This is just for fun given that we know nothing about the upcoming fireteam changes which could reset the wider meta anyway. Whilst answering the question, pretend you don't know that link rules are going to change. For the purposes of this though exercise, no major revamp is possible (just the usual CB "tinker round the edges" type approach). You can add/subtract mercs You can add new profiles to existing units You can add or remove skills to existing units You can modify points of existing profiles OK....go!
Kuang Shi peripheral was an idea I had with the Jingwei that I still stand by for imperial agents. It's a controversial position, but moving them from full order battery units to peripherals available to select unlinked agent profiles would allow ISS to move beyond the conceptual compromises that only serve to weigh down its design space, and would allow Kuang Shi to be used more sacrificially as intended in the fluff without compromising your (now limited) order pool. Cranes, Pheasants, Zhanying, and Celestial Guard all gaining a peripheral (or peripheral x2 profile depending on the trooper) would open up some interesting gameplay opportunities. As for individual units, most of these I would consider either with or without changing Kuang Shi in such a fashion: Hsien: The HMG Hsien is a conventionally strong trooper that would be too good with broadened fireteam access, yet doesn't gain much in exchange for the relatively enormous cost of putting him in a Zhanying link. Remove fireteam access from the HMG profile entirely. Instead, turn all other profiles into FTO wildcards. Every non-HMG Hsien profile is loaded with lots of cool functionality that really wants to see it set up in a fireteam to push up the midfield, but the Zhanying haris alone is too limiting. Crane: MR Profile gains smoke grenades (#vapecrane2021). With the maiming done to the grenade launcher, ISS needs a viable form of smoke. Spitfire profile becomes Breaker Spitfire. 6-2 MOV. PH14 would also not be out of line, they're in the same armour as the Shang Ji, after all. Sensor on all profiles. Consider cost adjustments (there is no world where an Asawira should cost over 10 points less considering how much ridiculously better it is. Even disregarding the Frenzy discount, the Crane is massively overpaying here). These guys should compete with the Asawira and Knight of Justice, which they really don't right now. Adil Mehmut (Crane): 6-2 MOV, 14 WIP, gains Para CCW. Considering his actions in Betrayal, a Kuang Shi peripheral profile would be a natural fit. Additionally, Berserk and Marksmanship wouldn't hurt (dude took a mono-blade to the hand in a trade against a speculo with only a little flinching and can shoot down a helicopter through its missile tube with a rifle while in a moving vehicle, how is he not BS Infinity?), but would probably inflate his cost too much. Zhanying: Bring back eclipse. Otherwise, not great, but they can bring some cool functionality to the table. In general, if more weird and cool stuff can be given to them, I'm all for it. Wildcard may be appropriate here (for agents in general, wildcard just feels like it makes sense for the sectorial). Pheasant: Wildcard. Kuang Shi: Peripheral idea or not, biolocators were cool, and ISS would actually be in a position to be pretty funky with them in N4, I want those back. They weren't even that complicated. If you want to get around the whole classified doctor/medic issue, just have move them straight to dead and replace them with a repeater entirely. Problem solved. Wu Ming: Changing them to NWI+SI to shave off a few points wouldn't hurt here, but the above listed changes would probably be enough to help with most of these guys' problems once they start joining Wu Ming fireteams. That said, going through with removing Kuang Shi as order batteries may necessitate such cost reductions in order to clean up the rest of the sectorial. As a whole, Wu Ming represent troopers with bad track records but with skillsets too valuable to simply liquidate. With that in mind, as with the Zhanying, I'm all aboard piling more weird stuff profiles on them too, which would also serve to differentiate them further from YJ's glut of basic HI as a whole. A funky engineer profile would fit in with the new theme of YJ getting a slew of really badass combat engineers. And being Wu Ming, you could get really weird with it. Bao Troopers: CB got the Bao right when they redesigned them and gave them to O-12 as Bluecoats. Just take that base, add some flagrant disregard to human life, and return them to ISS. Oh, and for flavour's sake, let them fireteam as a haris or core, but only if an Agent is present. Sun Tze (1 and 2): I really don't know. He's in a rough patch for sure right now. Fireteam access might help a bit, but it won't fix the foundational issues here. Everything else is mostly fine. I do like the mention of Taowu getting fireteam options, but I wouldn't consider it necessary (although it would be necessary for me to ever put his gorgeous model on the table). Oh, and Justice for Jingwei. Duh.
