For me right now the figure makes up for everything! Just got him and wow I love the pose. It's very dynamic. Just take time to find a good balance point on a base.
So, in my view, in the below list Combat Group 1 has completely obsolete profiles that are made obsolete by the Adil (in group 2) simply by virtue of Adil playing better with Fireteams and the budding N4 meta where everyone has some hacking. GROUP 1 2 CRANE AGENT (Triangulated Fire, Sensor, X Visor) MULTI Rifle, Nanopulser(+1B) ( ) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 46) CRANE AGENT (Lieutenant, Sensor, Triangulated Fire, X Visor) MULTI Rifle, Nanopulser(+1B) ( ) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (+1.5 | 46) GROUP 2 2 ADIL (Crane Rank Armor) Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon. (0 | 45) ADIL (Crane Rank Armor) (Lieutenant) Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon. (0 | 43) Points are very similar, melee abilities are very similar and the one point lowered WIP can occasionally make a difference but is about as cosmetic as a Zhanshi's Kinematica. It's not that the character doesn't have a spot in the army, but that the difference between Adil and a regular Crane basically comes down to Specialist Operative and Veteran, two one-point skills. Yes, I do think Adil is better than a Multi Rifle Crane. No, I wouldn't build a list with either.
Our other non SWC HI LT profiles don't get point discounts. Look at the Crane in the exact same quoted post.
Cranes in general are hurting a bit at the moment. It's a solid foundation, but they aren't keeping up with most of their contemporaries. Everyone and their dog moving on to AP weaponry, gaining a massive frenzy discount (holy shit, Asawira), or just being more optimized in general (KOJ) just leaves our bird boy behind a bit. The Spitfire Crane would do well to gain AP. As for the MR crane, he's got a kit that wants him brawling in the midfield, but not a lot of incentive to actually get him there. Considering how gutted ISS' smoke options became alongside the general nerf to smoke, and how important smoke is to ISS, I think giving the MR Crane an underslung smoke launcher or even smoke grenades would help both the Crane and the faction as a whole out a lot. A vape Crane could even find some real use in vanilla, where it'd be nice to see them being viable too.
I think it's one of their pure "story" rules. They arbitrarily change pts just because of story. Makes some sense because he's a character. Though if they really wanted us to take him as a Lt. then they would have also given him a +1 swc, or +1 order or something similar.
I wouldn't say CB has a history of arbitrary points. N4 has yielded some pretty suspicious points costs, but prior to that points costs have been relating to the units' abilities and not their story. I wonder if it is like in his Medium Infantry profile that the LT profile isn't meant to have Veteran and Specialist Operative, but accidentally got them anyway. (And boy would that make his profile suck even more...)
They have been doing it from the beginning. Just look at CA and all of the Lt. choices that cost 1 SWC but don't come with anything. The only reason is that they want you to take the Skiavoro, Anathematic, Charontid 0 SWC choices.
SWC is not points. They haven't done so with points as of N3 (though it took until HSN3 to remove the extra 6-8 points on the Pheasant)
ISS can get all the extra SWC in the world, but it counts for nothing if they can't actually do anything of value with it.
Coming into this thread a bit late, even JSA has a bunch of units that fail these criteria. Technically even some of the Ninjas aren't CC specialists according to this because of low PH/bad weapons, and Domaru/Tanko/Daiyokai/Oyorororoi fail because they are hackable. And half of those are pieces that given the option, I would almost always choose to CC with.
Ninjas have both decent damage (coming in at exactly 14) AND decent CCW (I think AP needs to be added to this list in this edition) Domaru, Tanko, Daiyokai, and Oioioioi are stealth so they qualify for being hacking resistent. Only the last criteria is difficult to achieve, but only basically Mushashi and Daiyokai has problems with that criteria. That said, I would rate stuff differently.
This Betrayal box looks interesting. We got the Nourikas who looks better than onther Umbra Samaritans, but Adil Crane version worse than common Crane agent.
*shoots Medikit on thread* Adil's non-LT profile is oddly 2 points too expensive. NCO is a 2-point skill. NCO would be very thematic for Adil. Maybe NCO was simply omitted on Adil? One profile is a Veteran LT other is an NCO Crane-ish.
I want to post about Gao, cAdil and Sun1 in the Army bugs thread, but at the same time I hate all the posts that are "this unit is different, is this true?" (also, I'm a tiny bit scared they'll take away the discount on the plain BSG Daoying LT, not gonna lie). It's just that there's something that's just off about these ones. It's not that they changed something on them, it's that they changed stuff on everyone and these ones missed the train or something. cAdil non-LT shouldn't be more expensive and would actually be somewhat decent as NCO* Sun1 is fairly blatantly missing about 10 points in discounts or new skills and gear - and even then would probably be a niche profile at best. Gao is just... there's something... missing there. It isn't that he's too expensive, it's that there's an ability or skill they forgot. * mAdil is sufficiently different and blocks cAdil so even if this makes cAdil better than a Crane, there's still a place for regular Cranes.
