Truthfully? No, I do not believe that a "one per list" limit is an attempt at balance. It's an attempt at limiting the impact of the concept. If you want me to go on further, I could but suffice to say until: a) Every Sectorial has wildcard+special links b) Every Sectorial has access to the same number and quality of links You're welcome to feel differently, but I personally feel that given the existence of things like Enomotarchos and Triad? It proves that the game can still function with multiple links. I really don't get where the concept of a 'wow-factor' is coming from either.
Neither of those is a Core though, and the Core is stupidly powerful with Wildcards caked in the way they are in Tohaa for all factions. Let's not forget that Tohaa has been a power faction for years and years even without the Core bonuses and extra troops Spiral provided, I don't even want to contemplate Gao Rael with +3BS and Sixth Sense.
Which goes hand in hand with the first part of my post: And I do get what you're saying, I just feel that distinction is important.
From N1 to N2 to N3, it was to correct errors of the rules. plus new Rules. N4 is like new ways to play infinity I think. For some that is really bad and that I understand. What is to do? Cancel the game? Live with the new Thing and start anew? New old Ways to learn is ok for me. And that althought I don't like the new crit rule.
That's literally how you balance it - you limit access to something that could potentially become too powerful if you have too many of them. You're just not agreeing it is the correct way to do it, but that is one way to provide checks and balance on asymmetrical power. And no, the number of Fireteams and Wildcards do not inform balance. At all. The game is meant to be asymmetrical, as in each faction different. There is absolutely no need for any sort of equality in any of the numerals as long as the sum of each faction's parts are roughly the same.
Yes, the factions are so different now. That's why every faction has a Biker unit, every faction has a S5 infantry, every faction has a Warband, etc. You're welcome to your opinion, Mahatamori. I genuinely feel that opening up Link Teams rather than just throwing them in as a "ONLY ONE PER LIST" would bring a bit more balancing by necessity. Right now, looking at lists? The Core is always super-optimized. And optimization is not the same thing as balance.
Yes, it's opinion, just like it is your opinion that Yu Jing has a motorcycle, Ariadna has a TAG and Pan-O has a Warband (sorry, couldn't resist when you served it up so nicely). Cores are designed using a flagship principle and if you break that up and make them distributed, you need some other way to balance them. So how would you balance it? The Core bonuses are very strong, regardless if it's a pure Moderator link or a Moderator link with strong units embedded. And please don't turn this into some sort of tiny scale WH40K where two or three 5-man squads is the only way to play, 'cause the game needs solo models to remain relevant and able to compete with several Cores... Players will optimise. Developers should also optimise at least sufficiently that a faction is able to compete in sufficiently interesting ways.
I agree that some aspects of faction identity have been eroded over time, although things like bikes are still not available to all factions (sectorial or vanilla). However, if you go back to the N1/N2 core book, you can see that a lot of the fundamental army structure has always been fairly standardized. If anything, I think newer armies are better about not always having the exact same set of core capabilities as older ones. With the current bonuses available to fireteams, I think allowing multiple core links would be a big mistake and would be deeply harmful to faction diversity. A lot of sectorials are already based on how good of a core team buffed shooter they can bring, and it would not be good to just double that. (Note that I’m in the camp that would like to see 5-member fireteams significantly weakened.)
Notice how I never said "leave fireteams as is". Yu Jing lost JSA relatively recently. That's where all of their bikes were, so it's not like it really was a big deal beyond that. Pretending that Helots aren't a Warband in all but name is a goofy take though. And while Ariadna doesn't have a TAG--they sure as hell have things that are not dissimilar via the Blackjack and the like. Honestly, I don't know how I would balance multiples if they were left as is--but that's why I have said, repeatedly, that a lot of what they've done with Fireteams feels more like a band-aid fix rather than actually addressing issues. It's why I said that if they were "brave"(which I think is a goofy term for people to have used in the first place but whatever), they would have tore the whole system down and started over. I, personally, don't see an issue with letting groups taken from the same unit being able to form Triads or something like that. The bike bit is arguable, IMO. There's only three(CA, YJ, Tohaa) factions that don't have access--and of those three, one only relatively recently lost their bikes. They gave Nomads and PanO both bikes, so I feel like that's worth mentioning. I can agree with that on the current rules. It's why I keep talking about revamping them entirely. Burn it all down and go from there.
