So here is a question from a fairly new player for you guys: How did the process of re-balancing the game look like in the past after the introduction of new sectorials? Was thinking about this recently as a vanilla Nomads player who is maybe a little bit too excited about the possible arrival of Tunguska this year. So basically each new sectorial also grants a buff to vanilla armies due to all the new available profiles. What can I expect to happen in terms of Corvus Belli trying to keep the game well balanced? Is this what's behind all the fuzz concerning the possibility of Yu Jing losing JSA (in exchange for Invincible Army)?
Balance in Infinity is really hard to observe. Unlike most games the theoretical worst team can regularly beat the theoretical best team based on the player. Not to mention ITS changes alter balance drastically and it moves faster than people can track. But anyways, I started shortly after Sectorials were introduced so I didn't see the change myself. I feel like most the balance is based around taking something away from the sectorial rather than giving something to Vanilla. When a new sectorial is added, can you accidently make a Vanilla list not containing any of the new units? I think you usually can. It's a strength increase for some lists but doesn't touch others, so the faction doesn't necessarily play stronger as a whole. It's hard to quantify.
Thanks for those insights! You're probably right. And I should focus more on my playing than on how "good" the different armies are. But still... the whole point of playing vanilla is having a variety of options when constructing lists, trying to get the best possible synergies. If you increase that variety, vanilla is getting better. And if you introduce a bunch of new profiles at once, it might get better quite a bit.
Better, yes. Stronger, more competitive? It needs to replace something that was there before in the list. Sometimes it is an obvious increase in strength. I often find with Nomads new additions like the very exellent Kriza replaces something else good. Which choice is stronger is very arguable, although it is objectively better to have the choice. Maybe Yu Jing or something has a bunch of units that are waiting to be replaced and they would get stronger from the addition of units. But the only addition since N3 that just makes Nomads stronger without a trade-off has been Jaguars.
AVA units are usually different, there are always suboptimal profiles and there are exclusive units for the sectorial. Increasing the number of units in a vanilla faction is always a buff, but it doesn't have to be a big one.
With sectorials you get upgraded one or two playstyles, and if you are good with them sectorials can be very strong. The problem, all sectorials have stronger weak point than vanilla armies. In vanilla you shouldn't face a complet counter, in sectorials can happen ( thinks like exile program, smoke vs Onix, weak leutinents, D charges in UsAriadna). But i think thats what make more funny to play sectorials, the challange. Vanilla in 90% is very balanced, and a bit more strong than most sectorials just for having acces to more playstyles and porfiles. And ofc some combos that sectorials can't do. However vanillas tend to some standar meta, picking the best cost/utility units, and thats why some units aren't very played out of his sectorials. That why i think new sectorials won't buff too much vanilla armies, maybe some meta core from certain facctions will change a bit but the great differns will be see if for example tunguska make corregidor feel weak. And as you said the balance in infinity is mostly hard beacuse every model can kill with some brain every model. ( My hac tao tend to die against normal haqquis soldiers).
@Boulnois to start things off, CB rarely introduces troops that introduce a new ceiling to something. Troops that straight up beat their Faction's or Sektorial's benchmarks aren't exactly a common occurence. While it does happen (like with the Sukeul and Kriza Borac) it's mostly to fill an existing design gap instead of straight up buffing a Faction. Infinity in general is more about presenting viable alternatives for existing tasks than i.e. Warhammer 40k's never ending arms race with certain armies way too strong and others next to useless. With several Sektorials and Faction specific traits PanO ends up with way more Gunners than necessary for Vanilla. This is because some of them are only meant to work properly in a Sectorial with Fireteam Options and lack of competition. As a result not everything will be straight up useful in Vanilla. There are black sheep with tiny niches and unfortunate Skill/Equipment combinations (Bolts in NCA) or lack of synergy (Maakrep in Onyx), but those are remarkably uncommon.
