How is Xan a god medic? He hasn't healed anyone yet! And that's not putting it correctly: I do need to have an idea what he can do to know if giving him one of the precious mission seats is worth the 'investment' of not bringing another char.
She is a god medic because she is the avatar of Sa'las[/joking]
She is literally perfect in all things medical, both in terms of stats and equipment. There is no way for her to not be a good medic. Even if she were to post an action saying "Pretend I'm healing someone while I actually don't" it would fail and result in her actually healing someone because she has terrible charisma.
'Loosing the Sword'? Now that came out of nowhere. Either way, we don't know what the people/things down there know or have, so I'm gonna try not to gamble any assets on a blind drop. If it turns out they have a hidden laser cannon, I'd rather loose an empty shuttle and some gunnerbots than a shuttle full of troopers! If that turns out to be the case, we can then reconsider our approach.
I explained the reasoning in that thing you quoted. And again, we know they can't shoot down a shuttle for gameplay reasons. Shuttles don't have grav-chutes and can't dodge that well, therefore if it was hit, the entire team would die and there would be no mission. Therefore, the only threats we encounter will be on the ground. Which means that if we don't have enough shuttles, send our only shuttle down and it gets destroyed after we land, we won't be able to send another and potentially lose our chance to stop something dangerous or take care of some time sensitive objective or give them time to organize while we go down on drop pods and hope the crew/AM can build a shuttle out of spare parts. Again, the chance of us having only one shuttle is low, but in the case we do, those are valid concerns.
Edit: And really, if you insist on sending another scouting team first, why not drop it in with a drop pod?
Again, meta considerations.
It is a game. Somd meta considerations are natural and should be part of the mission planning if they would make the game more fun or organizing the mission quicker.
Good, attentive commanders solve a lot of problems with sods. And at least, when you tell a sod not to shoot, or to move in or away, or to do easy action x they won't ignore it or wander off or do stupid shit like players do.
You mean micromanaging sods like you're controlling a few extra characters? Even if that's the case, that means that they won't be able to make split second decisions, unless you give them a giant string of simple orders covering every eventuality, taking extra care not to make any mistakes or give contradictory orders. Because sods are nice when you're facing simple things, but either they're not that good or they outright hinder you when you're facing a complex unknown high stress situation.
I think the sharkmist did what it did by inducing certain emotions on people, right. Would that work on sods? Maybe not, they have no emotions.
They show no change in emotion. But they have emotions. Happiness is an emotion. And they feel happy as long as they're following orders. Which means they can also feel unhappy when not following orders. Now imagine how confusing it would be if they started feeling bad while still following orders. It would be like punishing a dog for doing what you told him. They'd be unable to understand what's going on and thus be unable to respond, thus diminishing their capacity to operate well or causing them to outright go berserk.
As for screaming the loudest, it may be that an intruder finds nothing to scream at, nothing to really influence/overpower (like a 'psychic blank' in WH40K). Or that someone using an amp will have trouble targeting them, cause he is used to targeting normal people with normal brain architecture and psychology.
Not really. Amps work by altering brain chemistry, not the "soul" of the target. So if the target has no soul with which to engage in a screaming match with his opponents soul, then he is much more likely to lose.
Xan (and his new incarnation) are still strictly banned from spacemagics.
Never said she could. Just responded to a theoretical question.
And you might want to change "space magic" to "amps and manips", since something like sharkmist limbs or a pimp cane could be useful to her.