Im talking only about the rule "can only be damaged in melee", and how if it were not for such rule, the TO would need to provide extra cover scenery to avoid a turn 1 (or 2 or whatever, there is also the arbitrary rule "you can't target X during the first turn") objective achievement. To be fair, ALL ITS missions with consoles/beacons/antennas/etc... force an "order tax" (minimum orders spent trying to push that button, up to a chain failure that can cost the whole mission). As for *where* would a good place for objectives... well: Some factions have access to skills that let them deploy a fireteam an extra 10cm/4'' away (Hannibal, for example). A lot of factions have access to infiltrators, able to risk deploying on the enemy's half of the table; some have a minimized risk (Shinobu, Andromeda), but almost all have access to infiltrating specialists or D-charges carriers. Some factions have access to Impersonators, able to deploy in the enemy's half of the table without risk, or attempt to deploy in their Deployment Zone. At this moment, I think none carry Antimaterial weapons, nor are they specialists, at least. AD Troopers can deploy by Parachutism or Combat Jump quite close to the objectives anyway. All this means that, frankly, I see little difference between placing the targets to destroy in the edge of the deployment zones or +10cm/+4'' from that line, there are tools to negate that position's disadvantages, and in the end what I feel matters more is the table's cover availability, rather than the distance to the target or the enemy's ability to deploy on top of it. I would, however, make said items able to be marked (by FO or hacker) and targetable by all weapons, with only those of Antimaterial quality being able to damage (and only in melee)... that way, there won't be enemy units camping the objectives because of the risk of template weapons. To place the servers as HVTs (free, but at least X distance from deployment, and most important: at ground level) gives agency, but there won't be much different bewteen games: while the exact position will change, it will be placed where the enemy will have the hardest time to reach it, and exposed to the defender's fire as much as possible. I'd say that unless you need to against the center one, 1-2 cheap AD troopers can get the target. Problem is to remove the enemy fireteams and other defenses, of course, but that will happen regardless of the position of the server.
To drive that argument to absurdity; a mission that says "succeed 10 WIP checks on the objective 5 points" with the quirk that each WIP check can only be succeeded once per unit also taxes orders, but that doesn't mean it does so in a good way just because other missions do so in a good and interesting way, yes? I'm not talking about that the mission taxing your order expenditure being good or bad, it's not binary like that (especially since I think Unmasking is one of the better missions), I'm talking about Mindwipe and Capture and Protect and a few others doing so far too much, it does so at the expense of the rest of the game in my opinion. The underline there is, frankly, a kind of weird conclusion to come to. In Mindwipe the objectives are placed 6" back from that line, not forward - back. So the difference between placing the objectives at 6" and placing them at 18" is fairly huge both in terms of the number of orders that most troopers need to move and in terms of the difference in terrain this makes and in terms of how many defensive assets can be placed around the objective. Not to mention the enormous area where for example a Total Reaction remote can prevent an AD trooper from landing while being in total cover versus everything designed to take them out at range. To not make an exaggerated comparison: there is less difference in the combat ability between a Fusilier and an Avatar. Yes, there are tools to handle this, but all things being equal there are plenty of sectorials with some pretty hefty restrictions on those tools and reducing the friction between requirements for specific missions and other missions during a tournament is in itself valuable. The defender really doesn't need as much advantage as this mission affords them. I think that's the whole point. Let the players identify the most advantageous positions to defend with restrictions, let the players formulate their plan, instead of the mission itself forcing the players' hands as much as it does. While the position will share the same trait between all games; being that they will be placed where the player thinks is most advantageous, that position will be influenced by what list they are bringing and what list they expect to face. I have never ever seen a game of Infinity where removing fireteams and other defences in the opponents DZ can so casually be dismissed. In most games that are even remotely even, this doesn't happen until bottom of turn 3 if at all. Usually the opponent will also have AD, Infil, FD, etc etc troopers that you need to deal with and when the defences do not need to look forward, but can look towards their own DZ edges to do their defences, it's even harder to dig them out so that troopers with critical equipment can deploy.
