With the ongoing discussion about the strength and non-interactiveness of a turn 1 alpha strike with Pitchers, spotlighting into Guided Missile Launcher, I wanted to look at the problem from a numbers-first perspective to find what, if anything, needs changes. I want to preface this by saying that I am still quite new to the game, so if you find flaws in my analysis from a “what’s happening on the table”-point of few, please let me know. To start this of, I was looking at the probabilities of success for the different phases of this strategy for the main culprits against generic weak and somewhat specialised enemies, as will be detailed below, to get a grasp on the possible ranges of probabilities. I tried to be thorough in calculating these, but errors are obviously possible, so feel free to point these out if you find any. I will start with just the numbers without much discussion, and will discuss these, together with possible solutions, in the second part. 1. Pitcher to the enemy deployment zone All three of the most discussed troops are starting in the own deployment zone, so I was looking at the probabilities of shooting Pitchers above 24” (at -6). These look as follows: Linked Tsyklon: 75%, Linked Jazz: 51%, Bit&Kiss: 58% Assuming that we spend one (or more) order(s) to reposition our Pitcher unit forward to get within 24” (at -3), these change to: Linked Tsyklon: 88%, Linked Jazz: 70%, Bit&Kiss: 78% Obviously, there are other ways to get a repeater into the enemy deployment zone, such as a suicide run with a Fast Panda Heckler, but these can’t be looked at from a numbers perspective, so I will incorporate them in the discussion further below. 2. Spotlight Next is spotlighting the target. Here, I tried to keep the analysis simple, by just looking at the relative WIPs of Hacker and target: Same WIP: 42%, WIP of Hacker +2 better than target: 50% Using a second order, these change to: Same WIP: 66%, WIP of Hacker +2 better than target: 75% 3. Guided Missile Launcher Finally, we want to kill the target with a Guided Missile Launcher. I calculated the numbers using three different targets, two being generic (a weak and a sturdy one) as well as aiming at the Avatar, probably the hardest troop to kill this way, to see what the range of probabilities look like. I always assumed the target would dodge, for ease of analysis: Target with 1W, PH10, ARM0, No ECM/Tinbot: 78% unconscious or dead Target with 2W, PH12, ARM4, No ECM/Tinbot: 50% unconscious or dead Avatar: 42% one wound, 22% two wounds, 5% unconscious 4. Killer Hacker Defense Finally, I wanted to see what the odds of a Killer Hacker, positioned near the possible target, would be in a fight with the active player’s Hacker, to see if this could possibly dissuade the bombarding of the enemy deployment zone with Pitchers. For simplicity, I just looked at Jazz as the active Hacker, and assumed she would use Trinity, as would the Killer Hacker. I calculated the probabilities with both a generic defending Killer Hacker, as well as versus an Interventor Killer Hacker. Jazz (no Tinbot) vs. Killer Hacker WIP13 BTS0: 79% unconscious or dead Killer Hacker, 4% unconscious or dead Jazz Jazz (Tinbot -6) vs. Killer Hacker WIP13 BTS0: 89% unconscious or dead Killer Hacker, 2% unconscious or dead Jazz Jazz (no Tinbot) vs. Interventor KH: 33% unconscious or dead Interventor, 7% unconscious or dead Jazz Jazz (Tinbot -6) vs. Interventor KH: 45% unconscious or dead Interventor, 3% unconscious or dead Jazz Ok, so with all the initial numbers out of the way, let me start discussing what I think this means, regarding the strength and possible problems with the tactic. I will try to argue this through the lens of the two major complaints I read about it: how strong and how non-interactive it is. Looking at the tactic as a whole, the minimum order expenditure is 3 orders (Pitcher, Spotlight, GML). With the numbers as shown above, this is not very likely, but 5 orders (Move-Move, Pitcher, 2x Spotlight, GML vs. squishy target) to 6 orders (2xGML vs. stronger targets) seem very plausible to get rid of any target one desires. So the first point of discussion is this strength, and possible solutions for it. These would obviously have to lower the probabilities of success of the individual steps outlined above. I think it is quite evident that active spotlighting is not the problem – here, the success values are not very high, so bullet point number 2 is ok. Bullet point 1, shooting the Pitchers, is very probable. Obviously, one can make this more order extensive by posting a stronger ARO presence that first has to be dealt with before the Pitcher unit can get active, but this comes with its own drawbacks. A possible solution here, that has been discussed before, is changing the rangebands of Pitchers. If we would make all rangebands worse by one increment (so -3 to -6, 0 to -3 etc.) would change the above math as follows: Shooting above 24” would be out, assuming we change all -6 ranges to outside the maximum range of the Pitcher. Thus, shooting inside 24” would become: Linked Tsyklon: 75%, Linked Jazz: 51%, Bit&Kiss: 58% I think these numbers, in conjunction with the necessity to bring the unit forward (and thus having to deal with AROs) are quite reasonable, as the above are the apex Pitcher shooters. Anything worse would make Pitchers on all but a few units totally useless. This would also help increase the order expenditure for this strategy, as bombing Pitchers from deployment zone to deployment zone would be out. On to bullet point number 3, the Guided Missile Launcher. Here again, the numbers are quite strong, especially in light of the fact that shooting guided missiles is totally