Been thinking a lot about this lately, but haven't sat down to formulate things for real. I think it's important to note that ISS has strong list(s), so raw potency isn't necessarily the issue. I would hold the archetype of Kuang Shi mixed core together with a Dakini or Hsien (tinbot or HMG) centric Haris and/or Su-Jian up as at competitive strength. The issue is when you deviate from these archetypes. Attached to this is a discussion about what "bad" means since there's always a subset of people who have a problem with the fact that if something is "good" there is also something that has to be "bad" and that there's also a subset of people who will use terms like "useless" in its place. Neither are helpful. Generally speaking, good or bad should always be taken in context of their prices. You can take the best units in game and make them expensive enough to become the worst and vice versa. There's also the metagame to consider and by that I mean how things interact with the big three skews - hacking (with Guided), camo, and efficient rear/alpha attacks. I'd also note that a unit with bad performance isn't necessarily bad for the sectorial provided it's giving the sectorial capabilities it would not otherwise have, but at the same time a sectorial has less tolerance for bad units than a vanilla faction has as a sectorial is relying on fewer unit selections and to use fireteams to provide bonuses to offset the unit's bad qualities or to have access to more of a good unit. Good - a unit with strengths that are easy to exploit, easy to protect, has access to MODs and stats that outperform expected opposition, inherently works well with/against the meta concepts, and does things at a price that is lower than comparable units. The more boxes ticked the better the unit. Basically Major Lunah in other words. Bad - a unit with strengths that are hard to exploit, hard to protect, doesn't have access to MODs or stats to allow it to outperform expected opposition, works poorly with/against the meta concepts, or does things at a higher price than comparable units. Same deal here, the more boxes ticked the worse the unit. Squished - a unit that inside the same faction doesn't do things cheaper nor/nand better than alternatives. In either case. I don't think tinkering with the core strength of the sectorial is helpful. Sectorial Identity. Besides the identity of "Fashion Designer Trenchcoats Oppressing Freedom of Expression", the sectorial mechanically has lost its identity simply by not having a huge amount of... identity. On its launch it was the closest thing to a heavy infantry sectorial the game had, it was a defacto horde sectorial as an alternate design, and it had the aesthetic of surveillance. Back this up with the, at the time, Yu Jing speciality of stabbing people which ISS was better at than anyone other than the stabbier Yu Jing JSA sectorial - and well, JSA broke off and everyone else got much better at stabbing people while ISS arguably lost a bunch of stabbing prowess, particularly since PH got a lot more important for melee and how Natural Born Warrior units simply exploded. Oh, and Chaiyi and Kanren lost Sniffer. I don't think that bringing back melee as a sectorial trait is a goal worth chasing, but I do think that the surveillance schtick should be brought more to the fore. This means making sure the MSV units work well and do not step on each other's feet and that fewer units lose sensor just because they take an upgrade or two. Let's try to make Surveillance the second S. Imperial Surveillance Services. Holomask and Holoecho. This is a high level concept for the sectorial as many of the sectorial's strengths revolve around effective use of this, but the sectorial itself isn't constructed to facilitate these units. Essentially, the sectorial needs more believable units to act as decoys for these units and this means it needs more strong and relatively high AVA units that do not want (or aren't able) to be in Fireteams. Yes you can have random Celestial Guard standing around to sell the idea of a Holomasked trooper not being there, but you don't want random Celestial Guards standing around because Celestial Guards are not good enough to have just standing around and they aren't cheap enough to act as order monkeys. Since Holomask troopers we are talking about are S2 the REMs aren't suitable and since they by necessity aren't impetuous Kuang Shi are unsuitable and since they can't fake skills that causes rolls CSU and Bounty Hunters are not suitable decoys. So there's two options: 1. Make the sectorial have access to good DZ solos and good non-marker skirmishers 2. Change Holomask to allow faking Booty and faking Meta-chem rolls. For the purposes of this post, let's not assume a re-work of Holomask. Wildcard. Unfortunately, this is the quick and easy fix for how to make a unit better. Without completely reconstructing the sectorial, this is the simple solution. Note that intelligent use of specific troop linkability will also do the job. I'll try not to put Wildcard everywhere. -- Celestial Guard. This is a squished unit. Generally speaking I think CB has a lot of room to do exciting stuff with this unit, particularly since alterations do not really affect sectorial strength. I think the "issue" with Celestial Guard is that they're meant to be a close quarters trained unit, but they have almost literally nothing that makes them better at close quarters only weapon choices that makes them worse at long range. Zhanying training! 