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Avatar 720 wrote:

GW will never give them BS4 though because of their whole "we have bad depth perception" excuse.

I already gave them a valid reason in the form of using new technology that has entered a wider testing stage, possibly a better targeting array.

Targeting arrays were previously kept for battlesuits, but after extensive field testing on veterans, they have been rolled out to Pathfinder teams for further testing.

Instant BS4 excuse.

Or, the easier way...retcon.

Also, they gave them bad depth perception and then gave them multi-spectral vision so their excuse has actually become "they can't aim because their eyesight is better than humans"

no the excuse still stands they can't aim because they can't tell how far away something is. The simple fact is that while yes they haven't explicitly said "firewarriors will never be bs4" they've more than given a plethora of excuses. And while Ward does indeed love the retcon (necrons anyone?) given GW's love of SM over xenos I think it's safe to say they'll never give squads with rg 30 S5 AP5 weapons standard bs 4 because then they'd be better than astartes at shooting. can't have that. In a more logical sense: any tau old enough to have become a veteran is either a sergeant (which in game almost never have different bs than their squads) an honor guardsman (who do have bs4 but are only around ethereals) or a battle suit pilot (who should get bs 4 anyways because they're in a robot with targetting systems..god that irks me). Suffice to say that the standard vets that exist in armies like IG are almost never foot infantry in a tau army. Still, suits (stealth crisis and broadside) should totally all have bs 4. But you give bs 4 to firewarriors you'll make them better than SM at shooting (so GW will never do it, even dire avengers have to take an upgrade to shoot better than astartes and their shooting comes with drawbacks) and you'll make them capable of destroying even the most stubborn blob squad before that unit can charge
30 guys at 30" vs 12 FW
round 1 12 shots, 8 hit, 6.66 wound, 6.66 die because AP5
round 2, squad has moved 6", still out of range, ran 3", 12 shots, 8 hit, 6.66 wound, 13.32 dead total (already almost half the squad)
round 3 squad moves 6" runs 4", rapid fire 24 shots, 16 hit, 13 wound, 26.32 dead (leaving 4 guys before they're even in charge range)
assuming cover, more guys will live but take longer to get there due to difficult terrain.
giving FW BS4 and a pulse rifle standard would make them the most beligerant sons of bitches on earth to any non SM army.

Congratulations, you created a detailed response about why FWs shouldn't be BS4, despite the fact i've been talking about Pathfinders.

The excuse does not stand, if they can create arrays for battlesuits from vehicle systems, it's not that unbelievable to suggest that they can create experimental arrays for Pathfinders from the battlesuit systems. All they're doing is downsizing and compacting.

If you'd told the inventor of the computer that it's possible to get handheld devices far more powerful than the behemoths he'd just created, he'd have laughed at you, yet here we are with computers in our phones, and music collections that clip to your belt, and in the grand scheme of things, it didn't take us very long at all to do it.

Downsizing and compacting isn't impossible, and it won't always take thousands of years to develop. It's very plausible to suggest that, especially with the aid of other races, the Tau managed to integrate a lot of new technology in a short space of time, which fits their background as a young empire that is quick to develop and adapt.

I would love to see Pathfinders truly become the "special" forces of the Tau, give them one more possible Railrifle (total of 4) so it can be 4 shooters 4 spotters, or carbines, or even Pulse rifles, all with target locks, so maximum versitility, and any non rail rifle pathfinder has a markerlight.

Now BS 4 on pathfinders would be nice, and somewhat fluffy if they did indeed make them a elite/vet unit, personally I have zero problems with BS 3, on firewarriors, and make it work on the Pathfinders, but would not turn my nose up at a BS increase.

Just give me more versitility and options, and I will be a happy Shas'O

Gue'Vesa'O?

That would be the correct technical term, if a Human did take command of a Tau force fighting for the Greater Good, or did I miss something.

