As someone who loves the druze khd, I support this - if someone wants to spend their command token to activate cybermask instead of stripping 2 orders from their opponent, it seems fair. 2 orders is plenty for a discover-shoot setup.
Burlesfords' idea was to give some minimal protection from strategic command token usage to limited insertion lists. As it is now, LI lists are at the mercy of the player 2. Changing the rule as I suggested affects only niche lists, and is unlikely to negatively affect other styles. In regards to TA/NCO/Strategos, I agree the intent of those rules is to mitigate order hunger, and they do that well. However, in practice they also allow for order bloat; especially when multiple TA troopers can be linked, and/or in combination with efficient regular-impetuous troops (looking at you, again, Kornak).
Yes LI lists have pretty much disappeared altogether which is sad. I always thought that instead of Tactical Window, a better approach would have been: LI = no order stripping 11-15 models = up to 2 orders can be stripped 16-20 models = up to 2 orders can be stripped from each combat group
No order stripping to LI lists mean that Avatar can start the game with 13 orders. And with WIP 17 he has a good change to win initiative too. I'm not sure it's a great idea. Making impetuous active while in fireteams sounds good, but it would make some factions much worse, so I wouldn't touch this unless they are going to rebalance everything. MO for example would see even less knights in their lists, and I don't think right now there is any issue with them being too powerful. Deactivator in ZC would make it a bit useful at least so that's good. It's so useless right now. Honestly I would just remove this skill or just make it part of sensor. The ARO against repeaters breaks a core mechanic IMO: You can ARO against the active troop only. I think opening ARO against a repeater which is not the active troop is weird. I understand the intent of the change, but I'm not sure this is the best approach. What would the allowed AROs be? Only shoot or you can also dodge, hack, CC...? And why only a 3rd troop and not the troop being hacked too? As much as I hate being blocked by a wall of repeaters and pitchers, I think nerfing Spotlight should be enough to nerf hackers in general. The other problem with hackers is that there are a lot with extra programs, pitchers, very cheap and able to link, but that's powercreep more han a rules issue. The rest of the changes look interesting and I wouldn't mind to try them.
The problem is that since some of the factions are at blatantly different power levels, you *can't* fix that problem with a blanket fix - it needs to be targeted against specific factions.
The problem is if you nerf spotlight to make it "acceptable" in Nomads and a few other factions, it becomes underpowered/useless in others.
I agree, but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. A few minor changes to the rules could go a long way towards addressing some of the worst balance issues. Then any remaining issues could be resolved with more direct, faction-specific changes.
Can you elaborate on why impetuous in fireteams would be such an issue? With the change to make impetuous optional, it wouldn't break the link, so the only downside is loss of cover. On the repeater question, what if repeaters were treated like servants and activated when the hacker is activated?
I agree that it's not black and white. That said, I think that there's a lot to gain at looking at specific faction balance right now.
Already discussed it in a previous thread Covered it already at length It's a bad idea, will cause requirements for alot of overhauls for basically most factions besides Yu Jing. There should be a rework to the whole frenzy/fury mechanic in regards to how CB deploys it as arbitrary point cheats, but it's not an easy fix and it's the kind of thing that needs to be handled during a full overhaul of the rules during an edition change. If you simply try to make the change of no cover in fireteams for it you'll cause more problems than you fix because of how long this system has been baked into the core way the game and unit profiles are created and balanced on cost.
I saw some discussion earlier in this thread saying that the change would impact faction disproportionately, but I'm having difficulty understanding as to why (full disclosure, I play QK primary, so I'm not familiar with playing Frenzy HI profiles). If there is another thread with a more detailed discussion, can you DM link it to me? Since models cost the same whether in vanilla or Sectorial, and vanilla profiles are usually played unlinked, does keeping the unit cost the same but removing cover when linked and impetuous actually have that much impact on playability? It feels odd that a profile receives a discount, despite being able to completely avoid the downsides of impetuous - to the point that enforcing the disadvantage would make the profile unplayable.