18 CC, 12 BS, Para CCW (-6) Expected price should be... 16 for the basic Combi profile? Unless the Para is free. Celestial Guard Monitor. Kinda deserves a comment on its own. Generally speaking there's nothing wrong with this unit, but CB's nerf to Grenade Launchers has made a dent in the sectorial performance. Unlike many factions, ISS do not derive smoke from "free" Impetuous carried by troopers with well above average PH. I think the game in general would benefit from fixing Grenade Launcher range band and I think that the undesired aspect of the old Grenade Launcher was the ability to lob long-range Speculative Fire which oddly enough got easier with the new range band's expanded +0 range. Return Grenade Launcher to the same range band as Rifles Yes, this will affect so many more than just ISS. I don't see any problems with this, even if it will increase the value of certain profiles, including certain TAGs. Kuang Shi. This unit is integral to ISS, even with the limiter on number of soldiers. Just want to include this as it is such an important unit for the sectorial. No change. Taowu. Simply put, this is the unit that suffers the most from being the only unit that's not a REM, not Impetuous, and doesn't have a skill that causes rolls on deployment that won't want to be in a fireteam. Wildcard. This is important. Give him a price check. Marksman Sun Tze. The inherent design flaw with Sun2 is that he's a sniper without any of the skills that make sniper good. Additionally, he's likely your Lieutenant so just letting him stand up to do AROs is... not a good idea. Luckily, N4 benefitted Sun2 with a price that's reasonable for the stats and skills even if WIP scaling is kinda bonkers for any unit that's not the Avatar. BS Attack (Shock) replaced by Marksmanship and Mimetism-3. Breaker Pistol Price likely to increase by 5. Maybe 6. Hsien (Specialist Operative). My experience with this profile, particularly the LT2 profile, is that it's got a bit low oomph for the price and importance. Theoretically at least, the fact that ISS relies on Smoke Grenade Launchers for their smoke would mean that they have a decent chance of supplying smoke zones where the MSV user is rather than having the smoke providing unit forced to stick to the unit's side. I'd like to experiment a bit with this. Hsien (Specialist Operative) -> Hsien (Specialist Operative, Forward Deployment +8") Breaker Pistol on all Hsien profiles. Pheasant. I think CB's problem with designing a Pheasant that's not bad is that the core concept just doesn't work. Chain of Command is an expensive skill so making a middling priced unit with Chain of Command is just doomed to fail if you don't also give it Camo. Additionally, the alterations to Melee and Armour has greatly reduced the core concept of actually doing anything other than waste both player's time as the Pheasant has almost nothing to defend itself with against indirect attacks or direct shots. Bring back the sniper profile. 1. Working with the concept: Tactical Awareness, Sixth Sense and Dodge(+3) on all profiles. 2. Flip with Bao! Reduce CC ability to base line, get MSV2. Counts as Zhanying. Price should be mostly unchanged. Preferred. I should explain. In both cases I'm looking at improving the part that Pheasant already has some investment into. In one the Pheasant becomes a micro kick-asser, a hybrid order efficiency unit that you want few of. In the other the Pheasant becomes a detection or surveillance unit, better suitable for later game pushes and spending most of the early game in overwatch mode. Bao. This is a squished unit. It's squished between the cost-effective and buffable Rui Shi and the very strong shooter in the Hsien, both of which offers higher burst and higher effective damage. Add to this that the Bao are very mediocre at best when compared to other single wound MSV2 units such as Djanbazan or Nisse. Boarding Shotgun -> Boarding Shotgun and Killer Hacker. 1. Flip with Pheasant! Increase CC abilities to very competent level, drop MSV2. Price should be mostly unchanged. Gain Special Fireteam with any of the agents. 2. Become "Kanren"! Gain Forward Deployment +8", lose Fireteam skills. Preferred I should explain. Why I prefer the second alternative is that Bao are already fairly decently optimised as a forward brawler. It's true that these tend to want Mimetism and are kind of desperate for Camo, but ISS are lacking in this department which brings forward that Bao might not be a *good* unit, but they'll be a *necessary* unit. Also worth mentioning is that even if Pheasant "steals" the Bao's roll of being an MSV2 unit, I think the sectorial identity can benefit from having more MSV2 units. The reasonable deniability synergy with Kanren is also huge for Kanren. The alternative is to have the Bao adopt Pheasant's preference for punching faces which suits Bao's fluff even if it means Kanren must change to not be a burdensome unit. Wu Ming. As a small note to the above suggestion, I don't think adding more NWI heavy infantry is worth the two points saved. In general I think Wu Ming are funky enough, but from experience I know that it's hard to juggle these specific points values into a list that can do enough well enough. Tactical Awareness on the