You were talking about Impersonators assassinating obvious LTs, not sure where the hackers are coming into this.
ISO isn't a functional kill. It's a temporary albeit major inconvenience that can be leveraged into game changing effects. There are numerous ways it's weaker than a Null state. Possession is mostly a Command Token tax and is extremely order inefficient if you need to deal with Fairy Dust. But fair, it is existential. Yes, Trinity is slightly more viable (still essentially a dumb call because it's vs 2 x Oblivion AROs that benefit from SS and Tinbot -6) but that's the point: literally you're complaining about Interventors and won't accept any response that isn't "This will allow me to trivially kill Interventors through their own Repeaters with a KHD." You refuse to even engage with any discussion that argues for a lesser solution (your responses have been essentially "but that won't work vs BTS9"). Oppressive Repeater nets are far more widespread an issue than just Vanilla Nomads and TJC. KHDs alone aren't a good response to multiple Hackers simultaneously through their own Repeaters. Where I'd agree that KHDs are particularly weak is in ARO: I can see the use of a WIP+3 B1 DAM 14 AP+DA program to allow KHDs to be used in a more defensive role sitting inside enemy Repeaters (ie. the a combination of the old Skullbuster/Sucker punch in their ARO roles). At B1 its active potential would be a lot weaker, but it's strong enough that it can't be ignored like a Trinity ARO occasionally can. This minimises the concern that an AP KHD program would make BTS mostly irrelevant as a defensive stat in the Reactive.
Hecaton's Hacker issue is basically an Interventor issue. Most Interventors are Obvious Lts. Therefore Impersonators assassinating Obvious Lts is a mitigation to Hecaton's Interventor issue.
I guess I was talking about both since Interventors are both, and Nomad (linked) hackers, including Interventors are what was being dog piled on in this thread. Same basic idea applies to a keystone linked hacker (Like Jazz) tho Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Oh, well sure naturally anyone with an impersonator stands a far better chance of dealing with one of these hackers if they can go first. That doesn't fix the issue of getting shitblasted by them if you go second though so it's still a total crapshoot.
Yes I agree but people aren't saying it's 'a crap shoot' here. There are a lot of alpha strike strategies that are pretty powerful if you could guarantee first. But they are also a crap shoot, since you can't, just like this one. So you have to mitigate to win more often. And we're more accustomed to them, so they don't seems so much like the be all and end all.
I think you'll find the main difference is all these other alpha strike strategies have ways to either really slow them the fuck down or force them into trading. The whole hacking system we have right now is by far in comparison low risk to use. Yeah maybe you can get punished if you constructed a list to have a dead obvious LT and then also made it a high priority hacker someone would gladly suicide an Impersonator into, but that's also a very much self inflicted wound. You don't have to make that Interventor the LT anymore than I have to make my hackable HI an LT (and hence, they're normally not an LT), MO players basically spent half an edition bitching about how badly they wanted out of being forced into hackable LTs for a reason. As far as Interventors as LTs I don't personally think it's a great idea while the whole public WIP thing is a thing (that was a shit change really in N4).
Shitblasted is still mostly Guided. Which pretty much everyone agrees should be nerfed. Honestly part of what's not healthy for the game is the fact a lot of counters are hard counters that require particular success in the Lt roll or other chancy dice rolls. If you win the roll you win the game, if you lose then that's game against you (obvious hyperbole is obvious): T1 Guided, Impersonators, some AD and some TAG play falls into this category. Infinity is FAR healthier when the game doesn't hinge on a single dice roll. It's one of the reasons I don't like Possession: I'd much prefer Possession that automatically went away at the States step but was compensated by a higher cost for TAGs. Another example is Jotums, I've suggested could do with dropping back to ARM8 but changing to 4Ws so that they can't entirely ignore not-AP AROs (I haven't mathed it out, but I *think* that overall you end up with a slight reduction in survivability - but it's entirely possible this is an absurdly bad idea and just makes them harder to kill) and are less able to go "I've killed all your AP, guess I win then". It's one of the reasons I love soft AROs and think that Guided is a problem: widespread soft AROs don't immediately take something off the table, they just cause issues in how you use it. Guided allows you to leverage that good option in an abusive way. I'd love to see more soft AROs (ie. Dazed, -3 to all rolls, stackable) while simultaneously toning down mechanics that can tend to "huh, I rolled well. Guess I win" . Overall a distinct impression I get is that N4 balance is more on a razors edge than N3: so while the game may still be well balanced a match can rapidly snowball in one players favour with less ability for their opponent to recover.
