Does anyone honestly feel "thank god my impetuous troops aren't affected by marksman 2" or "damn, I'm only getting BS 15 vs this impetuous troop instead of the BS 15 I would be getting if he could claim cover cover mods"? P.S. Impetuous should also be deleted lol. It's trash implementation and trash for balance.
Interesting: HPs, Mines, Knives and Multi are the only weapons I'd like to see it retained on. Shock on HPs provides a great 'anti-Dogged warband' tool that can be handed out at little cost, but doesn't really impact 'elite' LI/MI who are more likely to be engaged at longer ranges or by higher burst weapons. Multi-weapons are almost universally expensive and limited. Shock doesn't feel out of place there: rather it feels like a tool you've explicitly invested in. Knives and Mines again for their use fullness in dealing with Dogged / NWI pushes. As annoying as the classic 'ARO Knife Crit' is, it's an important feature of the game. Mines as primarily defensive tools are limited in their impact, as Shock Immune or less valuable pieces can be sacrificed by preference. It's mainly on 'Primary Weapons' where shock becomes an issue: SMGs, Red Furies, Assisted Fire REMs and Sniper Rifles. Koalas ofc should get DA for no price change. ;)
No, but your question misses the point. What they think is "I'm glad they're only getting BS15 not the BS18 they'd get if MML2 was simply +3 BS". Well they don't, because most people don't consider counterfactuals mid-game, but you get the point. Are there any non-core* rules that you actually like? * By which I mean a rule that allows a few select units to benefit in a way that almost, but not quite, replicates a more generally available feature.
Lucky? Mate, there's a big difference between hitting on 18 and hitting on 15 on your one single shot against a Varangian that's using their Impetuous Order to try and put down a smoke screen for an Epsilon. There's also a huge difference between hitting an Uhlan that's making a dash towards the objective in Show of Force with the last 3 orders on a 12 instead of 15. Not to mention that the fact that you're going to hit that Tiger that's trying to flank you on 12 regardless of if it keeps to cover or not, so your opponent might say "screw ARM from cover, I need to win this FTF" and then move out of cover to get into +3 range and closer to the objective instead of keeping to cover as they might've done against a BS 15 trooper. Yes, Marksmanship L2 is pretty damned different from +3 BS. Also, you've been lashing out at quite a few rules the last few days, it does sound like you would like a vastly simpler game
Does hyper-dynamics (soon to be dodge + or whatever) qualify? I think it is a useful rule because PH is an abstraction of agility and brawn, but dodge is only really meant to be agility based. It's an OK way to make something good at dodging without unintentionally making it punch like doomguy. I don't crave needles skills because the standard shootout mechanics of INFINITY are already really good. Anyway the game has too many rules, and I'm not the first to say it. The thing I want least for this game is what happened in 40K, when one gattling gun is assault 4 with rending to represent all the bullets, and then another is heavy 20, with dice to represent all the bullets. One codex later the second one gets rending to represent all the bullets. But there are some rules I don't want gone. I can give pro-rule feedback too. Climbing plus is a great skill! Neurokinetics is a really great and imaginative way to play with the fundamental ARO mechanics and flip them! Keep holoprojectors just as they are! Camo is great! MSV2 is working just fine! 360 visor is super! Lieutenant 2 was a great addition! Free agent was good idea! Minelayer is really important! N3 did a great job implementing suppression! Triangulated fire is really interesting!
A lot of this will be less of an issue if dogged impetuous warbands finally have to pay what they should. Mechanically, I think shock is a great rule, but if the barrier for entry is shoots hollow point bullets every weapon in the game should be able to switch to shock like an SMG can and every army in the human sphere are idiots for not doing it sooner (Yes the convention, they don't like shotguns either but look). I think it should only be on weapons that inflict death via a second method in addition to trauma. The sort of anime meme bullets you'd expect to carry the biomunition label.
Well... I don't mean to suggest something ignorant like "go play chess herpaderpa", but you know... an Infinity with lower granularity wouldn't be amiss, like what a Code One with sectorials might be. However, I do suggest that shooting is the most common method of interaction between hostile troops in this game and there is therefore a much larger room for situational different interactions that in sometimes are more or less the same effect but in certain other situations are most certainly not, but at the same time this doesn't make an "it's not illegal so therefore it is moral" defense when it comes to how these abilities are distributed across factions or how much they price those abilities. E.g. I think the *effect* of Full Auto 2 is fine (though I think the name and conceptualization is dumb), but I am concerned that it seems to be too cheap and I'm concerned how it is causing Nomads to become the defacto HI faction. Or, I think that Minelayer really wasn't designed to exist on troops that has at most 50% chance of deploying across the mid-field, much less inside enemy DZ, and should probably not be allowed to have enemies inside trigger area when deployed. Or, for that matter, that Impetuous is fine as long as it isn't negated by Fireteams and how Frenzy should trigger immediately. P.s. Triangulated Fire is just poor man's Marksmanship LX now :p
My big fear for the new edition is that it will go too far in changing things. I will hold my hands up and admit I am far from the best player in the world and I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules. However, I've been teaching a few friends to play recently and part of the enjoyment of Infinity in contrast to many other games we have played is the fact that there are so many options and viable different playstyles. The abundance of equipment, skills and 'special stuff' makes it feel like a very large toolbox to assemble solutions from and whilst that can be daunting, it is also where much of the charm in the game is found to me. I feel like CC is the area which causes the most confusion and difficulty, so some tidying up there would be appreciated. Tidying up in general would probably be useful as reading the rules right now does not do a great job of teaching you the game; everything becomes much clearer when you have actual game scenarios in front of you. Mostly though I do not want a radical reworking of the core gameplay and I hope that when N4 comes out it still feels 90% like N3.
