How about stopping at the +1 Burst bonus for three members and up? It's a powerful effect, enough so that going up to 4- or 5-man teams is still worth it from a defensive standpoint just to mitigate the occasional loss, and it makes a bit more sense from a power-level perspective given the ease of mixing links and other link benefits such as shared Tinbots or Strategic Deployment.
Did you mean the 3-member link to be +1 B or +1 BS? Because those are very different. I'd also prefer to keep modifiers as multiples of 3, but that's just to keep it easy to do the mental arithmetic to find the final value.
I don't like a choice only for the sake of book keeping. Hard to remember as it is! lol It's still too much. I want no more than one extra skill per team number. But I'd move the +1 Burst up a notch. 2 man = Movement 3 man = Sixth Sense 4 man = +1 Burst 5 man = +3 BS
No thank you. Sixth Sense is far more disruptive to gameplay than +1B is. I think +1B on Haris is more than fair considering how much investment gets clumped up in one nice sliceable pie. However; should the bonuses really apply during reactive turn?
I think +1B is far more powerful in a shooting game than Sixth Sense. Sixth Sense is already a mostly reactive skill. The skill would need to change to something that can't be used reactive.
the thing with 6th sense is that some sectorials needed (at least in n3) that buff, while others didn't need it but got a high benefit from it.
The burst bonus adds straight power to the fireteam that can be checked against the fact that you need to pay the cost of another two+ bodies and need them in close proximity which increases the danger to the team as a whole and reduces their mobility somewhat. I think it's a fair trade. All's fair and equal on both sides of the scale and it's up to the opponent to counter-play. Sixth Sense disrupts gameplay. There's nothing linear about it, it's crap against a number of threats to the point where Haris would be a liability for most constellations and super-awesome at completely negating some specific gameplay interactions making other specific combinations impervious to a certain range of counter-play. It's one of those skills that I think they should be really careful with who gets access to and design units around them, not hand out like candy from the back of a black van. Like MSV2.
If Core got no bonus in the reactive turn, I know I would stop using it. It is just a liability at this point. Personally, I have always found Cores too difficult to use effectively in the active turn. They are simply too awkward to move into position. I only use them as a last resort, preferring Duo/Haris or a good solo piece (eg Intruder, Bandit). By the middle of N3 I almost exclusively used Defensive Cores, as anything else seemed a waste to me. If Defensive Cores were no longer a thing I would stop running Cores altogether, and at this point I would struggle to see the point of playing a Sectorial over vanilla. I feel it skews things too much, taking-away too much value from Sectorials and not justifying the loss of options from vanilla. This is just my experience, however, and I certainly cannot claim to be a good player. I have not even played a single match at a single ITS tournament.
I like a lot of the suggestions I’m seeing. I personally sigh heavily when I find out I’m up against a full core. I’m also biased in that I prefer to run a haris and a 3 man core in most games, for maneuverability. But I wouldn’t mind seeing a different 5 man bonus,
Honestly, I've never enjoyed fireteams. I learned to play just before Fireteams were originally introduced. After my first game with Fireteams my immediate thought was 'This isn't nearly as fun." I'd love to see Infinity give up Fireteams entirely but that seems very unlikely. At this point Fireteams are baked into the game, and so many sectorials are absolutely centered around weird min-maxed mixed Fireteams.> As for the original question? Like a lot of people, I would sometimes use Fireteams just for the ability to efficiently move units. Thats a valuable tool. If there was just an skill called Teamwork that, when you activated a unit to take a Move, you could also move any other unit within its ZoC that shared the same name, I think it would be considered a strong Skill and we'd see people build around it. People forget how useful Duo and Haris is for movement efficiency.
Fireteams seem to me like this novelty, the special thing of "secondary option" sectorials which were an alternative to vanilla gameplay. Then all of that grew all over the game like cancer and first became the main point of Sectorials existing at all and then turned out to dominate the field so much that playing core vanilla factions devolved into being a "secondary option". I would also love Infinity to completely ditch Fireteams.
