We do have the faction breakdown for IP and it shows a lot of SP, but keep being a joke with your amazing excuses that make no sense
I believe the quote from the SP player who won Kraken and lost in the final match was "He used his GML to kill my powerful named characters and I couldn't come back from that."
Infinity, where it's always your turn (except in any kind of competitive environment, then it's not because Eclipse/repeaters/guided))
The frustrating thing is there's a segment of the community that celebrates noninteractive play, and thinks it should be crazy powerful compared to interactive play. I don't get it. If I wanted to go play a noninteractive board game there's plenty of Euros out there.
The IP final was between Khavrion (SP) and Weran (Nomads). Khavrion is a regular participant in many TTS events and American in-person tournaments, and has been running SP for a while now. In the last major IGL event his SP were defeated by Norfolkot's bakunin via a GML play. He also has a youtube channel with a batrep covering the finals. I haven't watched it, but I'm sure you'll get the details of what occurred in terms of guided fire if you watch. (I just read the comments)
So @psychoticstorm to answer your question from a while ago that I'm too lazy to find and get the quote from. Yes GML was the reason they won Interplanetario, the Largest in person tournament in the world.
You really should watch it. It was a good breakdown of play. Also at 32:00, he gives his opinion about the two main topics: Is Steel Phalanx OP? He believes no, it was the lineup of missions and the skill of players contributed to them doing well. He does believe however the ways that Steel Phalanx are good can not be fun for the opponent (non interactive). Is guided OP? Yes, he does not see any good counter play and dislikes how one sided it can be and the limits for mitigation. Weran also shows up in the comments to talk about his list and how it has a lot of different tools to cover issues. GML is just one option he can use, but is not the whole point of his list. @RobertShepherd video analysis of Weran's list also noted this as well. I wonder what would happen if guided just lost the +6 to hit. It would then be more in line with speculative fire: people could use it, but it would not be the go-to solution.
I have already watched this video the moment it was released and watched it again over five times and have read the ongoing discussion in the comments particularly the discussion about if the GML is what made the list that won or not and if it would win without it or not. As per Kharvion Guided is not an issue as it is a valuable tool for armies to overcome things they cannot, for example avatars or armies based on mimetism -6 and non interactive play like Eclipse, the issue is for him the pitchers, though one thing I do not understand is why would a hellcat not be considered roughly the same as it can produce the same results and you get the same ARO you would get from the pitcher. Likewise he thinks Steel Phalanx is not an overpowered army list, but an army list really well suited for the Interplanetario line up, that can take advantage of non interactive gameplay with eclipse and smoke. I would say @RobertShepherd analysis video that is older than this is quite good highlighting why the list was good and why it is not "a GML" list.
Good question, I am not sure, I think it would make the face to face roll be more or less been roughly equal between the remote and the target assuming something tough been targeted.
Assuming everyone is outside LoF, it's not the same because a camo marker or AD trooper ( unless they have S-tier eyeballing) are going to trigger an ARO when they deploy their repeater because they can only place it in base contact and therefore have to be close to the target trooper when they do it, triggering a ZoC ARO. You can ARO with dodge and potentially get out of repeater range and it's way harder to get a deployable repeater somewhere that affects multiple targets that way. By contrast, a trooper with a pitcher or fastpanda is activating way outside your ZoC, so you get no chance for any ARO and on top of that they can more easily drop it into a space where the repeater is affecting multiple troopers while denying you the ability to "make space" via dodge. One idea could be if instead of the ZoC of a repeater counting as the hacking area, it was only the size of a smoke template centered on the repeater?
