Well, my votes are for Varuna, 'cause PanO need news and I'm glad to see this sectorial army, I like its playstyle and units, and the other one for my long awaited IA, I wanted to play it since i started infinity in 2015 xD. About the rest, I don't like mercenaries and JSA did not impress me, in my opinion is not a balanced army, Tunguska is good but for now I never played it, I'm faithful to vanilla Nomads. ALEPH, I always played SP and have just a pair of matches with vanilla but don't like OSS, I bought Coldfront and new minaitures are amazing but for now they're excellent for the main faction and nothing more. The only other army that seems pretty is revised MO, many new options but we lose the Hosp+Magister link that was really a great ace in the hole, overall, however, it seems more than decent.
It wouldn't make sense for the Tiger Soldier to be on Salvarheima due to the extreme weather outdoors. Maybe there is one more Yu Jing sectorial in the future that we have no idea about?
The stated concept for White Banner is for the sectorial to be a collection of older models. Now, the White Banner, or Banners in general, are large army organizations and can be redeployed to where they are needed. Add to that that a high-altitude paratrooper would need sufficient protection from the elements and cold to survive the drop regardless of planet, I think they'd probably be very decently protected regardless. Edit: Let's for argument's sakes assume they drop at a very high altitude of 20km. Up there it's fairly warm (but still far below freezing), but a few kilometers down and you're looking at -60 Celsius (not counting wind chill). That's over temperate climate during spring. +/-15 C shouldn't make that much difference and even if they also get rid of some protective layering on landing, they should still be able to handle a combat zone in a sub-arctic climate regardless of season provided they get evac before running out of food or fuel.
I've primarily chosen factions to vote for because of new stuff they've brought into the game at large (so decided to pick IA and Tunguska), but I'm not sure if it's what was asked. Can't really comment on their competitive prowess.
Very good point. I guess the White Banner troops logos will be varied compared to I.S.S. & IA's unit logos which share a similar backdrop.
What now? -60 Celsius is crazy cold, significantly more so if it's before wind chill. Antarctica isn't that cold at midwinter. You need some serious cold protection to survive that, definitely not something you could wear at room temperature. 15 degrees Celcius is a huge difference in temperature. That's more than the summer-winter average temperature difference in some places. Not sure why you're dropping people from that high though.
Basically just extrapolating a bit on World War 2 to modern day conflicts and adding a bit of futuristic insanity. Anti-aircraft guns have a limited height they can reach to, meaning to be safe from them you need to get fairly high (I'm sure Section9 could correct me) upwards of 8+km. If you want to get away from anti-aircraft missiles, you need high-speed aircrafts at very high altitude, the higher tech your opponent has access to the higher and faster you need to go. I'm making the simple assumption that in order to drop in the conflict zone you're not going to be using Anatovs (even if they can reach 12km), but instead you're going to drop your troops from significantly higher in full survival gear and personal air supply.
You simply not gonna drop them : you will use helos at low alt. High altitude jump are use by SF for both discretion and the ability to litterally glide into ennemy airspace. For "line" paratroopers, 300m jump is more common, sometimes 200m. At 100m you'll have 50% casualty (data from the 50's, modern parachutes may have change this, so not sure). But the general idea is to get them on the ground ASAP, were they are far less vulnerable. I think the Tigers will just "fly" into ennemy territory, so AAA is not really a problem
I didn't play Yu-Jing before, so I don't have the salt, but I picked up JSA for this season and have loved it. Coming from primarily Nomads, it's a whole new way to play the game and I'm in love with DoTanko fireteams now. Tunguska def got points for cool factor too.
"Spartans, what is your profession?" "DRUZE! DRUZE! DRUZE!" ...I quite like those orange helmets. I would have bought into them no matter how good or bad their profiles were.
It's a good thing Tigers are elite troops, then :) But in either case they should be better prepared for cold than most troops in YJ banners
If you're dropping troops into a defended location, you need to be dropping fast. Really, really fast. Right on the edge of 'burning up from re-entry' fast. And then you need to stay that fast until about 3 seconds before impact with the ground and do a 16+gee burn to scrub off most of your speed before hitting the ground hard enough to leave a small crater. It's called lithobraking. Anyone not flying drop shuttles calls it a 'crash landing'. Survival of the drop shuttle is not expected. If it's not a defended location, you can jump out at whatever altitude your gear can support. 10km is pretty typical for 'High Altitude' jumps (whether HALO or HAHO) today, but the better option is usually to jump out much lower. Though Jay Posey's book SUNGRAZER has a description of an Orbital Insertion, not quite Starship Troopers style. Each trooper is wearing their Recon Power Armor, and that is inside an Orbital Drop suit, Russian doll style. 20+ minutes of boredom while you wait for the suit to fail and kill you.
You can reach 16+ without much investment... that Lt L2 in camo state for 21pts is too autoinclude (and WHY is it in Vanilla YJ when the Asura Lt L2 are limited to OSS????) Meh, you have Teutons+Magisters if you want that. Add an Order Sargeant (Paramedic) and you can heal the Teutons and Magisters at 14-3, that's 55%... Standard PanO medical care! Besides, the KHD+Tinbot+D-Charges Santiago, and the other 2 profiles with E/M grenades... OK, you don't have cheap meat with sticks on that (enforced) link, but you can mix a lot, changing the damn list in a moment! Now I want to know WHY didn't they give Free Agent the possibility of changing its Combat Group just before ending Deployment (then give it to Wildcards or Haris/Duo profiles, so you can change your links between games!)
I put my vote in for VIRD, mostly because they mean more for PanO than any of the other new Sectorials mean for their parent factions. Varuna brought things that PanO players never would have dreamed of until the Sectorial dropped. It represents a massive departure from CB's approach to building PanO units and Sectorials. Tak: Look, Camo! And... Uh... Spetsnaz! And Vet Kazaks! And Irmandinhos! So basically any Vanilla Ariadna list. TJC: We're so good at Hacking. Sooo good. We're, like, really really great at Hacking, guys. And we have Kriza Boracs too. And now we have two Nomad Sectorials that run the strongest Heavy Infantry link team in the game. OSS: We took what PanO does and just do it better. We got a pile of new combat units, but why try when you can run Dakini and Posthumans instead. JSA: I seceded from Yu Jing and all I got was ODD and a submachine gun. StarCo: PanO has a really, really good character? Naw, let's have her join a Nomad Merc Sectorial instead. We're also the third Nomad Sectorial to run an ultra-strong Heavy Infantry link. Ikari: We can run 3 Keisotsu, a Brawler MSV2 and a Tanko missile launcher... And people still don't talk about us. Tough crowd. DBS: We had Wildcard mixed links before it was cool.