3 points sounds a bit correct for a passive device with Comms Equipment and ARO provoking vulnerabilities, tbh, but that price seems a lot lower on REMs. It's the DepRep and Pitchers that causes my 300 points HI-centric lists to perform as if they're 250 points in a way I have never felt smoke (being similarly priced and with similar requirements) is able to do even to lists without MSV2. It's an either or for me. They do have a small discount, but it's tiny and more in line with a discount for concentrating power in a single piece. Either you buff HI so that it's noticeable (cost is a quality, but not the only one you can improve) and force players to bring a decent hacking game (you know; at least one HD, one AHD, and a couple of DepRep/Pitchers) or you nerf the specific anti-HI down (i.e. Oblivion). Considering Ariadna exists I'm leaning towards the latter. And again, I'd rather have a cheap AHD for +3p/+0swc as a tactical assault tool (and the IMM programs definitely are greatly souped-up short range game changers compared to the generally decent FO skill), than a costly device with a requirement to make a large number of extra investments to make decent to the point where it skews the game. I don't see a good game balance reason to remove durations and I don't find many people think of them as confusing with the exception for that durations are sometimes 1 turn and sometimes 2 turns. Supportware in particular are very efficient, provided you use the good ones (which, to be honest, is basically Assisted Fire and Overclock...).
Or maybe, if you are using hackable and getting problems, its you who are not using your hackables very well? that argument is no good (mine neither). Usually hacking does good work when there is only one hacker and the enemy doesn't know/forgets about him and gets some lucky rolls in a critical moment. That has bended perception about hacking a lot. A TO possessing a TAG in aro when moving where he thougth was safe is one of the biggest examples, is a good move of the hacker player, but also a bad move from the TAG player (A very bad one if he didn't bring any way to protect its TAG and rushed) you invest a lot, not 3 points... your hackers (usually, if you go hacking, you put 3 or 4, if not more), and more than 1 repeater source... and when you find a non-hackable army is more skewed than for the HI when faces that hacking army. For getting cheap multipurpose tools we get jammers, and look all the trouble they bring.
Hacking's really weirdly designed at present; low Burst programs with modifiers and damage unheard of anywhere else in the rules and usually a special ammo on top are the rule instead of the exception. This makes them extremely powerful in ARO but borderline useless in active, with the sole exception of the KHD which ignores half of the MOD stacking the enemy can do to improve their position. A decent balancing measure would be to just add Burst and cut damage from everything save the KHD so that the active Hackers can go toe-to-toe with similarly-priced Rifles or split Burst for extra efficiency when doling out IMM-1, yet still allowing non-Stealth Hackables some freedom in their own active turn by reducing the chance they'll be slapped with some ridiculous mammoth attack that only a BTS 9 unit has a decent chance of saving against. KHD would need to keep the low Burst current format because it needs to stick in ARO, and shouldn't reliably kill three Hackers at once in active.
FTFY and now I agree. Nerf Oblivion to oblivion, increase duration of all IMM-1 programs to 2 turns, merge Basilisk and Carbonite so you have a program that's +3/+0 B3 Dam13 DT. Adding White Noise to AHD is probably a better idea than Exile. Seriously, Isolation effects from outside LOF are oppressive in ARO regardless of source because it shuts you down completely. It is as good as dead and it puts too much advantage to the reactive player. That's my issue. Reactive play should be about making it inconvenient for the active player at times when they don't directly challenge you. That's not an unfair accusation, but at the same time I have an area I need to go to because the mission forces me to do so and if my only options are using hackable HI then I've got a problem that can't be solved using the tools available to me, particularly not if the faction doesn't offer them in the first place. What differs a Hackable unit from a Hacker is that the Hackable unit is a passive trait and that a Hacker happens to the Hackable unit. There is no advantage to a Hackable unit to exploit so there is very little in the way of "how you use your hackables" other than "don't use them" as a counter-play to your opponent being moderately clever with their DepReps Like I wrote, it skews the game if you over-invest in assault hacking. If your opponent is Invincible Army or has gone all-in on their local heavy infantry fauna, they get shafted. If they're Tohaa or Ariadna, you get shafted. Not a good game design. Investing in hacking should give a player advantages to exploit and investing in heavy infantry or TAGs should give a player advantages to exploit. Currently, the game incentivise neither investments into HI/TAGs nor into Hacking, and in my opinion that's because both are countered too strongly by hacking (different kinds of hacking) for the advantages they offer. And it's all because of how Jammer-like Oblivion is.
