Ignoring the thing you're replying to because I don't care. Just wanna talk about why the "points formula" or lack thereof is the root of 90% of the problems in Infinity. Let's assume there is a formula and CB doesn't fudge points. That's bad. Every problem in the game is the three body problem in a nutshell. What should a Combi Rifle cost on an Order Monkey? What should a Combi Rifle cost on an Elite HI? Relative point costs for weapons are the same no matter if you are a BS10 Linetrooper or BS15 MSV3. And that's part of the major issue. You don't pay a price for synergy. There's some scaling, like a Cutter or the Avatar paying More for Mimetism (-6) than a Ninja, but not enough and not everywhere. It starts with how valueable a barebones no frills baseline trooper for a "class" of trooper is. That has been eroded a lot, but there's some built in reward for synergy when you start with an as cheap as possible LI body and start building from there and specializing into a role, compared to a "MI" body, that probably has a pip more on the baseline in CC, PH, ARM, BTS, WIP making him over 50% more expensive while maybe increasing performance in an area you later on want to cover on a Profile by 10%. Note that the "LI" baseline is not prohibited from getting upgraded in any stat to the same level as a "MI" body, which often happens and is a desireable specialized upgrade. There's loads of examples to pick from but here's an easy one to visualize it with The baseline Varg has horrible optimization, Superjump with 4-4 is tricky to get value out of and so is Shock Immunity and Albedo. Lots of matchups don't even have Visors or the Varg is never facing one on his first turn. He has no additional Synergy with his high ARM either (BI/TI/Dogged/NWI/2W). As a result he should be elegible for a package discount, but isn't. Karhu on the other hand, are bonkers. Judging from Engineer vs Paramedic Profile, the AP Mines cost 2 points and the vlaue of D-Charges, which is likely 3. In either case less points then a Varg maximum 24. E/Marat and HFT should be equal, at least after factoring in whatever fractional points the D-Charges are worth. Brings us to Multi Rifle vs Combi which would drop the Karhu another 2 points. A base Karhu and Vargar with the Vargar's armament therefore cost 22 vs 25 points. Both have a Movement Skill (C+ combined with 6-2 being vastly superior), Terrain Total and some sort of VIS MOD (let's call Albedo vs MSV1&Mimetism even, even though both of the latter are much easier to get use out of than Albedo and they last the entire game). Which leaves us with Shock Immunity and better stats against NCO and 4 points. I am confident on Troop Profile NCO gets a rebate because it's possible to take multipe troops compared to on loadout Profile. So the Karhu edges out another point and is 5 points cheaper than the Varg in terms of stats being generous all the way. We could now argue if a 20% increase in bloat is fair value for 1CC, 1WIP and 2 ARM on a 1W trooper. The Karhu gets every edge in this comparison. He has multiple impactful synergies on top of saving on undesireable stats: - 6-2 MOV & C+ & Terrain Total - Better gun & Mimetism & MSV - Courage to offset WIP12 on Guts checks - NCO in PanO on a trooper with great link options more than able to use that Order to great effect himself and in an Faction/Sectorial that often uses a passive backfield Lt, not utilizing the Lt Order at all without an NCO Now, the Varg has some very interesting Profiles that outcompete the baseline guy. But that can't hold a candle to other Karhu Profiles that are more or less auto pick in his home Sectorial and at minimum strong choices for a non-Joan Vanilla. And the baseline guy already brings a rare linkable DTW in PanO with debiliating E/M. Should these two troops cost what they cost relative to each other or has the point formula failed us, without Impetuous or Frenzy? CB should, and always should have, fudged points. Not doing so is a massive mistake that hurts the game and its design and always has. If there is a formula that's good, no reason to not know what the individual parts of a Profile are worth to know where to start. But there should be some final consideration at the end. Fortunately we always have the backdrop of 15 slots max and therefore Regular Orders to give us some leeway. We simply can't spend 300 points on troops 10 point each, a certain amount bloat is affordable. What I think should change in the next edition of Infinity is a redesign of how weapons are priced, which should be dynamic, and SWC. On baseline LI SWC weapons should be cheap, even 0 points on something like a Keisotsu, and low SWC cost (relatively speaking). The better a trooper at handling a weapon the more SWC and points should be charged to factor in synergy. With Profiles already doing all the calculating for us, this doesn't have any impact on how difficult it is to build a list. Similarly Linkable Impetuous/Frenzy Troops beyond and below a certain baseline in CC/PH/CCW investment should see different adjustments in pricing. The gap between a Hospitaler Knight, Teutonic Knight or Riot Grrrl is simply not reflecting what that package is actually worth relative to each other. Having a 15 WIP, BTS9 Hacker with Hacking Device Upgrades should add a bit to the cost, rather than receive a reward by shaving off points with an SMG. Actually, both together is fine, Non SWC weapon cost needs a good hard look relatiive to the body they are mounted on. This can be achieved by granting lower BS capability models like MODless baseline LI less exciting rebates. Ideally by changing weapon "downgrade" rewards to a % of the base cost, rather than the current flat amount. Facing the three body problem with every single Profile in the game, Infinity will never be entirely balanced. Making an effort to factor in synergy into points at least somewhat and rewarding blandness and situationally useful "risky" kits with rebates on the other end, whould move the entire while field of balance closer together.
