Interestingly this change would exacerbate the issue Triumph takes with the game: If you bump active turn hacking power and decrease it's reactive defense, then Shang-Ji have even more incentive to alpha strike like mad.
That last part about hacking through repeaters being weaker is really important. Just pulling numbers out of a hat without detailed analysis: imagine if hacks had one higher burst than now, Oblivion had DAM 13 and hacking through a repeater had a "Latency" which reduces damage and WIP by 3 (i.e. stacking with firewall). Roughly speaking that should make active turn hacking a bunch stronger when you're the one spending orders on it, more in line with the economy of active vs reactive in the rest of the game. (Yes, I'm aware this makes Spotlight through a Yolo repeater somewhat stronger, but... numbers in a hat you know)
If the issue is area denial of repeater network then maybe an easier solution would be to limit repeater range... say 6'' radius?
Maybe they could "move" Spotlight from HD to Sensor and maybe return Sniffers to the game and make Targeted last for 2 turns (maybe remove FOs all together and swap them with just Specialist). And then make the hacking more interesting and diverse (more options for attacking, for KHD maybe B1 program that ignores BTS, and bring back utility programs).
I don't think the radius is the true offender here, it's more about how repeaters allow you to dog-pile on ARO and how pitchers have a very generous range band. A more moderate approach is to drop the range band down to that of a grenade, but I'd still want to see a system that promotes the use of hackers deployed/reaching the mid-field over hackers squatting the DZ. I'm seriously considering running a tournament with the extra "No LOF label on Deactivators" to see if that shakes things up. The idea with Spotlight is that it gives a meaningful hack against non-hackable targets. Removing Spotlight from hacking means hacking goes back to being dead weight against lists that decide not to opt-in. I also think that if you make KHDs any better you're gonna have to assign an SWC cost to them, and possibly increase the points as well.
Frankly I'm at a loss too. I mean it's trivially easy to put out repeaters as Nomads and that's a strength sure but a) if you're doing that you're doing it instead of using those orders to kill things and b) How will you be in 'the driver seat to initiate the whole decision chain' if they then just decide ignore that and shove a Bearpode or McMurrogh or Duroc or Jan Starr or a Lui Xing or Nourkias or Uxia or Andromeda or Van Zant or a Speculo or a Grief Operator or Uberfallcommando or an Echo Bravo with a Wild Parrot or a Fiday or a Nazarova twin or Carmen and Batard or like even a Liberto or like a 6pt Warband down your Interventor's squishy throat? Or even like, just push buttons with Skirmishers instead? Who's had their order economy wasted not doing anything of value then? Repeaters nets + Hackers can be an effective and obstructive area defence against some things. And somewhat useful against a bunch of others. But there's whole classes of things that just don't really care about them. You write like your only choice is to play your opponents game, whereas successfully playing this game is all about not doing that and making them play yours. And the the effectiveness of Hacking against some things and not others is actually a really good case study of that. If you get a repeater down next to their TAG, sure you might have them a bit snookered (or you might not depending on their plan). Next to their Speculo, so what.
What about allowing deactivators to work within ZOC if they do not have LOF? It would make people use them more and provide some counterplay? For now against repeaters, I think the option right now is spec fire. Its not great, but it feels like the solution.
At no point does discussing hacking benefit from discussing situations where hacking is a bad idea to begin with, so let's leave Ariadna out of this completely. Yes, discussing Ariadna absolutely has its place in this topic, but what good does that do an opponent who isn't playing Ariadna and as such don't have access to Equip Mirage? Now, most of the things you describe are units that you have to deal with regardless, and identify whether they exist. There is nothing about most of them that makes them better at dealing with your hackers. Whatever makes Carmen better against hackers than basically everything else in the way? How even are you deploying your repeaters if a Louie can drop on an Interventor and not get isolated? Would you rather the Speculo shanks your hacker or your LT? Are you even playing hacking intensive if Nourkias can get close enough? I mean, if you aren't his main worry is whether he'll leave enough of a corpse to eat, which is what happens when a killer hacker can single out a target. How even are you deploying if a 6-point warband can get close enough to your Interventor before the Interventor has had a serious effect on your opponent's decision making? Have you considered your opponent might be cheating if they have all these options in the same list? The bottom line is this, though: for the strong hacking factions*, the hackers are the hardest models to kill along with the LT, and you're pretending otherwise and prescribing methods without a cost analysis or a threat analysis to go with it. * Remember, this is not about just Nomads - Anyway, I think I've started hyperfocusing on this topic, which isn't good, I'll try and decrease attention to it drastically, for more than just my own sake.
