@Savnock recently wrote this in a different thread: So I have decided to do exactly that. Well, at least the first part. The rest is up to all of us I guess. Infinity is the best Sci-Fi skirmish tabletop wargame on the market. I truly believe so. That’s why I think it wouldn’t take much to make it even better. There have been many things the Infinity community has been asking CB to address since N4 as well as the new Fireteam rules have released, but so far, little of that has gotten a response. I have gathered all the suggestions and community feedback from the forums, Discord, Facebook, etc. that I have read and experienced myself over the years and come up with what I think is the most minimal set of reasonable changes. My thought process behind this was to keep the changes as small as possible while having the biggest possible impact on those issues the community feels need to be addressed. Obviously, most of these ideas aren't mine. I also didn't have the time to go back and find out who I have to credit for each of these. If you find one of these to be your idea, please let me know and I will give proper credit. For brevity, I have only listed the changes in each skill. Whatever part isn’t listed, stays unchanged. Finally, this needs your feedback and thoughts, so please, rip it apart, respectfully. Here we go. Quick overview, or TL;DR: The following things would slightly change with these suggestions: Limited Insertion lists cannot have more than order stripped at the start of the game. As Second Player, you can use a Command Token to activate a single EVO Hacking Program or Cybermask on one of your models before the game starts. When a Trooper passes their saving rolls against a Guided Attack, they lose the Targeted State at the end of the order (Guided nerf part 1). Spotlight doesn't automatically succeed anymore, but forces a BTS save (Guided nerf part 2). Troopers can declare AROs against Repeaters or models with Repeaters if they have LoF to the Repeater as well as the model being attacked by the repeater (Guided nerf part 3). Explanation: The only logical way a trooper on the field would notice something is happening through a Repeater is if they see the Repeater as well as the hacker being attacked by it. When Jumping or Climbing, you measure from any point of the silhouette to any point of the silhouette, making it so you can't jump up higher than you can jump down anymore. Biometric Visor gets an inbuilt +3 MOD on the WIP roll and automatically cancels all Impersonation states when successfull. Also, Troopers with Biometric Visors can discover more than once against Impersonators should they fail the WIP roll. Suprise Attack can be used in ARO (also buffing Holoecho and Holomask). Deactivator can also be used in ZoC, without LoF. NBW now only cancels negative MODs against your own CC attribute, but not the rest. Doctors and Engineers can use the WIP of their Peripherals (thematically fitting buff for PanO). Tri-Core gives Composition Bonuses as well (buff for Spiral). Frenzy and Impetuous are no longer canceled when in a Fireteam. Everyone keeps their points discounts, but don't get to negate the disatvantages simply by being in a link. If a Trooper kills someone while in a link with Frenzy, they become Impetuous. If they use their Impetuous Order in the link, they break the link. Lieutenants can use the Lieutenant order to activate a Fireteam. RULES CHANGE SUGGESTIONS TO INFINITY N4 COMMAND MODULE COMMAND TOKENS COMMAND TOKENS: STRATEGIC USE The player who has the second Player Turn can make Strategic Use of Command Tokens in the Tactical Phase of the adversary's first Player Turn. By spending one single Command Token at the end of the adversary's Order Count, they can choose one of the following options: Remove two Regular Orders from the adversary's Order Pool, for this Turn only. If the adversary is using only a single combat group, the player using the Command Token can only take one Regular Order from the adversary’s Order Pool. The player using the Command Token will decide from which Combat Group or Groups the Orders will be removed from. Note: This is changed to give people running limited insertion style lists less of a handicap against players who run full 15-orders list. While armies like the Invincible Army from Yu Jing can play limited insertion style list with many more orders as well, this buff towards them doesn’t threaten to make this sectorial too powerful. Activate a single Hacking Program from the following list, provided they have a Trooper included in their Army List that carries the necessary Hacking Device who is deployed on the table and not in any Marker State: Assisted Fire Controlled Jump Cybermask Enhanced Reaction Fairy Dust Example: The Tunguska player who has the second Player Turn has an Interventor with Hacking Device Plus as well as a Salyut Zond with an EVO Hacking Device, and a Tsyklon Sputnik deployed on the table. After their adversary has counted their orders, they can decide to either activate Cybermask on their Interventor, granting them the Impersonation-2 state, or activate one of the Hacking Programs on their Salyut, for example Enhanced Reaction on the Tsyklon. Note: This is a much-desired change that helps Players who have the Second Turn prepare a little bit better against alpha strikes from their opponents. COMBAT MODULE BS ATTACK BS ATTACK Short Skill/ARO Attack Effects Troopers with the BS Attack (Guided) Skill listed on their Unit Profile: If the target