Avatar 720 wrote:Congratulations, you created a detailed response about why FWs shouldn't be BS4, despite the fact i've been talking about Pathfinders.

The excuse does not stand, if they can create arrays for battlesuits from vehicle systems, it's not that unbelievable to suggest that they can create experimental arrays for Pathfinders from the battlesuit systems. All they're doing is downsizing and compacting.

If you'd told the inventor of the computer that it's possible to get handheld devices far more powerful than the behemoths he'd just created, he'd have laughed at you, yet here we are with computers in our phones, and music collections that clip to your belt, and in the grand scheme of things, it didn't take us very long at all to do it.

Downsizing and compacting isn't impossible, and it won't always take thousands of years to develop. It's very plausible to suggest that, especially with the aid of other races, the Tau managed to integrate a lot of new technology in a short space of time, which fits their background as a young empire that is quick to develop and adapt.

Yes I know. Firewarriors at BS4 is scary isn't it. Now let's think here, 8 shots from a markerlight at bs 4 means 5.33 hit. that means rounding down we get 5 hits, 2 go to a fire warrior squad to buff it to BS 5 (even scarier!) and the other 3 go to subtracting from cover. Now you've got 8 guys who can make sure that no blob squad on earth can get across the table.
A better fix would be something like

Rules:
Scout, Infiltrate, Stealth

Add up to 4 more models.......+9pts/model
Add up to 2 Marker Drones.....+15pts/model
Sergeant may take:
EMP grenades......................+5pts
Bonding knife......................+5pts (squad may regroup below half strength) ignores negative LD modifiers? or too op...
Scatterfield Array..................+15pts (portable disruption field generator applies to whole squad, additional +1 to squad cover save, minimum cover save 6+)
up to 3 members of the squad may replace their Pulse Carbines and Markerlights with:
Rail Rifle..............................+10pts/model
Barrage Launcher...................+15pts/model (S4 AP5 Heavy3 Small Blast Rg 24", multiple missile launcher akin to an SMS or a missile pod armed with cluster bombs)
Squad may take a devilfish at a 35 point discount
Squad may take blacksun filters at +1pt/model

cheaper cost makes them more viable, cheaper devilfish makes taking one more usefull. keep their markerlights the same but let them take marker drones so that no matter what they'll be able to move and shoot markerlights. let them take a template weapon so they can strike first turn at enemy hordes, something that the tau are severly lacking in.

I don't have a problem with your rationale. the fact that i can now play OoT on the 3ds with better graphics than the n64 it first came out on is just a confirmation of your theory (as is the scatterfield array above). It's just that putting markerlights at bs4 will make them wildly more powerful, which while beneficial for us, will mean that they're more expensive and that they're rediculously powerful against armies that need cover (ig, nids, orks) or armies that can't stand a fusilade of fire (SM), as well as armies with a lot of light vehicles, since massed bs 5 pulse rifle fire will glance the hell out of AV11 and has a very good chance of wrecking AV10 through sheer volume.

You want to know how to fix FW? Make them 8 or nine points, and make Bonding Knives standard.

dbsamurai, that was a very long wishlist. I apporve of most of it, and I ike what you did with the hammerhead. It wouldn't hurt to give the diffrent tanks code names like the suits. The skyray being the main reason behind the idea, for the missile tank ofcourse.

There is rumered to be 2 new races in the next dex, but there will definatly not be any humans, I don't really see what they bring except to be a meat shield, and that doesn't fit well with Tau fighting style. Fluff wise anyway. Demiurg are comfirmed but the other is still open for discussion.

Railguns should insta-gib T6.

Yeah.

Ledabot wrote:dbsamurai, that was a very long wishlist. I apporve of most of it, and I ike what you did with the hammerhead. It wouldn't hurt to give the diffrent tanks code names like the suits. The skyray being the main reason behind the idea, for the missile tank ofcourse.

