+1DAM wouldn't really do anything to help the Yan Huo be better at its job. That HRMC has all the killing power it needs already.
Unit: Lobos Changes: They're hard to fix under the rules of this thread, but here's what I'd do: Give NCO to all profiles. Remove CC Attack (+3) in exchange. Remove Flash Pulse (+1 Burst) from all profiles and give all of them ADHL (+1Burst) instead. Remove the plain Combi Rifle Loadout Remove Light Flamethrowers from all profiles and give them Heavy Riotstoppers instead. That would at least give them a dedicated roll as riot police, with tools that are truly unique to the unit.
In think this should be moved to the "rules suggestions" subforum, but I want to hear your opinion first.
I guess to go with a more commonly forgotten unit, Shujae are one of a few 'infiltrator without a marker state' units we have in the game (others include Nokken and Locusts in PanO and the merc Samsa). Outside of Samsa, I think these units are nearly universally not worth it given how dense the midfield is in mines, templates and aggressive trading units. Still, I think there are a few things you could to do to Shujae to make em legitimately interesting. The first would be to give them Climbing Plus - this allows them to deploy in the midfield in somewhat out of the way positions where they are at a lesser risk of immediately eating shit against a Taigha. The second one would be to give them minelayer, at least for the profile that has E/M Mines - at least then they'd have a tool to try and protect themselves somewhat when they deploy in the midfield.
Which makes me think that Shujae do not have their place, and maybe are unnecessary. Shujae and Nadhir are way too similar. If it was up to me, I'd optimize the situation by deleting one of them. Preferably Shujae.
The problem with this thread is that there are units in this game that does not need a consolidation as proposed with this thread rules. But they do indeed need either new/alternate equiptment or skills, or a point cost reduction. Starmada's Nyokas for example wouldn't get the push they need to fulfill their role assigned by the lore of "They are Starmada’s elusive and deadly snakes, who will welcome and survive any mission assigned to them, such as supporting the Bronzes in their mutiny suppression operations." Currently a Bronze is better supported in a Haris by members of the security team if you want to go cheap, or by Betatroopers or Knight of Santiago if you want to go premium, thanks to the specialists profiles that you can find in either the security team or the betatrooper team. If we follow the rules of this thread what you could do as much is to unify the MultiRifle FO profile with the HRL profile, obtaining a HRL FO profile... but even then the role of supporting Bronzes in their mutiny suppression operations is... lacking for a better word. If instead we delete both FO profiles, the parachutist and non-parachutist, and give them these two profiles: Nyoka (Engineer) MULTI Rifle, Chain Colt, Gizmokit, MadTraps Nyoka - MULTI Rifle, Chain Colt, TINBOT:Stealth Suddenly they now have a role supporting the Bronzes as their natural companions without changing their natural DZ- bounded Haris role. The Bronzes now have an interesting alternative of being supported either by the expensive TINBOT:Firewall -3 of the Betatroopers or the Knight of Santiago KHD, or gaining stealth thanks to a sensible more cheaper Nyoka who shares both their MOV and Climbing Plus. And obtaining stealh is kind of significant for an expensive HI unit such as the Bronze. And they also gain an alternative of their Medic Betatrooper companion or their cheap Paramedic Kappa companion in the form of an Engineer Nyoka. Which may be much more interesting for a Total Inmunity HI unit when faced against Comms Attacks. And instead of having assigned a classic Deactivator + D:Charges for demolition role, have swapped both of them for MadTraps. Which suits much better a role of non-lethal mutiny operations. In fact think about this kind of Pure Haris: Nyoka (Engineer) Nyoka - TINBOT:Stealh Bronze - HMG Or if you want to go up to eleven this Pure Core: Nyoka HRL Nyoka (Engineer) Nyoka - TINBOT: Stealh Bronze - HMG Bronze - Paramedic
It's unfortunate but you are probably right. Maybe there's a work around where you can kit Shujae for more of an active turn role, but frankly I'd rather see Shujae either get axed or get entirely reworked to more fit their lore. One thing I've always found weird is that Shujae are in the lore, experts from the cube banks of other nations with specific skill sets handpicked by the Old Man for resurrection in service of the Hassassin Society and the Search for Knowledge. You'd imagine this would make for a rather eclectic unit composition, with everything from former Karhu, Domaru, Psi-Cops, etc., and maybe even a few former members of the Steel Phalanx, all bringing their own unique talents. In sum, a Shujae could be a martial arts expert, a legendary hacker, a superlative sniper, an unconventional tactician - ghosts revived from limbo, given another chance by the Old Man of the Mountain. But on the table, this pretty interesting lore is represented by... a rather middling gunfighter and specialist that doesn't really want to use it's forward deployment thanks to it's lack of a marker state and fragility, but has to because of it's limitation to rifle range bands. If I had my way, I'd rework Shujae entirely into some kinda MI/LI with some very diverse profiles, and maybe metachem and/or booty? Idk how good it would be, but I think it'd be at least more interesting and more fitting to their lore.