save for the user. A possible, easy small nerf would be changing the bonus for guided shots from +6 to +3. This would change the above math as follows: Target with 1W, PH10, ARM0, No ECM/Tinbot: 64% unconscious or dead Target with 2W, PH12, ARM4, No ECM/Tinbot: 41% unconscious or dead Avatar: 30% one wound, 16% two wounds, 4% unconscious This would mean that stronger units would be somewhat safer from guided missile attacks due to their limit of 5 shots per turn, and the expected order count to pull of this strategy would go up as well. I do not think that this addresses the main problem with this step of the strategy, which is the feeling of helplessness it inflicts on the defender – this will be discussed last. So, the final bullet point is the possible defense against Pitcher attacks with Killer Hackers. As we could see above, Jazz (and other strong hackers) are incredibly oppressive against “normal” Killer Hackers, especially if the active Hacker can get a TinBot on top. Against an Interventor, Jazz’ probabilities to get rid of the Killer Hacker are diminished significantly, but unfortunately, the odds of even an Interventor damaging Jazz back are almost negligible. So this point, which would give the most agency to the defending player, is unfortunately the most problematic. I see two solutions here. First, I don’t think Jazz should be able to get a TinBot, as I think the numbers without one are somewhat reasonable. This would be especially true, in my opinion, if combined with my second proposal: repeaters should not give -3 to the other player if used actively. While it has been proposed before that repeaters should not grant the Firewall-3, I think this would dissuade players too much from using repeaters, as they would become a vulnerability in the reactive turn. On the other hand, giving this Firewall bonus only when the enemy uses your repeaters actively, this would balance them out a little bit, and I think this could be explained full-wise with some technobabble as well. These two propositions would change the numbers above as following: Jazz (no Tinbot) vs. Killer Hacker WIP13 BTS0: 69% unconscious or dead Killer Hacker, 9% unconscious or dead Jazz Jazz (no Tinbot) vs. Interventor KH: 26% unconscious or dead Interventor, 17% unconscious or dead Jazz With these changes, Jazz comes still out on top of weaker Killer Hackers, but if one would use several of these as a defense, this would change, as it should. And Jazz still has the upper hand against even an Interventor, which is reasonable as well, but it would probably not be the best play to engage it this way, as it should, in my opinion. Overall, I think this change would be the most important one, as it is the one that has the biggest effect on the potential risk of the strategy, as well as gives the most agency to the defending player, as it would allow him to use Hackers for a stronger defense against such tactics. After this huge wall of text, what are my main points of contention? The alpha strike with Pitchers, Spotlight and Guided Missiles is quite strong as stands More importantly, there is very little the defender can do to prepare for or combat against it, which is highly non-interactive The following changes could all be implemented to make the strategy less strong without completely crippling it, order in my personal ranking from best to worst: Own repeaters do not grant Firewall-3 in the active turn, strengthening defense through hackers Limiting Pitcher max distance to 24” and worsening the rangebands by one increment, thus making movement out of the own deployment zone necessary, which allows defense via conventional AROs Changing the bonus for guided from +6 to +3, thus making it less oppressive The only nerf to units I would propose would be to not allow strong hackers with high BTS such as Jazz to benefit from additional TinBots The major point not addressed by me is the non-interactivity once Pitcher and Spotlight have occurred, so during the guided missile shots. I would be very interested to hear how this could be made more interactive for the defensive player. The most plausible solution I heard was potentially allowing the dodge to get rid of Spotlight as well, but I’m not sure if this would be too strong, as well as a niche rules exception which should always be limited.
I think removing Firewall from Repeaters in the active turn risks the other parts of the hacking game which are (more) interactive and risks pushing hacking further into the realm of dominance by massed ARO. Repeaters creates a battlefield where there are increasingly fewer and fewer "cover" for a unit to use the more repeaters there are and in general the less terrain there is the more dominating the ARO becomes as the active player's burst is spread thinner and thinner. For me at least, this is not preferable. I'd like to see more light hacking presence on the field, not the Go-Big-Or-Go-Home approach that Infinity tends to foster. I also think that addressing Guided specifically should be an either full removal from the game or to address the hacking function elsewhere. Guided is the primary means for Forward Observer to be relevant. Since Forward Observer is highly interactive in that it requires LOF and it doesn't have a +3 rangeband, it's quite dicey to use and without the threat of a Guided missile backing it up it's in most cases only valuable for the Flash Pulse upgrade on Specialist Operative. Still... I wonder how the game will work if BS Attack (Guided) became BS Attack (Speculative Fire), particularly now that Guided Missiles almost never get a full Fireteam bonus. Hitting on 9 or 10 between 24-40" at B1 and EXP? Oppressive or preferable?
