...on an S4, hackable and fragile chassis. I do like Peacemakers as a unit, but they shouldn't be the only solution to the problem.
That are also very strong units. Yes, they're hackable and fragile but they also forward deploy auxbots and get you a hacking presence up the field. PanO players can do that if they want. They just often don't want to.
Then kindly explain what PanO is. What's the actual CB design space for the faction? Because a growing number of players are getting frustrated with it despite really liking the models, and that shooting advantage that gets harped on about endlessly DOES. NOT. EXIST. There are factions that equal or get inside a few percent of PanO's shooting ability in all unit roles, with a few that PanO is definitively second or third place at even within the Face-To-Face BS Attack niche. In exchange, we sit at a 2 WIP+UPGRADE swing on Hacking abilities, no Smoke or White Noise, poor access to Minelayer, expensive Skirmishers, no Warbands, no Hacking Area projection tools... Seriously, what's the Official Word on what our faction does? We've got 40+ pages of ideas, anecdotes, analysis, and general complaining, but it hasn't once been explained what the designers want from PanO.
I'd just like to counter some of the doom and gloom on this board with a snapshot of the current state of the competitive game; the top six factions in ITS15 so far: This of course is not definitive, and it doesn't speak to the cramped design space of PanO, but I do think it's worth at least bearing in mind that PanO is currently slapping, competitively speaking...
The design space for PanO is more muddied by Knights than not imo. SAA, Varuna and NCA are cool and more thematic than knock off space knights imo As far as on the game table goes; PanO are extremely strong and do v well and I'm not sure where this idea that they're weak comes from.
It is the best Data set we have and are going to get, for all terms and purposes the unregistered players might not exist we cannot draw data from something like this. If people want to see that improved, at the local level try to promote friendly to the other players the importance of registering to a tournament and uploading the lists in a timely fashion.
I think you're mixing parts of the game here, cheaper 1W units are always going to outnumber more expensive multi wound models, it's the nature of the game at 300 points because of how orders work. Being able to bring lots of cheap cost efficient units, to fuel and/or defend one, two, maybe 3 major attacking pieces at 300 points is generally the go to kind of build people look for. Lists are built around cost efficient units fueling a couple of hero units that spend the majority of orders on themselves or their fireteam. You're saying because an IA or Whitebanner list may run 4 Zhanshi, that clearly the 11pt Zhanshi are extremely important to the list's success. The same list may also have 3-4 five point Monks in it too. All these units are useful to the list and important in their own way to the sectorial, but they're not important in the same way said hero units because they don't consume orders as efficiently as they do which when you boil down Infinity, a large part of success in the game is getting value out of orders spent. It's the Shang Ji/Haetae/Daofei/pick a multiwound fighter that's going to do alot of the heavy lifting when it comes to prosecuting an offense. You could build a White Banner list without all of the 2W models the sectorial has available, and even though they are massively outnumbered in lists they're the most important units when it comes to prosecuting an attack against a well defended or strong opposition. There might only be a couple of them in the list, but the HI are probably the most important models in the list for that player. The days of N3 era lists of drowning your opponent in just 1W spam is gone, the 15 unit cap killed that kind of list. When I look at Pan-O sectorials one of the things that stands out to me is that they don't generally have is a good, wide selection, of those tip of the spear hero units that have that ability to provide the biggest bang for buck when you spend orders. Look at WinterFor vs White Banner who released against each other. Shang Ji, Jujaks, Haetae, Dokkebei, Bixie, So-Ra, Dao Fei, Lei Gong give White Banner a very wide selection of popular units, most of which fireteam together, to get that value. Meanwhile WinterFor has... Orcs. Maybe Maximus I'm still super on the fence about him. The Hospitallers are crippled by fuck awful fireteams here as well, Boyg is crap, KoJ is lukewarm at best and the Jotum is paying through the nose for an ARM stat that people barely give a shit about because AP weapons are increasingly common.
It's the best we have, but it's still insuficcient to draw proper conclusions from it. I'd also like to see this improved but as it stands, it's not very useful.
Its certainly more useful than the random opinions of people, including my own. Ultimately the only data we have points towards a much healthier metastate than a lot of people would have you believe.
Enough random opinions is data, which is why I always try and throw in my two cents. I'd frankly love to be proven wrong about the viability of my faction, especially if people can make it work without the characters.
Heh, I agree with both sides on data here. It is very useful, but has its flaws and limitations. Also, please remember, that partial or incorrect data is actually worse than no data. First rule of data analysis, "garbage in, garbage out".
It's not the only data though and should absolutely not be treated as such to deflect complaints about possible issues. I believe most people are aware of the issue concerning local meta bias, both in terms of faction/unit choice and player skill. In my area, people are constantly harping on about the evil Zhayedan ARO because there is that one RTF player who is just really good in terms of deployment and board navigation. None of those people would claim RTF to be overpowered though. Sometimes we just have to accept this kind of venting for what it is.
I think these discussions would be way more productive if instead of complaining that other underperforming factions get something you think you should get that you instead just state what you think you should get and a sound reason why it makes the faction more interesting while leaning into it's identity.
I think this is the definition for Panoceania in general. I could use if I wanted to, the same couple of list with Hassasin since the Fireteam rework, pretty much without checking what missions are in the Tournament, with Panoceania, no matter the flavour, I will have to do it and for sure to modify a few pieces if not the whole list. I´m a player which enjoy to play same list in pretty much every mission and tournament against many rivals I could, to see how far I manage to go. Sometimes is not exactly the list but a particular profile. Usually I got good results by doing that. I was one of that few which played Andromeda back in N3 when she was pretty much "garbage". Right now Panoceania as a whole, vainilla or sectorials, doesn´t allow to do that, or it does but with only a few options. And I totally agree with your statement, "for a one vs one match" you will be probably fine with MO or any other Panoceanian Army, but for a tournament with 3 or 5... you aren´t in the best place. In fact, the main problem with MO is it has only 3-4 list to go "as competitive as possible". I find this interesting, but far to be optimistic about Pano, I got the feeling this could be use to "deny" Pano has a problem. I think nobody here is complaining about winning with Panoceania or "subarmies". However, thanks for sharing the data. We could project, still some interesting conclusions. A really good point.
There’s a few things that need to be baselined to progress What CB perceive PanO’s design space is? What customers perceive PanO’s design space is? How do Both parties want PanO to operate? Why do both parties want PanO to operate in that fashion?
One needs to work with what they have. That is true local meta has a great influence and how factions perform sometimes changes drastically per region/ country. That is correct. Also correct.
The impression I get from CB’s intended PanO design space is 1. Highest Tech balanced against Cost effectiveness so they can mass produce it. 2. Mass well trained troops armed and armoured to a level suitable to support and be supported by the other components of the Military Complex. But that key definer is that balance of high tech vs cost effectiveness vs mass production. I.e define it as Tech Enabled. The middle of the range where you don’t have the Human Solution (Haqq [Throwing Daylami with Panzerfausts]) a problem v Tech (Aleph [Dakini]) Solution. But able to rapidly bring to bear a combination of both en masse.
What do you think differentiates it from Nomads and especially Yu Jing in this respect? In the past I could point to strong MSV2 availability for ignoring modifiers and Smoke, but MSV2 isn't what it used to be.
