I think you're missing the point of what this exercise was trying to achieve. This was not an attempt at "fixing" the IA that we have. That journey would lead to a very different place as inherently its trying to address power level or minor rules oddities as opposed to looking at how you could build a sectorial from the ground up to play in a very different way. What I was doing was attempting to show what IA could've looked like had CB stuck to the central premise of the lore around the Invincible Army itself (i.e. entirely power armour equipped "new model army" that changes the way wars are fought - or at least working towards that goal) and what I'm very much not doing is attempting to tweak existing profiles for balance improvements. The only bits of lore I changed were for specific units that didn't fit into that initial high level goal. Why are the primary specialists in the current Invincible Army from the navy instead and for that matter what do any of their skills have to do with being in the navy? (snipers, chain of command but from an entirely different force, wildcard, etc). Well constructed designs for anything are fictionally consistent, mechanically consistent and ludo-narratively consistent. The current IA sectorial fails on at least two of those counts (fiction and ludo-narrative). To go back to the idea of "fixing" IA for a moment that would be addressing the current mechanical failings only while I'm trying to address issues with all three. Of course, I'm not expecting CB to make these changes. They've made their version of the sectorial and it is what it is but starting a discussion that gets them to think more holistically about how they can align all three of those design considerations in future will hopefully up the quality bar for future releases.
I put together a few quick lists above and none of them feel overly strong compared to a lot of lists out there. So please give me an example of this overpowered list? I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I'd be far more interested in specific examples of how it is too strong that don't also ignore some of the weaknessed built into the sectorial.
I was keeping the Holo2 for consistency and because it allows use of Holo1 to pretend to be a RuiShi. The reason I mention albedo was because of the heavy flamer present on the Lu Duan that isn't on the Rui Shi and I've known albedo users to try to close range on the Rui Shi to avoid the spitfire rangebands to really swing the fight in their favour (plus use of cover combined with albedo mods - all countered with the flamethrower).
Personally I think they should use their points calculator as a first draft for the unit price and then modify it appropriately. The value of a point of BS changes depending what weapon is being used (or the other way around but they are mutually dependent). Once you fix that you can start applying frenzy on troops that should have it rather than changing profiles with skewed skills/equipment just to make the points cost work. However, if you read the preface at the start of my initial post you'll note that I'm attempting to build a sectorial from the current rules and costs that CB use. Also, I'm attempting to address discrepancies between the miniatures and the unit fiction and the faction fiction rather than just rebalance the sectorial.
Absolutely agreed but with this rework I was attempting to rebuild a new interpretation of a sectorial within the current rules rather than fix the rules. So this (and the rest of @Janzerker 's post) was more the kind of conversation I was hoping to start :) What are the key things about the background of this unit: Developed from jungle fighting on Paradiso Repurposed for hostile/hazardous environment combat Used for night raids? The Daiyoukai was built from the same development program Key things about the model: Its an S5 Heavy Infantry and a heavy/reinforced one at that It has mimetic camo materials It has some giant containers/cylinders (ammo? cooling? power? atmosphere?) on its back It's carrying a heavy weapon in one hand Key things about the faction: It needs to avoid stepping on the role of the Yan Huo in terms of raw firepower heavy support Should this unit be the active turn heavy attack unit and the Yan Huo is more reactive or vice versa given the background of each? So, are there other considerations that we should be making here or is that list a good starting point? If we're good with the list of what we're attempting to achieve with the unit then it gets a lot easier to talk about what would be appropriate for it rather than considering the efficiency of weapon X vs weapon Y.
I think, in the spirit of fairness and honesty, that if you think that CB are going to be taking design leads from your redesign you are setting yourself up for disappointment, and that a better use of your time would be playing games with IA as they are rather than clinging to your pre-IA conceptions of what IA would be.
Hardly what Ben set out to do. Remember to read the OP sometime before posting. Doubtful he expects CB to heed any of the changes he'd like to see. My own thoughts on IA are is it is a great idea but the execution of it is rather lacking (kind of like Uprising). There were some omissions (Tigers, Daofei, and Sun Tze) that were head scratchers. Some new Additions that fell short (Liu Xing and Hulang). And some welcomed additions (Daoying, Mowang, and Haidao). But as a whole it was a let down. At least it gave vanilla some new toys to bolster its ranks after JSA left.
That sounds a bit counter-productive. Aren't they better off not-playing IA if it doesn't work for them so CB doesn't get false data on usage and satisfaction? Also, if you're able to get games in during downtimes such as lunch breaks, spontaneous bursts of boredom during evenings, or during your commute to and from work, then I envy you.
