A miner that is as capable as the military is not as compelling as just a regular mining crew barely defeating a giant monster, like all the great monster movies of our youth. From Tremmors to Reign of Fire.
They're Impetuous, BS11, and WIP12, barely a step up from a militia, this profile also represents prospectors that have turned Mercenary. From a game design perspective they're pretty great. Excellent at some things (corner guard, active turn CC threat) but pretty terrible in other respects (no cover, hackable, BTS 0, lack of good ranged weaponry) 14 points is about right for their combination of skills, equipment, and downsides. From a thematic standpoint they're good but not elite in combat (CC21) with the advantage of a very strong exo-suit that lets them overpower traditional melee defenses (NBW) and be devastating on the charge (APCCW +1 Burst) . The rules seem pretty fitting for a miner-turned-Mercenary, especially one that's used to getting into a scrap with TAGs and Megabeasts.
My original response was to the suggestions that they get better in battle ravaged armor... in the great words of the legendary J.B. "come on man" But really, its poor form to support opposite ends of an argument just 2 comments apart. Either it's their suit that's helping them or it's their skills. SAS are CC22 and dont have NBW and their basically British SEALs... so why this troop that is "barely a step up from militia" as you say would keep those skills or as the original argument was to get better would ever happen is beyond reason, turned mercenary or not. I also want you to understand, my hard arguments arent attacking you, I'm not interested another fight between us, I'm just pointing out some very real facts about every thing said and everything known about the unit. And I just want to this to be kept in mind, you're talking about CC specialists who often wield exp CCWs themselves and also often dismantle TAGs, HI, and up until the NBW craze many other cheaper CCWers, the Miners are as good as CC25 in the active turn. I'm not sorry for saying this, NBW has been over used to the point that it's actually breaking the game because it removes the CC utility of a lot of units and for some whole sections of their army: JSA, Knights and Myrmidons come to mind. While Knights and Myrms still have their BS prowess in different ways, JSA has it harder, but let's keep throwing NBW around everywhere.
Do I understand correctly that you're saying that a unit deployed in his DZ without smoke, stealth, camo marker, or any other additional protection is better than a camo infiltrator already deployed in the midfield, able to spend fewer orders to get up close and personal with key enemy targets that have to be removed as soon as possible? Also, I didn't say that them getting better at CC was a good design decision, it's just a fantasy that I got in my head from the descriptions of their bulky suits and how that would have spiced up the regular formula of the Transmutation Skill. Kinda like what we had with Le Muet's movement becoming 4-4 instead of 4-2 when takes a wound back in N3. Actually, Fraacta still has that shenanigan in terms of ARM and BTS.
To keep the peace in this tread... respectfully, you are mistaken. All I talked about was CC ability and believabiltiy, CC ability was your original argument afterall... let's keep it there because I definitely see how this can go sideways. Agreed? Alright, well, I dont wanna play the game of "I didnt explicitly say something though it could have easily been implied" and I really am not looking to argue with anyone, especially of Tohaa Symbiont Armor is being compared to a human exosuit. For what its worth, I like this game alot for its science FICTION but I still need some suspension of disbelief. I have no chance of believing that a miner in an an industrial exosuit is better at CC than even Musashi or Achilles, leader of the Myrmidons, both artificial perfect beings built for fighting up close and carry weapons, bodies and skills that can fell standard TAGs in one blow. It's better to just acknowledge that CB is fucking up with all this NBW. And yeah an artificially created perfect human being is not outside of belief because the science and case studies are proving Human limits arent even close to plateau with shit like CRISPR or Epigenetics.
Pretty sure he was talking about the strict CC capabilities, which he's kinda right about. N4 throws the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to CC capability, with random mercs coming painfully close to (or exceeding!) Musashi on a regular basis- though that might just be the fact that about 90% of N4 releases are Mercenaries and CB seems to no longer be trying to contain power creep.
Getting an awful lot of mercenaries is not something that I like either, but calling that thing a power creep? If we want to talk game balance, the most obvious way of dealing with Diggers would be to shoot them from afar or hack them which can both easily be done since they start their game in DZ. Mimetism -6 is still a 5% chance on his Booty. I just can't call a unit with such glaring drawbacks a power creep in my good faith. I apologize for not getting your initial response right. If you are referring to their fluff – then it does feel pretty unrealistic that they could beat up Musashi or Achilles. I feel like it's not the SciFi part of Infinity that we're seeing here but rather the A N I M E side of it. The side that tells us that a ramen-eating idiot could not only scratch but overpower trained ninjas/soldiers just because his sheer power of will and desire to win and love for his friends is just too strong. If we look at that through this perspective – it makes surprisingly more sense that a megabeast-slaying blue-collar who lives a simple life and enjoys simple things would be able to impress even Achilles by channeling his power of "it's not much but it's honest work". At least to me.
I appreciate the nod to Naruto, at least it seems like Naruto but hes also a jinchuriki... But really it's just the goddamn NBW every. It's disgusting at this point. While you're not wrong about dealing with the mine in the active turn, his active turn allows it to take out other corner guards either by tanking a CR or CCing the shit out of the CC guy you put their. It's just the NBW every. If he had CC-3 while fully powerd, it would inform better the suit. CB should have hand out NBW to Morats at a discount instead of everyone else. But it's whatever.
