Personally, I'd love to see a 5-man bonus give a supressive fire effect instead (-3 to opponent's rolls if he gets shot at), and a 4-man bonus to increase the coherensy (e.g 8" from at least 1 other team member, not 8" from the leader). Because while moving Haris is fine, moving a 4+ minis at a time is such a pain, that leaves them clumped up and unable to act more freely
This seems to be intentional though -- the two big drawbacks to fireteams are their clunkiness in motion and the fact they are only as strong as their weakest member in the reactive turn (given the right setup, or course). Take that away and you just end up with a daisy chain of progressively weaker miniatures from the center of the table to the DZ.
I find that I keep thinking about this topic lately. Now, I cannot say one way or another if Fireteams are good or bad for the game. I honestly do not know. I know that I personally do not like them --- I have more fun and more success with solo pieces --- but I feel that I have to use Fireteams to be competitive. This is especially true in N4 where it seems, to me, like Fireteams are critical to success. I largely feel this because of the mixed Fireteam options, which make Fireteams substantially more powerful than in the past. That I feel I have to use Fireteams seems like a bad thing, considering they are supposed to be an option. Firteams, in their base concept, may or may not be a good thing, but I feel like the balance with them is pretty bad at present. As an aside, I was reading something recently where a PanO player was saying Sectorials were must-play for their faction; vanilla is not even an option. This is because their whole thing is supremacy in shooting, and everyone's sectorials beat them in vanilla, so they need to go sectorial to keep-up. Not being a PanO player myself this is merely hearsay, but if there is any truth in it then it would also be symptomatic of poor Fireteam balance. PanO should be perfectly viable vanilla or sectorial, as should every other faction.
I do like 2 and 3 man Fireteams. I'm dead certain the game would benefit from getting rid of 4 and 5 man Fireteams. Enomotarchos - max 3, Core Max 3, would go a long way. There are Sectorials that rely on their Links for ARO presence, you can't realistically just remove Sixth Sense and +3 BS and call it good. So Link Boni would have to get reworked to keep opposing Cutters, Avatars and other strong solo troops. Likely by outsourcing 4 man and 5 man boni to Profiles, like the Taagma Tricore. That could breathe some life in still unoptimal troops and linetroopers. To make a few examples: A defensive Core Link with full bonus is a gunner and a dedicated Profile to unlock +3 BS and/or Sixth Sense Bonus, leaving you one slot for a pick of your choice. An aggressive Core doesn't risk walking 5 people into a TO ML, Wildparrot, E/Mauler or a Smoke to get cleaned up by a CC Specialist. To be perfectly honest I'd consider adding Sixth Sense as the 3 man Bonus as well and make it available to Haris. I'm pretty sick and tired of 90% of Sectorial running some sort of defensive Sniper/ML/Feuerbach Link with a gunner backed by Linetroopers. Having the option is nice and likely necessary, providing an alternative to run across the board to match TAGs or strong solos like Achilles, Hac Tao or Anathematic. To add some numbers to that thought - a freshly buffed and much cheaper Orc Haris still costs more than a Cutter, is arguably less survivable and has less damage output. Provding more of a reason to stick 3 basic MI/HI together rather than using them as turrets in a Linetrooper Link as ARO turret would go a long way.
As long as Sectorials picked up other options to replace fireteams it'd be fine, such as sectorial only profiles and units that add interesting options or tools, I already find myself picking sectorials due to this more than fireteams anyway. Dear god no. that rule is far to obnoxious and strong as it is, don't need more stuff picking it up for essentially free and removing more counter play from the game. adding it onto to haris is just going to incentivise more ARO baiting in order to get around that stupid rule.
Sixth Sense is the only thing that makes links possible against the utter stupidity that is MSV2+ through Smoke. I'm not happy about it cancelling Stealth, but the alternatives are much worse. If anything it should have kept delay in ZOC, walking around in a Smoke within 8" triggering a Dodge and rolling a risk free BS Attack FTF against it is hands down the worst interaction in the game. Making Links useless defensively, by making them keel over when getting shot by White Noise/Smoke respectively is one of the main things that makes them relevant to begin with. Similar for Surprise Attack. N4 already weakens that by a lot. A TAG in cover can keep laying into even the best ARO Sniper with ARM11 at significantly lower risk than N3 where a MSR could end your Active Turn with Stun Ammo and Crits were significantly scarier in that situation. A BS14 TAG might take 3 Orders to win a FTF and clear a Kamau and might take a wound for that, but it will take down any ARO piece with relative safety. Not to mention what happens when something like a Cutter takes on a less potent ARO piece like a Frontovnik.
