External army balance issues in N4

What do you mean by Guided as ARO?

Agree that KHD are not really a good counter to hackers anymore, not in a very meaningful way.

Using engineer, having 2 states of Unconscious and being Hackable seems like much more meaningful flavor and balance than "it has -3 to Dodge", REM all have low PH anyway, so they still have that flavour.

What's your concern with TAGs?

The addition of templates on all Shotguns goes a long way into making ODD troopers in check for low-wounds model, and the buff to hacking really helps keep the bigger on in check.

 

I hope the new Fireteam rule will buff sectorial in a way more meaningful than "I got better dice odds".

Fireteams would be a lot more interesting if their benefit were based around positioning imo.

Currently, I don't think the benefit of Fireteams outweigh their downsides. I'd personally much rather face a sectoria than a vanilla.

I'm a big fan of the direction some of the most sectorial took, where not taking a Fireteam or taking a 3-man core Fireteam is strong consideration and where the main strength of the sectorial isn't just "I got good numbers in my Fireteam"

 

Apologies for the error, intended to say Spotlight as ARO.

Wrt Remotes I was referring more to the balance of Durability vs. Vulnerability. In general, in N3 they were more durable (shock immune, 2 unconscious states) but had drawbacks (most saliently, they couldn't go prone either voluntarily or when Unconscious) and were priced reasonably to fit. For example, Dakini and Unidron links punched above their points cost, but were generally kind of hard to hide. In N4 they keep all the buffs and price, but the drawbacks are removed. This has implications for some of the other balance issues (e.g., hiding a Smart Missile bot now is very easy compared to N3 when it couldn't go prone). Likewise, removing TR bots was simple - now you need to triple it out otherwise it just goes prone and gets picked up the next turn. That Buffed Dakini MSR? Same situation.

Wrt TAG my main concern is that none of the changes were really incremental. Changes to (in no particular order) crits, meta, ODD/TO, Burnt state, Immobilized state, introduction of Tac Awareness, and broad points reduction nearly across the board (though inexplicably not applied to some of the units that need it most) represent a rather hamfisted approach toward encouraging TAG purchases.

To be clear, this isn't me just whining about change. I've been playing for...7 years now or something? In general every update has been a net positive. For all of these reasons and others, I haven't been enjoying N4 as much as previous editions. People are free to disagree of course.

 

IMO stripping fireteams of most of their downsides, like allowing members to declare different ARO, would largely make up for the loss of some bonuses.

 

Would you allow fireteams to also shoot like a Coordinated order and allow multiple members to be in the Suppression fire state?

This could do away with all the bonuses.

I would however give some FOs and some other types of troops a natural +3 to discover, sensor or Sixth Semse depending on the need of the army and the balance of the troop. CB will have to be smart about this but it would make the game playable without bonuses.

Imagine a fireteams members of a sniper and an FO on a roof top, enemy camo marker moves, FO attempts to discover with that +3 mod, while the sniper holds for a potential shot.

I think CB might have to create a rule that allows troops to kneel, so potentially one troop can kneel in front of another without out loosing site ofnthe enemy because prone often cant see shit and this will help mitigate pie slicing some which will act as the support bonus in ARO we currently see.

 

Nah, not with the way coordinated orders work at the moment. It'll just create incentives to use fireteam of cheap-ass troopers to trade for more valuable ones (since that's how coordinated orders work usually), whereas I think it'd be better if the main draw to fireteam was to move a variety of tools and weapons around. But for that you need to make it less punishing to drag bodies around. Risking 2 to 5 of your dudes in the midfield is risky enough on its own, there shouldn't be more drawbacks, and certainly not to justify more bonuses.

But yes for the suppressive fire, as long as it doesn't benefit from anything but 6th sense.

 

And you do recognize the existence of the burst and BS bonus is to compensate for less variety and often enough less access to powerful units than vanilla, the coherency requirement and linkability were the limitations on becoming OP, not all teams are made equal? Then what would you suggest to trade for the bonuses or do you believe teams dont need some sort of ability to hit harder than just one unsupported troop at a time? We can all think of a few sectorials that would no longer be competitive.

