I feel like it'd be better if it randomly but temporarily disabled a stratagem every now and then rather than just flat being one less you could bring. It's one of those things that seems like an interesting extra challenge but can just end up making things less fun. Stratagems are one of the coolest parts of the game!
Disabling a random stratagem for a period of time would be a great rework. Alternatively, an operation modifier that gives a chance of swapping out your stratagem for a random one on throw could bring some fun chaos.
That could really screw you over though if you only brought one way to deal with heavies. I think something cool would be to tell you ahead of time that you're going to get a random support weapon / orbital / Eagle / sentry or whatever. Then you would at least know "hey, I'm gonna have a random support weapon so I should probably bring a auto-cannon turret or something"
The only time this feels ok is when it's balanced out by getting a free stratagem, like when we had the Shield Sentry the other day. At least then it feels like being forced to play creatively instead of just a hard handicap.
4x shield generators was a fun time though. It definitely made protecting hellbombs easier for the gunship towers. Someone always had one available.
Yeah I thought it was super cool. It made a few hairy situations much more manageable. A random group I was in decided to destroy a heavy bot factory after completing the main objective, which is usually next to impossible due to the increased spawn rate. But we kept juggling shield generators and it made it way easier.
They also kind of don’t make sense, why would it reduce it by one? If it was AA maybe all the eagle stratagems would be disabled and you could still bring 4 other ones. You could have supply chain issues that disable some kinds of auto turrets or support weapons. At least then the challenge is a bit more fun.
I like that. Having Eagles, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Sentries (one of those, not all) would be a fun challenge. I think every problem in the game can be solved without any of those, though Support Weapons would probably be the toughest.
I'm not a fan either, but I've started doing ok on these operations. Things are a little slower sometimes, sure, but it doesn't feel like as big of a handicap as it used to.
It definitely shoehorns me into autocannon, airstrike, and OPS though because I feel like I can't take as many risks.