Druze are actually the highest, they run pure links that fire on BS15 before rangebands and also have X-Visors.
On stat you may not have considered: High ARM, multi wound units have a better chance at surviving a turn if they reset against the SML attack. They'd likely have to take at least one hit (which they'd likely be doing even if they dodged). Even with 0 ARM a GML hit does 2W on average. If you have armor, that number goes down. For something like the avatar, it's not very likely to die to a single GML hit, very likely to reset, and then more likely to win FTFs against a spotlight than it is against the GML. There are several suggestions to curb the effect of GML (e.g. making repeaters activate when they're used so models can ARO against them, bringing Uturn back into the game, making GML ammo disposable, making pitcher have a max range of 16", making spotlight require a save against BTS. ect.) I think GML are in an ok place for the large majority of factions. Offensively, they're very order intensive and likely only eliminate one threat in a turn. However, things like fast pandas and multi burst pitchers make it much more efficient. I would prefer something is done to curb the ability to reliably get a repeater up field for very few orders over anything else.
Units like that are highly likely to be isolated first, especially the Avatar because rolling 1dice vs WIP17 ain't great. It's quite possible they're resetting on -12.
A Zuyong (PH 12, WIP 13, ARM 3) is 65% likely to take 2 wounds from a GML and 50% likely to not take another shot. If they Dodge you're 45% to go UNC and 55% to waste another order. None of that are particularly good odds and I'm not all that sure if wasting orders or gambling on surviving is the better choice, but Zuyong are one of the worse HI at dodging so this is almost as bad as it gets
Two elements missed in the first analysis; a) Heckler Fastpanda is an alternative, exceptionally efficient and hard to interact with method of delivering a repeater at long distances. Pitchers are the main issue but not the only one. b) Multiple hackers can coordinate spotlight attempts, drastically increasing effectiveness at the cost of command tokens. I think your idea here, combined with legitimate marking via forward observer, would be a preferable path. That said... really hate long range speculative fire lol This strategy only seems to work if close enough to the edge of the repeater zone to guts out of it. In this case, models hit by Oblivion would escape the ensuing attack by the missile (unless they are fucking Morats of course and 'bravely' stand their ground) This was the only real countermeasure to GML I was able to find when I was playing it a bunch earlier in the year. Reset, tank hit, guts out of repeater zone. Uturn sucked, but I get the idea. Disposable isn't too bad but baggage isn't a huge cost for some armies, especially CA. I'm really big on the repeater ARO and 16" range concepts myself. Another approach is to reduce the hitting power. Why is the unstoppable attack also fired with one of the most devastating ammo? Nobody plays guided rocket launcher in tohaa, and not just because we lack hackers and pitchers lol. I also like the idea of a missile countermeasure system, that AROs against guided attacks in its Zone of Control or line of fire or something. Really niche and specific, but adding a very limited, very hard counter to strategies can be a way to keep them in line.
Make U-turn a real U-turn: If the U-turn hacker wins, have the missile hit the GML bot or another target decided by the U-turn hacker. High risk, high reward as it should be. Currently it is just high reward. (preferrably, remove guided from the game)
It's only low risk high reward if you're using Pitchers or Camo Pandas. Risk goes up and rewards down if you're using Forward Observer or try to run a repeater to the opponent - in my opinion to the point where bringing the GML is not necessarily a good idea. What if the U-turn was slightly different. Say... what if Spotlight placed the target AND the hacker in Targeted state? I would prefer if the change that nerfed the interaction targeted the part of the interaction that's causing problems instead of doing "sector artillery" style nerfs. This way Ariadna would start having use for their Traktors and can retaliate if they get their entire army spotlit. (Why are there no cats in Bloodborne? Because Cat Yorshka is not a Victorian era weapons system)
Dammit! That ruins the joke! There's a cat in Dark Souls! Back to the drawing board. I'm still going to name my cat Yorshka if I ever get another one for the pun. I had internalised Yorshka Ward as an area in BB for some reason.
Another side of GMLs is that they're decent defensively. If a non-HI/TAG rambo piece runs through your repeater net and gets spotlight-ed they either have to spend orders resetting or get blown up the first order of the next turn. I actually like this function of GMLs.