passes their Saving Rolls, their Targeted State is automatically cancelled at the end of the order. Note: This, together with the change to Spotlight, should take the edge off GML play just enough to not nerf it into oblivion, but make it slightly less powerful and order-efficient. QUANTRONIC COMBAT (HACKING) SPOTLIGHT Short Skill/ARO Comms Attack, Non-Lethal Effects In the Active or Reactive Turn, this Program has a Burst of 1, allowing the user to perform one WIP Roll against the target. A success causes the target to enter Targeted State, placing a Targeted State Token by them perform a Saving Roll against BTS. Any failed Saving Roll will cause the target to enter Targeted State, placing a Targeted State Token by them. Note: This change makes it just a little bit harder to spotlight enemies, and therefore dampens the success rate of the Guided Missile Launcher strategy a little bit. SKILLS & EQUIPMENT COMMON SKILLS JUMP & CLIMB Entire Order Movement, No LoF, No Roll Effects When Jumping or Climbing, measure the horizontal, vertical, diagonal or parabolic distance between the starting location and the landing spot, measuring from any point of the Trooper’s Silhouette at the start of the movement, but you must measure to the base’s outer edge and underside to any point of the Trooper’s Silhouette at the end of the movement. Note: This removes the weird situation of models being able to jump up higher than they are able to jump down. EQUIPMENT BIOMETRIC VISOR Automatic Equipment Obligatory Effects Reduces the -6 WIP MOD imposed by Impersonation-1 State to 0. When declaring Discover against a target in the Impersonation State, the user of this piece of Equipment can make a WIP+3 Roll. If they succeed, the target is immediately Discovered and loses any Impersonation State they had. Additionally, if the Trooper carrying the Biometric Visor fails their WIP Roll to Discover the Impersonation Marker, they can attempt to Discover the same Marker again. This is an exception to the rule that Troopers who have failed a WIP Roll to Discover an Impersonation Marker cannot attempt to Discover the same Marker until the next Player Turn. that a Trooper that has been revealed, and re-entered Impersonation State again, does not count as the same Marker. Note: This is supposed to make Biometric Visors finally do what they are intended to do, without making them overly powerful against Impersonators. DEACTIVATOR Short Skill BS Attack Requirements The user of this piece of Equipment must have LoF to or be in ZoC of the target. Note: This is meant to increase the usefulness of Deactivators by allowing them to apply the +6 to their WIP Roll inside of 8” of the enemy piece of Equipment without having to suffer, for example, the direct template attack of a mine. REPEATER Equipment Comms Equipment, Obligatory, Zone of Control. Effects There can be no reaction against a Repeater that is being used by an enemy Hacker, only against the Hacker, if possible. If a Hacker uses a Repeater, enemy Troopers with Line of Fire to the Repeater and with Line of Fire to the Target of the Hacker's attack, may declare any ARO against the Repeater or the Trooper carrying the Repeater. Example: The Combined Army player has used Kiss to land a Deployable Repeater inside the Zone of Control but outside Line of Fire of the Military Order player's Gabriele DeFersen, who they suspect to be their Lieutenant. The Combined Army player now activates his Anathematic to try and kill DeFersen using his Trinity (+1B) Hacking Program. However, there is a Teutonic Knight with Light Shotgun and Panzerfaust who has Line of Fire to the Repeater as well as DeFersen. While DeFersen can only declare one of his Hacking Programs as ARO against the Anathematic (he doesn't have LoF to the Repeater), the Teutonic Knight sees the quantronic struggle going on between DeFersen and an unseen adversary, sees the Repeater, and may therefore declare BS Attack against the Repeater. While the Anathematic is able to put DeFersen unconscious, the Teutonic Knight uses his Template to successfully remove the Repeater from the table, preventing further hacking attempts from the Combined Army player. Note: This gives the second Player some agency in the face of Hacking Attacks through Repeaters, but only if they deployed intelligently enough and the enemy doesn't manage to place the repeater where nobody sees it. HOLOECHO STATE Marker Effects In his Active Turn only as well as in ARO, a Trooper in Holoecho State may use the Surpirse Attack Special Skill. Note: This is just to keep the skill in coherence with the change to the Surprise Attack skill (see below), giving it a little much needed buff as well. SPECIAL SKILLS NATURAL BORN WARRIOR Automatic Skill CC Special Skill Effects The attacker cannot use the Martial Arts CC Special Skill against the user. The user ignores any negative MODs from enemy CC Special Skills against them, be they from any level of the Martial Arts CC Special Skill or any other CC Special Skill. Example: A Digger with the Natural Born Warrior Skill is attacked in CC by a Chimera. The Digger ignores the -3 applied to his CC attribute of the Chimera’s Martial Arts, as well as the -3 applied to his CC attribute by the Chimera’s CC Attack (-3) Special Skill. The Chimera, however, will still apply the +3 to her CC attribute from her Martial Arts, as well as the +1 DAM, should she win the face-to-face roll. Note: This is meant to mitigate the effect NBW has on troopers and characters who are