Big post incoming. I know I’m not the first one to say this, but the Troop Types in Infinity aren’t very coherent. As of now, there are no clear indicators of what constitutes Light, Medium, and Heavy Infantry, never mind Skirmishers. The Troops Guide on the CB blog is very vague, and many units don’t fit the descriptions. A few examples: There are tons of Light Infantry with special equipment. Many Medium Infantry units also have support weapons. Not every HI is hackable A lot of units that aren’t skirmishers use stealth, camouflage, and deploy outside their deployment zone Not all Warbands have smoke. So, if I were to put on my smart-ass hat (which I will) and make suggestions to the Corvus Belli team (hello @HellLois), I would create meaningful distinctions between the Types that make them easy to define and give actual value to the players. This thread is here mainly for you to take my ideas apart and see if I made any mistakes. I am aware that this would require changing the type and/or the skills and stats for quite a number of units. I will go into the detailed changes that would be necessary in faction-specific posts below. For now, let’s start with what I think would make sense. My suggestions for defining Troop Types LI – Light Infantry: Any troop that is not impetuous (except regular troops with the Motorcycle piece of equipment) and has an ARM value of 1 or lower. This Troop Type reflects lightly armored infantry units with standard training. MI – Medium Infantry: Any troop that is not impetuous (except regular troops with the Motorcycle piece of equipment) and has an ARM value of 2 or 3 This Troop Type reflects better armored infantry units with standard training, yet without access to power armor. HI – Heavy Infantry: Any troop that has an ARM value of 4 or higher and/or has the Hackable characteristic and does not have the Remote Presence, Pilot, or Escape System special skill (= not a TAG) This Troop Type reflects infantry units that utilize heavy armor or power armor of any sort. TAG – Tactical Armored Gear: Any troop that is hackable and has a silhouette value of 6 or higher This Troop Type reflects the large, mecha-like armor suits that have replaced battle tanks on the modern battlefield. REM – Remote: Any troop that has the Remote Presence special skill (unless they have the Peripheral: Servant special skill) and has a silhouette value of 5 or lower This Troop Type reflects battle remotes of any kind. SK – Skirmishers: Any troop that has the Infiltration or Impersonation special skill and does not have the Hackable characteristic This Troop Type reflects lightly armored units that are able to infiltrate the battlefield ahead of the rest of the force. WB – Warbands: Any troop that has the Frenzy or Impetuous special skill and has a CC value of at least 20 and does not have the Hackable characteristic or the Infiltration special skill This Troop Type reflects light assault units that are fast, hard to control, and like to engage the enemy at close quarters or in close combat. What are the advantages of this classification? With this classification, you retain the distinctions that are required for a few rules interactions (TAGs cannot go prone, hacking). Every unit can reliably be sorted into the correct category. This new classification would reshuffle a lot of units with ARM 2 from the LI group to the MI group, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, since the LI category is by far the most bloated of all, especially in vanilla armies. In addition, players gain some easy memory hooks that help them memorize information about troop profiles, such as: If a unit is Light Infantry, it can’t have an ARM value higher than 1. If a unit is Medium Infantry, it can’t have an ARM value higher than 3 or lower than 2. If a unit is Heavy Infantry, it can’t have an ARM value lower than 4 if it's not hackable. If a unit is a Skirmisher, it always has the Infiltration (or, in rare cases, the Impersonation) special skill. If a unit is a Warband, it always has the Impetuous or Frenzy special skill. What are the disadvantages of this classification? A lot of units would change. In the majority of cases, it would be enough to simply change the troop type, without changing anything else about the profile. This wouldn’t be a big deal. However, in cases where a unit clearly represents a certain Troop Type, but the profile simply doesn’t reflect this (i.e., Ariadnan HI that is unhackable and has ARM 3; Skirmishers that can’t infiltrate), it might be better to change the profile rather than the Troop Type. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing though. The biggest disadvantage is probably that it is never going to happen. But one can dream. Which profiles would have to change? Applying these new definitions of Troop Types to all army lists, the following things would have to change:
PanOceania LI Nøkken: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Bipandra: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Richard Quinn: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Brother Konstantinos: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) MI Gunnar Lundmark: Becomes a Warband (because of Frenzy)
Yu Jing LI Kuang Shi: Become a Warband Tian Gou: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Pheasants: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Xi Zhuang: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) HI Su-Jian: Becomes REM (because of Remote Presence) SK Kanren: Turn the Forward Deployment (+8“) special skill into the Infiltration special skill, or become Light Infantry