I like the idea that some faction could be more specialised in some kind of hacking more than others. What I think it's boring it's when hacking defense just consist in Firewall to give penality to enemy hackers. The main issue it's the White Hacking Device, the main defensive Hacking tool that it's usefull only for the user. My dream scenario (I write this a bit for fun) for hacking warfare would be something like this : - HD, HD+ and KHD are more or less on point. I would add an extra attack program to Trinity and searching other ways to make HD and HD+ t good in non hacking match up, White Noise and Spotlight are a good start. Making hacking usefull in every match up it's the KEY to have a game where hacking is present, remove EVO and split his program between the other device, giving the REm support software to HD and HD+ and the defensive one to the WHD. KHD if is not used throught a repeater should ignore firewall mod. - I would change Tinbot to just give Firewall, remove the -6, just -3 to the Wip and -3 DAM; The biggest difference would be the White hacking device. I would extend the use of the WHD to all ally inside the hacking area. So If one of my unit is targeted by an enemy hacker attack throught an enemy repeter and that unit it's inside the ZoC of and ally repeter the trooper with the WHD can make an ARO to counter the attack instead of the targeted unit. Add some sort of U-turn to the list of program of WHD and another one that can shut down enemy repeater. I would create some sort of Tinbot equipment called Defensive antenna that works like a repeater for just WHD. Every faction should get all kind of hacking device, but they should be stronger on attack or defense. KHD should be neutral ground. Now you have a situation where HD and HD+ are good against their target, but offer offensive support for your REMs and there is always GML. Now if you want to play the hacking game you can do it and you can bring some back up Rem to support when your enemy doesn't bring something to be hacked, If your enemy want to protect his hackable unit he has to bring his defensive Hacker with some sort of repeater. This two element combined create a scenario where the offensive hacker try to create a line of Repeater to attack while the defensive player has to "fight back" creating his own line of repeaters. In this scenario KHD it's a threat for both players.
What if Repeaters only allowed a single program to go through them in each direction at a time. So at most you could do a single active turn hack and the opponent a single ARO hack per order. At the very least that would reduce the exponential capacity of Repeaters to cause hacking shenanigans.
IMO this hurts ARO networks more than active turn. It's sometimes effective to have a repeater network with 2-3 hackers behind it to stop enemy KHD from walking into you to kill everything. Otherwise, I think Hacking is in an alright place right now. It’s not broken since the on a whole, the game works. However, it can definitely be improved. I think allowing an additional KHD program with a low burst, high DMG and AP makes sense. It provides another option against high BTS (or this might just be an upgrade on some profiles so that its not included in all KHD). I also think there is an issue with how spotlight and guided SML interact (pitchers only make it worse). Any faction with a turn zero repeater network (e.g. Nomads through Morans) and any faction with linkable pitchers are able to leverage SMLs too effectively. It’s not very challenging to through out a pitcher to kill key pieces. One possible fix is to make Spotlight require a BTS save.
Lol. the truth is it's only a few people who loudly and insistently claim it's broken (outside maybe guided). Answering continual hyperbole takes a few pages. I probably shouldn't bother. So when you insist Paper is too strong, you want to leave Scissors out of it. That's this whole conversation in a nutshell. Yes if you leave out the things hacking is weak to, it seems stronger, naturally. Then you have a lot of questions about units you have to deal with regardless, which sure you do (hello the nuance you claimed didn't exist in hacking through repeaters!). But in short they are units repeaters make little or no difference to delivering an effective attack, so resources spent on repeaters are wasted against them, and you're not exactly trivially in 'the driver seat to initiate the whole decision chain' by putting out a repeater net like you claimed are you? If an Interventor is Isolating a Liu Xing landing next to it (which it's often hard to stop) it's taking an explosion to the face (and its repeaters don't matter). If your Speculo has a choice between my supposedly invincible squishy keystone bad CC Hacker or my (obvious Nomad) squishy bad CC Lt, which are commonly the same model anyway well, you've got a pretty nice choice to make. Nourkias has Cybermask as a KHD (or can not be a hacker) so can ignore repeaters on his attack run. Carmen and Batard might get stopped by other things but they don't care about getting hacked on their (often devastating) attack run, and they can happily throw a burst at an otherwise annoying repeater on their way, same with WB. etc. And if it's not just about Nomads, it certainly gets targeted at Nomads a lot (see: this whole thread). Combined are stronger as a faction IMHO, but their repeaters work a slightly different way.
No, you won't, because they'll be protected by overlapping fields of fire and tucked away. I mean, if you play against opponents who can't defend their DZ, more power to you, but the rest of have competent adversaries.
N4 was not a multi-year playtest lol. Those profiles were being rejiggered up to the deadline, too fast for meaningful playtesting to happen. You could do better than to lie.
Nope, because it'll be on a rooftop, inside a building with closed doors, or otherwise inaccessible. Or do you deploy all your repeaters in easy-to-access positions on account of sportsmanship?
What choices? What choices do you make with hacking lol? I'm very aware what they do, and they're both easier to hit Oblivion on than Jazz behind a tinbot.
You're not reliably getting chain rifles on the enemy Jazz or Interventor, sorry. Meanwhile they're interacting with you without needing LoF. Try again.
