Woah, I missed that. 3 man Core and they get +3 BS, +1 B, SS and Discover? Or just any fireteam with 3 members? As far as effecting other troops and mitigating MSV, mimetism or Marksmanship, theirs other tools for that or in the case of Marksmanship not so much but maybe what CB should do is spread around Eclipse and White Noise a little more to help even the playing field.
The problem is that hackers are far too safe against Trinity, which should be the best choice for killing them. A lot of people disingenuously argue that KHDs shouldn't be good at killing hackers because they want the Interventor Lt to be risk-free, which is shitty for the game. Linked Vostok, linked Grenzer MSR, Szalamandra in general.
Could we just make it a choice where you have to 'turn off' MSV and Marksmanship for Fireteams when benefitting from the Fireteam bonuses (or choose to keep them but not get the Fireteam bonuses for that order)? Seems to me it would be flavor-accurate to either get one or the other. Thematically the reason why a Fireteam gets bigger burst, and a better chance to hit is that we're simulating how the various members of the team are acting as spotters or providing supporting fire... but someone with MSV 2 shooting through smoke simply should not gain the benefit of that additional coordination, since the rest of the fireteam can't see shit.
There is a 40% chance of a simple wip13 Camo killer hacker knocking a wound off a bts9 whlist using suprise attack if you avoid thier firewall. If you use your own firewall the numbers become better. If that's too hard for you to do, I'm afraid you need to git gud. Two of those are linked units, those are units where you need to pay the devil's bargain of playing a sectiorial. The third, is a unit that has aways been part of the faction since N1. It's quite clearly part of the factions design space since day one to have a bs14 unit that has 5 active turn dice. Or somthing like the intruder. Predates things like Kaung Shi defining yu jing.
As I'm one of the people who I believe you're refering to, I feel that's very hyperbolic. KHDs are perfecly good at killing most hackers in the game. It's only those with high BTS where they struggle. There's plenty of legit arguements for KHDs needing a boost in N4 vs hard targets. Just as a BS 12 mook with a Missile launcher should be a threat to a TAG, Asuras, Charontids, KoJs and Interventors should be concerned about KHDs, whereas at the moment they simply aren't. I'd just rather not have to go back to having to run 2 support hackers for an Interventor to have any degree of safety at all (i.e. why bother running hackers at all when you can just run a beatsick HI or 2 more skirmishers?). But the main reason this is an even an issue is because of other aspects of hacking that, as OP points out, are uninteractive and/or have too little counterplay. Leaning on KHDs as the main way of dealing with hacking doesn't really resolve these issues. All it does is make hacking less useful, especialy vs armies like Yu Jing, Nomads and especially CA who have cheap, infiltrating KHDs. That is what I personally (and quite a number of others) want to avoid - not for Interventor Lts to be risk free.
If I understand that right, in the reactive your core variant gets no BS boni. In this case the alternate SF state could be a thing. It still sounds a bit too good on paper ;-)
I think I'd be a bit concerned about making big changes to fireteams all at once, since it would likely create as many new unexpected interactions as it would solve. That said, I am in favor of the named fireteams being inherently different from one another in terms of the benefits they provide. When I started learning about fireteams it seemed like a lot of different fancy names with essentially no difference in function.
No, the problem is that because avoiding the firewall is necessary, there is no risk to skeeting repeaters all around the board, because if your opponent tries to attack you through them, it just wastes orders and is not an actual vulnerability. Also surprise attack is not ubiquitous in N4 for KHDs like it was in N3. It's not about "gitting gud," it's about giving repeater coverage a counterplay. That doesn't properly exist in N4. Yes, I can long bomb pitchers with Kerr-Nau and stress out any old hacker on the board. The problem is that all that means is that in order to properly counter hackers, *I* need my own noninteractive repeater net. This is bad design. Suggesting it's just a matter of player skill is not engaging with what the problem is; you should go back to the drawing board on that one.
The Vostok is a universal wildcard between all Nomad sectorials. It consistently out performs a core linked Kriza against anything that isn't packing MSV2. Realistically when people make the complaints Hecaton is making they're mostly pointing fingers at the Vostok and to a lesser extent the Grenzer. To put it in perspective you'd expect two martial focused sectorials such as Invincible Army and Military Orders which represent specialised front line combat forces for the two biggest nations to be on the cutting edge for direct combat gunfighters. The Vostok allows every single Nomad sectorial to absolutely outclass them when it comes to a direct brawl if the Nomad player so desires. Is it overpowered? In the overall scheme of things probably not. Is it weird that Nomads have this insane gunfighting unit that outclasses just about everything else in the game? Yeah, it's pretty fucking weird. The Vostok causes some pretty fucky internal balance issues for Nomads as well, the FTO option basically shelves the Kriza in Tunguska as an option by being both cheaper and more accurate, and being a wildcard on top of that. On a personal salt level from Yu Jing, being denied Burst 6 forever on the poster child of HI BRRRRRT the Yan Huo because "it's bad for the game mechanics" only to see it finally turn up in Nomads on a mimetic chasis to boot is fucking annoying. To then see the Vostok utterly dominate the Kriza despite packing B6 just makes me even fucking madder about my fucking Yan Huo being garbage.