There is rumered to be 2 new races in the next dex, but there will definatly not be any humans, I don't really see what they bring except to be a meat shield, and that doesn't fit well with Tau fighting style. Fluff wise anyway. Demiurg are comfirmed but the other is still open for discussion.

Thank you for your kind words however lol It's not a wishlist it's a codex my buddies an i have been playtesting I follow those rumor threads too and they do look interesting, especially the heavy vespid and the demiurg, but until I see codex I'm not getting my hopes up, just because when vespid first came out I was all like OH MAN!!! and then I looked at their actual stats and they sucked I do agree with you, I couldn't really find a use for humans except as true snipers over a sniper drone team, so I just sort of threw a guardsman squad in there...=/

dbsamurai wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:Congratulations, you created a detailed response about why FWs shouldn't be BS4, despite the fact i've been talking about Pathfinders.

The excuse does not stand, if they can create arrays for battlesuits from vehicle systems, it's not that unbelievable to suggest that they can create experimental arrays for Pathfinders from the battlesuit systems. All they're doing is downsizing and compacting.

If you'd told the inventor of the computer that it's possible to get handheld devices far more powerful than the behemoths he'd just created, he'd have laughed at you, yet here we are with computers in our phones, and music collections that clip to your belt, and in the grand scheme of things, it didn't take us very long at all to do it.

Downsizing and compacting isn't impossible, and it won't always take thousands of years to develop. It's very plausible to suggest that, especially with the aid of other races, the Tau managed to integrate a lot of new technology in a short space of time, which fits their background as a young empire that is quick to develop and adapt.

Yes I know. Firewarriors at BS4 is scary isn't it. Now let's think here, 8 shots from a markerlight at bs 4 means 5.33 hit. that means rounding down we get 5 hits, 2 go to a fire warrior squad to buff it to BS 5 (even scarier!) and the other 3 go to subtracting from cover. Now you've got 8 guys who can make sure that no blob squad on earth can get across the table.

No, it isn't scary, I couldn't care less about the BS of FWs.

8 PF markerlights going on 1 squad to increase FW shooting is far from scary either. Currently you'd have 4 hits and you'd only leave a 6+ cover save, which might as well not exist at all. 12 FWs benefiting from 5 lights vs a guardsman squad of 10 sees:
9.996 hits
8.326668 wounds
8 dead guardsmen.

With 4 lights it's:
9.996 hits
8.326668 wounds
6.936114444, or 7, dead guardsmen.

Either way, the guardsmen are:
Taking a morale check
Under half strength
All but useless, with 5 lights they can keep 1 HWT, with 4 lights, they can keep the HWT and 1 special weapon/lasgun/sergeant. Is that 1 model enough to make a difference? No, probably not. Besides, what is one small IG unit when they have enough firepower left to demolish our army 10x over?

5 lights vs 4 lights does not produce a large enough gap for it to be considered as scary as you make it out to be. Against 4+ saves or better it's the same no matter which version you use, against cover saves of 5+ or less, it's also the same no matter what, against 4+ cover the BS4 lights win out by a small margin. Against an Ork horde or a Gaunt blob, what will 1 extra model per shooting phase do? A mob of 30 boyz takes the 9.996 hits, takes 6.667332 wounds, and takes 7 casualties with BS4 lights on them, or 6 (5.553887556) casualties with BS3 lights on them and standing in 4+ cover. What has that extra casualty done to the orks? Nothing. Not a thing. They're still fearless, they're still deadly, all you've done is killed 1 6pt boy extra.

Now, if you'll allow me to explain just why I gave Pathfinders BS4, it's not to solely better Fire Warriors. Your scenario requires every single markerlight going on FW shooting, which is exactly what we currently want to fix; MLs right now need to go fully to FWs, or fully to battlesuits. The BS4 PFs are supposed to take advantage of their split fire rule to reliably light up multiple units. 8 MLs currently cannot split fire, and you end up aiding either FWs or Battlesuits. With the BS4 pathfinders, you can split them to get better coverage. 4 for FWs means that 3 (2.668) lights hit, and 4 for other units can boost battlesuit BS or remove cover for them.