Nah. I brought this up elsewhere and lots of people insisted it was fine. As far as possession goes, I think it should just kinda disappear. I don't think it needs to be in the game except as a fluff note (like Goodnight).
Welcome to Nomads. This is a big thing people miss when they say stuff like Nomads have everything and no weaknesses. Guess what, they don't have CoC and they do have obvious, often squishy, often Hacker Lts as their best / easiest options. Especially now with 15 trooper cap and public Lt WIP which makes it harder to take a dummy Lt. You're welcome ;) And yet, it's somehow the end of the world when Nomads get a way to scalpel out things, way less order efficiently - a capacity many other factions have had for ages.
Again, entirely self inflicted wound. There was nothing forcing you to take the Interventor as an LT there was a perfectly serviceable Securitate option as well. See @Zewrath's comments about making a huge mistake by making his LT hackable when playing white banner and has since stuck to paying SWC to hide his shit under a camo marker.
Given how many likes my "nerf Guided, make Repeaters easier to counter, rebalance Jammers, look at internal balance between Hacking programs" post has gotten - I feel it's fair to say that yeah a lot of people do agree that Guided is a problem (and a lot of those people play factions who can trivially exploit it). Pretty much everyone was probably hyperbolic, so yeah - that's a fair cop. I largely agree with Possession: it'd allow TAGs to increase in price again.
Except its not perfectly serviceable. Now I need 3 slots for Interventor + Sec + Decoy. Means I'm going to struggle to fit in the 2 x Morlocks I need for DZ defence to deal with Impersonators. That or I just take Jazz who at BTS6 doesn't need an upgraded damage KHD program to kill. Or in TJC that's just another nail in CKs as a usable core because I now need a Sec Core + separate Interventor. Which is extremely fun to list build around. Particularly if you're also fitting in the Best HMG and Best Sniper in the game that Nomads have (apparently) trivial access to.
Except it's not, it's a structural 'design feature' of Nomads. It's sure possible to take a non obvious Lt sure, but it's harder than in other factions, and you sacrifice more to do it often than in other factions, and it's harder to mitigate than in other factions (no CoC is deliberate) and that's a weakness. And guess what, they took Nomad Camo Lt options away, so that option in the example you gave, doesn't exist for Nomads. That wasn't an accident - maybe it was a hint though. Sure it's a little nuanced so it doesn't punch you in the face. But just because the forum ignores anything that doesn't punch you in the face doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or isn't an important factor in balance.
Oh and if we want to actually use that Lt order we're stuck with Hackable Lts or a Wildcat NCO, a Grenzer NCO or a Moira NCO (yes I know the Wildcat Lt exists... but seriously?). These are absolutely universally considered top tier profiles and appear frequently in Nomad lists. /s (They are all usable, but aren't generally "go to" profiles in the way NCOs in almost every other faction are). It's almost entirely impracticable to get more than 11 usable Regular/Irregular Orders in a Nomad Combat Group and 9/10 that's going to be just the Lt order on an Interventor/MB/TM. 12 is the absolute limit and that's running a TAG. At which point you're laughably vulnerable to Hacking if you are unable to dominate that sphere of the game. It is technically possible to build a >12 order Combat Group based on multiple TAGs and an NCO using the order from an LI LT... But I've never even heard of that being used in the wild. Note: I don't think this should be changed. I'm just pointing out that it's not only "obvious Lts" that is Nomad's weakness but an *almost* complete lack of command skills like CoC, Lt2, Strategos, NCO and Tactical Awareness.
I'm not disagreeing that it's not harder to do than other factions by design, I'm saying that deliberately ignoring that design and greedily spending all your points/slots on anything but obscuring and protecting your LT is a self inflicted wound. You can't claim it's a structural weakness that balances Nomads and also then complain that you get punished for not building your lists to strengthen that weakness to prevent it from being exploited against you, and you run into an opponent capable of exploiting that weakness and get punished for it. You do also have the option to run multiple Interventors.
We're not though: we're saying that it's an exploitable weakness that we already need to build around so making it trivially exploitable in an entirely different gameplay area is a bad idea.
It's only trivially exploitable if you show up with an obvious LT, to which the points was, fuckin' stop doing that.
Nah. My lieutenants are almost always obvious in OCF and USARF, through N3 and N4. You learn to play with it. Nomad players are just entitled on this issue.
Except right now it's not trivially exploitable through Repeaters. The argument you're making is that it should be. Managing the risk from an Impersonator or equivalent assassin is one thing, managing the risk from that AND from KHDs through my own Repeaters. Fuck that.
