With today's update Spiral lost the diggers completely. In my opinion they were the last real reason to play Spiral instead of Tohaa. Additionally I just can't understand why Spiral was hit by the last two changes (fireteams and current Army update) and Tohaa wasn't. But let me lay this out: Before the fireteam update Spiral had the following benefits over Tohaa: - The Tri-Core ability - a Holoecho Sniper - Helot Militia as strong ARO pieces - a strong Defensive Fireteam with your best cheerleader and a Sniper - possibility to take three Impersinators - Kiel-Saan Haris - AVA 2 Kriigel With the fireteam update Spiral lost their defensive Haris and gained a weaker one instead. Which, for whatever reason, Tohaa gained too! With the fireteam update the Tri-Core ability got significantly weaker because a Tri-Core Haris can never receive any purity bonuses. Three Impersinators and AVA 2 Kriigel are pseudo benefits because it's really hard to play with three Impersinators and while Tohaa can only take one Reex they have the Taquel and Makauls. And you always take them. And they do exactly what a Reex does. Do Pheroware Stuff and lay down eclipse. But with the fireteam update Spiral got the Diggers which were linkable. This openend up new benefits over Tohaa. You were now able to form a pure Core with a msv 2 Sniper and strong suicide attackers. Which was very different from things Tohaa could do. Now Spiral lost the Diggers and got Beasthunters instead. And Tohaa kept diggers (non-linkable though) and already owned the beasthunter. So this differentiation is gone. And a Beasthunter is of very limited worth in a NA2 Faction that already uses ~3 Irregular Models per list. This leaves Spiral with very few benefits or interesting things over Tohaa. In my opinion they can't outweigh everything you give up when playing Spiral instead of Tohaa. So why should anyone now play Sprial instead of Tohaa? I also don't get it from a business perspective. Why make the in-production faction worse and worse then their OOP counterpart?
I hate their patch directions. It seems like they just think SC is just 'Tohaa that we are manufacturing right now' not independent army. As a big fan of Spiral Corps(both lore & gameplay) I am disappointed as hell. Below is what I don't like : 1. Unique faction ability Tri-Core is glorified trash now. No comment. I thought they had no time to think about this but maybe they forgot it's existence. At least remove 'AVA1' for Tri-core option and SWC cost. 2. Pinpoint delete on Diggers without any options to fill it's place. Digger is deleted only in SC. All NA2 which had Digger still have it. Funny that Tohaa is still having Digger. So this is clearly not from Assignable(W) joke. If CB didn't like SC to have HI that can be a part of a core team, give something else like Chaksas, Longarms, Kaauri & Reex. If Tohaa agents are too noble to fight with hoomans, open options for these minor races to core team composition. 3. Limited Fireteam composition. Spiral Corps, Mixed Mercenary Company. This is their name. But outside of Taagma and Keesan you cannot run mixed raced fireteam. all races are having their own team. Hooman team / Chaksa team / Tohaa team / Kiel-Saan Team They must be awkward each other. 4. No keyword to Triad(incl. Tohaa too.) Lorewise Triad members are more than family. But in-game they are too selfish to grant 'discover +3 bonus'. Is 'discover +3' too strong? then why Morats are all having (Morat)? Is 'discover +3' not a big deal? then why we can't have it? Is 'discover +3' unintended bonus? Remember Steel Phalanx gets additional BS+1 after fireteam changes. 5. Traktor Mul 'Spiral Corps is a private military company based on Varuna that has a core of experts and professional troops from the Trident' This is from CB official website. SC is based on Varuna. Isn't it more reasonable to have PanO bots rather than Traktor Mul? Aside from the lores, Only giving us one exact option feels bad. Triumvirate ran out of money or what? I thought they were super rich or something. I personally wanted to have REM in SC. I thought adding REM into SC will open up more strategic options & give player a feeling that he/she is playing mixed merc company not twisted minor copy of Tohaa.
As another SC player AND a player of notoriously unfun sectorial called an Invincible Army, recent patches did pissed me off. Deletion of diggers are fine by it, since they were(and are) super hot potatoes to start with. But hey, is it that hard slapping some keywords to certain units? Like this guy said, why does some really funny and functional sectorials like Morats get a bucket full of keywords with such many opportunities while others had to stick with (or less, since they got some keywords reducted than before!) limited or lazy designed options? Blimey, I can play this game yet, but really, some toy soldiers need some effort rather than scaled attention.