THAT is why I suggested the pathfinders. I don't care about what FWs do if you hoard markerlights for them, what I want to do is have a more reliable ML system that can benefit FWs without having to give them straight BS4, but can also benefit the other units in the army without potentially game-breaking sacrifices.

Billagio wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:Personally, I don't see anything wrong making the Hammerhead Railgun in a honking powerful weapon (S10 AP1 Lance, etc.), IIRC Zoanthropes can do the same thing at 18", and I believe theres is Melta. The Railgun should certainly be a more powerful weapon. You can only take 3 of them max, which means at best 3 dead targets a turn. Your opponent is probably fielding 5 times that number of vehicles given todays meta, so it wouldn't be particularly game-breaking.

Not sure I agree with this. I think its fine the way it is. The reason zoanthropes have lance is because its at 18in, railguns are 72. I think that would be a little too powerful, unless you SERIOUSLY upped the points cost. iirc zoans dont have melta. You can take 9 railguns if you squad up the broadsides, and theyre twinlinked. Sure you can still only kill 3 vehicles a turn, but unless youre opponent if fielding 9 LRBTs or something, the rocket pods etc can take care of some of the more lighty armored targets.

But those railguns are 1/4 of the size, and they are a different weapon IMO, there should be rules to differentiate between broadsides and hammerheads weaponry (you'll notice I specifically stated HAMMERHEAD railgun in my post).

Besides, people need a valid reason to take HH's over Broadsides anyway.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Billagio wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:Personally, I don't see anything wrong making the Hammerhead Railgun in a honking powerful weapon (S10 AP1 Lance, etc.), IIRC Zoanthropes can do the same thing at 18", and I believe theres is Melta. The Railgun should certainly be a more powerful weapon. You can only take 3 of them max, which means at best 3 dead targets a turn. Your opponent is probably fielding 5 times that number of vehicles given todays meta, so it wouldn't be particularly game-breaking.

Not sure I agree with this. I think its fine the way it is. The reason zoanthropes have lance is because its at 18in, railguns are 72. I think that would be a little too powerful, unless you SERIOUSLY upped the points cost. iirc zoans dont have melta. You can take 9 railguns if you squad up the broadsides, and theyre twinlinked. Sure you can still only kill 3 vehicles a turn, but unless youre opponent if fielding 9 LRBTs or something, the rocket pods etc can take care of some of the more lighty armored targets.

But those railguns are 1/4 of the size, and they are a different weapon IMO, there should be rules to differentiate between broadsides and hammerheads weaponry (you'll notice I specifically stated HAMMERHEAD railgun in my post).

Besides, people need a valid reason to take HH's over Broadsides anyway.

The sub round an Av 13 4+ coversave mobile BLoS terrain not good enough? HH aren't for the solid shot, thats 88's job, being twinlinked already. HH are sub round pie tossing specialists.

CpatTom wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Billagio wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:Personally, I don't see anything wrong making the Hammerhead Railgun in a honking powerful weapon (S10 AP1 Lance, etc.), IIRC Zoanthropes can do the same thing at 18", and I believe theres is Melta. The Railgun should certainly be a more powerful weapon. You can only take 3 of them max, which means at best 3 dead targets a turn. Your opponent is probably fielding 5 times that number of vehicles given todays meta, so it wouldn't be particularly game-breaking.

Not sure I agree with this. I think its fine the way it is. The reason zoanthropes have lance is because its at 18in, railguns are 72. I think that would be a little too powerful, unless you SERIOUSLY upped the points cost. iirc zoans dont have melta. You can take 9 railguns if you squad up the broadsides, and theyre twinlinked. Sure you can still only kill 3 vehicles a turn, but unless youre opponent if fielding 9 LRBTs or something, the rocket pods etc can take care of some of the more lighty armored targets.

