Original argument quoted to show no goalposts were moved. The original point was that Domaru are "awesome" (your words.) Your argument was that it was somehow comparable to a Wu Ming HMG -- which it isn't in the active turn, and certainly isn't in the reactive turn. You claimed it's suppressive was good, it fails compared to any BS12 unit in suppressive with even one visual mod. And as I pointed out, the comparison to a Wu Ming or Zuyong is not good because both of those are better active turn shooters without Frenzy penalty (which is big for units who want to shoot high burst weapons, go look at how much an extra -3 shifts the odds in most instances), they are better reactive shooters (can't easily reduce their defense by making them deal a wound.) You argued that somehow the Domaru is a better piece to watch a flank than other options in the faction, I showed how that wasn't the case since similar units did it better and much cheaper units did it almost as well. You argued somehow a Domaru has a good chance against a warband due to its CC, I countered that if you have to CC a warband you're already doing it wrong, and that throwing a 5 point unit against a 38 point one with even odds is always a good trade. Please specifically point out where I have moved a single goalpost.
I learned a long time ago that you do not send a CC expert like the Domaru against another CC expert. You shoot the CC expert and CC the shooting expert. But you can use a Domaru to tank a hit from a mine or something, because the Domaru has a second wound.
While I agree with you on the issue of Domaru vs Zuyong, I find your assessment of Frenzy very questionable. Frenzy is better than Impetuous, you take no penalty until your next active turn after you cause an enemy to lose a W or STR (So only 2/3 of an average game, since it doesnt matter on turn 3) But you still get a discount for it, even if the trooper in question might stay non impetuous the whole game.
I have more mixed feelings. I wouldn't downplay the frenzy discount too much (it's the only reason that link is cheap enough to play right now) but it's not something I really want on an active turn shooter who isn't in a link, because it means even if he survives a reactive turn, he's going to be much weaker in the next one when he can't take cover. An additional -3 makes a big difference in terms of stacking mods even against a B4 weapon like a spitfire. I think the point that the trooper could stay non-impetuous the whole game is good on lower cost models with frenzy discounts or for link teams, but if you take a 38/2.0 model and don't wound anything with it the whole game, I feel like you have more problems than whether or not the frenzy discount is worth it. On a low Burst model like a Warband or the like I would just straight up rather have the impetuous orders to close the gap, Frenzy on those models would make them weaker I think. They're going to smoke dodge for every ARO anyway.
Something tells me that's because there's nothing of interest. Granted, I think people in my area got something early (before this whatevercon), but new profiles was the only thing people shown any interest for, so can't tell. Let's continue to stubbornly ignore this entire genocide thing that is going on and write it off because "it's not genocide if you blame the other side; oh, and ignore that it takes an extreme degree of word-bending to even read it as an accusation rather than an act of intimidation". But like I said, we've been over it already.
I notice that @psychoticstorm isn't repeating the "Ninja is the same as the Oniwaban" mistake more. That's good. The question is, are you arguing now because you have evidence... or just because you desperately wish the people you are arguing against are wrong?
Certainly it is better on cheap units on Jaguar or a specialist unit, but it is far from an insurmountable drawback, people run Joan un-linked dont seem too bothered by Frenzy. Also, as I mentioned before, in a normal 3 turn game, once you hit your 3rd active turn, the Frenzy model is free to murder as many things as it wants because the game will end before Frenzy kick in. So if your plan is to use the Frenzied unit as a back up offense piece it aint too bad either. Frenzy Warband arent bad, they fill a different role as impetuous warband though. (See Jaguar vs Morlock)
If it means they're going to throw their toys out of the pram, can I haz dibs? Not that I want to play with YJ or ISS, it's just that my metal stocks are getting low and I need more ingots (it's not "destruction"; it's recycling.)
