I've been away for some time, so this might be silly and all, but hear me out. One of the biggest issues with any order pool system is order chaining and order monkeys. I guess that was also one of the reasons why Tactical Window extra was turned into default mission format. I've been playing some Old World (a Civ / CK hybrid) that recently had its full release, and their implementation of order system is probably one of the best I've seen. In order to combat order chaining, OW uses something called Fatigue. Basically, every unit in the game has a Fatigue Limit, after which they can no longer spend orders without issuing a Forced March command. The latter requires you to spend another resource once per unit per turn, and then the order expenditure rate for that unit is doubled, which introduces a soft cap on chaining every single order into the same unit. What I am thinking of, effectively, is introducing Order Fatigue into Infinity (maybe as a custom Extra that would be an advanced version of Free Game). I don't think each unit needs its own Fatigue Limit, so this value can be standardised and bound to special rules. This will probably break some metas, but might also help to make the game a bit more diverse without introducing restrictions that make horde factions really hard to play. Thoughts?
Interesting thought indeed. Here's my two thoughts about this issue; Pros : It would surely dwindle down some of the best Alpha strikers. Cons : It would make game more static - something you don't expect in Infinity.
Interesting, I like the idea but it would render a lot of profiles obsolete. Why would you pay 118 pts for an Avatar you'll only be able to activate a few times per turn? It would require to completely recost everything in the game. I also have to admit that allowing a lot of orders to be spent on one mini is often what leads to some great cinematic moments, which are one of the main reasons why I love this game.
Avatar is kind of a bad example, as at the time I was playing, it was one of the most broken units that probably never needed to exist in the first place. Maybe the attitude has changed, but last time I checked, Avatar lists weren't very fun to play against. Even if we ignore the Avatar, most lists are built using the same formula -- alpha strikers and order monkeys that mostly do nothing other than keep their heads down and generate Regular Orders. Overreliance on order monkeys and alpha strikers is, what I think, is actually making the game stale, because there's few other effective ways to play competitively. If there was a restriction on how many orders you can feed into the same unit, it might give underutilised units a chance to shine. Again, I don't see this as a default rule, more like an ITS Extra that would basically act like Free Game+. If I was to choose some values, I'd set the default Fatigue limit to 5 orders and link skills like Strategos, Advanced Command and similar to extending that limit. Making Impetuous units less affected by this also makes sense, since they are so eager to fight.
I talked about the Avatar (which is not broken anymore btw) to get the most striking example but it also applies to almost every costly unit, that needs to spend a lot of orders to be worthy of interest. And I wouldn't say all lists are built on the model you describe, by far. Sure, you always have a few heavy hitters that will logically see more action than the average but I wouldn't oversimplify like this. I see your point though. Do you think limiting to 5 orders per mini would change something? I'm not sure... If someone wants to play the "alpha strikes and order monkeys" way, instead of having all 10 orders spent on one mini, they'll put a pair of heavy hitters and play 5 orders on each... =/
Maybe 5 isn't the right number. Most mlitary units in OW had a limit of 4, I just thought it might be too low because I stopped playing around HSN3 and what I was facing most of the time were lists with Mutt spam, Puppetactica, Achilles and similar fun guys. I was thinking about horde armies specifically, because the introduction of default Tactical Window completely invalidated factions like Ariadna and forced them to adopt the tried-and-true formula.
I think there's some fun ideas you could play around with this. If the goal was to eliminate cheerleaders (a category of troop I don't necessarily think needs to be dealt with in N4, but it's part of the conceit for your rule suggestion), then you could have a rule where each unit can freely spend one order without restriction. For each subsequent order, make a WIP check. If you pass, you may spend one more order on that unit with no restrictions. If you fail, you enter a Fatigue state. All active skills become entire order skills when in a Fatigue state. Fatigue is removed in the States phase. This would give you the option to push units if desired, but otherwise incentivizes you to pick another unit to use. You could also expand on the rule by being more punitive with failure (e.g. two Fatigue tokens means the unit may no longer be activated), make Fatigue state more punitive overall (Fatigue state imposes a -3 dodge penalty) or introduce ways to mitigate fatigue (e.g. Courage allows re-rolls, Impetuous/Frenzy troops may spend an order to ignore Fatigue but must treat their activation as an Impetuous activation, Veterans never enter Fatigue state; or maybe allow doctors to clear Fatigue the same way engineers can clear other states). That said, a suggestion that's been brought up before to limit alpha strikes is to reduce combat groups down to 5. It's probably the most streamlined approach.
The idea of locking the use of extra orders behind a WIP check sounds interesting, but it would introduce more randomness and add more hoops to jump through in order to activate a unit after it enters Fatigued state. I would definitely not try to make the Fatigued state something more than simply a limiting factor for repeated unit activation, because it's one thing players don't like. The problem with limiting Combat Groups to only 5 members is that it heavily affects order economy in mid-to-late game where you might have three Combat Groups with just one member in each. With normal restrictions and Order Fatigue you'd probably have one, maximum two Combat Groups, so order economy would stay roughly the same.
