Droid Trooper Suppression is poor design

By Aurelus, in Star Wars: Legion

Suppression is a big part of Legion. In a game with limited activations, being able to limit your opponents options is a huge advantage, and a effective strategy. Having a faction that bypasses this game mechanic is a massive blunder. Gaining no cover from suppression on cheap units with 6+ minis is not really much of a disadvantage, and can be compensated by terrain. Ion X is a poor substitute since it is expensive, and costs an action to untap, which pretty much nullifies it's tactical advantage.

I think a rework on how Droid troopers operate should be considered.

Lol.

Please pass the salt when you are done with it.

1 hour ago, Aurelus said:

Suppression is a big part of Legion. In a game with limited activations, being able to limit your opponents options is a huge advantage, and a effective strategy. Having a faction that bypasses this game mechanic is a massive blunder. Gaining no cover from suppression on cheap units with 6+ minis is not really much of a disadvantage, and can be compensated by terrain. Ion X is a poor substitute since it is expensive, and costs an action to untap, which pretty much nullifies it's tactical advantage.

I think a rework on how Droid troopers operate should be considered.

Um... I hate to mention how many times my clones have one shotted a unit of droids. Yeah Fire Support was involved, but so was heavy cover. A white save without surge is not worth the paper it’s printed on. Also droids don’t have much of an attack without an aim. If they don’t use an aim, they’re lucky to get one hit through.

That being said, I’m guessing you’ve had a bad experience? Was it one player, or several different players over several games? If it seems like they could do no wrong, either check their dice for tampering, insist you use the same dice, or give it time since lucky swings usually swing back the other way in time, though I’m sure none of this is what you wanted to hear, sorry.

Yeah, never noticed it as much of a problem. Even with Grievous, their courage value isn't great either, so panicking them off the board is very much a possibility if you can't actually kill them.

If you want your controversial opinion on this matter be taken seriously, then I recommend backing it up with actual observations or examples from games you've played wherein you found droids to be very powerful owing to not becoming suppressed.

AI is a decent drawback, as it takes away control of the first action of any non-faceup order token activation without your opponent doing anything. Suppression requires your opponent to have rolled hits while targeting your unit, all AI requires is for you to have been unable to order the unit and (since almost all of the AI are attack) have a valid target in range. This could be a particularly bad attack, you could prefer to take another action first, or you could really need that unit to double move instead, but regardless you're now forced to make a no aim token, no surge attack against a valid target. (Edit: unless you have other means of getting tokens)

Getting to choose your action for each activation of a unit is also a big part of Legion, yet I don't see you bemoaning AI. Nor are you complaining about Fire Support despite it providing Clones with a way to build powerful attack pools, or get attacks out of units that would Panic if they activated.

Edited by Caimheul1313
5 hours ago, Aurelus said:

Suppression is a big part of Legion. In a game with limited activations, being able to limit your opponents options is a huge advantage, and a effective strategy. Having a faction that bypasses this game mechanic is a massive blunder. Gaining no cover from suppression on cheap units with 6+ minis is not really much of a disadvantage, and can be compensated by terrain. Ion X is a poor substitute since it is expensive, and costs an action to untap, which pretty much nullifies it's tactical advantage.

I think a rework on how Droid troopers operate should be considered.

If it's really that much of an issue to you run comm jammers and laugh your way though any droid fire......

Edited by Ralgon

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I have been feeling that the empire is really resistant to supression. Vader or emperor morale bubble pretty much makes you immune to panicking. Krennic/veers with strict orders and units with dicipline like deathtroopers and royal guard, you need like 4+ supression tokens to affect them. However this feels thematicly fine, however I rarely Bring supressive weapons or split fire for supression when I face alot of empire.

The rebels have alot of units and can panic easily, however they got alot of access to inspire and supression removal from Heroes and operatives, again thematicly fine.

Droids, while I still haven't got my core set yet, feels like they are resistant to panicking troops and can be effective when in numbers and the command structure intact, if you can distrupt their command control or spread them out, they become vunearable. Again thematicly fine.

Granted if enough units/factions become less affected by supression then supressive weapons will lose effectivess, however I think we have to give the clone wars a couple of months before we know that.

Sounds like someone is playing the rules instead of the game.

