I think it's a bit of both. There are mixed cores that work admirably and I've never really seen much problems from them; for example a Crane in a Celestial Guard core is a close range powerhouse in a medium range core where the light infantry are a tactical liability because of how close the Crane needs to move. On the other hand a straight up Zuyong core using nothing but Zuyong and characters that are Zuyong can be absolute hell to face unless you manage to put up the counter-measures before the snowball becomes an avalanche. Same can be said about Hospitaller that I've seen a few times (even as far back as 2016!) completely trivialize any defence put in their way (which isn't much of a surprise considering that they are about the same cost as Zuyong but have better stats). So basically I'm saying that the bonuses and mixes will provide a nice smooth linear power curve and flavour as long as they're kept in strict control, which I feel they have not shown any sign of wanting to do since around 2018, but if they want to keep having spicy cores like they have expanded to even further lately, they will likely have to tone down the bonuses. However, the bonuses still need to be somewhat significant because using a proper core greatly focuses your performance on a small geometric surface. I think my biggest issue on that axis is how Sixth Sense synergises with the other two bonuses and what that does when there is a capable unit in the Core to exploit that synergy.
This topic is fun because in my opinion (hot take alert) even the small change of removing Delay from sixth sense makes link teams ridiculously vulnerable to anything that can do a shoot/template fork (i.e. anyone with a shotgun) and that change alone makes vanillas (aside from Pano... as usual) better and more resilient to alpha strikes. Fireteams feel like glass cannons now, even the ones fully built from HIs. Taking away the bonuses that fireteams have now would just completely kill sectorials.
If fireteams are glass cannons now, what about Vanilla where, following this logic, every single unit must be a glass cannon? And must have been a glass cannon ever since, since they were never able to delay anything (except for the few units that always could). If you ask me, that's just completely bonkers. Fireteams were/are much too strong in reactive turn. I had situations when I was pondering if I risk attacking a (defensive) fireteam with a BSG AD Trooper. I did not, because there was no single spot on the table where I had a) a better roll and b) a higher burst. And that had nothing to do with sixth sense. +1B and +3BS is strong enough. IMO they don't need sixth sense. Not at all.
6th sense is there to help certain sectorials that need it because they lack other tools, well, at least in n2 and n3 (not sure if in n4 will be so needed). The problem (As allways with those "this rule is the same for everyone") is that the ones that don't need it, get directly better, bending the balance the rule was intented to solve.
One solution in N4 would be to decouple the fireteam bonuses from the universal rules and instead add them as parentheticals to the profile version of the Fireteam notations, with the Fireteam rules providing guidelines for how they apply during active/reactive turns. Fireteam: Haris (+1B) Fireteam: Haris (Sixth Sense) Fireteam: Haris (Firewall -3) Fireteam: Haris (Sensor) Fireteam: Core (+1B, Courage, +2 BS, +3 Discover) Fireteam: Core (+2B, Religious Troop, Tactical Awareness, +3 WIP) It would make it a lot harder to know how a given fireteam will behave, but it could help distinguish the benefits of an Alguagiles fireteam vs. a Shang-Ji fireteam. By limiting the more powerful FT bonuses to fireteams that are based on more expensive troop types, you’d cut down on min-maxing. For example, if the Kamau sniper has to be in an Orc core to get +3 BS, the cost for giving a Kamau that bonus goes up, as does the hitting power and durability of the fireteam...but you’d be less inclined to park it in your DZ and leave it there the whole game.
To clarify: I don’t think every fireteam should have totally unique abilities, but by moving them from the universal rules to the profiles you’d be able to tune down the power levels of the more OP fireteams by selectively removing abilities like Sixth Sense, or add flavor by moving some troopers’ abilities to their fireteam—for example, I can imagine options like Military Orders or Ramah troopers that aren’t Religious until they join a Haris or Core, and then everyone in the team (including wild cards and REMs) gets Religious, or Acon/IA/USARF troops that become Veterans in a Core instead of gaining Sixth Sense.
In vanilla, most of your power is not concentrated in one 8" radius bubble that contains some linkfillers that are extremely bad on their own. Why I should bother with 100 pts of fireteam meat that is going to be painfully and easily dismantled by Uxia or Duroc+Margot or a shotgun libertos and make me go 5 orders down next turn when I can take 5 independent units and throw them around, outside of threat range, making opponent choose who they kill.
I think this is a very interesting idea, but it could perhaps add too much complexity --- particularly when you look at the apparent N4 design philosophy of collapsing this kind of complexity. You would need to make almost all Fireteams operate under some universal rules with only a very small number as very well-known exceptions. If every sectorial had one or two Fireteams that had special rules no present in the universal Fireteam rule it would be too much for the average player to keep track of. For example, the Corregidor player's Wildcat Fireteams are immune to Surprise Attack, the Bakunin player's Reverend Moira Fireteams get Vulnerability (Bad Balance), and the Tunguska player's Securitate get Sixth Sense (so the Interventor can troll Yu Jing).
