External army balance issues in N4

Bring me up to speed, what exactly is null deploying?

 

Not putting up any hard ARO beyond a flash bot, and largely relying on mines, camo markers and DTWs on hard corners and making incredibly order inefficient to engage you.

 

Null deploying is deploy in such a way that is everything is hiding. Basically leaving nothing up for ARO.

 

1; Why do fireteams exist?
Fireteams exist to provide an edge to Sectorials to counterbalance the extra variety present in a Vanilla army. From a thematic perspective, the idea of small units of similarly-trained units working in cohesion can be cool, and from a business perspective it ensures less-than-perfect units see actual sales as part of a Fireteam.
2; What issues do they address?
Their reduced cost-per-order and increased gunfighting potential compared to statistically-equal elite gunners, as well as their ability to drag along multiple types of Specialist, helps address the Sectorial issue of often lacking the perfect tool for the job. Limiting what can go in the link also means suboptimal units become appealing by context.
3; How do they solve them?
Flat, relatively-easily applied bonuses to combat actions in exchange for following the cohesion rules gives Fireteams their power, and the number of members give them flexibility. Link restrictions and profile options (with attendant models!) give them their business value.

We're still using rules designed for N3 in an N4 environment, so some of these work pretty badly. In particular, do-anything Wildcards like that idiotic EVAder or some of the more min-maxy Characters (like the Unknown Ranger) sink basically everything that makes links good for the game- they make that one profile better, but devalue everything else in-Sectorial and don't even help against Vanilla, since they get the same guy with -1 Burst. Furthermore, cost-per-order isn't as good as it used to be with the 15-order cap and lots of things getting cheaper. The only niche left for Fireteams at the moment is buff-engine for a gunner, because they've been put out of a job by the army design team and the Core Rules.

My suggestions for fixing Fireteams for N4?
1; If anyone in the design team suggests making a profile an elite gunner and anything else simultaneously, slap them.
2; Cut down on Wildcards a bit. Link mixing helps diversity and sales, link soup's going to hurt it by creating mono-builds very quickly.
3; If Sectorials are going down the route of having all the tools in future, as we're seeing with the most recently renovated Sectorials, links should probably trade the gunfighting domination for mobility and safety- things like allowing bonuses to Burst on Reset or Dodge (representing soldiers watching each others' backs against physical or digital attacks), or increasing the vault height (we've all seen those obstacle courses in movie boot camps, the whole team can help!).

 

No, it was about the fireteams discussion in general, you just happened to be the post before I posted my post.

 

Still though, your idea, you're up to bat... I added on the other 2 questions because that is what fully entails fireteam. So if you can answer those 5 questions that you started that might actually be helpful. I know you cant sit here and say fire teams are fine so what do you think pertaining to those 5 questions?

 

I don't expect anyone to actually listen to me on this, but from a design standpoint I think there are a few pretty straightforward fixes to the Fireteam rules that wouldn't require totally scrapping the current system or overhauling anything in Army. Mixed fireteams are highly flavorful, and I really appreciate being able to include support troops or characters to give a link some extra oomph while allowing the weaker units to act as mooks escorting a key player in the scene. Darth Vader looked that much cooler when surrounded by stormtroopers, same principle applies here.

1. Implement diminishing returns. This is a natural self-balancing tweak to a system, and it should work just as well with fireteams as it does elsewhere. It also gives agency to the players.

In a nutshell, cap the modified BS of any member of a fireteam at 15. So if that trooper's BS skill + the five man bonus = adjusted BS of 16+, the bonus is reduced so the modifed BS = 15. This is equivalent to the best solo shooters, but it also means that an ORC in a full core benefits much less than a Fusilier—the ORC nets a +1 bonus from the full core, while the Fusilier gets the full +3.

This doesn't do much to tone down Marksmanship or MSV in a full link, but Bolts and Grenzers are both BS 13, so they're down to a +2 bonus from a full core link, which seems appropriate, and most MSV troopers that can go in a core are BS13, with just a few exceptions. Strong point men and AROs in a core link will still be strong, but just a wee bit less, and that may make SWC line troops more interesting since the more expensive premium shooters are that much less boosted by the link.

