@HellLois since you mentioned in the Army bug thread you might be able to answer some profile questions, I decided to start a thread in the rules forum. Please let me know if this is alright. My first question is a I have a tiny one: Is it meant for all with the Engineer Skill to have the equipment Deactivators? If so, there are a small handful of units and profiles that do not have this combination. Or is the not including of deactivators on some engineers intentional and there is a design purpose behind it?
Yeah it's alright! I hope I don't regret it, because sarcastic comments to the first answers are already starting to appear and this is an extra work to my day to day Anyway, about Engineer and Deactivator. Having the Engineer skill, does not guarantee to have the Deactivator equipment.
Tech-bee has a Gizmokit but she is not an engineer. Is it intentional? Kuroshi Rider has Forward Observer but she doesn't have a Flash Pulse. Is it intentional? Yes, these should be intentional. As shown in the reply above having a weapon or piece of equipment is not tied to a skill and vice-versa, even if 90% of the time they come together.
If you are referring to my or @Vaulsc 's posts, I just want to say that mine wasn't meant to be sarcastic, and though I don't know for sure, I'd wager Vaul's wasn't meant (overly) sarcastic either. I'm really curious why you decided to nerf Spiral (again), and the fact that Diggers have Booty, Bit&Kiss have a pitcher with +1B, and (to give a new example), the Gator having NCO for his cost could be actual oversights. If Remote Presence on the Avatar went unnoticed for two years, why shouldn't those too? At the very least, they are problematic.
To clarify, I was 100% being sarcastic. People are paying money for infinity miniatures because they assume that there's a well-maintained game that they can use the miniatures for, and despite the hard work that CB usually puts in, I'd like to see a little more in terms of the upkeep of rules, profiles, related things. This paragraph has been sarcasm free. To be fair, what we've seen lately is a good start. Keep it up.
My bad then :P Doesn't change the fact that you could have been serious and not out of line. After the Avatar thing, who knows what else CB simply didn't realize yet? For example, berserk on the Bearpode and those other 10"-14" berserk profiles (Zamira is the latest offender) could simply be something they didn't intend or didn't foresee the consequences. This is why I second your request for explanations for all these changes/buffs/nerfs. @HellLois, this I would be very interested in: What was the intent behind making Zamira a 14", shock immune, dogged berserk model (for this price)?
Yes, it is. This is intentional no, we don't. ^^ I noticed :P We want to keep our game well-maintained, think otherwise is not wanting to see beyond and for a mistake, forget more than 10 years of the game. Luckily the rules and the army are free and that the CB staff is too close to be around here. Zamira was always the ugly sister, and she rarely have been part of an Army list, at least now we're talking about her, lets see if we see she more on the game table. ^^
I'm curious why you made the USA bikers pay for their ITS14 mimetism, when even with free mimetism bikes USA has been one of the weakest factions for all of N4? Cheap desperadoes going from 6 to 7 points really hurts. Is there much bureaucracy that slows down buffing weak factions with abysmally low tournament winrates?
Again, thank you for answering! While it's correct that Zamira was worse than Zuleyka, the consensus seemed to be that this wasn't due to Zamira being bad, but Zuleyka being severely undercosted for what she brings. What many people asked for was making Zuleyka more expensive to better reflect her power level. To make Zamira just as overpowered and undercosted instead by giving her Berserk for free seems to me to be the wrong direction. TL;DR: Nobody said Zamira was bad, just that Zuleyka was too good. Now both are.
I'm curious but If I understand well what you said, some Corvus Belli balance are from the frequency one unit is select on Army builder ?
Taking both sisters is a very good consideration now. I always thought it was weird that you were not forced to take both together at list building (kinda like Mirage-5 or Zoe+PiWell).
If that would have been true you would occasionally have seen them together - which you never really did imho.
@HellLois Thanks for this blogpost, I also have some questions: 1. Why Are Djanbazans still availible in the corvus belli store? They weren't made last chance to buy, when QK was stopped produced and are the only QK unit still in production. They have some mercenary fluff so I ecxpected them to be made part of some mercenary company, but 3 years later they still are there in the store. 2. Every now and then then we see updates to unsupported armies like beasthunters additions for Qapu Khalqi or Wolfgang for MRFF. However during bigger updates like fireteam change they seem to be left on the sidelines. In MRRF case they are unable to link Knauf (which makes him a much harder sell when compared to linked snipers) or Anaconda (which makes it a much weaker option than for example in Starco) and Qapu khalqi for a while had a second fireteam haris and then lost it. However at the beginning of haris was availible only to them and some members thought that it was a thematically fitting for them to have now 2 fireteams. Getting to my question I really like big balance updates, like N3 Human sphere or N3/N4 update where even unsupported armies get some new toys (taquel rework, Neoterra link changes). I would like to know if you plan more balance passes like these in N4, or do you want to focus on specific army updates with book releases, like recent Raveneye focusing on Kosmoflot, Corregidor and Morats and giving them much more depth. 3. With addition of dodge(-3/6) have you thought about adding bs attack (-3/6) in the future? It would be pretty much a comeback of full auto level. 2 from N3. 4. Are you also planning to remove Diggers from tohaa to stop their interaction with symbio bombs/mates?
This thread of CB staff answering questions has seemed to die off rather quickly, but I am going to try and revive it. @HellLois: Will Emily Handleman and Uhahu ever get re-released as stand-alone minis? I understand why the Outrage Pack got discontinued, since most of these models were never playable anyway. But Emily and Uhahu are kind of faction-defining models for StarCo, which makes the sectorial enter half-discontinued status. Will they ever come back?
I am copy-pasteing the relevant part of my post on the Update & Bugs thread, as suggested by @Ashtaroth
OK, guys, let's stop the giggle train. We would hate to distract HellLois and the crew from writing the Defiance FAQ after all.
Not Defiance FAQ, but yes Infinity FAQs :P About your questions. I have to say that I didnt have answers for all kind of questions. Dont forget I'm just a technical profile :) So @IHNIF answering your first question. I don't know. Maybe it is to give some support to Haqqis, or maybe it's because its time has not come. About the 2 and 4 questions, we will study it. But, yes, probably there were some updates. And the question 3. Yes. we have tha option on the table. But who knows. maybe soon TM or maybe not. It's not dead, it was out partying xDD. (Working on FAQs and rules update, and I have to manage my focus-time) I dont believe it. But It will depend on the releases plannification. And that's is a mystery for me. ;) This is due to the fact that these "heroic profiles" try to adjust the price as much as possible, otherwise they will not be able to compete against a similar, but basic profile. And sometimes you have to sacrifice access to these "counts as" to avoid unbalancing or having to increase the price and not compensate for aligning the profile. But who knows, maybe in the future this can change. It not depends on me.