If you have Joan and mini no name Joan you will have players complaining for bloat and that one of them is unoptimized and it should not be there. I know its a fight that cannot be won, personally, I prefer the way it is, I view the gameplay and characters as ava 1 units, because this is what they are, I understand other people view the game less mechanically and their concerns are valid.
Right, but there's different ways to approach that. Personally, I'd prefer it if character had generic names and we could do our own sort of background development with our special ops teams, but that's not the direction Infinity went in and that's fine.
Lunah was released very shortly before Aristeia!, so would definitely have been in development for both games at the same time. Abundance of characters in Infinity doesn't really bother me, the conflicts are sporadic and rare for the most part, representing extraordinary incursions rather than day-to-day conflicts. Plus the fact that medical and resurrection tech is fairly commonplace, factions can commit their most elite troops to repeated conflicts without a great deal of narrative dissonance.
Sorry to board on the "New Caskuda Suck" train, but that decision to transform a beautiful Biomechanical Technorganic "Bug-Shell Dreadnought" into ANOTHER Evangelion Rip-Off is VERY disappointing for Me. . . I'm not criticizing the Realization of the Mini; could be an awesome "Light Paratrooper EI Avatar" or some kind of Shaasvastii Spartan TAG, but for the Caskudas and Exrahs that I started to love and like EXPRESSELY for their Visual Art Style so different and weird from other Alien Troopers that is NOT. . . Feared that it was like that anyway, with the recent "Omologation" of Heavy Armour Style of the Combined Army. . . . .
New Caskuda... I saw previous version. New one looks better than it was. But of course it looks usual and nothing exciting for me. Plus you can guess, what material it would be... But if I would take it, in theory, I would remove strange spikes-blades from hands to another place and would try to rework shoulders. They don’t look like something that is comfortable to move with. On the other hand it may be excused as EI revenge. “You’ve traded with enemy? Ok, then. Now you are going to wear this. Enjoy!”
IMO converting your own models to take the place of characters who are overpresent (in your opinion) is pretty baller. I loved that in 40K. See way less of it in Infinity (though to be fair maybe the motivation for that in 40K is also premium prices on character models). Helmeting your character dudes often serves a happy medium to that. Same form/pose, lose the distinctive head, not a bad compromise. I converted a model to replace Raoul because I didn't like the space-tracksuit at the time (though I will now be using the Raoul mini for something in Kosmoflot because I can paint his outfit in Adidas scheme to lead my drop-gopniks).
They probably changed the design because, at the time they took them out, they were the least selling figures for them. I guess it was assumed for the way they looked. The rules for them were pretty good too though so I don’t think it was because they were bad for that. I did know a few people that didn’t like them.
With the possible exception of the Caskuda the Exrah were their worst selling minis, and they cost more to produce due to the way they wore moulds faster than other ranges. Their rules were actually excellent with the Vector Operator being one of the best units in the game, and I'm pretty sure at least 50% of sales were due to rules rather than looks. A friend of mine bought one of Wayland Games' last two Iskallers and they sent him the other one just to get rid of it!
If I recall correctly, rules-wise, they were all sort of replaced by new Morat troops. Like the Rodok took the place of the Super-Jump/Mimetisim troops.
The original Cascuda shredded moulds as if there was no tomorrow, iirc it never paid for itself, Exrah (and the old drones) solidified the understanding that "starfish aliens" do not sell.
