Just start some new factions. Or even proxy them with your Pano. It’ll feel like a new game, and pano will feel lot better. At least some units.
Ah, of course! Why don't I just eliminate the guy prone on a rooftop at the very back of the deployment zone!
You will obviously invest 50pts into HI with BTS3 so that you might spend your whole first order moving into position and then speculetive firing ^^ Or take 2nd turn and see him melted under hacking (or jammed xD) :D
I picked a PanO profile because this thread is in the PanO forum. Also That was MO. They have nothing available in their force that is interesting besides the Hospitaller link. The hospitaller magister link is the one good thing in the whole sectorial. (Well maybe the 10 TO Order Sergeants ) My interest in the hollow men point cost is not based on PanO. I want to understand the design decisions that lead to those point costs. So for the sake of argument compare them to Mobile Brigada. There is zero reason to ever field a mobile Brigada. The Hollow man is 4 points cheaper. You trade in -3 PH -5 CC light flamethrower For: 4 point discount MOV 6-2 Remote Presence (Which also has MB Courage in here) Super-Jump Pitcher Chain-Rifle (not fire but but bigger template) Breaker Pistol Even if we take one of the most disliked units in PanO like the Orc and compare him to other HI like Father Knight, Aquila and Swiss Guard we can at least say that the Orc is cheaper. (or we can push things in comparison to a hospitaller on the frenzy discount) Mobile Brigada is worse and more expensive than the Hollow Men in pretty much every point. I have not even actively seen someone in here complain about Tunguska being OP. I for one just want to understand the design decisions that go into those stats. As an example i will stay way more afraid of riot girl links than for example the hollow men link. Also Tunguska is missing cheap order generators. My only problem with the puppet team is actually that i assume they will always either overperform or underperform. Seems unfun for both sides if i'm honest. But that is just an assumption on my part. I will find out how that actually plays out on the table. i certainly do not think yet that Tunguska is OP.
Guys, the Puppetactica is a glass hammer. It can dish it out - with a low BS, though - but aside from having 2W it's not that durable. And it has AVA 1.
I think GW is the better company right now. When I started Infinity I thought CB was awesome and GW was butt but they seems to have flipped in the last year or so. GW actually puts effort into adjusting stuff but I know that my bolts will never get looked at by CB. So that is why GW is crushing right now as a company.
Wait, what ? Explain how 2 hard wounds (albeit with a degraded profile) is "no that durable". While almost everyone else has 1W and is happy with the occasional Dogged / NW:I
Let me put it this way: I think the Hollowmen are undercosted for what they are sporting.and the formula seems a bit off here. Even with Religious as a discount and PH 10, something still does not add up considering it has a lot of other skill such as super jump and G: Remote Presence. If that is the case, then the cost of some other HIs (such as Mobile Brigada, ORC, Shanji Ji etc) feel unjustified. That said, Hollowmen gameplay wise are good but not unbeatable. The suffer just as much to E/M and are very susceptible to Adhesive.
So disclaimer: I don't think that GW is the "better" company overall at the moment (I find their nickle-and-dime approach to rules appalling), but I do think that GW has progressed by leaps and bounds when it comes to not only its interactions with fans, but crucially, taking community feedback seriously and implementing changes in the game that reflect it. On this specific point--and it's an important one--it is beating CB like a red-headed stepchild. The Bolts example is obvious, but there are plenty of others. CB always adopts the posture of, "We know what we're doing, trust us." Whenever folks dissent publicly, they're inevitably presented with the same two defenses by the usual suspects: (1) you're wrong, stop whining; and (2) it's CB's game, so even if you might have a legit complaint, tough. And that right there is a terrific recipe for generating a group of disaffected players (see, e.g., @daboarder 's comments earlier in this thread--I can remember a time when he was decidedly more upbeat). You're all absolutely right that CB "owes us nothing," etc., etc., but if CB wants us to continue to hand them our $$$, they might consider responding to enduring complaints about faction design, inter alia, with something other than a dismissive wave of Bostria's hand. Just my two cents.