At the risk of getting sidetracked, the bike availability ratio goes down even further if you count sectorials separately. Unlike you, I actually like bikes, and am perpetually disappointed that if I want to play them, I’m going to have to pick up yet another faction (as I own Combined, Tohaa, and DBS).
I know I bitch about bikes a lot, but it's not that I dislike them--I just feel they're oftentimes put into places they don't belong. I also dislike the way they're presented as being related to 'culture' in the case of the Derpsperados. Varuna and Tunguska, for example, felt like places where a better concept could have been applied than "let's put bikes in!". Mavericks made sense as convoy escorts(even if the bikes are the wrong kind for that kind of off-road/trailbreaking work) for USARF, Aragato are an 'ehhh' thing but people liked them. I'm still disappointed we never saw the RedEye materialize for PanO. That was a far, far cooler concept than bikes were.
At the moment, CB has put more limits to fireteams depending on the faction... so the "get the big gun and put him with four cheapest friends" is allready in the game. It is just not avaiable to everyone, be it not as strong guy, or not as cheap friends and so. Not everyone has access to a mimetic BS13 MSV2 with 10 point dudes
It increasingly feels like they do, because people play the factions that get them what they like. It's infuriating playing NCA into most of the newly released or reworked factions, because you rely a lot on single pieces with visual modifiers to clear out enemy AROs instead of sneaking around or blocking them. And yet nearly every faction people play can now field a Core-linked sniper with MSV and/or Mimetism on the cheap, which makes things much riskier for your formerly-overwhelming long range attack while the enemy risk one 30 point guy to stop your whole advance. It's going to be interesting to see how Vanilla competes in N4 actually, before CB get their act in gear and bring out the new Fireteam rules. Current mixed hard AROs are so bafflingly superior to any other form of defense save the DZ DTW zone that it could be tricky to challenge them with single units, and methods of evading lanes watched by enemy gunners are going to get even more Order-hungry with just about every faction being able to see through Smoke.
JSA isn't Yu Jing, that ship has sailed years ago by now and there's no point looking back. CB might still claim Oniwaban are a good purchase for expanding a Yu Jing army on their homepage, but everyone should be aware they are not there anymore. While I don't think everyone needs a bike (this game has oh so many other ways of increasing mobility) and would prefer to have them more concentrated to certain factions, there are behaviours I expect from Warbands that a Helot, Myrmidon or Wulver just don't conform to - they're essentially pointless labels that confuses rather than informs. (Wulvers conform to heavy infantry, myrmidons to medium and helots to the cross-section I'd call "ambushers" in which you'll find such units as Swiss Guards and Lynx) I mean, the least you should be able to do is describe whether you want them to shift away from individual unit mechanics and move towards squad combat or not so we have something to discuss and disagree on that isn't just kindergarten disagreements. And just to preface that; I would rather not play yet another squad combat game.
but that is not exactly true. Not all factions have linked MSV2, (not all factions have MSV2) not all faction have mimetic linkable dudes. Fewer of them have mimetic MSV2 linkable ones. Is not so spread. My bet is that, because it is so efficient, the factions that have it, use it more than other options, which creates a biased perception. CB said once that there will be no more motorciles (not much time after aragoto were released). Because several different reasons (unneded by the lore, unnneded new ways of playing, kum were not selling as much as at the beggining, harder to balance and sculpt, and so). As you can see, now there are a lot more of them. I suppose that they open new interesting ways of playing, and if they spread more, tables will also change a bit (which will make changes in the way of playing too), so I would expect more of them, even maybe more AI mortorciles.
This was my point. More people play the factions that have the option, and the option is incredibly popular internally for factions, so it already feels that way despite only about a third of all armies having access to some variant of the Super MSV Sniper and Friends link. The Kamau itself is far and away the strongest option, but there are others that are similar.
Kamau in Varuna Haidao in Invincible Army Brawlers in Dashat with CSUs Brawlers in Ikari (must include a Tanko) Taagma in Spiral if you include two Taagma in the Triad? Gao Rael in a Triad? Grenzer? Which options am I missing for it to hit a third, rather than being four armies out of 30 Sectorials/NA2 forces, or 7 if you include Taagmas, Gao Rael and Grenzers?
