Titan Transnational is the 4th ID that has >15 influence, and the third printed in a big box. As a concept, I doubt they’re going away any time soon. Aside from Custom Biotics, the others all have abilities ranging from solid to really good.
Is this good for the game? Is it a necessary step to maintain diversity in splashes? Are 15-inf IDs going to fall into disuse despite their abilities because of the limited flexibility?
My current opinion is “maybe”, “probably not; people will just splash more power cards like biotic” and “I fear they will”. I’m interested to hear others’ thoughts on this.
I think its fine for the game, but the balance of some of these IDs wasn’t great. NEH doesn’t need it, Titan doesn’t feel like it needs it but haven’t played much, I’ve never played Ken but it seems fine in his case, and Custom Biotics would be better without the Jinteki restriction but probably still wouldn’t see much play.
It’s a fine enough way to balance IDs alongside decksize. I’m curious whether we’ll ever see a corp ID that is required to play 50 cards.
I think you have to look at it for what it is: EtF gets a buck for every single install, while NEH only gets a card for every new remote. Now you could argue that between the tempo gained from card draw, the potential tricks that it opens up, and general power of the faction, that 17 influence is bananas–and by all rights in the current meta you would not be wrong. But on paper, the ability of NEH is worse than EtF, and so it makes sense to have more influence. Similarly conditional is Titan Transnational, which while opening up scoring atlas as just a 3/2, is certainly worse (again, on paper) than the cold economic advantage of an EtF. 17 probably WILL become more common in new ID’s, because they will be more and more specific/situational to find vectors to explore in the factions.
First The “I’d make fun of you as well. That’s how people learn.” is terrible btw. Humiliating people is not the only way to teach.
Draw is extremely powerful in this game, but this is not GoT or MTG and card advantage is not really a factor in many of the games I play…because I can click for cards on either side. This is not a symmetrical game, when I destroy your pad campaign (without spending a card since its just a click to run after all)… its still -4 credits, and a click… I can win games when the runner has drawn 20 more cards then me.
Basically resources are resources, cards, clicks and credits are slightly different values but they are ALL important. (some more than others depending on game state)
Anyways,Its not as clear cut as you make it sound.
@false_idol: Problem is, you can’t really take EtF as a baseline, as that’s an ID that we knew was about 1-2 tiers above everything else in power level all the way back to Core. The thing that I’m comparing 17-inf identities are actually their 12-inf brethren. The question always becomes: “Is this ability so much worse than that one, that it should have extra influence to compensate?”.
That being said, there are definitely identities where I wish they’d have done things differently:
ST really deserved 17 inf, seeing how EtF is better even for dedicated Bioroid decks (because it doesn’t matter whether a Bioroid has +1 str if you can’t afford to rez it all game)
BWBI, same thing (as you positively need influence to even capitalize on your ID in a manner that’s meaningful towards winning you the game)
An argument could be made for Nisei Division having 17 for the same reason (yeah, it’s a credit… but a pretty conditional one, and again, you probably need influence to actually do anything with the only proactive psi game there i)
Not really going into NEH, just gonna say that it should have had the “no HB” restriction and it would be actually interesting then
And don’t even get me started on the 10-inf identities. I’m positive Iain would’ve been fine with 12, Kit probably same (especially compared to their respective baseline faction workhorses).
What was that thing that @JohnnyCreations always says? Ah, yes… This is me publicly shaming you.
Here’s the bullet point version of why I think you’re completely off the mark:
That first paragraph probably doesn’t belong even in a post that’s right, much less one that’s so wrong
Card Advantage only exists in games with limited draw options. See: Netrunner, SWCCG (the old one)
EtF’s ability is easily the most impactful corp ID to date, because of how it skews the expected value of certain plays (like a naked Adonis that ticks once then gets nuked by the runner)
The reason NEH is so good is a combination of SanSan, Astro, Fast Track, Wraparound, Quandary and Architect. What makes this happen is primarily the combination of faction and 17 inf. If the ID were blank, it’d still be both strong and fast
p.s. Custom Biotics has plenty of support already. It’s called “Midseasons”, “Psychographics” and “Shoot the Moon”, respectively. It’s just weaker than ETF FA. Whether Clot changes that, we’ll see
While I think you could be quite close to design decisions FFG guys were doing behind the scenes, it is inherently incorrect to compare Identities between different Corporations. They are defined by cardpool first and foremost (especially Agendas).
Nope. It can’t be agreed upon. Netrunner is the game that turned “Card advantage” concept upside down, especially on Corp’s side, where drawing too much Agendas can cost you a game.
“Click advantage” is what this game is all about.
