Arguably, less restricted because of the B1 EXP firing mode, however, something worth pondering is whether Neurocinetics is worth it on a Yan Huo MHMG when it could enter Suppression Fire for a not-too-dissimilar effect without Neurocinetics.
I love the idea of "Heavy" remotes. One of the many things I'm jealous of Nomads for. Something that could be cool is "walking cover" It's a remote that has no weapons, or minimal, but anyone in b2b with it counts has having cover.
I don’t play Yu Jing so my vote barely counts, but if I was king of CB for a day I would take tactical awareness away from all the SWC cost HI in the Invincible Army, and give it to a lot of the non SWC cost stuff. And then I create a ton of Fireteam Duo profiles. These would join any given cool thing in the list with one Zuyong. That way literally everything cool in the Sectorial could be deployed with a Zuyong buddy to feed it bonus orders and guard it and make it just a bit more Invincible. Mowang? Great troop. Better with a Zuyong buddy. Hulang? Give him a Zuyong buddy too, and let it ride his Forward Deployment. Yan Huo? Buddy. Guija? Sure. I would reverse the regular Fireteam design. Usually the designers want you to build a big Fireteam of a trademark unit. I would flip that and encourage Zuyong escorts on everyone else. If done right there might be more Zuyong on the typical field, and more orders being generated by HI instead of Zhanshi and cheese bots.
It would be nice if Xi Zhuang got wildcard in Imperial Service in line with some of the other Dire Foes.
Not all Dire Foes get wildcard, therefore I'm fine with Xi Zhuang limited to Celestials. However I really hope our next Dire Foes, who should be a Zanshi, gets wildcard in White banner and Invincible in the same way Leila does in haqq sectorials.
Wild Card in Huang Di (and yes, I'll keep using that name until proven it's entirely wrong), but not in Invincibles, I'd say ;) I would like to see Celestials in general have a bit better link options, if only to get some more diversity in list building by having a decent smoke source in a Haris - that ISS' smoke is only located in a Core is a bit annoying (I don't consider B 1 BS 11 to be worth spending orders on for smoke), and anything that's good for the Celestial Goose will be good for the Celestial Gander
If ISS was brand new, just released today, it would be full of wildcards. Some agents might just all be wildcards, some might only have a few FTO profiles. Bao would mix with CG like grenzers and securitate. Heck, some Cranes might have even been given TA.
Oooh, TA on Crane, now we're talking true delish stuff. Them are some of the best sculpts, most evocative concepts and somehow the most bland experiences I've come across on the table...
At the moment I think Pheasants should be re-statted as Mymidon officers who trade some survivability (ODD/NWI) for modern leadership buffs, especially for links. Wildcard as standard. Maybe sensor instead of x visor. Add an NCO + number 2 profile CoC profile With these changes he'll pretty much perfectly match his bio. He is an investigator who joins assaults, occasionally taking charge and ending up reliably fucking shit up in the thick of it. NCO feels like Yu Jing flavor after 3O and it would be valuable because IS LTs often can't spend their own order. He'll be an expensive one wound tool box, but with eclipse grenades and actual PH, plus link bonuses, he'll not be so tragically fragile. Cranes are pretty much perfect statwise. They deserve PH14 but I don't want to pay for it. Other than that they just need free agent and wildcard everywhere. Maybe counterintelligence but the other factions would never allow it! Hsien is in a strange place. Gamewise he's pretty great. But in terms of being interesting, he's already turbo expensive but he just feels like a visor shangji/oriental aquilla when you use him, rather than the emperors will personified. He's the Crane's superior, but statwise the crane will kick his ass.
Maybe so, but I'm not viewing the Crane vs Hsien in terms of who should beat up who. As I see it, Crane has problems getting in range to do what they need to do, Hsien doesn't. Granted, it was years since I played ISS and my meta's ARO pieces have changed so the likelihood of walk-shooting with Hsien is much lower now a days.
Giving the Crane a role to fill in vanilla would be very much welcome, but I wouldn't bother prioritizing it. That said, if we were looking at redesigning ISS to fit the modern age of sectorials, it'd definitely get the frenzy discount. I'm not going to bother justifying it, it'd just get it, because every HI that wants to be optimized seems to get it these days.
It's an incredibly hardy LT, and has a good chance to resist assassination attempts by just about everything short of a full-scale attack from the enemy DZ. It also has decent Classified coverage, and the Sensor version can use Triangulated Fire to counter extremely heavy modifiers or pull things out of CC, or just Sensor using the LT order to save an order on a sweep. Its big problem is the same as almost every other LT profile in Yu Jing; the Daoying Hacker is safer, cheaper and more useful. This faction used to be renowned less than a year ago for its unheard-of variety in useful, viable active LTs until that profile came along. I'd like to see a few more benefits for using your LT aggressively instead of hiding and supporting to restore a bit of that old variety.
I don't think sectorials need frenzy-cheating to be viable - largely the top 3 factions don't use frenzy cheating. I can see an interesting design direction for ISS if NCO was located on Pheasant and LT2 was located on Hsien, provided Pheasant didn't have Wildcard this would mean that to effectively use the NCO you'd have to make some hard decisions regarding who got to be in a fireteam and who doesn't. Hsien wants smoke, but smoke from a solo Celestial Guard is unreliable. Hsien LT2 in a Haris won't use the LT orders, but that would mean a solo Pheasant (whom is not the toughest unit) or a Pheasant Core (with Bao) which would mean the Celestial Guard gets Command Token intensive or has to be solo. Or you eschew smoke fully and embrace a different version of order dumping compared to Invincible Army.
Well, the mowang red fury/spitfire is better than the hac tao HMG at close range, which is coincidentally where the additionnal wound will matter the most as well. he's really just a cost-effective sturdy rambo you'll ram down your opponent's throat, dealing as much damage as possible before he dies. Not gonna lie though, I really, really miss the marker state and stealth...
So, Operation Kaldstrom, what appears to be 4 new profiles for PanO and only 2 for Yu Jing. Way to go, CB.
If Krit and Zuyong taught us anything it is that number of new units do not matter as much as the relevancy of them. Krit is a complete dud (unless seriously changed in N4-) and Zuyong weren't new but got two new profiles that are game changers for them (to the complete detriment of all other Zuyong profiles)
Daofei and Guilang desperately need new sculpts and they are integral to White Banner, so their inclusion was pretty much a given.
