Data Sphere

I'm pretty new to Infinity, and I'm coming from Warmahordes which, from my experience, had a lot of balance and design issues when compared to Infinity, so I think I have a case of rose colored glasses. Recently on the CA (Combined Army) board there was a thread about a letter writing campaign to complain to CB about the MAF (Morat Aggression Force) and it got me wondering what is there that is actually unbalanced, or at least considered as such. I haven't seen much myself to complain about, other than the AVA 2 of Rangers in Vanilla Ariadna, but as I mentioned above I'm really new. So the question I have is: What in this game do you think is unbalanced, over-priced, under-priced, or useless? I know threads like this can get a little heated, so let's keep it civil, I'm not asking for a discussion of choices, just an idea of where people stand.

First off imo complete balance on games like these is almost impossible.

For Infinity itself I feel it is quite balanced. Yes there are things that might have slight costing issues but I haven't seen much that has huge issues. For me this can be seen by the variety of units and lists that can be seen, there isn't a go to list showing that some units are clearly better than others.

I think a lot has to do with people's focus on ITS. Within that particular system a couple of things are stronger than other things. Infiltrating specialists, cheap specialists, high AVA specialists, high mobility (4-4), lots of orders, order-efficiency (linkteams).
All things that are considered strong in an objective based game, that requires specialists to operate the objectives and which takes orders to spend actions, and movement to get to the objectives.

The current ITS has become a system favouring netlisting; trying to figure out if you can use model A that has 4-2 movement to the same effect as a model B which has 4-4. But we're already sure that model A is overpriced, because it's a MI, it has higher armour and probably a tool or two extra. That cost forces you to take another model out of your list, which would deliver you an extra order. So now we have a dilemma; do I want a tool unit, that can counter things and perhaps grab an objective if it reaches there 'slowly'.. or do I want a 4-4 specialist that can take an objective and gets an extra order to do so?
It's a trend to consider everything that doesn't check all the right boxed subpar or overpriced by default.

I'm not saying there aren't any models that suffer because they do not fill a clear spot in an army, or pay too much for what they bring. One I can think of is the Azra'il FB, which in N3 had the same price as the AP HMG profile, but.. mathematically seen, both profiles did not put the same efficiency on the table. Which in this case would be the # of dice rolled.
Or the Sekban pre-HSN3, which were competing within their own sectorial against Kaplan (price, weapons, survivability due to mimetism) Odalisques (price, Haris, also 360 visor and NWI) and to a lesser degree the Djanbazan (regeneration, MSV2), which all ranged around the same prices. But most other units checked the righter boxes; Kaplan had mimetism and could put up a lot of high WIP specialists. Mimetisme does more to survive shots than higher ARM does. NWI allows the Odas to fight after a lucky hit. Both Kaplan and Odas are LI, which made them faster than Sekban. The Djanbazan were a great anti-camo unit that could regenerate.
The only thing people could agree on, was the fact that a choice between Sekban and Druze would favour the Sekban more, as 360 visors allowed for a better ARO phase. Also, if you had a Tohaa filled meta, Sekban would shine, as it was the only place to get long-ranged fire in QK.
*there are multiple threads, going on and on for pages about the Sekban and the Azra'ils over at the official forums*

Mind you that playing Infinity like this is a choice, and not a wide-spread believe about how this game should be played. A lot of people consider units great on their own and allow them to work for them, and in many areas ITS is falling out of favour because of its favouring of netlisting stuff. The current situation is far from the pre-Paradiso 'take whatever you want in your list and have fun' attitude that has continued underground.
Each his own, of course.. but this current attitude is not the way I, personally, like to play this game.

To answer your question about MAF: MAF misses out on almost all things that are considered 'amazeballs' within the ITS system. Their profiles pay a Morat tax, they do not have cheap links, many link-options only work for 3 models, otherwise it becomes too expensive. They do not have cheap specialists and due to the price they can't deploy lots and lots of orders. Even their line-troop is one of the most expensive, and they have a pretty standard line infantry statline. They lack sufficient, cheap and specialist infiltrators.
So in a way, most of MAF does not shine within the ITS system.