I'm just picking out the bold text to disagree with in minutiae (as one does on the internet). I think this mindset is one of the things that over-emphasises the strength of / gets in the way of effective play against jammers. Maneuver and positional play against jammers that adopt similar principles to link team movement (where it's a good practice to try to make every move with the link as though it's the last one the link might make for the turn) really helps mitigate the worst of the tactical impacts of the the a jam attempt succeeding. Just to give an example, in an ASA vs Haqq game I played a little while back I was making an early game non-committal run on the Haqq lines with a Naga minelayer. I had a shotgun attack in enfilade that I could make that was attractive enough to attempt, but doing so exposed me to a jam attempt from a mutt. If the jam failed I had a number of further attacks I could make, but it succeeded. However, I'd ended the Naga's movement assuming it might be the last order I spent on it (usually this would be defensive positioning but in this case it was an aggressive overwatch position that forced two cancelled impetuous orders in the subsequent Haqq turn to avoid the risk of catastrophic shotgun shots in ARO). The Naga stayed alive and a thorn in my opponent's side the entire game despite being isolated (using his orders in two subsequent turns to drop a highly annoying mines). Yu Jing and White Banner deal with this a little better thanks to their A+ close assault options, but there's nothing worse as a Haqq player than having to go in after and engage a tough model you've isolated because it's still positioned to force you to have to deal with it.
overinvesting in hackers, but not overinvesting in HI? for hacking to be effective, and not an stroke of luck against not-overinvesting-HI armies, you need to invest what you call "overinvesting", and that's what some of us see as normal hacking (HD, AHD and KHD, to have access to the programs you need, plus 1+ repeater source). As I see it (in my experience), putting a single hacker and manage to do something with it is just luck, the hacker player doing way better than the enemy, or the HI doing really bad moves (the table is big for a single ZoC). If one player fields only HI, hacking should be a heavy weapon against it, and it is only true in reactive, and if prepared enough repeaters and hackers. A single hacker poses almost no treat, unless the table is completelly biased, the HI-army has no hacking defences and also do worse moves than the hacking player. If hacking was cheaper, and trully effective (only oblivion is effective, which is one of the weakest crippling effects) then the HI discount should grow a little, but as is now, is ok in most units, and their problem is not the hacking, but its dessing as HI, which should be addressed separatelly.
You're absolutely right, my faulty assumption was that the isolated unit is necessary offensively and won't be in a good position defensively. I have had a Gangbuster get isolated by a Spiral stinkbomb only to dismantle the same Kriigel simply because the Spiral player didn't respect the Gangbuster's Mimetic SMG, but at the same time I've had some pretty discouraging games where Haqq players in particular just ISO my offensive units and then ignore them. I don't think Yu Jing in general and White Banner in particular has better A+ close assault options than Haqq in general, if the requirement is that you actually have to have them in the list and close enough to be useful. Sure, Adil is better than Tarik in melee, but Adil isn't quite as useful as Tarik and a lot less likely to be on the table. Not that it matters, just shoot them. Often that's decent odds enough without requiring the order expenditure or risk of moving into stabbing range. Edit: @Armihaul let's leave the general hacking discussion for a thread where that's on topic.
Nah, if you nerf hacking even more, you won't need it outside of defence anymore. Like I already said: Every effekt that can be removed using a reset is effectively useless. Or borderline useless. I once IMM-1'd a Bulleteer so I got a free shot afterwards, but that's it. It's something you have to invests orders and units in and it does not even work reliably. And here I disagree. Like it was already said: Isolation is far from dead. IMM-2 is almost dead. Yes, linked jammers probably shouldn't be, but neither should linked-Kamau/Nisse or Min-Maxed-Fireteams. Hacking is not even to strong: First ... just move around the repeater, second ... use a non-hackable unit or third ... use a KHD. Comparing Hacking with Jammers is ... just wrong. But hacking should do something in the active turn. Raising the burst would be one solution. But even then, if the effect can be removed with a simple reset ... useless. Example: If you compare Isolated to Dead and propose it should be IMM-1: I invest points and orders in my hacking game and actually manage to IMM-1 a HI. Then the HI can just reset and is good to go. If the same HI now goes and shoots my hacker or my repeater that I had to move forward to IMM-1. Where is my simple reset to ressurect my repeater or my hacker? Like I said: "It (hacking) might be stealing orders but it is not stealing Units." And with the upcoming boost to HI (Crits Change) some boost to hacking would be appreciated. Especially a boost to active turn hacking vs. excessive fireteams.