(speed read the thread so i might have missed stuff, so sorry in advance) my spin on on on the fatigue would be a middle between yours and quantronicwombat's that you can spend set amount of orders like normal, lets say 3 for argument sake, after that you roll wip (to next order roll on that mini in the turn). passing the you get the order on the mini but incurs an accumulative -1 to wip . failure you keep the order but cant spend it or any more on the mini this turn
In my playing group in North Poland we were toying with an idea to weaken a bit rambo-style long time ago (maybe 6-7 years really). We used it in our unofficial tournaments in one of the scenarios, when you had to control a Objective Room in the center of the board and we figured that we name it communication disruptions. It worked that way - 1st regular order goes normal, all Impetuous / Irregulars too. But every next order on the same unit requires first a WiP roll to check, if the order was understood. The first WiP was on +3 IIRC, the second on WiP, third on WiP-3 and then you get the idea. Failing the WiP roll was causing the order to perish and the player could try again with the same modificator. It was interesting, changed a bit the units people used, but TBH in our unofficial tournaments we use our scenarios and different scoring system, when you sometimes don't need specialists, sometimes they get bonuses, while "normal" units can still try to click the antenna for example but with a WiP -3 roll. So it already changes the armylists. And I remember few games that were lost purely because of bad luck, for example my friend couldn't get his Aleph guy inside Objective Room, because he couldn't roll a 15 (!) to get the order several times in a row. So funny, but not ideal. Still I'd rather see this working our way that just having a set in stone number of orders a unit can carry. But you can try whatever you want. It always makes me surprised that some people only want to play ITS, when you have so many options in which Infinity is also great. YAMS, TACOS, 20x20, your own visions... Beauty of the game for me is that each month we're playing a bit different tournament. That's how the game doesn't get boring even after over a 10 years of playing :) PozdRawiam / Greetings
Personally, I've never had a significant problem with this issue - on the occasions where a single unit, (or more likely a fireteam), received so many orders in a turn, it tended to subsequently hamper my opponent with regards to the scenario's objectives; or possibly even opened up their other models to be more easily attacked. On the other hand, if this was to be trialled, can I suggest an alternative; Any model/fireteam can only ever receive 5 orders per turn as standard. If you spend a Command Token on them, then you can spend as many orders on them as you want - but in that turn only. (Might need a bit of finessing, mainly around what counts as a "fireteam", but hopefully it's enough to start a discussion).
It'd change the game on a fundamental level, you would have to re-balance everything from points costs to mission turn limits. Outside of a major edition overhaul it wouldn't be feasible, and even then I don't have faith in CB managing to make that transition smooth at all for something that major. At the core your fix is aimed at mitigating overwhelming alpha strikes. Personally I think it's an inelegant and clunky fix, there are better solutions.
I understand that there is people that would like to limit Orders given to units, because of several reasons, but one of the things I like about Infinity's ruleset is the freedon it gives you for activating your models as you wish. That's why I'm against fatigue systems and such. That being said, it is true that currently some Uber-powefull-alpha-striker units are too much punishing and it's easier to decide the game on the first turn than it was in N3.
Looks cool. I would maybe not include extra stat for that, but use existing one. For example you can spend up to half of your PH value (rounding up) orders to activate unit. In fireteam, the model with highest PH value determine how many times link can be activated. It would still mean that one model could be activated 6~7 times but it would not be 12~14 like we can see right now. And tying this "fatigue" to PH would mean that Avatar or TAGs can activate more times than other models. And maybe if someone would like to activate beyond this limit (to "push the limit" of their bodies or machinery) they could spend twice amount of orders to act normally, or spend single order and suffer severe penalty to any roll (that would allow a withdraw if something goes wrong).
I think there's a possibility of designing a system around fatigue that isn't inelegant nor one that requires the entire game system to be rebalanced. A 15 order cap was effectively introduced without doing this, and yes it made a couple of sectorials go from very powerful in the right hands to be the red headed step children, but I think that's about the worst it could get. What's more critical is that the system itself isn't clunky. By that I mean "don't introduce more rolls". (If you do introduce a roll I think it has to do more than just "can I activate this dude?" and that'd mean a kind of fumble mechanic and that would mean redesigning the system at the core) For example, instead of forcing a WIP roll after 5 orders to see if the trooper has hearing issues or not, how about you get a stacking negative MOD every third order? That's still a reasonably high deal of flexibility. Caveats do include that Dodge and Reset probably need to be excluded, DTWs probably need rebalancing (or not, maybe a weapon category that doesn't care about fatigue needs to exist), and maybe the reactive player need to have their troopers affected by fatigue as well. It's not a small alteration, but if you will allow me to poke a bit of fun at a game system I love a bunch; it's definitely bigger than the N4 changes, but certainly smaller than the FAQ 1.2 changes. :)
