Hello everyone, I think in most situations NBW isn't that big of an issue, besides it popping out the earth like mushrooms. But there are some corner cases that bother me. Prime example being Musashi: he's supposed to be THE close combat specialist, and that's all he brings to the table, yeah he has a wip 15 Flashpulse, but that's not why you field a 20+ points Unit, and that's what helpf him get into CC nothing more. With rules as they are now a cheap digger has good chances in his active turn to just snack him away in CC. I propose to change NBW to not effect the Burst-Bonus, and possibly Damage-Bonus, of MA5, or alternatively cap MA at MA4 and give CC(+1 Burst) to current MA5 Units, thus the Burst isn't affected by NBW. This will not effect balancing that much, but will make MA5 Units feel much more competent, even against NBW Units. As a footnote regarding Mushashis Profile in particular: the historical figure was famous for winning using unconventional methods, it's specially strange for him to have this much trouble against cheap NBW Warbands. I propose for his profile to either get CC(-3) or NBW to reflect that.
Yeah I totally agree with you. Overall it's weird that the best melee unit will be the new karate tac bot of Aleph with a REM Driver. It's possible to reach 34 CC with Burst 2 Multi Pistol or EM/CC weapon. Also so many units with NBW (and CC-3)that are much cheaper than their MA skill counterparts, that are supposed to be the best melee combatants inside the Infinity setting.
To be perfectly fair, the reason why Mushashi isn't the best CC unit of the game anymore is that his design idea haven't changed, not that NBW's interaction is flawed in any way. CB's really gone wild with a lot of newer unit designs, and it is this that is causing the issue. I think it is better to argue that Mushashi should be a Natural Born Warrior. You are assuming Apsaras will change, but we have no indication they will so far. Or you might be assuming that Dawon will be available to general Aleph, so that they can be combined with a RemRacer, yet at least so far the rumours we have are that most of the Reinforcement profiles will be Reinforcement only. (And on a tactical level, Dawon slogging it solo from the DZ would probably struggle to get into melee at least as much as Mushashi does) Time will tell, of course, but let's not make assume anything is set in stone for now.
Or given perhaps Immunity vs. NBW. Or both. We're dropping into the area of rock-paper-scissors plus a lot of special exceptions.
Pretty much, though when I brought that up on Discord people weren't thrilled about the immune-immune part of MA-immune-immune. Key point; this is a unit design issue and not really a rules issue. Or perhaps the fluff is at fault for giving the impression that Mushashi is more than just mediocre with the sword.
NBW is the „immunity to MA“, isn‘t? Asking for an immunity to NWB is like asking „can my AP weapon get immunity(immunity (total)), so I can still reduce armor when attacking dog warriors, Bronzes, etc“ I do not like this spiral. After you have immunity(NBW), there will be immunity(immunity(NBW)), because you want to have roadblocks against immunity(NBW) units. Then you want again have some super special units that counter those roadblocks = immunity(immunity(immunity(NBW)))… I have played a video game similar that and it was not fun, as it was invalidating the units which were at the lower end of that spiral and made everything overly complicated. MA units should be great in CC. NBW should be able to counter them. We do not need more than these two skills. These are already on top of having high/low CC attributes, modifiers to CC attacks etc.
And I can't deny you are right. The problem being - back in the day, NBW was, memory serving, only on a few characters like Sr. Massacre. And that's okay, if a few Special Snowflakes do that kind of stuff: invalidate someone's more popular skill. But once you start handing NBW out like candy, it stops being special. Hmmm... MArts are tiered... how about tiered NBW that reduces NBW on 1-to-1 basis? You'd need NBW L5 to cancel Mushashi's MArts L5, but even NBW L1 would be putting a dent in MArts L5 reducting it to L4 (and negating the rare case of L1 MArts).
Agreed, that'd be another way of meditating the effect, but wouldn't that be just MA with a different name? I'm fully on your page, Forthfaran, just implementing Immunity(NBW) isn't a solution. And I know what I'm aiming at is a rather rare Rules Interaction, NBW vs MA5, but tgere is an issue with that as NBW is given out to so many new units.
There's two issues there: - first: NBW is a bad skill and it's lazy as possible to give it like candy to everyone (sorry, to everyone except the core CC factions*). Like Immunity (total) or 360° visor, it should have stayed a very extreme skill distributed to only a handful of profiles to represent their lore. - MA needs a slight modification, in the same way Fireteams got one shortly after N4 debuts. Current CC in Infinity is far from its goal: the best CC units aren't the MA ones, but the one having +1B in CC nor NBW or any other "breaking the design chain" skill like Berserk +3 on 14pt profiles. The result is that today a MA5 specialist is worth often 3-4x times the cost of the best CC units for far less results. Even against lesser profiles, the fact that everyone has now CC14-16 as a standard means that MA1-4 specialists aren't reliable either in CC, it's everyday a gamble. It doesn't need much, as imho the sole problem is the output burst of the skill (and the fact that too many NBW exists for the sole purpose of power creep).
