Tell that to the guy who wiped my 19 trooper inc 6 WB CJC with a LI Marut list last night... Whether people want to accept it or not changes towards smaller lists (eg fatality and tac awareness on tags, esp already good ones) have had an effect. Not saying this is wrong exactly still, but it's not all one way traffic. There's plenty of situations where the Jammer can't hide from the TAG better than the TAG can't hide from the Jammer.
Oh I agree. The problem with that is that you end up in a very swingy arms race and the factions that miss out get hurt. My "be bad" was deliberately flippant hyperbole. But I bet that that Marut player took appropriate counters for Jammers if it was a tournament style list; and it it wasn't that he took appropriate counters for CJC warbands. Edit: for the record I told the guy that whooped your CJC with a Marut that "low order count elite lists without warbands is N3 on hard mode", he accepted the premise. So, clearly, git gud [emoji14] Edit2: turns out it was a different Aleph player who also likes Maruts. My point stands though [emoji14]
Well, I disagree. Does it? As others have commented in this thread, the design goal of Ghazi (and thus the Jammer, to a certain extent) appears to be noninteractive play. These two statements are more or less contradictory. Given the interaction of Jammers and Fireteams, yes, they do have the same answers.
I suspect strongly that the main design goal of Jammers (And other zoc ish board control like pieces like perimeter weapons) is to stop alpha striking being so strong that the game isn't very fun or winnable going second too often. Ie both sides get a shot at doing the mission. Seems to work ok. People get very caught up in particulars they don't like though.
To me, it has felt really clear that CB is trying to promote more use of Engineers in the game. Jammers have become more prevalent, a new cheap engineer has become available to nearly all vanilla armies, things like d-charges are more useful, and Immobilized-2 is more common with all the EM Weaponry and glue weapons. Maybe we need to just accept that we need engineers.
If that's what they're doing, they're going about it in an incredibly stupid way. Engineers either require almost as many orders if not more to catch up to a stuck unit as the unit it's helping spent getting there in the first place, are unreliable since Engineering can't be rerolled in this context, and there's all of one Engineer in the game that can't be Isolated into uselessness itself. (NCA Machinist. It's so nice to have for one extra point that it's one of the main reasons I stick to that Sectorial instead of Vanilla.) Thanks to all these factors, unless your list has some serious synergies like REM links or Remote Presence TAGs it's just better to bring more gunners. As for Jammers as anti-rambo tools, they've always made sense in that role but the power tuning on them is way off to the point that they're more useful than equipment ten times their price. If not for the positively idiotic numbers attached with a Core Link and literally broken interaction with Reset, I'd say the Tian Gou is the fairest Jammer iteration yet since its deployment in the DZ, lack of strong defense and moderate cost really sell it as a unit that can be devoted to anti-rambo and AD duties without making it an insanely over-the-top efficient board control piece, like the cheap and fast Mutts or the safe, forward-deployed Marker Jammers. If that's how Jammers will be used going forward I'm all for it, as long as they fix the rules and bring it in line with Hacking's cost-to-power ratio.
Wait, wha...? Most if not almost all of ITS11 scenarios are won by going 2nd and controlling the mop-up.
It's pretty mixed. I'd make a rough appraisal (seriously, rough) of Season 11 as follows. Also worth bearing in mind that every scenario that encourages going second can still be played from first with ye olde 'every scenario is annihilation if you try hard enough' alpha-based approach: Acquisition: scoring encourages second, deployment zones enable powerful alpha Annihilation: no second turn advantage The Armory: scoring encourages second Biotechvore: no second turn advantage Capture and Protect: scoring lightly encourages second Countermeasures: no second turn advantage Decapitation: no second turn advantage Firefight: no second turn advantage, deployment zones enable powerful alpha Frontline: scoring encourages second Highly Classified: scoring lightly encourages second (if end of game classifieds) Hunting Party: scoring lightly encourages second (engineering to fix up models etc) Looting and Sabotaging: no second turn advantage Power Pack: scoring encourages second, deployment zones lightly enable alpha Quadrant Control: scoring encourages second Safe Area: scoring encourages second Show of Force: scoring encourages second Supplies: scoring lightly encourages first, but play variations exist Supremacy: scoring encourages second Transmission Matrix: scoring encourages second Unmasking: no second turn advantage
You're misquoting. That doesn't say that Alphas ARE too strong but rather that there are a set of tools designed to prevent them BECOMING too strong and that these tools are successful at that. // I largely agree with @Hachiman Taro assessment I just think that the secondary effects of Jammers significantly undermine other design aims to such extent that I consider them to be a design problem.
