September>December 2024: Nuclear winter has struck, leaving room for the N5

You're mistaking me for some other members in the forum, I'm hardly going to take a war game discussion personally.

And yeah, I'm emphasizing on an issue that is not significant atm (haven't seen sectorials yet), because I see an overcorrection that I believe may turn systemic. We went from having a list of characters fit for a decent sized wedding all the way to half the native characters.


Looking at player data is okay, but should not be the sole criterion. Let's take, for example vanilla nomads. Since you have ava 2 morans in there, a lot of other units will not get picked, due to the cost effectiveness of morans. If you remove units based on player data, then wonderful, people will still play morans. But if you reduce the availability or the cost effectiveness of morans, a lot of other units such as tricky premium skirmishers will see the table. And the army will be better balanced.

Furthermore, and for all armies, a lot of hard ARO was not viable due to fireteam or TAG active turn strength and other asymmetrical methods of removal. Now that we saw nerfs on fire teams and some other changes, hard ARO will increase in value but unused ARO units got culled.

It is rather important to know why the units no one plays are units no one plays and this is not captured by statistics.

 

100% agree with you here, and I think this mistake can be seen in the way Achilles was moved out of Steel Phalanx. My Opinion and Speculation: People were not playing Achilles in Steel Phalanx because he could only be taken as a solo piece, and he was way better supported in that role by vanilla. He gained nothing from being in Steel Phalanx over that vanilla Achilles (and I do recall all SP where he could DUO with Patroclus, but you would wild card in Acmon for the TA and non hackable ENGI to counter hacking). I think maybe Steel Phalanx players liked him as a character and would have been happy to have a reason to run him in Steel Phalanx. Especially since he is basically the coolest character in Aleph and the face of the faction. I think the link options they are giving him in Combined Army are exactly the kind of thing Steel Phalanx players would be looking for. Looking at the other units that went to CA with him, I don't think Teucer Drakios or Patroclus were ever popular in N4, or in N3 in the case of Patroclus, so while I don't have any inside knowledge, but seems likely they were moved for a perceived lack of popularity in Steel Phalanx compared to the incredible Myrmidon link and characters.

The counter to this is that CB does like their hero's that fall to the dark side in lore, and Pandora was incredibly take-able in N4, but still went with Achilles.

 

Jeez it’s usually dead here on the weekend and now it looks like it exploded!

I don’t mind the fewer characters in vO12 (I like the small v!) but I’ve been focusing on Starmada for the most part since I started them.

I actually consider myself lucky with N5. I completely expected ISS, Ikari and Dashsat to be axed. I of course haven’t seen what’s in them, but I expect them to be close to what they are already. But I’m totally surprised they are still there.

I think some of the sectorals are only gone for a while. They will come again as unsupported

 

My main ask in O-12 would be the fix Saladin in Starmada. I think they wanted him to not outshine Hector in Starmada, but only having Strategos L1 versus the L2 in Haqqislam is a FeelsBad moment. Let him be his full genius.

 

I never compared him to the Haqq profile. I had no idea he was different! I agree. If they want him to be different, there’s other ways to do it. The Stratego seems iconic for him. Other things not so much.

 

Saladin was 100% a useless piece in O-12, a true example of "just here for the lore". Everything he did, someone else did it better in O-12: Cho, Alpha, Hector, Raveneye...

 

You’re rough

Alpha unit is a cheaper Lt pick, but he just stays in the back doing nothing because he’s ultra squishy. Hector is obviously 10 times better, as he’s a better Lt, excellent shooter and a CC monster, but you pay the price for it.

But I wouldn’t say Saladin is 100% useless. A unhackable repeater, 2W MI with 3 ARM, Lieutenant with Strategos, is actually quite good.

He can go up the midfield and is frankly a pain to get rid of.

 

My issue with saladin in haqq, is that he was supposed to be in QK. Pic from human sphere book.

Cheers.

 

Not the first and not the last time they go against their own background. I think since that time too, QK has become more of a piratical fleet Saladin would have no part of.

 

I believe the polite term is 'contracted'.

 

Or "shareholder value focused"?

 

Just as long as we stop insisting we're the good guys.

 

I can settle for "we're okay-ish guys, when the circumstances permit us to" ;)

 

Hey, my Haqqislam forces are the good guys! They just sometimes do horrific acts for the greater good...

 

My Ikari though is just pure scum and they don’t say otherwise.

 

Same with my Druze Bayram Securities. They are bad beople - and they can be worse.