The Swasts do cross the line from ''Why would I ever even use this beyond self defense?'' to ''There are actual feasible situations where this can be very useful'' in terms of CC TBH.
This might of been true before the Zuyong showed up. Those are the true state of the art mass produced HI that Haqq and the Nomads (who are good at adapting tech and such but their mass production is minuscule) can't keep up with. There are full regiments of Zuyongs and are the backbone of the Invincible Army for a reason. There's also the nice ability of MA granting you stealth as well. Comes in handy for HI that want to move through locked off areas do to hacking threats.
If I get the fluff straight, Asawira are basically the most advanced armours money can buy (and money can't buy the armours of Hac Tao or Shang-Ji), leaving most if not all of the HI found in Haqq and Nomads a bit on the old side. Particularly the refurbed stuff that are Kriza and Swast - they've crammed as much tech as they can in there, but it's still a Trabant by comparison to a Zuyong's Golf (because none of them are luxury cars, okay?). It is not far-fetched that most of these HIs should be Zhencha-style armours, but lacking the mobility enhancers that Yu Jing installed as part of the realignment, since they're simply just old tech. Or CB should've been more liberal with the Heavyweight rule or similar. Plus, it's only really in Yu Jing that stuff like Climbing Plus is explained as being complicated tech stuff, in other factions all you need to do is defect from the army and rob a few banks and you learn to run on vertical walls wearing only a kilt. But nevermind that, I'm just approaching the redefinition as a means of accomplishing an all-HI faction from a different angle. It's like a vegetarian meatball - it's a ball made from meat with 0% meat in it, it'd have been perfectly serviceable and marketable without calling it a meatball.
It's not strictly linear. Weapon costs are linear (they're the easiest to reverse-engineer). Stats get more expensive as they get higher. Some skills have different prices based on what unit type they're on (Camo and Infiltration are more expensive on HI than on LI or SK, for example).
7 points is for the base combi rifle loadouts. It's an 8 point differential for the FO with deprep adding the +1 point. WIP 14 seems to be only +1 over WIP 13 due to CG and Securitate. The CC bump, MSV (2-3), and WIP means they are paying at least 2-3 points for the armor. It's not like this armor sting is exclusive to Guilang. The Al Hawwa and Scouts get hit by it too. The Bandits would feel it if they were forced into using the combi + mines for their key profiles. Hell a big reason why The ailing Prowler is so expensive is the armor. It is a problem when this is systemic throughout the faction. There is re-examining the formulas. Its apparent you have a problem when you have to blatantly munchkin your own system. And no, I refuse to be greatful for the CC tax. Yes, there are clumsier developers out there, but that's not a good reason to lower my expectations. Good enough for the Hsien. Bringing friends helps a lot.
The Hsien also crosses that line IMO. That CC has actually come in useful a whole entire couple of times for me!
What I was thinking of was whether combinations also incur a surcharge; for example, climbing plus and camo costing more as a pair than individually.
But you at least get something. They play within their own structure and think it's important to have one and follow it, most games don't.
I'm not even sure weapons are strictly linear. You get some weird jumps here and there: Alguacile, Combi to Missile Launcher is a +5 point jump. Mobile Brigada, Combi to ML is a +6 jump. Sogarat Feurbach is +1 point on an AP HMG. While an Azra'il Feurbach is 2 points cheaper than the AP HMG. Seems like weapon costs change depending on who's holding them. Generally though, yeah, weapons are the easiest costing to reverse engineer on profiles.
Just realized, but did the shang-jì lost their fireteam duo option? it's not listed in the sectorial's recap in the presentation video.
Their base duo yeah it appears so, on the other hand they're Wildcard so they can jump into anybody's duo.
Yeah but i was planning on a Shang-jì Tinbot-B/Haidao KHD anti-hacking duo, and the IT guys aren't listed with duo either. Anyway if it's a mistake that's good!
''Alright, I'll stab them really really hard, and you go stab that console really really hard once I do that, okay?''