Oooh, that's an interesting idea, but I'm having a few problems with how this would be balanced in practice, mainly for speculative fire and in the first turn and for Markers (Camo and Holo1/2) I guess you could solve it by a) teaching players that trying to ARO the opponent's DZ in first turn is extra bad and b) using FO cancels the Marker state similar to how using a Repeater cancels the Marker state.
Taking out SSL2 from fireteams would be ok...if all sectorials had MSV2 in enough numbers, but that would make angry pano, so no. For it to be gone, it would be needed a revamp of more than half of the sectorials, and to take out stealth from some units. that will make easier to take out the bonus with cheap or template aros, and kill out LI fireteams, and make unworth almost all fireteams in ARO. In my meta, some people thougt was a bit too OP, so we tryed in a small campaign (it was n2 though). It was a total mess and we droped the idea for our local campaigns
It's fine to have 6S ignore smoke shooting as it would be utterly oppressive (not that you can't replicate this anyway), stripping the ability to ignore Surprise from both levels would bring it back down and at least add some counter play to the +3BS. Then they just need to clean up those rules so it doesn't turn any time it interacts with any other rule in to an utter cluster.
Eclipse grenades become ubiquitous and completely replace regular smoke grenades after the time jump due to cheaper production?
The only nerf should go no further than removing Smoke from the Impetuous table. As is it has two functions: a bad ODD and a screen for movement and button pushing. Replacing it with Eclipse will just make one of the features (specifically the one that removes player interaction) even more problematic while nerfing something that is an order sink if you want to use it. Oh and maybe allow MSV1 to mitigate the penalty of smoke (possibly see through it at a penalty).
Having MSV1 downgrade smoke from a Zero Vis to Low Vis would also work. Granted, then we might see an MSV dominated meta crop up, buuuuuuuut... we're kinda inside there already thanks to Smoke?
I think SS2 should be reduced to SS1 and smoke trick should be directly nerfed to make up for it. Right now firing thru smoke is very powerful, so it is limited to being used against the targets that you need it least for (anything but a link). My Intruders often flip a switch between useless and overbearing. Removing smoke from impetuous units might have helped but that ship has probably sailed even between edition changes.
They could make smoke go from zero visibility to -6 mod to BS attacks, that way smoke still does its job, but the smoke trick is not as good.
You are forgetting the part where you can shoot 5 ARO pieces one after another even though they would all shoot you in the face at the same time without smoke.
I think you forget how easy it is for a piece to slice a pie in this game, so the ODD piece will take just as many AROs as the MSV2 piece would.
So the whole point of sectorials (apart from, apparently, 2 of those) is to turn 1-2 models into murder machines by giving them 4-3 otherwise pretty useless cheerleaders and kill the sh*t out of your opponent. Got it. What's even a point in that? Pick a sectorial with the most handsome linkable gunfighter (Mimetism+MSV2) and cheap fillers and call it a day, why even bother with other inferior lists? ...I'm strictly against the +3 BS bonus and will always be. It's unfun to play with or against and is always a highlight of whole sectorials, because apparently there's nothing good in them otherwise. Just get rid of that bonus, or just scrap sectorials altogether, if they only got one good thing about them.
No, their are other things to sectorials thean that bonus. While that may be the main bonus to sectorials, their is also the higher AVA and, to a lesser note, the theme. Trust me I get where you are coming from, I am a vanilla 012 player, but fire teams have weakness that counteract it, such as the coherency. The main thing about fire teams that needs changed is the sixth sense level 2, which i hope will get changed.
Well depends on your stance on the entire "intent" discussion. It also helps against hidden deployment troops. Or moving into better rangebands. Or moving into cover. Or not having a firefight at all. I'm not saying we should nerf smoke into the ground but just calling it "bad ODD" is lacking.
Alright, at least remove cross-tier linkability. You either save up points and get 5 basic guys to A tier gunfighters through teamwork, or go all out and buff your best unit to S+ tier by spending much more points.
I see what your saying, but that would be confusing to put in, and clarify, in the rules, (at least from a pratical stand point). But not all sectorials have the "A tier" guys. As an example Shas only has one person that can go in a core link and is "A team" so they must use line infintry. And for those that do have the HI link thats all they use, looking at you Invicble Army ;). Besides, what would no cross tier linkability accomplish?
No it really doesn't. Call it "different ODD", then. Most of the time I'd prefer to have straight up ODD instead of MSV2 and smoke (except against MSV1 and other smokers, of course). You have to be a lot more passive and stationary using smoke to gain MODs. Still doesn't change that what's most open for abuse isn't MOD stacking (because the active player will do that anyway, and I really don't think the reactive player should ever have the right to be entitled their beneficial MODs), but blocking off LOS so that you can push buttons and bypass the strongest AROs so changing them all to Eclipse will make the bad part worse and remove the interactive part.
That's also true. The concequences of an ARO that nothing on the table can reliably beat is bad for the game. IMO that should never be the case if you go first and are on turn 1. You're supposed to have to be careful deploying your ARO troops.
