Speaking of which, what's the general consensus regarding a Crane with sensor in a fireteam. Does he befit from burst and BS bonuses when using triangulated fire or not?
-3 is the only MOD they get according to Triangulated Fire skill and the burst bonus from fireteams is not applicable to Entire Order skills according to the Fireteam rules. I don't think consensus really needs to be sought when rules are so clear. Makes the situations where Triangulated Fire is beneficial to a 5-manned Crane very limited, but it's still a nice backup to have.
I mean if you're shelling out for a Crane you're probably bringing a Spitfire version anyway which doesn't come with a Sensor.
Possibly. I still haven't tried the Spitfire Crane, to be honest. The Multi Rifle versions is such good value without the SWC expenditure and the Combi range bands makes the X-visor pull its weight compared to the already lenient Spitfire rangeband. For Vanilla they can Sensor-snipe better than Sun Tze V2 and for ISS, and for ISS they bring a Sensor for regular Sensor duty to the CG link. Having a Sensor Crane within ZoC of whatever was hiding in Hidden Deployment can not be understated how juicy that is. I can say, however, that shelling out for three Cranes is something of a speciality list and one that I so far haven't got to work all that reliably.
You do get utility, but in terms of pure door kicking the Spitfire is alot better than the multi rifle. In the 16-24 band the Spitfire comes in between 15-20% more likely to stick a wound onto most infantry. Even against high armoured TAGs the Spitfire still performs marginally better by a few percentage points. You gotta have a real need for the Sensor otherwise you're alot better off ponying up the 2pts and SWC for that Spitfire if the Crane is gonna be your heavy lifter. Triangulate Fire is a cute trick and all but Rui Shi are AVA2 in ISS so you could just point them at the ODD in cover problem model and watch it get shredded.