2. Reduce the coherency requirement from "all members" to "at least two other members" for Core links. Basically, when you check coherency, a model that's within ZoC of at least two other members of the fireteam is still coherent with the team as a whole. This ought to address the issue of how cumbersome a full Core fireteam is to maneuver on the table, but only helps 4- and 5-trooper Core links. Even if you applied it to a Haris it wouldn't do anything, and a Duo only has two members in the first place.

This incentivizes pain trains a bit, but frankly a static core is kind of a dull gameplay style IMO and mobile cores are harder to justify right now given how vulnerable they tend to be while moving out, and how finicky positioning gets for them. It also prevents the unlimited-range order efficiency of coordinated orders, so they don't lose value on the mobility side compared to a core link, and prevents the core from enabling a DZ sniper to get full bonuses while moving everyone else out. Template AROs are still a threat to the team, but they're going to be a little less devastating in the open and more threatening in narrow alleys or gaps, which seems flavorful.

3. Allow members to perform any Short Movement Skill or Look Out! without breaking the team. The main effect here is to permit some troopers to declare Move and others to declare a short Jump with super jump and others to Discover, but only the fireteam leader can actually execute Discover in the active turn, so the impact there is just to allow some of the team to reposition while the leader performs Discover or Discover+Shoot. Good, but (probably) not game-breaking since it means more chances for a trooper to be in the wrong place and provoke a missile ARO.

In ARO this change has no meaningful effect except to allow some team members to declare Look Out! and others to Discover without affecting coherence, since the only Short Movement Skill allowed in ARO is Discover. This also seems both flavorful and not OP, the squad goes on alert and someone tries to call for help while the others are trying to get a read on the incoming sensor blip.

4. (Optional!!!) Replace Sixth Sense with 360 Visor. I've got mixed feelings about this one, but I've seen it bandied about so I wanted to address it. It makes Core links worse at firing back through smoke or other visibility zones, but it also means that the fireteam can ARO with as many troops as can see you even if you don't attack them, so Cautious Move becomes mandatory and it's effectively impossible to cross wide firelanes in view of the team without eating up to ten dice of BS Attacks for your trouble, which means smoke gets that much more valuable against Core links both coming and going, and troops without smoke or a marker state can be easily pinned down by a full link even more than they are now.

I actually think this change makes core link AROs even more problematic than they are now, but maybe I'm in the minority.

 

Allow some type of suppression Fire and this would work great I think.

Maybe, allow one team member to be in Suppression Fire while the others can ARO as normal with the clapped bonus for all? This along with the looser coherency requirement is actually really what I could get behind. That and allow different AROs for team members so say that a combi guy can still discover a camo marker while leaving say an HMG in suppression fire?

 

The issue with links is the units that can be crammed into them and stacking bonuses. Not the link bonuses themselves.

It really just comes down to some factions having access to better toys, and those toys also being able to go into a link. It doesn't help that some factions got huge or advantageous reworks, and some just got ignored for the most part.

 

On the topic of fireteams, I play vanilla CA and don't really find them absolutely gamebreaking, specifically the boogeyman that is 1W MI sniper with MSV with cheap bodies for bonuses, it's way easier to deal with those now in N4 since every shotgun has a template mode, and you can use any model with a good delivery mechanism to trade for 1-2 models and then deal with a sniper much easier. But I do feel like fireteams skew balance too much, not in a playing sectorial over vanilla way, but in terms of what rules are actually good to have on your models: the combination of +3BS AND 6th sense with a lot of sectorial players in the meta makes tools like surprise attack, smoke+MSV2, white noise/albedo almost useless in most situations, because there's so few ARO units that aren't in a fireteam these days, and on top of that fireteams also make a lot of potentially viable ARO choices obsolete, because when you can slap +3BS on top of a wildcard likes on top of mimetism/msv/etc the only hard ARO units that have any chance are the same overbuffed wildcards in fireteams, TR-rems, Hidden deployment models with impact templates, and sometimes TAGs in cover if you can reliably fail guts and hide in total cover after taking a wound or two. For example, in vanilla CA I either take the Avatar, Sphinx, maaybe MSV3 HMG Charontid if I want to save some points, or just don't bother with direct gunfights and try to play with as much marker state/AD units with direct templates as possible to be able to trade for key units of the opponent's army and try to achive mission objectives outside of opponent's ARO's LoF.

