@horizon What I mean is that the pre-existing tilt to escorts is increased when they get 1 shield per HP and cruisers get only 1 shield for every 6 HP!
It would be interesting if Corsairs had no shields but Craftworlders did.
Not that any of this is new, but I think the biggest mechanical issue with BBB Eldar is how the second move exploits the biggest weakness of the IGoUGo system’s representation of simultaneity (giving artificial resilience because nothing can react). I don’t think the holofields in BBB are as much of a problem except that they disproportionately affect lances to an extent that’s bad for game balance, but they’re pretty easy to tweak.
But the MSM mechanic seems pretty core to at least Corsair Eldar and you lose a lot of the feel when going to MMS (as well as you miss out on the Uboat-like tactics). Ideally, one could fix this with alternating activations (BFG2020 away!), but if you’re sticking with IGoUGo and you want to keep the MSM character, I think you’d need one or some combination of the following: a reaction fire mechanism, a firepower output reduction when using MSM, reduce the success rate of MSM, or everyone gets a ‘submarine’-type unit that uses similar rules to MSM (probably + holofields).
If you make MSM harder then you get the issue MMS had where you need to up the resilience a lot because BBB Eldar are fragile enough that pulling MSM off becomes a bit of a binary ‘no cost to Eldar’ versus ‘maximum cost, Eldar ship dies’.
I like the idea of using CTANH to reduce firepower because it gives the player a meaningful choice about whether they want to risk the lower firepower and chance of failure for a MSM ambush versus setting up an ambush the hard way without relying upon MSM’s ability to almost-trivially escape.
Now for the unpopular ideas
I personally like the idea of escorts being able to fire reaction fire (i.e. shoot their guns in the opponent’s move phase, in lieu of their own shooting phase). It gives them a solid role that they really want for (at the moment, everyone but Corsairs basically has ‘torpedo boat’, ‘supplemental firepower’, and ‘a few more turrets’) and follows history by allowing escorts to deter ‘submarine’ attacks.
Giving everyone a escort submarine with Eldar the only ones with cruiser+ subs is an interesting idea for balance, but I’m not sure it really suit BFG so well.
Now obviously the overall question is whether any of these things do enough to counteract the egregious turn order artefact that allows MSM to work in IGoUGo. I’m guessing MMS tried out some of these ideas? If it were me doing this round of XR, I would have probably taken MSM Corsairs and added the CTANH requirement, and changed holofields to either use the tracing mechanism or made lances count as WBs against them, and just done some balance tweaks. Maybe Craftworlders could have some shields (probably 5+ armour at least); it makes sense to me that they’d have shields where Corsairs might not, but I know they’re there primarily because of the MMS changes. I’m not sure how much @Xca|iber considered those ideas, but maybe some food for thought to at least settle some questions!
(obviously, @Xca|iber, this is theoretical and I don’t mean to unduly influence ye to throw the hard work out the window!)
