Its just a sad reality of the device. You have to get to a really wonky point of profile stats and distance for the deactivator to match up to a burst 3 weapon that most engineers have. Of they turned the deactivator into a passive piece of equipment that cause the trooper to not trigger deployables or perimeter weapons it would be so much more useful and interesting for the game.
Not to mention this assumes there are no other hackers in network to really put the screws to the offending hacker for entering the repeater net.
Please pay mind that my post was answering to another member forum in where he felt there was a need to table (read, kill everything and therefore winning the game in practicality) your opponent before you can even try to shoot the offending hacker becase he will be deployed behind several layers of defense in mid table and his own DZ. In this sense there are a number of tools available for Pano, that allows them to shoot such offending hacker without the need of tabling them. Eclipse Grenade Launcher is not a joke when you want to block the LoS of the aroing pieces that unallows you to move into position to shoot the offending hacker, or you want to make a certain shooting gallery safe for your move into position. Shooting them with the Guarda de Assalto requires that you treat the EGL either as a secondary ‘double tap’ to remove the ARO you’re shooting with the Guarda, or to try to put templates in the way you need while the Guarda is dealing with the ARO piece. Yes, it launches at 10s, but they’re essentially ‘order economy free’ as long as you’re using the Guarda to shoot other things. This is why I am specifying it requires playing the trooper in a way that players are not used to. Most of the time you activate a smoke throwing troop willing to throw smoke you want to spend the less amount of orders in the smoke throwing troop before the template is successfully placed in the table. But with the Guarda you want to use it several orders to kill things, and treat the eclipse templates you were able to put into the table as a extra that you spend no orders for, but you can count you will end having with some high statistical chance thanks to the binomial distribution. Marker State paired with vertical mobility skills makes you not having to deal with most of the problems you’re describing as threats to the marker state trooper moving to shoot the hacker. Stealth is a plus not in order to re-enter in marker state again, as obviously you wouldn’t be able to as long as an enemy is within CZ, but to make the defending troopers you’re moving through their CZ and out of sight thanks to your vertical mobility unable to declare dodge in order to re-position themselves to enter into LoS. Most of the solutions to deal with an offending hacker end requiring a heavy investment either in point of troops that you’re going to exchange to kill the offending hacker, or with orders spent to deal with it. But let me please again quote myself why a player would like to do so, and the follow up question of balance:
I do not think I ever questioned it is difficult to deal with prone models on rooftops, but I think you make it sound more difficult than it is, our Nomad player has as standard to have at least one Moran prone in a rooftop midfield, I am accustomed on clearing or ignoring these hacking minefields. But it becomes a question of terrain, even assuming using purely CB terrain (and then the question is what CB terrain we use) I do not see why and how you would set up the terrain so that the mid rooftops would be impossible to shoot with a Super Jump model from another building. As I said earlier tables is a third player to the game and what works in one meta does not mean it works in another and the available tables is usually a big factor for this.
I think part of the ‘can not be seen / can be seen’ discussion about troops placed prone in rooftops against superjump troopers is because the ‘can not be seen’ side of the discussion are talking about a trooper placed prone in a corner of the building protected by the parapets be seen from the most direct 90º degrees of such corner. Which I agree requires being placed in a much more high placement to see the prone troop. But the ‘can be seen’ side of the discussion (which I am myself included) are looking not at those 90º degrees, but the rest of the 270º that are not in contact with the parapet and allows a much more lenient LoS to be seen from another building… specially the 90º degrees directly opposed to the parapet corner, which even a troop standing on a similar height building is going to be able to see the prone trooper without any problems nor requiring any special skill.
There are exactly five units in PanO with Super Jump- the Varg, Seraph, Shona, Liang Kai and the Beasthunter. Of these, only the Varg is something that could be conveniently slotted into a list to fulfill this role. The Seraph is better these days than it used to be, but still expensive enough to shape a list so it's certainly a "sometimes" piece. The other three, while they certainly have their fans, are 1.) mercenaries and special characters available in other factions rather than being PanO units and so are often better with other factions' support, rather defeating the point of playing PanO in the first place, and 2.) not actually very good at shooting with short-range and/or low Burst weapons. Disregarding the feasability of pulling off these attacks depending on terrain, it's still a tool that PanO players aren't going to have most of the time. It's certainly a direction I'd look into for improving the faction though, with Haqq getting tougher and better in CC and Nomads picking up harder board control and better direct shooters it leaves a bit of space for PanO to fill the mobile shooting role.
It is a side discussion within the wider discussion, for certain vargars are an option for this now that I will try Winterforce and I did assemble that Seraph so it is an option for my Military orders lists. As for the main discussion, I think I will try the two Fussilier Hackers as a tactic and see how it goes.
You have it backwards. A prone model in a corner has 270º of protection, and is only visible from the 90º directly behind it.
Only if you confront that model from its ideal position, facing the tip of the corner it is hidden behind, and not from any other angle that can see that corner.
And it just comes back to leveraging your own strengths to take on the challenge. Super Jump with a Varg, have a Karhu shimmy up a tower to snipe it, use a Varg or Locust to launch a WildParrot, Deactivate it or flat out BS Shoot it. Problems have solutions, unless we decide they don’t.
It has been stated, ad nauseum, that these are not reasonable options the majority of the time, against a half-competent opponent. Problems have solutions that usually require expending >4 orders to safely gain LoF on a midfield repeater.