But those railguns are 1/4 of the size, and they are a different weapon IMO, there should be rules to differentiate between broadsides and hammerheads weaponry (you'll notice I specifically stated HAMMERHEAD railgun in my post).

Besides, people need a valid reason to take HH's over Broadsides anyway.

The sub round an Av 13 4+ coversave mobile BLoS terrain not good enough? HH aren't for the solid shot, thats 88's job, being twinlinked already. HH are sub round pie tossing specialists.

Which is why we need a legitimate option for solid-shotting with the HH. It is not a lance, so using the lance rule would make no sense, but adding ordinance or a railgun-specific rule would be nice.

How does lance not make sense? Lance weapons DONT NEED to have the word "lance" associated with their names, think outside the box.

chaos0xomega wrote:How does lance not make sense? Lance weapons DONT NEED to have the word "lance" associated with their names, think outside the box.

But it ISN'T a lance. A lance is a continuous beam weapon in 40k, IIRC.

Railgun is neither continuous nor a beam weapon.

Applying the melta rule would make just about as much sense.

One thing that could work is rolling 3D3 for vehicle pen.

3d3 would be hawt!
As for lance, the BRB refers to it as a beam weapon, though it makes no specification that it be continuous, just that it is powerful enough to bore through armor regardless of thickness. So, if we follow that description strictly to the letter the railgun wouldn't qualify, but GW has been known to loosely interpret things so its a possibility. Also, if we suspend a bit of disbelief, we could reason that a Tau railgun (esp. a hammerhead railgun) accelerates the projectile to near the speed of light, at which point the projectile would begin to function as a particle stream. If that is the case, then (as I understand it), you could in fact consider it to be a "particle beam" in which case it would fulfill the requirement for lance status.

Avatar 720 wrote:

No, it isn't scary, I couldn't care less about the BS of FWs.

8 PF markerlights going on 1 squad to increase FW shooting is far from scary either. Currently you'd have 4 hits and you'd only leave a 6+ cover save, which might as well not exist at all. 12 FWs benefiting from 5 lights vs a guardsman squad of 10 sees:
9.996 hits
8.326668 wounds
8 dead guardsmen.

With 4 lights it's:
9.996 hits
8.326668 wounds
6.936114444, or 7, dead guardsmen.

Either way, the guardsmen are:
Taking a morale check
Under half strength
All but useless, with 5 lights they can keep 1 HWT, with 4 lights, they can keep the HWT and 1 special weapon/lasgun/sergeant. Is that 1 model enough to make a difference? No, probably not. Besides, what is one small IG unit when they have enough firepower left to demolish our army 10x over?

it will make the difference, because that squad missing both it's heavy weaopn and its special weapon (or unthinkably its sergeant) means you've essentially nullified the entire purpose of taking a 10 man IG squad. further against veterans that means you can kill some of their special weapons in one round of shooting, taking out three special weapons (melta vets anyone?) instead of one. The additional wounds also make playing wound allocation more difficult, something that multiwound squads like warriors would loath.

Avatar 720 wrote:Against an Ork horde or a Gaunt blob, what will 1 extra model per shooting phase do? A mob of 30 boyz takes the 9.996 hits, takes 6.667332 wounds, and takes 7 casualties with BS4 lights on them, or 6 (5.553887556) casualties with BS3 lights on them and standing in 4+ cover. What has that extra casualty done to the orks? Nothing. Not a thing. They're still fearless, they're still deadly, all you've done is killed 1 6pt boy extra.
.