supposed to be apex Martial Artists (Shinobu, Mushashi, etc.), without nerfing NBW too much or adding too much complexity to the whole MA system. PERIPHERAL Automatic Skill Obligatory Effects Peripheral (Servant) Peripheral (Servant) and Doctor/Engineer: This Special Skill allows the Controllers, if they are Doctors or Engineers, to use their Special Skill even if they are not in Silhouette contact with the target. If a Peripheral is in Silhouette contact with an allied Model, their Controller can perform the Doctor/Engineer Skill, targeting that Model. In this case, by using the Doctor/Engineer Skill, the Doctor/Engineer will be the one performing the Roll, even if the Trooper in Silhouette contact with the target is the Peripheral (Servant). The Doctor/Engineer can, however, use the Peripherals WIP attribute to perform the Roll. Note: This is really only notable for PanO, as it allows their WIP12 Doctors and Engineers to use the WIP13 of their Palbots to Doctor or Engineer something. This is supposed to emphasize how PanOceania relies on Tech more than on people. SURPRISE ATTACK Automatic Skill / ARO Obligatory Requirements The user of this Special Skill must be may use this skill in their Active Turn as well as in ARO. Note: This is a much asked-for change that makes the experience of having Surprise Attack on a Trooper more satisfying when they are engaged in their Reactive Turn. TRI-CORE Automatic Skill Optional Effects This Special Skill allows the Fireteam Haris of its owner to apply the Fireteam Size Bonuses as well as the Fireteam Composition Bonuses of a Fireteam of five members. Note: This is made to give Spiral Corps a bit of a much-needed buff again. FIRETEAMS FIRETEAMS: BASIC RULES Fireteams, Frenzy and Impetuous While in a Fireteam, the Frenzy and Impetuous Special Skills of a Trooper are not applied as normally. If the Trooper leaves the Fireteam, any Frenzy and Impetuous Special Skills will apply again, in whatever state they were in when the Trooper joined the Fireteam. If a Trooper with Frenzy is in a Fireteam and causes damage to an enemy, they become Impetuous in the States Phase of the same turn. If a Trooper in a Fireteam uses their Impetuous order, they automatically stop being part of the Fireteam. If they are the Fireteam leader, the Fireteam is automatically cancelled. FIRETEAM INTEGRITY In the Active and Reactive Turn, a Fireteam is automatically cancelled in the following cases: The Fireteam has the Impetuous Special Skill, or has become Impetuous because of the Frenzy Special Skill, and uses their Impetuous order. In the Active Turn and Reactive Turn, a Trooper automatically stops being part of a Fireteam in the following cases: The Trooper is the Lieutenant and spends the Lieutenant Special Order. Note: This is in my opinion the easiest fix to the Frenzy problem. Models keep their Frenzy discount, but stay Impetuous even in a Fireteam. They don’t gain cover, and they cannot use their Impetuous order in the Active Turn without breaking the Fireteam. Also, this finally allows Lieutenants to use their Lt Order in a Fireteam, removing the illogical situation of NCOs being able to use the Lt Order, but not Lieutenants themselves.
I'm largely agreeing with these, so I'll comment on the ones that I don't agree with. Limited Insertion: with how the game design has progressed and how Steel Phalanx are absolutely dominant in this ITS extra list format, I think it is better to simply design other sectorials to be more able to reach the body count where they no longer play limited insertion and then leave it to the player to figure out whether playing with 10 dudes is a good idea or not. CT for Cybermask: I'd like to keep up the pretence that there is a designed chain of command drawback to Nomads. Realistically Securitate and Custodiers are some of few troopers who'd even use this. Guided removing Targeted: I think this is a good idea, but I honestly think it is needlessly complicated to tie it to saving against it. If they're still fit for fight afterwards they either saved or they have immunity either continuous damage or total. Just make using Guided trait the consuming trait. Spotlight save: No. I think there needs to exist some way of somewhat reliably affecting Asawira, Securitate or Avatars. Making Guided no longer repeatable against particularly TAGs is already a huge for the guided play. Spotlight in itself is not causing issues, except maybe frustration of having a state that's not worth Resetting out of if there's no Guided nearby. Jumping and Climbing: I see an exploit :) As long as you can use to AND from in the same order, you can dupe movement - essentially get your Climbing+ unit next to a wall and then move along that wall without spending movement distance at all. Climbing+ would, by the way, really like to have it better clarified to do the climbing transition measure mid-movement. Personally I'd prefer to to let white metal miniatures hang from perfectly vertical walls be something left to computer games. But when even computer games opt to not do that and still have incredibly fun resulting mechanics, I think that's a hint. Surprise Attack as ARO: Either Reactive or Active turn, not both. Having it be both is just a blanket huge buff to the game's already strongest ability, and won't do one iota to make Holoecho useful, let alone playable. Holomask doesn't get Surprise Attack. Tri-Core: I don't know if this is necessary and I don't know if it is good when the ability is not obligatory.
