Some people call it lack of vision and direction. I call it others are increasingly encroaching into the PanO design space to remain viable and compete against the primary shooting faction in primarily shooting game. The PanOceanian design space can be difficult to conceptualise and convey - How is it high tech when it doesn’t specialise in Hacking or Heavy Armour to achieve its aims. One component of the various background and fluff that has stuck out to me is - Logisitics. PanOceania has the biggest, best and largest logisitical chain in an interplanetary system. How do we convey this small component of being the High Tech Faction in amongst various “High Tech” factions - Ammo Options - It’s a small point but it’s the most viable design space that can be leveraged if CB is looking for ideas to develop various unit options in PanO. It implies the funds available to be able to mass produce materials that other nations can only produce in a limited supply. The framework the be able to store it etc. Things like - Breaker HMGs MULTI Spitfires Fusiliers with MULTI options MULTI Weapons with a variety of different ammo options aside from the standard - AP, DA, Shock. EM Rifles Pollock Grenades This list isn’t exhaustive but Illustrative. This is an area I hope people feel is the best medium to convey PanO’s technological superiority. Allowing CB to lean into various types of design spaces historically fans have felt have been reserved for PanO forces. Additionally with the de-nesting in N4 will allow increased customisation that uses the framework now established. Regards, AntipodeanBolt Self- Proclaimed PanO Shill.
PanO does have access to a lot of specialty ammo options, and I do agree it's part of their flavour as a faction. But I'm not sure that I want PanO's design space to just be, "PanO! Now 12% shootier!" What I think would help sell the idea of a PanO as an opulent war machine and make them more interesting to play would be adding a lot more and more specialized peripheral options. Mine deploying peripherals, sensor peripherals, forward observer peripherals, repeater peripherals, stun gun/EM weapon peripherals, etc. I always thought it was odd that PanO engineers stuck heavy flamethrowers onto Auxbots and thought to themselves, "I've made the perfect specops robo-buddy. Literally no other configurations can beat this."
Agree on both points team. I’m not advocating for certain ammo types just a mindset when developing elements that feel unique to PanO. The Auxbots would also fall inside ammo options idea too. This super expensive material to us is so common to us that even our expendable Robots get issued it.
Multiple ways to go about it. Couple things to figure out: 1. Do we care about tangible impact on balancing or are we fine it it's CB's job to factor it into the makro balancing of the larger Sectorials/Faction? Judging by the state of the game CB can't be expected to handle low cost/free high impact upgrades like i.e. access to special/upgraded Hacking Programs without the results to vary wildly, adding i.e. STUN Ammunition back to some PanO Multi Weapon Profiles could be quite broken or entirely situational depending on implementation. 2. Do we care about perserving the status quo or should Factions have more of an identity in the long run, including the loss of existing options and in return access to different options more in line with their "identity"? Drastical changes like reworking Symbiomates, adding broken rules like old Fatality L2 and Full Auto L2 tell me that CB will not give these a trial run and any changes will be semi permanent. Not to mention JSA splitting from YJ, although I think that was narrative driven (which makes it kinda even worse, putting game balance behind storytelling in a game where the majority of people weighs the game higher than the fluff). 3. How do we prevent even single exceptions from a percieved rule from breaking the rules? Corregidor only needed one exceptional Hacker to go from the worst Hacking in Nomads to the best Hacking in Nomads. And you only need the ony heavy weight in Hacking, for additional coverage you are fine with WIP13 generic cheap guys. Ignoring all that, more stuff for the list: - Access to more Auxbot variants, not just more quantity of the HFT one, especially the Eclipse guy. Eclipse Bot is horrendosly bad at Smoke, yet already exists since forever. - Command options worthy of a professional military. TAG/HI Lt/NCO options as well as reasonable CoC availability. Seraph "Father Officer" and KothS getting their long overdue Lt Profile. The largest military in the Human Sphere not having a common sense command infrastructure has always been a riddle. With the Bolt as a precedence I'm fairly sure "PanO-MI" is the place where we'd usually see CoC/NCO too. Bolt (CoC), Karhu (NCO) being the respective examples and Rao/Singh honorable mentions for their contributions over the editions. In line with that the Knight Commander is the antithesis of anything MO, he should definitely be the CoC option to enable an active frontline Knight Lt, rather than hide in the back and leverage NCO. - PanO characteristic Characters. A lot of them are little more than slightly over statted Profiles for their base trooper, rather than a full on individual character. Ofc with exceptions. Jeanne, Uma (since recently), DeFe, Shona, Gunnar and Mendoza definitely deserve their own Profile. Bipandra, Agnes, Quinn, Patsy, Konstantinos, Singh, Rao and Kyle - not so much. - Sectorial only Profiles. This is probably necessary for all Factions, not specifically PanO, but someone needs to reign in the Vanillas a bit. Easiest way to do so is to reserve more Profiles to Sectorial only. To be PanO specific, all PanO Sectorials should all have a unique Profile for their signature TAG, the same way Varuna does for their Squalo. It's kinda ridiculous that the Montesa Tik and the Zapper Squalo are the only TAGs that you'd want to run in a Sectorial (because you have to, to get them).
I would like Corvus belli to explore the sectorial only options or full troop selections more, Shasvasti is the only army that can field the Gwailos for example and there beeing some options gated behind sectorials is also nice, It does not make much sense to me that the "WinterFor Orc" can be played in Accontesimento.
