The way the Church is so intertwined with PanO as a whole makes the Orders breaking off rather unlikely to occur. It’s not impossible, though.
They wouldn't so much cut them loose as limit the Vanilla choices to a couple of units, say Father Knight, Joan etc. While everything else that you're not supposed to take in Vanilla ('cus it's either SWC bumped, or simply a worse version of something that already exists) is trimmed entirely. (though NA2 is as good a slot as any for MO; especially as StarCo is "not-Nomads, honest!", a "not-PanO" army feels fine) I'd especially like to see most of the HI Knights removed from Vanilla to allow some design space for hi-tech PanO HI.
I could see a Teutonic order break-off if a break had to happen. They might be pretty good with some mercs with smoke or something. A justice-seeking-religeous-thing merc company that has all the "good guy" pmc stuff or something.
I can see no Echo-Bravo, Helots and Zulú-Cobra just fine, thanks @Cartographer , just dont touch my Vainilla Joan, just.......dont
You want a Red Veil/Outrage, where all the knights vanish but FK? No thanks. I'd just like most of the profiles to be heavily reworked, if that means exclusive weapons locked to MO like Varuna's Feurbach, so be it. Oh, and a FOOTTS sculpt. Dammit. And I'm gonna call it right now, Varuna ORC lady character will be sans helmet, short hair, with a tactical rock. Would be nice to have a newer female ORC model with the helmet. Presumably in a SWC box that I'll never use.
Really all that needs to happen for a "Military Orders" NA2 is the Knights and Order Sergeants to get moved into their own lists. Add PanO stuff for flavor for the 'major Orders' et voila! It would free up a lot of space in vanilla and clean up the faction a bit so we can finally have a reasonable measure of where we actually are in some cases.
And I'm sure some people liked JSA as part of Yu Jing...just sayin You'll notice that my ideas aren't "REMOVE KNIGHTS FROM THE GAME!!!" but rather making them into their own independent faction. Which still jibes pretty heavily with the fluff, since the Fusiliers that they get aren't supposed to be 'active duty' individuals. The Crusader Brethren and Order Sergeants are both supposed to draw from that same pool of people. It would also make it so that we could keep Knights in the Sectorials that already have them, they'd just NA2 stuff making its way into the lists. And really, I can't see why people wouldn't be more excited for a Hospitaller specific Sectorial? Or any of the other 'majors'?
If cb think that mo need adjustment rather than have a na2 army i think they put it in same spot as merovingian
lol, you know what amuses me, that people make up all this headcanon to justify knights being in the same situation as JSA. They arent, they are an integrated part of the PanO military, and they are going to continue to be. thats why each sect gets its MO units
JSA situation was that only some very límited units were used in YJ Vainilla..... MO Is not far from that. (Just dont touch Joan!!!! ) Also keeping the knights that work in the sectorials is not crazy, its like an Aleph loan
The difference being knight units are spread through other sectorials in pano not just ninja in iss like it was in yu jing. You have friars in nca, montesas in acon, hospitallers in slav. And we dont know about varuna.
NCA didn't have MO units until the Friars got introduced. SAA's only MO units are local Knights. Let's not pretend for a single damn second that your statement of them being "integrated parts of the PanO military" can't support them being their own NA2 faction as well. ALEPH is its own faction and we have parts of that in PanO and YJ. Nomads are their own faction--yet we have StarCo.
Gameplay>Fluff, when all is said and done. If CB will figure out, that moving MO from PanO to NA2 will improve the game they'll do it, and came with a fluff justification afterwards. I'm sure many players won't like it. I understand them. For me, my only concern is state of the game and faction after such move.
Friars are new. They really do seem to have been introduced to NCA so that people can point at them as the token MO unit in a PanO force. Nobody is saying to remove those units though. Just making the major Military Orders their own NA2 factions wouldn't actually break the game--and we could finally get an accurate snapshot of how PanO proper is doing without the random MO crutches throwing the balance out.