Unfortunately spotlight and guided missiles don't give a flying fuck whether or not Tohaa are their own thing and they are equally susceptible to this meta issue and not having a reasonable reactive defense against it.
Which means they need their own defense against it right? But it won't be a hacking program. I don't deal with them often enough to have an idea on how to resolve their vulnerability without looking through their options.
I mean Tohaa use hackers in the fluff, the point of hackers is to interface with non Tohaa tech they're not trying to plug pheroware into a computer. It makes more sense for Tohaa to attempt to hack an incoming missile than squirt pheromones at it, pretty sure the missile won't give a shit about pheromones.
It could be. The biggest issue I could see would be that adding it onto already commonly used platforms would make it a no brainer. Everything should be a choice. Bringing a pitcher + hacker + GML is a choice and costs. The counter to it, if reasonably effective, should also force a choice. It could be something as simple as a Hacker [Upgrade: U-turn] (just using the name, not suggesting the same program). I'd like to see the EVO have a purpose, but it doesn't have to be the only carrier.
If they have hackers in the fluff cool. I'm not really interested that much in the Infinity fluff, just the gameplay. Give them a Hacker [U-Turn] without a hacking device similar to the wardriver.
I keep telling you, bring back N3 guts move for successful Reset. This would also fix the worst of Endgame. Imagine if you couldn’t move 2” after making a successful Dodge ARO against enemy BS attack? That’s the situation that we have in hacking at the moment.
@Amusedbymuse suggested BTS vs Spotlight. Just give it a damage value and have it apply the Targeted state instead of damage.
While I do hate nerfing spotlight (which on its own is totally fine except needing 2 burst in active) instead of GML, I'd like to note that it would stop being an initially baffling exception among aggresive hacking programs. I do love rule consistency.
For sake of consistency, you would have to put the damage value on FO as well. The only realy difference is you get firewall bonuses against spotlight.
FO isn't the issue, and it's not using the Spotlight Program. So it could still work as normal without introducing inconsistencies. Just like the ADHL and Carbonite both result in Immobilized states, but the process is different.
Would it bend the rules too far to have a Defensive Hacking Device that had a U-Turn style program, and which protected models in ZoC from hacking in some way? Like imagine if it could defensively ARO on behalf of friendly models. Would be cool as. Issues? Maybe lol but you should always start with a cool idea and then whittle it down. What I've seen, experienced and had told to me by other players is that pitcher/GML appears, sucks the fun out of the game, and then vanishes because people don't want to use it, not because its weak. Ariadna plays well into one of the best strategies in the game: everything is cheap, a warband, or marker state. Tuck all the non-markers into corners and the damage goes way down as TAGs are not ideal for rooting out troops from hard cover. Honestly I don't mind the idea of a Point Defense Remote. It can fire its gun in ARO against missiles. Maybe in Zone of Control, or maybe drawing distance based on where the target of the missile is with no LoF needed. It would be a pretty cool way to do it and could be stuck on the TR baggage robot or something for the lols. EVO really does suck though doesn't it. I ran one for my Vostok in Nomads earlier this year, and resented its presence on the table. Its giant, boring and does buff based play which I want to see kept to a minimum in the game. I don't want to rehash the arguments to this post already presented, but I feel it would be rude to totally ignore the post. Simply put, your response to GML alpha is to alpha them first, and thats not a good enough countermeasure. Things like "ARO defense against pitchers" are just not reality. The other stuff is good advice for reducing the impact of missiles against certain targets, but it does not address my stated issue - the uninteractive ability to delete one target unit of their choice while you sit and watch. The biggest effect re TTS and tabletop is that TTS tends to be dense maps. Both because terrain is free, but also because Vaulsc's community designs them. I play Vaul IRL and he loves dense terrain. Dense terrain pushes up the effectiveness of lists with a GML, but that is different from whether or not it affects the forward repeater + GML alpha builds, which it doesn't. Those builds function the same almost regardless of terrain, as terrain is just another thing that they largely ignore. Is this data available for the community? It could be opening pandora's box, but making this data public would be a ton of free data analysis by the community and show a good faith attempt on CB's part towards improving game balance.
I really disagree. It's not the equivalent of Guided because there was the risk of losing something if you failed. Between Tinbots, Kaleidoscope, and bespoke programs (in some factions) you could make it a dodgy proposition to hack willy-nilly.
The part you're missing here is that Guided has *no risk of losing models*. It should be cumbersome and expensive - it should not be easy to kill opponent's models without any chance of retaliation.
You're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that KHDs do work against top-tier hackers through their repeater nets - I'm saying they *should*. Otherwise there's no risk to overextending your hacker network if you've got Jazz with a tinbot or an Interventor sitting behind it, and that's wrong. No, that's not the issue. There needs to be costs to extending repeater networks, and defanging KHDs with respect to BTS 6-9 hackers means that those hackers are far more unassailable than they should be. It's not that things are a "crapshoot" - it's that some troopers are nigh-impregnable behind their repeaters, even against KHDs.
Sorry to bring it back to this point of the discussion, but @psychoticstorm, so what does that wealth of data and the other feedback say? What does it say about these issues I've been hearing and reading again and again from the (again, competitive) community: GML is uninteractive, not a lot of fun, and some factions have too easy access to the strategy Jazz, Puppetbots, Avatar, Überfall, Asawira, PF Daylami etc. are undercosted and/or overpowered (referencing @Vaulsc here), making the factions they belong to much more powerful than others. Vanilla armies are decidedly and consistently stronger than sectorials (except for Pano) this edition, and the latest fireteam rules change exacerbated the problem. Introducing 2W HI for 14pts with Booty (Diggers) was as bad as having introduced an 8pt camo FD mine layer (Liberto) (insert everything else I've forgotten or can't comment on here) Sorry, I don't mean to sound cynical, I'm just listing the most common complaints I've been hearing. What does the data CB has actually say about these things? Because from what you've said so far I gather that CB thinks that almost none of the problems listed in this thread and elsewhere seem to be worth fixing. The weird thing is: CB does listen. The Andromeda nerf is proof, and so are the new fireteam rules, the new Namurr buff, the (not big enough) Jazz nerf, the Uma buff etc. But then the avatar stayed unchanged, as did the Asawira, Puppetbots, Diggers etc. I'm simply so curious.
If the Kamau rolls a discover, you can shoot it unopposed. If you MOV-MOV to behind cover, you can recamo and go again. I've done it plenty of times. And you can always shoot it within 16" with an intruder or something. I've said the Kamau was a problem for a while. But it's less of a problem than the current hacking dynamic; you seem to only be opposed to the Kamau because you don't play PanO, and in support of the current hacking dynamic because you play Nomads.