Some scenarios have a last mover advantage if your opponent doesn't alpha you so hard you're too crippled to take advantage of it. Broadly speaking I would say it's not a bad general theory of infinity that your job when going first is to do that, and your job when going second is to impede it enough to be able to snatch victory at the end (with many caveats and exceptions of course). In other words if you're going second and you don't feel mauled after your opponents first turn, you're probably winning. If ITS was almost always won by going second, people couldn't win from either first or second consistently, and they can. Which tells you attack and deference are likely broadly well balanced for the mission set, despite specific quibbles.
I don't think we have the data to tell whether going first or going second is balanced and even if we did it would probably be a healthy debate to have which missions favour first or second player and why. As to Jammers, I think I'd rather see them replaced with an upgrade to Blackout so that Blackout works on all targets and causes an ISO-1 or Jammed state that simply prevents them from participating in Regular orders for 1 turn and for Repeaters to always offer Firewall effect to troopers (regardless of alignment) and then do away with Fairy Dust. Jammers could then become Defensive Hacking Devices (ghetto style as was hinted at long ago) with a seriously limited list of programs. Yes, a lot of stuff that interlink which causes some soft nerfs and soft buffs to a wide range of units. Nerf to Jammers; they are no longer No LOF guns with a permanent effect. Buff to Jammers; they are now specialists and work through Repeaters on all Troopers. Nerf to AHD; Firewall through repeaters. Buff to AHD; HI no longer have Fairy Dust when you get close and personal and you have a program that works on LI and SK units. Nerf to HI; The almost mandatory if going deep-HI Fairy Dust is gone. Buff to HI/TAG/REM; kinda have free Fairy Dust if opponent relies on Repeaters. Buff to current DHD; you're now White Hacking Devices
In general, Jammers are too good at this for how much they cost. Against a canny VIRD player, there isn't going to be a way to approach without taking Jammer hits or dealing with the Kamau sniper. People in general need to stop thinking of the Turn 1 Alpha as "foul play." Keeping that attitude will lead the game to a scrubby place.
He just said that it's what you're supposed to do with first turn that is as far from foul play as you can get.
I don't think anyone thinks of the turn one alpha as foul play (outside of the occasional rare exception where an experienced player is playing against a very new player and might be asked to pump the brakes a little, but that's not the same thing). Bit weird to hear it actually.
(What @inane.imp and @Mahtamori said) x (entire thread). And good discussion by everyone on this thread lately, good points from all contributors. This is a fun gaming community, and the analysis on the forums is actually quite helpful. Thanks for the thoughts, folks.
I encounter the attitude fairly commonly, especially whenever the (poorly designed) Retreat! rules are discussed.
one thing is that people don't want the alpha become again as strong as it was in n1/n2, where against some factions all missions became "kill all you can, do mission in last turn without opposition", and other thing is thinking alpha is foul play. alpha is a valid strategy, and I think most of the people that think it should remain toned down think so, but should not be the only strategy for/against some factions, and also not so metabending where playing first had so much more chances of wining than the second one
It's a hard balancing act. Too strong alpha isn't fun for the second player, too strong defence makes boring early game stalemates where it's in no ones interest to be active and attack (And makes last shot at the objective too good). That it is constantly shifting so no one is quite sure they are playing it correctly keeps the game interesting though.
