I think that is an important point. I feel that in N4 going first it's more important than N3. N4 has more thing that can come in your deploy and if you are not one of the few faction that has powerful Fireteam pointman it's better to hide and pray. I think this happen because scenario don't put enough pressure, so you can go in Killer mode at least for T1. As I said above I think that the player going first should have a limit on how many order he may spend. On fireteam I think an option could be to have different bonus between Active and Reactive. Maybe the extra burst can be a bonus only on ARO while in Active, instead of the +3 BS, the Leader gain MSV3 rules.
Yes, my thought was that having some bonuses apply in either Reactive or Active, rather than both by default, would help offset some of the current balance issues and make the fireteams more flavorful and unique. My core link idea is stylized after a modern military fireteam, where you likely have an light machine gun, marksman rifle, light grenade launcher, and some riflemen. In the active turn, the team leader is benefiting from spotting and covering fire from the rest of the team (hence the +3 BS), but in the reactive turn they provide overwatch against enemy maneuvers (represented by entering the suppressive fire state or gaining +1B if they can't/don't enter suppressive fire). I think making the Enomotarchos name more generic and then expanding its availability to units in other factions that also fit the "move fast and smash things" approach of Steel Phalanx (JSA, MO, ISS, etc) would probably be a reasonable approach. I think many links that are currently Core could be removed in favor of one of the more flavor-appropriate styles that I've presented.
I've been playing seriously for a number of years, and Australians having an inflated sense of their own competence at the game since COVID when they were involved in more events than most of the world has been noted.
You were suggesting outflanking your opponent somehow. Outflanking a repeater net is a very questionable suggestion; it doesn't have facing.
It feels like a lot of the balance issues hinge upon the fact that while an uber-buffed Core fireteam/turn-one alpha strike/pitcher Lieutenant hack can technically be 'balanced' by specific counters, it takes a game that should be the decided by the results of many small decisions and their outcomes over time and replaces it with an "All-in" approach, wherein one event/roll has an inordinate impact on deciding the game. The paper/rock/scissors analogy from the OP is actually a pretty good description of this, incidentally, because a single random outcome determines the winner. Whether it's balanced or not, if the entire match is decided based on which side's Core crumbles first or whether or not the Lieutenant goes down turn one, it's not going to be fun. Certainly any rules/balance improvements that can get away from the *cough* GW *cough* approach of "we balanced out how good this is by making a huge penalty for failure" are welcome.
@Muad'dib Conceptually I like your idea for different types of teams having different abilities but I just thought of the fact that CB is trying to simplify things and perhaps they would try to keep things as simple as possible. In those terms everyone can build up to remembering of theres a number of members they dye bonuses while if we started giving different abilities to different teams people would start to struggle what has what and then inadvertantly cheating and longer play would ensue. In sorry, I do like your idea but I also see this happening.
Well the alternative to nerfing present things in the game is escalating everyone's ability to mitigate losses.
I've talked to both RobertShepherd and Hecaton in voice chat and they are both quite nice guys when not posting on the forums :)
I can certainly see some good points being raised and after 15 pages we've had no proper flame wars so this is remarkable too. I've been playing since n2 and was a warcor for a long stretch. I can't add much to the discussion as hardly played n4 (handful of face to face and a smattering of TTS) but I broadly agree on power banding. The factions I own have a huge disparity in tools available to them. The games in n4 have so far been much more lethal than previous editions, we've actually had tablings several times which we've never had before in other editions due, largely, to tool removal (the dudes with a big gun dies, then enemy heavy hitter mops up with 0 threat). I get the rationale for spotlight aro changes, they wanted hacking to be better against factions that otherwise could ignore it, but guided is back now to being useful after an edition on the shelf and tools like U-turn on every hacker have disappeared. I think n4 is OK in mechanical structure of rules but agree that balance needs to be looked at. U-turn and ECM could definitely be more widespread and wardrivers, KHDs and such could be made more useful to expand toolkits available. Internal balance certainly needs looking at in a lot of factions. Covid's effect on playtesting is quite evident as there are some bonkers units and some hopelessly outclassed units