In regards to the Orders-Sergeants vs. Securitates OP, Securitates lack template weapons and don't have all of those camo options. While the base Securitate might have more value than the base Orders-Sarge, the latter makes up for it with better options using that profile. Most MO lists I've seen use their Fireteam for a Knight squad of death anyway, with Orders-Sergeants independently supporting the big unit.
Privateer Press also went through a similar time of opacity and dismissiveness. Until maybe a year ago, the developers for PP were probably the least transparent in the industry. That all changed when they went public with the "Community Integrated Development" program which is basically a public beta test for models 4-8 months down the release schedule. They would do internal beta testing and then open it up to the community, which of course would shit on everything, propose idiotic overpowered ideas, complain about their advice not being taken, and pointlessly intrude on other factions to complain and nerf their new releases. It's become so bad listening to the community interaction that I've almost completely left the game. So, a well-done community engagement like what GW has been doing recently is definitely a positive thing for the game. But done poorly or with an entitled, spoiled brat of a community, it can actually make the game worse. I can only hope that the Infinity community would be able to handle some form of interaction with the company but in my head I see it becoming a raging dumpster fire. EDIT: upon re-reading it sounds like I'm coming across overly negative. Would I like to see more community involvement with the dev process? Yes absolutely. I would love to be able to submit a "flag" on units X Y and Z to say "hey devs, take a look at this". I would also like a little more transparency in the unit design process, to have Gutier Bostria et al say "This is why we made this decision, this is why we didn't do this other thing." From my PP example, that is one thing that actually did work well. When a new release went into testing, the appropriate dev would write a quick note on its intended role in a list, why it got ability A, specific interactions they wanted to monitor (hey is this model overpowered in this circumstance?), and what stats/abilities were firmly unchangeable. Because I started rambling a lot, TL;DR I wish CB was more transparent in their design of units, but I don't necessarily want total community involvement because that leads to entitlement.
I think the Infinity community isn't really asking for much. Just small touches here and there to pick up units that have either fallen behind or were never where they needed to be. I think it's pretty obvious that whatever system CB uses to create points is not aligned with their actual game. Some stuff is seemingly a lot of points but it's effectiveness is related to what it is on. Away from PanO, I could compare the new Hollow Man vs Haqq's Zhayedan and be very confused on their comparable points. All I can guess is that automedkit is a lot of points but it isn't very useful on a Arm1 W1 shock vulnerable model so why would it bump their points up so much? I think most of the Infinity community just wants CB to try just a little bit instead of waiting 5 years for a book to drop and have another roll on the "will I get a good new unit" roulette. If the pointing system isn't perfect it would be appropriate to adjust by hand.
I know it feels like PanO is being left behind, but I still see them perform well overall. They can feel boring to some people because of their obvious limits (warbands, smoke), but some of their limits make for some creative problem solving. It does suck to see more things encroach into the PanO design space. I still have hope for changes... and honestly it wouldn't take much. Maybe change up link options in NCA, offer some unique LI/SK unit(s) to MO, give ASA more janky profiles to go with their scrappy playstyle. It's not hard to refresh PanO, just give us a little more variety of the same style and most people would be happy.
On the sniper, sure but it is mostly appropriately pointed. However, not on the breaker rifle and it's absent on any other profile that are still 30 points. So we can conclude that CB doesn't consider Marksmenship Lv 2 all that powerful because it doesn't change the points very much. Which I think goes farther to prove my point. CB's pointing system has no idea what is actually good.
I think you might be underestimating the strength of breaker ammo. Not many 1 W units have the BTS to survive that shot. I won't say CB's point system is 100% correct, but I think its not that far off. If the game has problems, its in the area of unclear game states/situations and rules conundrums, which there aren't many but they are noticeable. (ie. the ZoC/ARO interactions)
MMS L2 costs 4-5 points on the Breaker Rifle Zhayedan, because the the interaction of Shock and Breaker ammo forcing a BTS and an ARM Roll per hit.
If you ask me, I guess that CB is aligning the new Sectorials to N4 already. At least that would make some sense. I am even optimistic enough to say, that after this wave of Sects, the older ones are beeing looked at.
*a mao's quickening footsteps rumble in the distance* So template weapons increase the cost of the units who don't have them?
