Well here's another wishlist of changes: High Impact stuff: - Fix platform costs to represent the base package value in context of its purpose, there's absolutely no reason why Zuyong, Mobile Brigada or Orcs should be massively more expensive than Riot Grrrls, Tankos or Teutons. This is actually looking good already, both Orc and Shikami appear to have gotten a significant point adjustment in the cards shown by Bostria. These troops need it, so does MI. Achilles or most of the Frenzy/Impetuous HI's don't. Just make the gap between them smaller, especially for the stuff meant to be in a Link. And ofc do something about single wound MI. - Balance Profiles to match the platform. Combi Rifles and SMGs have no place being on expensive multiwound troops as primary weapons. Every time I see the KoJ Hacker it's a bummer. - Give every non LI Specialist option and Link filler Profile at least a single useful thing. Mines, Deployable Repeater, Firewall, DTW, PZF, Sectorial special Equipment/Skill. And don't just mindlessly allow these to bleed into Vanilla 95% of the time. There should be 2+ Special Sectorial only Profiles for every single Link. - Fix Profile costs, some Profiles are just better than the sum of their parts, some aren't. Equipment should scale at least a little bit with other stacking MODs already present. Mimetism + MSV1 + High BS + Big Scary Gun is better than just adding all points together and calling it good. Add another couple points to offset in particular minmaxed double and triple stacking options. Spare the ones that pair it with a weak gun like a Rifle class weapon or a somewhat expensive utility kit. Should result on basic gunners without much frills to have a reason to exist next to their kitted out cousins. - Fix Weapon costs, there's already SWC doing the exact same thing. Swiss Guards and Keisotsu should not be paying the same 8 points for a HMG. Similar to above, maybe Securatate should pay less for a Feuerbach relative to a Karhu or Uhlan. - Fix "full counter" rules. You should not lose your complete investment into something just because the other guy has the counter option. Counters should offset the advantage they provide partially in a meaningful way or have a downside to them like the Mimetism vs MSV vs White Noise trifecta. Maybe even those should just reduce the MOD to a -1 instead of fully negating. NBW is a bad Skill and should not both negate negative effects on yourself and positive Effects on the opponent. Either it reduces the MODs or negates negative effects, should not just flat out say nope to the enitre purpose of an Oniwaban. Total Immunity is a bad rule and should not make heavy TAGs at paying for multiple times the cost in defensive stats look squishy in comparison. - Slot limits should not be one fits all. There either needs to be a custom limit for every Sectorial/Vanilla Faction or there need to be at least 2 (better 3, something like 15,16,17 would be easy and simple) categories stuff falls in. Aleph and Hassassins do not operate under the same rules and it's ridiculous that one of them can cheat with Proxies while the other can't utilize Dailamis and Muttawias properly. Reinforcement should factor in here somehow if they turn into a standart option that's allowed by default. - Lethality needs to go down. Late N3' TAG update and N4 updates added AP and +1 DAM like candy and then doubled down on expected damage increasing with the new Crits. Making E/M CCWs roll to brick twice AND better DA CCWs, generally higher DAM values in CC and ubiquitous DAM 15+ AP options makes multiwound models' investment in defensive stats less effective than they're paying for. Yes there was a point adjustment to offset that, but that missed another issue and that's the ARO game. Add in the 15 slot limit and matches snowball much faster and much more often in N3 than they did in N4. Nerfing Flash Pulses didn't help and weakened Links relying on that. Impure Links also lost a couple points BS which further added to the problem a little bit. N5 needs to bring back the ability to defend yourself and play the game - for all armies, not just the ones who still have working high power ARO options or asymetric time sinks that bypass the issues the 15 slot limit introduced to the order economy as a whole. Be that by having the ability to field more warm bodies like Warcors, Daylami or Galwegians or by simly surviving a bit better with ARM4 in Cover. One potential measure to add to the mix could be a limit to Regular Orders spent per unit. So you can't go on a 12 Order rampage with Avatar or Achilles and have to think about using the rest of your list a bit more. This would also favor options to compete with the 10+5 Combat Group split we see most of the time. Other more specific stuff: - just make more MULTI weapon vatiants already. How is there still no MULTI Spitfire and we have to look at abominations like the Gecko MULTI MMR, which clearly just is supposed to be a MULTI Spitfire instead. - Get rid of deployment rolls. Just make more FD Levels up to 24". It's difficult to price things like Shinobu or Impersonators correctly if they have 60-80% chances to be better than what you paid and 40-20% to me a mook starting in your DZ without a Marker State. This is a tactical strategy game, point costs should matter before you factor in dice rolls. - Smoke is still way too broken. Just reign it in a little bit. Some ideas, make it a technical weapon so it's always B1 or add Limited uses. Limited uses is more bookkeeping although it would be the mechanically better option in my book, so I'd argue for the B1 limitation to avoid keeping track of 10 extra markers on the board for SP players. Guided and CC was already addressed to get changes so hopefully that will just work out. Cheers.
Well in every game I play losing commander/general is minor penalty. In Infinity it is a huge penalty, and Infinity is one of the games where killing a general is actually relatively easy.
