I'll leave this out there for us to salivate over ...

Yeah I see where you don't understand what's going on. Someone who does this, does not care about what your odds are to hurt them. They only care about their odds to kill you. They're in this to crit you, they don't really care what you're rolling it it's largely inconsequential to them.

Their mindset is "I have a 1/3 to win this, I'll take that." and they roll on it hoping to win. There isn't any question about what happens if they lose. If they lose it they lose it, they don't care. They're gambling on that 1/3.

Also I don't think it particularly changes much relevant to this discussion but you left your ammo type on AP. Nobody shoots with AP against the low armour spectrum.

Yeah it is, when you double the chances to crit it's what causes the weird spike in effectiveness of FAT2 when you take the bad firefight vs taking a good one. If you change FAT2 from providing an extra crit number to say +1 Burst as an example it has a less unstable effect on the odds to win.

Again, you're ignoring the situation. They don't change the odds to push people to take the bad firefights. Like I said they don't help you win terrible firefights. Taking a terrible firefight more than once doesn't change your odds to win it in the first place.

If you have a 15-60 firefight you don't suddenly go "hey I'm gonna roll on that NWI will help me win it." Hell no. You don't do that. But if you have a skill that jumps the odds to 33-50, some people look at that and go, "Hell yeah, that's worth a shot." That's what FAT2 is doing that NWI does not in anyway do.

If you take that 15-60 firefight you're probably just going to get smacked down twice. So you don't, the risk vs reward isn't there. If you dramatically improve their odds to win it on the first go however, the temptation to just say screw it and shoot it is right there.

Taking the bad risk on a 5pt model is fine, because in the event that they die the game doesn't get thrown out the window, there's still a game to be made out of it. If the 2/3 happens and Tarik straight up dies on the other hand taking a gunfight he had no business taking the game's mostly thrown away at that point and player 2's agency on the game is largely taken out of their hands by their opponent gambling on bad rolls.

Mike, your argument here is "don't put ARO pieces on the table so your opponent can't fire his Spitfire at long range." Have you really considered what you're trying to say at all? That's a terrible argument, it's why it's being ignored.

 

Not really. It's possible to be smart, or conservative with your ARO pieces. You should be aware that you don't have to commit them to as big fire lanes or as broad line of sights that you normally would if you know your opponent is going to try and fish for crits as soon as the game starts. Get this – you can actually try anticipating the amount of orders it's going to take your opponent to reach you if you put your ARO piece in a certain spot versus another, and planning around how many orders they'll actually have to shoot you with. Or, now, I know this is going to blow your mind, but maybe you can try and play to the weakness of the unit your opponent is taking and try stranding them in the midfield, where any infiltrator/SMG/minelayer/or really any dude with a rifle will be able to shoot them. They're kind of incredibly flimsy. This can be done with mines, regular old infiltrators or your traditional ARO piece. Perhaps you can bait your opponent into gunfights that are actually beneficial for you – even if you lose your piece!

Why do you think you can come up with one strategy and apply it to every opponent with the same effect? Are you really so dense that you cannot come up with literally any solution to your problem other than "Me no like rule because he win gun fight I want to win :("

 

Yeah, you are not reading these posts at all. Please go back and actually take a look at the discussion. The problem, as I have stated, has nothing to do with who wins the bad firefight. You seem to be under the impression that I am arguing FAT2 is an overpowered rule and cannot be competed with. This is not the case.

As I have pointed out, the problem is that FAT2 encourages and creates brain dead, unfun gameplay regardless of who wins the roll. It does this by encouraging players to gamble on bad firefights, and some of them do just that which has the effect of heavily reducing or removing their opponent's agency in the game. I don't find that to be a good game play element for Infinity.

Braindead =/= overpowered

 

I like how you all completely ignore the point that he's making.. was expecting better from this forum.

But yeah. Let's just all agree that FAT2 is a fun skill with a lot of counterplay, that doesn't work the best in unfavourable firefights and is very fun to play with and against, because increased crit chance on high burst weapon is just a slight buff that won't enrage your opponnents at all.

 

Well, that reminds me of a player here who used, as @Triumph describes, "braindead" tactics, i.e. counting on blind luck / fishing for crits.
Counting, essentially, on his blind luck.

Was he always successful? No. Was he successful often enough? Yes.
Did he play F2 Khawarijs all the time? Well... nope, he wasn't ever playing Haqq, and it was back in 2ed, when no such skill existed.

Therefore, I'd say - as it was already said there - if you have a problem with it, the problem is not in the rule itself, but in the players.
Crits are inherent element of Infinity game mechanics. They do happen. I've heard enough players complaining about crits being "the worst idea ever", and I can sympathize with anyone who gets critted out of blue sky. But is it a part of the game, and increased crits have existed before F2 came into being.
Simply, it is way more difficult - under current rules - to stack your BS modifiers to get past 20, while with CC basically every CC specialist worth their salt can do that - or even has CC over 20 from the start! In some cases as high as 25, plus Martial Arts bringing it effectively to 28. I'm counting Berserk out, as while it adds +6, it also turns CC into Normal instead of Opposed Roll.

