This is infinity, almost any unit is playable while maybe not optimal. If you like it but have the feeling it is not competitive enough, play it carefully and only in optimal range bands. It's not hard to outrange the opponent with a missile launcher or hide with the autocannon and wait for the perfect moment.
It's been "F-tier" forever. Now it's maybe "D-tier" in Spiral, at best. Probably "E-tier", especially in vanilla Tohaa.
Yes, the unit is not super optimized. Tohaa intentionally have some weakness in the long-range game. Introducing patches for every single Tohaa weakness while they continue to be almost-too-good at midfield stuff is not how you get a balanced game. Accept the weakness and work around it instead of demanding that the army be good at everything, and people (designers included) might listen more.
I'd like the weakness to be interesting. Not as in "the way to work around it is to never ever consider spending points on a Chaksa Longarms". I want a reason to deploy this unit and the awesome model despite the weakness. Make it do something else, make it somehow useful.
Break the Sukeul's knees and undoing the insane link power creep that makes said Sukeul necessary? It seems a lot easier to adjust the power spikes down than buff the entire range around overperforming units.
Against marked enemies, in active turn, the longarms become very violent Besides, it has good armor, especially in cover, it can withstand enemy shots for a while I've also tried 2 Combi Chaksa + 1 Aelis Keesan, maybe not the best haris of the world, but quite dangerous enough to play it, those E / M greanades are so Yummy, for more happiness play it near a triad with Kriigel with Smoke :p
It wasn't you, OP said they have garbage stats. They're not garbage, they're average. Average dude with a an Autocannon with +1 B is still pretty decent for Tohaa against armor. Not a lot else in the Tohaa armory that can deal with a TAG at long range.
Stuff like this plus unlimited flexible Triads is why Tohaa are the Lords of the Midfield. The Longarms are there for whenever you actually need range and a Viral Sniper isn't enough.
I have said it before... Chaksa are support units, let them support triads by giving all of them the Triad skill. Simple, not OP and makes them very usable.
allow chaksa longarms to form special fireteams with the baggage+flamer chaksas like the Taagma can and I think you'd see these guys deployed very regularly. And I don't think that's a huge game breaker of a twist...
I've a suspicion we didn't get oktavia as she would basically invalidate the existence of the longarms. That said if you have ever looked at an unlinked missile fusilier and had an itch to pay 66% extra for a random grab bag of bloat the longarm is there to scratch it. Maybe they have a reason to exist in spiral. Edit: apologies i missed this was in the spiral sub.