Vanilla should be the same as a sectorial if it exists. It needs to have meaningfully lower AVA of of units, especially specialist troops. In fact, they should not have access to some of them at all. It should be a choice, not just better in most cases. They should reduce the mercenary options significantly as well for Vanilla and sectorials and really focus in on putting them only where they belong. There are a TON of extra profiles floating around that see almost no play. Just like they did with the Vostok profiles they should prune them away. In a lot of cases it's a false choice, ivory tower game design, trim it away and make the game more accessible. We don't need 3 different nearly identical line troop options, or 14 ORC profiles. It's dumb. That goes for all factions.
I would be fine with more Streamlining in Vanilla Factions, with more Sectorial Only models and Profiles, and lower AVAs.
I hate the Frenzy cheat. It feels like a very unfair rule. Units that have a disadvantage but can ignore it most of the time is just wrong. They just shouldn't be in link teams then. It sucks when I play some YJ against Bakunin. Riot Grrls are already very good troops but then also cheaper on top of it. Then able to be in a Fireteam with cheap ass Moderator paramedics bring them back. Or worse, Asawira haris with a doctor and a hacker that goes around killing everything in sight.
I’m OK with cleaning up generic, removing some mercenaries from the generic factions and making some existing profiles to sectorial only. However, I’d take Nokk and Locust rather than Locust(FD8") and Locust(Infiltration), especially when they come with different skills, weapons, and equipments. Both “every sectorial have their own fusilier and orc” and “every sectorial have the same fusilier and orc” are lame design and I don’t think current status of Infinity need to be fixed. I don’t like Frenzy or impetuous discount to linkable troops a lot, but it is something when those troops can play some roles in generic (like Teutons in generic PanO). For sectorial-only linkable troops, I want CB to just bravely break their point formula and discount whatever they want. Of course there will be some situations that impetuous cenobite or frenzied riot grrl win the game with their impetuous order, but I like more “we just want them cheap so they are cheap” than “we put this and that negligible penalties to make them cheap”.
I would prefer that it vanishes in the state phase. At least take the -3 for the reset away. Different tast here - I like them both (but I would like to see Locust go full marker state ... or HD). I also like: Different flavors of Orcs (but clean up their profile list), Winter-Zhanshi SWC would be nice ... Regarding Vanilla: I would not be too sad if they dare to remove it. But what they have to do is reducing available profiles in Vanilla and to make sure that a mercenary is not outright better for a specif job then your own guys. Frenzy troops in fireteams: It looks like they will take half a year or so again, until they update the FT rules. If they come why not have Impetious FT? 2-5 troopers generate ONE imp-order. They can use it or forgo it. If you want all imp. orders just start without FT. Make them actual pay for their discount!
I've said it years ago: this is easily fixed. Under N4 rules, what Frenzy does is make you Impetous once you cause a Wound. Same kind of Impetous as a model that was Impetous from the start. Now, what being Impetous does? It does 2 things: 1. gives you an Impetous Order 2. prohibits you from using Partial Cover. And there's no cheat up to that point. The only thing one could possibly conisder a "cheat" is interaction between Fireteams and Impetous (whether Frenzy or not): models in Fireteams don't act as Impetous. Once you make them do - i.e. stop being able to use Cover and get the Impetous Order - there's no difference anymore. Note that if you use an Impetous Order on a Fireteam member, they drop out of the Fireteam. Since under N4 you can simply discard the Impetous Order (rather than spend a Regular Order to cancel it as it was back in N3), this is not that big of a hindrance, whether in a Fireteam or not. Of course, we are yet to see how N5 handles this issue.
What you suggest has been extensively tried since the N2 to N3 transition, for one reason or another it was not deemed a satisfactory solution, and some of the reasons still remained in N4, we will see in N5.
Veteran is not just for retaining your order after LT kill, but also why make a crucial list design element redundant, its a risk reward element like everything else in Infinity.
Add imm: Isolation and that takes care of the second important part of Veteran and also doing it how I proposed would solve the problem of one of the last skills that still have a nesting problem. Retreat is another crap mechanic that people asking for years now to be removed. So here is to hoping that one would be a goner as well.
Eliminating retreat will be a reward for turn one alpha strikes. You want to eliminate LoL, want to eliminate veteran, want to eliminate retreat. Man, you dont want to play Infinity
Another thing: Terrain skills should give the Trooper cover whenever it is in that terrain type (and remove movement penalties as currently). Giving extra movement in difficult terrain is ok game mechanic wise but weird and immersion breaking. Always having cover in the terrain would give the trooper more freedom of movement without that problem too, as well as being more thematic. Also - if we are going to have circular zones of terrain put down by players to force more terrain (as we have in many ITS Seasons) the player who chooses deployment should get to choose the type of terrain so that a) the type of terrain is more often relevant and varied b) Represents a 'home ground' of the defender and c) generate more interesting choices in defending alpha strikes, which can be quite strong in N4
One thing cancels another. Plus bunch of missions don't have retreat already. I play Infinity since 2014, and I play it more than 95% of the people on this forum. I also play multiple other systems and I can tell what mechanic would work great in Infinity if implemented. If you don't like changes keep playing N2, why bother with new editions at all.
Because i like infinity as it is and i dont try to change itto a different game. And N4 was consensually a crap. The only good thing was de-nesting rules. The last time i was really happy playing was in N3, pre Tunguska/Varuna, truly balanced game there
