Point was that 50% chance of success is not particularly great odds compared to actual favourable matchups, say, an MSV 2 HMG against a skirmisher. She will deal with them eventually, and at very low risk, but it's not "as good as it gets in Infinity", which is the claim I responded to. Not that this particular scenario is likely to happen in real life anyway. It was just an absurd example that turned out to illustrate how useless KHDs are as an ARO against those kinds of hacking setups now.
I believe I said they were "good odds", not "as good as it gets" or "the best odds." If you're offered something like a 51% to 8% set of odds on a roll that's a pretty safe way to spend some orders to get a favourable outcome without much risk of a bad one, and they're better odds than actions that players frequently undertake with the hope that they will work, or do you mean to tell me you don't frequently see players use core linked HMGs (or HMG platforms like TAGs) to try bust their way through a linked ARO?
Something that I think about a lot in listbuilding is gear checks, and specifically how much of the game is predicated on them. Not bringing the tools to deal with potential threats is failing a gear check, but the variance comes in when a given threat requires a specific tool to handle, and the feelbads seem to go along with gear checks that are trivial for some factions and list-deforming for the others. For example, the effectiveness of Paramedics compared to N3 has expanded the range of factions that can incorporate some form of Wound recovery while only sacrificing a little utility from other areas. A linkable Paramedic is still less good than a linkable Doctor +3, but it’s often good enough. The gear check of “can your list heal?” is easier to pass with minimal tradeoffs in N4. Snipers in Core links—and particularly the ones carrying some combo of mimetism, marksmanship, or MSV—produce a list-deforming gear check. If you don’t bring tools specifically to deal with one, you can probably brute-force it with more general-use tools in a list, but it will suck and may not work at all. The gear check of “can your list cope with a core sniper tower?” is at least as hard to pass in N4 as N3, particularly given the change to MSV1. It’s not impossible, but bringing a list that isn’t built to handle a MSV sniper tower puts you on the back foot, which limits listbuilding options. N4 hacking for certain factions has become a gear check that is more burdensome than it used to be, and it seems to be up there with managing a sniper core. One of the problems that comes up, and has been discussed here, is that by the time your list passes a certain number of gear checks, you’ve had to make compromises that end up compromising your ability to do anything else with the list. It seems like the problem generally isn’t just hacking or link bonuses, it’s the distribution of tools among factions and the unevenness of the strength of those tools. Some factions can pass most or all of the gear checks with minimal need for compromises and while maintaining their own niche style, while others can pass the gear checks but become unrecognizable in the process, and others can’t pass all the gear checks no matter what you do with the list, and struggle as a result. IMO the question is really not just about specific mechanics, it’s about who has access to them and what else they can do simultaneously. You can introduce counters to Pitchers all day long, but unless you hand them out to everyone, all you’re doing is deciding what factions are guaranteed to fail the gear check, and making the bearer of that counter an auto-include that locks down a trooper slot in the lists of the other factions, harming list diversity. That process of “balancing” is how you eventually end up with netlisted and faction-determined rock-paper-scissors gameplay where as soon as you see the opponent’s army you know who is going to win the game. Ideally, every army should have a few different ways to pass a given gear check, and the method they have the most opportunities to use is what provides their faction identity. For example, there are several ways to handle camo: Sensor, high-WIP Discover, MSV Discover, and template intuitive attacks. If a faction has limited access to high WIP troops and no MSV, it really ought to have lots of options with Sensor, not just one Sensor that becomes an auto-include. Or worse if the one Sensor unit that should be an auto-include is a liability so it never gets used. When tool availability is more restricted, as opposed to tool quality, you end up with the rock-paper-scissors thing of “well you brought a camo list against the faction with all the visors and sensors and better guns, guess you’ll die.” For that reason, I really favor things that are as broadly applicable as possible. Allowing troopers within ZoC of a newly placed Pitcher repeater to ARO with dodge, BS Attack, or a hacking program as if they were responding to an AD trooper or grenade is broadly applicable and doesn’t depend on CB giving every sectorial a new kind of hacking device. Reducing the Reset penalties from various states or giving Trinity AP are both changes that would help most factions; even Ariadna would benefit from making Reset easier. You know what else would help? Making Loss of Lieutenant less of a screw-over for the receiving player. If they’re running a LT2 list they’re going to lose the LT’s Regular order and one LT order when they have to pick a new LT. It could also prevent spending Command Tokens, or cost a CT to assign the new LT, it could grant an Objective point or two, there are a lot of ways to make losing the LT impactful that don’t effectively cost the player a turn in a game that only gives you three turns at best. Nuking the LT with Jazz would still be good, but it’d make aggressive LTs more viable and likely improve list variety, and would tone down the level of devastation a pitcher alpha can inflict.
