What the title says. I suppose I have to get more creative dealing with hard-to-shoot fireteams now. Honorable mention for Goodnight, which was funny when dealing with Su Jian or Posthumans.
inb4 the iT waS tOo CoMplicAteD tO hAvE sO ManY ProGraMs crowd turns up. To which my response is what the fuck is Pheroware then if not just another version of special hacking programs expanded on just for Tohaa. That shit even interacts with firewalls now.
Those people were* just being stupid. Some programs were just better than others, but that wasn’t hard to figure out beforehand. I suspect there’s a significant overlap with the “weapons are too complex” crowd, who can’t read profiles apparently. “Red Fury is a Spitfire with shock ammo.” If you ignore the lower Dam and the different rangebands, yes. A pistol is a spitfire by the same criteria. *(& still are)
But if you have options, you have to actually think, you know, for yourself. Can’t have that now, can we? It you can’t netlist the problem, it’s too much and should be removed from not just the game, but all memory.
Interesting and distinctive use cases? Yes. Samey stuff with different numbers? Nah. That adds complexity without value in a game that already has a lot of overhead. I personally think N4 hacking is better calibrated overall (remember how awesome assault hackers were?). That said, I do miss Exile.
Eh. Having three different flavours of near-identical KHD program wasn't that great, and frankly some were used so rarely that the game's better off without, but Exile at least did something unique. That said, Oblivion on just about every device does cover many of the Exile use cases since links are so absurdly diverse now- odds are there's still a Hacker, REM or HI in there to Isolate normally.
Well, for any given situation, the option was particularly clear. As @SpectralOwl noted, Trinity and Skullbuster were used extremely rarely. The issue is that the overall power level of different factions' hacking seems to have shifted; in particular in my case, the stuff that made Onyx amazing at it seems to have been removed. Eh, not fireteams like the ubiquitous defensive Kamau fireteam, for example, or pretty much anything Ariadna. And then there's Tohaa...
Are you saying that primarily because we lost exile? I think we got a nice, though subtle boost with firewalls affecting killer hackers. With that and the pitchers Kerr-nau is a workhorse in a tinbot link. And for more repeater coverage (which I always struggled with) we now have Kiss able to puke them out as a cheap ARO with his pitchers.
@bloodw4ke more I meant Onyx's inability to stack modifiers on hacking with things that used to exist like Maestro and Kaleidoscope. Exile is certainly part of that.
Maestro was pretty good. Maybe it's just RNG but my nomad buddy used to just stomp my Onyx in the hacking game. Since N4 it seems more evenly matched.
Anyway, enough bitching. What're some tricks that work particularly well for Combined Army (any sectorial) for hacking in N4?
Yaogats are capable of pulling the all your AROs are shit trick with smoke. If you dodge, you eat uncontested hacking attacks, if you reset you collect an uncontested Panzerfaust/Combi/Heavy Pistol to the face. Between that and the B4 MSR low key super dangerous link in N4.
A Raicho starts with: Immunity to Oblivion (Veteran), so F their AP hacks -3 to incoming hacks (ECM) With Fairy Dust it gains: BTS 9 vs. Comms Attacks -3 to incoming comms attacks, additive with the above for hacks So besides spotlights (-6), incoming hacks are limited to: Total Control at (-6), you save on 2x 8+ Carbonite at (-6), you save on 2x 5+ Not immune to hacking, but still pretty durable. An average WIP 13 hacker is going to struggle to connect, with a 35% chance to hit unopposed and only a 25ish% chance of landing carbonite. Total control is a bigger issue, but probably awesome if they're wasting active turn orders trying to pull it off at B1... and even if they do, they can't kill it with dumb stuff like fall damage anymore.
And Scylla got ECM (Hacking) -3 because she had Maestro. None of the CA hackers have anything like that.
Not for Onyx, but give the Skiavoros the REMdriver ability. That'd give it something worthwhile to do.
Skiavaros with REMdriver is a really cool idea! It would certainly make him a unique aspect with more of a supportive role compared to the combat roles of the Charontid and Anathematic.
It strikes me as odd that CA doesn't have REMdriver since, isn't that basically just a less intense mnemotech anyway? I suppose that stuff like Unidrons are their own REMdrivers, but still....
when EI is everywhere and able to direct control any remote or TAG within its network (and its whole civilization is connected to said network) a Remdriver kinda feels like a redundant position