Same problem with, say, Jayth - unit that's a solution in search of problem. I thought about posting here, but my idea how to fix them goes way beyond the proposed thread rules. All in all, quite a few units suffer from game's oversaturation with choices. There's too many units, and many of them could be safely axed or at least combined together.
I agree to an extent, but I think it's more an issue of unit design than oversaturation. We do have a lot of units and profiles that overlap, but I feel there's still a lot of design space left in Infinity - just look at weirder units like the Stigmata and the Sunduqbut that have been released somewhat recently. We've also had some boring and redundant units as well like Zellenkriegers, but the point I'm making is if CB is willing to, you could def rework a lot of units to fit into as of yet unexplored design spaces. If CB isn't willing to do that though, it's prob better just to axe stuff.
I've been feeling that they have been coming out with too many new things rather than working on what they have. It shouldn't have taken 15 years to come out with a hacker Guilang for example. White Banner came out years ago and they just came out with it! There's still many Steel Phalanx that have yet to come out. Yes we can proxy, but some don't want to proxy all of the time. I want them to not even have the profiles if they have no intentions of coming out with a figure.
That's the point: I see too much resources being used for releasing EXCITING NEW STUFF, and not enough for making sure that what's already released is both fun to use and available as a model. To not be all doom and gloom, I just thought of an example which mostly fits the original premise of this thread. It requires me to post two units, though: Parvati: - Reducing Doctor (2W) to Doctor - Reducing Engineer (+3) to Engineer - Reducing WIP to 14 - Increasing BS to 13 Sophotect: - Upgrading Doctor to Doctor (2W) - Upgrading Engineer to Engineer (+3) - Increasing MOV to 6-6 - Increasing BTS to 6 Points will have to be recalculated after that, but whatever. This would leave Parvati as combat-capable jack-of-all-trades, while making Sophotect a superior specialised Doc/Engi. This is an example of the problem: spotlight on new releases (and far too many Aristeia crossovers), power creep, old units left untouched for years. I don't want EXCITING NEW STUFF all the time, I want the stuff already here to be equally balanced and fun.
I think 6-4 is already very good. Parvati is 2" slower in the 2nd move. Otherwise this "fix" is on point. Also a commercial problem. Give the new stuff super rules to make it sell like hot cakes. It would be very kind if they do at least one update on a old mini for every new one in addition.
This is another interesting tangent, are there any other profiles that are redundant (in that they have a rule that does need to exist) due to recent updates to the game? I don't have strong feelings either way, but my goal with this thread was not really to suggest changes to the rules. Rather, I wanted to bring some attention and discussion around the topic of profile consolidation, via an interesting exercise. While there are quite a few responses that veer completely into wishlisting, that is the opposite of my intended goal, as I feel profile and unit creep has undermined what I felt was a very crisp game back in 2e/3e. If the Shujae was available in a different Haqq sectorial, I think they would by a very interesting option, but HB is the most highly tuned of all of the Haqq sectorials (in my opinion at least), so there is no reason to take 2nd string picks. As someone who dabbles in Dashat from time to time, I always want to make the Hulang work because it feels like a cool concept, but my opponent always murders the Hulang on turn one, usually before the Hulang has done anything valuable. Tying back to the thread topic, why do FTO profiles exist in factions that dont allow fireteam formation with that unit? Would be nice to make them exclusive to their fireteam sectorials only. I made a similar point in another thread, namely vanilla factions have receive too many units over the past decade (thanks to the proliferation of mercenaries and sectorial expansion) that overlap each other substantially. Part of this is due to CBs approach to marketing new game systems (Aristea, Tag raid, etc.) but I think a portion of the blame should also be placed on the players demanding that their sectorial receive the same tools that another sectorial has. This has created both a sense of sameness between certain factions and has made certain unit profiles clearly superior to others within the same faction. Consolidation of profiles and limiting certain profiles to sectorials only would go a long way to re-distinguishing the unique balance of each army. I also really like the concept of the new Sunduqbut, but CB should think about allowing neurocinetics to use all active turn bonuses (including surprise attack) and not just BS(mods). Having profiles that bend the core rules is interesting, but they should remain unique, expensive, and rare to avoid completely warping the game.
In RTF, Shujae would be competing against Nahab INfiltration variants (Touareg are too much of a different beast IMO, with HD and general flimsiness). In QK, that's an another kettle of fish - I think the only unit they'd be kinda cometing with are the al'Hawwa, and they differ from each other enough to not step on each other's toes... But alas, that's just theoretizing.
