I think that, regardless of what it says on the tin, Pan-O, Haqq and to a lesser extent Yu Jing is trying to dabble in what is all the other factions' schticks. Yu Jing is getting more HI with every release and this is anchoring them (though the "melee faction" from the tin remains a blatant lie - they're no more melee than Nomads are), but Pan-O always get a bunch of mediocre melee units and HI and the same can sort of be said for Haqq until recent shift towards bio-engineered soldiers. Now with O-12's release doing Pan-O better than Pan-O... at least this person has problems seeing what vanilla Pan-O are meant to be other than the lanyard stick.
As best I can tell, Haqq is the "synergy" faction, with each unit having a defined role and a few orders spent on each in pursuit of a plan. Their units are among the weakest and most points-inefficient in the game on paper, but they always perform well in the actual game because every unit aids the overall strategy. PanO doesn't seem to be built with Vanilla in mind. The Sectorials all feel internally consistent and largely well-designed if a little reliant on the Fusilier Fireteam, but Vanilla has wound up with three TO Snipers, four MSV Snipers (three of which have Mimetism), a ludicrous number of largely redundant Heavy Infantry and a profoundly dull Character roster. What it does do better than Sectorials is 1: abuse Mercs with Joan, 2: mix up the game with TAGs and 3: defend. The ASA mines, VIRD Jammers and Helots, NCA Auxilia and the various heavily optimised, nearly identical Snipers make up the kind of indirect defenses you'd normally get from another faction, but at a higher cost with no Smoke and painfully basic Hacking, so everyone who wants defense is better off in another faction anyway.
Yeah. I'm not really sure what O-12 was supposed to do: I don't really know which Human Sphere faction's toes they don't step on. Which gets us to "factional identities" as a draw card. From a certain point of view relatively narrow factions are a good thing as it means if you want to try X you need to play the X faction; but from another point of view adding X to all factions sells miniatures. These are more of a continuum with those two options as either extreme. The downside with the first is that there ends up being only a few "correct" ways to play each sectorial, with "must take" options. The downside of the second is that all factions begin feeling samey. As the amount of factions proliferate I definitely feel like CB has been moving towards the first model. But yeah, I can see the argument that that narrowing is occurring at the Sectorial level but at the factional level there's a bit of dabbling in everything (see the proliferation of Jammers, Motorcycles and toolbox-MI choices). Personally I think this risks burn-out as players feel the need to change sectorials to experience new things while simultaneously risking disenfranchising existing players who go "thing X was one of the main reasons I play my faction, but now everyone is getting thing X". I don't know what is a good answer, because ultimately CB needs to sell models and their are only really 3 ways to do that: > Expand existing factions / sectorials (risks blandness / loss of faction identity / obsolescence issues for old-pofiles) > Add new narrow sectorials (puts a significant gateway to trying new things / adds to the information density required to pick up the game) > Resculpt existing models (can't be done too rapidly or will be ineffective and risks seeming exploitative) Basically CB needs to balance these issues. At the moment I think mostly they've been doing a reasonable job: in particular I think they've nailed their PanO changes (Sectorial ORCs and mixed Fusi links all make PanO seem like a military machine, and Helots added a much needed "Warband-alternative") but I think they missed the mark with Nomads recently (it's moved away from the REM + MI focus of early N3). Re: YJ. I think pulling JSA out has helped refocus its identity in a more useful way on HI and C2. That shift in design intent hasn't been explicitly communicated. Honestly, CB would benefit from stealing Dev Blogs and Patch Notes from Video Games development methodologies. Articulating the intent of the changes, what they wanted to achieve would go a long way to helping the community understand and sell them. So dropping a Dev Diary that explains that the CC focus of YJ was holding it back, and instead they have explicitly decided to emphasise the robust authoritarian command structure of the State Empire.
To my mind this is fine: Late-N3 PanO Sectorials (less MO, who are weird) are deliberately built around the mixed 'Fusi'-Core* which provides a fire-power backbone. This makes PanO sectorials feels like regular military. What I don't think is fine is other HS-factions taking the same approach. It compromises this identify (looking at you mixed-Alg link), and misses the opportunity to emphasise how those factions are different (Zanshi links kinda feel a little on the fence here, I'm not 100% certain they work as a point of difference from PanO but I'm not they don't either: they don't quite feel the same as the pretty uniform PanO approach). * Regulars are being treated as 'Fusis' for this model, which TBF is what I expect to happen in N4.