If you're removing LOL you just make the Lt special order non-transferable (outside of Mennommena). This means that losing the Lt loses 2 orders.
NCO would still work, just only if you didn't lose the Lt or had CoC. So it's still ideal for an active model that's likely to die with a passive / late-game Lt. CoC would need to drop on price. But it's the mechanically easiest way to manage "no LOL" - the penalty is the loss of the free order and whatever Mission objectives apply. Yes - no LOL would require balancing. But I think less than you'd think.
I think more when it comes to Nomads as the only real weakness people can point to is easy-to-identify Nomad LT ;)
Seeing how the things go, the fact that this change would buff Nomads only makes it more likely to actually happen ;P
I agree, but killing them and their CoC can be tricky when either or both are hiding under a Marker state that you can't attack such as IMP-2, which is one of few ways of protecting against LoL in the current... "rainy" climate
How does Jazz find a Camo'd KHD in her repeater net an easy victim exactly? She can't hack it. Hacking is good now, Nomads are good at it. Theyre the hacker faction. News at 11, finally Working As Designed. It's hardly unbeatable, and complaining about it doesn't change that. Jazz is a 1 wound super squishy keystone that lots of alpha strikers like impersonators can remove almost at will. And then what does a repeater net do for CJC? There are plenty of other Alpha predators in the game that are at least as dangerous. TAGS for one, Andromeda for another, wildcard Karhu for a third, charging JSA HI with linked Yuriko + Onis for a forth. Just because you can't beat something trivially doesn't make it unbeatable. Maybe you just need better tactics.
The context is the KHD(s) revealing themselves as an ARO to contest Jazz' hacking attempt on a critical target.
Why would you do that? Are we playing against people who don't understand odds? I'm not sure that's the example we should be looking at. At the very least you're gonna wait till your active when you have burst advantage. And hopefully your game plan isn't to just out hack the hacking faction by default or decide the game is broken.
That's all well and good to say, but in a lot of factions the tools aren't there to do anything about it. NCA takes a full turn to raid a DZ with an unhackable attack piece if everything goes to plan, and doesn't really have an effective solution for Morans on roofs anymore due to the Grenade Launcher nerf. ISS has one Ninja to play with before they're stuck just as badly if not more so. A sub-30pt piece should never require a full turn to dislodge using all the tools available to a faction, we don't even expect a Jotum to live that long under a faction's top-end firepower without at least needing to Guts back into cover and let things move again.
I feel that NCA players are sleeping on Locusts. To me as a Haqqislam player, they seem like great assassination pieces with stealth and infiltration. Especially the 25 point one with SMG and Wild Parrot. You have AVA 3 in NCA and they have a 45% chance for over infiltration. Does any one know if people have been exploring that option?
I have, personally. I've always enjoyed them, and with the changes in the various Immunities, they're a good way to get some Breaker in there. An SMG, BSG, and Breaker are a good trio to have, with the Breaker also having the option of being some species of Hacker for little extra cost.
A lot of armies are being potentially slept in to be honest, mostly due to this freaking pandemic and the consequent lack of tournaments.
