Preach it nomad brother. Honestly the most disappointing thing about our code one TAG box was that all prior TAG boxes were either a new model (Blue Wolf and Zeta) or a new sculpt of an existing model (Cutter and Sphinx). Instead we got a rebox of the salamander. The salamander is arguably the coolest sculpt around, but we have the lizard which is very old at this point and one gecko sculpt is still holding the old double combi rifles. Between one TAG sculpt being super old and another having the wrong guns a reboxed sculpt just feels lazy. Could be worse though... at least our TAG box at least had a TAG in it. Pour one out for the Ariadnan TAG dream.
I think the grenade launcher thing was to avoid some abuse from fireteams and TAGs. the Squallo used to be able to speculative fire on a 12 (15-6+3), never saw a player use it, but fireteam cores with grenade launchers used to dominate my local meta and basically did the same thing. Not certain we will ever see that +3 range band return, at least not without changing the 5 man core bonus. I think I'd rather see an NCO option rather than LT, mostly because we lack a chain of command piece outside of spec ops, but hey I'll take it.
Funnily enough, those abuses remain absolutely untouched- the launchers that were the worst offenders, namely the Squalo and anything with an X-Visor and Core Fireteam, were so bad because they could reliably hit targets on the other side of the board with their extended 0-range band and high BS. With the 0-range extended by default now, it just makes GLs nearly useless outside those few cheesy gits.
I'm talking about an actual pilot inside the TAG. Remote piloted TAG pilots don't suffer from being tired and hungry or even getting injured. Like modern drone pilots, if they need a break, they can just switch out. They can run continuous 24 our ops forever and never get tired. As long as Nomads use manned TAGs, they'll never be as efficient as a remote piloted TAG.
We already have the Sally as a straight forward and functional TAG, we don't need a second, crappier Sally for the same points cost. The attitude here is not helping your cause, you know? Infinity is a game made by nerds for nerds, not a game made by soldiers for soldiers. Similarly, as a work of fiction it likes to slot its factions into particular themes because those are easy to understand. Bakunin as 'engineers and tinkerers' makes more sense to most people than 'engineers and tinkerers and elite military specialists and... every occupation under the sun' even though in 'real life' it would most likely be the latter. If we extend the realism logic, then the factions would blur together an awful lot. This seems like solid justification to mysticize the pilots honestly. But coming from Morats, I promise you won't like a religious TAG lol I'm liking the pilot-engineer idea myself. But I'm very cagey about improving Nomads given how good a position they are in already.
