But you do apply it to E/M weapons like archon said in the case of the Arjuna's Kiranbots as E/M is not Non-Lethal as he implied it was.
Yes, I left DTWs out of that part of my response intentionally. E/M is not Non-Lethal for a reason according to IJW.
There is a search function, but a quick search and I can't find it (specifically stuff with "E/M" is makes search results iffy I find). From what I recall he only noted that it's not non-Lethal and that it's not a mistake, but didn't give a justification for it. I do seem to recall the thread containing reasoning as to what E/M weapons are and do, and that in the setting they aren't just electromagnetic interference*, but rather dialed up so strong that it's got a physical and painful effect (albeit for a normal human, it's not normally directly and immediately lethal - still more lethal than a thick wad of glue that might prevent minor bodily functions like breathing or seeing!) * against which Cubes are hardened to withstand
All I can find is this (by searching for Non-Lethal): I can't remember making any comment about reasons for E/M not having the Trait, just that it doesn't have the Trait.
In a world with advanced techno-implants, EM could be lethal to people that have modified some of the critical organs in their bodies.
The funny thing is that doing what I suggested would actually mean correcting an error that either concept artists or sculptors made, where they conflated the appearance of an E/Marat with that of Jammers.
Curious. I don't see you checking the ITS ranks of the posters who support your points. I like that notion... "Stop agreeing with me, you're not an ITS player, and therefore your decisions are uninformed." But I won't hold my breath for that one. Really though, I completely understand your viewpoint... I routinely smash my head against the opinions of dozens of players who have never played a 3 or 5-game event in their life. But if we start using ITS ranking to establish credibility, then there aren't going to be a lot of participants in discussion. As for the broader topic: I do think the combination of Smoke, Impetuous, and direct template has always been a shockingly point efficient combination. You remember N2... DTW that were -6 to Dodge were the bane of the system, and we're all grateful it's gone. Whatever the rules though, Infinity is a good system for letting players adapt to the meta pressures of such units. I agree that the game wasn't always great for providing solutions to warbands, but the landscape is pretty healthy right now. Countering warbands becomes one of my premier considerations. It's the reason I started playing Shock Army once upon a time, and it's a big reason reason I like VIRD. I consider NCA and Shock Army to actually be better, more versatile ITS armies, but VIRD polices smoke tossers and short-range warbands better than almost any other playable force. Now that I'm dabbling in other projects too, it's fun to gleefully abuse smoke and direct templates to stunning effect. They're absurdly good relative to their cost, and players don't always give them the respect that they should. But the truth is, every time I Chain Rifle something important to my opponent, there's certainly something my opponent could have done to make this harder for me. Usually the solution would have been an easy one too. These are tactical considerations, not game balance ones. And I think that all armies now have decent tools for being able to challenge/interdict these kinds of cheap threats. When I play against direct templates, I find that players tend to have irrational expectations for their performance. Example: an opponent expends a pile of orders sneaking a Chain Rifle past my defenses and into my DZ... Then they try to Chain Rifle 1 or 2 of my units, who typically Dodge / make their Save, and my opponent sits there frustrated that their maneuver didn't yield better results. I point out that their individual chance for success was only 25-30% per target, but then they complain that my dice are just really good, and we move on with the game. But the truth is that nothing about this unexpected, or powerful. If my defense is halfway decent, I can force my opponent to expend a lot of Orders to get a low probability weapon into range. Then he tries to apply that low-probability weapon, it fails, and I either survive his attack, or Doctor / repair the Wounds he inflicted. This is my most common interaction with direct templates. As I move closer to the enemy, the order-efficiency of DTW increases, so I make sure I only advance units with in-built resistance to DTW (multiple wounds, good PH, defensive tools likes mines, and I always support them.) Once again, these are tactical considerations, and not game balance issues. The solutions exist through the proper application of tools. When you build lists with the correct tools, and then apply those tools during your game, you worry about direct templates less and less. Why do I like using an ORC Datatracker in Shock Army or VIRD, compared to just a cheaper, more point-efficient 1 Wounder? Because a Chain Rifle only has a 15% chance per order of hurting a Dodging ORC, and has to succeed twice as often to knock my ORC into Unconsciousness. I love that. These are tactical considerations, with clear, abundant ways to mitigate the risk.
