Hammerheads, Crisis, Pathfinders, Ethereal upgrades also make my list.

What about Issac Asimov's I, Robot "rule of 3?"

Gentlemen.

A question about how guided missiles interact with the hit allocation rules in particular range stretching. I must begin by stating that I have never tried this. I'm just curious.

Say a Tau formation containing guided missile units can draw LOF to one and only one unit of a marker lit formation and the rest of the formation is hidden behind terrain. Can hits caused by the Tau formation spread beyond that first unit as the rest of the formation is a viable target for the guided missiles, effectively allowing Tau to shoot around corners and over buildings. Does the part of the guided missile rules stating that they do not require LOF disallow this or should it be written into the rules that this is expressly disallowed?

Do other armies get to do it? If so then I don't see an issue as the only thing that changes the equation is that the GMs need a ML to actually fire. Shooting is essentially the same from that point. The ML acts as the "eyes" as it were.

My 2c.

It seems to work, so hits could be spread to the bulk of the formation even though they are out of LOS. It can be done by a non Tau formation as well (although it is much less likely to happen) if a formation had some artillery attached to it (like a Mech Guard formation with some Griffons) and sustained fire it could use the indirect fire ability to achieve the same effect.

I'm not really OK with it happening. I'm OK with range stretching and accept it as part of the game. But LOF stretching seems like an unexpected consequence of the guided missile rules/indirect rules. It is very odd and I would like a note/FAQ to stop it.

It’s an odd consequence of the hit allocation system and could be done by any army using a non LOS weapon, it’s just easier for Tau. It’s still fairly corner case and requires your opponent to leave a small number of units exposed to the bulk of your firing while hiding the rest behind terrain. I don’t really want to add a FAQ for it even if I can see how it might annoy an opponent the first time they are caught out by it.

Effectively a formation in any army could do the same using attached artillery on a sustain fire order (although this is less likely, it is still possible) and so effectively it is a game rule instead of a Tau problem, even if Tau could probably abuse it more than other armies.

I think the hangup on all the range/LoS "stretching" is caused by an overall idea of "Unit X fires at Target Y, and damage from the X shot kills Y."

However, it's supposed to be abstracted. Just because Weapon X rolls the to-hit doesn't mean that the shooting from Weapon X was really what killed the target. It was just part of a big, aggregate volley that caused a certain number of hits. Maybe Weapon X hit the target. Maybe Weapon X just worked in combination with the rest of the fire to disable the target. For example, it might have flushed the target into the open where some other weapon delivered the actual killing shot.

There are also lots of ways fire can "kill" the enemy without any real hits. Maybe the target took evasive maneuvers and crashed. Maybe the target crew panicked from the incoming fire, loaded the cannon wrong and blew themselves up, or a trooper dropped a grenade and killed his squad. Maybe the target bailed out or fled. Maybe enemy fire triggered a rockslide or a tree to fall on them.

Maybe in this Tau example the 'hits' from the direct fire weapons weren't rounds from those exact weapons hitting particular enemy targets, and instead those hits reflect the direct fire weapons pinning the target so the indirect guided missile fire did more damage.