I suggested this in person to some of the staff (B, G and others) in a interplanetario... they all said the same "is too much work and we think is not needed and boring for the people" (not exactly their words, but is the idea). I would like to see it, but I don't think we will do (if only B said that I would still have hopes, but...)
My point is that this approach doesn't take Vanilla into account, leaving it a bit behind other factions. It also makes most PanO sectorials build superficially similar to each other, and has led to massive redundancy issues in the Vanilla roster. PanO's lack of design focus also extends to its models; they don't look all that unified next to other sectorials' units and I haven't seen a new player jumping into Vanilla PanO instead of a Sectorial since I first started, prior to the Uprising. I've seen people tempted by the colourful surcoats of MO and the high-contrast armoured wetsuits of VIRD, but never the whole weird range of overly specialised models.
O-12 are the Primaris of Infinity. ;) Jokes aside I think most of the style and interest comes from the background and the miniature designs. I really didn't care about rules when I started since I couldn't know the rules and the gameplay differences.
Not sure about that for Haqq. Infinity in general have very little synergy and what little there is I'd say you'll find a lot more of in Nomads and Aleph with their Jumpers and high quality REMs. In general I think Haqq has a stronger tendency to carry several guns, but it's the pervasiveness of Doctor+ and SuperJump (etc - that Yu Jing is starting to nibble on, I might add) that defines them better. I like the new bio-soldiers thematically whereas before they were very close to Nomads, both in terms of strong MI or para-MI (mainly Kaplan) and surprisingly great hacking. I don't mind the Pan-O TO snipers. I think there's not enough TO and ODD in the faction. When VIRD came out it started looking like they'd finally cracked a coherent plan about what Pan-O was supposed to be - a faction with stupidly well equipped LI - and it sort of excited me even though it's probably the last faction I'd play. I'm a tiny bit disappointed that WinterFor didn't present a problem that White Banner had to solve (i.e. how do you crack Jotum's stupidly high ARM and how do you fight a large number of TO/ODD troops on a budget?), and instead returned to mixing MO with LI and yet another horde of Fusiliers. Aleph also kind of steps a bit on Pan-O some feet in terms of theme and identity in a similar way to O-12, but mainly O-12 seem to be Aleph's shooty twin. I like the direction O-12 seem to be going, but I also think it's the direction that Pan-O should've been taken towards. I'm not sure I agree on the sectorials migrating towards "mono-build". Now, I don't mean there's one viable build, but as you write a small subset of must-haves surrounded by a few differing units to add seasoning. Certainly some factions seem to be built that way and among those I play IA is the biggest offender with all of about two viable types of builds, both of which plays very similarly. However, JSA is a great sectorial to hold as a counter-example with a large variety of different viable troops while retaining the overall focus and identity on trying to get to melee where they shine, and JSA isn't an old sectorial in the grand scheme of things. Equally, White Banner doesn't seem to have a specific stereotype and once you look past McMurrough Dahshat is actually quite varied. At the end of the day, I don't think CB needs to build sectorials around a specific unit to have that sectorial sell well or be well balanced. More than anything, it seems that sectorials break more when they're designed that way. I think, at least from my own purchasing habits, that making sectorials have several different answers and then relying on the strength of their game to have people buy several options instead of The Thing will result in a better long term sales. Re Yu Jing: They've still got that New Player article up for Yu Jing that recommends beginners to seek Yu Jing out for close combat and recommends the purchase of Oniwaban (edit: Shinobu specifically), unless they've taken it down in the past few months. Veterans know that's not what Yu Jing is about, but CB's pushing it. I still think they've got some way to go before you can call Yu Jing a C2 faction for real. They don't have monopoly on the C2 abilities the way Haqq has monopoly on Doctor+ and they don't have nearly as much C2 options and C2 support abilities as Nomads have hacking options and hacking support. But I'm happy as long as Yu Jing keeps getting the infantry armour problem worked on (problem being "how to make it prolific and affordable" which Yu Jing military complex seem to have cracked, but CB still hasn't)
PanO models don't look unified? I literally can't tell the difference between a Bagh HMG and a Kamau HMG from a glance. [emoji14] Part of my point is that it's mostly fine that PanO the faction is focussed more on its sectorials than say YJ or Haqq and that those sectorials all look superficially similar: play into that character and make it the faction focus and it can work. I do think Joan bears some responsibility for making Vanilla so limited. I'm also not really opposed to redundant profiles in Vanilla: ideally there's minor nuance differences that make both viable, but certain units that only really make sense in Sectorial are fine. But I do think that the direction CB has been going with Zulus, Helots, Nokken and even Locusts has added options to Vanilla that do open up synergies.
