Even @Teslarod agrees that they're insufficient as it stands in ARO. The odds for say for your classic Zero/Ninja kind of skirmisher camo KHD trying to act as an ARO obstacle to something as mild as a Druze HD that dumped a pitcher on your links is 54% to 13% for the KHD to get bricked, and we're on the lower end of the stat spectrum here. If your opponent is running around with Valerya, Danavas, Jazz or worse as it goes up the food chain your odds just go from shit to shitter.
Some times I don’t understand you at all, @Teslarod which is surprising when I generally almost always agree with much of what you’re saying. You’re suggesting spamming like, what... 9? Regulars for shell games AND minelayers + the Hacker(s) at the same time? Well, I mean that would solve the lieutenant issue but that’s like saying cutting off your arm solves your issue with skin rash, I mean yes... but sounds like you’re crippling yourself in order to make that work. How is Dart, let alone Tikbalang, solving any issues with Pitchers? And no, I haven’t forgotten about Scylla, it’s just that she doesn’t work the way you’re imagining she works. She’s hardly a good deterrent for Pitchers “slicing” your link in ARO and with the way you’re describing repeater coverage in DZ, does that mean you have 3 flash pulses along with God knows how many Regulars, Scylla, Naga AND a functional army that brings attack pieces? I don’t get it, that sounds like you would struggle to hit the point cap and model cap before you’re even done with making a shell list. Also, you’re suggesting me to burn 3SWC on Hackers with LGL and Combi rifles in one of the most SWC-heavy armies in the game? Why? The castling technique with AVA:T Minelayers is fine, but you’re mistaking your enemy with normal units. Duroc or the Rape Bear doesn’t care about anyone of those mines nor about hacking, neither does the suicidal robot monkey that literally lands on top of your link and brings a boarding shotgun for what ever it failed to kill on the landing. What confuses me the most, is that you were adamant on Nomads being nearly impossible to breach due to “armies” of Koala, Mines, Libertos Hacking and a very safe Lt. and what not. However, from reading your post above, it sounds like Acon is “better” at protecting their Lt. than Nomads? I mean, I won’t put words in your mouth but that’s how I read it. If that’s the case then I will stridently, although respectfully, disagree.
If you truly truly truly believe that excessive hacking is somehow a problem in ITS play (i cant believe wtf I am reading here, it is some silly alien speak probably caused by a year of no irl games and big tournaments) for your army maybe you should invest in khds that can sink orders or win hacking ftfs on aro.
I live in a place with no Covid, it was stamped out early and I've been free to play N4 the whole time. You on the other hand, have you even opened up Army recently and considered that not every faction can actually put up hackers that can attempt to fend off these attacks? Certain Vanilla factions are particularly susceptible to it as they can't even guarantee firewall bonuses if they go second. Generally speaking this idea of long ranged AROs only works if you are in a group that doesn't play with intent and pie slicing. If you do play with intent, normally it's very simple to land a pitcher in range of the ARO piece. This is assuming that you're playing against a faction that actually puts up a scary long range ARO piece and not say a faction that can't really offer that and you just use a gun fighter to shoot a TR bot level threat dead first then use the pitcher.
Me: My linked Jazz will land my Pitcher here, any ARO’s? You: No. Me: My Linked Jazz will move 0” with her first short-skill, any ARO’s? You: YeS mY 200 iQ pLaCeD kHd WiLl ReVeAl ItSeLf AnD ArO wItH tRiNiTy ThRoUgH yOuR -6 tInBoT fIrEwAlL!! Me: Lulz, okay. I will hack you back with +1B Trinity
That scenario comes out to a 85% to 3% in favour of Jazz killing the skirmisher KHD, just for those at home watching fatherboxx make his usual brand of low IQ posts on the forums.
AND THEN SUDDENLY BEAR COMES OUT OF NOWHERE AND BITES YOUR LEGS OFF! Well, obviously he'll wait until you swap link leader and start shooting or something to force you one or another
Jazz doesnt have +1B Trinity please refresh your army app if you consider this something THAT backbreaking (and not a goddamn casino of coinflips that it really is, starting with trying to land pitchers on 11s across the field) just take two naga khds they are dirt cheap and she is unlikely to win ftfs against both Corregidor player relying on Jazz superhaxxorz powers (she is a stupidly optimized profile I agree but it is still a 1w model) and willingly engaging in infowar against non-TAGs instead of running 1st turn the old dog with a sword or new 1.5W units or monster gecko is an idiot in my opinion
Yeah, KHDs don't work in ARO anymore. They're actually directly inferior to some units they need to protect against in the active turn. They need to be used as active assassins, with Cybermask to let them take an advantageous position before securing the kill with a full-burst Trinity. Problem is this sinks orders like nothing else in the game save maybe trying to use an unlinked Metro's Grenade Launcher for a purpose other than comedy. On reflection, the fact this takes so many orders to do right is probably why easy repeater projection is more of an issue than actual Hacking power.
