Ok, I'll bite. Why? Because as it stands then sectorials would be literally meaningless apart from some uncommon AVA discrepancies. And NA2 armies, I guess.
Well... I started playing just before original Human Sphere. When the original Fireteam rules were released I was pretty excited. But after my first game with them I realized they changed the game in a lot of ways I just didn't care for. And to be fair, in some ways I found interesting too. As time went on and I continued to play through N2 and into N3 I found I really preferred games that didn't have Fireteams at all. In late N3 and now in N4 the emphasis on Fireteams is extreme, and in my opinion, pretty unattractive. I've always found Infinity to be a cleaner, more elegant and more interesting game without Fireteams. As for Sectorials... I think they're fine without Fireteams. I played MAF all through N2 and N3 mostly without Fireteams. Military Orders, pre- Uprsing JSA and Qapu too. Fireteams are definitely a sectorial strength, but especially these days they seem to entirely dictate every aspect of a sectorial. Instead of playing a sectorial for its flavor I feel like I'm playing it for convoluted optimized Fireteams. In some cases entire sectorials feel like thats all they offer at all. I think sectorials can stand on their own with increased AVA (and decreased vanilla AVA in some cases), unique profiles and unique units.
They absolutely cant and would become unplayable joke/challenge choices in any remotely competitive environment such drastic change would require complete overhaul of the game profiles
Oh, but you can't sell big boxes of dudes that way! People will only buy 1-2 op profiles + cheerleaders
So the problem with fireteams are the bonuses and absurd complexity of legal fireteams. With the first problem I would seriously consider deleting all the bonuses. And have them function exactly the same as coordinated orders but with a coherency requirement. That way the five man bonus relative to the 5 man bonus is you are activating 5 men instead of 4. To counterbalance this, let the now much-rarer burst mods count in ARO, and remove the restriction on splitting fire in ARO. Some flow on consequences of this: Consolidation of the rules. Fireteams now abide by rules in the rulebook. Immediate shift of emphasis from team leader to the team. The ideal fireteam is diverse, but requires significant SWC investment to dominate firefights at long range, rather than being the brainless point and click minmax wildcard team leader with dominating stats. To fight at range you want at least a HMG and a MSR/Missile in the team. Leveraging the fireteam bonuses makes you vulnerable to impact templates, unless you are very tactical with your team placement, like gaining LOF to the target from multiple corners (something which deserves a reward). If you try to get the shooting advantage of a fireteam by having 5 guys slice the pie at the same corner, all 5 of them will get hit by the template. More weapons become interesting, slicing the pie with fireteams becomes a huge risk. The end of ridiculous BS creep. The ARO capability of fireteams and all sectorials are seriously nerfed. ARO buffs are needed, some proposed above but maybe go further. The ARO benefit of a fireteam becomes putting up to 5 guys in suppression in one order. This is an incentive to push combi rifle LI fireteams into combat range. Multiple visors in a fireteam is no longer bloat because everyone shoots You could have more generalised linkability rules because it's harder to inadvertently elevate a unit to godhood. Fireteams don't go limp at their first casualty. Less answer to smoke trick because less Sixth sense, but the smokes are likely weaker. A tradeoff in fireteam use. Being in a fireteam limits your maximum burst rather than buffing it. S-tier gunfighters are better off alone, whilst medium and low tier HMGs are better off in the link. A return of the Fusilier/Zhanshi/Ghulam/et al. HMG to the game. I'm sure there's more. I think most of this is positive. ARO is too weak in N4 but fireteam-elevated gods are not a good solution.
This sounds unplayable So you are shooting at range 16+ B2 Brigada HMG on 13s plus uhh 4 alguaciles B1 each on 5s and pray to nomad gods that you are not shooting at something with visual mods Why bother with that garbage and not run Intruder or Gecko with honest B4 BS13
I don't think thats true at all. I think increased AVA, unique profiles and unique units could make sectorials worthwhile on their own. Especially if vanilla had much more limited AVA. Yes, it would involve re-writing most sectorials. So what. That happens every few years anyway. It JSUT happened, and what we have is the current Fireteam mess as a result, where every sectorial is a puzzle with a single super optimized Fireteam solution. As it is right now, sectorials are almost universally only worth looking at for Fireteams, and I find that very boring.
As a Yu jing player I would see no reason to play for example white banner and invincible, over vanilla, if the fire team rules are not good enough. Same situation in a lot of other big factions maybe, like pano, nomad, aleph. Shure I would consider it if some hot great models where sectorials only. Lets say CB moves daofoi, long ya and hundun over to White banner only. So not in vanilla and other yu jing sectorials. That however would mean not only a rewrite of linkteam-rules, but are a workthrough of all armies ala N5. Would also make the players riot I think. Seems highly unlikely. What we are getting are likely minor adjustment .