Local group played it today, common consensus came to agreement on that the objectives are too far back. Particularly over taxes Vanilla with lack of links for order efficiency and railroads them really hard towards A/D troops with anti material for those who have it and not in a good way. Particularly noted passive defensive repeater networks are a potential problem for low tier hacking factions. Mission was fairly clearly designed around N3 where punching into a repeater network was much easier due to KHDs being hyper lethal and generally stronger. Too easy to simply deploy cheap order battery repeaters around the servers and make it difficult for an unsupported weak hacking faction to approach the server with the eraser program, let alone other hackable targets to bust the objectives. Way too many orders to dig out repeaters that take no orders to set up. Other complaint that's already been raised, very imbalanced between factions due to CC anti material requirement with some factions just not having any ability at all to put sufficient anti material CC on the table. This needs to be addressed if the mission is to be considered competitive at all. Easiest fix, take a leaf out of the Hunting Party mission and hand the mission required gear out like candy. Pick an arbitrary number of unit types, hand out D-Charges for free to all HI, Specialists, Veterans, Elite.... you get the idea. That will free up list construction a bit more as well as fix faction viability. Lastly, pretty big complaint, the uberhacker as it stands is a win more button and that's a really bad piece of design. The better your faction is at hacking, the better value you get out of this rule. The worse you are at hacking, the less useful this rule is to the point of actually being useless garbage. A faction that can place this on a hacker who can link into a tinbot and be fairly well protected as someone else drags them forwards finds this rule super useful, a faction that can't link or has no reasonable hacking choices finds the rule useless and is at a significant disadvantage. While there isn't an easy fix for Ariadna short of adding new profiles, other factions, including Vanilla players who can't link their hackers require better protection for their uberhacker. The KHD restriction should be removed, it's fucking dumb in N4 and doesn't make any coherent sense to try and limit it anyway, and the restriction on marker states should also go away. Allowing the uberhacker to hide in camo states helps Vanilla players not get their uberhacker alpha struck the fuck off the table without being able to reasonably defend themselves without making fire team based hackers become over the top. Some feedback for you @HellLois @Blindside @CoveredInFish after playing the mission.
Yes, sorry, my train of thought went off-track and never got back... I meant that all missions impose an order tax, but some impose an excessive (that can be, or not, also convoluted) one, others demand barely lip service to the concept, and some look like the order tax had to be shoehorned in the design (which can be good, or bad, despite feeling artificial. For example, Capture and Protect in its first incarcation demanded a console activation to be able to grab the enemy beacon, then that was removed but the mission was still grouped with missions demanding specialists, etc...). Anyway, Mindwipe suffers extra because with N4, where a player can be limited to 8 (limited instertion-2) to 13 (15 -2) orders from the beginning (he'll have casualties); sure, I've known people who went to ply tic-tac-toe with a Limited Insertion list, but I doubt they represent the majority of the playerbase. The problem is that remotes can now be prone, so a TR bot can be placed with much more ease in total cover against enemies coming to melee the server, regardless of its distance to the DZ long table border (and if the server can't be shot at, having the TR in total cover against the front, but with the sides free is easy). I agree, however, that the bare minimum would be touching the DZ, not in its middle (frankly, it gives extra advantage to the factions that have troops with Parachutism Deployment Zone and antimaterial gear). The CA seems specially suited for this, incidentally, thanks to their mimetic TR bot with plasma rifle and the Rasyat for fast incursion. I meant that regardless of the position of the servers, those obstacles would need to be dealt with. Again, AD troopers with smoke (specially eclipse) and Antimaterial weapons or D-Charges have an advantage, since no matter how good is your fireteam, I only need the orders to smoke-blanket my target and reach it, since I would be ignoring everything but mines.
I think we're mostly in agreement and just arguing over specifics :p Armies with ZVZs will always be at an advantage and it is up to CB to design those armies with drawbacks to counteract those fairly strong advantages. Particularly armies that can use Eclipse on specialists with good PH (ASS and Morat to name a couple).