yes which against shootas is an extra 2 shots and against sluggs is an extra 4 melee attacks. When the squads are designed to be large enough to soak up wounds, every additional model you can kill helps. in addition, the fact that 5 markerlights can be used to buff two squads BS and still take away any sort of cover saves the unfortunate sons of bitches being shot at could use means that you can now have 2 squads (at present bs 3) of crisis suits pumping AP 2 rounds into a tac squad and have them have no way to defend against it. Or say they're bs 4 in the new codex, you could pop them to BS 5 and ensure that you kill the entire squad in a single shooting round. Against tanks you could eliminate smoke launchers altogether while still giving hammerheads the abiltiy to all but garuntee a hit. That simple fact right there, that you can, with a single squad, eliminate the greatest strenght of AV11 spam (mass smoke launchers as armor providing cover for one another across the field) while still allowing the squads firing to be doing so at balistic skills greater than even space marine special characters means that that one little BS boost to pathfinders would make them one of the most overpowered squads available, especially at their current price of 12 pts. You're talking a squad of 8 guys who can remove the defenses of the most common tournie build. At present, that one less markerlight means that there is a trade off in cover vs bs boosting. Add an extra markerlight shot for free and suddenly that trade off goes away, you can basically garuntee whatever hole gets targetted goes bye bye lol and as awesome as that would be, it would also make pathfinders rediculously overpowered. I mean look at the present cost of an extra markerlight. at it's cheapest its an additional 10 points. upping their bs would be giving them that extra markerlight for free. And as exerienced as I'm sure you are I bet you also know how powerful even that one extra markerlight shot, especially if its free, can be.

chaos0xomega wrote:3d3 would be hawt!
As for lance, the BRB refers to it as a beam weapon, though it makes no specification that it be continuous, just that it is powerful enough to bore through armor regardless of thickness. So, if we follow that description strictly to the letter the railgun wouldn't qualify, but GW has been known to loosely interpret things so its a possibility. Also, if we suspend a bit of disbelief, we could reason that a Tau railgun (esp. a hammerhead railgun) accelerates the projectile to near the speed of light, at which point the projectile would begin to function as a particle stream. If that is the case, then (as I understand it), you could in fact consider it to be a "particle beam" in which case it would fulfill the requirement for lance status.

Their railrounds do NOT go at the speed of light, they go ~8 times the speed of sound. Hyper velocity=Mach5+

And they would work so fundamentally different to any other weapon that they really do need more rules.

it will make the difference, because that squad missing both it's heavy weaopn and its special weapon (or unthinkably its sergeant) means you've essentially nullified the entire purpose of taking a 10 man IG squad. further against veterans that means you can kill some of their special weapons in one round of shooting, taking out three special weapons (melta vets anyone?) instead of one. The additional wounds also make playing wound allocation more difficult, something that multiwound squads like warriors would loath.

You cannot kill of both the HWT and a SW and somehow leave both of them alive by killing off 1 model less, you'd have to kill off 3 models less to keep both.

I have already displayed how its 'purpose' is all but left untouched, leaving two models left leaves the HWT on 1 wound and the sergeant, 3 models left only gives you another special weapon or the hwt's other wound. Either way, the HWT will remain unless you purposefully remove it, and that it not affected by the pulse rifle shots.

Against Veterans, when will you be able to shoot them outside their Chimera? You'd have to kill that first. Also, you're basing your counter-argument on terrible wound allocation. At most the veterans lose 1 special weapon and keep two alive against the BS4 marked rifles, I don't know where you're getting 3 instead of 1 from.

There is also the fact that if the IG fail their morale check (other markerlights can lower Ld if need be) then they're running and unable to regroup no matter which markerlights you use, thanks to being under half strength.

It also has no difference against multi-wound models with a 4+ save or better or in 5+ cover or worse. Ork Nobz rarely leave home without 'eavy armour or a bike, so they're fine. Tyranid Warriors come with a 4+ as standard so they're fine. Nobody uses Ogyrns, but if they did, in 4+ cover they'd take 1 wound more, but lose a model either way, and since they're all the same apart from the Bone 'Ead, you can't play WAS with them anyway. Grotesques are essentially the same, with only 1 model being able to take something different. Enemy Crisis Suits have a 3+ save. Paladins have a 2+ save. Unless you manage to find someone who uses a ragtag mob of Nobz without 'eavy armour or bikes, then WAS never come into play, so it's quite a useless point.

