That was uncalled for. @Nuada Airgetlam The second profiles for Anacondas and Iguanas (aka all TAGs with an Escape System) do not have the Pilot Special Skill, and follow none of the rules for Pilots. They're also irrelevant to this discussion because its impossible to have both models on the table at once, due to the way the Escape System works.
Thank you. All right, I haven't noticed there was a tertiary rule specifically for those TAGs, thought these were pilots and that was an omission. Never played with or against those TAGs so it never came up. Thank you for the clarification. Still, I think my point about how PILOTS are separate from the TAGs still stands. The Anaconda being an unfortunate pick of an example doesn't affect that.
Depends on what you mean with "separate", you do imply more separation than the Pilot skill allows. Yes, they are separate miniatures and separate profiles, but this doesn't mean they are separate troopers and indeed the mount and dismount bullet point in General Movement Rules calls them the same Trooper. Unfortunately, they didn't make a separate TAG skill like they did for e.g. Motorcycle (where it specifies these are two profiles of the same trooper) and put everything in the Pilot skill on the pilot profile which isn't the default active profile :(
The escape system rules are closer to the gorgos’s symbiont armor, but still somewhat distinct. I’m happy to see that the gorgos inactive profile no longer has different weapons from the TAG, because that was always supremely inconsistent.
While a very good question, I think I'll have to rephrase it slightly for the benefit of the casual viewer.... Let's see if it can be narrowed down...
So is there any benefit for being TAG with human pilot that I am missing? AFAIK there are advantages of remote pilot and 1 disadvantage of human pilot: Manned TAG has cube and can get Sepsitorized. Remote presence and Str grants 2nd uncounscius lvl. Remote presence TAG allow reroll on failed engineer roll while fixing Str. Remote presence TAG can Reset when their pilot is uncounscius while dismounted to get rid of pilot and regain full functionality. Is there any point tax for remote presence? Are there benefits of manned TAG? If not then I have a little off topic idea. Grant manned TAGs possession immunity. How the hell does hacker posses a manned TAG anyway? It makes no sense full wise and it would be a fair tradeoff for all of the remote pilot advantages.
TAGs are controlled move-by-wire rather than pneumatic or hydraulic systems, so a hacker can hijack the onboard computer to possess it. The tradeoff for manned TAGs seems to be that their Pilots are actually useful. Rather than a practically unarmed and defenseless remote you get a hacker, or twin Assault pistol, etc. Manned TAGs do also seem to be a touch cheaper, there's few direct comparisons but the Szalamandra is cheaper than the roughly comparable Zeta.
The pilots are all clearly better than human-made Remote Pilots and somewhat better than alien Remote Pilots. That's it for advantages, you've detailed the advantages of Remote Presence on TAGs well enough, and those advantages do not cost points.
Considering models like Guijia and Blue Wolf TAG mimics pilots movements. If the computer responsible for that is completly sealed from any connections then any remote controll shouldnt be possible, or at least there is a decent fluff reasoning why manned TAGs could be possesion immune. As for the advantages of manned pilots, they only come to life if you decide to dismount. And lets be honest, how ofted does anybody dismount? So its safe to say that manned TAGs are just inferior to Remote ones with virtually tradeoff. I guess some pilots can be usefull with B5 on Assault pistol, or KHD to fry that lone HD waithing to posses your TAG, but for example YJ gets just somewhat CC competent Li with base statline and short range weapons.
One of Infinity's fluff conceits is that it's impossible to completely seal off a computer from quantronic hacking, because of quantum entanglement, uncertainty principles, and other such technobabble. It's why you can't make all your HI hacking immune by turning off their Wi-Fi.
Honestly, I think simply making the order generation center on the pilot would be enough to make for an interesting difference between the two... Indeed, however, if you remove the wetware that the hardware is designed to take orders from, and thereby removing potential double-inputs or attempts at hard resets from inside the TAG, you will no longer be able to take control of it. Hacking for remote control also works on bio-mechanical creatures that have grown around the pilot, of course. That said, if you make the mechanical or bio-mechanical creature shorter than 3 meters tall, remote controlling them via hacking is no longer possible. Not to mention that if the computer running the systems doesn't have a wifi to turn off and has really ancient and out-of-date security, it'll also be impossible to hack.
They have acknowledged that REMs should be possessable according to the fluff, and their immunity to it is a gameplay consideration. They could have extended that to manned TAGs, but chose not to in favour of making the pilots more effective, and apparently a touch cheaper.
The difference is not really sufficient to tell, IMO, they've simply made the TAGs so much less carbon copies of one another now that it's difficult drawing straight lines between them. On the one hand, Zeta has lower PH, but on the other Zeta has increased Gizmo value, courage, higher guided ecm, AP CCW and climbing+ while in case of Lizard vs Squalos it's 1 PH and WIP vs 1 BS, CC, hack ECM and Multi Pistol. On an S2 this wouldn't be difficult to parse, because the sample size is small, but TAGs have pretty crazy pricing on some stuff. I think most of all it's a conceit for how they wanted to get rid of Eject. I just find it a tiny bit irksome that the pilot doesn't count for anything.
Is there any special consideration for when a Specialist pilot dismounts a TAG (in this case a Crabbot exiting a Jotum) to grab Supply Box in the relevant mission (N4, p.146) and then attempts to get back into their TAG? Is this possible or does the box get dropped, since the Pilot has left the table and the Jotum profile itself does not possess the requisite skill (Specialist Operative) to carry the box?
In the N4 rulebook scenario, the TAG will drop the box when the pilot re-mounts (most likely - it was an unanswered question last I remember). Howeber, in the more current ITS12 supplies scenario, it doesn't matter because you don't need to be a specialist to hold the box.
@ijw in the Infinity builder Staldron of Xeodrons and Avatar are lacking (Remote) skill, is this a bug on the builder, or is that intended?
They are absolutely Pilot(Remote) and shouldn't have just Pilot, consider reporting it to Zoe and Koni here: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/infinity-army-7-n4-bugs.37729/page-46
I did report almost a month ago and the Infinity army has gone through some changes but the issue with Xeodron/Avatar pilots have not been addressed at all. Is it safe to assume that this is intentional and that these TAGS are manned now? Does not make much sense especially for the Avatar.