edit.: damn, @Tom McTrouble ninjaed my hard here... I basicly wanted to toot the same horn... plz don´t compare a 100% non-interactive set-up with AD of ANY kind. AD has negativ side effects: - a regular order missing if you don´t deploy the AD first round - You´r opponent can maybe figure out, that in your 14 units set up with roughly 25 points missing and no HD in the army, there could come some AD and deploy appropriate. - AD is based on a single roll to even beginn with, and single rolls are always shit. Fast panda dont need that. Pitchers can roll at least 2 times, most of the time on higher numbers - depending on the assumption your opponent did ignore a unit and points missing in your army he has not a single unit facing his own DZ and all important units are easily be seen from behind and 9 inches away, no units has Sixth sense or 360visor.... -even if all that is the case, the moment you shoot everyone in ZoC to your Target is allowed to turn for free (Alert) or in ZoC to you can react. Which should end your time in no-LoF area. -most AD units dont have DMG14 EXP ammo -most of the time you dont ignore mimetism and cover -most AD units dont shoots at 18s and give negative mods to dodges -after your first target is dead, you have to move and have to hope AGAIN that all the requirements above are still intact. -if anything goes wrong, you lose a unit, its VP and it´s order. Sorry, but this comparison limps on both legs. That could be a thing that, in my opinion, would be worth discussing even without GML beeing the thing it is, because a cricle with a 17 inch diameter is a huge area and with 3 of them you can basicly cover the whole midefield with ease. But I stay with my everlasting sermon to remove the combination Hacker-Spotlight + Guided entirely and make forward observer to the units they always should have been: let them be the only ones applying a state the guided weapons can work with. It solves so many problems, starting with getting in LoF. Let spotlight be the poor mans hacking vs everything unhackable. The targeted state by itself is not that huge of a problem. Non-interactive gaming is. Making forward Observers a vehicle to shoot guided missles at your enemies gives you at least once the opportunity to F2F and in case of success the option to get rid of the F/O unit and to shut the GML game down till another F/O comes by, instead of "ok, I try spotlight again". Plus: Forward observers would then have purpose again instead of beeing the cheapest option to press a button.
The discussion was specifically for a Hellcat hacker doing the pitchers work, you can land relatively safely outside of ZoC and move into ZoC and hack roughly equating a pitcher landing successfully and then spending an order to move and hack, on many occasions this can be achieved by just walking from the table edge instead of rolling to land, roughly the same is achievable with AD troops with deployable repeaters and infiltrating (preferably camouflaged) troops having a repeater. I do not think removing spotlight will do any good, hackers are already limited in functionality and removing that would severely limit their usability in game.
Why can't a unit with 1" range do the job of a unit with 24" range? Is that the question? The Hellcat needs to spend an order to land, and then an order to get within 1" of where the repeater needs to be. Certainty is 15 in 20 (usually) Heckler, if deployed well, only needs to spend an order to get within 9" of where the repeater needs to be. Certainty is 20 in 20 Tsyklon needs to be able to see the spot where the repeater needs to be. Certainty is 15 in 20 up to 16" and 12 in 20 up to 24" The Hellcat needs to spend a lot of orders to get to the second spot where the second repeater needs to be. Heckler needs to spend a few orders reloading and then a few orders to get within range to place the second repeater. Tsyklon needs to be able to see the spot where the second repeater needs to be. In a sectorial, the Hellcat does not gain anything to improve their performance. In a sectorial, the Heckler does not gain anything to improve their performance other than higher AVA. In a sectorial, the Tsyklon becomes more reliable and can place more repeaters per order which in turn makes it harder for the opponent to clear the repeaters. So the answer to your question is that Pitcher is significantly less order intensive; comparably reliable; and significantly more repeatable. The Hellcat is not bad for the purpose of targeting a very specific unit, but they do not operate in the same negative play experience space at all. It's all about the range. Range reduces the number of orders required, it increases the repeatability of the action, and it makes reloading from Baggage less of a hassle.
It is interesting you choose Tsyklon and not the usual pitcher units most people choose, local meta conflicts I suppose? I get what you say for repeated usage of pitchers I was thinking more of the single use as most pitchers seem to be used in most reports I see.
mmmh maybe, but my argumentation stands the same: A hellcat behind enemy lines is a way more fragile platform than a repeater that you cannot react to.Plus the Kittie is not working from behind the safety of the repeaters firewall, cann be countered by good enemy placement and EVO-hackers, and so on. plus 29 / 0,5 points for a unit that is basicly not worth half her points if it fails the single roll AD landing. In this scenario the deployable repeater Hellcat is the even safer option. In CJC the Tsyklon is the best option to bring repeaters where u want them. Easily linkable into harris, X-visor, BS 12, plus it is an solid weapon plattform either with spitfire or Feuerbach. Defenetly my go-to option in CJC. Vanilla is another story. I never mentioned removing spotlight. Target state has its uses, +3 MOD on every BS and Hacking attack is not to underrestimate, plus -3 MOD for all your resets.
