I think that shock ammunition affects the tactical gameplay in a negative way: If a trooper gets killed by simply bypassing the unconscious state, you loose the chance (and tactical decision) to spend orders to heal that trooper (or to spend orders to kill that unconscious trooper for sure). And with the increase in Shock ammo showing up, NWI and Dogged get less and less valuable. What if Shock works like this: you have to pass an ARM and a BTS save per hit, but even if both fail, you suffer only one wound. This would make shock more hazardous, even for multi-wound troops, because the save is harder, but the instant kill is gone. And NWI still is not like 2W, because you loose the unconscious state. And you could make Shock-Immunity mean that you only suffer a wound if you fail both saves, or - what I think would be better - Shock-Immunity is no longer an immunity to an ammo type, but instead it grants you another level of unconsciousness. More chances to heal mean more tactical decisions... Well, what would be the impact of such a change? Multi-Wounds would be a little less valuable, while NWI and (to a lesser extend) Dogged become more valuable. And, of course, more unconscious instead of dead troopers on the field. Would this hurt PanO too much and make Haqq invincible? So, in a way this is a 'Rules'-Question', a hypothetical one: How would the redesign of this rule(s) interact with other rules, and affect the gameplay? What is your opinion?
I think Shock works fine. In fact, Shock is about the only thing that makes NWI different from having multiple Wounds. So if Shock screws that up... that's kinda the point, isn't it?
You seem to be missing the entire point of shock. The tactical decisions that shock provides are exactly what you list. I make the tactical decision to use shock, in order to negate you healing any wounds or get around NWI. How about we remove immobilized, or isolated, or unconscious, or the dead state? All of those remove my tactical options to spend orders on my models.
I just think we remove shock from marksmanship which is given randomly to bots. AP needs a rework waaaay more than shock IMHO.
As with the others, I don't think the problem is with shock, per se. The amount of shock increasing, however, does mean something might need to change. Whether that's an increase in cost to models that have/can get shock or a decrease in cost to NWI/Dogged, it doesn't matter too much. Just think of it like this: imagine shock didn't exist. Now NWI should cost slightly less than a true wound (you still miss out on an unconscious state that a 2W model has). Dogged should cost slightly less than that. These are the maximum costs for these skills because you will get maximum benefit from them. Now imagine if every model has shock ammo. Now NWI/Dogged should cost nothing because they don't actually do anything. This is, obviously, the minimum cost for the skill (it doesn't provide any drawback either in this case, so shouldn't provide a discount). In reality, they should cost somewhere between the two extremes, but as shock ammo becomes more prevalent, it should slide towards the lower end. On the other end of things, increasing the cost of troops with shock ammo might keep the rough numbers the same per army, which means that a static cost for NWI/Dogged can exist. All that said, I think @psychoticstorm has asked that we put stuff like this (rule change suggestions) in the Access subforum.
But your decision is about negating options, not enabling them. I am not talking about negating options, but about strengthening the option to heal. Well, I asked for the impact. The impact on Marksmanship seems to be rather good, but NWI might get too strong. Is there so much more Shock vs NWI than Shock vs 1W troops? As I want to emphasise the healability that NWI lacks, I still think the overall impact would be good.
Sorry, was really thinking about where to put this and I don't mind this being moved. Before suggesting a change I just wanted to explore for the possible impact.
I read that as opposed to a true 2W model (which can go unconscious after losing that second wound and be brought back up).
I mean, Doctoring your fallen troops is all well and good but I feel sometimes even Avicenna couldn't stitch a 'cratered skull and scorched,scattered brain tissue' back together again on the battlefield. In my mind, there are some weapons/munitions that leave such horrific wounds that a paramedic/doctor cannot possibly repair. That's what Shock is all about. Also, as everyone else says: Mechanically, Shock is working exactly as intended.
I only think more consideration for who gets shock (and viral) and who doesn't is necessary. As SMG is used as a cheap-skates weapon to reduce cost of profiles, maybe this is the problem and there should exist an SMG with only Normal ammo that's granted to profiles that need to be cheap and a Multi SMG (which is basically current SMG plus a burst 1 DA mode) granted to units that are designed to be melee brawlers like Dart or Hulang. After all, we're getting a bunch of Valor2 models and being able to access stuff that puts those down in one order is important. As @Alphz wrote, AP is in more dire need for attention (and honestly, it should probably be 0.5*[ARM+Cover] instead of [0.5*ARM]+Cover)
My favorited rework of shock would be to stop handing out Shock Immunity like candy. Steel Phalanx looks really dated because of that trend.
Just remove shock from smgs and knives. Honestly maybe AP mines too, I don't know. Looking at the cube jager profile, I am completely flabbergasted how smg + E/mitter is cheaper than just bsg.
I'm with you in the case of the smg, but why knifes? They have -1 Ph and the silent trait isn't used most of the time. Then you could remove them completely from the game.
I think shock is fine too The increase in shock use is very meta dependant. When players increase their use of NWI/dogged, their opponent start to take more shock ammo in their list. Season 8 we had few player playing NWI-heavy army and we had very few shock amo used Season 9, 3 players (me included) moved to Aleph and got good results and suddenly our meta switched to more shock amo as a counter Season 10, we now have little NWI in our players' armies and shock is mostly gone from the table once again
It would be nice if this was a choice you would actively make, but in many of the new releases you are actively incentivized to opt for a model with shock ammo regardless if you are facing a lot of (non-Shock immune) NWI or Dogged in your meta. Most units also don't offer you a choice of equivalent models with either normal Combi or Multi Rifle the way Hospitaller do so it tends to make the choice a lot more difficult than the two sniper options for Cateran. Take Zhencha for example. You can choose between 3 profiles and while SMG and Boarding Shotgun often are apples and oranges, the particular apple that is the SMG is significantly less expensive and in this case also comes with mines which is such a hugely better toolbox than D-charges (unless your meta uses destructible terrain "addon")
Shock is fine, it wouldn't be such a default option if AP was more effective such as a straight -2 to Arm or halve and round down. I do like the Idea of a Normal ammo only SMG.