+100 to that. That would also explain what they intended to do with a unit/sectorial and would provide us the ability to give them specific feedback if they met their intent or not.
sorry, but nomad hacking power is less represented in nomads than TO/ODD in pano (lets remember that ODD is the nomad devide that they got when trying to obtain TO, and because of that Pano says its their, but nomads are not getting new units for it anymore, only 2 characters), and while it has some sinergies, most of them are in almost all factions in the game (except for having a hacker+engineer in the same profile and maybe some unused ones), it even got anti-sinergies (interventors in grenzer fireteam... great place for white noise or the almost-no-gain-krizaharis) on the other hand, the developement team seems focused on how to fix pano/yj things. They bended the lore of other factions (well, pano was also in that nice yet ignored little text) so pano could get their S6 TAGs. Actually, lore seems that is used as an excuse to give anything (but smoke) to pano, while to the other factions usually is "you cannot have this because lore, but we also cannot give more of your things because it would be broken". Only pano had got one of their units checked outside an standard update during this edition (while other had to wait years to be checked on since n2). What it feels to me, is that CB hears a lot more pano players than other faction players (same on YJ, but not so exagerated), and that maybe is the reason their sectorials are so similar in the end, instead of using new ideas and follow the original lore. An example is the new boyg. Is a dude with YJ tech...but instead of something from yj, they give FA, an skill that is "put more dakka and see if it survives". I am not saying if it is good or bad profile, I am only talking about how CB explained in the lore how to give pano an skill that lot of pano players wanted and ranted because it was not in sight for them, so they ranted and ranted until it got nerfed (is ok applying a -9 in SF when not all factions have access to MSV2, but it is not applying a -6 against pano, lol). Another is the fireteams...those 2 are highly organized armies, but their fireteams are usually more flexible and have access to more wildcards than other less organized armies, and the "they are newer" seems not a good reason to me, because that have been happening since the first NA2 arrived and the OOP sectorials got their review. I think the problem for pano vainilla being so behind is that, they have so much similar units that their sectorials don't have the "fewer options" handicap that other sectorials have compared to their vainilla. Also the disps on the sectorials are a bit too tweaked (really, flasbots at disp3 while the "remote factions" is limited to 1 should be seen as a problem). With all that in mind, why choose the vainilla, if I have access to almost the same (Except for a few really expensive units as TAGs, Aquila or swiss), with better disp of anything I want, and better disp to extra orders?
@Mahtamori I think we're talking about the same thing: it's about how many viable list archetypes there are. That being said, I disagree with JSA as a "new" sectorial. It's fundamentally an old-style sectorial with some updates: it's in a similar place to NCA. Even then there's an argument that it's relatively narrow (noting that this is about degrees). VIRD, TJC, Ramah, Shas, IA, Druze, StarCo and FoCo are all unambiguously narrow. Dashat, Ikari, Spiral and TAK I don't know enough about to say. But my feeling is that Ikari could easily be considered narrow. But let's just say they're all ambiguous. WB and SWF haven't settled. OSS, JSA and O-12 are the only unambiguously wide sectorials that have dropped since HSN3. Even if all the ambiguous ones are considered "wide", it's still only 50/50 ish. Whereas, I'd argue that only very few of the old school sectorials feel narrow: MO certainly and maybe USARF and Onyx. Bakunin oddly as well, but I think that's mostly because of how cruelled it's MI have been by the present meta: it has become narrower overtime (although that could be me given how familiar I am with it). The point being that narrow sectorials are over represented amongst new sectorials compared to older ones, so I think it's fair to say that CB has increasingly been embracing this paradigm.