Ariadna LI Para-Commandos: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Loup-Garou: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Mekhaniks: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Zouaves: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Frontoviks: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Kazak Spetsnazs: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Zenit-7: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Polaris Team: Become Medium Infantry (or the Polaris Controller lowers her ARM to 1) Jacques Bruant: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Van Zant: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) The Unknown Ranger: Becomes Heavy Infantry (or lowers ARM to 3 and becomes Medium Infantry) Isobel McGregor: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) HI Moblots: Raise ARM to 4 and/or make hackable, or become Medium Infantry Highlander Greys: Raise ARM to 4 and/or make hackable, or become either Medium Infantry (if they lose Frenzy) or a Warband (if they keep Frenzy) Minutemen: Raise ARM to 4 and/or make hackable, or become Medium Infantry Equipe Mirage-5: Become either a Warband (because of Duroc’s Impetuous) or Medium Infantry (because Margot is ARM 3 and not hackable) SK Pavel Aleksei McMannus: Turns the Forward Deployment (+8“) special skill into the Infiltration special skill, or becomes a Warband (because of Frenzy) WB Antipode Assault Pack: Exchanges the Tactical Awareness special skill for the Impetuous special skill, or becomes Light Infantry
Haqqislam LI Ghazi Muttawi’ah: Become a Warband (because of Impetuous) Hafza: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Lasiqs: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Odalisques: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Nahab: Gains two troop profiles (like Posthumans): The ones with Parachutist become Warbands, the ones with Infiltration become Skirmishers Namurr: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Tarik Mansuri: Becomes Medium Infantry Bashi Bazouk: Lower ARM to 1, or become Medium Infantry MI Yara Haddad: Becomes Light Infantry HI Sunduqbut: Becomes Remote (because of Remote Presence) SK Shujae: Turn the Forward Deployment (+8“) special skill into the Infiltration special skill, or become Light Infantry
Nomads LI Lupe Balboa: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Carlota Kowalsky: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) HI Hollowmen: Become Remotes (because of Remote Presence)
Combined Army LI Tyrok Hunters: Become a Warband (because of Frenzy) Umbra Samaritans: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Agent Dukash: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Nourkias: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) MI Corax Hasht: Becomes Light Infantry Kornak Gazarot: Loses Frenzy, or becomes a Warband
Aleph LI Thyreos: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Deva: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Posthumans: Mk 1: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Sophotects: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Andromeda: Becomes Skirmisher Parvati: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) MI Ekdromoi: Loses Frenzy, or becomes a Warband SK Dart: Turns the Forward Deployment (+8“) special skill into the Infiltration special skill, or becomes Light Infantry WB Phoenix: Gains the Frenzy or Impetuous special skill, or becomes Light Infantry
Tohaa LI Kotail: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Sakiel: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Sukeul: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Aelis Keesan: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Kerail Preceptors: The Symbiobeasts gain the Frenzy or Impetuous special skill, or become Light Infantry SK Draal Saboteurs: Turn the Forward Deployment (+8“) special skill into the Infiltration special skill, or become Light Infantry
JSA LI Aragoto: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Ryuken Unit-9: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Kuroshi Rider: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) WB Mushashi: Gains the Frenzy or Impetuous special skill, or becomes Light Infantry Mercenaries LI Avicenna: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Father Lucien Sforza: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Hannibal: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Laxmee: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Oktavia Grimmsdottir: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Raoul Spector: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Shona Carano: Becomes Medium Infantry (or lowers ARM to 1) Motorized Bounty Hunters: Become a Warband (because of Irregular and Impetuous) Krakot Renegades: Become a Warband (because of Impetuous) SK Kunai Solutions Ninjas: Gain the Infiltration special skill, or become Light Infantry
O-12 LI Lawkeepers: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1) Team Sirius: Become Medium Infantry (or lower ARM to 1)
Unit types are essentially vestigial, as you've identified the difference between Warband, Skirmisher, LI and MI is slight at best. I'm not a fan of "Units of this type must be X" rules, especially as one of the design goals with N4 was to make unit design more flexible by removing nested skills. Adding in category restrictions seems counter to that goal. Scrap them entirely and introduce skills for TAG, Powered Armour, and Remote, tweak relevant classifieds. Makes the game simpler, is easier to implement, maintains (if not increases) freedom of unit design.
Sure, that's also a (much simpler) option. I should probably have added that I also did this mainly because I love sorting stuff... :P
I think Troop types are fine, most of the things make sense in a concept space, even if they don't exactly match the bullet points in the blog post, with just some outliers that we make fun of, like the Unknown Ranger. It's Troop Classification (Line, Garrison, Veteran, etc) that I've seen cause the most issues, when it's something that matters for only 1-2 classifieds. Especially having to explain that a Veteran Troop doesn't have the Veteran Skill, so Character troops counting as Veteran for this ITS will still become irregular if you're in Loss of Lieutenant.
As of N4 (and N3 as far as I can remember) the difference between Li and Mi and Sk and WB is not really important. In N2 Mi almost all had move 4-2. And each troop type had different rules for difficult terrain. So mostly the current troop types are just kept from previous editions. There are some funny ones like the Loupe-garou and the briskards from the frech ariadnan. One is Li and one is Mi with exactly the same statline. ;)
