@kanluwen I'm also very interested! I really love the Infinity universe and Gutier's work. I've read almost all of CB books + a large number of RPG books. I've read everything USAriadna before starting this army. USAriadna Marine Corps is a reality that is for sure.
The mention of unmanned combat drones was in short story about Mavericks, I think somewhere in Human Sphere N3.
I have been playing some USAriadna lately and would agree their update with N5 seems lacking. For example, they are the only sectorial without access to vystrel and the remote for doc and engeneer. I can't think of a reason lore or game wise not to add them to the USAriadna rooster and it would be a nice adition, helping in defending, wich is the hardest part for Ariadna. I disagree that a lot of profils of the army need update. For exemple, Marauder are already very optimised profils with MSV 1 and +1 burst on the HRL and Sniper and dogged. If anything they could get shock immunity since they have almost the same armor as grunt and Minutemen. It's strange to see minutemen, which are heavy infantry be less resilient than medium but they are on the same spot as Moblot so doesn't bother me. And eventually I would disagree that Ariadna doesn't have more orders to compensate. In this sectorial you always have the Unknown ranger for tac awarness and probably one NCO with Van Zant and Minutemen, so effectively 17 orders. You also have a lot of dogged models, wich is not as good as 2W off course but still better than 1W. Adding the Vystrel and the doctor remote for more staying power in defense would be nice and fair to keep them in line with the rest of the army. I wouldn't go much further than that in the update of the army.
from actually having a clue about how the designers operate? Marines are, stereotypically, portrayed as "dumb brutes". It's why the common moniker used is "Jarhead", not "Devil Dog"(one that Marines tend to refer to themselves with, not other services). Hence why they added a segregated marine corps made up of a second class citizenry. Same thing has happened with the whole "Tech-Bee Coolie" nonsense that they had to walk back.
Maybe I'm in the unfortunate peak of the Dunning Kruger curve for this, knowing nothing about the American military, but it seems obvious to me that the name devil dog was chosen as a straightforward pun because these particular soldiers happen to be, you know, dogs. Rather than being a descriptive name comparing their in-universe rank to that of real world 20th century soldiers.
Oh for the love of God man really? You really think they went further than: Carlo#1 what do we call the Dog-warrior unit for USARF? Carlos #2 I know! the Marines are called Devil Dogs, so let's do that! Carlos#3 And we'll make them a Marine unit too while we're at it!" *High fives all around.* CB has had plenty of misses (Stars and Bars on Desperados gear for example) but don't go digging for more reasons to be offended.
I'm not the one who likes to wax poetic during interviews about my knowledge about historical references or how much thought gets put into these units. -Stars and Bars on Desperados gear. -Saying that the "military contingent" was primarily African-American/Latin-American while NASA was whites and Asian-Americans. And since you chose to ignore it, using a slur as part of a name for a unit. Coolie was originally part of the moniker for the Techbee. There's a bunch of extremely questionable references to Russian nationalism that has been used for unit imagery/patches as well but apparently we're supposed to pretend that doesn't exist.
If you go that way everything is offensive to someone. Japan imperial flag, using the Word Allah on a dice, confederat flag, even the bee on the Merovingian flag (Napoleon reference) may be offensive to Spanish people who suffered a lot under the occupation. None of these make me rise an eyebrow. I live in a country where some people (charlie journal) were shot for a satirical drawing. I think it's very important that artists are free to use references that may be offensive to some people as long as it doesn't incent people to hurt others. Just learn to take some distance, especially with fiction work
In the lore, Russian settlers indirectly dominate other colonies, promising them a direct armed return in the event of disagreement, as Russia does with its near foreign neighbours. Gutier uses more or less distant historical references as a skeleton for his lore and cyberpunk all that. At one point, it's said that the French settlers, for love of women, called their town Mariannebourg, whereas Marianne is just an icon representing the republic and the values of the Declaration of 1789. And this taste for Bonapartism, which currently numbers only 3,000 hadérents of a very advanced age, is equally strange. The infinity lore certainly has problems understanding certain things, but in any case we won't change it, since Gutier refuses to read the forum because it makes him depressed. As for the Spanish and the occupation, it's mostly propaganda from Franco, given that the Spanish volunteer came to fight in 1871 and in 1914 like my paternal grandmother's father and grandfather, if the Spanish were so disgusted we wouldn't have seen a single one come. In any case, Psychoticstorm forbids to talk about politics or political history even if it's related to infinity lore on this forum, so you should either come to the French forum or go talk about it on a discord, or talk about it with AI Sybilla, or stay within the parameters of thediceabide's topic, which is about the USariadna.
