Well the idea is you used your Maestro/Redrum packing hackers to attack the enemy KHDs while you were busy putting those repeaters all over the place. Kinda the same way I was using AHDs in N3, you attack with your attack hackers first to pave the way for your support hackers to control the field. Contrary to popular misguided belief, AHDs in vacuum were useable just CB had a habit of creating shitty profiles to carry them and they got a real bad name from that. Guilangs and Proxies? Super useful. Zerats? Puke. That is also assuming the opponent in question even had KHDs. Your average Pan-O player? May not even have any in his list in N3. I'm struggling to even remember if NCA even had a KHD option before the Bolts had a rework. TBH it sounds like your meta really just didn't get very far into the hacking game at all. Sounds like it pretty much evolved to KHDs fighting KHDs and didn't really figure out where to go from there. As far as E Drones? I mean yeah I can't give you the exact data but even without Exile in the equation they were solid on paper, order spam was a thing in N3. E Drones were a good force multiplier for 2 Ikadrons and an R Drone to increase their burst value, it's not like other factions weren't doing the same thing with Fugazi/Fanous/Transductor spam, and E Drones came with Exile which as discussed, ballbuster of a program for extra value.
Ah, my meta is a bit older than KHDs and our tournament settings not quite so forgiving as to allow a list to overspend on hacking, though I'm no stranger to test absurd lists even in tournaments.
I think you're getting mixed up with shit AHD carriers again. When I ran an AHD in N3 the adjustment was literally one FO guilang turned into an AHD. Are we going to pretend that Vanilla Yu Jing wasn't already running KHD ninjas to support HI/REMs in a list anyway, and the Dao Ying HD wasn't practically auto include anyway for other reasons? Are you really going to try and tell me that's an over investment to trade 1 FO for an AHD for minimal price juggling for a list? I often had an trio consisting of the AHD/HD/KHD and even if the AHD wasn't present the other two hacking devices were in my list for other reasons anyway. The fucking AHD Proxy was always a bigger pain in my ass than the MSR profile ever was.
Ok, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you think it took to make an AHD useful in a list. Are you imagining you needed to bring something like 6 different hackers to make them useful or some kind of meme fiesta list?
Oh come on. This is N3 in an N4 discussion, ffs, not to mention it is a line of argument that's very one sided. If you must drag me into it, and I have no wish to meta discuss N3 hacking as of the past few months... The best players brought hacking as a tool in a varied toolbox, not as a solution to all things. There used to be and still is a dynamic of aggressive and defensive posturing with hacking that had to be done by evaluating the hacking and play method your opponent had. If your list opted in harder you could be more aggressive, which only payed off if your opponent tried to use other hackables. This is a very generic answer because it was never a dead set number that would be ideal. However, then just like now the strongest hacking operated via repeaters. Our best players seldom put hackers forward unless they were KHDs, because KHDs had too much of an advantage. Keep in mind the answer for "how many" in Infinity has never really been very many for specialist pieces. Yes, that posturing has been upset now that Guided has such strong synergy with hacking.
Discussing N3 isn't irrelevant when it's in the context of change compared to N4. That was always a concern when taking hackers in N3, sure, and the spotlight changes definitely helped make them feel less hit and miss. Personally I am still very much on the side of things that no faction should be without some kind of viable hacking presence, even more in N4 now that it's not really possible for armies to ignore infowar anymore. That said even in N3 even if I had no targets for a KHD or AHD at the end of the day I was still ok with bringing those profiles. I'm pretty sure we discussed Ninjas a long time ago and you said you preferred the 26pt version while I preferred to pay the 3pts for the KHD as it was insurance for my HI, and it doubled as as a midfield button pusher. Same train of thought for the Guilang, even if I dropped a Monk to pay for the AHD upgrade even if it had nothing to hack the Guilang was still a super useful profile for midfield skirmishing, but the points I was paying was for diversity. I mean that was exactly the point I made. If you found yourself against an opponent who was also hacking, you lead with the KHDs and once they had created sufficient space the AHD was then able to either position or utilise positioned repeaters to control the field. KHDs were your hacking equivalent of high value SWC carriers while the other hacking devices were supportive units. You fought where possible with the equipment designed for fighting. A regular HD could brainblast someone carrying a KHD, but it was like bringing a combi to fight a Hac Tao who was shooting link cheerleaders, not really the optimal choice. I found that was perfectly fine as a dynamic for hacking. Now we have the issue where for the vast majority of factions and players they don't actually have the option for any kind of hacking firepower to tackle tough hacking opponents. The Trinity is like pissing into the wind against suitably shielded hackers. Just to swing back to that point because I actually double checked the math, if I'm correct at BS15 with burst 2 on his Gizmokit Cheong is actually only at 65.48% of success to bring up a PH11 REM. That's actually worse than his 70% to just roll on his Engineer skill at WIP14. It gets worse though because Husong are PH10.