The reason you invest in a hacking game would be to allow you to ARO your opponent without LOF, to push buttons, and to gain a strong temporary advantage on the offense. To capitalize on this beyond wasting a valuable amount of their orders you then need to actually have an angle to actually shoot them. Why should a non-mutual attack mechanic offer permanent effects to the benefit of a player who is not able to capitalize on strong impermanent effects? Might as well remove the ARO mechanic at that point. Forward Observe and Sat Lock gives you a +3 which is a lot less strong than denying ARO completely and can not even be used as ARO. FO requires LOS. Oblivion and Jammers you can not engage in a meaningful response to, even as an active player. The hacker won't have to make a BTS if you succeed the Reset. I once declared Basilisk on a Kriza. They Reset inatead of moving forward. That's a win for me. After three orders the Kriza managed to get out of the Repeater and spent the rest of that turn's orders on a much less powerful unit. Big win for my Cyberghost and easily enough tactical advantage that investing in the Sirius position and points was worth it. That Kriza did nothing for the rest of the game because it got too far out of position.
well... for some, hacking is sold as the alternate tool to deal with high tech, instead of more MSV, more ODD, better BS and better ammunition, so it is not only an ARO tool, specially when you need to invest so much for be really useful in aro That kriza you talk about crossed the repeater zone from side to side, didn't he? 3 orders to make out of a repeater, passing through and gaining possition instead of...2?...that should show you how weak it is a tool dessigned (or so say the creators) to win over HI, which only slows them making them use one more order. But what about those HI that have stealth? they will not be slowed by just that, you need to put a hacker in a core (putting a weak point in the core), or an ARO shooter for that same spot, but some shooters will slow or even directly stop a HI without the need of hacking (which is usually what is used, because it needs less orders and points, like the flasbots). Just some coments on that basiliks on a kriza: if he moved+ reset and won over your hacking, he can be moving 6" instead of the 4" when move+shot and getting out faster from the hacking zone, and if its a repeater but there is no enemy on sight, he can just move with cautious move and ignore hacking, go outside repeater zone, and do what he wants, spending 40+ points to make a trooper waste 1 order, I don't know how worth it is, specially if an 8-points bot can do the same And I agree, we can leave that discussion for a more focused topic PD: sorry, I translate the moves from CM to Inches...
I just want to say something else: What's dominating the game right now? Is it hacking? For sure not. It's Mixed Fireteams. In active and reactive. So maybe hacking needs a boost. Not a nerf. Like @Armihaul said, it's not always only area denial and ARO-duty. And even then it is astonishingly weak.
We'll see how CB decides to make hacking work in situations where the target is not Hackable, but I don't really see how a weakness against non-hackables means it has to stay so strong against hackables. Hell, they introduced KHD because AHD were too strong... Nor do I share your opinion on Fireteams. It wasn't much of a problem a few years ago, even with the mixed teams we had back then, so there's more likely an issue with specific compositions of more recent teams.
they created AHD and KHD at the same time, but KHD get in the game after. And on those times, AHD were not so good. They were better than now, but still underperforming, while KHD worked as intended since its appearance. But I agree with you, the problem is not mixed fireteams, but some of those. But inside those, the linked jammer might be one of those problems because of all it gains from the fireteam and the problems it solves for it... giving access to jammer to one of the allready over the top fireteams was even worse (even if its only in a handful of tournaments with an specific extra)
Well, this was before my time, but I bet it had something to do with one special faction whining. In the current meta I can not see how AHD would be to strong, even if there were no KHD at all. Only one single good programm. And only working against Hackables. And KHD now cancelled out AHD almost completely. Well, this can be true, but I see a problem when four 10-points cheerleader can support a 50+ Points Rambo or some "I can see through everything and won't ever be surprised by anything"-Wildcard that even the most powerful single Rambo-pieces in the game have only a 50:50 chance against in their active turn. Means, in passive the Link Team wins at least 50% of FtF-rolls. Is ARO supposed to be this strong? I doubt it.
I dunno why Pan-O would be whining specifically about hacking, but if they were it must've been grade A trolling as they basically got the worst KHD. (And I know you probably referred to Yu Jing, but prior to Uprising Yu Jing were a very chill part of the community by comparison - at least on the English side) I'll agree with you about the Kamau's Core:d ARO, but not here, in a different thread ;)
That's an interesting comparison. Did a positive community consensus of Adil emerge recently? My appraisal of him was that, at least for the remainder of this edition, he seems pretty weak for his cost relative to other options in white banner/vanilla.
No, I meant PanO. IMO the only faction that has been successfully whining. Yeah YJ is salty, but they got nothing out of it. It can't be said to often So every thread should have a "Death to Kamau/Nisse-Wildcard and absurd min-maxing-fireteams"-Post It's somehow like Cato the Elder and the Punic Wars.
Nah, I think your appraisal of his N3 profile follows community consensus. At least for now. He's better than a Pheasant but still too costly to see table time regularly. Of course there are Shaolin who in N3WBA are a bit out of place, but still I'd rather use a Long Ya to finish off what a Tian Gao jams. Generally speaking fewer orders spent that way.
It's similar to CC in that way. Both suffer from the problem that CB wants them to have a different mechanic than guns, but the low burst makes it problematic. The easiest solution would likely be to change the mechanics for both to work more like guns.