Thanks! This is all very interesting to me. I guess this actually answers my opening question: Tunguska (or any new sectorial) probably won't change all that much for vanilla, since new profiles doesn't necessarily mean the army will get better at solving certain problems. Got it. So to me this has interesting implications about what to expect from the new sectorials. When I look at Onyx (as the newest sectorial that belongs to an established army) I wonder if it's just fluff reasons why it has this peculiar "patchwork" character. It seems like a smart move balancing-wise to just introduce new strong fireteams and make already existing profiles available. So maybe we'll see more of that in the upcoming sectorials. But no new "faction-defining" units...which is a good thing probably, but will restrict new sectorials to options that are the same or similar to what's already available otherwise in the vanilla faction. But oh well, new fireteam-options, mercenaries and sectorial-specific profiles should be enough to keep things interesting.
I think it's an interesting point, to try and work out how to balance a huge swathe of varied units in Vanilla. If you'll indulge me, In Magic the Gathering it's possible to make what is referred to as GoodStuff.deck , which is basically consists of the most efficient, biggest power:cost ratio cards and intends to win purely through incremental advantage. All of my stuff does more for less. However this doesn't make that deck outright better than a deck that has a specific plan and intends to use certain strategies or combos to generate a win rather than sheer brute force. Now, I think the brute force through efficiency approach can occur in Infinity, but so long as a faction never feels like you're being rail roaded straight into the most obvious path then I think the game is in a good place balance wise. Or at least not in a bad one. So long as you can make an arguement to take strategically interesting alternatives to the most obviously 'points to power' efficient units then I think there is some semblance of internal balance.
In my experience, new players tend to over value Link teams (I dislike the term fireteam, Link sounds way cooler and techy). It feels to me that Vanilla factions require more careful thought at the list building stage because the large selection of options means it's easier to build a list without a plan or with an uncomfortable mishmash of units that lack range bands or capabilities. The constraints of sectorials do help to push players towards a halfway decent list and this can be misconstrued as the sectorial itself being more powerful. It's taken me a lot of games to see where the strengths of Vanilla PanO lay, after playing a bunch of NCA and playing with those constraints.
I think in general the strongest stuff from sectorials beats the rest of the sectorial into Vanilla (like, timeline-wise). Look at Yu Jing for example -- the Daofei and Guilang are both from a yet-to-be-announced sectorial, but are incredibly strong in Vanilla. It's rare, on the other hand, for a newly announced sectorials unit to be incredibly strong in Vanilla. Another example is Nisses -- I doubt anything in Svalarheima will be better in Vanilla than Nisses. I expect that Interventors will stay one of the strongest Tunguska units available to Vanilla Nomads, for example, the same way I doubt anything in the new JSA box will be incredibly relevant to Vanilla. It's rare that new units in sectorials are anything more than side-grades for Vanilla armies .
As more and more sectorials get released, the generic armies get oversaturated with similar units competing for the same roles. This allows those players to cherry-pick the most optimal unit for each position. At this point AVA limitations stop mattering as much, as you can take a single model from each of several different AVA 1 or 2 units. Or, in some cases, it allows them to field a ridiculously high AVA of a certain class of units and very strongly skew their list past what other factions can accomplish. (I'm thinking of Ariadna and Camo Infiltrators)
2018 will have something that "fanatic peat" will love and hate... kill all vanillas, only sectorials from now on?
Instead of erase Vanilla Armies (that would be a rather backlash move), i'd like if the similar troops from different sectorials were grouped within a single AVA slot. For examples, in PanO you can have 2 Auxilia, 2 AconReg, 1 Order Sergant, Total Fusilier. This could be grouped as Total Fusiliers, 2 Support units (Auxilia, AconReg, Order Sergeant).
If my Nagas in vanilla ALEPH drops down to AVA 1, manly tears will be shed. Along with less-than-manly sobbing.
I dunno what they intended with the Sukeul, but it definitely buffed the whole faction because of how Tohaa work.
Yeah agreed, but as mentioned it does happen CB deems it necessary to improve upon the existing options. The Sukeul got added because CB wanted Tohaa to have a better top range Gunner and straight up buff the Faction as a whole in terms of gunfighting. Bit&Kiss as well as Kerr Nau aren't just great for Onyx, they're also CA's first access to KHDs in general. The Techbee adresses PanO's AVA1 Engineer proble... oh wait, nevermind. Cheap warm body and a Specialist though, even if she was a bandaid that didn't work, she still is a useful addition just for that.
