Seed Soldiers deploy in the seed embryo state. If I choose a Seed Soldier FO, does it retain the FO skill in the embryo state? Thus allowing me to choose it as a Liason officer?
Imma page @ijw for this one, but i believe* it would go thusly: The Liaison rule asks for a "troop possessing the Forward Observer Special Skill from their Army List", and since the Seed Soldier is a troop on the army list, it is viable. Although it is deployed as a camo marker, it will have the liaison marker next to it, as per "always one of the models or Markers deployed on the game table" and "identified with a Liaison Officer Marker" clauses. So, you'd have a camo marker with the Liaison Officer marker next to it, until the Seed Soldier is revealed, and then they will have the marker next to them. *I ain't no rules Guru, and did absolutely nothing in designing, playtesting, or influencing the rule.
As current RAW the Liason Officer must be a model or marker on the board with the FO skill. An unhatched Seed Soldier does not have the FO skill, only the developed form, therefore it cannot be chosen. The same goes for the O-Yoroi pilot.
What about a Fraacta hacker? Or any symbiomt armor trooper? the skills/equipment listed apply to both profiles? An Aragoto hacker is a hacker whether mounted or dismounted. A Kotail FO is a FO regardless of symbiont armor state. Etc.
My understanding of how profiles and their skills work is that the stuff in red is exclusive to the embryo form, the stuff in blue is exclusive to the developed form, and the stuff in green is common across both forms.
As long as the profile on the board at the start of the game has the FO skill they can be Liason. So a Maverick FO is fine, because the mounted profile that is deployed has the FO skill. Same for the Kotail An Undeveloped Seed Soldier does not have the FO skill, so is not eligible.
No, it doesn't. A hacker pilot does not make the TAG a hacker, for example. I'm actually less sure about that now that I look at how the profiles of a Fraacta and TAG are organized.
Exactly, the hacking device on the Szally pilot falls in the equivalent of the blue section in my above example, meaning it is exclusive to the pilot. Also the tag and the pilot are completely separate entries with separate Point cost entries, not merged like with seed soldiers or symbiont armor troops, bikers, etc
The best I can come up with is that the army app doesn't account for it because the seed-embryo profile doesn't have any differences between the profiles (nor does it have anything to list in the "name" "BS weapons" etc. categories), so it doesn't list any of them. They could have gone with a generic profile under the Seed-Embryo to make the distinction, but then the problem is what to do with the points. Make it 0, but then if you send a S-E straight to dead you don't get the kill points? Make them worth the same as their developed shape, but then you run into the same problem as before? Put a dash there an explain what the hell is going on somewhere else in the rules?
Without anything called out in the rules as an exception it should work like all other troops with the same layout. now if that's not the intent there needs to be a more obvious distinction in some way shape or form