That's uncalled for. It's not like any of these rules actually complicate things much, they are mostly just a path to a +/- 3 difference in target number. Exciting skills like holo projector, climbing plus and camo usually do more than just put a mod out there. Heh, it's a thematically cool perk of an advanced sensor suite, not being the only guy in the unit who remembered how to stop moving and aim carefully. I still remember the first time I used it to take out a surprise Noctifier with a Crane. It was really cool, had to dodge a shot to get an angle on it, then took the triangulated shot and laid it to rest. Before Triangulated fire that crane was pretty boring. Triangulated fire normally only exists on units with short ranged weapons too so it's quite a twist. They should probably delete some CC skills. I wonder if @inane.imp and @Mahtamori will defend Guardian...
Again, I'm not saying you should git gud or play [insert game that's for some reason considered a noob's game], but that a greatly slimmed down game might not be a bad idea. If you like that or not is not for me to judge, but you've given the impression you might by attacking large swaths of rules as fundamentally broken at their core. Right now, neither of us can actually tell if Code One is going to be massively dumbed down or if it's a lean mean version of Infinity, we'll see in a few months. Now that they changed it to have the most consistent progression of all melee skills in the game? No, I'm not going to defend it, I would love to see Guardian be a discreet bodyguard with its own base rather than a doggo that the trooper has to hunch over to pet all the time, but Guardian is mechanically more sound than Martial Arts in my opinion.
Guardian really should just be CC Burst +1 and S4. S4 should offer a substantial discount because it's a 'bad' SIL size. I think CC Skills as a whole are a mess. I'd just change them into the following Automatic Skills: Suprise Attack -x (trooper starts in Marker state and declares CC Attack, imposes -x penalty to OPP FTF roll) Close Combat +x (declare CC Attack, gain +x bonus to your roll) Melee Defence -x (if in B2B impose -x penalty on OPP FTF roll, works on Engage/Dodge etc) CC Burst +x (CC Attacks gain +x Burst, this can be split in Active but can't be split in Reactive) Melee Damage +x (adds +x PH to DAM of CC Attacks) NBW (cannot be affected by opponent's Close Combat Special Skills that modify ATK or OPP attributes) Note though that I keep everything except MA5 (which is used so rarely as to be basically pointless), I just break it into specific skills. This is exactly what I did with FA2. What you lose is the "you should use this technique in these circumstances, and that technique in those circumstances" of the current system, favouring instead just hard coding in optimal choices vs most common targets. I also conflate the -3 MOD from MA1 and the -3 MOD from IKOHL: they both become Melee Defence -3. This reduces the difference, but it's a difference I don't think is important enough to matter. Yes this means I'm taking a subjective position that "MML2 ignoring cover is a worthwhile difference from simply +3 BS" and that "IKOHL working even when you don't declare CC Attack is not a worthwhile difference from MA mods, they should be combined". The reason I'd do this is actually more about Shinobu and other high-end CC fighters: this change buffs Engage and makes if more useful.
This video has actually addressed my fear to a decent degree - It sounds like we aren't losing rules so much as rules that are currently bundles are now being split out and there is a potential wide range of modifiers available noted directly on the unit profile.
I'm fine with that trade-off, personally. I suspect that as you become used to reading the profiles your eye will naturally be drawn to the penalties.
If Mimetism, Camo states and hidden deployment are going to be seperated in N4, this opens up so many possibilities to individually adjust profiles. - Units with hidden deployment but only Mimetism -3 or even 0 - Units with hidden deployment who cannot go into marker state again after revealing themselves - To Camo without the option of using hidden deployment Not sure if they are going to treat it this way, but I sure like the idea. The TO:Camo Infiltrator archetype is too ubiquitous across factions in my opinion, so a bit of fresh air in that department would be nice.
Yep. And this allow to make new combinations of skills, like hidden deployment and stealth, but no mimetism, camouflage but not stealh... We'll see. But i hope they keep with the intervals of 3 for the modifiers
I really hope they stick to increments of 3. Gonna be a pain to remember the difference between which units and profiles get -6 Surprise Attack and which get -3, but if there's also a few -5 Surprise Attack... oh boy... Technically creation of a unit with no Camouflage and Hiding skill but access to Hidden Deployment was mechanically possible and sound before as well, so we'll see if this remains just an opportunity or if they take it as well. Literal bullet magnets :p
They've managed to resist giving range modifiers in anything other than multiples of 3, so hopefully that restraint continues.
