Hello everyone. The new factions of infinity are always better (in the competitive side) of the olders. Not only they have better abilities and equipment, but have also the best profile-cost ratio (there are model of old factions that are ridicolous compared to models of the new factions that have same cost or lower, and the internal balance of the new factions are indisputably better that the olders. So, I hope that the Corvus Belli is working most for improve efficiency of the olders factions dedicating only little work to the new ones. What do you think we will see with N4 about this fact?
I think your initial assertion is incorrect. There are old factions that remain strong and new factions that are weak.
Agreed. What I hope for is for CB to move all factions towards the same point balance-wise, regardless if armies in question are old or new.
CB released a video recently that showed win rates among factions to be with in a range of 10%. For a miniatures wargame with greater than 30 possible lists to choose from. That seems pretty ideal to me. In regards to individual point values among a faction. What matters to me is the overall playability of a faction. Yes libertos for example are 1 extra point for mimetism. Yes it is a deal. They are efficient, and a great unit, but you do not win games just because there are one or two libertos in a list. It's how you play the model and with the SWC and AVA system there are more levers in infinity to push for unit optimization. TLDR, With a win rate range so small, it is objective evidence against your clubs or your subjective opinion that infinity is unbalanced in x way. As well points cost is not the only way CB balances a unit. They have other levers to use too, like AVA and SWC that create a more complex decision for list building.
One thing on that - it was a large ITS sampling, sure, but not weighted or corrected by any of several obvious confounding factors. @Bostria even alludes to that in the video by saying it's not representative data. I suspect that if we had the data in hand and corrected by, e.g., ELO, match up, mission, number of games, special rules at the tournament, tournament experience, and so on, we would find some significant differences even after multiple comparison corrections. In fact, CB, if you want, I can write up that analysis for you - just pass me the dataset. This doesn't mean the game is too out of balance. Nor does it mean that the OP is right that new factions are strict improvements on old - they're not. But I don't think the data from the cancon video is the end-all on the game balance conversation.
What the "newer" factions have going for them is "obviousness"-ness. They have a distinct resting bitch face and straying from it tends to degrade it's performance a lot more than the "olders". The "olders" have more breadth of play if less of a peak in performance. But doing other things tends to not screw things up as much. I'm not opposed to changes, I'd just hope they are for more than "play optimization" or "play experience" changes.
This. Talk on the forums and in some groups trends too far into optimisation for my tastes often. Some of the newer armies have some very optimal builds, but the downside of that is people tend to only play 1-2 builds and feel like they gimping themselves.
Agreed - some of the newer sectorials are less interesting to me because they've been clearly designed with a list in mind. If you play that basic list, it's great - but if you try to play a different list, it's not really supported and it doesn't work. Part of the fun for me is trying lots of different lists and finding what works for me, rather than what the designers intended.
Yup, totally agree with this one... and that is why it seems like new armies are better. Their combos are more obvious. But, I would still say that many things are "better" costed with the new than with the old. One thing that keeps some old armies competitive are new broken profiles like libertos... To me thats one of the really bad examples, an out of place troop that is a MUST take in every army that can field it. The way that CB "designs" armies is quick and simple but not really deep... so that are the results... getting more optimal combinations as time passes. Mixed links are an obvious example. Once some (not all unfortunately) of the old armies got the "new treatment", it was a jump in the power level of the sectorial.
Interesting, my experience is completely different. I play - amongst others - TAK, OSS, and SEF (the latter since N2), and I find enormous flexibility there. In fact, my biggest problem with them is what to choose for any given mission, since there are always multiple choices that fit my needs, and everything plays well. Mixed links are an obvious choice, but their composition isn't; there are always many good ways to go about it. This is one thing that seeps into the older sectorials, and I have zero trouble with it. I'm less thrilled with the overabundance of CoC troopers, at least those perfectly optimized for their role - Shukra, Alpha, Tankhunter, Caliban. They're too obvious a choice, I agree. On the other hand I do hope to see more robust Lt system in N4, with more command skills. I'd like for each army to have a choice between obvious but powerful Lt's, and weak but easy to hide ones.
I was pretty shocked by this too. However, I think that this may show that no sectoral is flat out non functional. Everything can possibly play and win... However I would love to see these broken down into list comp. Who out there is taking what. As that to me gets to the root of the greif that we see where people's sectorals lie in the pecking order. Sure sectoral X may have a perfect 50/50 wirrate, but I would say the sectoral needs a looking at if that wirrate is with a single list, a single mini being a must take, or most importantly half of their options collect dust on the shelf. That means that said choices within an army may be poorly designed and is limiting those that play it. I can't really see this being a bad thing for players. I imagine everyone here has a mini in mind they love to death but underperforms on the table, and less choices being pitfalls or noob bait.
It just shows that there is lots of luck involved. If the sample is small enough the results can be skewed by luck. I had several games where luck is not balanced. And on the other hand I think 40:60 _is_ significant. In a game where almost every unit has only one wound I didn't expect something like 80:20.
only with the win rates what we see is that any faction can win games. There was missing data, a lot of it... tournament points, objective points, people that do not send their list so their results cannot be assigned to a faction, and so. There was a person that picked all 2019's data (is public, anyone can get ITS data) and showed more info, and in there the results were more clear. Yes, there is some balance, but there is also a clear bias towards some factions, and room for improvement in that balance. about CB and how manages sectorial revisions...for some factions they check fireteams, costs, rules and options, but for other sectorials, CB only checks fireteams and options, no costs, no rules. For some factions they check for nerfs, for other factions for bufs. Part of the cause are the different ways of working when dessigning factions. Maybe is something done on purpose by CB, maybe is a result from using different testers for different factions, maybe is something else. I hope for N4 CB stops that way of doing things
TAK and OSS are two of the strongest Sectorials and part of the reason is flexibility. Compare both Varuna and Tunguska: neither are particularly flexible. Varuna is strong largely because it does 1 thing really well and can support that very effectively; but as the meta has shifted to account for that, it's success is also waning. SEF I'm less certain about. Mainly because I haven't played around with it enough or vs it enough. But on paper it always feels like Sheskin and friends. I really hate that sort of design aesthetically; but that doesn't mean that it's not strong.
VIRD is high on my list of sectorials to get next, so I'll have an opportunity to find out firsthand how flexible or inflexible it is. But at least in theory it looks like I'll be able to do more with with than I was able with Acon. We'll see. SEF is very far from being about Sheskiin and friends. You can safely forget she exists and still have a lot of success with them.
True, just like with VIRD and Kamau Sniper, the true power of SEF is Taigha, Speculo and Noctifiers. You need to be wary of what Sheskiin can do or she'll mess you up real good, but she's not the reason SEF are strong. I my opinion.
Some of the troopers in the new factions have leaner profiles, but they all stick to the point formula. Some profiles from the new factions are stand outs when compared to older faction. But saying that this is only true for the new faction is so wrong. Find any camo trooper more efficient than the Chasseur. Find any anything more efficient than Post-Humans. Find any impetuous trooper more efficient than Mutts, and try to find anything that trades up as much. Find any source of regular orders more efficient than Volounteers or Kuang Shis. There are stand outs profiles that pushes the point cost formula even in the older factions.
Well... there is the Hexa KHD vs Lynx KHD comparison where the Hexa has 1 PH, 1 CC, Electric Pulse and 1 point over the Lynx' 1 BS, 1 WIP, 3 BTS, Courage, Cybermines and Breaker Combi... They clearly weren't made with the same formula, but I don't know of many other examples where the old stuff doesn't match the new quite well.
The Hexa has always compared poorly against the Noctifer; I really don't know what's going on with that unit in particular.
