I dont think this has been brought up much in this thread, but the problem with TAGs will always be cost and opportunity cost and for PanO support. Raw cost of points for TAGs is why the tik is usually our highest regarded tag as it combines affordability, tools and skills to engage in its primary role and excel. The Ulham is a rather mediocre tag as it jumps the price up another 30 points while improving one dimension and sacrificing everything else. The value of an Ulhan compared to it contemporaries stutters from strong option to niche choice. Add onto the cost of the unit the support in the form of an engineer and a hacker. A minimum 30 points ontop of the cost of the tag. You can sacrifice this, but you progressively put your tag in more danger and incur higher risk in running it for each option you forgo. If anything, spending more becomes more attractive to increase the defense of what is easily taking at least 1/4 of your list and soon to be 1/3 with support. This leads to the opportunity cost of running a tag. Is the tag performing something that cannot be done by a cheaper piece? What is better, an expensive piece that excels above and beyond what is needed or a piece that gets the job done at a fraction the cost? The answer will always be enough to get the job done without expending more than needed. Pieces like the nissie, Swiss guard and karhu easily fight as well or in some cases better than our tags for far less. While the tag does have a better defensive statline, its not without its own major flaws. Hacking, e/m, monofilament, smoke and cc warbands all cause issues for tags at fractions of the cost of the piece. Putting all your eggs in one basket becomes a delicate gamble and one that is not without greater risks for the same reward. Finally, pano support is notedly not the best. Wip 12 means that our chance for success on a given die roll to fix a tag is about 8% worse than that of an average wip 13 engineer. This puts greater strain on command tokens to cover rerolls which are also needed to pop tags out of possession and coordinate orders and reform links than other factions while we have limited options for more command tokens. Translate this to reset and hacking attempts and the baseline of support for the tag shows issues. More subtle issues become more apparent unraveling pano hacking profiles. Low wip, low bts, lack of hacking upgrades plagues the faction. To get solid hackers that can stand up to some of the nastier hackers out there you need to spend around 40 or so points. Many hacking dangers avoid midfield through pitchers negating hidden midfield hackers. Some of these issues are not unique to PanO, but most factions don't claim to be tag factions which compounds these issues acutely for PanO.