@inane.imp We probably are talking about the same thing, but with JSA keep in mind that they had the opportunity to focus it further than it already was, to shed some units and focus it more towards how other aforementioned sectorials are focused, but they didn't. Instead they expanded the sectorial with one more HI (or two, depending on whether you think Shikami was accidentally released early or not), one more non-Ninja Skirmisher, and refreshed the bikers as well as significantly expanded Fireteam capabilities. Ikari is I feel like most NA2 sectorials and Varuna; utterly dominated by one specific gimmick. I am a bit blind to Tunguska, but it seems to me there's roughly 3 different kinds of lists (at least from what I've observed at tournaments) but those are somewhat similar to each other, so yes, maybe that makes them "narrow". I don't know if I agree that Shas is as narrow as that, though, I think that's mostly a meta thing. However, much like Ikari, Varuna and Dahshat, Shas is utterly dominated by a specific profile that's off the charts. What that does to player retention I haven't a clue, but I can imagine people may be turned off by the HeroHammer feeling that especially Dahshat and Shas (and for that matter, CA, Ramah and Haqq) can evoke. Most of all I think it's a matter of whether the sectorial offers different ways to approach a problem. E.g. whether it's a "Warband" a'la Wulvers, a LI a'la Fusiliers, or a HI a'la Zuyong, if a sectorial's list archetypes generally speaking start in the home zone, use no indirect weapons, and has roughly the same amount of orders, then it's for all intents and purposes the same way of playing. By that metric I'd classify Shas as "wide" together with OSS, and JSA, simply because it has roughly three primary different archetypes (possibly four, but no one has played Gwailo against me so I dunno if it is it all that different from NoxWithCheese). I have a strong feeling that White Banner will come to rest as "wide", particularly if they manage to fix the Shang-Ji issue and if Shaolin gets to form Fireteams or Fireteam-equivalents that Liang Kai's special Fireteam hints at. WinterFor I have no idea about, people seem to dislike it so much that I'm not sure I'll ever get to play them even though there's a bunch of new Pan-O players because of it. I haven't been able to get rid of my Pan-O units from the 2-player set at least Now, we may need to re-evaluate this if the hinted cost decrease on elite units in Code One comes true in N4 as well...
I think Winterfor really suffers from “designed for N4” issues. Assuming that both Locusts and Boyg get HD, in addition to the known N4 changes, then it actually becomes quite interesting. But we’ll see. I think you’re probably right about WB. Even relatively small list design changes can significantly shift where its offensive and defensive emphasis is, so it’ll feel different. I really like the design of most of WB: but it is kinda “YJ do Nomads”, so I would. Personally, the depth of being able to take the same ingredients and recombine them in numerous different ways to achieve different outcomes while retaining the same style is seeming that keeps me engaged with Infinity. If this was lost, to the extent that it became hard-locked as “well to get that outcome you should play X instead” it’d probably drive me away from the game (eventually). But equally I know people who do collect and play that way: indeed quite a few of the best players I know do it where they run just one or two archetypes of a sectorial. So they literally only just collect the models needed for that archetype plus a few extra to allow minor modifications. Then they play that until they’re “done” with it, and then put it on the shelf: to be touched rarely or never again. Part of CB’s problem is that the interests of these two sorts of players aren’t aligned. The second set of players need a conveyor belt of new or redesigned sectorials (with attendant miniatures) to be the next hot thing; whereas, the former want new ingredients added to old sectorials, coupled with resculpts to showcase old favourites in a new light. At present CB attempts to balance these interests, but I certainly feel that recently they’ve tended to new content over revamping the old. All that being said, I’m hopeful for N4 because I expect that we’ll see some of the shine taken out of the standout profiles, underperforming profiles potentially lifted but most importantly the meta being significantly shaken up to break up ossified archetypes and allow new ones to replace them. So from a direction POV: I think CB has been going new and narrow but they’re now likely to flatten everything out, allowing new archetypes to come through across the board.
I dunno how underpriced they really are. Compare them to a Spektr which is +1 BS +1 ARM +1 WIP over them, and is 7 more points? That's probably about right, with the way Infinity's pricing scheme works.
remember that some people says that spektr are one of the better TO while at the same time deffend that the MK2 PH is not so good. 7 points for those 3 attributes is high IMO. What I mean is that TO are usually in a strange possition to value them. Most of them are too expensive, while onlya few ones are fine there will be criticism, with or without that. But with that, we would know their reasons... now we just especulate (And see different treatment of factions, but not the reasons for that)
Honestly I'd say that's probably like, 3-4pts but who knows. I think they're probably priced right even, or close to it, but they're too efficient IMO.