Damn, who foresaw that hundreds of years later we'd all have to learn French again to speak on high-minded topics such as politics and religion.
I believe we should keep in mind that people in Infinity universe live 200 from now. I’m sure they have their own beliefs about the past. Like idolizing military orders, khawarijis, rangers, kazaks, you name it. I mean if you imagine people living in USAriadna who grew up on tales of their great ancestors ‘Merica a lot of things described in their society suddenly make a lot of sense XD
Sorry to break "immersion" and conspiracy theories, but the most likely scenario is simpler than anything you are discussing: First, at CB they are all nerds to some extend regarding history, be it historical fencing or having the History career from college (I think that's precisely Gutier's case), and second, they have always been making "X, in spaaaaaaace!", with the transition being anything but subtle. Couple that with how old Infinity is (IRL) and how small did it started as (a homebrewed P&P RPG even before the first model was casted), it is to be expected that several things are "copied" from somewhere else that's easy to recognize (and to find in 2000's Internet, or the college's Library) and others are not all that "sanitized" for current events (last I checked, Russia was not seen as the evil bad guy 20 years ago or so... at least in Spain, I mean). While Corvus has changed some things to avoid issues ("corporate sanitization", I like to call it) like the JSA's flag, let's be clear: they can't change it all, and they can't do it all at once. The first, because there will be always someone with the "offended card" (and I mean a genuine one) because of pure stadistics; the second, because those changes make the lore impossible to recognize, and alienate players, so they are rolled out slowly. As for the French invasion, you always have problems with your neighbours, so most of us in Europe are like siblings not getting really along, but whatcha gonna do? Befriend the brits? ;) Also, we have a national holiday celebrating the french leaving, so I feel that's more than enough payback, you know?
Contemporary politics. That been said I would rather avoid again the discussion of what is deemed offensive and what is not deemed offensive by each language or country group and how this will deteriorate in how each one views the others opinion. We have been there, we have done that, we know how it will go and I am not thrilled to see it again.
Yeah, I really don't get the lack of the Vystrel Marauders are easily in the best place. I don't think that the changes I suggested for them were to fix them, more to make them a bit more interesting. Minutemen definitely need the most help. What you said about orders is actually exactly the problem. We have 3 sources of getting additional orders, and they appear in nearly every list. If you go through every other army in the game, USARF has just about the lowest access to those kinds of extra orders. We have very minimal access to it, and it ends up becoming pretty boring and predictable, both on the table, and when making lists.
Do you think that this is better solved by increasing access to alternative Order-boosting options in USARF or removing them elsewhere to prevent the competition from being as overwhelming? I've noticed more than a little flattening of lists across the entire game since NCO, extra LT Orders and TacAware became widely available alongside elite and capable armies like CA rapidly closing the Order economy gap with more "spammy" low-tech ones, yet at the same time Ariadna has always needed a bit of built-in redundancy to make up for historically-inferior combat profiles (though the very wide access to forward deployments and Camo goes a way to making up for it).
I think it's been too broadly applied to fix some of the issues they introduced with capping at 15. It started as a workaround, but now it feels like a bandaid they've spread out too wide. I think the issue is that order economy has been written out of the game, without addressing the faction that most relied on those orders. Reducing it elsewhere, while increasing it a bit in Ariadna, would probably be the best fix, and would give them a chance to reset the baseline. That said, I don't think the genie is going back in the bottle, so it's down to finding solutions that can fit internally, into the army list, rather than fixing the problem externally... Which again, feels like a bandaid, haha.
Ariadna in N2 was pretty predictable too with stockpile of body under camo marker. Now we start to see some Ratnik, some Chernobog, and other multi wound infantries. As an Ariadna player I find it more interesting to play with the less popular but more resilient tool compared to before when a list would start with 2 volunteer and 2 Traktor mule for max order ... Imo playing Ariadna now is more interesting than before. But USariadna is lacking a bit of these new tools (Vystrel to start with)
At least, can we agree that it would be nice if CB actually did something, anything to make USARF not suck for the next 5+ years (if they are in the army until next edition) And I mean anything any kind of actual buf to at least make them enjoyable until they get deleated or remade. But not in a year, I'm talking about the upcoming months. Just get in the army app and give them something. Just make them somewhat fun so at least we don't have to loose every game and feel bad because our faction is going the way of the dodo for years to come.