The conversation has moved on, but my dice roller has an intuitive attack checkbox for DTWs that I think should mostly do what you want.
I'm not checking ITS ranks, I looked for participation in the format. You and I both know that ranks don't tell the whole story, and neither does W/L. Given I know that at least one person supporting my viewpoint (me) participates in ITS a decent amount, I'm generally a bit leery of people who don't participate in the format at all saying that I have a misapprehension about the balance. Like I said, I think participation is a more important metric than performance. With respect to terrain density, the problem is when you can't engage a warband outside of Chain Rifle range. Barring Dogfaces and especially McMurrough, sure. Defensively, sure, but the problem is more when terrain is dense enough that you can't do stuff in your active turn without taking DTW or Jammer attacks.
Okay. I somehow think, that EM is non-leathal too, because it causes no loss of W or STR. A cornercase is something like a breaker rifle in the hands of trooper with MML1 (Zhayedan for example). Should not force two rolls (BTS and ARM for shock). It could be, that I that I am missinformed about that, but anyway don´t want to have an discussion about that in this thread, only point on it.
The Zhayedan will force two rolls, you are not misinformed, and I do think they should change the way ammo combines. I think it should be that ammo has an Effect and (maybe) an Affinity. Shock, for instance, should have only an Effect (straight to dead if 1w profile) and no Affinity (so that it works with Hacking). Affinity dictates what is used to save against it and if you have both affinities with an attack you apply the weakest. Example: Shoot a Bolt with Plasma ammo. Plasma = both Affinities. Effect is thus; Bolt only gets to add +2 to their ONE save roll per hit for ARM Shoot a Fusilier with a Assisted Fire Plasma. Plasma = both Affinities, Shock = no Affinity. Effect is thus; Fusilier gets to add +0 to their ONE save roll per hit for BTS and will straight up die if it fails Shoot a Bolt with a Assisted Fire Plasma. Plasma = both Affinities, Shock = no Affinity, Bioimmunity = pick best Affinity. Effect is thus; Bolt gets to add +6 to their ONE save roll per hit for BTS and will only go unconscious if it fails. (Remember: don't use Marksman 1 against Bolts)
I've made similar comments before, although I phrased it as a trait/label (deadly), which does all the things Shock currently does. Shock gets rewritten as being the same as normal, but with the addition of deadly, and then marksmanship just adds the deadly trait to whatever ammo type your weapon normally fires.
Let's make it a bit clearer. Ammo stacking change. The way ammo currently stacks is that you take both types of ammo and add them together. If the ammo types are for the same save stat, they get merged to each other, if it's for different traits they get added, unless it is Normal in which case Normal gets replaced or a Hacking Program in which case the save type is changed implicitly. As a result, for the most part this means that adding two types of the same save stat together is much weaker than adding two of different save types, which can create highly divergent and skewed scenarios. Instead, I suggest all types of ammo merge. If the resulting ammo targets more than one ability, such as both ARM and BTS, then the resulting save is made against the worst (for the hit trooper) of the two abilities. If the trooper hit by the attack is immune to any part of the resulting ammo, the save is taken against that trooper's best ability, or the best of ARM/BTS, and the effect of that part of the ammo is ignored. For example, a Bolt (Bioimmunity trooper) hit by EXP+Viral would be rolling 5 saves (+2 for EXP, +1 for Viral) and go immediately to Dead if any fails due to being a 1 W trooper versus Viral ammo, however, the Bolt is immune to Viral and will be rolling only 3 saves (+2 for EXP). Additionally, because the Bolt is immune to a portion of the resulting ammo, all 3 of these saves will be taken with the Bolt's +6 BTS since this is better than the +2 from ARM. Shock Special Ammunition Category Bio-Munition, Standard. Affinity Shock Special Ammunition has no affinity and will use whichever Affinity is Normal to the attack. Effects If the target takes damage to their Wound characteristic, they will enter the Dead state directly, bypassing any Unconscious state. This specific special effect does not apply to: Units whose Wounds Attribute is higher than 1 on their profile (such as Heavy Infantry). Troopers who, during the course of the game, increased their Wounds Attribute above 1. Units with a Structure (STR) Attribute instead of a Wounds Attribute, such as Remotes, TAGs, Vehicles, etc. Against these, Shock Special Ammunition has the same effects as Normal