I'm liking how it's done with Monks in White Banner. They have to at least take the more expensive characters of Liang Kai or Jing Qo. That is their "payment". I can't just form duos of Shaolin and they become regular. One thing to note: Irregular troops that can form fireteams, can't use those irregular orders unless they break the fireteam. They also autmatically loose the Impetuous order if they start as a team. I know some say it's more efficient but I disagree. I can move two monks once with one precious regular order, or I can move them both twice with Impetuous and Irregular order. Where it is more efficient is if use the Imp and Ireg then form them into a fireteam after that. But then that's using a Command Token. What I don't want is groups of impetuous troops with no special cost of a character or something, being able to ignore it. It's not like they have a strong leader reminding them of their job. I propose a new FTO troop that must be taken for them that adds a cost for them to ignore the Frenzy or Impetuous.
That's an interesting idea, though I'm afraid it'd make the game even more focused on special characters, which is something that I increasingly dislike. What I'd prefer is to remove the general rule about fireteams suppressing Frenzy and Impetuous, and adding it as a fireteam rule for those units which would cause balance problems should they be able to use Impetuous orders while linked.
I'm not saying a character in this case. For example Minimum one Riot Grrl FTO who has nothing but he most basic weapons and costs more. That would be to ignore the Impet/Frenzy. If they don't take it, they would be subject to it. Edit: This is for example RIOT GRRL FTO/Skill/Thing that allows ingoring frenzy Combi Rifle, Blitzen / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 48) RIOT GRRL (Specialist Operative) Combi Rifle, Blitzen / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 29) RIOT GRRL Boarding Shotgun ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 29) RIOT GRRL Spitfire / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 33) RIOT GRRL Missile Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 32)
It's an idea, though it'd also be going slightly back to times when you needed a specific unit to even form a fireteam. Less pronounced in this case, but still. It'd also require additional notes about what exactly this particular FTO does.
Easy, you can't claim partial cover while impetuous, Frenzy can still trigger while you're in a fireteam, and using an Impetuous order while in a fireteam activates the entire fireteam, but an impetuous model must be the fireteam leader, only one impetuous order can be spent per fireteam per active turn, and non-impetuous troopers in an impetuous fireteam are considered to have performed an idle for both of their short skills.
This is one of the things I just don't consider much of an issue. You get some cheaper troopers in a link, which is typically what makes it a good choice. Since the game was "balanced" based around that, we'd need to see a reduction in cost even further. TBH, I don't think it's a big deal. Let alone one of the more important balance issues facing Infinity. However, if I were to do it, I would make a Skill that allows a unit, when in a link, to suppress Impetuous members. Kill that member, the Impetuous members lose their cover bonuses.
Are you sure its fine? Compare these examples: Crane ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13) CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13) CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13) CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13) CRANE AGENT (X Visor) Spitfire, Nanopulser(+1B) ( ) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (1.5 | 49) 1.5 SWC | 101 Points Open in Infinity Army and Asawira ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 GHULAM Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11) GHULAM Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11) GHULAM Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11) GHULAM Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11) ASAWIRA AP Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 39) 1.5 SWC | 83 Points Open in Infinity Army Or Jujak ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 JUJAK Missile Launcher, Light Flamethrower / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 33) JUJAK Spitfire, Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 32) JUJAK (Engineer, Deactivator) Boarding Shotgun, Panzerfaust, D-Charges ( | GizmoKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 30) JUJAK Boarding Shotgun, Panzerfaust ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 28) JUJAK Combi Rifle, Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 26) 3 SWC | 149 Points Open in Infinity Army and Riot ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 RIOT GRRL Spitfire / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 33) RIOT GRRL Missile Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 32) RIOT GRRL Boarding Shotgun ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 29) RIOT GRRL (Specialist Operative) Combi Rifle, Blitzen / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 29) RIOT GRRL Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 27) 3 SWC | 150 Points Open in Infinity Army INB4 YJ salt accusations. I know YJ units best, so its easier for me to use them as examples, but I bet other factions have similar units that just look like overcosted and inferior versions of things like this, that cheat point formula with disadvantage that doesn't do anything other than prividing free discounts.
