While this is a healthy doubt to have, just consider how much the game's lingo have to change in order to facilitate a change to where a failed save is not a wound taken. What you're suggesting would actually mean quite significant change to the game's rules because everything, in a quite literal sense, has to be re-written. Your reasoning is fairly sound, but you're attributing far too much to HMG crits while at the same time hand-waving the impact that a crit can have on a key unit. A HI may have 20% riskor lower, when in cover, of going taking two wounds, but over the course of a game it is my experience that you're likely to see around 5 to 10 crits meaning that on average you're fairly likely to see one unit take two wounds from crits on average during a game. If that one unit is a REM who won't care much one way or another, a 1-wound NWI who'll just die, or a TAG is a bit up to the dice, but it's important to realise that while a typical HI eating a crit is going to have only, let's say, 15% risk versus a 1-wounder's 30% risk, the 1-wounder failing that 30% is not going to make a difference (unless you're Haqq or Pan-O with a Doc in the fireteam) while it's going to actually matter a lot to the HI. In pure points investment as well as in tactical investment. It's this reason why I think the biggest benefits from this change is for 1-wound troops who suddenly have 30% chance of not being affected at all by a crit and for Super Heavies, while it has the potential of making crits even more game-deciding for NWI and 2-wounders, particularly those with ARM 2 to 4 who aren't already well fortified against a normal hit. In my experience and considering how people play around here, a 2-wounder getting leap frogged is going to be maybe as uncommon as a unit being killed due to melee crits and certainly more common than people using Sensor and/or Triangulated Fire Now, as for the HMG. Yes, this is going to make a crit from a HMG potentially more severe, but specifically from that weapon it's not going to be as common as would merit lowering the DAM. The changes to crit may increase their damage potential against a specific category of units (ARM 0-2, NWI/Dogged/2W/near-a-doctor) by around 2%, but it's also going to lower their damage against another specific category of units (ARM 5+, 2+W/pokemon) by around as much, and make crits spikey for two types of units (ARM 0-2, 1W and ARM 3-4, NWI/2W) - and I don't find that to be a good reason to lower the weapon's damage by 5%. Unless the weapon needs to be nerfed regardless of crit mechanic, but I don't agree with that either because the game has more or less built itself into a corner with the HMG where increasingly hard AROs mean that in order to gain a sufficient advantage you need the HMG. I would more rather see SWC scale be more lenient on low burst high damage guns like Missile Launchers. It's nuts that a HMG has lower SWC cost for a light line infantry than the much worse Missile Launcher or Multi Sniper. Particularly now that we may go into a meta shift where they're going to be needed a lot more to threaten Multi HMGs (not counter, because their burst is far too low to counter a TAG).
Yeah, that'd be a better shift. 1SWC MSRs and 1.5 SWC MLs and HMGs would seem reasonable for a lot of LI. I'm assuming that Impact Templates don't change. So MLs remain desirable due to the template.
I'd go even crazier than that - at least for testing to see what would happen. 0,5 SWC MSnipers (with points remaining high), 1 SWC ML, and 1,5 SWC HMG. SWC would then tick up if the unit has MSV2, mimetism, or generally good stats (a.k.a. heavy infantry), and maybe even more if they're a wildcard. 2 SWC for a HMG on HI is generally fair I think, but I think MLs should be 1,5 for them and I think a Kamau Sniper at 1,5 SWC is fair in Varuna but in vanilla they should probably be 1 SWC.
I think 0.5 is too spammable. But honestly, these days with how quickly BS11 ARM AROs fold, it's probably ok.
I find ML to be more common than the HMG on line troops. I would give that the highest or match for the highest SWC on most troops.
If Full Auto or something like it stays i N4, the +1 burst from level 1 should apply in ARO (inc. suppression) and the -3 BS from level 2 shouldn't. It's ass backwards the way it is now.
Should 5-man Fireteams/+3 BS bonus stay in N4? Feels like it ruins many solo firefighters, who could be decent, but are outshined by those who can form Core (esp. with cheaper units).
You don't run attack many pieces that rely on Surprise, through ZVZ mods or shooting from behind do you? They get cruelled by SSL2 AROs. It's effectively a +9 MOD vs Intruders and fairly commonly a +6 MOD. It also has a massive impact on manoeuvre because it makes shooting from behind far less effective. Burst and BS are both a lot easier to play around.
I don't use Surprise attacks on Fireteams, but I do attack them from behind and through smoke, taking out the target model in a 1v1 fight. There are usually other targets to use Surprise Attacks on. But taking fights with BS 16-17 units, which at times even ignore negative MODs is tough, and sometimes you can't just avoid them and focus on the mission. For me it is easier to play around SSL2 than +3 BS.
To be honest i want in N4 all of Sixth Sense to die or be at least entirely rewritten simply for the amount of confusion it causes ruleswise.
That would certainly fix the internal balance for Böyg and Gamma, but it'd cause considerable external balance issues -.-;;
Out of sheer curiosity, what sort of external balancing issues would it 'cause? Only thing I can think of ATM is this becoming an outright upgrade over Neurocynetics.
Neuro is full burst in ARO, it's quite different and already has Total Reaction as a strict upgrade. No, I mean, there's 3 S5 with FA1+ and 1 S5 with similar weapons that doesn't have it and that's the Yan Huo which is already not very good value for the points - and that's true for basically anything where there's anything comparable to a unit with two guns where already Full Auto 1 is cheaper and better (unless the unit is designed to be in a Fireteam and I can only think of one unit that has two guns in a Fireteam and that's Zuyong with their pistols)
i might be reading this wrong but doesn't aridana alone have 2 S5 units that lack FA1 (with 3/4 configurations lacking dual weapons)?
There's actually a lot of S5 units without any form of FA. Actually, until O-12 ,we didn't even have any FA1 units ( Only ones with FA2 were Feuerbach Sogorats and the Kriza. ). Now there's 2 S5s with FA1 ( Gamma/Boyg ), 2 S5s with FA2 ( Sogorat/Kriza ) and one S6 with FA1 ( Blue Wolf Mongol Cavalry ). As for FA-less S5 HIs, there are... Azra'Ils, Al fasids, Mowangs, Yan Huos, Su Jians, Ratniks, Blackjacks, Bakunin Taskmasters, Charontids, Ajax, Kiel-Saans and last but not least, Daiyokais.