That's probably one of the reasons our group focuses on 20x20 (and it's a good system, too). I like to fit in an ITS game once in a while, but I have more experience with unofficial systems. I wonder how new ITS will change things, from what I see CB tries to fix this problem. The question is, will it succeed.

Balance is also very meta-dependent. Concerning Morats - if your opponents use a lot of E/M, other Isolating stuff, or go on Lt. hunts often, the Morats look more resilient than in other metas.

And then there's HSN3 and all changes it brings. It was stated somewhere last year that one of its purposes is to level the field a bit, rebalance units and sectorials. In a few months we will have enough data to know how it went.

Stiopa wrote:That's probably one of the reasons our group focuses on 20x20 (and it's a good system, too). I like to fit in an ITS game once in a while, but I have more experience with unofficial systems. I wonder how new ITS will change things, from what I see CB tries to fix this problem. The question is, will it succeed.

Balance is also very meta-dependent. Concerning Morats - if your opponents use a lot of E/M, other Isolating stuff, or go on Lt. hunts often, the Morats look more resilient than in other metas.

And then there's HSN3 and all changes it brings. It was stated somewhere last year that one of its purposes is to level the field a bit, rebalance units and sectorials. In a few months we will have enough data to know how it went.

ITS in itself is not a bad system per se, but I do not consider it the holy way to play. A game with a balance level as Infinity should be able to have more variety in the various ways to play it. Unfortunately, that isn't the case everywhere.
I am so glad to see 20x20 getting more and more popular world wide, and YAMS still is an oldy but goldy for me.

One of the big reasons we play YAMS was because I took one look at ITS and said, "That's going to be just as view-shifting as steamroller was." I like simpler systems that give a point to the game besides "KILL KILL KILL!!!!" but don't go too complicated and started dictating the best list. I think we'll eventually try 20x20 as well, though, because it seems like it might have a bit more depth to it. Meta really does warp the way units are looked at, I guess its a good thing my meta consists of me, my wife, and eventually a buddy of ours if he likes the rules.

Meh the MAF problems are overstated even within ITS, if you try playing Morats at 150 pts in ITS. You'd find they actually are one of the stronger armies at low points because of the option of 4pt regular orders. Similarly Imperial Service, which is a "weak" faction is stronger at low points because of their 5 pt regular order.

Personally I like playing MAF at whatever point level. Regardless of system, they do force you to play better because you're never going to be able to rely on a negative mod stacking beasts like Swiss Guard or Phoenix to do work for you or escape bad play/positioning through their equipment.

What I do considered unbalanced in Infinity are profiles that have poorly defined roles or extremely niche ones and this extends beyond what missions system you're playing. An example would be the Nomad Securitate. It's not expensive but its role as a Lt or cheap hacker are undercut by the Interventor and no mission system would make it more efficient.

Scorch wrote:...and in many areas ITS is falling out of favour because of its favouring of netlisting stuff.

Do you have data to back up that statement? I'm really curious. In my area ITS works just fine in no less then 4 stores out of 5. The fifth no one plays Infinity.

MARC C wrote:

Scorch wrote:...and in many areas ITS is falling out of favour because of its favouring of netlisting stuff.

Do you have data to back up that statement? I'm really curious. In my area ITS works just fine in no less then 4 stores out of 5. The fifth no one plays Infinity.

I know the American 'supermeta' (the crowd that surrounds RoR66) and Poland are kinda fed up with it. They are currently shifting towards homebrew narrative campaigns and many want back to 'old infinity' (10 models, 300 points, not the 20 order squad lists).

I think Alkasyn can tell you some more details about it, as he is a Polish TO. ITS is dominant in my country too, and everything else is considered 'meh' by default, so it differs per area... I guess many very active metas are experiencing the hard shift toward netlisting crowds, and want to go back to the way it was.

