I’m in favor of changing fireteams in some way, but any meaningful change is going to significantly reshape the game’s power curve. Right now I feel like there’s a very strong impetus to play a sectorial with a mixed fireteam for mechanical reasons.
Fireteams on their own aren't overpowered and there are plenty of solutions for them. Doesn't matter how good you are in a FTF if you can't take a hit from a Mine/DTW/Coordinated Order. Vanilla Factions having ridiculous solo pieces that can keep up with Links on their own on top of 3+ Sectorials worth of choices for every aspect of the game is what Fireteams have to somehow try and compete with. That in essence is the root cause of the problem. Outside of Links, Sectorials have very limited options to achieve that. AVA restrictions for Vanilla basically just went out of the window with the 15 slot limit. There exist far too few Sectorial unique Troops and Troop Profiles to provide a reason other than mixing and matching your merry Wildcard RPG party Core link. NA2 does this better than any "regular" Sectorial. Having choices from different Factions circumventing the Vanilla problem. At the same time they are in danger of becoming too limited (Druze) or basically a better version of a native Sectorial (N3 Dashat). Additionally N4 only made Vanilla stronger, while it did put a damper on several of the best performing Sectorials (OSS, Dashat, Varuna...).
The question would always be, why do you choose the LI over the missile bot? I'm assuming they can link in white banner?
White Banner can't link the Son Bae. The bigger issue the Zhanshi run into is the TacAw HRL is generally just a more cost efficient option if you want a hard ARO, or if you don't want the link to have a hard ARO the threat of Hun Dun for the same SWC value is also harder to argue against. Spending that 1.5 SWC on an extra Hun Dun does more to slow people down in terms of thinking twice about moving link teams around. I think the 1.5 SWC is the biggest limiting factor on the Zhanshi ML/MSR in White Banner rather than the points cost. There are alot of things competing for that SWC from Shang Ji to Long Ya to Guilang to Hun Dun to Tigers and Dao Fei.
If the +3 BS bonus for the five-man link goes, the rest of linkteams could stay and work fine. It's spiking that critical stat up on already-nasty pointman pieces that is so distorting. But of course this screws the one class of troopers who need it most: cheap LI grunts who were passable if they have that +3BS bonus. Yet seems better to allow those poor LI to get screwed and find other ways to buff or decost them than to keep the BS bonus on fully-linked HI HMGs or Spitfires in squads otherwise made up of 6-point Volunteers or 5-point Kuang Shi.
Back on the original topic, I use LI grunts with HMGs pretty often. JSA, Corregidor sometimes (if no points for the Brigada HMG), cheapo Spitfires in Moderator links, Securitate, etc. They work decently when needed.
This is true, but that could easily be softened by giving line troops a steep discount on SWC weapons to allow them to be reasonable options as upgrades with leftover points or as a backup SWC weapon in a meta chock full of nasties. one nice flow on effect of cheap SWC line troops is a viable strategy of coordinated units dealing with ARO. If I could bring 3 zhanshi missiles for the SWC cost of 1 decent missile troop, they might be garbage, but together they might just be able to create art.
I agree that USARF isn't a good example, since the difference between a Minuteman and a Grunt, both in terms of gunfighting prowess and durability, is significantly less than the equivalent mixed-link options of other Sectorials. I would probably make room for line trooper grenade launchers, except that I find the nerf to grenade launcher rangebands makes that choice less desirable. Still, it is a decent way to leverage Spotlight if you don't plan to buy the full missile bot. That's a pretty niche choice though. If I do have a glut of SWC left over (happens in some lists) then ~15 points for a missile launcher isn't bad. Grouped units and multi-Wound targets have to respect it, and it can become very useful in the late-game when an attrition has taken a toll on your opponent's best gunfighters. Generally though, I don't think linetrooper SWC weapons are particularly strong or useful.
I think your quote here is simply false and insulting. I don´t think it is meant like that, but you do not mark it as a joke etc. I bought them. Luckily I spend roughly a third of the orignial price for an nearly OVP box. The main reason for this box, not beeing the best pick or even the among the best LI SWC boxes anyway, is their wierd size. These guys are big as a HI to a point, that make their brothers and sisters from the starter box look very slim. I don´t know who played on the size buttons of the render software in CB, but the Zhanshi SWC guys are way too tall. That beeing said, I have to say, that I like the poses very much and everyone buying and painting these guy up, has some nice models on the shelf ... at least ;-) I term of playability the quote above is right in is firt part. From all LI SWC boxes, this is the worst in playability. Both sectorials that can use them offers only AVA 4 to Zhanshis. Both only use them as a basic for FT-options. At least WB is a bit uncomfortable for its FTs so here are the best chances, that, accidentliy one ore two of the guys end up in the core team. With the lone exception of the Hacker, it looks like he is very popular at the moment. Generaly I am not a friend of all the - also a bit confusing - wild link-options in N4. I had a small hope that CB will go a little bit back to the roots, but it seems they have to push forward. Did anyone ask for this? I see a HB list, with a lone Guhlam (guess wich one) two Barids, Laila, the new MSV2 Character and some Asawiras. Two or three are counting as Guhlam for linkbuilding, so he is able to relink, even if the Guhlam (the only layout, that lacks a model) the Guhlam die. This is the new shit it seems.