yes which against shootas is an extra 2 shots and against sluggs is an extra 4 melee attacks. When the squads are designed to be large enough to soak up wounds, every additional model you can kill helps. in addition, the fact that 5 markerlights can be used to buff two squads BS and still take away any sort of cover saves the unfortunate sons of bitches being shot at could use means that you can now have 2 squads (at present bs 3) of crisis suits pumping AP 2 rounds into a tac squad and have them have no way to defend against it. Or say they're bs 4 in the new codex, you could pop them to BS 5 and ensure that you kill the entire squad in a single shooting round. Against tanks you could eliminate smoke launchers altogether while still giving hammerheads the abiltiy to all but garuntee a hit. That simple fact right there, that you can, with a single squad, eliminate the greatest strenght of AV11 spam (mass smoke launchers as armor providing cover for one another across the field) while still allowing the squads firing to be doing so at balistic skills greater than even space marine special characters means that that one little BS boost to pathfinders would make them one of the most overpowered squads available, especially at their current price of 12 pts. You're talking a squad of 8 guys who can remove the defenses of the most common tournie build. At present, that one less markerlight means that there is a trade off in cover vs bs boosting. Add an extra markerlight shot for free and suddenly that trade off goes away, you can basically garuntee whatever hole gets targetted goes bye bye lol and as awesome as that would be, it would also make pathfinders rediculously overpowered. I mean look at the present cost of an extra markerlight. at it's cheapest its an additional 10 points. upping their bs would be giving them that extra markerlight for free. And as exerienced as I'm sure you are I bet you also know how powerful even that one extra markerlight shot, especially if its free, can be.

First off, please use spacing.

Secondly, what is 2 shoota shots or 4 extra melee attacks? The Ork Mob still has a bucketload of attacks. It's a drop in the ocean. As for your comment on killing models designed to soak up wound, yes, every little does help, it helps them, every other wound they take means they're doing their job better. 1 Ork extra dead from a mob of 30 makes no difference.

With the markerlights, that is the point, but you are grossly exaggerating the damage. Plasma rifles are 1 shot unless you get close, so the max casualties are 6. From 6 BS4 suits, plasma rifles do:
4 hits
3.332 wounds, for 3 dead marines with no cover saves. Considering that it took 372pts worth of crisis suits to cause that, i'd say it's an exceedingly fair trade-off on the part of the marines.

If they are BS4 in the new codex, then they do the following:
5 hits
4.615 wounds, for 4 dead marines with no cover saves. Yep, a whole dead squad there. And it only took more than double the cost of the tac squad, not counting the markerlights.

Rapid-firing will cause more damage, but again, you spent more than double (more than triple if you count the pathfinders) on doing it, and it's a result i'd damned well expect for that cost.

You're exaggerating things greatly at this point, and it does not help your argument.

Against tanks, you can eliminate smoke launchers currently. I don't see your point. Using the BS3 markerlights you score 4 hits, that removes smoke completely and buffs the HH to BS5. Using the BS4 markerlights, you can buff a broadside squad to BS4 in case the tank doesn't die, or you can choose not to waste it and use it on crisis suits or FW shooting instead. By your logic here, Pathfinders need to be BS2.

From all this, I fail to see where BS4 Pathfinders are 'overpowered' in any respect.

WOW why dose the tau have to lose every game to make other army owners happy. I think the Marker lights need to be fired Interdependently of the shooting phase or at the start of it, at what ever BS of the model holding it is, to the point every non CC ML model fires the ML at its own target.( I think of this as a kind of field id beacon update done army wide)

I know crazy right play test with this one change, Place a ML token on each ML target then roll to hit them if hit leave the token if missed remove the token, then spend tokens as needed / used. Then in the shooting phase the Units shoots as normal. I think this would help win back the points spent on ML of any kind.