Edit: adding to that.. large areas in Germany have never gotten into ITS, as they didn't consider that kind of play fun, or so some of the German Warcors told me.

I think that Infinity does not have huge balance issues. CB puts a lot of effort into balancing units and armies. Of course it is not perfect.

The reason many people do not use certain models is because they may not have learned how to use them best or they do not play missions where these troopers would shine.

Many aspects of the game have been left a bit abandoned, to be honest. Terrain rules and structure traits are not used widespread, for example.

the idea of infinity is that different troopers are good for different missions. I sometimes feel that ITS should have more of that and it is time CB stresses that Infinity is more than just ITS.

With 20x20, I try to have a diversity of mission inviting people to play with diverse models. there are missions benefitting certain specialists, some missions which ask for troopers with climbing skills, or msv or close combat, etc. Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to balance the missions to perfection. A lot of mistakes also creep in. I hope the next edition will be better in this regard.

Prophet_of_Doom wrote:The reason many people do not use certain models is because they may not have learned how to use them best or they do not play missions where these troopers would shine.

Many aspects of the game have been left a bit abandoned, to be honest. Terrain rules and structure traits are not used widespread, for example.

the idea of infinity is that different troopers are good for different missions. I sometimes feel that ITS should have more of that and it is time CB stresses that Infinity is more than just ITS.

This is one of my personal reasons that I don't like ITS.
The abstract nature of the system almost forces people to leave out large quantities of the rules, in order to keep it 'fair' for everyone. Nimbus Zone is one of the few missions I have played that at least incorporated some form of terrain rule. And for that same reason the mission isn't very popular.

I understand ITS as a international tournament system. It does a good job at being that; fixed point objectives. Each player having the same distant from the objectives. It's all very abstract, fair and one might even say.. artificial. But I find it very unfit for narrative campaigns. BoW at least incorporated some terrain rules in their missions; those missions that took place in the jungle apparently needed a zone of jungle terrain through the middle of the table.

I hope the terrain rules will become more and more incorporated in the system in the future. Make a narrative before you start playing the mission. For me, personally, Infinity becomes a much richer game, with much higher 'stakes' when you can delve into a narrative with your opponents.

Best way to incorporate terrain rules: put them between hard terrain so people have to either go through or haul ass the long way around. I used to have a "derelict underground base" table where difficult terrain blobs were broken/leaking pipes, rubble from cave-ins, or random vegetation that crept in and made its home in a corridor. Kinda hard to avoid when said corridor is your main route to a console.

It needs some experience in placing those if you don't want the tables to be skewed too hard, though. Then again, the choice of deployment could use a slight boost

I see.

I've been playing INFINITY for 4.5 years and I have to say I (and all the veterans locally) are really happy with ITS. We are slowly incorporating terrain rules into the missions. My next tournament on May 7th will have a few terrain surprises for the players.

I remember that «old days» with YAMS and have to say players were also optimizing troop selection because that is what they do. Always looking for the best troop for the best cost. Its not new to ITS. And I don't see that as a problem either. For new players coming into the game ITS is good because it gives structure to the game and promotes playing with Specialists - which is what makes Infinity distinct form other wargames and why I play it.

Now, do I believe ITS should be the only way to play Infinity? No, of course not. As with any game you can created home brew missions and have fun !

And I have no problem with playing against a 20 model list. The problem I have is with the player of that list taking 65%+ of the 2 hours game time and/or not having 3 full turns for both player. That is why I instituted the Chess Clock in our ITS tournaments. You can't have the double advantage of more models (orders) and take more time to play. You want to take 20 models, go ahead, but you need to play faster or clock yourself. Works like a charm. Our current model count is 10-15. A majority use a second group to put 2-3 models in reserve of the first group and move them in Group 1 with Command Tokens after some casualities have been taken. A good way to offset kills of the first turn.

@!vg3g@%71: What are those 4 pts. regular orders for Morats? If you think about Imetrons, then Morats can't field those, and neither can Shasvastii. They're available only in vanilla CA.