What we have now is units like ORCs, Shang-Ji, Mobile Brigadas and Suryats actually seeing table time thanks to fireteam compositions instead of warming shelves at home. And there are dozens of units designed for use in fireteams first and foremost (most Dire Foes characters for example) - they would instantly be thrown away in favor of units with raw stats and skill advantage. AVA is non-universal solution since more than often it is increased for costly units that dont increase their value in numbers and are good mostly for meme lists. There should be way more unique profiles, yes, but I think only with fireteams as the main reason to play sectorial armies. N4 fireteams are already hit hard due to sixth sense nerf, they are extremely vulnerable in reactive turn
Why can you only envisage engagements at long range? Why are you imagining one good unit and 4 shit ones as the default for a fireteam? It's because you've been conditioned by broken fire teams. The whole purpose of the proposal is to change that. Snap out of it. If fireteams were forced to be diverse to be good, it's a good thing for the game. Why not give one of the Algs a missile launcher in your example?
Because spending 1.5 swc on a B1 BS11 1W 1 ARM troop without mods is beyond retarded? I totally agree with that, the only way those cheerleaders remain viable as a fireteam is being cheap and getting BS bonus. Unless you drop ZOC requirement, of course, that might give them some use.
See it wouldn't be if the standard ARO threat wasn't dirt cheap, BS16 with burst 2. And it wouldn't be if it was mainly getting normal rolls or allowing the spearhead to get 2 normal rolls because the target'd rather tank 2 hits from a HMG than one from a missile. Your response may be conditioned by the current BS power gap created by cheap fireteams. With this change you would have to pay for a premium pano HI or TAG to get BS 15 and get one, maybe two orders out of it rather than 5. The comment was in the context of the proposed change.
well, if you want to go out from your Dep zone, you first need to take down the enemy ARO pieces, and you put your bonuses in your strong tools, usually the fireteam.
I can absolutely see Fireteams being removed to be a valid approach, but it would require some pretty heavy modifications across all factions to make sure there is enough AVA shifts and faction-unique profiles to give enough advantage to even out the loss of options. What I mean is; there's a number of somewhat unique profiles out there that are standing out (e.g. the Grenzer sniper that's the only Grenzer with an MSV), what if these profiles were unique to the sectorial and a lot more common? Getting a Kamau sniper in vanilla Pan-O? You get it cheaper than Varuna does, 'cause it doesn't have MSV2. Or imagine if the argument for playing Invincible Army was that (among other things) Mowang had a profile with Camouflage there? That kind of special profile shenaniganry. Like meaningful extra abilities. The main issue I see with this is how much it would inflate the value of Blitzen and Panzerfaust armed cheap troops. Coordinated Orders for the most part aren't about punching hard, but about moving lots of stuff most of the time, unless you're using it to take out a Kamau sniper who will no longer be as oppressive. The question would be if the Fireteams are informal or if you still need to juggle with formal Fireteams that cost Command Tokens to form and that will remove your burst until broken? Still, my guts tells me that for most sectorials this will not be enough to mitigate the advantage that vanilla would have.
I don't really have a problem with Blitzen and Panzerfaust becoming meta, I tend not to use them much at present and they can be costed appropriately, as should most cheap troops. They are also stymied by needing to be reloaded and wont be fired at ridiculous BS to cost ratios under this idea. As for t link formation rules, I like the approach of the original proposal in the thread, that they be more generalised, but still formal. I'd be happy if the more generalised rules are more liberal about what can link, because without the buffs to individual models nothing gets pushed to ridiculous heights. Fire teams become about teams firing, not tethered cheerleaders pouring abstract buffs into a single elevated unit, to such an extent that it is ruining the game.
I can see the merits of a very light-touch fireteam formation that's strictly speaking informal similar to what you suggest. If they worked like Coordinated Orders with a Zone of Control limit (or more appropriately perhaps, a temporary Peripheral Control), that would be a good argument for simply removing command token requirement and not much else. Just add a skill "Wildcard" which says they can be part of a Fireteam Order, have the Core, Duo, Triad, Haris, and Enamotarchos skills say they can be Spearheads in the corresponding Fireteam Orders and then each time you spend an order on these units you can choose to activate up to <fireteam limit> troopers with the same unit name and/or Wildcard skill in Zone of Control using initial Coherency measure. Not sure if this would be too strong or too weak, but the only issue I can see is there being difficulties having a consequence for failing final Coherency. On the other hand, I don't see these fireteams as working if they're formally created (er... that's to say formed using Command Tokens and persisting in a perpetual state until cancelled or failed) simply because there's too many scenarios where they're actually a direct detriment to be part of such a Fireteam
No I am conditioned by Proxy Mk2 snipers and Noctifiers who would lock that "fireteam" without hope in a deployment zone
Noctifier zones current fireteams. Proxy 2s are supposed to be hard to hit for Brigadas, and a coordinated order is more likely to land something. Turning a brigada into the brainless answer for everything down to TO snipers across the board isn't good for the game anyway.
It would zone your concept of fireteams just the same - he rolls 12 or 15 against everyone in a team who cant drown him in dice and are disadvantaged due to range and visual modes. Inability to concentrate brute force of 5 dice and bonus +MOD in a single piece would make fireteams extremely suboptimal compared to single pieces that dont need to be babysit to even participate in a simple FTF engagement against ARO pieces with minimal order investment.
And that's a good thing! The less powerful the unit on its own, the better off it is in this theoretical fireteam. Fireteams were supposed to be about getting cheerleaders into action, not mistakenly elevating certain units that are already good to godhood. I don't disagree, but out of curiosity, what scenario is there other than wanting to use full burst?
