I really want to create custom missions to both have some thematic fun (anyone else want to play the Arcology Shutdown in Crossfire?) and be able to really do a campaign. Going off of Close the Portal, I figure that'll require curating Obstacles and maybe even making custom ones. To that end I'm trying to understand Obstacle build and balance. I broke down the Obstacles and thought others might find some of the information interesting. To be clear, this is a *very* basic analysis. You're not going find anything more complicated than medians here.
Color: There are 10 of all four colors for both Normal and Hard Obstacles. Pretty straightforward.
Types: Here we see some differences between Normal and Hard:
| Normal | | Hard | |
| Type | Quantity | Type | Quantity |
| Human | 16 | Human | 15 |
| Elf | 4 | Elf | 3 |
| Dwarf | 1 | Dwarf | 4 |
| Ork | 4 | Ork | 3 |
| Troll | 3 | Troll | 1 |
| Tech | 7 | Tech | 6 |
| 6th World | 5 | 6th World | 8 |
Humans are the dominant metatype, as expected. This has some effects on crossfire cards like First To Wake and Humanis Mercs. For example, with the Big Uglies crossfire event, you're actually less likely to add new Obstacles if the crossfire threshold is reached (17.5% chance from normal Obstacles, 10% from hard). Okay, onto the main stats.
Stat Breakdown: | | Normal | | |
| Quality | Average | Median | Min | Max |
| Nuyen | 6.05 | 5.5 | 4 | 11 |
| HP Total | 7.025 | 7 | 4 | 12 |
| HP Levels | 4.05 | 4 | 2 | 8 |
| Attack | 1.425 | 1 | | |
| | Hard | | |
| Quality | Average | Median | Min | Max |
| Nuyen | 4.275 | 4 | 2 | 6
|
| HP Sum | 10.525 | 11 | 4 | 14 |
| HP Levels | 5.3 | 5 | 4 | 8 |
| Attack | 1.65 | 2 | | |
I think this puts to rest any idea that there isn't a real difference between Normal and Hard Obstacles. Hard Obstacles give you less nuyen, require more damage to kill,
and that damage is spread out across more levels. Not to mention they are more likely to have 2 attack strength.
AttributesNow there are also some other attributes that matter, like passive abilities (ex. Spirit of Air also attacks the Mage), as well as Flipped and Defeated abilities. These are a little harder to measure. The Defeated abilities are almost always good (frag you, Gargoyle), while Flipped tend to be bad. I categorized whether an ability has a positive or negative effect on the runners. A couple caveats here:
1. I counted anything that cycles Black Market cards as negative. While sometimes you really are happy to clear out the drek taking up all the slots, in general I think an effect that forces you to suddenly change plans is negative, even if the effect may occasionally benefit you.
2. Security Goons, a Normal Obstacle, has both a negative Flipped ability (black market cycle) and a positive Defeated (heal). I counted both effects.
I also counted how many Obstacles do 2 damage, just to get an idea.
| Normal | | Hard | |
| Attribute | Quantity | Type | Quantity |
| Positive | 9 | Positive | 4 |
| Negative | 22 | Negative | 28 |
| Flipped | 15 | Flipped | 10 |
| Defeated | 6 | Defeated | 4 |
| 2 Damage | 17 | 2 Damage | 26 |
No major surprises. We see that Hard Obstacles have more negative effects, and those effects are continuous as opposed to one time Flipped abilities.
I hope this was helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Going forward I'll probably break it down by Color and Type to see how those interact. I'm also working on the crossfire cards, but those are much harder to quantify since they have so many conditional effects. If anyone has ideas, I'm all ears!
