactic so far. I just locked the table down completely with hacking, turning all my units into basically Atalanta. Except that one game where a enemy FO REM managed to FO my Guided REM and FO some important shit before I got my repeater network up...
     
  18. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    Were Impersonators and TR bots brand new mechanics the meta hadn't settled on counters to when you took them your first 5 games?

    Haave you played going second vs camo spam with it yet?

    It's not winning tournaments in my meta.
     
    #118 Hachiman Taro, May 2, 2021
    Last edited: May 2, 2021
  19. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here, but. No no and yes. The way the current hacking game works makes camo mandatory for anything mission critical. I've seen several players a lot less trigger happy when it comes to reaching conclusions than Triumph report that it's been getting more and more impossible to play with a specific subset of LTs.

    Biggest issue is that most factions don't have an effective counter to this tactic.
     
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  20. Hachiman Taro

    Hachiman Taro Inverted gadfly

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    Your statements about it seem a bit extreme, so I was just asking to see if that was due to not having enough experience with the counters due to your meta not discovering them yet, due to it being fairly new.

    If most factions didn't have an effective counter at all, this tactic would be winning most tournaments if how powerful you describe it as was accurate. That's not my experience of it having played it, and not true generally either AFAIK. It definately seems strong situationally, but then so are a number of things.

    It does have an outsized psychological impact right now though, which is part of what people react to. Not saying it possibly couldn't be improved with an adjustment either (I even suggested one earlier). But many adjustments players who don't like it suggest effectively would just remove it from the game (and in that case it would be better just removed, so it's not useless complexity).

    It's more powerful than it was in N3 right now for sure, and people are still getting used to that. But then with how strong armoured heavies got in N4, something has to be good against them.
     
    A Mão Esquerda likes this.
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