As long as the mission is about shooting people off the board, they're fine. But have you tried Looting and Sabotaging, Highly Classified, Biotechvore, Rescue or Antenna Field with them recently? We seem to agree that MSV3 troops are all in the Shadow of their TO counterparts. I'd imagine that having access to MSV3s is an existing strength. Making that strength more attractive to use seems worth exploring. Pardon the question... as long as you'll keep looking at it that way, why would you not always keep using Achilles? Whatever you do to Dakinis unfortunately won't change that. The Asura will have to be slightly altered or the status quo will remain.
Achilles does a different job to the Asura HD+, as you well know. My point is that when I make a list, the points costs are, in the main, merely limiting the total selection and combination of troops I can take in the list. Outside of controlling zones, if I was to make a list where every other troop cost 5pt and was woefully underpointed, and the Asura cost 250pts, then the list would be as just as effective as if the Asura cost 5pts and everything else was woefully overpointed. Of course there is retreat to consider as well, but I don't feel like the cost of the Asura or indeed any troop in the game is so massively unbalanced and off-kilter that it has a real effect in one's ability to control zones and avoid retreat. Essentially; the list is more than a sum of its parts and points costs mostly are irrelevant once the list has been selected. So while the Asura is probably a few points more than it should be, Dakinis are probably a few points less, and therefore if I make a list where I want the tactical flexibility of the Asura and the speed and cheap firepower of the Dakini, I'm sorted. Would I prefer everything to be accurately pointed forever? Yes, absolutely, but it won't be. And incidentally, MSV3 is called overpriced, but if you put an Aquila Guard down on the table against Nomads, with Intruders across the board, Zeros and Bandits etc in the middle, then I feel that MSV3 is very effective indeed. What would an MSV2 Aquila discover an Intruder on at 30" away? A 10, which is pretty useless. Auto-pass discover seems very, very useful to me!
Well then mate. If you can't comprehend why the Asura is the one in need of a touchup and how that is unrelated to Dakinis being good or not we have to agree to disagree. The MSV3's pointcost is something I can't address due to the limitation that I want the army builder to stay valid. So if it is currently overpriced there is only one way to work around that by expanding it's traits. Not necessarily the way I currently handle it, but some kind of added utility. Everything in Infinity does something, there are people who like Bolts, Mobile Brigada, Suryats etc and happily run them. It's impossible to make every individual happy. It is impossible to balance everything in a way that every 300 point list will be equally viable. The best I can hope for is to expand the available pool of viable options. The point isn't to make everyone happy but to bring everything I can up to speed. I hope you understand it is hard to take your oppinion into account under these circumstances. I very much think each trooper needs to be balanced against it's Faction internal counterparts. We seem to see things fundamentally different.
As far as I understood @Solar has honest concerns I can't get behind and that is fine. Unlike you seem to suggest I have no intention to mock him for that. If you just came here to be rude I suggest you be on your way.
How about making Discover a part of an ordinary Move for MSV 3, that is they get to complete a Move and a Discover as a single short movement skill.
That's an idea and not a bad one. But apparently MSV3s were deemed overpowered back in N3 when they were able to directly shoot a Camomarker. I kind of want to honour that verdict. Short Skill Discover+Move is mechanically slightly different. It might be a possible solution, so thanks!
I'm not very familiar with the "formula" myself, but I seem to recall people saying on the old forum that the cost of MSV3 was more than MSV2+Sensor+Sixth Sense L2. If that holds true isn't that ridiculous? Especially since the combination of those skills is more effective than MSV3 is.
I'm not sure about this case in particular, but MSV across the board seems to be way pricier than its utility. There's no reason MSV1 shouldn't be cheaper than Mimetism (if it isn't already) and MSV2 really should cost more than 2-3 points. Comparing an Aquila to an Orc, MSV3 looks like it has to be at least 10-12 points, which is insanely expensive.
Are you saying you encounter low vis zones and wish "i had MSV1" more often than you have a mimetic troop on your side win a roll because they had mimetism?
I don't use a ton of mimetism but you should encounter a F2F thru a low vis zone every game unless you try to avoid it.
What are you playing on that has so many (or any!) low vis zones? Nimbus has the reflective trait and Smoke is a Zero Vis zone.
The entire USA ITS community plays non-standard, in your opinion, then. I'm much more concerned with how the game *is* played than how it *ought to be* played, personally. And until CB fixes terrain rules to not just be all bloat, that means no terrain rules.
Maybe non-standard isn't the correct term, it just sounds polite. They're playing it wrong and you may as well be complaining that superjump sucks cuz the buildings are infinite height. If a mechanic interacts with terrain that you refuse to use you have actions to take before asking for a rebalance. Should they have made it clear they expect low vis zones to be used in the rules? Probably. They probably mistook it as a given.
From memory, those three skills in combination is only slightly less expensive than MSV3 in cost, but they act differently. MSV3 can't delay ARO nor respond outside of their LOF arc, while MSV2+Sensor will at best discover a target in cover at medium range on 17 and sniper rifle range on 14 while MSV3 does it on "20" up to 96". However, MSV2+Sensor+Sixth Sense isn't going to happen. Possibly we'll have it through a Fireteam at some point, but I think MSV2+Sensor is one of those combos that's only theoretical (much like Sensor+HMG or Core Fireteam + HRMC is only theoretical) Again, I don't fully recall the exact point costs, but Mimetism is on light units 3 points (or 1 if you're a CA REM). I seem to recall MSV1 being roughly the same at 3, while MSV2 is easy to tell - 5 points on Order Sergeants. On one hand, MSV1 also allows you to more easily defeat camo markers by reducing the requirements for Discover vs them, but on the other hand White Noise is getting common.
What do you want? @ijw said it is an expected mechanic and is priced in to MSV1. To what degree I don't know but not using it at all is wrong.