"Ad nauseum" is an overstatement of what has been discussed, but, lets entertain the idea, if the rooftop repeater network is as important to the hacking player and so crippling to the opposing player 4 orders is good investment to take it out and probably these 4 orders will also take things that would be placed to defend this network too, we assume competent players correct? This is more or less why this discussion is doing circles, it is a topical discussion with way too many variables and assumptions thrown in an undefined equation. Lets go back to topic, though there is not much to discuss beyond what ahs already been discussed, PanO can hack if purposefully list build for it, but prefers to shoot its problems. To be fair we never defined what "use hacking" means.
If they are investing time removing your hackers instead of your shooters, you’re still in front. And I’m sure you’ve all gone through and actually counted how many WIP13 Hackers of various BTS we have right? Apart from the REM Racer which we could ignore we have 15 WIP13 Hackers. Of those a fair amount are have a marker state or have a KHD and therefore have access to a marker state. A few have 2w - Knights for example.
Hacking is probably always going to be secondary for Pano, but they have a good amount of hackers that make wonderful specialists. Nearly all of them are good shooters and can defend themselves. Standouts include the Zulu Cobra and Knight of Santiago KHDs. Both are relatively resistant (camo for Zulu Cobra; Two wounds and tinbot for Santiago) and are self sufficient. Someone trying to kill either of them takes dedicated effort. Throwing one of them into a list as a combat specialist and as limited hacking defense will not hurt your list.
To get back on topic; why do PanO players avoid relying on hacking. There are 130 units with access to a hacking device, EVO and Pheroware excluded, with an average WIP of 13.46. There are only nine WIP 12 hackers: Fusiliers, Echo Bravo, Bolts, Orcs, Bandits, Fraacta, Cadmus, Keisotsu, and Brawlers. PanO, Yu Jing, Ariadna, and Tohaa do not have access to pitchers. Haqq has access to 2, Nomads have 7, CA has 3, Aleph 2, and O12 has one. So PanO has 4 out of 9 of the worst hackers in the game, every single hacker has below average WIP, and there are no pitchers or HD+ (except Scylla in SAA). This doesn't take into account the improved hacking programs available to other factions. So why don't PanO players like hacking? Who knows. Don't get me wrong, I love the Zulu Cobra and Hexas, and even the Bolt KHD because veteran BTS6 kinda balances its WIP12. But all of these profiles have a specific surgical role of punishing misplaced midfield hackers. They cannot reliably fight a repeater network.
I just showed you a list of the amount of Hackers in PanO - Excluding the mercenary REM Racer for Vanilla. PanO has 15/20 Wip13 Hackers which according to your math is the Average WIP with 1 Wip14. So the extrapolation that PanO has the worst hackers seems a bit misleading they are at the average. Key difference between ours and everyone else’s is we know for certain that our Hackers have above average BS. So as I raised before PanO’s hackers are a force multiplier to enhance our already above average shooting. Hexa, ZC, Swiss, Crocmen all have an organic Surprise attack which means targeting non-sixth sensed hackers like those typically employed in a Vanilla Nomad list will be roughly par for par. IF we factor in say an active ZC KHD coming through a Nomad owned Repeater on Jazz will be B3 Wip13 v B1 Wip14 - Those odds are still solid. She’ll still pass a save on 6+ but you only need 1 to get through to knock her down. If she’s able to sneak into ZoC range cause of a marker state she’ll be Wip16 v WIP 14.
That fels a bit like saying "my CC specialists have +1 wip". It might have corner-case uses, but god damn you'd prefer to have the kind of CC utility on your CC unit that you see in other armies! :D Those odds are not solid. Let's say the Zulu takes its best shot, and let's say it's against Jazz out of a core, so surprise attack works. 27.9% chance of succeeding, or thereabouts. Let's assume you don't get lucky with your surprise attack, and go into a standard trinity battle... Then the odds are pretty equal, but slightly in her favour; your active turn trinity into hers through her repeater has about 22.3% chance to succeed, she has about 24.7% chance to succeed on reactive, and 52% of the time nothing happens. In my book, I'd call this a pretty forlorn strategy. Maybe worth it if you have no other plays, but not something you go into a game planning on, or something that deserves to be considered as a reliable counter. The only play that makes sense for the Zulu or Hexa is to move up the board to force direct rolls, or bring a crocman FO with deprep, which brings your chances way up to about 51%, only 8% back.
Which is pretty much the point I was making. There are ways to leverage hacking that isn’t “How would a nomad do it?” Point being PanO isn’t Nomads so trying to fight them in their domain under their terms is a silly prospect. Find a way to leverage Hacking to do what we do best. Is it our primary domain hell no. But it is a force multiplier that gives us options when we have no others. Some of it is good enough in a pinch.
Well a CC specialist with +1 WIP is not as relevant as a "something specialist" with good shooting capabilities, this is something PanO does from first edition, our specialists can, if outmatched, or if they do not have a purpose on the battlefield (for example a killer hacker against Ariadna), reliably shoot the problem.
I know I keep on harping on the Knight of Santiago KHD, but they are really unique. There is only two other hackers in the game that has a native tin-bot, and that is the Nomad Hollowman and Mobile Brigada with a regular HDs. A native tin-bot provides so much additional protection in a hacking battle. Because of that tin-bot and its multiple wounds, it is one of the rare units in Infinity that can actually be used to attempt to punish an enemy repeater net. Military Orders even gets a version that can combat jump. It also can shoot, fight in CC, has a template weapon, and can accomplish a good set of classified objectives. I would strongly recommend that you try it out. EDIT: To show there an additional hacker with that capability (Both in Nomads and are regular HDs). It does not change that this is a unique ability.