They're not though, in most cases Frenzy units that would otherwise spearhead a fireteam don't see play in Vanilla. Riot Grrls are solid in a fireteam, they're crap as solo attack pieces. Frenzy pieces that get picked up for Vanilla don't get picked up because of how they gun fight, they get picked up like Aleph might consider random Myrmidons or Nomads Jaguars to corner guard and throw smoke. For example take a linked Teuton vs something as simple as a TR bot. You shift the odds from 54% vs 15% in the Teuton's favour to 38% vs 29% if cover is taken out of the equation. This thing has link bonuses and can't even reliably fight a TR bot, that's utterly awful. That is a massive swing. You can't expect to make a change like this and not utterly rock the boat. The 30+ point HI now has worse odds than a Crozier in the same fireteam taking the same fight The vast majority of gunfighting in an active turn is taken from a position of cover. Your idea basically requires you to look at every Frenzy unit that is designed to handle pointman positions in a fireteam and go ok, time for this unit to be -3 BS and -3ARM/BTS, because that's what it is statistically speaking. The Teuton is now functionally a BS10 ARM0 unit while his Line Infantry link members are BS12 ARM1. If you can't understand why this might be utterly fucked and cause balance problems I can't help you.
Yes, fireteam troops with Impetuous in full effect would lose Cover bonus. Face to Face odds decline. But such an Impetuous linked trooper is active, and while FtoF odds are lower, those odds are generally still in their favor thanks to higher Burst and ability to choose favorable Range. So the loss there is a moderate one, not a complete reversal. To offset that moderate loss of power, there’s a balancing benefit from allowing full Frenzy effects in links (in the form that Burlesford proposes): [Surprised no one mentioned this bit specifically!] Linked Impetuous troops will have generated an Impetuous order in the Impetuous phase, and be able to use it. Under current rules this free order does not get generated at all. Using the extra order/skills/moves, the Impetuous trooper can leave the team and go zooming forwards killing stuff with no orders from your main order pool required at all. Always having those Impetuous orders available and not gaining cover-grabbing benefits from links gives Impetuous/Frenzy troops actual motive to leave their links, motive that is almost completely to lt missing now. For example turn One Move your Teuton Haris up, getting B2 Panzerfausts/missiles for one turn. Then you get to keep their B2 AROs in your reactive. As you regain active turn, you can decide if you want them to use an extra 3 orders to close in to shotgun or sword range. Now If an Impetuous linked troop with penalties is reactive, it’s true they -will- have lower defensive capacity, which seems appropriate for a barely restrained murderer. 7-point discount and a free order later seems to justify that. And finally Frenzy troops would get the -best- of both worlds: nice defensive ARM, cover, and link bonuses until they kill. Great balance for first turn, and later free moves. Thematically this also plays -way- closer to what Greeks or Tankos or Teutons or even Moiras should play like IMO: able to move in formation to concentrate forces, but not good at the defensive kind of movement when riled-up, with a powerful incentive to leave those links and carve/shotgun/zapper stuff in with more fire discipline.
