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With the recent release of Marian - Riptide, her logistics set Aileron Squad was also made available to players. And while at first glance it looked like it would just be another character-locked piece of gear, a closer look reveals a whole world of possibility.
It works on everyone?
Looking at the skill description:
It would seem that the 3-piece effect is only usable by Marian - Riptide. However, skill effects work interestingly in Snowbreak. Each sentence is its own independent effect, which means that the 3-piece effect is in actuality two effects:
- If equipped by Marian - Riptide, increases Kraken Magazine's DMG by 50%.
- When Kraken Magazine is not active, increases skill DMG of deployed operative (excluding Marian - Riptide herself) by 30%.
Notice how the second effect doesn't specify that it only works when equipped by Marian? That's because it doesn't.
Yes, that's right. Any operative can equip Aileron Squad, and because they will never have a Kraken Magazine active as only Marian - Riptide can provide it, and only to herself, the logistics set will provide a PERMANENT 30% skill damage buff for the entirety of any mission the operative is deployed to.
The operative equipping Aileron Squad also has their own skill damage boosted while active as well:
And it gets even better.
But wait, there's more
Many other support logistics sets like Amarna Squad or Hjartagard Squad do not allow their buffs to be stacked with themselves, effectively limiting their usage to one per team at most. However, Aileron Squad has no such restriction:
This means that you can equip Aileron Squad to both supports in your team to have a permanent 60% skill damage buff at all times. I don't think I have to explain how ridiculously good that is.
This is why we can't have nice things
Aileron Squad being universally usable is an amazing new tool for players to use, and fittingly makes it the skill damage counterpart to Amarna Squad, the ballistic damage support logistic set that coincidentally also released during a summer event and is also insanely good. In a time where it seems that every new operative release brings with it new equipment only usable for them, getting this is a much-needed breath of fresh air.
Unfortunately, it seems that Seasun does not share this view, going out of their way to specifically lock new equipment releases to only be usable by the character designed for them. Furthermore, Seasun is also aware of the shenanigans that you can pull with Aileron Squad, and have announced their intent to patch out this functionality. So this leaves you, the reader, with two things you can do:
Abuse it while you can
If any of you are looking to improve your score in Neural Sim, maybe give Aileron Squad some consideration if you're using a skill DPS. It certainly worked for me, giving my underbuilt Eatchel some extra supportive oomph this week.
Make your voice heard (complain to Seasun)
If you're also tired of every new logistics set being locked to one specific character, or just could really use a good universal skill damage support logistics set, don't just sit there and let Seasun take this away from you. Tell them that you like this, and that you want it to stay the way it is.
In the game settings is a button that will take you to a customer service webpage. Here, you can directly tell Seasun that you DON'T want this amazing logistics set to be nerfed and kept locked away for only Marian - Riptide to use. Here are some talking points you can use:
- I enjoy using the Aileron Squad logistics set with other characters besides Marian - Riptide, and I think that the game benefits from it continuing to work this way
- I dislike how recent logistics sets have only been usable for the character they were designed for, so finally getting one that many other characters can use greatly excited me and improved my enjoyment of the game
- Being able to use Aileron Squad with older characters that I own has given them new uses, which I appreciate a lot, so it would extremely dislike it if this was taken away.
Remember to be respectful, and thank you for doing your part. Hopefully Seasun changes their mind about this, because it is too good to lose.