All equipment needs to scale appropriately for the unit and synergies. It's dumb that the HMG costs the same on a line trooper as it does on a Hac Tao or Omega...
I do want to point out while Evaders do get “interesting” discounts, after the fireteam update they did lose their Wildcard ability as well as the only way to get pure fireteam bonuses is to take 5 of them. So it seems like CB acknowledged their efficiency somewhat and curbed them a little bit?
Sort of? The unit that it most often gets compared to, the Haidao, cannot benefit from coherent fireteam bonuses at all. Evaders are also really well fleshed out in their kit, even on their own. Beyond that, YJ has a pretty huge glut of overlappimg HI with varying degrees of fireteam rigidity. Comparing strictly HI links between YJ and Nomad sectorials, I'd say Nomads have it pretty damn good overall. Bakunin's Riot Grrls have to be one of, if not the best coherent HI core out there, but both WB and IA get access to the Shang Ji, who is basically the peak of what it means to be a basic HI. While such comparisons can often be short sighted, I think it's fairly safe to say that Nomads are definitely not caught wanting when it comes to heavy arms and armour. They're some of the best of the best in that regard.
Every 3 Months or so i take a peek look into this forum, picking a random thread an read about 5 pages or so and its always amazing; YJ Players salting around about how damn crappy their faction is, pointing out each and every unit which is slightly compareable to the ones of another faction (mostly nomads, cause.... well... ofcourse). Crying around about this mytholigic "Point formula" which OBVIOUSLY no one understand, I dont think even CB does, but some are nearly hanging themselves about calculating the worth of special skills and equiptment on different units from different factions with different synergies and units. Arguing till the point of insulting (!) each other who is right and why. Point costs are too high/low, CB is amazingly bad in balancing, sectorials are unfair, vanilla even more (but just the one i dont play, cause mine is either perfectly balanced or horribly downgraded), Missions are crappy, and oh my god this Point formular! Some people in here should realy stop playing infinity,, due to it seems they hate the game so much their health is in danger. This whole thread reads itself like satire, and it is just trumped by the fact it was started by someone named "angry clown" Luckily we are the nice and civilised infinity community, otherwise i would think i am in a forum for spazeMarinezPlayers. Don´t get me wrong, i had fun reading cause all this is hilariouse. But also a little questionable and alarming. Btw: Nomad/MO Player here. yes, nomads are the most beloved faction of CB yes, evaders are optimisticly low priced. yes, nomad has way better punching-units then they had back in the N2 days (but they also lost the ODD-field, soooo...thats something) yes, yu jing units are bad. ofcourse they are. the lost an entire sectorial of units cause the got beat by guys with sharp sticks. What do u expect? yes, gator is the next of already too much TAGs in the nomad faction and I would have preferred a rework of the Lizard. But i take it. yes, the point formular is like a religion: belive it, dont try to understand it. No one expects anyone to belive some bearded white guy in middle east did succeed his regeneration roll after 3 days. This all in mind, the last 5 Pages make me wonder why nomads arent single-handedly rule each and every top 10 all by themselves. But for some reason no one can understand they don`t. Maybe nomad players are all bad. So thats some kind a balance aswell.
But they do insist Nomads dominate every tournament, they just can't name which ones and when you point out the tournaments that Nomads don't do well, they just say those tournaments aren't "competitive"....whatever that means. It's like arguing with conspiracy theorists, the lack of proof is just more proof to them.
Funny how you instantly got defensive about it though. It's almost like you were saying those exact same things.
"If nobody contests my statement I am right. If they *do* contest my statement, they're defensive and I must be right." Yeah shove it kid.
I mean, Polynikes tends to win tournaments fairly consistently... there was at least 1 other Vanilla CA player yesterday who *didn't* win. And they ran an Avatar all 3 games.
I mean in general, Vanilla CA consistently does very very well. But more to the point, unless CJC and Nomads are consistently crushing it I don't think the issue is anything beyond people being annoyed they are getting so much attention. As much as I would love to see USARF, QK, NA2, etc get more love, I don't think it's going to happen until they roll out a new box.
I'd be interested to see the stats on it for N4. I know in N3 it did great in the lower 75%, but dropped off significantly when you focused on the top 25% of players.
I wish they had their ITS stats published with breakdowns by what profiles get used and so on. Would really help to see what is just wasted space and what isn't.
We have this Data for N3 Its 2019 for something like 50big tournements on the forum somewhere, was an interesting find. A totally other meta ofc. https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/2019-in-numbers-its-data-analysis.36359/
Yes, and things have definitely changed since then. But Dashat, Tohaa, and ALEPH being the top of the top back then was something some people were in denial about.
I guess the last 2years not much was going on cause covid, maybe the autor or someone else is willing to data out 2022. would be appreciated.