Do not make this a strawman. Tsyklon is the pitcher user most people choose. Bit and Kiss are the pitcher user most people choose. Ker-Nau is the pitcher user most people choose. Dartok is the pitcher user most people choose. Druze are the pitcher user most people choose. Cyberghost is not the pitcher user most people choose, for this purpose and in the context of when the system breaks, because their efficiency is too low. There will be a pattern, if you care to see it. The more reliable you make the Pitcher, the stronger Spotlight-Guided becomes. (As a small note; I do not think Dokkaebi in Yu Jing reinforcements are on this axis because they arrive too late, but they might be on the axis if they are released into a Korean-dominated sectorial)
The one big takeaway I got Khav's discussion of the meta and GML in his batrep is that the primary issue with guided is that a lot of the current repeater delivery methods have very little active counter play, and that once the repeater lands, you don't really have any options aside from hoping you roll well. With regards to SP, I agree with Khav's argument that SP is very weak to GML which is a limiting factor, but if GML was to be nerfed, it would be pretty impossible to effectively play against. I don't think GML losing it's +6 to hit or nerfing Spotlight or even nerfing the Pitcher's rangebands are changes that will actually address the core of the issue, which is that as the reactive player you have no effective counter play once a repeater in range of your units hits the table. I think the ideal change would be to make a repeater 'activate' when it's used extend a hacker's hacking area, and also make repeaters hackable entities that can be disabled by a friendly hacker. Hell, maybe those rules should also be carried on over to units that carry standard, non-deployable repeaters like Morans.
They were fine without it in N3, but I *think* it was added to include Hackers in Code1... Nevertheless, if the Marked state were consumed after the Guided attack were resolved, this would a) limit Guided impact on specific units and b) give MORE reasons to have several Hackers in the list, since the point of the efficiency is to have SEVERAL enemy units cross a zone inside a Repeater so all of your hackers can attempt to Spotlight. As it is, several hackers will try to mark a specific troop to maximize chances of success, but the other way gives an incentive to attempt to mark 2+ troops whenever possible, in order to be able to make more than a single attack against a group. This also means Lt-blowing is less certain since you have one, instead of five, chances to remove it with a Guided attack. Most people chose pitchers because a) closer to target, b) Hacker with pitcher (tighter package, and a nomad specialty), c) Pure fireteam Core, and d) Vostok taking the "remote in the Haris" spot. Please do note that Initiates are 21pts with camo (1use), infiltration, minelayer and Deployable Repeater. They can risk like the AD trooper and try to deploy near the enemy DZ, but if not they have to do so in the midfield... and in their turn, reasonably advance safely 20cm (8 inches), then 0-10 (4 inches) and plant a repeater... so with 2 orders they can do the same as a heckler regarding where to place the farthest repeater (even better since they start much closer to target, so they can move laterally even), but they also left one repeater in the midfield... This would mean that SP needs to be reviewed, with special care to the new, post-blackwind changes, since before that it was much more accepted as OK. I mean, you can't justify a broken mechanic as the sole way to face a specific faction... I think they already are, thought? Or at least were in N3. Granted, it's much more efficient to shot them than to try to hack them to impose an ISO state (since unless you deploy your own repeater, or use one of your Repeater units that somehow has Stealth on it, you will be in range to be hacked by all enemy hackers).
@Mahtamori I find the idea you even think I would make this a strawman argument disappointing, to say the least. Anyway as I observe the various battle reports for ITS 14 I see for Nomads, not sure why you mention other faction pitcher users, Jazz and π-well are the most common units with pitchers, as was also the case with Interplanetario list, I just found Tsyclons as a pitcher platform (and other stand alone pitcher users) falling out of favor on the various meta for hacker + pitcher unit combos and seen one discuss them all of a sudden interests me. @tacos these and Guided burning targeted state are the most popular sugestions. @xagroth hackers had more things to do in N3 but were severely limited when a non hackable target or army was present.
