I need a little advice on how to deal with hacking heavy lists when fielding Invincible Army. When virtually everything is hackable, what are your techniques to avoid a repeater net? I ask because I played Battlegrounds with this list: Daoying hacker LT Bixie/Krit/ShangJesus/Rui Shi/Zu Yong shotgun Liu Xing MR Weibing Chaiyi Haidao sniper Warcor Opposing list was White Company: Karhu feuerbach x 2 Fusilier GML bot Peacekeeper shotgun x 2 Sensorbot x2 Liang Kai Haidao KHD Danavas Valerya Gromoz Beasthunter x 2 Guilang minelayer I admit the pain train had a lot of points tied up, but I could barely make it out of my deployment zone. Is this just the cost of having HI? Do I need more Zhanshis, or Lei Gong? Thanks!
Drop the Liu Xing Otto the danavas and watch the the whole repeater net be worthless. In a more serious Note. Againsg hacking heavy factions invincible army is starting on a very big backfoot. But yeah, zhanshi and the engineer from betrayal are a way to go. But that doesn't feel very invincible to me. I stopped playing invincible against armes with very capable hacking. The invincible have a lot of issues and I honestly don't think that the Trade of between vanilla and invincible army is worth it as it is now. Weich is a shame because the minis and the idea of an all HI force is Rad!
Am I right that if I drop the Liu Xing on a hacker (which I wanted to do but alas, failed the PH roll), Valerya Gromoz could hacker through the Danavas's device? Also there was a beasthunter right there that would have flamed the Liu Xing. It felt very uphill from the start. Also, man the Karhu feuerbach is no joke! Talk about an overtuned unit.
No, other hackers can hack through repeaters, but not through each other's devices. For that to work, the hacker would have to have a repeater on its profile as well as a hacking device. There may well have been a repeater deployed protecting the Danavas and doubling up the hacking areas, but not the way you think. Liu Xing always solves problems in your mind easier than it does on the table. Often better to walk on and shoot things outside hacking area!
Thanks for clarifying! I had never used the Liu Xing so I wanted to try the starfall explosion. As a rule I walk on but decided to try for an exciting appearance - should've known. I think a Zhencha would have also had trouble.
The most obvious option is to give yourself some more options with the Haidao KHD in the link instead of the Zuyong Shotgun. You get a boarding shotgun anyway, it's two points cheaper, and you can try and trinity through the enemy repeater if you run into it. The Tinbot protection stacks onto your KHD model, though unfortunately the opponent will have the benefit of their repeater and the Haidao doesn't have great BTS. Another smart idea is to build models into your list and/or link that aren't hackable. Lei Gong is a good choice - if you need to clear a repeater he can move out and do the job without getting bricked and he also helps vs MSV AROs. There aren't a lot of other options in IA, though Zhencha or token state models can sometimes move past repeaters or hackers and shoot back at them. The new ITS season brings CSU or Bashi for some missions, so give you a little extra flexibility for non hackable units in this role in the right missions. It's also worth considering 3 man links instead of a pain train. They can often get most of the work done but are easier to move on the table maintaining cover and keeping them safe.
I am thinking more on 3 man. Bixie has Stealth so she got pretty far but still got isolated in the end. Thanks!
This is one of the few things Gao is good with since his ECM stacks with a tinbot. A Haidao engineer is good too. But he can be bricked too.
Wait, ECM -stacks- with a Tinbot? Anyone got a rules reference for that? [Since the wiki is down I’m having trouble finding rules.] Having those stack seems… uh, excessive. Especially because there’s no way to punch through ECM, and Tinbots can only be hacked via Oblivion on the bearer, hard to do and high order cost. I guess you can also Jammer them but again, very conditional/difficult. A massive cover-like modifier you can’t annul seems like bad design for Hacking. Hacking can be done from anywhere on the board these days so protections against it should be a bit more difficult to avoid or move than Cover or Mimetism for example, but if ECM and Tinbot can stack there’s practically zero chance to get through any F to F roll. Dangit, 4th ed needs an Icebreaker program that can halve Firewall penalties.