Well... if they don't like the product, why should they use it. Wouldn't you say it's counter-productive to spend time using a product you don't like? Also consider that one activity requires a second person and at least two hours of dedicated gaming time, not counting setup, while the other can be done on the shitter. These two activities aren't exactly mutually exclusive.
I would not say that is counter productive I think clinging to a vision of something that doesn't exist is an exercise in disappointment however
*shrug* sounds like a you problem. I wouldn't assume anyone is clinging to anything without some serious evidence to the fact.
As noted elsewhere in this thread (including the original post) I have no expectation of CB making this. As @Solodice noted above I think the execution of IA wasn't what it could've been but it is what it is. However, I also think that they could achieve a lot more with the ruleset they have if only they fix some of the contradictions within their product. That doesn't mean going back and making a special exception to completely rework a sectorial/faction (unless it's an edition change of course) but it does mean looking carefully at how to improve things going forwards. Designs get better when they are critiqued, when we question our thinking about how and why we made the designs we created, when we learn from our successes and mistakes to iterate on the work and iron out all the rough edges. I know this because I've worked as a game designer for almost twenty years in teams small and large and that is probably the one fundamental rule that has held true throughout that time. The other big realisation that comes from working as a designer (or a professional artist or musician) is that it is a job. Yes, you want to entertain your audience/players. Yes, you get a lot of satisfaction out of the creative endeavour of making something (on most projects). But ultimately you are making a product that needs to sell and there are certain tools you use to do that. In the case of something like Infinity it would be a tactically rich ruleset which promotes more decisions in a game compared to many of the competitors out there, a vibrant setting and background that gives context to what's happening on the table and fires the imagination of players, wonderfully sculpted models that appeal to the artist in each of us, etc. Each of those things appeals to a different person (see something like Quantic Foundry as an example of how this can be broken down in more detail) so that the reach of your game is as big as possible. While the benefits of that reach are good in terms of bonus customers it also creates an extra burden on the design side of your product as they all need to be telling the same story. When there is content from CB talking about how they're putting more thought into the materials used on the models (from memory I believe it was the Red Veil video talking about the Dao Fei) and how that reflects the rules that's fantastic. The art and the rule set are telling the same story. When you see the same material used on a Liu Xing and it has no rules in that space (camo, mimetism, ODD, albedo, etc) your brain questions it. You've been taken out of what should've been a joyful moment and placed in a negative space because things don't quite add up and you're trying to work out why. Did they just make a mistake with the model? Maybe I misremembered what that material was for? That happens once, you're most likely to put it down to bad luck, some vagary of the playtest process or the like. But if it keeps happening it undermines trust in the rest of the product. The questions start becoming maybe CB were lying before? Maybe they don't really know what they're doing afterall and it was luck that got them here? Maybe I should play that other game over there where at least I know what I'm playing... I get that is an extreme example but as you pointed out, you look elsewhere in this sub-section of the forum, particularly in the hundred plus pages on Uprising there was already a lot of trust lost. Each time this happens there are players who get a step closer to leaving the game (they've generally made a big personal investment in the game so it will take more than one step) or potential players who are one step further away from joining the game. From a financial perspective that's bad in the immediate term but also it has a compound effect where the social connections holding communities together also start to break down which is another step for those players (and the people they play against in their local gaming scene too). So, as I said at the start, I'm not expecting this redesign to get made. What I would hope is that CB see how they're falling short in their holistic design process and how that could be losing them players. If you spend several years telling players about the Invincible Army and what it is in the narrative you should probably try to release a set of profiles that allow players to use the thing you were telling them they'd get. If you've got a trusting player base then you get more leeway with that but coming off the back of Uprising I don't think CB could've picked a worse time to fail in that regard (even if I think they probably tried to help by rushing it out the door a little to make up for the mess that was Uprising). In short, I want the game to live up to its potential as I don't think it's managing that right now. Which isn't to say that it's bad, just that it could be great (and it wouldn't take much to make that shift in thinking).
And drop any pretenses about HI-heavy lists' playability :P I have a (possibly false) impression that CB is getting the memo that Infinity heavies (using the term broadly here) are overcosted and dialing back on discounts and optimization is the opposite of what is going to happen to this game. And while we're in transition phase, you'll keep hearing complaints that Infinity suffers from "40k new edition codex syndrome" when new stuff is more competitive because it uses new design philosophies while older stuff is not being hotfixed immediately.
