@Lawson The name is an artefact of the past, when the link team was an ad hoc formation of troopers of the same type working together as one, there was never a "leader" to from the unit around there was the soldier who takes the initiative and the rest supported him, this changes dramatically with mixed fireteams were the homogeneity of the unit is no longer existing, on the other hand it makes more sense given there are no squads but a task force either tailored made for the mission or ad hoc from what is available at the moment, the Fireteam Leader does still carry the meaning of the Link Leader of the past as the active trooper of a homogeneous team, when the team is no longer homogeneous.
Maybe? I think the basis of what I'm asking is more along the lines of: "what if every FT functioned like Triad" wherein the only necessity to join the team was having the skill itself (I suppose Tohaa wouldn't be special anymore[?])... or more simply, can we have fewer restrictions for fireteam creation? The leadership idea wasn't so much the idea to have an additional restriction/cost as it was a soft guide to fireteam composition built into the profiles rather than a bunch of special and wildcard fireteams that function as exceptions. If several unit had leadership across all profiles, for example, fireteam creation at least would be no more restrictive than the current system... but maybe the leadership concept itself isn't even necessary. I am coming to this as someone who's new in N4 though and unaware of how things worked in the past though, so it sounds like I'm treading some ideas that were already changed for good reasons. Thanks for explaining the basis of this in previous editions. Hopefully whatever comes about will be the most elegant version of fireteams yet!
Unfortunately I do not have solid data for the previous year ITS, so I base my opinion from games I have seen played in the past year and online discussions. Though I do think many people put too much emphasis on the mercenaries vanilla PanO can get over the sectorials (and Joan making them regular).
Not all sectorals can do just 3-man fireteams and be good. I play Yu Jing mostly. I've tried to do just 3-man teams. They just don't have enough variety to choose from. I have nothing to take instead of the Zhanshi. I don't get anything good for the same price or less. I've already taken flash bots and Shaolin. If I take more I go over the 15 limit. I could possibly take a Doc or Eng with a bot but that costs almost as much as the two Zhanshi, then I'm loosing an order. So I might as well boost up the core to 5-man. Edit: That's mostly with White Banner in the last year. It might be easier with IA and ISS.
I think White Banner is a good candidate to not be quite as affected by this in terms of power level as you fear and you've got Zhanshi, Ye Mao, Shang-Ji, and possibly Jujak without Shang-Ji. Plus an above average number of decent solo units. IA already plays quite well with treating their Core as a Haris and morphing Core into Haris would allow them to take Zhanshi as Haris which does have the potential to be a net gain. ISS is more complicated. I do think the sectorial design is backed up in a corner, but they have a bunch of good Haris atm and making them unlimited can do funky things for them - though something probably needs to be done to prevent running more than one Dakini Haris. I'd say the preliminary analysis is that it's probably fine. Game probably will need a bit of an increase in sectorial-specific profiles, though. The flip side is that Grenade Launchers probably need to be un-nerfed to regain their +3 range band. This heavily affects ISS, given that they tend to rely a lot on non-impetuous smoke*, but is true for almost all grenade launchers outside of full Cores already. * You know... smoke that actually costs something to deploy and isn't "free" like 90% of the game's Smoke Grenades effectively are.
So my last post got me thinking... what are the main issues people actually have with fireteams. I'll list some and you tell me how you guys feel about them: 1. apex aro unit (say kamau, grenzer) in a 5-man can lock down a table hard, and thanks to wildcard can do it much easier (cheaper) than in N3, which may feel unfair 1b(EDIT connected to above):, elite units wildcarding into light infatry means that LI heavy weapons minaitures are dust gatherers. 2. some fireteam interactions feel a little over the top Jazz bts 6 with MB tinbot -6 3. big fireteams are unwieldy to deploy and even more unwieldy to move around. 4. the fireteam formation rules (wildcard/counts) can be quite convoluted 5. duos seem kinda neat but there is little benefit to having one usually. Missed anything? Or maybe I listed some non-issue?
There is no ability to counter act the strong fireteams aros without using tools to ignore it. IE there is no way to provide negative modifiers to them. smoke / white noise / surprise attack are all negated by sixth sense. The only tool that remains is coordinate order and that involves multiple strong tools where you must lose one to attempt it. And because of the prevalence of more powerful paramedics or doctors babysitting that aro piece, you have to kill it outright to have any lasting effect.
Is this a problem or is this a solution? Because it sounds like suggesting a solution to problem I have already listed (elite aro units in 5mans can lock down a table). I would like us to focus on trying to agree on a list of problems before we attempt to fix em.
this is the problem? elite aro that can lock down a table could just be describing atalanta. the inability to provide any negative modifiers is the outlier. My statement has no solutions to it.
Why do you think it is a problem? How does it affect the game or player experience negatively? This might seem argumentative but stating that there is no way to force negative modifiers on a troop is not necessarily a problem in itself. That is just how SS works (in a link or not).
If things remain as is, simply change SS with 360Vis and all the problems are solved. But there are more important fixes to do. 5men links are way to strong than 4men thanks to the BS+3 4men links are way to strong than 3 men thanks to SS 3men links are way to strong than 2 men who has no bonus at all What if instead of "incremental bonus" they have a sort of bonus (360Vis?) on 2+men, an additional buff (B+1?) on 3+men and STOP? The advantage of 4 and 5 men links are to be able to suffer losses without consequenses.
