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Okay, so here are my squads:
Crisis Team 1:
1x Crisis Suit w/ Missile Pod, Drone Controller, Target Lock
2x Crisis Suits (loadoud doesn't matter)
6x Markerlight Drones
Crisis Team 2:
1x Crisis Suit w/ Missile Pod, Drone Controller, Target Lock
2x Crisis Suits (loadoud doesn't matter)
6x Markerlight Drones
Crisis Team 3:
1x Crisis Suit w/ Missile Pod, Drone Controller, Target Lock
2x Crisis Suits (loadoud doesn't matter)
6x Markerlight Drones

Crisis team 1 fires at a squad. BS3 markerlights so lets say 3 hit. The squad is not destroyed, and it has 3 markerlight tokens now on it.
Crisis Team 2 fires at a different squad. The crisis suit with the drone controller uses his target lock to fire at the other squad with 3 markerlight tokens on it, and expends 2 of them to increase his ballistic skill to 5. The markerlight drones are now BS5 shooting at a different squad than Crisis team 1
Crisis team 3 continues to chain more BS5 drones onto a new squad

Finally, your broadsides and their missile drones all fire at BS5 at Squad2's target (3 markerlights remaining on average) (or BS4 and strip cover), or your broadsides fire at BS5 and strip cover at squad 3's markerlighted target.


Is this legit? Can I do this? It seems entirely possible going just by the rules.

Clever but I would lean towards no. RAW Yes, RAI no.
RAW: He counts as the +2 to his BS for that shooting attack which happens simultaneously as the other one. The BS modifier takes effect before any shots are fired.
RAI: I don't believe it should help the other shooting because it really doesn't make any sense on why it should. Yes I know its Warhammer 40k and half of it doesn't make sense. But it is stretching the rules a bit.

So basically you're saying right now it's OK RAW, but likely to get FAQ'd if it becomes a popular tactic?

More of RAW it works, but RAI that shouldn't work that way. Its a little too cheesy and I wouldn't do it.

Does seem to work that way, and i dont think its cheesy at all. You are expending so many markerlights just to keep buffing more markerlight drones with the accompanying crisis suits dont get any benefit at all. All this does is after a cycle of those, you get about 3 markerlights on each targeted squad with few units left to shoot at them.

You are spending 72pts to place 3 marker lights, or 24pts per markerlight which is the same as a marker drone's points per markerlight is (BS3, so 24pts for 1 markerlight).

In your example:

Targetted Squad A: 1 markerlight left
Targetted Squad B: 3 markerlight left
Targetted Squad C: 5 markerlight left

but if you just use the same squads on the same target:

Targetted Squad A: 3 markerlight left
Targetted Squad B: 3 markerlight left
Targetted Squad C: 3 markerlight left

since the crisis suit squads wont be using any markerlights. All this does is spread the markerlights in a different way. using an entire xv8 squad to effectively place one markerlight on squad A is not worth it, if squad C really needs to die, you might as well use two xv8 squads to mark squad C so that they have 6 markerlights

It doesn't work by RAW, pinpoint specifically only applies to models firing at the target.

Any models in the Tau unit who are not firing at the enemy unit with the markerlight tokens on it gain no benefit from the pinpoint rule.

edit: Upon further review I believe the others are correct that this works, the drones inherit the modified BS even though they aren't targeting the same enemies.

I'll give you that. I guess that's the problem with 6 shots per squad. +1 to BS results in exactly +1 to average markerlight results so it's null and void. The gain is when the squads are kitted out such that all members of the Crisis team have target locks and are shooting at the prior squad, which means you're giving +1-2 BS and whatever for basically free markerlight tokens. Really my squads are as follows:
Crisis Team:
1x Suit with MP, DC, TL
2x Suit with weapon, weapon, TL
6x markerlight drones.

Yes it's 15 points in target locks, but it enables me to chain them in this fashion and it basically gives me army wide BS5. Also when the chain is started by my commander and his markerlight drones, I don't even have to worry about the initial BS3 firing. Honestly if this is legal (and it sounds like it is), this is the way I'm going to try playing Tau. Tau with army-wide BS5 and plenty of ablative wounds on my Crisis teams sounds pretty awesome.

Fitting for Codex: Markerlights.

Some markerlight action with your markerlight action.