I think that - aside from meta and chosen mission system - large part of the balance perception problem is that people tend to compare units between factions and assume that they should be played the same way. As diferent armies have access to different tools and unit compositions they need different approaches to tactics and mutual unit support.

As for terrain rules - I'm working on a cohesive table terrain set right now - PanO bioweapon research facility hidden somewhere in the Paradiso jungle - and I hope that this will make us use those rules more. With a bit of work such terrain can represent mountains or desert, too. And I'm considering creating a mission set of my own for this table, with objectives tied to specific terrain pieces. I wonder how this will turn out.

Stiopa wrote:As for terrain rules - I'm working on a cohesive table terrain set right now - PanO bioweapon research facility hidden somewhere in the Paradiso jungle - and I hope that this will make us use those rules more. With a bit of work such terrain can represent mountains or desert, too. And I'm considering creating a mission set of my own for this table, with objectives tied to specific terrain pieces. I wonder how this will turn out.

I really like the sound of that.

Scorch wrote:This is one of my personal reasons that I don't like ITS.
The abstract nature of the system almost forces people to leave out large quantities of the rules, in order to keep it 'fair' for everyone. Nimbus Zone is one of the few missions I have played that at least incorporated some form of terrain rule. And for that same reason the mission isn't very popular.

I understand ITS as a international tournament system. It does a good job at being that; fixed point objectives. Each player having the same distant from the objectives. It's all very abstract, fair and one might even say.. artificial. But I find it very unfit for narrative campaigns. BoW at least incorporated some terrain rules in their missions; those missions that took place in the jungle apparently needed a zone of jungle terrain through the middle of the table.

I hope the terrain rules will become more and more incorporated in the system in the future. Make a narrative before you start playing the mission. For me, personally, Infinity becomes a much richer game, with much higher 'stakes' when you can delve into a narrative with your opponents.

Making up symmetric scenarios is much easier than asymmetrical ones. This is why in ITS and 20x20 all the objectives are mostly neatly in the middle. A bit annoying, but try to figure out whether a scenario is fair if both sides have different objectives or something else is going on which is not symmetrical. To make the game uneven, CB has invented those classifieds, that is asymmetrical if you like that. I detest the classifieds.

But I am still a fan of asymmetrical missions, and thus I have a project called 20x20 Commando Edition. Unfortunately, there is no way this could ever be playtested to satisfaction. It is purely a fun project of which I am uncertain whether anyone but me will ever see it.

As for terrain rules, I would like to see players and TOs to just put terrain zones on the boards! I have played using terrain zones and it does make quite a bit of difference. With area terrain frequently in play, people will pay extra attention to those skills and maybe use some models which are otherwise left at home. Incorporating terrain into scenarios which are meant to be for general use is a bit difficult, because you'd want everybody to have easy access to the terrain in question. Also, the mission descriptions could get a bit unwieldy.

About the chess clocks: When do people have to press? Everytime an ARO needs to be declared? Would make sense, but doesn t this lead to the clock being forgotten about a lot? I mean, if it works, great, but I can see that things can get wrong there.
As an Ariadna player, I have to agree that larger forces can take too much time. That is an unfortunate unbalance in a tournament setting.

Prophet_of_Doom wrote:
But I am still a fan of asymmetrical missions, and thus I have a project called 20x20 Commando Edition. Unfortunately, there is no way this could ever be playtested to satisfaction. It is purely a fun project of which I am uncertain whether anyone but me will ever see it.

Just in case - colour me interested

Errhile wrote:

Prophet_of_Doom wrote:
But I am still a fan of asymmetrical missions, and thus I have a project called 20x20 Commando Edition. Unfortunately, there is no way this could ever be playtested to satisfaction. It is purely a fun project of which I am uncertain whether anyone but me will ever see it.

Just in case - colour me interested

Same here

Prophet_of_Doom wrote:About the chess clocks: When do people have to press? Everytime an ARO needs to be declared? Would make sense, but doesn t this lead to the clock being forgotten about a lot? I mean, if it works, great, but I can see that things can get wrong there.
As an Ariadna player, I have to agree that larger forces can take too much time. That is an unfortunate unbalance in a tournament setting.