So, I put my Myiamoto Musashi into CC. He has CC 25 + MA 5, so he can take on any single target, roll a die and add +3 for MA L3, at the same tim imposing -3 on the opponent's roll. Any roll of 13 or better is an automatic crit, about 40% chance if I'm guesstimating correctly. Additionally, if the opponent isn't a martial artist with effective CC over 20, well, remember Musashi's minimum rollable score here is 9, and any dice result of the opponent lower than 11 is an automatic failure anyway.
He can forfeit the +3/-3 modifier, and go for MA L4, allowing him to make two attacks at CC25, so each of them with a 25% crit chance. And still getting that +5 to any roll result, giving him an edge against other CC combatants.

Ah, but he's Myiamoto Musashi, swordsman extraordinaire...! Well, plain ol' Ninja has CC 23 and MA L3. Hassassin Fiday has CC 21 and MA L3. They can still do the same trick, albeit with lesser success ratio.

Is it brain-dead get any of these CC specialists into CC to make use of their over-20 CC value and special skills...? Some of them have extra stuff to make it even easier (and more difficult for you to shoot them down) - smoke grenades, TO Camo, or at the very least, Stealth to stab you in the back...

 

The difference with CC is that you actually need to get into CC and most of the time you're sacrificing Burst for that Crit chance. CC is more or less a proper risk-reward system in that regard.

 

Your problem is that you care too much of people's thinking process and what's the mechanical process of calculating the odds whereas removal of pieces from the table as an end result with these odds is the only thing that matters in a shooting roll-off. It's easy to come up with a lot of scenarios where you inflict wounds in ~30% of cases on your active turn without FAT2 involved, and they are no different. Your gambling addict can as well try to power through them and that would not be any less or more of a stupid thing to do so regardless of whether it is achieved through crits or otherwise.

Things your "it's braindead" argument is missing is that Spitfire is not a good weapon to shoot from DZ to DZ, but somehow you compare that to taking that spitfire into the midfield using some committed maneuvering while using smoke, terrain etc., or to shooting with the same spitfire from DZ but with no FAT2. Both are bad comparisons.

Shooting from DZ to DZ is equally "braindead" regardless of what you use to do so. It's not harder to just take a linked HMG (with some mods if you have access to such things, which Haqq struggles with) and hammer your Dakini into oblivion like some low-cost mook it is. But somehow doing the same with a bad tool is infuriating to you whereas you should be happy your opponent plays into your hands.

You're focused onto FAT2 making some shootout a ~30% odds for your opponent, but it can be just different weapon with better rangeband, some extra mods to increase your chance of total misses and other stuff that pumps chances higher - it can be a lot of things for that bloody point cost. You may find it "more fair", but in reality resulting odds are resulting odds no matter how they are calculated. And if we are talking of just shooting from DZ, then they are attained with the same effort in both cases, so there's no difference. And yes, in all cases these odds are bad, so you still have to use all those things you want people to use to get a better shot at your ARO piece. Or gamble and likely lose.

Yeah, you can't pick a counter-rule to FAT2's effect, normally measly even on the active turn unless your opponent doing some stupid hail mary, but it's only noticeable when you're on the reactive and you're forgetting that you don't get to make meaningful choices on your reactive anyway, so how does it even matter?

And yeah, Infinity dice are very swingy compared to other wargames. You need a lot, and I mean A LOT of matches to claim that your success/failure rate in certain scenarios is representative of statistical probability. So yeah, you'll find a bloody ton of negative reinforcement for your strategies that rely on your opponent losing while trying to fight against bad odds - so for solid play. That's just what Infinity is, that's why you should ignore the heat of the moment, keep doing your thing and look at your results in a very long run instead. Preferably, match results and not just outcome of some shootout that may or may not stop you from winning a match.

Spoiler: Obligatory toxicity

And one more thing. You're complaining about "lose less but still lose" rule here, yet you're bringing up a textbook example of recent period's power creep in the from of cheap, mimetic, linkable, buffable troops of which there's no real downside in taking them into your roster, reasonably capable of being order monkeys while also doing things some armies find impossible to achieve even when they call for their supposedly "elite" pieces. That's some "braindead" and "stupid" if I've ever seen some. The fact you're upset that your disposable pieces get deleted in your reactive turn with little effort (I disagree that trying to bruteforce through ~30% odds constitutes "no effort", but let's roll with your perspective for a second; otherwise see paragraph above), something that's just everyday's business in this game, already says something.

Opinions, huh. Thankfully, this being Infinity, the game where "all models are basically the same" (as it was said by one of the two of our "local meta's final bosses", players that consistently compete for first 2 places in every tournament), this doesn't matter that much in the end.