Wrong again. With Zewrath's example even at B1 vs B1 against a Naga Jazz is favoured 40% to 9% to kill the Naga, and she has 3 dice to split not two, she's 62% to 6% versus the other Naga. Very likely Jazz murders both Nagas without incident and then moves on to deal with whatever it was she was chasing in the first place with that pitcher.
Oh yes for sure, my suggestion was to make them spend their orders killing the ARO piece instead of the target they want to go after with their pitcher. They can shoot it with an HMG or pie-slice a pitcher out there and shoot it with guided, either way you're hoping to eat enough orders that they can't then throw another repeater and target something you want to protect. Of course, as always some of the best ARO pieces are the ones in camo.
one of the ftfs is a coinflip (17 vs 14) and even on firewalled bts you shouldnt engage in coinflips in this game
Thought: Maybe give EVO Hackers a program that hits *everything* in Hacking range with a strong program on bad odds, to force a face-to-face? Kind of like how a DTW works, but for Hacking. Lore-wise Repeaters are used because they allow a network to be spread without the enemy being able to bring their full national computing might down on the poor Hacker, and EVO devices are uplinked directly to military command centres. Putting one of those under a Repeater should have dire consequences for anyone on the network who isn't prepared for it.
Those are multiple possible approaches to solve the same problem. Generally I'd expect something like 5-7 Regulars in an Acon List. 3-4 naked Regulars for Lt shellgames spread across the board. You'd be very lucky to get more than 1 with a Spotlight into Guided kill turn 1. Similar for an assassination run with a Finday or whatever shouldn't be able to get to 2 potental Lts without certain death. Why are you assuming we're gonna carpet the DZ with Mines? 1-2 are all we need to mess with Impersonators and AD and that much is basically auto include in SAA. This is PanO. If you can't hit the point cap add a FB Orc, Dragao, Tik, Dart and Nagas until you're out. You can never have enough points even if 10 of your guys cost 8-10 points. Quote me on that Nomad part, that looks a bit out of context. Nothing is impossible, especially not cracking Nomad Lt security. It's one of their weakest points if you're willing to gamble your game on guessing. The trick is preventing your opponent from exploiting that reliably if you can't be invulnerable. Nomads can reasonably secure an Interventor Lt and be fine unless they go second vs Spec Fire and the other guys feels like gambling his turn on it. Not my style, I'd prefer 3+ Moderators/Alguaciles & a KB HMG for shellgames or something (heck I don't think you have much use for Interventors with Jazz existing). The whole point of having 3+ believable Lt candidates is to make sure your opponent has to gamble on guessing right being worth it over killing your more expensive troops. Nothing you can about the opponent running Duroc. Don't make me your stawman, not a fan of your funny examples. I argue the whole point that someone should be able to guess your Lt reliably and dump repeaters in range on 14s. The whole scenario is unrealistic if you put in some effort to prevent it. You don't need an ARO in the pitcher if you don't let the pitcher walk up to the middle line unopposed.
It's actually not 40% vs 9%, if you check those links Jazz is on WIP 14, I forgot to give her her +3 MOD for Trinity. When she's fixed to attack at WIP 17 it's 51% to 7% Well that'd be great if they were being fired from the middle of the table but they're being fired at me from deployment zones usually.
No no, the scenario was that the reactive player reveals two KHDs to force Jazz to split her burst. She's 40% to wound the one she only sends one burst against, and 60% to wound the other one.
I cant input anything in that calculator and I dont care because unlike noted idiot crybaby Triumph I prefer to play this dumb game instead of playing with calculator in a game that is very resistant to being mathhammered that way (because you roll dice on everything like in rpg) but my example (jazz vs two nagas bc poor acon and poor orc LTs apparently) is engaging in two ftfs one of which you are likely to win but not likely to eliminate the target (trinity is not shock anymore and nagas have dogged) and the other one you are engaging in a coinflip of 17 vs 14 - if you lose that one, you have 25% to go unconcious and hope that your daktari can patch you up and at that point some resources have been wasted in a real game you also have wasted orders on reloading pitchers bc you dont pick tsyklons in n4 and rely on heroic 11bs of jazz and rethink your life choices because your order pool is thinned and you havent yet activated morans or the dogg who would have wrecked face in that situation
I see, I read that out of context, thanks for elaborating. But even then, you are looking at two rather unreliable attempts to wound the nagas (60/50%). And that's not even factoring in the amount of resources you expended in getting that whole link team into LOF and landing that BS 11 pitcher (disposable 2) successfully.
