Lorek wrote:Now that I'm getting a better feel for
STs and how they play out, is it worthwhile to suppress a vital unit by tossing a ton of
STs on it instead of trying to kill it?
If you really lock a unit down, there's no bringing it back from reserves (which also is a poor man's redeployment). I've been running fewer large units, but I'm thinking that taking more, smaller units would let me really pile on the
STs; the Epirians can get really nasty with this (the fact that 'bots ignore psych
STs gives an Epirian player a bit more flexibility in this regard).
I realize that killing the odd unit is definitely beneficial (it gets them out of position and uses Command Points to get them back in the fight), but in several of the games I've played, killing off units seems to be kind of a sucker's game, especially for things that can move quickly.
Quite a few of the objective types require you to destroy a unit in order to accomplish your mission, so obviously in games utilizing those objective types you have all the incentive in the world to destroy enemy units, which also means you probably want to equip your force with a few units that are capable of wiping out an enemy unit or you put yourself in a disadvantage should you draw one of those missions.
Otherwise, generally speaking, heavily suppressing an enemy unit can often be more easily accomplished than destroying it, especially if that unit has an ability that allows them to ignore more than 2 hits. But remember, you can always destroy any of your own units in the end phase before scoring
VPs for that turn, so if your unit gets completely suppressed, you can destroy it (representing them withdrawing from the battle) so that you can bring the unit back on as a reinforcement.
Finally, robots don't ignore Psych
STs, only large models do (the Hunter and Angel). While it may seem strange that robots do suffer from Psych
STs, its not that they're actually getting scared/afraid/confused, but rather that they logically interpret all the danger signs that Psych
STs represent as a cue to keep their heads down or retreat to a safer position.