Thematically, Pano can fill a space where it is not their excellence at shooting or equipment, but how very mundane strong shooting and equipment is. Fusilliers and Orcs being your more standard troops could get more profile options to demonstrate how pano's more lowly trooper get access to tech that is usually reserved for more elite troops in other factions. Hacking and further deployment of mines are probably spaces I'd avoid, but Visors of all sorts, deactivators/gizemokit, sensors, disposable weapons, and marksman rifles all come to mind as some of the "excesses" that Pano would just be handing out. I also agree, that more ammo types and Aux bots would be good.
Theres a million different things they could or should do but won't because of weird design hang ups.
I'd be pretty happy with just knowing the design space for Pano and it's sectorials. My progressive understanding: 1) Guys with the best shooting, but bad at pressing buttons 2) Guys with the best shooting, but bad at pressing buttons, also can't use smoke, and don't have these things called "warbands", but have best tags 3) Guys *Tied* with the best shooting, but bad at pressing buttons, also can't use smoke or white noise, and don't have these things called "warbands", but have best tags, kinda vulnerable to hacking. 4) Guys *Tied* with the best shooting, but bad at pressing buttons, also can't use smoke or white noise, and don't have these things called "warbands", but have best tags except for Combined, kinda vulnerable to hacking. The pointy sword ones don't like vis mods, and the Capital ones don't like to be deployed outside of the DZ, The snowy ones don't like tricks like hiding or air drop and the jungle ones get neat toys but not -6 mimetism. The soggy ones are good on defense, except when links change... This is kind of a joke post, but I am do think it's worth considering having a public design document for each sectorial. It could be caveated that it is always subject to change, but it would help to know design and maybe telegraph to newer players what you are or are not signing up for.
Basically what the previous post lays out. PanO's supposed shooting superiority is becoming vanishingly thin with other factions getting better gunfighters that are on par with our own. The solid tag lineup that PanO has is held back by very poor supporting pieces in hacking and engineering. It took CB ages to give us an off-brand weapon and it seems like they're finally giving a few ammo types to select pieces like vargar k1 and the Sepulchre. PanO has long been afflicted by the +1 BS in baffling ways. Its like they think they can't give us shooting tools to actually have an edge in shooting and then also cripple us in other facets so that we can't perform them very well either. Varuna was a really nice breath of fresh air when it was released but Sval seems to have been a harsh correction of design space. Despite the BS 14 models, they really aren't our key shooters. Most of our gun fighters are bs 12 or 13 with mods which is completely in line with other factions. The fireteam update seems rather harsh on PanO as well as we have vanishingly few options for mixing pure links in 3/5 of our factions and the other 2 have some rather restrictive pure links compared to several sectorials. Our Vanilla options are fairly poor in comparison to other vanilla in the game. Haqq, as of late, and Nomads seem to be pushing well into our space with shooting on pat with us but without the other restrictions in other areas. Yu Jing has never been that far behind us for gun fighters. O-12 feels kinda like what PanO should be in some respects but seems to get discounts and again a lack of restrictions on design. Ariadna is one of the few areas where I see design space being honored as much as ours. CA is CA and Aleph is Aleph. They tend to pay for what they get. Its hard to see what they think PanO should be when they make the Boyg and then they make that new Hassassin HI that is just better at its job and seems more high tech than the supposed illegal tech. Its just a parade of head scratching decisions that culminates in a big question of "what are we?"
I feel way better since I finally came to the agreement that PanO is not the shooty faction anymore, but just the blank canvas profiles for any Infinity designs for CB to improve on for other factions. Only our Knights have personality and a defining design.
If you try NCA it still feels head-and-shoulders above its competition these days. Swiss Guards, linkable Aquila Guards, the crazy-strong Bolts and the ability to inflict stacked AROs with Hacking and hidden troopers really feel genuinely superior if you can shut down the opponent's assymmetrical tricks. Very distinct playstyle. Hacking is trouble though.
I always found NCA is what Pano should aim to be, design-wise, not whatever non-sense SWF is trying to be anyway, but N4 decided otherwise.
Do you think CB hears all these concerns? or are we just complaining about something that is not going to change/improve?... how can we make them listen? As a new player, it is somewhat disappointing to read all these (and other similar posts) about PanO, having spent money on everything SWF I'm starting to think I've lost my money, especially because when I play, I find myself in the situations that many of you describe. (well I can't say I wasted my money because I love the models)
Part of what makes infinity good is that you can still play and win games if you can play your tools right. The issues raised here don't mean that you cannot play at all or you're going to lose a lot. These are just issues that force a narrower playstyle with the faction which makes it more rigid where as many other factions have more open ways to play. You'll have to focus on learning fundamentals and using them where other faction players may miss simple things instead opting for fancy tactics
You shouldn't feel too discouraged, there is still a lot of playstyle bandwidth in PanO. The main complaint is we are told the PanO design philosophy is X, but the new releases are all starting to look X-ish. Now we are all wondering what is the PanO niche if other factions are getting some really interesting options.
I would also add that though I have a jealous streak when I see other factions, they often have their own issues. When I play other factions I do find myself just as grumpy about my lists, but in different ways. That's not to say that it's all perfectly balanced though.
Then they might have to say that Corregidor is intended to be top-tier shooting, top-tier hacking, top tier almost everything.
