I feel bad for whoever when through Uprising with YJ and then goes through the split of whatever else is happening to them as well. I thought and still think QK should be or become NA2. Maybe folded into Druze. Of the other factions, the only ones I can see doing it are maybe one of the Nomad ships. Some of the other speculations don't make sense to me, like PanO MO, the church is the PanO people. The people are not going to be happy about it. There's too many ties from different parts of PanO. A whole world on the other hand is different. Like Acon or Neoterra (both defunct and then the least amount of trouble). Nomad ships rarely see each other only a few times and only have political ties. If they had cut out an order somehow from doing the sniffer/sat-lock/guided, it might be used. Like making it that when Sat-Lock is used, it's an auto-fire for the Guided ammo. That would cut out one order.
Okay so I’ve gotten more than a few games in with WB, and have some final thoughts before N4. It has a gameplay style of NCA, aka Vanilla with links. This isn’t actually bad, but definitely makes it feel boring and bland. We have increased AVA on Hunduns, Dao Fei, Guilang, and Shaolin. All of these really feel quite pointless, but at least 2 Dao Feis and 4 Guilangs makes a fun gimmick. So how do we make WB interesting if the links and increased AVA are bland? We need Sectorial specific profiles! Give Blue Wolf a WB profile with mimetism or Climbing+! Give Dao Fei, Tiger Soldiers, or Guilangs some unique profiles that only WB has access to!
I took the engineer's hair to be grey. It's a shame he doesn't have his tricked out rifle from the graphic novel (Yu Jing plasma gun?)
I just realised Qiang Gao, Invincibles Officer doesn't get Wildcard in his native sectorial IA, he just gets to count as a Zuyong. CB doesn't want him competing with Shang Ji in IA, but then puts Shang Ji in WB and then Gao follows them over and decides he's a wildcard. What an ass.
Just now!? lol. If he counted as a Wildcard, no one would ever take Shang Ji in IA. But then I don't many that do anyway. I almost force myself to sometimes.
This isn't really anything new. Adil, a member of the Imperial Service is a wildcard in WB, but surprisingly has no fireteam options at all in the Imperial Service sectorial... In general, Yu Jing probably has the worst contradictions between the background and their faction compositions. Invincible Army and White Banner are just grab bags of units that kind of disregard at lot of fluff.
On the one hand, I really want to say that running three Cranes is its own reward. On the other, man, I'd really appreciate a real reason to run three Cranes at once. I mean, I have'em. Just give me a reason.
I'm an inherently optimistic person but can't help and feel the triple whammy or cheaper martial arts, cheaper HI, cheaper multi-rifle might help somewhat. My biggest bugbear with crane (and many Yu Jing HI) is the slightly too high price point. This is obviously caveated by ?? around sensor, stealth and what looks to be increased viability of hacking. Being able to punch a TAG with DAM 16 DA might become a more valuable skill though. Its all swings and round abouts. We will have to see.
They're too expensive and they kinda all sit in the same role. You can sort of justify 2, Spitfire and Sensor, but the 3rd is difficult to really make a reason to stick in the link. The Hacker profile is super iffy with no Tinbot to back it up. If they had better link options that made them easier to spread out into multiple links or profiles with more varied gear...
A wildcard Crane joining a Wu-Ming haris (because why the fuck do we not get that option when Ikari does?) would actually be pretty freaking sweet. But we're getting off topic and that's another thread that is already currently active.
I haven't actually seen anything indicating a re-balancing of prices. So far as I can tell, price reductions seem to be based basically on N3 prices rather than have a correlation with stats. Time will tell, though, as we really don't have much in the way of data atm. There's about as much reason to take Qiang in IA as there is Shang-Ji, and I wouldn't say either would overlap each other. After N4, from what little we have to go on, would anyone ever favour a HMG+1 over an AP HMG with regeneration?
I'm still not convinced Regeneration on active turn units is going to be worth the cost, but on the other hand it could well be cheaper than I expect.
Oh yeah, you'd probably go for the Zuyong TacAware if you could, but if you were hurting for an HMG in a Zhanshi link you'd only get Qiang if the link already had a Shang-Ji in IA and then only because of Yu Jing's unique limitations on Wildcard. In WB it's a different matter. There Qiang is one oof the best LTs.
I'm really hoping that limitation is gone in N4. After watching the free min-max share of links everybody is getting, not to say HB's "build your links as you wish", there's absolutely no reason to keep those restrictions.