For now, players change the clock only when their turn comes up. No shuffling back and forth during AROs. 95% of AROs are Face to Face rolls anyway. No one is stalling during AROs so I didn't have to make a «Warning» yet. The idea behind using a Chessclock is not to be super precise down to the second. Its more to give the players a sense of time so they can auto-regulate their game play and make sure both players get full 3 turns. My last tournament had 12 players. we started on time and finished on time. Everyone got home to wife and kids at the time they said they would.

Not everyone has the same perception of time. Some people don't even realize they are slow decision makers. We have one guy who takes between 15 to 20 minutes just to deploy. Another one managed to play only a maximum of 1.5 to 2 turns per game in one tournament. Issuing warnings didn't work. Using a Chess clock showed them how slow they actually were. It was a shock for them. These two guys are both super friendly its just they didn't play fast enough.

--------------------------------------------------
Question : Why do you hate Classifieds? The Highly Classified mission is pretty much how we played YAMs in my area. CB created Classifieds because of the popularity of YAMs.

Errhile wrote:

Prophet_of_Doom wrote:
But I am still a fan of asymmetrical missions, and thus I have a project called 20x20 Commando Edition. Unfortunately, there is no way this could ever be playtested to satisfaction. It is purely a fun project of which I am uncertain whether anyone but me will ever see it.

Just in case - colour me interested

Indeed.

Marc_C's group is not alone in chess clock territory. It's being used in Spain in multiple places, for example. The TOs determine everything, including if used for AROs or what happens when all time is used or if a referee is needed. Just like table setup is their task too. There have been some whines about complexity or "lossing freedom", but in the end, it's one fair way to split the time.

Seems I'll have to buy one for my group, too... and see how it goes.

Got a laptop? I found two quickly https://sourceforge.net/projects/vchessclock/ and https://redmine.koumbit.net/projects/gameclock (this one even allows more than 2 players... boardgames?). There are others, including for tablets and phones.

Well, not going to bring my laptop around every time I play.

I even prefer having a list printed than on my Kindle. It is lighter and smaller that way. And I've laready offered a bottle of quality booze to a guy who wanted me to run some app on my phone, provided he'd be able to run anything on it...

Call me a dinosaur, but I meant actual, physical clock

I was suggesting those for the tests, instead of spending the money, then figuring you wasted it. You know, like testing a new troop with a proxy model, but about clocks.

MARC C wrote:


Not everyone has the same perception of time. Some people don't even realize they are slow decision makers. We have one guy who takes between 15 to 20 minutes just to deploy. Another one managed to play only a maximum of 1.5 to 2 turns per game in one tournament. Issuing warnings didn't work. Using a Chess clock showed them how slow they actually were. It was a shock for them. These two guys are both super friendly its just they didn't play fast enough.
.

This. I use chess clock personally, as they aren't implemented by TO and at one event I stated we'd have to pick the pace up in turn two as we had gone long and my opponent, in a civil manner, said my turn one was long. At which point I could show we were both running comparative times. He then noted about perception.

We don't use actual chess clocks. We use cheap dollar store timers. One per player.

Real chess clocks are relatively expensive. There are apps, but that may not sit well with some players having to offer some one else their phone or tablet. They would have troubles checking their lists stored on the same tablet as the running chess clock app.

Just having to press for the turn is pretty straightforward and good, as long as opponents don t stall during ARO. I guess its quite doable with friendly people.

Why I hate the classifieds? Because they cause an unfair imbalance, are random, and are pretty bad at reflecting the background. I don t want to be mean (again) to our wartrader, but I was never a fan of YAMS.

Oh, I guess I could borrow a chess clock from my father. He hasn't used it for ages (no-one in the family is going to play chess with him - and when he goes for tournamnet play, they have their own chess clocks there).

The idea needs testing, after all