Tri-Core is at least balanced somewhat by going on a unit with effectively a line trooper statline. I don't like it from a design perspective for the same reason, though. On the other hand, from the perspective of someone playing Spiral Corps, I do like it a lot, so I guess it's my responsibility to downplay the strengths and play up the weaknesses so it doesn't see any nerfs.
Would you play Sectorials if Fireteams were replaced with the ability to spend Coordinated Orders on the troopers that are Firetaem-compatible with each other without spending Command Tokens? It would be balance if the Tri-Core user was the one needing to stick their neck out, however, do keep in mind that a recurring complaint about Fireteams is how single strong troopers keep getting buffed by a bunch of weak sauce units.
that would be too much. A haris could get 2 normal rolls and one ftf, meaning high chances for the deffending dude to die, while giving it not so easier to the ftf roll. That one was suggested by a friend and we tried a few times (in early n3 though), and we didn't like in the end. Deffending player had it way worse and the alpha strike was heavy as in n1.
It would be even worst than now. Immagine a fireteam of only (any variant) Rifles. Now you shot B4 from a single model Then you shot B2 from a model and B1 from all the other, resulting in 2+ unopposed roll unless you Dodge.
Yeah, but reforming a Tri-Core isn't exactly difficult in Spiral/Tohaa and the Taagma isn't particularly expensive for the benefits you gain.
It's hard to gauge from the thread, but are folks tending to think Fireteam bonuses are more oppressive in active or reactive turns? Personally I've always felt them to be much stronger in the reactive turn, and frankly, if I'm rolling out a 5 man link, it's typically for defensive purposes. Would a simple solution like "only the fire team leader gets the bonuses in both active and reactive turns" be enough to mitigate the concerns folks have with fireteam power levels? Or, in a similar vein to some other suggestions, what if fireteam bonus was only calculated based on the number of units in the team with the same name? You run 5 Celestial Guard, you get a 5 man bonus. You run a Crane and 4 Celestial Guard you get a 4 man bonus. You run a Crane and Xi Zhuang and 3 Guard you get a 3 man bonus.
It's fairly equal, from my point of view. The extra Burst, BS and the lopsided effects of Sixth Sense are fairly obvious in reactive now, but I think everyone's forgotten that even a Fusilier HMG in a link shoots like a Dragao, and is five times as easily replaced- direct shooting ARO outside of links is effectively dead thanks to this effect and seemingly has been for longer than I've been playing, because between elite gunners like TAGs and the fact you're more likely to play against a Core Link than not, it's effectively a total waste to invest points into a one-shot ARO like a Nisse Sniper as the only effective targets are rare Vanilla lists that have skimped on HMGs for better scoring power.
Which would be a benefit Tohaa/Spiral have. Not necessarily what anyone else gets. Also if the Tricore dude dies that's it. No more Core for the remainder of the game in the entire army.
To answer your question in a very short form: order efficiency. Edit: And if you see a Fireteam just as one trooper plus 4 appendices that hinder your free movement and placement but you bother with them because they give you boni ... well, that's exactly the kind of fireteam that ought to be deleted from the game. \Edit If your fireteam is completely wiped out by a shotgun libertos ... you did something wrong. 8 Inch radius is ... huge. 16 inch in diameter. Sure, if you line them up behind the same small building ... you deserve them to be killed. I think most of the time I have 100 points of individual models in a 16 Inch bubble even in Vanilla because ... somewhere my 300 points have to be. The argument "They are standing so close, a single hit with a template can kill them all." is just not true. If they'd stop the Wildcard mania ... but I don't see this coming. With the update to Corregidor I don't see any sign of an end of the Wildcard crap. I think there are many ways to balance Fireteams, but I think the easiest would be to just delete Sixth Sense. The other boni are strong enough already.
I am not talking about 1 template catching 5 (though catching 2 is fairly easy even when it was deployed by a good player) - more how a skirmisher can easily kill it even 1 by 1 because those orders and their points are still concentrated in a bubble without a defensive state. Vanilla deployment never need that much clumping. Sixth Sense is effectively deleted because the delay was the most important part of it
Like I already said: "I think most of the time I have 100 points of individual models in a 16 Inch bubble even in Vanilla because ... somewhere my 300 points have to be." A normal Deployment Zone is ... 12*48 Inch. Even with FD 1 it's only 16*48 Inch. You have to deploy your models pretty evenly to not have 100 points in a 16 Inch bubble. And I think +1B (even if you don't have +3 BS) is a pretty good "defensive state". I already described the situation when my AD trooper (or a Shotgun-Skirmisher) didn't have any angle of attack where he had any advantage. If only the Team Leader had the boni in Reactive Turn, it would be okay as well. But like it is right now, Fireteams by itself are a very good defensive state in reactive turn. No, it's not. Sixth Sense still cancels Smoke and Surprise Shot. IMO in most of the games, this is more important than the delay.
