Hacking is likely to be a big part of the N4 meta. A lot of our best stuff is hackable, but we've also gained a massively increased repeater net and we have access to a linkable Tinbot: Firewall (-6) in some of our sectorials. It might be a bit early but I figured it'd be good to start a discussion on both how to protect our hackables and how to leverage our own hacking capability. Hopefully this will be helpful in the creation of a hacking tactica in the future. To help put things in perspective, here's a list of our current repeaters and deployable repeaters. As a side note, all our deployable repeaters besides REM Racers also have minelayer! Deployable Repeaters: Guilang Minelayer Krit FD2 Lu Duan REM Racers Repeaters: Cheong-Hee Jeong (also unhackable and linkable in IA) Chaiyi Weibing Pangguling Rui Shi Something to start off a discussion - how do we deal with BTS 6-9 hackers? If we're trying to hit them through a repeater, they're at effective BTS 9 or 12 and Trinity is only DAM 14, which are pretty poor odds. If we have access to tinbots, do we just ignore them and hope for the best? Do we have to rely on dicing off with Oblivion, or is the best solution to just get someone over there to shoot them?
Just fielding 3 hackers/killer Hackers is good enough defense for regular repeaters. If the enemy wants to play the hack game, it will be forced to spread burst, or make focus/suicidal bets like coordinated hacks For the deployable repeater ones, setting the repeaters on, is a good hacking defense too. They can perform reset while the hackers go on offensive. Tinbots are only an option for solo attacking pieces on vanilla. But in sectorial, they can provide cover to your hackers Sixth sense on at least one of your hackers is a way to halt down enemy advancing with stealth The best defense is a good offense, deploying a repeater is a good way to open a coordinated hacking over an enemy superior hacker Liuxing bomb or AD troop is a good way to take out enemy killer hackers outside enemy repeater network. Peripheral weapons like koalas and madtraps planted next to repeaters are a good way to halt killer hackers down A deployable repeater next to an evo hacker is a good way of defending it against solo hackers On IA, pango FTO on an advancing fireteam is a good way of refilling repeaters, panzerfausts and mines
Don't forget about the Zhanying hacker. Yu Jing and CA are the only vanilla factions with access to a hacker with Sixth Sense. And the Zhanying is far better than the Maakrep. While there are no linkable tinbots available for vanilla to exploit, vanilla can combine a vicious array of marker state hackers with a strong repeater net that can't be stealthed through.
I'd say don't bother with them, especially if they're HIs. BTS6/9 hackers are too uncommon/expensive to get spammed, and hacking is a number game: I'm much more scared by 3 alguaciles throwing oblivion/spotlight at me everytime I move through a repeater than one interventor. I think cautious use of KHD to reduce the herd of shitty hackers and assassination run on missile bots/fireteams/lone hackers/repeaters might be enough to make the infowar pressure bearable with stealth troops, tinbots or fairy dust.
Having just played a game with IA, it is remarkably well suited for hacking. Shang Ji-sus Haris with Tai Sheng and Cheong, backed up by a Haidao KHD, is damn near impervious. I was confident enough that I baited a camo hacker out to isolate Tai Sheng (a tough shot in the first place) so that with my next order the KHD could use Cheong's repeater to kill the hacker, then the engineer went and happily fixed Tai. My opponent said he was terrified of the concentrated hacking power and protection. EDIT: also having the camo HD ready to hack through the repeater made it even more resilient.
Yu Jing in general and IA in particular are not designed for an offensive hacking. There is no pitcher, and all of our repeaters are pricey or in the DZ. Often, the infowar will take place in the midfield. Factions such as haqq/nomads can easily bring their hacknet into the other half of the table, it's harder for us. as @Mc_Clane said you can saturate your field with hackers, abuse tinbot protection or use Combat Jump. I want to add another option : denial. Sometimes it's more cost-effective to let this BTS9 hacker alive, but useless. please consider the following things to make his day the worst: - alpha striking it's order pool is an elegant, classical and universal way to shut down any threat. I'm not talking about rampaging around the board and killing everyhting, but more removing troopers of a specific combat group to reduce their potential. An hacker in a 3-5 man group is especially concerned about this. -> AD troops, Fireteams, warbands, infiltrators can do this job - burn their net: an hacker playing the ARO game needs it's hacknet. Every repeater can be cut to pieces. Even if this strategy costs you orders, it prevent you from spending extra points into multiple safety-hackers. Kill them all: repeater folks, remotes and pitcher guys (or just the ones bothering you). Don't forget about the speculative fire weaponry for this one. -> LI and MI are prone to do this by avoiding the risk of hack ARO. With right setup, any unit can. - make sure it's a problem: sometimes you worry about something that does not prevent you from taking the objective. Maybe it's better to spend 2 orders to move rather than using 3 of them to kill a hacker. - increase the cost of the hack attacks: the same thing could be said against a rambo dude. If you go back, someone will have to go near you, spending orders. Using tinbots is part of this scheme as it will take more attacks to land a hit. -> with 6-2 MOV, HI units can easily fall back then shoot/ hack/dodge and their Cautious moves are big. Great fallback units. - take some engineers. They can both take care of wounded Remotes and HI states. -> we got many flavors of them. LI, MI or HI. Choose the most cost-efficient (or rule of cool ? Heck, I can't take any other engineer since a Haidao survived a alpha strike)
IA might not be designed to be a basement dwelling hacker sectorial, but that's not gonna stop me from trying to be a penetration test* style hacker -.-;; * Might be the socialist faction, but I'm not referring to any social penetration tests here...
Keep in mind that as of now in RAW, Stealth is only working against ZoC but not against the Hacking Area in general. This might be changed, but at the moment there is no protection against a well placed repeater. There is also now the option to coordinate hacking. Although only with the same programs.
Is there any confirmed information about Oblivion? in Army it is b1 in rulebook it is b1 on page 174 and 62 and b2 on page 64. But in all pleaces where its b1 it doesnt list Hi as target, unless IP is HI in spanish then it does in Army.
In that case its super messy. There are 2 sources that state it cant target HI and is B1, 1 source where it can target HI and is B1, and 1 source where it can target HI and is b2.
I would say go with what captain spuds website says. He was given early access so he could set it up so I would assume it is correct. Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk
You'll note that Captain Spud has different Burst values for the quick summary and the rules text because he's gotten mixed messages, too.
I'm wondering if HI hackers with shotguns, like the liu xing or the zhencha, are not pure evil. You can pop up in front of a target and force some very shitty choice on them: if he shoots you can template, if he dodges you can face to face with the shotgun but also spotlight/hack. Might want to test that in an IA Guided missile list.
You could have always done that, the hard part is to pop up in front of someone without being hacked or e/m'ed into oblivion. Trying to land that LiuXing inside a Nomad DZ should give an achievement. :-) To be fair, Spotlight got way easier.