Simply put: it makes a strong ability far too common. Sixth Sense is an ability that negates tools the other player had as options to a fairly large variety of situations and having it on Core fireteams makes that tool available to a very wide range of bespoke units. It gives almost any sectorial the option of preventing Stealth hackable units from using one of their most important abilities (as these units tend to be melee focused) and it gives most sectorials the ability to mimic MSV2 and smoke even when MSV1 is the best they have access to. It also gives sectorials with hard or situationally hard AROs the ability to be immune to abilities like White Noise that were specifically designed to debuff these ARO pieces enough to gain an advantage. I don't think this is a good pivot point for balance.
@Lawson started a good idea and several other people riffed on it as well and I like it all and here's what I think I'd like to see: A WIP... A simplification of fireteam play. - Only one coherency check at the beginning of the game when the fireteam is formed around the leader. - Only count the number of fireteam members at the beginning of the game for Fire Support Orders. - No more having to reform fireteams if the leader dies. - No silly complicated ARO checks like do we all want to shoot or dodge. - No more gotchya moments where you wish someone else was the leader. Only one member will be activated at a time outside of Coordinated Orders and Fire Support Orders. - Leader Skill: I want the fireteam leader skill idea, playing of the importance of characters, veteran/elite units. Nest him somewhere or also designate him as the spearhead. Leaders Skills are Core, Haris, Enomotarchos, Duo, Triad, TriCore. Spread Enomotarchos around a little more. Killing a leader should not devolve the efficiency of the team so no bonuses lost. -Pointman Designation: This is your designated gunner unit, only this unit of the fireteam will get +1B for all BS actions and for discover for as long as they are alive and will be designated with the Pointman Marker. -Overwatch Designation: This is the only unit that will get +3 BS and Sixth Sense and will have an Overwatch marker with all bonuses for as long as they are they are alive. Its tiresome seeing Snipers and Missile Launchers trying to tag along into their bad range bands or stay behind and lose their bonuses, it makes zero sense and this is actually better, it's like GitS and all linked Snipers would be like Saito. Untying the same ARO frees up the Overwatch but only one unit having 6thS means it's not OP and allows for camo units to soften up other parts of the fireteam as they see fit. -Fire Support Orders: All members of the team except the Leaders are counted toward Fire Support Orders at the beginning of the game and these tokens will be set aside to only be used on the team. This is functionally a Coordinated Order Token that can only be used to get the fireteam members to do a Coordinated Order, Pointman and Overwatch will keep their respective bonuses. Support markers should be placed on the extra members in case their are models of the same unit fielded but not part of the team when deploying, this way should Number 2 or Fire Support Orders be used, only the correct units will be used. -Regular Coordinated Orders using command tokens do not break fireteams as their coherency and actions are no longer tied like they were before, Regular Coordinated Orders negate the fireteam bonuses. - All members of the fireteams can go into suppressive fire. If the designated Overwatch goes into Suppressive fire, they lose Sixth Sense for time they are in Suppressive Fire. -Number 2 and the Leader can acquire the bonuses of Pointman OR Overwatch should either of them go unconscious but once designated cannot revert back to the original designee unless they have Number 2 and the new designee goes unconscious. Obviously this is a spur of the moment WIP... CB should be very specific about who is linkable and who is a Leader. The leader can be the determining factor on fireteam composition and even make it mandatory that the Pointman and the Overwatch are members of a specific unit... Sixth Sense should only apply to surprise attack and attacks made outside their LoF but not because of smoke. Since the team is starting off in one point of the board and they arent all getting bonuses or even stacked bonuses and not all moving at the same time the fact that some of their members will get these bonuses continually and coherency checks will be gone should not be a problem, it has its built in limitations while simplifying a lot of the checks to just the beginning of the game so player can focus more on the overall flow of the game and having fun instead of the minutiae of fireteams. Markers to be used should all be the same color to denote belonging to the same team. One Leader Marker, one Pointman marker, one Overwatch marker and 0-2 Support markers. When forming fireteam Duo, only one Pointman or Overwatch can be designated but not both. When considering the extra markers on the board, since the whole team will not be moving as often as before due to the relaxed coherency the extra markers will mostly stay where they were deployed the majority of the game freezing up the mind and hands for more fluid game play.
This does actually sound interesting. Making fireteams weaker but way more usable. Moving entire squad to maintain bonuses of the main guy is annoying, but here you have buffed solo piece and some restricted free coordinated orders. For balance and fluff i would also add 360 to all members. Other than that I would like to try this out for fun :)
Thank you, I really just wanted the game to get freed up more and still have Sectorial fireteams seem like a team and a buff. As for the 360 visor on the members, I'm uncertain how good-bad that would be since they can all go into Suppression fire with my suggestion and no longer restrained by coherency turning their 16"half bubbles of suppression fire into full bubbles might have unforeseen consequences.
I dont see simplification here. Just the opposite. new roles, exceptions, skills that go on and off... Incredible, but i dont like a single one of the suggestions made... False, i like the different ARO actions without breaking the link.
If you dont like it what makes it incredible, that's kind of an insulting thing to say. Also, a reduction in checks and a reduction in power while allowing units more table freedom, giving back the power to camo troops, getting rid of gotchya moments which never feel good and all the other changes I suggested all look good to me. 3 extra types of markers deployed at the beginning of the game and will mostly sit still on the board is not a problem when you think about how some players put out 10 prone markers, and 5 deployables..
I dont see the point to call 5 guys spreaded through the table a "fireteam". I like the gotchas moment. People tend to tunnel vision with their super spearhead invincible linked man. A shoot to a random member teach you to avoid that behave. Is a nedeed feature