Ammunition. Explosive (EXP) Special Ammunition Category Standard. Affinity Explosive Special Ammunition has ARM Affinity. Effects Explosive Special Ammunition forces its target to make two additional saves per hit suffered. Hits from Explosive Special Ammunition are Anti-materiel. Adhesive (ADH) Special Ammunition Category Exotic. Affinity Adhesive Special Ammunition PH Affinity. Effects Adhesive Special Ammunition PH-6 saves. If the target fails the save, it enters the Immobilized-2 state. Place an Immobilized-2 Marker (IMM-2) next to it. Troops who are rendered Immobilized-2 this way cannot make the subsequent Guts Roll. Hits from Adhesive Special Ammunition are Non-lethal. Critical Hits If the result on the dice is equal to the final value of the Attribute, the Roll is a Critical success. In a Face to Face Roll, Criticals always win, trumping any non-critical result rolled by the opponent. If both players roll a Critical, the Face to Face Roll is a tie and both troopers fail. When a Critical success is rolled in any Attack Roll (Being a BS or a CC Attack) the target fail one of their save associated with that hit. Any further saves required by that hit must still be rolled. An outlandish example A trooper is hit by a Remote wielding an experimental weapon that causes Explosive Adhesive attacks. The same Remote also benefits from Assisted Fire and will be using both levels of Marksmanship. Angus, the unlucky Fusilier, not only loses the Face to Face roll against this nightmarish Remote, but also suffers a Critical Hit! Explosive, Adhesive, Shock has both PH and ARM Affinity and will cause the roll to be made against the worst of PH-6 or ARM and will force Angus to make 3 saves and will kill Angus if he takes a wound damage, however, luckily for Angus the attack is Non-lethal which prevents any actual damage to be done. The critical hit will automatically cause Angus to fail one roll and make two further rolls. Evaluating Angus' attributes, the player finds that an effective PH value of 4 is worse than an ARM value of 1 and will be forced to make two further rolls, trying to get 4 or below. Rolling, Angus' player tallies their successes and finds that Angus didn't manage a single success, evaluating the damage however, the Non-lethal trait of Adhesive means Angus is Immobilized-2 three times, which isn't any worse than being Immobilized-2 one time, really, and may not roll a Guts Roll. Side note: if this ammo had hit a piece of scenery, the scenery wouldn't be damaged by it, but it would be possible to Immobilize said scenery. Effect + Effect + Effect ... = how many saves, MODs to those saves and consequences of each failed save. Just add everything together! Affinity + Affinity + Affinity ... = which attributes will be evaluated for finding the worst. ------ On a different note; what if saves worked the same way as attribute rolls and weapon damage was noted as a positive (or negative) MOD? Rifles would have a DAM of +3, melee damage would be PH-10, and ARM values would start at 10 for nearly all soldiers. No, this is not a hugely important change, but it would make evaluating Affinity in my suggestion above easier and make a units statline more consistent and would make rolls more consistent in that you'd as often as possible try to roll high, but under a value. Zuyong Statline would be; 4-4, 15, 13, 12, 13, 13, 13, 2, 2, 5.
Basic tactic in N1/N2 was to try to force your opponent into a situation where he was eating Normal Rolls. N3 has changed that almost entirely to Face-to-Face rolls at significant penalties.
How about we do away with Marksmanship lvl1 and just issue Shock ammo to the relevant models. Then we just don't make stuff that stacks that way (screw you Zheyaden) at all? Or you write it up special a la plasma.
Don't know if it was pointed already (too many pages to keep up on this, sorry), but please in next major rulebooks release (if physical, might also apply to digital versions) please simplify the index in these. It's really a pain when in a middle of a party (or anytime) you're just searching for a specific rule (example: ADH) and the index is pointing at you 6 or more related pages, each far apart from each others, and you have to guess which actually speaks of the rules and which are just references in other rules. I know wiki exists but sometimes you just don't have internet around, and the time to grab phone, open wiki, and search you usually 'at least in other games/situation) already found your way in in the rulebook.
No, reduced index is no good. Better to make clear which one(s) is(are) the important, and keep the rest too. For example by listing in importance order (Whatevers X, Y, see also Z, W, V...), or by marking them differently (Whatevers V, W, X, Y, Z). Tables and diagrams can also be marked that way (of course, legend at start so everyone know what bold, italic, underline, etc mean).