The original post was saying how the Domaru (and other JSA profiles) were still useful in vanilla, and how they weren't outclassed too hard by everything else because they did different things, or did things in a different manner that made them useful. Yes. They are/were awesome. I didn't say that they were better than Zuyong/Wu Ming (just gonna refer to this as Z/WM from now on); the only comparison I actually made was that Zuyong had better firepower than the Domaru, and that that notion didn't invalidate the Domaru's existence or inclusion because the Domaru had a plethora of other uses. As far as being comparable in firepower, it is (was). BS12 B4 D14 vs BS13 B4 D15, with shifted range bands. They are comparable; there is an obvious advantage to the Z/WM in raw stats, but that doesn't (and never has) shown the whole picture. The Domaru's Spitfire is better at shorter ranges and on suppression fire it's nearly identical (same B, same range bands, only 1 BS and D difference). My point about the Domaru's suppression fire wasn't that it was better, but that it had more aggressive/forward applications (because the Domaru was much happier being further forward thanks to CC skills and better Dodge/Kinematika when there). And Frenzy is not a pure downside, like you seem to suggest. Yes, it can impact the power of an active shooter, but it also plays to the strengths of an aggressive unit (aka, the Domaru). With sufficient Burst and BS (and B4 BS12 is) the lack of cover isn't actually that bad - I've pushed my Zuyong HMG up, firing outside of cover, several times and the same with Domaru Spitfire; it's not that bad, though it does depend on what you're facing at the time. Additionally, as pointed out already, Frenzy kicks in at the start of your next active turn. So a Domaru doesn't lose cover until after the enemy's active turn, meaning they can remain in cover with their SupFire without becoming easier to hit. I suggested that the Domaru has many more options in the role of flank guard compared to the Z/WM HMG. And it does (did). Because it had superior Dodge to them, far greater CC (to deter middling CC units, and to make CC experts take pause) and comparable BS. As far as cheaper units are concerned, that's kind of indicative of my point about moving goalposts. My point was always about the Domaru Spitfire in conjunction with, or instead of, the Z/WM HMG (or something similar, like a Daofei) where it can utilise its abilities to support and be aggressive. If you want just a flank guard a Kanren with MadTraps will do it better (ish - it's not much cheaper and is limited in how much it can shut stuff down, plus MadTraps going after Warbands is kind of crap, for example) but again, that wasn't my initial point. And again, I said that the CC equation is a simplification because the Domaru is not necessarily going to go straight up head-to-head. It will likely have an ARO or two before being engaged in melee (unless it is in very dense terrain) which can be with SupFire potentially; or it can Dodge away (with Kinematika 2 making closing the distance somewhat awkward); or it can engage in melee - depending on what they have on the flank, it can go F2F to absorb more orders (high CC troopers going F2F often end up crit cancelling each other) or it could Berserk against weaker Warbands that can't kill it in one go, such as AP or Shock CCW troops, Shaolin for example. I'll admit, I thought there was more, so sorry about that. That said, there was some stuff that shifted the focus of what my initial point was about (ie, Domaru in vanilla, because that's where vanilla YJ has lost out). I plead tiredness on my part But essentially, my point is/was that Domaru Spitfires (and other Domaru profiles in general) had uses in vanilla that are basically irreplaceable (ie, that of an aggressive, dangerous CC unit that packs good ranged power at the same time). The only comparable unit now is the Crane (which is pretty damn good, of course) but it is in the elite HI cost range, whereas the Domaru Spitfire (or even Combi) profile was in the medium cost range (making it more economical to employ, particularly alongside another unit such as the Zuyong HMG Lt).
Eh, I've never been a fan of giving Domaru real guns, frenzy becomes a double-edged sword and the price makes trading up harder. Spitfire also lacks E/M grenades, and those things are amazing at PH14. The chain rifle profile though, he was a true hero. That fucker was a god of trading with plenty of versatility, and will be sorely missed. Force a big guy out of supp fire with speculative shot, then charge in with CC29/32 berserk to immobilize. The grenades also worked wonders against links who ended up in the midfield. Sometimes the specific requirements for frenzy were actually a problem, because immobilization =/= wounding. I had to make him spank his helpless target again or send him in to kill someone else before he'd get his free order to do suicide attacks with (chain rifle really helped with those against lighter targets, and anti-camo too). Only real sectorial troops that sucked in vanilla were Kempeitai and Haramaki. And O-Yoroi I guess, but it wasn't much good in JSA either.
I never used Domaru in vanilla, but I did occasionally use Haramaki. A couple of Haramaki as extremely heavy warbands sans smoke actually worked well in Biotechvore. Meant they could get out of the DZ without much order expenditure and if there were any units on overwatch duty you'd typically have a good chance of not only tanking the hit but also removing them. It's just a shame that there weren't more missions forcing you to move a larger part of your force - but the game isn't really designed to behave like that.