 

Setting aside my personal preference for vanilla because I'm an absolute muppet trying to use fireteams with more than three troopers, I would generally consider most vanilla factions to be a little more challenging to play against than their sectorial counterparts because the probability space early in the game but especially during the critical deployment through early game phase a lot more possibilities need to be accounted for. What my opponent might be about to deploy, and then things that could be under camo markers, things that could be hidden, things that could be off the table etc are all occupying a much bigger space in vanilla, so the scope for uncertainty, misjudgement and mistakes is wider.

By comparison, sectorials present a threat with bigger numbers and clearer strengths but much narrower scope. Especially at deployment (and even list selection, if you have a flexible list choice), it's much easier to make safe assumptions about what might be about to threaten you and what you might need to engage.

Just for full clarity, I'd like to make the distinction between being challenging to play against and being powerful. Vanilla armies are often the former and sometimes also the latter. Sectorial armies are often the latter and sometimes the former.

This is a subjective assessment, but purely personally:

PanOceania: vanilla less challenging to play against than sectorials
Yu Jing: vanilla approximately on par with sectorials (maybe less challenging than than white banner since it's a very flexible army with good links)
Ariadna: vanilla more challenging to play against than sectorials (although Scots and Kosmo still flex direct power very effectively)
Nomads: vanilla more challenging to play against than sectorials
Haqqislam: vanilla more challenging than sectorials (but on par with Hassassins, who like white banner are both flexible and have very good links/raw power)
Combined Army: vanilla much more challenging than sectorials, also more powerful
Aleph: I'm not actually sure about this one; it's very close based on games watched and played.
O-12: also not sure about this one. Starmada is the most monobuild army in the game, but O-12's range isn't full enough yet for the fog of war to do more than equalise the difference.

As noted, Tohaa are really a sectorial for the purposes of this assessment. Really good one though.

 

OSS compared to vanilla is about on par with each other, as the majority of vanilla lists just seem to be OSS with smoke. SP is so far below both of them it's hardly worth mentioning.

Vanilla O-12 is very strong and can be incredibly obnoxious to deal with when piloted by a competent opponent, where as Starmada is a case of can to kill parvatii and hector before they kill you. Though the introduction of Starmada helped a lot with the viability of vanilla with the addition of a lot useful tools and profiles such as the Psycop, Crusher, and Gluecoat.

 

I had this opinion before playing games against Phalanx; now I'm less sure.

 

I've got a local getting into O-12 that would probably really benefit from some further thoughts on this - are there any good resources I could pass on to him or even just do you have any lists you've seen/found that work well? (only If you've got time - maybe PM them to me to avoid thread derailment)

 

I occasionally get the bright idea to field them before realising it was a mistake. Mostly thanks to just about everything being able to ignore the army's primary defensive abilities by opting out the games core mechanic and just slapping them with a template when ever you twitch, but at least in active there are ways to mitigate this issue, reactive you are kinda SOL as they can just suicide trade cheap disposable (often camo) shotgun pieces to take out chunks of the army, which the army has a real hard time stopping unless the table is particularly open and the opponent isn't that great at leveraging them. It's very much a go first or die army.

Ranged capabilities also leave a lot to be desired, outside of Phoenix, Hector, Achilles, Atalanta and Patroclus, random spitfires don't really cut it anymore and Ajax is not worth the consideration as fire platform, B5 is no where near what it used to be, the ranged capability of the army is very much lacking leaving you to rely on myrm officers and Machaon to close the distance under eclipse.

Though SP's viability goes way up when playing at 400 compared to 300.

Which parts in particular? With SM it has the two main points of failure smash those and the army starts to crumble pretty quick. As for O-12 more generally, digging around the faction sub-forum helps, as for my thoughts further to this point (and our other local O-12 players), I'll write something down and post it there when I get the chance, if it'll help one player it maybe helpful for others along with the accompanying discussion.