Grenade Launcher and Heavy Rocket Launcher profiles. Return Grenade Launcher to the same range band as Rifles They can keep their shoddy regular pistols. Criminal scum. Sun Tze (Heavy Infantry). Oh boy. The poster child that's had all the posters ripped down. This didn't translate well into N4, he suffers greatly from having LT2+NCO being generally speaking much better than LT1+Strategos as well as not getting any of the price reductions. He went from being a very expensive HI in N3 to being an extremely expensive HI in N4. Add to it that he barely gets any value from the absolutely ridiculous amount of points invested in raw WIP... Sun Tze (Lieutenant, +1 Command Token) -> Sun Tze (Lieutenant[+1 order], +1 Comand Token) at no price alteration. Sun Tze -> Sun Tze (Chain of Command) Special Fireteam Core: Celestial Guard Special Fireteam Haris: Deva and Zhanying Crane Agent. Amazing how many stats shared with Asawira, yet so much more expensive and still worse BS and BTS. That's a snide comment on Frenzy, not on Crane Agent, so anyway. New edition, new FAQ, new reality these guys need to operate under. They're not bad, but they're not great. For their concept they've got quite low BS. MOV 6-2, BS 14, Sensor and Triangulated Fire on all profiles. Price likely to increase by 2 to 5 depending on profile. Spitfire -> Breaker Spitfire* Breaker Pistol Adil Mehmut (Heavy Infantry). The act of making a character with such an amazing model be such an extremely modest alteration to the basic unit is... a decision that was made. I also don't think the "incentive" discount on the Lieutenant profile actually does anything. Adil (Crane Rank (Lieutenant) -> Adil (Crane Rank) (Lieutenant, NCO). Para CCW (-6) Breaker Pistol Remove the price discount to prevent the lieutenant profile from becoming too cheap. Adil Mehmut (Medium Infantry). I know there's a prevailing opinion that "all" NWI units "need" Shock Immunity. I disagree. I think people need to learn to deal with this drawback. However, I think he does need a QOL alteration. Basically, I think Adil should be able to obfuscate Chain of Command. I also think the CoC profiles has value in being immune to Isolation even if the skill would prevent Loss of Lieutenant from being applied and even if he's not a heavy infantry simply because he's likely to operate in places where E/M Mines are becoming more common. Veteran and Specialist Operative on both profiles. Breaker Pistol Kanren. Even through all this I don't think the Hsien with FD is enough to make the Kanren have enough ability to use Holomask. In vanilla there's Hulang that's gotten good enough to be reasonable inclusion, but in the host sectorial there's not enough. I do note that as a mid-range combat unit there's nothing directly wrong with the Kanren, but as a skirmisher they have very little to push MODs. In short, they're a lot like Greif... The ridiculous part about making them IMP-2 would be that they'd become cheaper! Holoecho with FD+8 is very cheap for light units to begin with, so... yeah. As a small note, minelayer really doesn't play well with a unit that wants to use Holoecho. 1. FD+8, Holomask, Holoecho -> Impersonation (IMP-2) and Remove the minelayer profiles 2. Bao Best Buddies. Bao for plausible deniability. Preferred. Kanren with Shock Mines -> Kanren with Sensor and Triangulated Fire. Breaker Pistol Kunai. The marksman ninja without any increase in marksman skill. Core issue is, this is one of few units that sectorials with access to Kunai have that can go hunt rooftop assholes. All the same... it's meant to be a marksman... Marksmanship on both profiles. Kunai (Forward Deployment +4") -> Kunai (Forward Deployment +8") All Those Mercs. I have, of course, Opinions, but nothing to note really. If we're not flipping ISS to full on Agents, then add this small QOL and sectorial variety (definitely not strength) change: Authorized Bounty Hunters gains Haris. -- The Meta Things. So with all of these changes, which might seem a lot, note how I've done very little to actually directly address two of the big meta affecting... topics... of N4 - namely rear attacks and hacker+guided spam. In a small way, adding breaker pistols in a lot of places will give Bears and Mirage pause for thought, but it's not a major obstacle and I mostly edited those in because I think the premium Yu Jing units should have breaker pistols (same as how CB added heavy pistols to almost all Morats). Largely, not directly addressing hacking is, however, intentional, as I think that's something that players shouldn't have to play around as hard as players have to in several metas. Basically the only real way of addressing it at the moment is to add camo everywhere and that's just not ISS. Of course, the other is to make a lot of units good at dodging or giving a lot of units Total Immunity and while that's certainly attractive, it's... just weird. * Okay, so let's add a footnote here. I'm loving the addition of a lot of AP Spitfires to the game on the more prestigious units, but it'll get stale before long if everything gets this. I selected the Crane for a Breaker Spitfire (as I think Breaker as a faction characteristic is kinda cool) not for any strength reasons, but because this is a cool unit that could do with a cool gun and to introduce the Breaker Spitfire as a Thing. Note that Breaker is a more expensive ammo than AP.