It isn't exactly as bad as WarmaHordes, but bear in mind this unit is priced like a Celestial Guard. You get a lot more value out of a highly-optimised trading piece like this one than practically anything older than N3. The CC component is my biggest concern; the numbers on Diggers make them more destructive than anything in Yu Jing save a single, N4-new Character. And this faction was sold as the CC specialists up until about two years ago. Baseline CC competence in modern Infinity sits above even very good units from when I started playing. They're starting to get to the point where it doesn't even feel good to bring actual, professional military though. It's not frigging fun to bring your nicely thought-out line of Warbands or fancy Ninja/SAS badasses and have them unable to do anything because rando civilian miners and TV celebrities are better every single game. Keep that shit to Aristeia, it's a perfectly solid game.
They can't do anything to them in CC. If they can't do anything to miners/celebs in CC – then avoid engaging these units in CC, it's not like they'll have high chances of discovering Ninjas/SAS with WIP 12. The least you could do is MOV-MOV in the Digger's back arc while camoed and then SG/Grenade/TacBow/Combi him. The professional military should know when to engage an enemy in close combat, when to shoot them from afar, and when to avoid them altogether. Diggers are order-hungry, they need to spend a lot of orders getting to someone to engage them in CC. They are impetuous, but that skill is a bit less effective when you don't have smoke grenades IMO. And we all know the biggest issue with CC: you first need to get into silhouette contact. Whether or not you get into silhouette contact depends on various factors like the ability to block LoF with Smoke/Eclipse, dodge bonuses, or the table terrain. Digger is decent at dodging, but not amazing, he has no way of blocking LoF for a safe CC engagement, and he will be practically useless on a more open game table where a sniper can see everything. I have only seen dense tables in TTS, haven't encountered a lot of them in live games. Even if we imagine an opponent without hackers like Ariadna or JSA – they still have Minelayers. JSA can put up to 4 shock mines into the midfield that a Digger will only have 50% chances to dodge, while also potentially eating a breaker pistol that would remove the second wound. And if shaving off one wound with a shock mine is not enough for you – Domarus can still brick them easily with E/M Grenades and PH14. So, from my own experience, if a unit without camo, smoke, and/or forward deployment of any kind eats up the order pool and manages to go past all your AROs and other defenses to engage your units in CC – I'd just applaud that Digger's player. It would also tell that spending a ton of orders to CC someone is more important to the Digger player than doing an actual mission.
No, it's the insult that CB would make such an unbelievable unit capable of smoking some of the best in its active turn. While I appreciate Rock Paper Scissors as much as the next person, too often does CB make that game disgusting to play because of how unbelievable it is. Other players will have their own reasons and some will agree with me but this is my reason. I dont need to see another random NBW and then hear, professional armies wouldnt go near that guy. I dont know if you've been in the military, been shot at, did some shit or just trained how to fight but mother fuckers who run n gun for a living, dont avoid the fight just. Literally just like if a squad is ambushed in real life, you know what they teach you, they teach to go strait at the enemy. They teach you to always have the mindset to be on the offensive. So if it's less orders for a troop who will have to jungle some shit to kill this guy, even though theres a chance they can die, their gonna do it, just like real life, we go in to rip a mother fucker's head off. And then military does not fuck around with its combat training, they want their troops to be fucking efficient, ain't no taekwondo in the Marines, Army or SEALs and I assure you from first hand experience, real knife training does not look fancy, you're not flipping the knife around or swapping hands or spinning around like a spinning backfist, every movement all follows along the same damn lines and who wins is who's faster, stronger and who's drilled more. So no more of this NBW bullshit everywhere when plenty of us know what it looks like to deliver a skillful KO or at least a skillful TKO and then have some old timer knife guy show up from the Filipines and you realize you aint even close to being badass yet. And I can vouch for how not okay it is to bring a knife to a gun fight. Yeah this is just a game with little toy men, but some believability is necessary. Oh and those old filipinos, many of them are head hunters who get paid for bringing back an identifiable face. That's the mother fuckers who can charge a shooter from 10-15 feet away, there's no natural born warrior about that, that's martial arts, training constantly for years, so you're not even thinking about what your body is doing. This old dude wasnt even looking at my hands at all or even my eyes half the time, he just felt my arms with his and knew where my knife was and knew when strike, and I knew the drills already, so yeah, CB needs to chill tf out with NBW.
Might be a local difference then; I've seen exactly one table outside of terrain scrapped together out of spares for a tournament that was open enough to be dominated by a sniper, and DZs in particular are so dense that a Digger would be basically impassable without getting inside template range. Those stealthy SK-melee types really don't want to be in template range until they're attacking in CC, relying on an enemy not Discovering is a pretty bad play as far as Infinity goes due to the basically 50-50 odds. My own take on Diggers is that they're more designed for defense and counterattack than for DZ raids; light attackers can't outtrade them with templates and they're able to kill pretty much anything they can reach making them a hazard when combined with allied Hackers throwing down Oblivion on heavy targets that get too close, or when teamed up with an E/M or ADH source. Which is pretty easy to do in most factions.
I think NBW should be designated to non humanoid aliens and maybe Dog Warriors and their like in Full Wolf form, maybe, I'd need to think about it more, and ask the question, does CB allow Dog Warriors to also use their mouth as a weapon. Cause Martial Arts does not help you fight a Tiger. That is where NBW belongs. I'm done on the subject now.
Subjective enjoyment, you saying your enjoyment is better than the people who have also voiced the opinion that there's too much NBW for whatever reason, because the number of people in that camp gets bigger by the day, and when it comes down to the crux of my complaint, it's that and you know. Suspension of disbelief exists for reason. So dont go around saying one liners as if your point trumps everything I said when one of the biggest draws of Infinity is that it better "simulates" real combat than other games.
