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Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 12:12 am
Posts: 2241
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CS,
Glad to see you got us a list up so quick. Well done on the update time Sir. I'm glad to see you didn't drift too much from WIP v4.2.4 but I have some questions of why you did make some changes - most of which I'm hoping was accidents! 
Side note before I get into what I see: Jervis may wish the list be more than just 'inspired' by him - FYI, regardless of how much we all changed it - he was the original author from what I remember.
Ok, jumping into the nitty gritty of what I can see. BTW: just comparing this to what we came up with in the v4.2.4 WIP list.
1) The Coordinated Fire (CF) ambiguity is back now. It doesn't say whether a player should declare each of the subordinate shooting actions before rolling to activate CF, or declare after rolling for CF but declare all subordinate actions before any formations are moved, or declare each subordinate action after each previous sub-activation has been successfully resolved. Some direction needs to be clarified. Thus the proposed in the WIP.
See CF Discussion for more details.
2) GM & ML
Glad to see that Nerroth's Tracer notation was included, but you may want to further note that Tracers fired from outerspace that are guided work and may target as normal. Just a suggestion for clarification since it may generate questions.
3) Tau Jet Pack Technology
You've removed the air assault clause. Its part of the original defense of the jump away - even if you can't escape the aircrafts assault, which you can't, you may be able to escape nearby support formations. Why would you take this out?
4) Tau Deflector shield now lists weapon types again, and now lists lance... a rule of 'like lance' leaves room for interpretation. The last sentece has a typo, "They do not work at all in attacks from..."
Overall, this section was rewritten as it was too wordy before and now takes up 9 lines again instead of 7. Your call, but seems unnecessarily wordy again.
5) You may want to check margins in general, Amoured Mobile Hunter Cadre, Broadside, Hammerhead contingent - etc in the armylit are now taking up two lines instead of 1 for some reason.
6) Stealth Suit - Drones to Gun Drones in upgrades columns - good catch!
7) Changed Gun Drone Squadron in the army list back to Gun Drone "Swarm" for some reason. Don't know why as the Datasheet actually says Gun Drone Squadron... and doesn't sound so Tyranid either!!! Eeek!
8) Added 0-1 Shas'el restriction - why?
9) Tau Ethereal's listed twice now 
10) You kept the Tetra formation increase in price from 150 to 175 but you didn't keep the Tetra upgrade at +100 and put it back to +75, intentional?
11) I like your rewording of the swordfish upgrade description, good job... but there's that margin issue again! 
12) You buried the upgrade points in the description of the Kroot and Gue'vesa alien auxilia. We seperated it out in v4.2.4 to have consistency with the other upgrades and to clearly list the points - like the Tracer salvo upgrade - its listed like the rest of the 'Tau Upgrades' with points to the far right column. Just a preferences thing I suppose, but seems like the Tracer upgrade on the Hero would follow suit with the Alien Auxilia for consitency one way or the other in the army list.
13) Tigershark Strke Craft is used as the unit name, but Forgeworld calls this a Tiger Shark Bomber in Taros. So they seperate out the Tiger from the Shark and they reference it as a bomber instead of a Strike craft. Doesn't mean we have to follow their lead, but your call.
14) There are all kinds of little breaking tick marks in the horizontal lines of the datasheets - just a nit picky thing.
15 & 16) The majority of the Tau community like infantry on the crisis and broadsides - i.e. all battlesuits, I have no idea why you reverted back to LV and then added walker. Even Nealhunt said crisis (at least) should be infantry. The evidence is overwhelming to make them infantry. If you think they are too powerful as infantry, I'd personally rather lower their power than make them an aircraft, a armored vehicle or anything else than what they are - which is infantry. Many have also modeled their army already and LV and Armoured vehicles are 1 per stand. Having multiple crisis or broadsides on a stand and then adding drones - like we would with infantry, but then calling them LV's is not only confusing, but also makes many army mountings now out of kilter with the norm... LV on crisis and broadsides... I'm dissappointed in this.
Please reference the many threads on this and consider the majority Tau player opinion as well as the other development champions and comments from the SG forum on this topic in general...
Epicomms LV Battlesuit debate
Specialist Games LV design Principles
17) You left "Tau" in the front of all datasheet names. Why? We took that out in the WIP list because it was repetative, ?because the 'Army List' names of the units didn't say "Tau" Hammerhead Gunships, "Tau" Gun Drones... etc... the Army List names should match the Data Sheet names for consistency, and because your eye has to read beyond Tau each time in the datasheets just to find what you are actually looking for - i.e. Piranha, Tetra, etc...
18) God love ya - you put the Dragonfish in with 2 Supreme Commander Rerolls!! You just gave many of us a moment to rejoice, however - we'd I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that it was determined early on that there's no way Jervis or the development community as a whole will let this fly... so we took out the extra SC ability from the get go when the unit was brought over from the collectors edition. Afterall, it's a SC WE already. There's at lest two different threads here on the epicomms board on this topic:
Epicomms Dragonfish cmd vehicle discssion 1
Putting this back in with 2 SC rerolls, as much as we'd like to see it, seems like a step backwards from these discussions.
Further discussion on the latest direction with this unit is here:
Epicomms Dragonfish cmd vehicle disscussion 2
19) Kroot Great Knarloc as an LV again. See battlesuits. I can see this being an LV easier than the battlesuits... one unit type in a whole formation of kroot that can be targetted by AT fire will make this unit completely obsolete in our list. Why take them if the enemy can pick them out of 20 other models?
20) Gue'vesa pulse rifles should have a different name to be inline with Jervis' development principle -- all weapons with different stats should have different weapons - i.e. TL = +1, Long barrelled +15cm, etc... if nothing more, I would call these "Gue'vesa Pulse Rifles" or "Limited Pulse Rifles" or "Sparce Pulse Rifles"... vs still taking another sentece in the Notes section to explain them as inferior... Inferior was used to get rid of the sentence explanation - when all it really needs is another name for the weapon.
21) You kept the Tiger Shark with variant upgrade - so the "Whiteshark data sheet" is no longer valid. It should be removed from the unit list of Tau air caste units all together. It cannot be selected anymore.
22) You kept the Orca Drop ship at 8 carrying capacity instead of 9 which was JG's and tau community's recomendation for v4.2. Why did you lower it back to 8?
23) Nit - picky coment you made Fixed Forward Arc red on Tau moray 2x Railcannon - the main weapon was always FFA, just a heads up - that was nothing changed from v4.1 FFA just appeared on the next line in v4.1 as I recall (from memory)
24) Nit - picky comment again - on the moray, you took off the plural "s" on Railcannons and changed it to Railcannon... on the Manta, you left them plural... ? I know - I said it was nit picky didn't I?
25) AHHH! Why did you add Slow and Steady to the Hero Notes??? No, no, no... that's all wrong! Please tell me that was an accident! All Tau planetfall operations will immediately go to Turn 3+ - LOL, we'll be the joke of the Killing Strike community for sure! Seriously - please fix.
26) Nerroth will have issues with spaceship fluff - I'll let him comment.
27) Slow and Steady on Or'es El'leath good call.
28 and 29) Collector exploerer and bombardments were updated per Nerroth's recomendations as he's the resident expert on such matters. I'll leave it to him to tell you why you shouldn't go back to the way it was in v4.1... or you can go look at the Tau WIP v4.2.4 thread that was sticky... he went to great lengths to explain all this to me/us:
Tau WIP v4.2.4 thread where Nerroths comments can be found
Hope this was helpful CS,
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Rob
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! ?Again Keep up the good work ! ? (I really do have to spend more time with girls/women !) 
