In the background, Barids are infowar assassins. As good as the profile may be, this seems outside the purview of RTF. Also, not to pick nits, but in your first post @Papa Bey, you say there are no Deployable Repeaters in RTF, but there is still a Ghulam with that and e/Mauler, no?
There is and he is usually my 5th man when I can take 5 Ghulam. HMG/Missile Launcher or Sniper/LT/Doctor/Emauler+Repeater
I guess the point was that it's not a DepRep that helps with delivery that much, so that's probably why it was overlooked.
Perhaps not, but it would help with guarding an Al Fasid or something like that while the Mukhtar, Tuareg, and who knows what else are up in the midfield doing their business.
Problem solved. The ghulam fire team will advance into the appropriate area(s) and deploy repeaters so that the Jannisaires can more safely progress. :p The troops carrying er, offensive hacking devices are carried by what must be the smallest percentage of the troops of the task force. Is there a Mukhtar or Taureg available for every Jannisaires/Al Fasid heading into an anticipated infowar zone? It's not always about the quality of those that do, but the quantity to provide coverage. Because if this system falls, the Combined Army is entering Bourak. So let's cut corners, right? On a more game related note, the variety of (what's the buzzword? Platforms?) platforms what enables a wider and more interesting range of figures we can use at once. Dropping 30+ points for a single assault hacker is locking me in or out of certain other things. A sectorial is a theme and themes naturally have limits. QK is the rag tag desperately overburdened sectorial that somehow still manages to have more spec ops resources than the task force shipped directly from the home world... Still not squaring with what we I understand in terms of the story of the game. I'll give it a rest. Next week.
This is actually one of the problems with the fluff, right? Things that make sense for a Black Ops unit don't always make sense for a frontline force against Invading Aliens. Mukhtar / Tuaregs may be available for every Jan in a covert mission, because those are the missions that best leverage their abilities. Jannisaries, however, are best leveraged in a different situation. I think of it like Black Widow vs War Machine. Black Widow doesn't make a lot of sense in Infinity War, because she's only so helpful on the open battlefield. War Machine is the man. But in Winter Soldier, BW was more useful. Same idea. Different missions call for different units. But maybe Infinity has too many unit types and not enough missions?
I agree that this has always felt weird. In fact, before I knew more about the lore, I assumed everything we saw in the game were just black ops units, and that there also existed (rarely used) frontline military forces that were unsubtle and capable of truly horrific destruction. After all, imagine what a power with the ability to create, say, a Jotum could do if they wanted to create a battle tank.
I think this is probably the reason that the main large-scale conflict in the lore is taking place on Paradiso: it's all guerilla warfare in jungles and cities (i.e., urban jungles). The books talk about the large-scale space battles at the blockade points, but on the ground (or in space boarding actions) it's all infantry actions in constraining terrain.
Tanks?! Did someone call for Maggy??? But I agree with the discussion on "Is this really clandestine black ops?" Its very much a grey area. Paradiso large engagements with TAG's and such make a lot of sense. But an infiltration of a Nomad Homeworld Ship? eeeehhhhh....... I usually just remind myself of the Al'Fasid porta-potty story.
Good thing that Al-badass had a sealed/recirculating environmental system! Poor dude is *never* going to live that down...