As a means to prevent mass smoke shooting it's fine, that's all it should be, especially if thats the only counter argument people have for removing them. Losing the delay was a good thing, now they have to react without perfect information giving you options when engaging them, now they just need to loose the part about ignoring suprise and it being more or less a 360 visor and we're good. On top of the increased burst and +3BS, SS negates a lot of counterplay options beyond either ignoring them, brute forcing them or doing some aro baiting jank, as well as being a substantial BS swing in and of itself. Frankly the +1B does more defensively than SS as it reduces failure chances meaning the piece is more likely to stick around and drain more orders as opposed to just getting Brrrrrt'd off the table by a linked HMG which is the fate of every non linked ARO piece. A BS 14 TAG is likely to die trying to put down the linked Kamau, or burn through it's order pool doing so. Also why even bother with that when I can do the coordinated white noise dance and put it down far more reliably and with less order expenditure and risk to my model?
So what is there to stop the utter Mimetism -6 stupidity? It is not functionally any different other than that its less costly to set up, harder to prevent, for the few factions that have it, and it works really well in ARO as well. How is it that vanilla doesn't seem to be lagging behind when they don't have access to it? It is true that when my Epsilon HMG is allowed to have a Varangian set the smoke up and the Epsilon take long range shots, it is functionally slightly better odds than a Reverend Moira HMG*, Hac Tao or Swiss HMG, or an Omega HMG thanks to both Smoke and Mimetism, but... kill the Varangian, set up your AROs to avoid the MSV2 trooper or do any of the things vanilla does to solve this * Unless this is a Moira in a Core so that they have Sixth Sense and all the other bonuses
Arguably they don't compete with them as it is A Hac Tao or Swiss HMG will absolutely clear out a fireteam left out on ARO if it does't have MSV, for example.
I tend to agree. I perceive vanilla as being stronger usually. Maybe its different in n4 with all the new options. Definitely its the first time I've been able to justify playing a Nomad sectorial.
Like @jake richmond and others on the thread, I think the movement-efficiency function of fireteams is incredibly powerful, and often overlooked. I'd love to see 5-man fireteams stay, but their only advantages being +3 Discover (4-man bonus) and Sixth Sense (5-man bonus). +1 B should be reactive-turn only, and apply to all linkteams of 3 or more men. You could keep it in the active too without distorting the game too much, but losing it in the reactive would be a serious hit to the value of linkteams (and would weaken defensive play, which really need to remain strong to keep Infinity from becoming a swingy alpha-strike game like it often was in N2). +3 BS should go. It's massively distorting and makes wildcard mixes even more powerful proportionally.
Well, should an Epsilon be able to blow a Core Linked Moira off the roof? That's what happens without Sixth Sense. Why should the much cheaper Epsilon with easy setup be better than a Swiss Guard in the majority of FTF rolls? Vanilla has to deal with the Smoke interaction, but gets more stuff to chose from and most of them are up there with the best of them. It's Sectorials who need to rely on Links to make up for lacking access to some of the tools Vanilla can use. Perimeter, Mines, TO ARO's, warm bodies like Puppets or Antipodes to delay the other guy. Mimetism does what it does. The counters should be obvious, come on you've been here for a while. MSV levels, DTWs, Mines, Templates, hacking, dropping a Smoke and ignore the ARO, kill it in CC. New Perimeter adds another tool. Heck Mimetism is countered by other Mimetism. You can also still spring a layered surprise ARO on a Mimetic piece just fine. MSV2 in Smoke cover isn't gonna worry about a Noctifier getting pulled on him, even if a TO Shotgun reveals close by you don't have to face both AROs. Not to mention that Mimetism -6 in Core Links has some heavy utility costs or restrictions. Why should MSV2s, which already counter other troop's Mimetism and already get what's effectively an ODD with a little setup against non MSV2+ and non Sixth Sense troops also get that against Sixth Sense? The idea is to enable Links walking across the board being less of a bad idea, not fundamentally reworking game mechanics. Slightly counteracting Template's increased effectiveness and making it harder to just pick off the entire Link to have a reason to run one over a more expendable, cheaper and easier to protect solo. The problem with that is how Vanilla Factions can easily keep up with the best and defensive Core Links are what keeps stuff like the Avatar, Achilles, Cutter etc somewhat in check without having to hand out more uber solo pieces like that. N4 actually did away with a lot of the risk. BS15 TAGs with ARM11 in cover have little trouble downing a Kamau Sniper with a couple Orders. They'll likely take a scratch in the engagement, but that's what you have 3 STR for. A N3 linked Securitate MSR could realistically threaten to "oneshot" a TAG for a turn thanks to Stun ammo, taking that away and the crit changes already made ARO a good bit weaker against the heavy spearhead troops.