Well done on the small changes. My only input would be to have Suprise Attack as an ARO option. My reason is because having a trooper in marker state would make sense in keeping it camouflaged so it can fire out of it in ARO. Having a camouflaged trooper in active turn is going to be discovered, cancelling the surprise attack, because it was discovered. Surprise Attack makes more sense as an ARO skill. Often a discover or skill that cancels the camouflaged state makes using SA-3 almost useless in active turn. I like the idea of Targeted being cancelled after using guided. No need for a saving roll because Targeted is good for discover, negating mimitism, negating partial cover bonuses to saves.
Limited Insertion and Command Tokens: What if it was set as a floor, rather than a limitation based on L.I.? There are some very powerful lists that can take 15+ orders in a single combat group (looking at you Kornak). Remove up to two Regular Orders from the adversary's Order Pool, to no fewer than 9 orders of all kinds, for this Turn only. The player using the Command Token will decide from which Combat Group or Groups the Orders will be removed from. Frenzy/Impetuous: I'm still not sure that is enough. Too many troopers do/would happily forfeit link bonuses in favor of an extra order every turn (Achilles, KoS, Libertos, Wolfgang, anything with smoke, etc). The point discount afforded by these skills is just too great. Frenzy seems to cost -7pts, it needs to be increased to -5, or greater for some units.
An additional consideration: Religious Troop: Much like Frenzy and Impetuous, Religion provides a point discount while rarely being a detriment for the units that posses it. Religion is beneficial when combined with traits like dogged, NWI, remote presence, high WIP, high armor, multiple wounds; weapons with suppressive fire, or hard ARO weapons like missiles, panzerfausts, and snipers. I would eliminate the discount associated with Religion, but otherwise leave the rule unchanged.
Securitate? They are BTS 0, I think you mean Interventors? Even witht his change there would still be chain of command issues for Nomads, this would only make it slightly harder to kill a LT, while preventing said LT from hacking in Reactive if they also want to stay safe. Also this is something that Nomads needs. Considering their LTs are quite squishy, it absolutely sucks when an enemy Impersonator kills your LT at the top of turn 1.
Interesting ideas - most of these look p good, but I do have a few comments. - For the Spotlight/GML/Repeater nerfs, I don't mind the idea of a GML shot consuming targeted (it should prob do it just regardless of the outcome), but I think Spotlight requiring a save is not a great idea - it relegates GML to only really being viable against low BTS targets, and considering how often it's used to deal with otherwise hard to deal with HI and TAGs, I don't think that's a great thing. It also further increases how swingy guided can currently be. I almost wanna say that if you make a GML shot consume targeted and allow repeaters to be targeted by AROs, you can probably make Spotlight B2 - something that I think would make the mechanic way less swingy. - With regards to AROing deployable repeaters, I think another change that could be made would be to make them vulnerable to hackers - e.g., maybe you can destroy repeaters by hitting them with an Oblivion or Trinity. Aside from making hard to reach repeaters easier to deal with, it also just kinda makes intuitive sense to me - my killer hacker can fry an enemy hacker through their tech, so why can't they fry a piece of hacking related equipment? - With the Frenzy/Impet FT nerf, I think the main issue with this is that a lot of units will be hitting unwarranted strays - while you will be doling out deserved nerf to units like Riot Grrls or Asawira, you are also gonna hit units like Knight Hospitallers, Highlander Greys, Domaru and Tankos. You'd def need to touch up a lot of these profiles if such a change was made. There's also gonna be some units that aren't really gonna care about the change - for example, Varangians really aren't gonna care about being impet in FTs, nor will Diggers. While it's more involved, I think going through and adjusting the problematic profiles on a case by case basis is a better solution - there's too many complications with this blanket nerf to Frenzy/Impet. Also, to throw my own suggestion in: Total Immunity should not protect against the ammo/states imposed by non-lethal weapons. IIRC fluffwise, aren't glue guns literally used by the authorities on Dawn to try and stop rampaging Dogfaces? Why is a Bearpode's comms equipment immune to being fried by a Blitzen, any more than a Rokot's is? Fluff reasoning aside, it would make certain units and warbands significantly less frustrating to deal with.