Hexa KHD used to be almost mandatory if you expected Hackers, a big part of choosing NCA was so you could use another Hexa such as the Sniper too. PanO just has too many Hackables to go without. Speaking of dropping high-BTS uberhackers, a KHD might not work well but a Coordinated Spotlight has very good odds of letting you turn the Guided Missiles onto them for once. I consider a GML-bot nearly auto-include these days just for the fear factor around Repeaters.
Polynikes ran AHDs pretty regularly and went undefeated at the Interplanetario. For Onyx's part, "overspending" on hacking wasn't really an issue when hackers synergized incredibly well with your list - its best defense turn 1 was via overclock, Kerr-Nau or Bit allowed for more repeater coverage, etc.
Expensive, but plausible if you had enough hackers and CTs to make it work. My experience has been that people reach for a single (A)HD and brick the offending hacker with Oblivion thanks to Burst 2 and AP, then start launching the missiles against a target that can't really fight back against spotlight on -9 reset checks. Either way you go about it, we still come back to the bad part of N4 hacking where the supportive hacking device is also the HMG equivilant that you use to tackle hard targets which really diminishes the point of even touching KHDs in N4 for actually killing things. That's basically what I found from my experiences. At the end of the day the Guilang AHD was still a baseline Guilang. He was still extremely good at midfield skirmishing and could beat most other skirmishers in a fight thanks to carrying MSV1 and Mines. Same for the Proxy AHD, TO Camo guy with a Boarding shotgun was still a very terrifying presence to be hiding in the midfield for links to get near regardless of their hackable status.
I prefer the non-hacking Ninja for their ability to move unobstructed through an enemy defensive line. The KHD has for me not been a straight upgrade as it has come with limitations that means the Ninja can't operate in the unique role it has for Yu Jing as an assassin, so I had been prioritizing other hackers. Now I'm looking forward to experimenting with the more reasonably priced Ninja HD, but that's experiments that'll have to wait until I find time to play JSA I think. Less a combi vs Hac Tao more like a Combi vs Wild Bill. The strength of a KHD was that it ignored your "cover" after all, not that it made you super-tough and from memory Brainblast still had respectable damage value, just not as respectable as Oblivion. A Shang-Ji hacker in a Fireteam with a tinbot is/was more in line with what shooting a Hac Tao is for non-MSV troops. That's still a damned powerhouse of a hacking combo, btw, but a few more factions can do it now and its potency against hacking devices has gone down slightly due to Tinbot now no longer being "hacking mimetism" but instead is a firewall that doesn't stack with other sources of firewall. I will give you this much at least; it's irksome how Oblivion is the one that got AP and still has high damage as if all heavy infantry and REMs has the hacking protection of a TAG. Carbonite and Total Control actually seems fairly reasonable for their scope. I still find that Trinity being in line with other non-SWC infantry weapons is appropriate. On Chung-Hee: Oh yeah, I somehow calculated him with effective BS 16. Still, it's sufficiently close where the utility of not having to get to where the REM is may make it more attractive - such as if you put the REM on a roof. Also keeping in mind that the risk of taking damage is lower because some 6% will simply be a miss instead of doing damage to the REM. Keeping Chung-Hee in a Haris means his combat strength can be utilised. He's been a sleeper-killer for me given how he's got a very dangerous gun and the rest of the Haris plus the Repeater means it's harder for the enemy to target him specifically.
If there were tools that worked against BTS 9 hackers, then it'd be reasonable. I'd love see Kerr-Nau with something like Dam-2, BTS =0 on his Trinity.
Don't care. Use a gun. Or stab them with a spoon. Hacking is the one thing the Interventors are meant to excel at. Unless you're making the mistake of playing with Spec Ops, in which case; stop playing with Spec Ops.
Just get rid of the KHD it's basically pointless profile bloat at this point. If you really need to give the HD trinity as well.
Interventors aren't the only BTS 9 hackers any BTS 6 behind a firewall falls into that category and there are a few others with base BTS 9 (Knight of Justice). And yes Spec ops needs to die outside of casual fun/campaign games.
And KHD's are supposed to excel at killing hackers. The balance for that is all out of wack. They're in the same faction with the Kriza, what the heck *aren't* Nomads supposed to do better than other factions? That'd be like making an argument that K1 weapons shouldn't exist because TAGs aren't supposed to be vulnerable to weapons fire, only hacking.
So stab those guys, too. Maybe not the Knight of Justice. Bury that guy in bullets. I seriously do not agree that this is an issue with the game, it's more something that you need to find a solution to that's not just a carbon copy of how you deal with everything else with the Hacker skill. It's like how you do not enter a shooting competition with a TO camo unit at long range unless you haven't got options, and against hackers you always have options because hacking is added on to the rest of the systems.
I think it is, because the factions that were previously good at hacking and killing units like that had that capability taken away from them. It's like if there was a TAG with Total Immunity, NBW, and Berserk - everyone would say "Just hack it" and Ariadna players would be sitting around going "but what do I do?"