I'm not sure if +3 BS and +1B mods should go, because it's a nice and simple buff and it doesn't really save fireteams from direct templates, but removing 6th sense would open a lot more possibilities to deal with fireteams in the active turn, while still keeping fireteams stronger in ARO than a single model. As far as what fireteams need - I think that some bonus to dodge/reset should be a good thing, because that'll help fireteams not be so vulnerable in the midfield, and should probably encourage a more active playstyle than putting a wildcard with 4 cheap bodies in your DZ and calling it a day, so mayby allow all fieteam members to declare dodge/reset even when they are attacked from outside LoF and ZoC, maybe with dodgee(re-roll) or +3 to dodge, so that it's easier to survive in reactive turn without making a lot of skills useless as it is now with sixth sense, maybe the game as a whole could benefit from splitting 6th sense into 2 different skills, one staying 6th sense with L1 and L2: L1 allowing to dodge/reset without LoF and Zoc requirements when attacked with no negative modes, L2 including L1 and allowing to declare a BS attack when targeted by a BS attack from outside LoF the same as 6th sense works now, and the other skill allowing to ignore surprise attack and -6 when shooting back through a zero viz zone, leaving only the L1 skill for fireteams, and giving L2 or ignoring surprise and smoke for specialized solo models, the same way that some models now have total reaction or Neurocinetics.

 

Sort of but not quite, just meeting a gear check so your list doesn't die isn't quite List Chicken. List Chicken is when gear checks have become ingrained into the game to the ultimate degree where they straight up decide games with almost complete certainty before they start. Comes from Warmachine where it wasn't uncommon to have players facing off knowing that between their List 1 crushed the opponent's list A and would get crushed by B, while the opposite was true for their 2nd list.

More or less the winner and loser is decided as soon as list selection is revealed and the actual (short lived) game is just formality.

Infinity isn't quite at that stage but if CB keep tossing in more gear checks that are harder and harder to answer then we run the risk of ending up there. One of the reasons I'm finding 400 points more balanced so far in N4 is that it's alot easier to organically meet current gear checks while also having room to comfortably tweak lists.

 

I used the "null" pretty loosely, I've been surprisingly using a lot more ARO in N4 than in N3.

I had basically no ARO whatsover in N3 outside of Noctifer / camo and very rare occasional Flash Bots.

But that might also be the faction that I play now compared to the factions I was previously playing.

 

When you play at 400 points what's the order cap you use?

 

Have soft counters become less viable?

 

15 orders still. Decision to keep it at 15 was because we didn't want ballooning army sizes, compounded by N4 price cuts to things, but also because it helps get middle tier units into the list. Things that aren't necessarily bad but often fall under the knife for the list of ruthlessly finding points to make sure you have Albedo or something that can answer a BS19 MSV Sniper. I like Tai Sheng for example, but she gets cut from alot of my IA lists because I need NCO but I also really need engineers to potentially answer hackers, so Krit often gives her the boot at 300 points.

That extra 100 points gives me enough breathing room to have both Krit and Tai, or I can pick up a Mowang. There are more units hitting lists because I have no slots left and I need to upgrade something, Line Infantry special weapons have been making it back into my lists because I have left over points and SWC.

It also does have some effect on blunting the ability for player 1 to unleash a crippling alpha strike, lists can naturally wind up with a bit of extra redundancy with more valuable units making it onto the table that an Impersonator or aggressive Uxia/Andromeda/warband making a one way trip to trade for something important doesn't have quite the same level of effect on the game.

 

As long as we're on this topic, Tohaa are still too powerful, and Nomads have too much good stuff.

 

But does opportunity cost come into play or can they really afford to have it all in one list...

 

Why

 

5-man core was a mistake.