 

Specifically vanilla - we've got a prolific Starmada player locally although I believe he hasn't changed his list in the last three events. The new player's interest is in Vanilla O12 which we don't have a local knowledge base for. Any thoughts would be great :)

 

Funny, I think it's the other way around: Bonuses are here to make up for the fireteam's limitations, and what's supposed to offset the sectorial's lesser variety is the increased order-efficiency of your available option. Hell, some units or profiles would literally NEVER see the table if it weren't for fireteams, and not just because of the bonuses. Even in N4 it's still pretty hard to beat the sheer order efficiency of camo skirmishers specialists when it comes to pushing buttons, but in sectorials you can run your big run around while dragging a specialist to the button, and it's good enough.

I think it's good to give them some bonuses. I like the +1 burst and 6th sense, both in active and reactive. In active the +1 Burst allows for some low burst weapons to be worth spending orders on (HRL, Sniper, feuerbach, but I've also had some fun using missile launchers), and in reactive they both allow fireteams to provide a very different challenge from other ARO units like your run of the mill TR bot or camo sniper, and variety is always a plus. 6th sense especially is needed to keep smoke trick and surprise attack in check, otherwise there are too few available counters to those.

IMO It's the +3 BS for 5-man teams that's really the straw that break the camel's back, both in active and reactive. Nothing but a strong defensive fireteam can keep a now standard BS16 B5 HMG HI in respect, and that's not even peak power level these days. In reactive, the +3BS stops a lot of units who might seem to be approriate counter (like using an HMG with MSV to kill a mimetic reactive unit) to effectively be so. Both in active and reactive, it's what gatekeeps a lot of units from actually doing their intended job.

There are 2 examples I like to use to illustrate this on the dice calculator: Trying to take down a Naga sniper deployed well enough that it outranges you with a linked zuyong, and trying to kill a Bagh-Mari sniper in Fireteam with a lone djanbazan HMG. With, then without +3BS.
Disclaimer: The definition of good/acceptable/bad/horrendous odds might differ from player to player. Note that I don't really care about exact numbers, as I think looking at orders of magnitude is much more meaningful.

Linked Zuyong HMG vs Out of range Naga Sniper:
With +3 BS: 44.54% VS 23.30% to deal one wound, in favor of the Zuyong. Even with a near perfect placement from the camo sniper player, the zuyong player still has acceptable odds to kill it in a face to face.
Without +3BS: 30.89% VS 29.56% to deal one wound, barely in favor of the Zuyong. Bad odds for the zuyong player, now it's effectively a coin toss.

Lone Djanbazan HMG vs Bag Mahri Sniper in fireteam:
With +3 BS: 33.11% vs 36.05% to deal one wound, in favor of the Bagh-Mari. Straight up bad odds for the Djanbazan, that's not a face to face you might want to take in the active turn.
Without +3BS: 44.91% vs 22.56% to deal one wound, in favor of the Djanbazan. Now that's an acceptable face to face, not very good but that's one you might want to spend orders on.

In short, without the +3BS troops in fireteams are no longer universal counters, especially to things you might intuitively think should counter them. With it, those intuitive counters can't do their job reliably.

Next question then is, how do you make fireteam attractive without the +3BS. I still think movement alone is a great benefit, running around with all the tools, guns and bodies you might need is something vanilla factions can't do and is extremely valuable, but ATM running fireteam around is pretty much an all-in with how bothersome they are to keep alive if left over-extended.
What they really need IMO is a whole bunch of quality of life improvements, to be less rigid in their functionning, to stop being a brick thrown in the lake in a game where everything else flows like water.

Off the top of my head:
- Allow members to declare different AROs. I want my hacker to hack the aggressor, while one of my dude shoot it, while the wildcard CC specialist tries to dodge into contact, and not just each dude waiting for his turn to do his thing like city guards in an early Assassin's Creed game.
- Allow fireteams members to enter supressive fire. Because you know, it's THE defensive state of the game and somehow fireteams can't use it.
- Allow fireteams members to integrate coordinated orders without breaking the fireteam, but only with other fireteam members. Again, more flexibility when necessary.
- Allow fireteams to be reformed without having to spend a command token during the state phase. Makes fireteam less of a command token drain.
- Allow fireteam members to declare different move skills in the active turn. Don't let mismatching vertical mobility skills be an obstacle to use the terrain to its full extent (looking at you, Jing Qo/Liang Kai dumb duo).
- During deployement, instead of keeping one trooper in reserve keep a whole fireteam for one command token . Maybe adjust command token cost depending of the fireteam size. Maybe make it free or less expensive with strategic deployement/strategos (here comes For Co A-team in its van). Fireteams are usually very easy to counter deploy, and it'll get worse if they're nerfed, there need to be an option for the player the maximize their potential, albeit at a cost.


edit: I think the fireteam talk might be slightly out of topic regarding the actual OP...