Your posts in this thread are generally too long for me to bother with but this makes me think I should because it feels very familiar. It very much explains what made me apathetic about INFINITY for close to a year. That I am coming back to the forums to complain is a positive sign, at least I am interested, but that period where I didn't care about what happened to INFINITY at all broke my pokemonitis and I doubt it will recover.
Yeah, I'm in a similar position. I used to have a really bad case of pokemonitis, at least for the factions/sectorials I played, that I would buy all the new releases for my armies. I haven't bought a new Infinity release since JSA/Uprising. The messed-up thing is that CB can hotfix all the points changes immediately via Army. I don't know how the data is held in the Army database, but if the unit points cost field was a calculated one that referenced back to a single master points formula (critical part) making a change to the points formula in the Army database would automatically roll that change out to every model. Since CB (justifiably) wants to keep the points formula private, I think they'd need to make a separate unit database that copies values (not formulas) into the Army database. Bit of a pain in the ass to set up initially, but once it's done it's pretty easy to maintain.
That's true, and that makes any related issues we can think of more jarring, especially when you have examples like PP (who also use an app) rolling out balance patches almost as often as online video game developers do. Well, there are other concerns to pay attention to when it comes to newer designs. Namely, plain access to something that can shoot straight or linkability of said something, for example, makes a world of difference without making a blip in point costs of specific profiles unless they are gamed with, sort of. And that requires individual approach. Although centralized calculations would be at very least useful for CB to quickly review any changes concerning actual costs. Chances are, they do use something like that internally.
Here's some shower thoughts on what I'm missing in IA. 1. Solution to Varuna style lists. 2. Solution to Tunguska style lists. 3. Bodies. 1. Varuna lists tend to be designed with a castle that's hard to crack and Orcs that supplement their Core and/or Haris as attack pieces. In order to crack this you need to either be able to properly lower the castle's to-hit chances through Nimbus or avoid it through Eclipse/White Noise, and to defend against them you need to target their weakest link - which is their strongest link - through Hackers and Repeaters and make navigating objectives with their Orc in tow hell or grenades in order to avoid directly confronting the superior firepower of the Kamau and targeting their means of pushing buttons or supplying said Firepower. Additionally, with a large number of camouflage tokens it's very strange that the faction that's long prided itself on the number of Sensor units it can field suddenly have nearly no options to do so. Never mind the Jammers for once. 2. Tunguska style lists are simply put quantity of hackers supplemented with massive repeater nets. Stuff that don't have Pitchers have Repeaters or are Assault Hackers waiting to make your 10 HI into 10 statues. In order to combat this you need actual explosive grenades, not those less-lethal nonsense that Tai Sheng carries and because Hacking is even less a quality game than shooting is (really, a Shang-Ji at 45 points is basically as competent as a 25 point Wildcat), and you need sufficient range with them to outrange a Zone of Control. It's weird how one of the game's few 100% military sectorials (most of the others are security forces - paramilitary police) has so little access to grenade launchers. Or you need a repeater net of your own. 3. Simply put, IA is the only sectorial without a skirmisher-style low cost body. No sub-25 "Gangbuster" that slows people down, no 29 point Ninja to hide near buttons they can push, no 18 point Hunzakut to be cheap camo-delayer, no (throws a dart on the Ariadnan table of contents) SAS. In fact, Yu Jing is a bit bad in this department as well as Hacking, other than Kuang Shi there's very little that's Made In China cheap. With nearly everything priced 30+, it's very difficult not to by no choice of your own make lists that is very "Vanilla, but more limited" or "Tunguska, but without Hacking" or "Dahshat, but without McMurrough and Libertos" 3b. As an alternate solution to this one, completely flipping who has Tactical Awareness would probably do it. Remove it from the heavy guns and put Tactical Awareness on all Zuyong and Shang-Ji that currently don't have it. So. What's needed: Tai Sheng needs Grenades, not Stun Grenades.* Zuyong needs Grenades, not extra pistols. Mowang needs Light Grenade Launchers, not more direct fire missiles.** Krit Kokram needs Light Grenade Launchers, not Automedikits. Hulang needs to become Shaolin Monks in Power Armour with the corresponding points drop. Zhencha Boarding Shotgun needs a Deployable Repeater or Pitcher. Remove Wildcard from Son-Bae (this is a great Wildcard unit for light infantry sectorials, Heavy Infantry should not need this) Add Wildcard to Weibing. And seriously, CB has designed two perfect basic statlines for Shang-Ji; Tai Sheng and Qiang Gao. Both would keep costs nearly the same, but would increase utility greatly which this unit badly needs. * This is more for fluff sensibilities than actual gameplay ** They can be loaded with different types of 'nades for flavour