The problem with fireteams isn't that they aren't balanced it's that the five man core bonus is dull +3 BS is a boring bonus, and it encourages boring play. It's also the single entirely non circumstantial BS mod in the game. Mimetism you can get around with MSV, Suppression can be outranged, weapon bonuses are based on distance, cover is based on angle and position. The BS bonus from the fireteam is just always there. It encourages people to just put HI Missile Launchers on rooftops and wait for them to kill or be killed. The Sixth Sense is annoying because it means you can't use tactics like smoke+MSV/White Noise against em, but at least that's a circumstantial bonus. The +3 BS mod is boring. I'd get rid of the five man core bonus, make the get +1 B and then Sixth Sense and then +3 WIP for discover. Make taking a five man core a choice rather than a well why the hell not.
You're right, I've been here a while. I've also played vanilla a bunch. It isn't that vanilla factions come with a wide range of equipment to counter smoke gameplay that nearly all sectorials are missing. No.There simply isn't anything that merits giving out this ability to screw over a particular style of gameplay to every single god damned sectorial. The interaction between shooting-through-smoke (3S) and 6S is fine, the interaction between Surprise Attack and 6S is fine. The number of 6S units out there currently is completely ridiculous compared to the comparatively low number of factions that need to lean on 3S and when factoring in how important Surprise Attack can be to units that spend a lot of orders to make a very small number of attacks. So; why should 3S users or Surprise Attack users have to face their secondary utility be negated in a majority of their games against their primary target when the Mimetic user seldom does? (Keeping in mind that MSV2 users effectively negate the need for 6S and the utility of smoke, so you already have a counter to this play in most factions when you don't want to play cleverly and do hard AROs) Again, the interaction is fine, but there is no good reason to hand this out to every single sectorial. Select units should have this; particularly among the factions with fewer MSV2 units - not any given missile launcher HI you care to hand it to. P.s. or white noise against the MSV2 unit on ARO duty - you've managed to gain no advantage after all...
The easy mixed linking and MSV1 buff makes Smoke shooting far less of a problem. There are very few Sectorials that can't get a Fireteam that can see through Smoke now. As @Teslarod says, a Moira in a full Core can be taken off a roof quite easily without Sixth Sense by an Epsilon through Smoke, but a Riot Grrl is a substantially more dangerous unit to that combo , in the same Sectorial, and can be easily linked with Moderators which are amongst the cheapest troopers in the game. Meanwhile, that same Moira is still almost totally unassailable to anything without MSV that it out-ranges, and has a decent chance of winning if closer. The Bakunin player simply has to choose which will be better for their list and opponent; ignoring Smoke-shooting and picking on Mimetism, or more powerful FTF odds against anything else and higher cost. Tactical Window is also a factor here; every order spent on Smoke is one less accomplishing other tasks, and setting up for Smoke-shooting could cost a game if done often enough if the enemy can deny enough opportunities to complete a mission.
MSV2 very much benefits from Sixth Sense. Makes you not eat the -6 from White Noise or Albedo. There's still Coordinated Orders or sacrificing a link member to get the MSV Sniper off his roof, but at least it's not free. Again not debating the existing game mechanics. Just want to make Links walking across the table work. Everything works on them after you manage to break them with a Hack or pick off anyway. Sixth Sense is hardly the "problem" it is in a defensive link. Should be easy enough to break the Link somehow, including chugging a Smoke and shooting them with a MSV vs Dodge from inside ZOC.
