I like units to be viable. When CB double downs on giving a unit a mediocre profile on top of mediocre fire team options it ceases to be a reasonable option and is simply under powered. It's got a crap profile, crap fire team options, and it fails to fill any strategic niche within the sectorial that the other HI options do not. The Boyg is a pointless entry in WinterFo, CB should at least fix one of those three things so it feels good for players to pick instead of feeling like the horrible handicap that it is.
Not optimal I get, Ugly I would get, but I think it fills a role in Winterforce as a mid or long range attack piece.
The prototype convo gave me a thought. Maybe nomad rems and hacking tech is better because they don't have to worry so much about designing them to be produced on a mass scale? Maybe there lacking in some rare materials that would allow them to apply that tech into T.A.G.s on mass.
It doesn't because its fire team options suck and it's competing in the exact same role as a Knight of Justice who is simply the same but better and gets better fire team options as a wildcard because it can go in a core link.
Knight of Justice gets worse dodge and less B offensively but is more reliable to stay up when hit, can potentially be in a mixed core for +1BS
Boyg compared to KOJ seems to be self contained KoJ in a fireteam. Trade burst in ARO for high dodge value in ARO. trade Super high BTS linkable with tinbot options for pretty high bts and ECM. The design makes sense to me when you think it was released with code 1. Seems like a decent thing to surprise someone with as a reserve on a previously empty table side. IMHO. "Bloat" is not really bad, unless its really awkward, like reverend healers being min 3 bs 13 before the update, which felt weird having the dr in the fireteam being the easiest thing to shoot at. In nomad world I hear complaints about still 'paying' for high close combat on reverend healers after the update. If they have low cc it makes it an easy choice for the opponent to choose what vector to move on. I enjoy it when the little extra bits come into play.
I don't think you understand how this works. Let's say one side is paying 20% more for unit abilities which aren't efficiently leveraged or are worse in real world application than rhe opponent. Fluff whatever, who cares, the opponent has more effective points in their list. Infinity is a game of efficiency. And yes, i don't care about infinity fluff. I'm not buying otherwise worthless books to read what amounts to fanfic level of writing and poor editing. You got me once with the dumpster fire which were the N4 books which have rules paragraphs missing entire sections and duplicate paragraphs. It's awful. Just to clarify, I buy indie products all the time from much smaller creators which are equal in length, better laid out and edited. The indie RPG scene is nuts.
Then you're missing a good portion of why things are what they are on the table. You can belittle CB's work as much as you'd like, but the long and the short of it is that the fluff and what hits the table go hand in hand. As such, you'll spend a lot of time disappointed, because they'll continue to go hand in hand, and the reasons why Unit L or Unit Q are what they are lies in the background. And if you can't find a way to make a unit work for you, that's OK, it's just not in your skill set. Shift to a different unit or different army, and just acknowledge that Army 1 and it's units just don't jell with the way you like to play.
It has for me. It can slot into a fun and useful Haris, and even if you decide to run it solo, the +1B and range bands on its weapons mean it can hit reliably and doesn't have to worry about someone getting in too close and suddenly being in a -3 range band. Layering Fairy Dust on top of its ECM is also a nice perk.
Like it has been mentioned, units don't need to be hyper-optimized. They just need to be "good enough" for their faction IMO: I think this is the core disconnect between two of the major player groups of Infinity: the importance of optimization as part of game. I believe a lot of friction comes from each side believing their view is the "right" way. Personally, I do not feel everything unit should classifed as a binary of good and bad. But I think it is an error when each side treats the other with disdain.
That doesn't make it not a poorly balanced game. Fluff is a justification for poor design used by developers who can't fix their stuff. Fluff and gameplay can go hand in hand, and be balanced, because most of the time you balance price on the overall effectiveness of a unit, and not on a formula that doesn't account for the difference in value of skills/equipment/weapons once you start stacking them. It's why normally a big gun on a durable hard to hit unit that will win more fights costs more than that same gun on a unit that is weak. Because it's much more effective on a more unit that can leverage it more effectively.
Ideally, every unit would be relatively equal when it comes to a holistic view of the faction and game. Everything having it's place, being useful in that place, and having reasons to see table time. Sadly, there are a ton that do not, and there are a ton of redundant profiles. No matter how cool the fluff is (it's not) it doesn't matter if the unit is putting you at a disadvantage.
Game balance is so much more important than fluff service. Fluff informs design space and faction style but balance is what we as players live by. It's what we experience every week on the table. C'mon.
While you see it as a disadvantage, others may see it a challenge. I see Infinity as such a complex game that you do not have to always take the most "optimized" units. The definition of optimized can also be influenced on what capabilities the specific player prioritizes. It also can change based on the specific meta of the player. I think one should know the strengths and weaknesses of each piece, but, for me, think uniformly breaking units into a specific limited binaries limits how one can play the game.
And some units are just obsolete, poor choices compared to similar things in their faction, or outright over or under costed for what they bring. Denying this doesn't make the game better. You don't always have to take the most optimized units, but when two units fulfill the same role you want the best one for it. This is why some units just do not get used and some are pretty much must takes. It sucks, they usually have cool models, but cool models are just sitting on a shelf unless they bring something to the table.
When some factions preferentially get optimized profiles that's a balance problem. You can have a balanced game and still have things be fluffy; you'rr trying to pull a fast one and claim that players who want a fair shake at the game are going against the fluff of the setting. Is PanO supposed to lose games of Infinity? Is a theme of Infinity that PanO is too stupid to use electronic warfare?
There is probably a points cost where the Bøyg would be playable without being overpowered. CB has failed to price it appropriately.
KoJ has a marginally worse dodge and the same burst of a spitfire to a MK12 just a 1 point damage difference. Ph 14 dodge is good enough in most cases. It lacks stealth, martial arts, speed and antimaterial cows.The niche the boyg fills is a B3 missile in a link which costs around 80 or so points at its cheapest and a missile has serious limitations in ftf offensively. One of the big complaints about winterfor is overlap and the koj and boyg fit that to a T. The boyg doesn't even cover its fluff very well. While immitating Yu Jing is part of it,, the big part is the cube jacking which is horribly represented. This is a unit that could be doing much more interesting things like total reaction, sixth sense or any number of things to represent the cube interface. And ffs courage wouldn't kill it if a pilot of experimental tech in a arm 5 suit had some bravery to actually stay on ARO.