The problem isn't fireteam bonuses - it's mixed fireteams. Before mixed fireteams really became ubiquitous, you needed to spend >150 points to get a 5th dice and the +3 BS for the HI with the HMG. Now it's a few extra schmucks to tow around, and you can dicedick pretty much any ARO into the ground without much thought to range bands or positioning. Against vanilla factions it removes a lot of the tactics. You get back to having to stack those range bands against (big surprise here) - mixed *defensive* fireteams that are throwing 2 dice on 17s, 18s or 19s in most matchups - the same types of matchups that even elite troopers will struggle to win *without* fireteam bonuses. However, once the power piece goes, the rest of the team folds like wet paper. On the whole, just my opinion, but the game was much more interesting when mixed fireteams weren't the norm.
I've mentioned this before in other places, but the Fireteam bonuses are very well-balanced if a whole team is approximately the same cost; even a Kamau Sniper isn't so bad in an actual Kamau Fireteam. They do need an adjustment now that mixed links are the norm. Ideally I'd like to see a more utility-focused buff set rather than a direct shooting one because that's where mixed links become interesting; the odd pieces which can alter the capabilities of a team in fun ways. Letting a Zhanying join a Wu Ming fireteam was fun, letting an ORC into Fusiliers isn't.
Yep, mixed links and cheap wildcards force Linkteam gameplay. IF you had to take a full link the same trooper things would balance out better.
It would be interesting to see a rule similar to FTO that specifically handled being a Wildcard or not. For example, you could have Tai Sheng count as an Zuyong for fireteam composition, but if you want her as a wildcard you need to take a more expensive Wildcard profile. You could even exclude certain weapon systems from the Wildcard profile(s) of certain regular troops, like the aforementioned Kamau Sniper or HMG profiles, ect...
also OG fireteams gave a sectorial some faction identity. A jaguar team or a birgada team would definite your list's playstyle, wildcard+mixed links just makes most sectorials 'vanilla, but better'
I gotta confess; I hate link teams. I hate playing them and I hate playing against them. My worst fear regarding N4 is that I will be forced to play sectorials myself just to stand a chance against link teams, because everyone else in my meta seem to be playing them all the time. Defensive links are particularly boring to face, especially ridiculous things like dual or triple heavy infantry missile launchers. However, let's assume for a moment that I liked playing them. Then I think I could be compelled to pick a cheap 5-man team even without the +3 BS bonus, as well as without the Sixth Sense, just to get the B2 on good ARO weapons. Getting a burst-bonus on smoke and pitchers are extremely compelling to me, because I hate missing those rolls - if certain Duo or Haris links got that, and -only- that, I might still use them just for that ability. But the movement benefits alone would never compel me to take a link team - I think the disadvantages of exposing two models outweighs the benefits of saving orders moving them.
Hmm, what if only the “core” members of a fireteam got the bonuses, or at least the +3 bs bonus. So jamming a wildcard in there doesn’t immediately buff it up for the measly cost of 4 line troops.
Absolutely agree. If I was simply going to change the order of things, I'd honestly swap SS and BS+3. This would mean that as soon as the first member goes down, the link becomes vulnerable to Surprise Shot and similar shenanigans. There are some interactions where SS counts for +9 BS and others where the existence of SS is the defining factor in not being able to achieve something. Whereas +3 BS is always simply +3 BS and can be countered by a myriad of different tactics. Moreover, it means that the links hit peak active potential at 4-members. Which means that running 4-person Cores in your active is not unreasonable (making it that much harder to de-fang a primary attacking option simply by knocking of the ARO piece). You can even do funky things with that and have Enormoustacos have +1B and SS if you wanted them to. Personally when Tri-Cores came out I was hoping that they were going to be just the +1B and +3B bonuses as that would have made them much more tractable for dealing with.