Very interesting discussion. In my mind, my troops are always accompanied to battle by a small swarm of aerial drones. Too high to be shot down, but can relay the positions of enemy combatants. That is how my guys know there is someone hidden behind that wall, even though no one has line of sight to them. I also imagine all my troops have an array of sensors strapped to them that record and relay all battlefield information, and the trooper can add relevant tags to the data as it goes out. For security and network reasons, all this info is transmitted to the Lt, combined, updated, and pushed back out to each individual trooper's HUD. That is how my cheerleaders contribute their orders to the team. Because they are busying feeding information into the battle system, the guy on point doesn't have to creep forward slowly checking every angle. The point guy's access to everyone's information allows him to act quickly and more efficiently because allies are watching other approaches. At least that is how I picture it.
Seems very likely. Modern militaries aren't too far from this now I'd imagine although not with the efficiency described. Only thing is trying to make sense of why a fireteam gets such bonuses compared to a number of "solo" fellas working as a unit.
Simple, training, and access levels. Everyone on the team is trained to use the Combat Area Network (CAN, if that becomes a real acronym, I get bragging rites right here) But Link team comm's are connected on a deeper level, relaying even more combat information. A regular Joe would be overwhelmed by the extra, sometimes irrelevant information. However Link teams (at least in my mind) have trained extensively together. They almost don't need the data, to know what their buddies are up to. They know the minimum level of input to convey their intentions to their brothers in arm. A single word or icon that has layers of context, that the everyday soldier just would not get. That and the data streams themselves take on personality-like patterns. Patterns that Link team members learn to recognize on a macro level, so the readouts become almost transparent, but the information behind them flows freely. Either that, or a Link team is actually a wireless direct neural link between members. Depends on your sci-fi level preference.
I'd buy that! If nothing else... it is a good abstraction for representing something along those lines.
This is how I see it. It also then explains other rules like Isolated and loss of Lt as being the level of operation without this additional information.
That's exactly what the various Special Ops groups train towards. To make it so that everyone knows exactly what, and how, everyone else will react. This takes an awful lot of training together, however.
The game just isn't complicated enough we need more layers. I want to stop and count fingers more, maybe keep a pen and pad. More reference sheets!
I only want to mess around with the guts of an already established game to match my oddly specific hangups of what needs to be realistically represented and what can be abstracted. Not sure where all this hostility is coming from!