That is, imho, a path no one can want to go down. Especially if there would be a so much more easy way to attamped the problem: You want a supreme Close combat specialist, that is not impressed by a Cat lady with 3 furrys? Give the guy a high CC and the rule "CC-Attack (-6)" or "CC-Attack (+1B ARO)" or something alike. The options are many and cannot be canceled by NBW. It´s easy to understand and easy to adjust. The option is there, it,s nothing new. thats the point which bothers me most... The skill is called "Natural Born Warrior". Back in the days the descriptions sounded like these guys are able to poke you in the eye protected by a full visor helmet with a toothpick, whilest making a backflipp on a rolling boulder. at this moment in time I count 35 units with NBW, including ariadnan peasents with pitchforks, big bulky Nomad TAGs (for WHATEVER REASON?), Policemen in blue coats and funny hats, Tunnelworkers and exterminators of giant cockroaches. Most of them come with even more Close combat skills. That does not....feel right More dice are often better. Especially in Close combat, where the avarage numbers of dice is one. An rolling a single die means u have the same chance of hitting 1 like every other number. Without a CC of WAY OVER 20 melee is a coinflip, and even then it can go horribly wrong. I saw my Chimaira beeing beaten up by Rasails and my Wildcat punch a Knight´s teeth out. Plus: a good friend of mine did never get tiered of saying "infinity is a shooting game" It´s the far future, and guns is they way humans are best at killing each other. Bringing Knives (even fancy ones you can do funny tricks with) to a gunfight, is most of the times a bad idea. I love going into melee with my units, but it "should not" be as present as it sometimes is. That`s why we play infinity, not Chainswordhammer.
NBW definitely needs some work. They need to re-think what they want it to do. "good at cc" should be covered by martial arts, if you want a skill that is "ignores opponent's fighting skill" it should be limited to something that's actually going to bypass it. Like I don't care how good you fighting, the grizzly bear will still beat you. CB in general needs to do more balance passes on things not getting a complete makeover. Like 2 units per faction per year or something. That doesn't seem too much to ask.
There should just be levels for NBW mirroring MA. That way, you can fine tune who can counter what. As it is, there is too much NBW around.
Been thinking about this one, and I’d suggest picking one (and only one) of the following changes to address the issue: If a unit has NBW, it cannot have a CC stat higher than 19 or Martial Arts higher than Level 4. Units with NBW can have only one other CC related skill (eg only one of the following: Martial Arts, or CC Attack (+1B), or CC Attack (-6)). This necessitates changing some profiles but no changes to the actual rules. Modify the NBW rule so that the user doesn’t suffer the Opponent MOD from enemy Martial Arts, but that’s it. This has the effect that vs a MA user, the NBW’s own attacking skill can’t be reduced by MA, which is flavorful but less powerful, and leaves the martial artist’s attacking skill unaffected unless the NBW user also has MA. Give Mushashi NBW. Modify the NBW rule so that it ignores all negative MODs to CC, which would mean that NBW ignores the penalty from enemy MA and also skills and weapons like CC Attack (-x), Dodge (-x), or Para CCW (-x), but only if the NBW user declares CC Attack. It basically becomes “you can’t slow me down when I’m punching you, I’ll go through any barrier you can put up.” Maaaaybe give Mushashi NBW.
No. having MA2 on a NBW is already too much of a bonus. But I agree, NBW should be "ignore all negative mods to CC" instead of "delete all MA skills from opponent" in the same way a MSV ignores all mimetism negative mods, or marksmanship ignores cover. That's a clever way of improving that part of the game, along with reducing drastically the number of NBW troops in the wild + improving MA by removing MA5 and giving +1B to MA3 and +2B to MA4. That should assures overall a better distribution and representation of CC amongst the game.
CB needs to chill with cheating their own rules, CB gives CC+whatever skills to a lot of profiles for cheap and those skills are not affected by NBW making them better than MA and making both MA and NBW kinda pointless. Solution, remove MA from the game and replace it with CC+whatever skills ( which would be in line with N4 ideology of simple skill representation on unit profiles and no nesting ) and make NBW cancel all CC+whatever skills. And preferably don't pair CC+whatever skills with NBW except maybe on some crazy uber fighters but have them pay for it.