Then they would use ToL + Ice Wall instead of Biotics, not much of a change. Anyway, that’s too theoretical
NEH was very good before Architect, and I’d argue they would be very good without Wrap and Quandary as well. Fast Track, SanSan, Astro, Breaking News, Biotic/ToL, economy cards and Jackson are what shapes the archetype. Also Project Beale deserves a mention as a blank 3/2.
I don’t think you can take influence levels outside of faction.
I believe the ability of Noise, for instance, is so strong that it is one of the reasons FFG have been so reserved (careful) when it comes to printing good Anarch cards. They’ve been much less reserved about printing good Anarch IDs.
Au contraire - ToL + Ice Wall means you have to see two different cards, then spend an entire turn setting it up the first time, almost an entire turn anytime after that. Not only is it slower, it’s also more expensive even if you only value your clicks at 1 cred. It’s also more interactive: in addition to the ways you can stop the Biotic way of doing things, you get all the extra vulnerabilities that come from the Ice Wall part of the combo. If they leave the Ice Wall unrezzed to counter some of them, they just used twice the deckspace to do the same thing.
These are valid points (except for expensiveness. ToL is cheaper). Corp also gains a set of cheap gearcheck barriers as a bonus out of the deal.
I guess it’s subjective if it’s “plenty” of change or “not much” of a change. From my point of view it’s still operation-based fast advance most Runners can’t really do anything about except for Legworking ASPP from HQ (if it’s even there) or employing Imp and randomly accessing ToL / Biotic. Or Siphoning, which kinda works vs. Biotics and doesn’t against ToL.
Well, it also does matter against Leela since she can bounce unrezzed Ice Wall with advancements and it would hurt. But other Runners… nah, more or less the same NEH Astrotrain.
How exactly is 2 credits + 2 clicks (for advancement) and 1 credit + 1 click (for ToL) “cheaper” than 4 credits and 1 click (for Biotic)? Surely you value two clicks as one credit, at least?
To expand on this:
ToL needs 5 clicks and 4 credits to score a 3/2. Biotic needs 3 clicks and 7 credits.
But ToL is 3 influence and Biotic is 4. Then again ToL provides the benefits (and drawbacks!) of having those 2 advancement counters somewhere else in the meantime. On the other hand ToL runs the risk of leaving your agenda stranded in a remote in case of Utopia Shard (vs the risk of having your agenda trashed).
Anything else we could consider?
Tol is marginally cheaper (costs 2 clicks more but 3 creds less). The main advantage I’ve found is being able to fast advance from only 2 creds when you need to, which is especially useful against Siphon. Other advantages are that that you can sometimes benefit from the advanced ice in the interim (usually marginal but sometimes makes a real difference) and that seeing shadow early on sometimes makes people think you’re playing scorched, if they haven’t seen the deck before. It also means you can actually consider using space ice in NEH without completely trolling. The fact that you need to see an extra combo piece barely matters when you have 5 advanceable ice.
I’m with @PeekaySK, I think the bigger issue are the identities that are very difficult to use due to their lack of influence. Personally I think there should be 3 tiers - 12, for IDs with stronger than typical abilities, 15 for standard abilities, and 17 for niche abilities. ETF is a great example of a 15, it is strong, but not too strong. Same goes for Andy, Kate, Gabe, etc. Ken is a great example of a 17. God bless its heart, Gagarin should have been 17. I think Titan is fair at 17. NEH should have been 15, I think. GRNDL deserves at least 12 IMO, as do poor Kit and Iain. Personally I think Kit would be fair at 15. NEXT Department deserves at least 15 as well; I think it’s relatively comparable to Andromeda, in that it gives the Corp 1 turn of tempo (3 clicks for 3 installs as compared to 4 cards or 4 clicks). TWIY is tough, I think it’s fair at 12 but also possibly fair at 15. The problem with NBN in general is that their agenda and card pool are so strong that they almost need less influence to balance them out, compared to other Factions.
I think my ideal would be something like 25/25/50, with 25% being strong 12 influence ID, another quarter your ‘standard’ 15 ID, and the last half being niche ID with a bit more influence.
Always hear this but I strongly disagree. Only thing people can claim I think is Siphon abuse out of Kit with 15, but is that really any better than PrePaid Kate? I argue not.
just for fun, here are what I would put Corp Influence at under my 12/15/17 system.
GRNDL at 15 might be controversial, but IMO it would put it on par with Blue Sun for a competitively viable Weyland ID. I strongly disagree it would be overpowered at 15 influence. I think TWIY needs to be 12 because its influence density is effectively higher with the smaller deck and more influence coupled with NBN agenda and card pool would make it possibly too fast.
2 more spooned if it comes to ice destruction.
also u may use that spare influence to close the gap to so called tier 1 by bringing whatever u feel this id needs (more reliable econ? vamps?)