I was actually looking forward to playing with lots of Impetuous YJ troops: Aragato + Shaolin + Kuangshi as a combination of Extremely Impetuous Smoke with merely Impetuous guns so you could (to an extent) choose engagements. Haramaki + Shaolin would have fitted into that well. Alas, it is not to be :)
Okay, this might not be the correct post to bring this up, but I guess it works. For some reason the past few days the forums marked a bunch of posts in the News section as read, but has now marked them as unread and lo and behold - Riotgrrl Painting's (I guess that's @tdc ?) video is there. Video quality is a bit hard to see, but does anyone know what the whole damned sectorial worth of units that were used less than JSA in vanilla consisted of? (6 that's used less and around 4 that's used roughly as little as Kempei - looks like Lunah and Pheasant are both below Kempei!?)
I see the "numbers don't lie" keeps being taken as an article of faith... Let's provide an example of why they don't: there is a way to elevate the medium level of wealth in the world to twice is actual value, and no rich people will lose a dime, neither will they oppose it very vocally. ¿Do you think it is a good thing? Answer: no, because it implies the slaughter of the poor. The numbers point one way, the context, another. Let's go for another example: bests schools are filled with students with the highest grades. This must be true, right? So we must remove the schools who don't teach right, so we can optimize the system and those children can go where they will receive better teachings. Or change the teachers, of course. Right? Wrong. Human nature makes it so at least some teachers will give extra points to their students in order to raise their perceived performance, leaving those who don't looking like bad teachers in comparison. Context, specially in Big Data, is everything. Please do consider that there are not enough data to provide context. It is impossible to claim that the Shikami is an almost never used troop, for example, when it has been around less than a quarter of the whole timeline. As I mentioned before, bikes are another type of troop hard to see on the table, and we should compare not the % of bikes Vs total in vanilla, but also % bikes used in JSA lists. TAGs also, until LI came around were hard to see on the table, and there is a difference between ITS 8 (Limited Insertion as an extra) and ITS9 (lists with a single combat group won't suffer the Strategic Use of Command Tokens). Celestial Guards % is affected by Kuangshi, since you need at least one to place the others... Funny how the Pheasant Agent is so widely used, despite being so generally considered an overcharged unit... Now as for the ARO troopers... Yanhuo is the most used... but it has 3 profiles, one of which is very Active Turn Hunting! Then the MSV2 spitfire remote... then the Total Reaction, then the Raiden. Seeing how only 29% of lists included a Total Reaction, and nearly none included 2, I'd say that the Vanilla playstyle depends on basic troops for ARO, the Guilang sniper... or none. I can't see well enough the Keisotsu, to me it looks like nearly 19% of the lists included them (1 in 5), and nearly 2 per list.
Please correct me if this is not the case, but I think the argument is: "We wanted to separate JSA from Yu Jing anyway and according to the data it's not going to impact Yu jing players very much" rather than "We've noticed that JSA units are seldom used in Yu Jing lists, therefore we have decided to split the two." Drawing the wrong or incomplete comclusions from statistics is definitely a danger, but I don't think it applies in this case.
and did they taken into acount the impact of Operation redveil to "what people uses"? - Zhanshi - Guilangs (beyond) - Tiger soldiers - Ninja - Hsien - Zuyong All above 30% Daofei and Zhanying between 17% and 9,9% The fact that the initiation kit sells all of them is unrelated to their use... right? because new players doesn't use the army and distort the stats. I'm telling you the reading of this stats. but is no secret. The bast majority of the reports for the last campaign were barely playing with starter content or by begginer players. Or the fact that a lot of players play a couple of games and then sell their minis... This people are the reason JSA seems to be barely played on Vanilla Yujing. They don't expand or test JSA troops because they doesn't deepen inside the game. And players that start with a JSA sectorial do their lists as JSA If you want realistic stats, filter the results by activity or by the time the players remain active. Droping numbers without a proper filter or asking the right questions is not rigorous
I think the argument that's been coming back from the affected players is there is no way these stats show underusage by key JSA models. You can't say Raidens were under utilised when they were used 2.4% less than goddamn Su-Jians. Are we going to delete battle cats next? Chaiyi and Pangulings are barely used more than Kitsune, are we going to try argue removing them wouldn't impact vanilla players? Too many people are looking at these stats without actually thinking about how to apply them and coming to some really dumb conclusions.
So, this was including the ITS8-specific profiles, explains a lot. Stand-outs for me: 1. People use Tigers that much!? For me those are very niche, rarely effective, troopers. 2. People actually use Zhanshi at all, let alone most of all?! 3. People are not using Armand!?