I only have critiques for the 4 items quoted above: Given the other changes to targeted, AROs against repeaters, I don't think spotlight or FO needs a BTS roll. But I do think targeted should be removed in the states phase, like stunned. Allowing friendly hackers to attack enemy repeaters that are used within their hacking area, including friendly repeaters (maybe oblivion or trinity only?) would also help make hacking more defensive. The proposed changed to biometric visor seems to be an overcorrection. I would propose: Discover with no penalty, and if successful, remove all impersonation states. If impersonator is within ZoC and LoF, automatically pass Discover check (like MSV3). This makes biometric visors a defensive deterrent. I like the idea that surprise attack should work in ARO only for camo. Currently, there is no incentive for a model to break camouflage in ARO, unless they have an impact template that can ruin catch multiple models. I would keep your proposal of surprise attack for active and reactive turns for holoechos and impersonators. I don't like the idea of using the servant's WIP, they aren't autonomous bots, so it doesn't make sense to me that they (not their controller) is responsible for the roll. I'm biased as a Haqq player though.
I would make Deactivator automatically disable deployables in ZoC. That would make it actually good. It would mean that you can use it to defend against pitchers and other deployable crap, put one next to your LT, can't be isolated on turn 1 anymore or spotlight for GML attacks. Pichers should be 16inch max range, I saw someone suggest that last year and I completely agree. Only suggestion of yours I am not a fan of is Surprise attack working both in ARO and active. IMO it does make more sense to work in ARO as someone suggested, so I can get behind that change. Overall there are many more things that can be done to make game more enjoyable, but some of these would be a really good start. Leave more complicated ones like removing Frenzy from the game ( which I really pushed for as a change going from N3>N4 ) for N5.
Changing the core rules around GML etc is all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact thay certain factions have had and continue to get a disproportionate amount of attention and powerful profiles. Some of their good stuff has to be taken away for the game to be balanced. For example - Steel Phalanx should not have been granted Hidden Deployment, and probably not TR on Atalanta. Nomads should have AVA 1 Morans in vanilla, just as an example.
I think these are beyond the scope of what is effectively a community patch. Individual faction balance can be highly contentious, so if we want any sort of general acceptance for this patch, we probably have to limit it to core rule adjustments.
The reason why you don't go off of orders is that then you start to directly mess with the value of orders. A TacAware order isn't necessarily the same value as a Regular order. Besides, TacAware and NCO are skills there to mitigate order starvation. Frenzy/Impetuous is much much higher than that. Compare, if you will, Asawira to Cranes for a sense of just how large the discount is. It's not a fixed amount like comparable skills like +3 ARM and Mimetism-3 would be Yes, I meant Interventors. Need? Or want? This is something a player need to find a solution to when playing Nomads. Getting the developers to give them a solution that is faultless is one way, I suppose, but is this a good way to solve the challenge? As much as we don't see Nomads consistently winning tournaments, we also do not see them consistently stay away from top positions the way a lot of factions (even vanillas) do. I'd suggest that perhaps making systemic improvements targeted specifically at Nomads is perhaps not the best idea
Don't really need a systematic improvement to target Nomads in this case; people hate being put into Loss of LT by a threat that bypasses their defenses and counterplay no matter what the situation- this is a shared key feels-bad from Hacking, GML and powerful early-game alpha strikes. Some kind of direct countermeasure like "Troopers cannot deploy in Impersonation states within ZoC of an enemy Trooper with Biometric Visor, troopers cannot deploy in Camouflage or Hidden Deployment states within ZoC of an enemy Trooper with Sensor" would be appreciated pretty much universally if well-implemented, and alongside changes to Repeaters could allow many more viable LT strategies to re-enter the game. Doing so might require an actual rebalancing of Nomads though, since their weakness couldn't be easily exploited by any factions at all anymore.
I agree with the sentiment on why, but I do not think the suggested method is correct. I.e. why specifically let Nomads protect themselves (if and only if they opt for the specific LTs with KHD/HD+) when it is a more universal problem with the direction that N4 has taken? Pushing killer troopers into the opponent DZ has become much easier and it needs a solution/restrainment for all the factions that can't have an easy out with camo/cybermask LTs.
Every skill/equipment that allows the user to use a Marker state, has the option for "active state deployment". Every single one except KHD. Maybe it's time to allow it...