I had very fun games with line infantry core teams prior to the wildcard-madness. Of course they can still perform, especially high burst HMG on average (BS11) or above average (BS12 or Mimetism) variants. The problem is that highly-optimized mixed teams are so prevalent nowadays that it is a given they will have to fight an uphill battle while costing insignificantly less.
A random poorly thought out proposal that just popped into my head (is there any other kind?) LI: cheap, bad stats - fireteams of up to 5 MI: medium cost & abilities - fireteams of up to 4 HI: expensive, good stats - fireteams of up to 3
the thought of cheap link team filler is to let the HI be strong but not be overly expensive. are you suggesting that you could do 5 fusiliers but max 2 fusiliers if you had an orc in there? Primarily I am asking how your thought would work with mixed link teams. (not hating on it, I am curious on the answers as this certainly a unique answer).
Nah, I'm mostly being a crusty old-timer who doesn't really like mixed fireteams :-) To be blunt, I find it really hard to keep track of what all the different options across all the different sectorials are.
I'm making a tool for that, because knowing what combinations might show up in a given OpFor is handy. Right now it's just compiled lists by sectorial showing what all of the fireteam build options are, but if that's something people would find useful I can format it to be visually easier to follow. Unfortunately, listing what every possible weapon loadout iteration is for that kind of thing becomes quite silly very rapidly. I'm finding it useful to at least know "oh, I'm going up against WinterFor, if there's a Fusilier core I can expect something with troops from this list."
I don't think that's a good idea for logistics reasons. The medium cost and abilities units tend to be fairly poor performers* and the fact that CB would need to do a major re-shuffle of a bunch of LI and MI and possibly buff a bunch of HI so there's no overlap between SINWIMI and ARM3HI. I mean, we're talking about a large number of Ariadna and Haqq LI, Myrmidons, Ariadnan HI, Kamau and Zhanying becoming MI, and Guarda, Magister Kniggits, and half of Yu Jing's HI all being bumped up one step in performance or special abilities. It's just a lot, you know... * Typically units who pay 20 to 30 points for their combi rifle equivalent profile, start in the deployment zone, and have no MSV, camo, or Mimetism fit this bill.
Tweak swc cost from damage out put, like how hard a weapon can hit, to how survivable is the model carrying said weapon? So like one wound LI with low armor pays 1 swc for a missile launcher, while a two wound medium armor HI would pay the 1.5 or 2 depending.
Adding to this reasoning too - for me, an overabundance of mixed link teams also serves to remove some of the distinction between armies that can help preserve faction flavor and identity in an edition which has brought a lot of the factions closer together. Mixed link teams in moderation (read: like 1-2 wildcards per army, 1-2 unique but restrictive fireteam options) can help bring back a little distinction that's currently lacking when everyone can do order mooks + link team super star. Even if it doesn't match everyone's perception of the fluff and fluff based arguments generally don't go over well when attempting to put it into mechanics, I think in this case there's a potential to have fluff inform the mechanical decisions. I like the idea of barring certain troop categories from certain link sizes, and think that might be the most elegant solution with a rule like "Fireteam: X" with X indicating the max number of models *of the same type* that may form a fireteam. Because if you think about it, what strong basis is there for ORC troops drafted supposedly from another regiment entirely to work so well with Fusiliers who are essentially MPs that they can all move in unison and provide just an abdurd amount of performance boosts? You could then toggle up and down the "X" based off the status of the troop (i.e. make 'veteran', 'headquarters', etc. make a difference) so Kamau could do a 5 man team because they're more highly trained than most medium infantry (or whatever other example you can think matches fluff/makes for interesting rules) with the caveat that, again, these teams stay largely composed of the same troop type. "Counts as" characters who clearly "count as" (Tai Sheng, Patsy, etc.) are probably fine, wildcards should be cut down, and mixed teams should be at most 2 per sectorial with some real restrictions put on them.