You could also compare Teuton and Hospitaller, where ironically enough just the small extra discount of the Teuton is considered much more important than the combat ability the Hospitaller gains, though that balance might have been upset by the fireteam alterations preventing Teutons from getting a full bonus.
Impetuous models are not able to claim Cover even in Fireteam. Impetuous activation of a single model kicks it out of the team. IF AND ONLY IF the entire Fireteam is Impetuous, a single Impetuous Fireteam activation is allowed if none of the members had previously used it. Simple as that.
A lot of the arguemnts here focus too much on individual problems between troop X and Y from where I stand. Are Riot Grrrls better than almost any other HI Core Link? Yes. Are Riot Grrrls broken? No. What's the actual problem then? Expensive Links performing badly relative to their cost except when they are get to leverage good kits, weapon layouts AND are cost effective (i.e. through Frenzy). Is a Hospitaler Core good? No. Why not? Their fillers are significantly more expensive and significantly more vulnerable to the most basic threat, getting shot in the face, despite overall better stats. Imho the problem isn't solveable balance wise. You can not make 5 man Core Links work without changing/adding Fireteam boni to something that increases defense, rather than offense potential. You can try a convoluted system where every Sectorial gets their Special Core with special boni (a bit more impactful than gaining Terrain Skills) to offset systemic disadvantages (such as lacking food fillers or Frenzy) and it will eventually just bloat the game and get out of hand again with some clearly being better than others. The current 5 man fireteam failed. It's simply not adding enjoyable gameplay. It's stressing to even deploy one, not to mention trying to move one around the table. Fixing Fireteams from the ground up would mean to fix the main problems, point investment and footprint. The only way I see to achieve that is to make them less of an all eggs in one basket thing. Reducing the footprint to 3 members max would avoid the problem that you move more than half your points around in one clunky mess that dies to a funny guy in a Camo Suit with a ML (exaggeration, but you get the point). You can't remove the problem of Fireteams being efficient to kill by means that exploit them having to stick together. But you can improve the risk management involved by making it less of an investment and spreading it out across more evenly across the whole list. From where I stand Vanilla armies are significantly more powerful than Sectorials at this point and functional Fireteams for every Sectorial is the one tool to fix that across the board. The recent Fireteam Update has been a step into the opposite direction. While the quality of life improvements and improved readability in army are nice, balance is worse than ever. The game would be much better off if the usual Sectorial Layout was 1-2 Haris Teams and a Core Team of 3 members each, with the Core Team slot simply providing better boni. Ofc none of that is gonna happen at this point, or rather not in N4, maybe in N5. So I'd just settle for some easy quality of life improvements for Links, that are unrelated to the above and should be treated separately (would stack nicely though). The main problem bad fireteams have are their fillers not being able to defend themselves properly, especailly after another member already dropped. DTW/SMG/Shotgun Profiles with secondary long range options are a lot better at dealing with this. Rifle based troops in Fireteams and SWC weapons are pretty much always glaring weakpoints. - Spearheads aren't used as Link anchor (meaning, any team member can be used to validate Coherency checks, same as now everyone has to be in ZoC to the same guy, but it can be someone else than the leader), simply allows the Fireteam to position better, spread out properly to defend itself and avoid becoming template food. - SF no longer boots you out of a Fireteam, the bonus just doesn't stack (Rifle equivalents are worse and more expensive than any of the cheaper options, i.e. LSG+PZF, SMG+Blitzen, it's downright ridiculous) - enable the possibility to make use of this during deployment and during the game in limited capacity (i.e. like with a Coordinated Order, just applied to a Link instead with the use of a Command Token)
I think it's simple as fairness. Troops were given a disadvantage of Impetuous and Frenzy for a reason. Then they are given something that allows them to completely ignore that disadvantage without paying for it appropriately. They may have done other things in the faction to balance that out, but how the hell are we supposed to see it without studying it!?