Well, this is one interesting, but (i´m afraid) unheard threat i want to attend. Yes and no. First: I am always in to cancel the "I GML you"-state be succeeding a roll of some kind. BUT: Most units´ problem is that they cannot easily make three ARM safes vs. DMG 14 and survive, leaving you with a corpse that at least isn`t targeted anymore. I stay with my suggestion to decouple the target state from guided entirely and create a new state that can only applied by Forward observers (because that is what they per definition are there for!) and give them more purpose than "beeing able to press buttons": The necessaty to be in LoF does not just create a F2F roll but also forces the F/O units to (most of the time) spend orders to create new firelines to units it wants to spot, instead of just having a 17 inch diameter cyrcle with already a couple of units in it. Lt Order in Fireteams sounds fine to me. Stripping cover from everything impetiouse.... oh boy. Cover is one of the best MODs in this game. Hands down. Because it is for free, gives a huge chunk of armor and a negative MOD to everyone shooting at me. @Triumph already pointed that out! To make it a little bit more clear: In a common firefight a Fusilier in cover is worth more than a hospitaler without, with the later beeing 3 times as expensive. Why are Bolts that strong? Why is MSR Grenzer that strong? Why is assisted fire the most used Support ware? Cover is the most common MOD a unit can apply. Negating it (or at least half of it!) is so powerful, that it ascanded Bolts from something no one touched with a 8 foot stick to a unit that went to hospital for all the back pain from carrying NCA on its own. The problem is not frenzy/Impetious. it´s easily to see that no one plays them in vanilla. The problem are the fireteams. Since my corps is lying on the hill with demanding to go back and limit fireteams to just members of the same units and MAYBE characters of that unit I would go a step back and seggest to give one of the most important Fireteam-bonuses, sixth sense, to pure links only. You want your fancy Kamau having Sixth sense to not be countered by white noise? Well, give him 3 brothers. Same to Bolts, Grenzers, Riot girls, and so on. "only"? Cover is, as mentioned before, the most common state nearly every unit can have. In a regular game you shoot a lot more against cover than without. 9 from 10 (non-impetious) units are deployed in cover. Nearly no one in his sane mind would place a unit in open field if there is a fairly equal option with cover. One of the most rare equiptments/skills in the whole game are Nanoscreen (7 units with 6 beeing CA only) and Sapper (5 Units) cause it gives cover regardles of your postion, no matter from where you are shot from! Loosing "only" cover is an understatement of one of the core mechanics of the game. Damn, how i miss playing LI.... but at the current state it is more useful to play a second combat group with just a warcor in it than playing LI...
Thing is there's only one faction that plays the 10 model format well and I'm not sure they do that using order inflation. Cover is good, but so is an extra activation. Given the enormous discount units get (well over 15 for Asawira and that's Frenzy, though curiously almost nothing for Kuang Shi), however, this is not necessarily something that needs to be handled too delicately. Also, Nanoscreen is overpriced like mad
The thing with Frenzy is that you don't actually start with any downside or upside until you cause a Wound outside of a Fireteam and pass through a States Phase, and it's then kind of a wash since you do gain an Impetuous Order (which is much more valuable in the late game with hard ARO cleared and Order counts down). It really isn't enough of a disadvantage to be worth a substantial discount even without it being ignored in Fireteams, and in Fireteams even if it is made to apply normally you can mitigate the impact of losing gunfighting ability by simply rotating your gunners between turns- lots of good links have either two SWC gunners or an SWC gunner and a profile with a quality mid-range gun (often a Character). This isn't just speculation, though I'm short on recent experience I played a fair bit of unlinked Frenzy with Bakunin and Nomads back in N3 when it applied immediately instead of in a States Phase and it was pretty much always useful. Seriously, does anyone actually have any experience using Frenzy in a game or is this all just speculation? Because I've pretty much never even seen the skill activate in any of the reports I've read outside Steel Phalanx and more recently Morats.
I think most people tend to forget about frenzy, likely because the model that entered frenzy just got killed in the opponents turn.
I did once manage to kill a dug-in Achilles (Hoplite) thanks to Frenzy kicking in. Steel Phalanx. Prior to the rework/upgrade they were ridiculously dominant in the format.
Not just them, there are plenty factions that can work quite fine with just one Combat group, but suffer hard from the lack of Limited Insertion. To me it is mostly Military orders, but I also ran Tunguska with 10 units and it was pretty succesful. I would think, despite all their other problems, IA seems to be the LI posterboy, but thats more from an opponents experience I like to run a Spitfire or Multi rifle Riot girl in Vanilla to have a fast midfield mimetism hunter, but thats more some fun unit that gets constantly underestimated.