Got a rules reference for that? Seems like a bad enough idea to stack them that I really need to see where this is written.
It's the basic rules of MODs. They stack unless something says otherwise and neither ECM nor Firewall says they don't stack with each other so it's no different than getting -3 from range, -3 from cover and -6 from Mimetism-6.
Okay source of stacking rationale makes sense thanks. Still going to look it up in detail in the rules just to be sure we’re not missing something, because the effects on a hacker with ECM (Scylla, for example) are pretty egregious. She’s still only ECM -3 & Tinbot -3 in that SP, which isn’t broken yet. But if anyone ever gets even ECM -3 & Tinbot -6 they would be Jazz-levels of broken. If it gets up to -6 & -6 they would be effectively unhackable, terrible idea unless it’s an EVO with zero offensive programs. Note that I do NOT think stacked Tinbots and ECM are a problem on non-Hacker units, since they can only fight back against hacking with con conventional attacks. It’s only hackers who are protected both defensively and offensively by an ECM/Tinbot combo who would be broken. No different mathematically, but very very different outcomes. Cover, range, mimetism mods can all be overcome pretty easily, and are widely available. ECM is currently impossible to remove or get around at all (I think, anyone see another way to strip a stat in the game?). Tinbots are basically impossible to remove/annul for 90% of armies without getting really really lucky with an Oblivion (since you’re hacking that overprotected hacker directly, chances are maybe single-digits of your hacker winning, with nasty consequences of the likely F to F loss making a repeat attempt very unlikely). Jammers are an option, but you’re attacking a unit likely to have high WIP and BTS, with your exhaustable Jammers. Even if you had repeated attempts from a super safe position it might take you a whole order group to get there, try repeatedly, reload repeatedly, etc. and try what, 4 times over maybe 10 orders? Tohaa could do it with Eraser iirc? But yeah, a single army… There needs to be a counterplay to strip or lower Tinbot protection on hackers in Infinity, and the need is even MORE serious now that we have hackers stacking ECM and Tinbot. We need an Icebreaker program on KHDs NOW, damnit. Target: Hacker, B2, STR13, DA ammo, halves Tinbot mods. This really, really needs to get fixed before they (inevitably) allow an ECM hacker to stack with Tinbot -6 in a link someday. (The likely culprit will be Scylla with Orcs in SAA, once they get around to actually revising and re-releasing that force).
We had one in N3, although I recall it being fairly rare (although roided hackers were also much less common and hackers in general were kept in much better check). I'd be hesitant to do something like your DA ammo suggestion on an Icebreaker-like program, because it's very easy for something like that to become an optimal pick in general cases as well. On a more positive note, Tinbot-6 seems to be firmly YJ and Nomads (...because of course it is) territory, so it limits what combinations there are to worry about somehwhat. In the case of YJ, it seems like a very intentional trade off for our mostly mediocre hacking abilities across the board, and hard limitations on what hacking tools we do get access to. Nomads, on the other hand, is going to be less held back in that regard. If our power creep in the aforementioned direction is inevitable, it will likely manifest there.
Good for goose - good for gander. Having these stack isn't much of an issue most of the time. The only real issue is when CB lets factions be good at hacking offence, hacking defence, and hacking force multipliers all at the same time. That's perhaps bad faction design rather than a mechanics issue, neither N3 Shang-Ji Hacker nor N4 Qiang Gao is breaking any metas. Can't really have hacking be a main feature of the game while only letting a minority of factions participate beyond being a target dummy.
ECM stacking with Tinbot isn't a problem at all if it's only on Gao, or potentially one or two other models. Hacking is a thing, but there's no game design principle that says hacking should be the answer to locking down every model in IA. Nomads is still going to be a horrible match-up for an IA pain train, with or without Gao. Also, general opinions are that hacking along with GML is overpowered at the moment, so having an LT choice that can't easily get nailed that way is pretty useful. And still I don't think I've heard of anyone taking Qiang Gao.
Lt. with ECM Guided-6 - when? I don´t think ECM Hacking -X is a thing. As already mentioned only a very few units can profit from that and even then hacking is not impossible, only very hard to achiev. Gun down the Tinbot then instead.
