Most useful HI can do something about Hacking (which these days means a HD+ just as often as an AHD), Stealth, Fairy Dust and Tinbots come to mind. For TAGs people mostly bring them out against Factions that are unlikely to have either of these or prepare to circumvent the Hacking problem with Marker State, bringing KHDs, Engineers and Exorcism, by staying at long range or a combination of them. So even if you bring a generic AHD your opponent might be well prepared to deal with it. KHDs being cheap universal staple Specialists that have powerful and deadly options against AHDs, something the AHD can only dream of against it's usual targets. The best AHDs are usually not about their AHD. The Proxy MK2 is a BS13 NWI Infiltrating Specialist with a BSG. A Swiss Guard is a big threat that can also push buttons. The Brawler SMG AHD is a cheap upgrade that provides Sixth Sense L2 Hacking AROs to prevent Stealth stuff from happening. The AHD vs hackable stuff balance is probably okay, for basic HI and REMs, but it still sucks to get your TAG possessed by a Bandit, Zero or Guilang. It still feels like a gotcha to get a Charontid MSV3 Lt Isolated by a Croc in HD. I'm pretty glad AHDs aren't as relevant as they could be, mostly because Oblivion and Total Control appear to be situational, but utter bullshit OP given the right circumstances, next to the pretty well rounded Carbonite. On the other side of the same coin we find AHDs to be complete garbage against several Factions, Sectorials or List concepts, while being a bane against others, with KHDs being an even bigger bane to AHDs themselves. The current Hacking balance is a spread of extremes. On the one side we find unhackable Tohaa, Ariadna, JSA and Haqq lists. On the other side we find barebones TAG/HI focussed lists with maybe a token KHD expecting not to run into any hacking for quite a few of their games. Of course there are a few lists in the middle that try to do a bit of everything, wo bring 1-2 Hackers and a few Hackable Remotes and HI. On the lower end we find the minimalist who slaps a single KHD into his list to unlock Remotes, annoy enemy Hackers and calls it a day. Then there are the Hacking heavy lineups, like some people like to play Nomads, Aleph, CA or even Haqq, with several competent Hackers and Killer Hackers to squash enemy opposing Infowar, HI, REMs and TAGs. Out of these lineups the only one without a bad matchup is the one without Hacking. Every point his opponents spend on Infowar is wasted beyond Specialist and buffing duty. Another winner is the minimalist, who has very little wasted effort, can hope to trade his KHD in a favourable manner and gets a headstart against balanced as well as Hacking heavy lineups. The generalist has some serious issues to deal with heavy hacking, but has spent enough points on it to nd up a bit on the backfoot against the purist as well. TAG/HI focussed lists can expect an even playing field or even slight edge against the no Hacking Purists, but will have problems to deal with heavy hacking. Fortunately for them ITS is a 2 list format, so you can easily prepare an alternative for a skewed list. This is true if we saw an even spread, but unfortunately we don't. Some Factions get to cheat. Factions don't suffer downsides from going for zero Infowar. Some Factions get ridicuously good Hackers that double down as combat troops like the Proxy MK2. Some Factions get anti HI/TAG solutions who far succeed the effectiveness of even Hacking, like JSA and their various CC monsters. Generally speaking there is a trend towards 0 hacking lists right now. Which in turn makes HI and TAGs slightly more relevant than usual. AHDs would normally be a good way to deal with that, but they are pretty bad at dealing with the 0 hacking lists and still suffer from the ever present and less affected KHD. So the few AHDs that still exist have Marker States and tend to swing in between overpriced Specialists and good value, but always haunted by KHDs. As someone who values consistency above everything else, Hacking is a mess right now and needs to be addressed better sooner than later. It's swingy, because it can be completely circumvented or completely OP and thus doesn't lend itself to contribute towards proper balancing. To link that wih Varuna and this thread, I really hope Varuna can run amazing unhackable lineups backed by REMs as mere cheerleaders, simply because that should work very well in the current framework.
Because they're 2 points more expensive and can't hold a candle compared to a Fugazi in terms of defensive ARO capability. Also 6-6 with Sniffers.
Btw we need boarding shotguns on the infiltrating FOs! Maybe on the minelayers as well. Or something that's not a combi. More non-combi to Pano!
I don't know what you're talking about. We have plenty of perfectly useful Light Shotguns under our Combis :P (It's a joke, not salt. CR+LSG number went down and isn't as pronounced now. But I'd indeed like to see some other weapon options. Fusilier with Multi, for example. Or Regular with Boarding/Vulcan Shotgun.)
Combi + LS is actually not bad, just expensive. Vulkan shotgun is cool, either Fire with template or AP only.
Yeah, that's the main problem with that combo, point cost. It's cool if it's on one or two loadouts in the unit, so we can mix in cheaper ones as well.
Combis are great, until you learn that for the cost you can get a normal rifle+assault pistol or a rifle+lsg and some change. Really hope they dont ruin it up this time, the Zulu-Cobra profile gave me a lot of hope in this, assault pistol with MM Rifle sounds amazing
Or a Heavy rocket launcher, or a T2 rifle, or an AP rifle. (no, seriously) Or like every single discounted weapon in the game together (Chain rifle, contender (who needs this), Submachine gun, Assault pistol (this one is actually expensive, like 3pts), HFT, LFT, there are a lots of weapons in the game, that costs 1 pts, while a combi cost like 8 (and if a combi costs 8 pts, then the chain rifle is -1 pts).
As far as Varuna goes – we haven't seen anything that that specializes in info war technology. Unless there is a unit we havent seen or heard about yet I think were stuck with fusil/kamau caching device as well as Crocman AHD/ possible KHD. Zulu cobra and echo bravo might have an over costed AHD profile aswell, most likely stuck at WIP 13. I could see the cobra getting KHD though, which would be nice
I wouldn't mind Combi + LSG on the right troops. On AD or Camo Infiltrator, it's actually really nice to have that versatility. Sometimes you do in fact want to have both. Using the Combi's range to clear your way to the perfect shotgun angle before ending your turn in Suppressive is a really nice array of options to have.
It's also one of the things that gets fixed with the November update. We know updating older troops with changes in the formula is part of that. And right now Aragoto pay only 2 extra for a LSG over a Combi. Other than that Drop Bears are down to 1 point. Which means various PanO troops get a couple points cheaper. Most notably the Bolts Drop Bear Profile which is looking at a 4 point price reduction. Rodoks and Bagh Mari are also benefiting from that. With SAA getting an Update like MRRF, they are gonna be in a very good place afterwards. I'd be very surprised if MO isn't getting tweaks while they're at it, considering the massive amount of recent resculpts and the 300 points box coming up. Varuna is the new hot stuff and I'm just gonna claim there are at least 4 Sectorials in that book. All in all Third Offensive is a big cake to enjoy for all Factions, but PanO gets the biggest slice.
we all agree that can be awesome in the Echo-Bravo, the thing is that with rifle+lsg you get to do all that for cheap
I really don't get how is that a thing. It should all be done simultaneously and automatically. With zero effort.
