As of FAQ 1.4 a pilot no longer enters the Dead state when the TAG dies, if the Pilot is dismounted. Will the army enter LoL if the pilot is alive at the start of the active turn, but the TAG is Dead or Unconscious if the TAG was the active Lieutenant? I'm assuming that the army enters LoL because the TAG no longer generates orders and order generation and use seem to be shared with the pilot only if the TAG is alive (see FAQ 1.8 dismounted pilots and TacAware orders), but the FAQ has left this bit a bit under defined.
The Trooper is the TAG not the Pilot (based on what generates the Order). The Trooper is in a Null state. Alternatively, the Trooper is the TAG/Pilot gestalt. The TAG/Pilot gestalt is in a Null state (even if the Pilot is not), this triggers LOL. It's not pretty, but it's a thing. I really hope N4 moves to the Pilot being the Trooper, generates the Order etc and just Mounts/Dismounts an alternative profile.
Just noticed that by the text of the Pilot rules, a surviving Pilot with a TAG killed by Monofilament, thereby skipping the Unconscious state, breaks some things: The Pilot of an Unconscious Vehicle or TAG generates no Orders for himself or for his Order Pool. The Pilot of an Unconscious Vehicle or TAG is not considered either as a survivor or a casualty for Victory Points, Retreat! or any other purposes. The first element keeps an order to the pool and the second causes the TAG amalgam to count as both living and dead thanks to them being arguably the same trooper. Seconding that request to make the Pilot the Trooper for N4.
A Dead trooper is not in the Unconscious State regardless of when it occurred... Still, having the Pilot be the Trooper would be infinitely better for all intents and purposes, I agree.
Where are the rules for this? I couldn't find any cancellation clauses for this situation in either Unconscious or Dead.
When a trooper is removed from play, it can not logically be in any state. Double this up with the consistency argument; becoming Dead is not a cancellation clause for any State as far as I am aware (have only checked Unconscious and Isolated atm), and a Dead LT in Hunting Party does not yield points if they were Isolated at time of death
"Removed from play," yeah that can and is read as "doesn't have any states on it" but I also don't really see why a Trooper that's not in play can't keep the states applied to it when it was in play: it'd make suiciding to remove Isolation in HP irrelevant. In either case Dead troopers are still explicitly part of the game (albeit only for limited purposes). It's arguably be cleaner having Dead cancel all other states applied to the Trooper. But this is pure semantics :)
Dead is a State. It can even be cancelled legally if there's a Scenario Special Rule for it. Unfortunately there seems to be no written procedure for removing a unit from play, according to a quick wiki search. It's a technicality, but with N4 so close I figured I should probably mention it so it could be cleared up by the hardcopy release if the rule is still around.
Argh! Infinitythewiki.com is gone it seems, have to go through wiki.infinitythegame.com only now. Just to remind you, a manned TAG only ever enters the Unconscious State if it has exactly 0 wounds left at the end of the order. This is not unique to Monofilament, any DA, EXP, Fire, DT, or high burst attack can cause a TAG to leap-frog the Unconscious State. Now, this is not much of a problem; * Pilots never generate orders in the first place, it's the TAG that does this * Pilots are universally 0 point troopers (if they even have points) * TAGs in the Dead state explicitly are not allowed to generate orders Both "offending" bullet points are clarifications, they do not alter the game mechanics on their own in any meaningful way. P.s. Now, hopefully the situation still changes in N4 to where TAG pilots are the valuable tactical assets, as pilots are excessively valuable individual as noted by the Guijia propaganda infomercial. Not unlikely the pilots are vetted and trained for the role from their early teens, so the cost of losing the pilot probably dwarfs the cost of the TAG itself - even if the TAG is destroyed beyond meaningful salvage.
I think @Mahtamori has the crux of it. In the N2 core book TAG pilots didn’t exist. The rules were added in Human Sphere, but were trying to be minimally invasive so as not to upset points balance; hence why order generation and such were unaffected. N3 kept those intact at release instead of rewriting them (which I found disappointing at the time). I really hope N4 addresses it this time around; they put a lot more effort into rebalancing TAG stuff in the latter part of this edition, and I would hate to see those updates go to waste.