Hmmmmmmmm

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12 hours ago, Aurelus said:

Suppression is a big part of Legion. In a game with limited activations, being able to limit your opponents options is a huge advantage, and a effective strategy. Having a faction that bypasses this game mechanic is a massive blunder. Gaining no cover from suppression on cheap units with 6+ minis is not really much of a disadvantage, and can be compensated by terrain. Ion X is a poor substitute since it is expensive, and costs an action to untap, which pretty much nullifies it's tactical advantage.

I think a rework on how Droid troopers operate should be considered.

You need to provide an argument for WHY you think it's unfair. How does it break the game? How is it a tactical advantage? Look at the math and ignore your feelings. It's the best way to make a logical conclusion.

Current tournament results disagree with you. Separtists have been doing very poorly in tournaments, so I don't think it's a problem.

12 hours ago, Alpha17 said:

Yeah, never noticed it as much of a problem. Even with Grievous, their courage value isn't great either, so panicking them off the board is very much a possibility if you can't actually kill them.

Your opponent must not have used strict orders on grievous, that along with coordinate droid trooper has kept my droids fine from panic, I think OP is a bit salty against units that only strength is activation control

5 hours ago, TheHoosh said:

Your opponent must not have used strict orders on grievous, that along with coordinate droid trooper has kept my droids fine from panic, I think OP is a bit salty against units that only strength is activation control

Even that activation control is fragile and can be easily disrupted by single card (albeit that card can be best delivered, currently by Tauntauns)

16 minutes ago, syrath said:

Even that activation control is fragile and can be easily disrupted by single card (albeit that card can be best delivered, currently by Tauntauns)

That is why targeting units with comms jammers must be a priority for CIS armies, easier said than done, but other than tauntauns not a huge threat

22 minutes ago, TheHoosh said:

That is why targeting units with comms jammers must be a priority for CIS armies, easier said than done, but other than tauntauns not a huge threat

To be honest I'm really liking the rock paper scissors that is going on in the meta, sure there are a couple of archetypes showing but this is impressive given how immature the CIS and republic factions are just now. when the tanks come Tauntauns will very likely fear them greatly

Are you aware that the droids roll all white? Are you aware they don't surge? Are you aware you can wipe out a unit really quickly? Geez how weak do you want them to be?

27 minutes ago, Uchidan1 said:

Are you aware that the droids roll all white? Are you aware they don't surge? Are you aware you can wipe out a unit really quickly? Geez how weak do you want them to be?

Strangely on an efficiency point of view of effort to kill 1 pt worth of droid, or DMG caused per pt of droid vs any other Corp unit in the game B1 battle droids are the most efficient in the game.

1 minute ago, syrath said:

Strangely on an efficiency point of view of effort to kill 1 pt worth of droid, or DMG caused per pt of droid vs any other Corp unit in the game B1 battle droids are the most efficient in the game.

Shhh it's our secret weapon strength in weakness

I actually agree with the OP, in part.

I've been playing a lot against droids (and winning), and did a write up on their relative strengths + how to beat them, in an earlier thread.

Whilst I don't think they are completely overpowered, I think they are extremely efficient.

Droids seem to have a lot of ways to help newbs in the game. You effectively ignore 2 detrimental problems, suppression and activation control. This gives you two less things to think about. Due to the ability for B1 droids to share out order tokens, the army can pretty easily ignore the 'drawback' of AI: whatever. B1's, I think, are point for point one of the best units in the game.

But that's just it. This game has other layers of depth that enable you to negate point for point attrition, to a certain extent.

I think we will see the activation control become less of an issue when the army is fully fleshed out. With other options popping up.

But still, the designers did pretty much shoe-horn in a mechanic to negate the balancing drawback of AI. Seems kinda dumb and pointless to me.

Edited by lologrelol
1 minute ago, lologrelol said:

I actually agree with the OP, in part.

I've been playing a lot against droids (and winning), and did a write up on their relative strengths + how to beat them, in an earlier thread.

Whilst I don't think they are completely overpowered, I think they are extremely efficient.