I fail to see how this in any way actually benefits links moving across the table - as the primary issue here is unit clumping in my experience. Use the appropriate tools for the job, and the appropriate tools aren't actually in short supply for most sectorials when it comes to the active turn. As I outlined in the Moiras example, there is very little in your reasoning that can't be replicated by another unit. If you must have Sixth Sense to provide ARO presence against smoke+MSV users, then you're gonna fail hard against ODD users who will be able to push the same MODs as Sixth Sense allows you to avoid. If it's your active turn, then you should have so much advantage that you don't need it. And no, sacrificing a few units during active turn isn't a good solution to this - this is something you do when you're running out of options due to attrition and should absolutely not be something a player should passively be able to set up. Reactive player should instead realize that setting up more clever AROs is a requirement and that any unit left out to ARO is by definition forfeit on the altar of slowing the opponent down. Just plonking a Zuyong/Orc/Jujak/Nyokas/Govad/Brigada/etc Missile Launcher down in a Fireteam Core on a building overlooking most of the table shouldn't ever be a good idea unless the opponent's list building and deployment choices makes it one. That particular passively placed problem for your opponent should have a very large number of counter plays! Yet Sixth Sense makes it so that it isn't and the number of units of these who are Wildcards or can have enough Wildcards to make it cheap is also very high, so it's often not even a big investment - yet it's a tactic that is available to all sectorials. Not a few so that it's a distinct flavour, but all. Bottom line is that Sixth Sense breeds passive game play. The solutions to these aren't actually as difficult as I might make it sound by my rant above, but those solutions tend to breed fairly boring gameplay as well. As much as Cores are a no brainer for sectorials, it also tends to make for that one single problem that needs solving for the opponent and only the best designed sectorials (f.ex. Shasvasti) avoids having the Core be its primary feature that needs solving - simply because it means you're building your list very tall. So why on earth is this good design that should be reinforced? -- The one saving grace I think Cores have is that it makes the most basic line infantry armed with direct fire weapons have a purpose beyond eating shit to better armed or more disposable units. I can't but help think that maybe the core issue is how Direct Template Weapons work
I'm not out to change anything outside of shrinking links down to 3 max. Keeping +1B, +3 BS and Sixth Sense and make the 4 and 5 man bonus tied to a Profile you can't get back when it dies like the Taagma Tricore. I get it that you don't like how links work and they probably could be improved, but I'm not out to reinvent the wheel.
Tri-Core gave access to the Core's strengths but not the Core's weakness. That's... not great design... to be as mild as I possibly can be. I'm not even talking about Sixth Sense here, and the worst part was that it wasn't precisely applied to bottom tier sectorials, either.
I am finding this an interesting topic. I would like to try and agitate further discussion. From what I can gather, no one has any issues with Fireteam: Duo at this current point in time. Everyone feels it works fine as-is. Fireteam: Haris/Triad is only mildly contentious. Some people feel it would be just as good without any special bonus (like Duo), but others feel the +1B (especially in providing B2 AROs) is good for the game. Fireteam: Core (and, by extension, Tri-Core) is the truly contentious Fireteam option. I began Infinity in early-N3. At the time I cannot recall any suggestion of Fireteam: Core being too good as something people would have taken seriously (though, being new at the time, I could have misunderstood the discussions of the time). A Fireteam: Core of, say, Alguaciles was not so powerful as to elicit controversy, while a Fireteam: Core of, say, Mobile Brigada was so expensive as to be prohibitive to most competitive lists (the Riot Grrl Core was a well-cited exception to this). This issue only seems to have arisen in late-N3 as mixed-Fireteams became more common (eg Kamau Sniper + 4 Fusiliers). To me, there are two possible issues here. One possibility is that mixed Fireteams are the problem. Having a variety of different units working together is bad for the game. Five Alguaciles is fine, but three Alguaciles with a Daktari and a Mobile Brigada is not. The other possibility is that the specific modifiers granted by Fireteams of 4-5 models are too much when applied to a mixed fireteam. +3 BS and Sixth Sense on an Alguacil is fine, but not on the Mobile Brigada when he does not pay 200 points for the privilege. If the issue is the former, does this only lie with Fireteam: Core options? Are mixed Haris Fireteams perfectly fine, and potentially even good for the game? If it is only an issue with a Core, the Wildcard rule could be adjusted to only work for Duo and Haris, while Cores could get curated additions through the 'counts-as' rule (eg 'Lupe Balboa counts as an Alguacil for Fireteam purposes'). If the issue is the later, do the modifiers need to be changed, or does the availability of them need to be restricted? For example, if I make a Fireteam of three Alguaciles, a Daktari, and a Mobile Brigada, should the +3 BS and Sixth Sense only be applied to the founding members of the core (ie the Alguaciles) and not any wildcards (perhaps 'counts-as' members could also benefit)? If that makes Wildcards too weak, what would be some more suitable modifiers that justify fielding the Core and any Wildcards that join it, but do not make the stronger members too powerful?
