So it seems that Dire Foes were updated....

Well, I consider Bipandra much more useful now.

 

Honestly, all that she really needed was the SWC cost removed from her. Wish she got a different weapon than a combi, but Nanopulser is not too bad.

 

Let's not overdo it. It's a nice feeling when other faction is the current Salt Master.

 

I’ll use her now. Which is more than I’d done before. I can see her being good in NCA as part of the Fusilier link. The template weapon will be kind of nice for defense against CC specialist just getting and killing the whole link since it should grant an auto hit. Not 100% how useful courage is. But there is nothing that would stop me from bringing her if I want a good doctor but don’t have room for the Hospitaller.
That said she is certainly not an auto-include.

 

fuking lmao at Roaul Spector and his drop bears. Do we have anything special left?

 

No, you don't. Sorry, call it like I see it.

As for Bipandra . . . I think @Narkano is right that the changes have at least resulted in her becoming a competitive option for missions where a having a Doctor is handy. I think she pretty much renders the Trauma Doc obsolete at this point except in niche cases where points are at a premium.

But does Bipsy bring anything shiny and new? Hell no. But SWC is valuable in PanO in a way that it's not in other factions (see, e.g., Tohaa), so getting that reduction is huge in and of itself.

 

I guess SWC is a good removal, but I miss that shotgun. 5 man link bonus doesn't help her at all now, whereas at least with a shotty she could stack viscious mods in close range. I guess b2 nano could be good?

She should have had shotgun and a nanopulser. There, I said it.

 

As a CA player who's seen the same happen to our Nanoscreen and Plasma rifle, and the Maestro EI upgrade which another faction got before us...

Spoiler

t('_'t)

 

She's still 3 points over. She's still priced for an Assault Pistol.

Meanwhile Aragato Combi + Light Shotgun is -2 points, elsewhere Combi + Light Shotgun remained the same.

Anti-hacking Tohaa got a Killer Hacker.

All factions are equal, but some factions are more equal than others.

 

I'm not convinced, in vanilla you might just want a doctor with palbot to help your snipers, and 9 extra points is a lot for the 1 extra WIP you'd actually be using in that role. I think she will get taken more in NCA and that's probably it.

I mean, compare her to Balboa or Leila and see how far the difference still is.

 

You may be right.

To be fair, I have never done that while playing PanO because WIP12 is lousy and I don't consider it worth the order expenditures (that stands in stark contrast to OCF, where I routinely do exactly this with Dr. Worm and Unidrons--but there I've got WIP14 and an extra level of unconsciousness to work with).

 

Well, I mean i've only felt like I can do the sniper+palbot thing with lists where I try to avoid needing command tokens for achieving the mission and have some spare.

12WIP with a reroll is decent odds.

And if we're talking anecdotes i've had my machinst repair my cutter with a crit 13 (+tech bee) twice in one tournament :D

 

I can't recall a single occasion when that WIP 12 would make a difference. When I fail a roll to heal it's usually around 16+/

Drop Bears don't have to be PanO specific, but it'd be fcuking nice to see more PanO equipment used by, you know, PanO. Feyuerbachs. MMRs. More Auxbot options.

Pierzasty's point is actually well made, though, and keep in mind that CA is in a worse place with sectorials than PanO; one is severely outdated, second pretty bland and somewhat underpowered.

 

It looks like NCA have got the new CSU profiles though!

Rifle+LSG, nanopulser, Specialist Operative (12 points)
Breaker Combi, nanopulser, Specialist Operative (15 points)

 

Eh, I got used to that. I remember when we had a trivia quiz back in N2 and one of the questions was "which ITS-playable armies have access to K1 ammo?"

The given and accepted answer was "CA and Tohaa, because Morats are not playable in ITS". So basically, same shit different recipient.

 

I wonder if we did this Bipandra change to ourselves, lots and lots of people fixating on her SWC resulting in changes getting made to her that justify getting rid of the SWC but losing some of her other utility, and also not her actual points cost. We should have b!tched about more than just that and maybe we'd have gotten more :s

 

Yeah, this is a bit of a hard hit. As mentioned, the SWC cost was rough, but the light shotgun was a great piece of kit and was very good with link bonuses.

I still don't have the incentive to field her over a Trauma Doc. If she's linked, she doesn't really get anything helpful from the link, and won't have a palbot to help Doctoring. If she's solo with a palbot, she's not bringing enough over a standard Trauma Doc.

I use a Trauma Doc in every NCA list, to support and pick up my ARO pieces, so keeping an eye on our Doctor options is interesting to me.

Would have loved to see her lose the Combi completely, and be LSG + Nanopulser. She would have been great as the Fusilier's close-combat beast, able to force enemies to make hard decisions at short-range, or as a great defensive choice to utilize shotgun/nanopulser with Sixth Sense Level 1. Aw well.

 

For anyone capable of basic Math this change should have added up into something good.
Just look at those CSU Profiles with their BS12 Nanopulsers for.... free? 1 point? Heck they're all over the place.

Someone screwed up calculating her points really badly. Bipandra should have gone down 3 points instead of one.
-Specialist Operative -LSG +Nanopulser +Courage

Something is off with the pricing, unless I'm missing Nanopulser cost scaling with ARM/BTS/WIP which seems... unlikely considering everyone and their mom have one in Aleph and somehow manage to stay cheap.
There are loads of these weird pricing issues (Musashi Haris Profile, Oyoroi AP HMG, CSU....)
we might have some bug in @Interruptor 's point calculator at our hands.
Unless CB changed the formula or went back to manual editing.

/EDIT:
okay so I just saw the new Aragoto only pay 2 points for their LSGs together with a Combi.
Most likely scenario is someone forgot to list Bipandra's LSG on her new Profile.
This would mean the new Profiles are all according to an updated points formula and we might see all Combi+LSG Profiles drop 2 points across the board with the next big book.