 

Obviously nobody is being persuaded here. We all have just been reinforcing our own opinions and I really don't know how profitable it is to keep carrying on. There are many threads in the Access Guide debating FAT2. If the debate absolutely must be continued, it can be continued elsewhere.

For now, does anyone have any good ideas on how to leverage the unique Khawarij skillset? Obviously the MSV2 option suggests all the usual smoke tricks and that pairs well with super jump, but what are some more unique options?

In the past, I've enjoyed jumping up a tall building, diving prone, and chucking grenades to take advantage of their high PHY. But that seems more than a little wasteful for a link team.

 

I don't think you can come up with many cases where you're taking 30%+ odds to win shooting BS4 vs BS17 that don't involve FAT2.

Just because I can't fix everything at once doesn't mean we shouldn't fix what we can, particularly when it's a relevant topic. Now would be a great time to clean up FAT2 to coincide with Ramah and assumable Khawarij buffs. The rule itself lends to bad gameplay and could do with a makeover while they're at it.

Trust me I know. That dude has done some of the weirdest stuff I have ever witnessed, much of it I can't piece any logic together with it. With that said, the vast majority of it features Tarik. And there's a reason for that it's because Tarik gets punished far, far, faaaar less for engaging in these shenanigans. There's a few compounding factors there with his statline, but FAT2 shoulders a large part of that blame of letting him get away with doing dumb stuff.

They're not bad comparisons and they're completely relevant. Maneuvering the spitfire into position to fire at optimal bands is good gameplay, that's what you're supposed to do with the piece of gear vs spraying it at BS4 at range.

The comparisons for different odds between firing at bad range with and without FAT2 is to demonstrate how FAT2 warps the chance you get punished for doing something as silly as that at an abnormally high rate. It shows the skill scales heavily in effectiveness when you take bad firefights vs how much impact it has when you take good firefights. Ideally, you would want it to scale evenly, not to heavily favour shooting at bad range bands but it's the nature of how it has a bad interaction with the critical hit system.

Using the correct tools to solve the problem is the opposite of what I'm calling brain dead here. If you take a linked HMG and apply it at range, you're making decisions to apply the best possible odds you can. If you're engineering good situations, you're playing the game well.

The same is true if you take the FAT2 Spitfire and move it so it can fire at its good range band, and not fire it at BS4. That's using your brain to engineer the best possible odds you can, as opposed to spraying at terrible odds on BS4 and getting away with it, that's braindead, you're not thinking there.

Because as I've pointed out it heavily encourages gambling with stupid rolls. The gambling, win or lose, tends to decide a game and removes player 2's agency for the entire game not just the reactive turn. Either the gambler gets away with murder or he gets punished for doing stupid stuff and loses important pieces (normally Tarik) and the game largely becomes a done deal either way.

If you take away vehicles such as Tarik abusing FAT2 for balls to the wall ridiculous moves the amount of times they take these risks drops. The way our mentioned player plays when using Bahram vs Vanilla is markedly different.

Adjusting FAT2 not to scale badly with bad firefights doesn't fix everything, you're right, but it would lower the frequency of these types of decisions being made which would be a good thing.

 

Well, I am perfectly willing to agree that F L2 is not the best idea out there. I'm perfectly fine with F L1 (in fact, I consider it highly appropriate on TAGs!), but F L2 well, CB could have made it in a different way (no idea how exactly).

But I'm not going to agree with opinions painitng it as end-of-the-world rule. It is not that bad. But they could adjust it somehow.

Having said that, I'm also perfectly willing to end the discussion / quarrel about Fatality L2 here :)

 

Just make Fatality L2 cause a second ARM roll for BS attacks and adjust points accordingly, or make it an optional skill with a -1 burst penalty when used. It is now more "fatal" without being tied to the crit mechanic. You still need to score hits and win FtF rolls fairly, forcing good engagements and scaling flatly. They already have Poison for doing nearly the same against models in melee so it fits into their mechanical theme. There are already plenty of models and BS weapons that force more than one ARM roll per success. I dunno, just spitballing.

My only issue with this option would be that it steps on the feet of the Zhayedan currently.

 

It's called DA ammo and it exists already. Also, not before Full Auto gets it's medicine too, please ;-)

 

I feel like it would be much easier to change the text of FAT L2 than make two whole new weapons and edit 6 profiles.

 

This is going to surprise a lot of people: I agree with @Triumph on this. Fatality L1 isn't bad. Fatality L2 has major problems.

And this is why:

It's a pretty decent weapon to shoot from DZ to DZ when it has a 30% chance to win the FTF.

 

Given that we actually agree on like... most stuff? Shouldn't be that surprising.

 

We've been rather vocally disagreeing on a couple points lately. Uprising stuff, IIRC.