 

If there is a general discrepancy between sectorials and vanilla, then fireteams do come into question as the conceit of a sectorial is that you trade versatility for direct power (almost like tall versus wide) or spam of particular good profiles.

Now, my own experience so far has been that you simply can't make a general comment like this. Generally speaking I prefer to go up against vanilla armies - with the exception of Combined (!) - as vanilla armies generally can't out-dice me, and this makes the games less likely to just steamroll without giving me a chance to turn it around. On the contrary I am of the opinion that Fireteams offer too many bonuses and it's making the playstyle of sectorials kind of samey and it's made worse specifically since CB is catering to sectorials revolving around like one particular Fireteam each (and then a few flavour alternatives that clearly aren't as well optimised but exists for spice).
There's just some sectorials that are noticeably worse than others because they lack important abilities or that the unit that has it is too awkward to build into lists or has multiple roles spread across too low AVA. Or that they're just skornergy.

 

Anecdotally of course, but that right there is why I'm having such a hard time making an OSS list I like instead of going vanilla Aleph.

 

I agree with you alot actually.

ut let say you're a JSA player and your primary link for faction is Domaru and co, it is, and you know you're likely to face an Avatar (Cutter etc), you already know you're link isnt strong enough to face it in ARO even with current bonuses and you know your Ninja Hacker wont be able to stop it either, your best option is to hope you go first with an Oniwaban otherwise turtle up in a corner with less than 4" margins right...

I think the worst offenders are really just a handful of mimetic, msv, min-maxed, mix-matched teams.

I would like to concer specifically about some of your bullet points so that the idea for any CB reader sees it twice...

- Lower or delete Command Token Requirements. Perhaps 1 at the beginning of the game for your faction to have fireteams for the game. Automatically reforming at the beginning of each turn. Allow command tokens to reform midturn.
- Allow any number of fireteam members to suppress and maintain the link.
- Operate like Coordinated orders allowing for different Skills/Long Skills and AROs.
-Some Sectorials/armies do need to have their power level looked at in some terms; hacking, BS output, certain weapons for the reactive turn, things that are the argument for fireteam bonus existence and certain fire teams that are argued against.
- Allow multiple types of movement for fireteam members.



I honestly dont like that some armies can alpha strike with such efficiency that they can wipe 5 or more of your order producing troops in 5 of their orders and then just repair if they did lose a wound or more likely structure.

I think I would like Killer Hackers to have Spotlight as well. It would help forces like say JSA contend a little better while still leaving plenty of reason to bring other hackers.

 

I find Fireteams to be very exploitable. The factions I play have very good tools to exploit their weakness.
(Though hidden deployed templates are available in so many factions now too)

I find that sectorial tend to be a lot less mobile (they're "forced" to waste slots on fireteams rather than get a better midfield, though HB and WB not as much) and rely on your having stuff that can be shot at to really maximize the value they invested in their fireteams. And I tend to null deploy a lot, so I feel like they lose a lot of their value in that sense.

 

Fireteam bonuses existed to offset the inefficiency that used to exist in fireteam composition. They were made for when you had to bring 5 of the same thing and it wasn't particularly cost efficient to do so. The modern fireteam is far stronger to the point where you could arguably do away with alot of the bonuses and they would still be very much worth while. You could honestly cap fireteam bonuses to +1B and there would be very little issue with that.

We no longer have a fireteam of 5 Fusiliers, where to be on the same playing field as a high value HI bruiser they needed to get stat buffs. Now we're looking at an ORC or some other high value pointman actually being the leader for those Fusiliers while also getting the stat buffs on top of that.