Droids seem to have a lot of ways to help newbs in the game. You effectively ignore 2 detrimental problems, suppression and activation control. This gives you two less things to think about. Due to the ability for B1 droids to share out order tokens, the army can pretty easily ignore the 'drawback' of AI: whatever. B1's, I think, are point for point one of the best units in the game.

But that's just it. This game has other layers of depth that enable you to negate point for point attrition, to a certain extent.

I think we will see the activation control become less of an issue when the army is fully fleshed out. With other options popping up.

But still, the designers did pretty much shoe-horn in a mechanic to negate the balancing drawback of AI. Seems kinda dumb and pointless to me. But then again, its not like the designers listen to what we think.

Oh wait... They did do points adjustments, almost to the exact numbers I recommended in earlier threads... Sometimes I wander if the designers actually playtest this ****.

AI: attack is built in to punish if coordinate droid trooper is not properly executed and to make tauntauns the biggest bane of the droids

2 hours ago, lologrelol said:

But still, the designers did pretty much shoe-horn in a mechanic to negate the balancing drawback of AI. Seems kinda dumb and pointless to me. But then again, its not like the designers listen to what we think.

B1s have coordinate and the security droid. B2s, Droidekas, and AATs do not. Easy order control is the B1s schtick. Other CIS units will not have as easy a time negating AI.

3 hours ago, lologrelol said:

I actually agree with the OP, in part.

I've been playing a lot against droids (and winning), and did a write up on their relative strengths + how to beat them, in an earlier thread.

Whilst I don't think they are completely overpowered, I think they are extremely efficient.

Droids seem to have a lot of ways to help newbs in the game. You effectively ignore 2 detrimental problems, suppression and activation control. This gives you two less things to think about. Due to the ability for B1 droids to share out order tokens, the army can pretty easily ignore the 'drawback' of AI: whatever. B1's, I think, are point for point one of the best units in the game.

But that's just it. This game has other layers of depth that enable you to negate point for point attrition, to a certain extent.

I think we will see the activation control become less of an issue when the army is fully fleshed out. With other options popping up.

But still, the designers did pretty much shoe-horn in a mechanic to negate the balancing drawback of AI. Seems kinda dumb and pointless to me. But then again, its not like the designers listen to what we think.

Oh wait... They did do points adjustments, almost to the exact numbers I recommended in earlier threads... Sometimes I wonder if the designers actually playtest this ****.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one picking up on this. Yes, B1s are "weak" on the surface... But not nearly as much as most think. Action economy is still a big deal.

6 hours ago, Squark said:

B1s have coordinate and the security droid. B2s, Droidekas, and AATs do not. Easy order control is the B1s schtick. Other CIS units will not have as easy a time negating AI.

AAT will have 2 pilots that remove AI: Attack

Wait, you guys are really going to continue claiming that B1s are unbalanced when Tauntauns and Shores/Mortars/Comms Relay are all still in the mix.

I’ve pointed out imbalances in the game before, between Rebels and Imperials, to get much scorn from these very boards, but I gotta tell ya, I don’t see it. Every game I’ve played with my clones vs droids, I’ve beaten them and I see them as strong, but not unbalanced. So let me go over this so maybe I can see what your talking about.

The premise is: Droids can’t be suppressed, but can be panicked off the board. This means that they will always get two actions and because they get two actions regardless of suppression, that makes them OP.

But... they do have white dice with no surge. When they attack, it’s usually only one hit through cover and that’s if they rolled well. Usually it’s just suppression and all of that is with a heavy weapon in the unit. So they need aims when they can get them. As for using an action for a dodge, they need that and their numbers since they have the worst defence in the game (white no surge). When wookies came out for rebels, I pointed out their imbalance because they only had a white defence die with no surge. I said, they’re just going to die too quickly. Of course everyone said, the three health each is their defence, but wookies are not used competitively except as a guardian drain because they Just die too quickly. Droids need the extra action as well as their numbers just to keep up with the other faction’s. Sorry I still don’t see how getting two actions a round makes them OP. Maybe they can do an objective while under fire better than other factions, but aside from that I don’t see the benefits. If the same ability was on any other faction’s corps units, I would totally agree, but B1s are just too weak for words.

Have you guys try playing droids?. Maybe the grass just looks greener? Or maybe if you could explain why you think that makes them OP, maybe more of use can get on board.