Sentinel walkers need some love
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2015 10:15 am
The Sentinel walker could use some serious love: Walkers are a full unit category, but you start the tutorial with the BEST type available, and there is never any reason to buy any more. There are no weapon variants, no further upgraded models, nothing.
In my experience Walkers don't do enough damage to gain much XP quickly. And with no upgrade prospects you should do as I do: disband the starting walker and buy something else! Or use it as a bullet sponge; that works too - move forward to spot, take fire, die. Be resurrected next mission.
I think the Walker needs to be tweaked a bit, to make the category worthwhile.
Their primary (and only) gun is the lascannon. It looks good on paper, but it has such a slow rate of fire (1) and the walkers come in an 8-piece unit, meaning you get only 8 shots. That's simply not good enough, even if accuracy is high (for comparison purposes a Russ Annihilator unit gets 15 lascannon shots, plus 15 hvy bolter shots, at double cost - and with much better protection).
Each walker has 2 hits, but armor isn't all that good, even for the Arma pattern, so they can't go toe-to-toe with anything with a range 3 weapon - or they quickly die. That means either shooting at Inf - but the low ROF/hi power of the weapon makes this wasteful in the extreme. So they are usually relegated to pure scouting (they are good at that, but there are other good scout units that are far more versatile) or sniping at already severely weakened armor.
At 200 and 300 points respectively, they aren't very costly, but you could get a Salamander for that kind of money. So you get a fairly quick, good spot, but otherwise entirely crap unit for a moderate price. I'd much rather have another Sala or some Inf in a Chimera.
I suggest:
- make Sentinels 1 hit vehicles (like the Tauros it's only lightly armored, much less durable than other 2 hit vehicles like the Sala for example)
- increase max size to 12 (I considered 15, but that might be too much); consider doing the same for the Tauros.
- increase Defense slightly to compensate for lost hits (12x1 vs 8x2)
- you now have a unit that packs a semi-decent punch, but that can die very quickly from heavy fire
- increase speed by 1 for the basic version (speed 7)
- initiative should be HIGH to account for the fact that these are fast, hit-and-run vehicles
- make more weapon variants
- the default is the multi-laser; with 3x12 shots you now have a walker alternative to common Inf.
- lascannon, hvy bolter, hvy flamer, and missile launcher variants
- you start with the COMMON sentinel, not the Arma pattern
- the arma pattern is unlocked at some point in Act 1
- give it a slight armor upgrade (on top of what the common version got) to make it competitive, but make it slower (speed 6)
- same weapon alternatives
- consider a more heavily armed and armored pattern as well
- drop speed by 1, spot by 1
- default loadout is 1 multi-laser PLUS another support weapon; hvy bolter, hvy flamer, lascannon, missile launcher
- available at the start of Act 2; to provide an alternative to disbanding remaining walkers
Now there are 5 Mars patterns, 5 arma patters, plus 4 heavy pattern.
This would make Sentinels a viable, interesting choice for the first Act, possibly beyond for units that have managed to gain a lot of XP.
In my experience Walkers don't do enough damage to gain much XP quickly. And with no upgrade prospects you should do as I do: disband the starting walker and buy something else! Or use it as a bullet sponge; that works too - move forward to spot, take fire, die. Be resurrected next mission.
I think the Walker needs to be tweaked a bit, to make the category worthwhile.
Their primary (and only) gun is the lascannon. It looks good on paper, but it has such a slow rate of fire (1) and the walkers come in an 8-piece unit, meaning you get only 8 shots. That's simply not good enough, even if accuracy is high (for comparison purposes a Russ Annihilator unit gets 15 lascannon shots, plus 15 hvy bolter shots, at double cost - and with much better protection).
Each walker has 2 hits, but armor isn't all that good, even for the Arma pattern, so they can't go toe-to-toe with anything with a range 3 weapon - or they quickly die. That means either shooting at Inf - but the low ROF/hi power of the weapon makes this wasteful in the extreme. So they are usually relegated to pure scouting (they are good at that, but there are other good scout units that are far more versatile) or sniping at already severely weakened armor.
At 200 and 300 points respectively, they aren't very costly, but you could get a Salamander for that kind of money. So you get a fairly quick, good spot, but otherwise entirely crap unit for a moderate price. I'd much rather have another Sala or some Inf in a Chimera.
I suggest:
- make Sentinels 1 hit vehicles (like the Tauros it's only lightly armored, much less durable than other 2 hit vehicles like the Sala for example)
- increase max size to 12 (I considered 15, but that might be too much); consider doing the same for the Tauros.
- increase Defense slightly to compensate for lost hits (12x1 vs 8x2)
- you now have a unit that packs a semi-decent punch, but that can die very quickly from heavy fire
- increase speed by 1 for the basic version (speed 7)
- initiative should be HIGH to account for the fact that these are fast, hit-and-run vehicles
- make more weapon variants
- the default is the multi-laser; with 3x12 shots you now have a walker alternative to common Inf.
- lascannon, hvy bolter, hvy flamer, and missile launcher variants
- you start with the COMMON sentinel, not the Arma pattern
- the arma pattern is unlocked at some point in Act 1
- give it a slight armor upgrade (on top of what the common version got) to make it competitive, but make it slower (speed 6)
- same weapon alternatives
- consider a more heavily armed and armored pattern as well
- drop speed by 1, spot by 1
- default loadout is 1 multi-laser PLUS another support weapon; hvy bolter, hvy flamer, lascannon, missile launcher
- available at the start of Act 2; to provide an alternative to disbanding remaining walkers
Now there are 5 Mars patterns, 5 arma patters, plus 4 heavy pattern.
This would make Sentinels a viable, interesting choice for the first Act, possibly beyond for units that have managed to gain a lot of XP.