Some good ideas here I have to say, not keen on the current iteration of kuang shi and the dependence on them as order batteries. I do like the idea of having them as peripherals for an agent as part of a wider rewrite would be good as suggested upthread.
if kuang-shi are to be reworked, then the logical one would for them to end-up as a peripheral (control) unit, like antipodes or nomads puppets. There's a few SKU and rules issues that need to be resolved first though.
SKU issues wouldn't be too cumbersome if they become like Uberfallkommando and I think the rules issues are mostly resolved by them having Dogged. The big issue would be that ISS and Yu Jing will have a fairly fundamental design shift in order economy. As much as I've been able to pinpoint Yu Jing's primary Bullshit Unit, Kuang Shi is it.
Something I'd like to ask though, is how many of you have played them for more than one off games recently? Right now I don't think I can make many comments since I haven't played them since N3. Having said that, when I make lists for missions, I find I have a hard time finding tools for some missions like anything that needs anti-material weapons. Also, only one doctor/engineer sucks. I hate when I need a doctor in one place and engineer in another. It's also expensive. The Dakini medic is ok but I'd rather have an Engineer. I think Engineer is the one specialist I actually use the skill with. I can't remember when I last actually did Forward Observe. An ENG not only fixes stuff but also gets rid of Targeted, IMM, and Isolated states, etc.
Guilty. I keep wanting to use the models I've painted but every time I write a list for a mission it's just bollocks and I can do better lists with other factions. It's a damn shame but I'm just not motivated to try and make them work when vanilla is just so much better
I have been play ISS pretty much since January. My thoughts, bear in mind I am newish to Infinity, there too many “fun” profiles . I have been playing without kuanshi of late as I have found them a bit of a trap. My main core is a wuming with tinbot wuming, Zhanying missile launcher, Zhanying Lt, Crane with spitfire and Xi. Then I take lunah always, she is too good. In a game yesterday against Starco, she killed Knauf, Emily, uahu plus three algauxiles to turn his core into a duo. I don’t use the sujian because of my own incompetence in the attack. Much more a defensive play. I then have a deva hacker plus two dakini one of which is a paramedic I would love it if Kuang shi could be made peripherals.
Mileage may vary. Engineer is my second least used specialist skill, which isn't saying much since I think I've used Chain of Command like once so far in N4. Still is a bit iffy to only have one, but on the other hand Sophy's less likely to be completely out of range due to movement in late game objective rushes.
And now we know for sure that Kuang Shi are not being reworked or turned into peripherals. Bostria mentioned in the Fireteam video about CG+KS team breaking when CG leaves it even if it wasn't the leader (just like Oznat and Hungries in Morats)
I'm liking a Bao 3-man team Discovering on a +6 though! Now a auto discover for them most of the time.
So with only hours left; last minute daydreaming about fireteams (that will not quite do anything for Kanren). ISS privileges. 1 Core, 3 Haris, inf. Duo. Field Agent guarantees fireteam composition bonuses Agent fireteam. Duo, Haris, Core Zhanying. 0+ req. Field Agent. Crane Agent. 0-3 req. Field Agent. Pheasant Agent. 0-1 req. Field Agent. Celestial Guard. 0+ req. Bao Troops. 0-2. Hsien Warriors. 0-1. Bonus: All members of fireteam have No2. Kuang Shi fireteam. Core. Celestial Guard Monitor. 1 req. Kuang Shi. 0-4. Bonus: Fireteam cancels Kuang Shi Impetuous status. Celestial Guard Monitor required to maintain fireteam and guarantees composition bonus. Penal fireteam. Duo, Haris, Core. Zhanying. 0 req. Field Agent. Wu Ming. 1-5 req. Mercenary fireteams. Duo, Haris. Authorized Bounty Hunters. 0-2 Sforza FTO. 0-1 Miranda. 0-1 C.S.U. 0-2 Motorized Bounty Hunters. 0-2 Bonus: All members of fireteam have Terrain (Urban) Aleph fireteams. Duo, Haris. Deva Functionaries. 1 req. Field Agent. Dakini. 0-2. Sophotect. 0-1. Su-Jian fireteam. Duo. Su-Jian. 1 req. Wildcards. Adil Mehmut (both versions). Field Agent. Taowu. Field Agent. Xi Zhuang. Field Agent. Sun Tze (both versions).