It does feel like there is a direction to the changes. The TriCore nerf came at the same time as the Taagma became a Wildcard and we got access to the Longarm and Anaconda Haris, so I did wonder if they were trying to forestall SC suddenly getting core-linked firepower out to 32". And Diggers were an impetuous heavy infantry core link option in a faction that had previously had no impetuous and very limited HI and core link options. So it might be that they looked at this and thought that the Beasthunters fit the theme of SC more than Diggers. That said, whilst I like the idea of reinforcing the themes of the faction I have to agree that it feels like they've gone about it in the wrong way. Increasing our link options is great, but the effectiveness of our best links was reduced in the process. Swapping Diggers for Beasthunters might better fit the theme, but in game terms we've traded something we didn't have before for something that we have a lot of already. One step forward, two steps back. I'd definitely like to see better mixed fireteam options going forwards; that would reinforce the theme of SC whilst also improving list options.
I agree on your faction theme stuff. Cheap HI is definitely not fitting to SC game design. I am surprised from this removal but I am not angry just by it. I don't like the part where they didn't offer alternatives. Before Tri-core nerf, SC was using Tri-core as explosive attacking tool or defensive tool for making strong ARO squad to hold or kill opponent. My fav combination was Taagma VSR + Tri-core + Kaeltar for backup fire support/ARO. After Tri-core nerf, defensive squad is changed to Brawlers 5 men fireteam from Tri-cored sniper/HRL. I felt sad about nerf. But using Brawler was fresh for me and it could serve similar role so I was happy at that moment. And now. Diggers are gone so 5 men Brawlers team nerfed. So If I want to have powerful ARO squad, I have to invest more points into it. But SC's faction design is all about surgical strike and controlling fields. So this unexpected nerf also affects faction's controlling power. Yeah we got Beasthunter that enhances control power. But once we could build good defensive gunline with cheap cost, this change is not ideal IMO. At least give some alternative options. Plus, Brawlers AVA is 4 so if opponent knows SC, 5 men Brawler team is definitely a sign for Taagma's presence. Digger was not just filling squad.
Are we looking at the same Reex? Did you mean Kriigel? Not disagreeing about anything, just got really confused.
The Monstrucker was a link option along with the Digger before, but like now, it did not have the (Brawler) keyword, so all it can really do is make the fireteam loose its composition bonus. With the change to the Tri-Core, the main benefit I see in playing Spiral over Tohaa is the Kauuri Paramedic.
Spiral outclasses Tohaa in access to MSV2, Smoke, Impersonators, and cheap defenses (Helots, WarCor). I will admit though it is... frustrating... to see CB continuously knock down our best options with neither an explanation nor compensation. I don't think the faction's quite dead yet, as we've still got a few tricks up our sleeve (Kriigel SGL + Taagma Sniper, Kiiutan w/ E/M Mines, etc.) but it's getting harder and harder to justify giving up the Makaul/Sukeul/Taqeul that Tohaa get.
Was writing my lists for a tournament on Saturday when this dropped. Frustrating loss of what had become one of THE signature pieces in my SC lists. People who don't play SC dont get it, because digger is so damn common in Infinity, but my lord, they were so important for us. Will now play Tohaa instead. Taagma and Helots dont touch the sides of what we now have to give up to play SC.
I also find it funny we got the beast hunter FTO, but it can't join any fireteams. It feels lazy like they just slapped into spiral corp without proofing the unit entry.
Kind of strange given her fluff that she doesn't have inspiring leadership. She's used as a PR chip/figurehead, "she made it through hell and she'll get through this!" Sort of deal. As for giving a new profile for her to Spiral, why not? She officially works for them, Literally covered in Daedalus Fall. I will say the extra command token is nice though.
Vanilla also have the FTO, they tend to keep the profiles named the same between factions, I imagine it keeps the back-end database much tidier.
That a very reasonable answer, thank you. Side note: between this and the nomad forums are you stalking my posts? :P lol
The existing inspiring leadership models are recreations of famous movie characters. Yes they were real people too, but I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a lot of reference data to go on the originals other than the larger than life stories. A soldier jumped up into a figurehead is the definition of that skill.
Spiral have lost a lot of what makew them unique, and to get it back CB needs to either buff them or nerf tohaa. Not sure tohaa should have jaan star, or draal ap rifle as it stands. The reasons to play SC over tohaa are vanishingly small...
Probably because the Traktor Mul is the worst-selling REM in the product range. It's not usable in many places and those that can take it won't because of their awful support for Guided and cheap, useful Order generation.