Grab a warband and git gud, like, this isn’t rocket science just destroy the fucking thing with something and then reset/ engineer out of it if you really care. There's your counter play if you don't have the tactical ablity to outflank your opponent and fight on better terms if stage diving dosent seem worth it. Seems pretty interactive.
Nah. KHDs should punish people skeeting out repeater nets. They don't do that well enough right now. I have the tactical ability to outflank my opponents, just like any competent Infinity player, but I don't know if you noticed, repeaters don't care about facing... And this "stage diving" bullshit? Just a bunch of blather from some catty schoolgirls on Critposting who can't back up what they say. Again, go back to the drawing board.
I'm not sure what the facing of a repeater has to do with a Preta or Naga attacking it. But I also don't understand why a player investing releases in controlling the board should be easily punished by someone mindlessly adding a shrouded KHD. Seems to me they should be rewarded in spending the orders and points investing in quantity/quality of hackers and repeater coverage. Especially as the tools exist to bypass it all by not even playing the hacking or pheroware game. Tldr git gud and learn to stop fearing the phrase "comms attack"
So while I broadly agree with you on this topic, these trolly responses really don't help. If nothing else, remember that Hecaton has a relatively low win rate in official events; not everyone is good at innovating and overcoming and if he complains about something there's a good chance it's a real challenge for new or casual players.
Personally I'd like to see some of the breadth of ability we see internally in gunfighting brought to the Hacking field. As it stands each faction has very few viable options for Hacking, with a truly massive gap in power and price between them. Putting a price on Upgrades and proliferating proper, optimised-for-Hacking profiles with good faction flavour (like PanO having really good KHDs to match their "shoot, then score" playstyle and Nomads having their verstility emphasised with quirky Upgrades and razor-optimised pricing) across the board is something I feel would be helpful. Currently too many profiles, especially in older factions, are built as a shooting platform with a Hacking Device tacked on when Hacking has been made such a relevant part of the standard game experience that the opposite needs to be true.
I think you do have to be a bit carefull with that to not over expand the breadth of the game, which could make it innaccesable. Currently hacking and cc are kind of side games in my opinion to a core game of shooting. However a bit more nuance to the hacking game wouldn't hurt, or additional factional flair.
On Fireteams: I don't like how fireteams currently skews the game. The Core (or Core Triad) itself is this monolithic part of a list's power curve that the game usually comes down to dealing with the Core and once the Core has been dealt with you've put the rest of that list into a fairly steep up-hill battle. This may be balanced in the grand scheme of things, but I find it seriously negatively affects my enjoyment of the game how almost all lists will have this monolithic... swarm... trudging across the table that's almost impervious to AROs as long as they're careful. It's the kind of skewey effect that in other games would be reserved for a very few factions as their specific thing, but is normalised in Infinity to almost all factions and playing a meta where sectorials are the norm this means there's two of these on the table of almost all Infinity games. In short, the Core enables some pretty crazy and some pretty dumb shit. I have had a lot more enjoyment playing against Tohaa, prior to Triad Core, as the level of Fireteams where the list do not immediately fold when the Fireteam loses a member or two and where the amount of bonus you get from the Fireteam is beneficial but pretty limited. Avoids the whole "building tall in a swamp" kind of deal. Not saying that everyone should have the highly flexible Triads, but that maybe the game would be more interesting if a bunch of Haris was the norm as was mentioned earlier in the thread. On Gitting Gud: This is gaming's equivalent of Goodwin's Law. Or some other conversational law like that. I'm not a scholar. Whether you have a good argument or not is undermined by the fact that you just conceded that you don't want to be taken seriously. On Kriza: Get over it. Yes, Kriza breaks the unwritten law to not go to burst 6, yes it's a strong unit on the board, but the price tag demands it to perform stronger, still, and it's not quite able to do that. Just like with the Yan Huo. On hacking: A lot of people disingenuously argue that KHDs should be good at killing Interventors in ARO through hostile repeaters, which would somehow not be shitty for the game. Also, a lot of people disingenuously misrepresent a few people as a lot of people. My experience with KHDs is that they function to a similar degree as you'd expect a device that costs the same as a light shotgun does. The problem for both the user and the target is usually the delivery method. It's difficult getting the device into position like with a shotgun, but once there it's almost impossible for the target to do something about it because unlike with the Shotgun the target can't dodge or hope to guts out of the danger area. I think the overall design of hacking still has a ways to go. Just like any attack that doesn't require LOF does in this game. It stops being about position and becomes all about rolling unfavourable dice until your opponent stops spending orders on it. Edit. Last but not least I'd like to talk about how insanely important it is to go first in so many match ups. Be it to deny Hassassin Bahram from murdering your LT turn 1, to avoid having Combined spam repeaters literally everywhere, to putting your LT in marker state, to re-organising for protecting against a likely parachutist dep zone, to just generally spreading your troopers out a bit if the DZ isn't generous. Yes, the best players are still the ones who can avoid being punished for not doing all this and consistently go second, but I think those windows are closing.
Guys please cut the "get good" comments, this is not the thread for it, either constructively add to the discussion or ignore the thread.
