Never really thought about it before, but when thinking about it, the Pilots have some very odd mixes of stats. I always believed that the differences was to give variety, but the more I look at it, the more I realize that there are so many overlapping, and some entirely useless setups that it sort of limits everything down to under half the options.

First of the poor setups: Milano, Shiro & Ibrahim. The problem with all of them, is that the cost for having one stat to the max, is that another stat is suffering to much. Both Shiro and Ibrahim with their Agility 1, are simply to slow, and thus worse off in all regards compared to Raven. Milano have the horror of Endurance 4, which just isn't enough against anything but the AI (And pray the AI doesn't get a lucky hit). Some slight readjustments of these stats might have made them more usable, but on the whole, a stat under 5 is crippling.

The Similar setups: Steffan + Cosette, Jean Paul + Angel, Shiro + Raven, Christian + Ibrahim, and to some extent Crystal + Milano. It will be much easier to read if I write them with some separation so:

• Cossette & Steffan: A single point of difference, Cosette have one more Power but one less Agility. Does this really affect their play-styles at all ?
• Angel & Jean Paul: Both are slightly defensive all-rounders, two points in power and endurance separates them. It makes Angel slightly more defensive.
• Ibrahim & Christian: Both defensive bruisers, but Ibrahim sacrifices everything else for that max Endurance, where Christian is a very good all rounded pilot.
• Shiro & Raven: Both aggressive bruisers, but Shiro again sacrifices everything for that max Power, where Raven is a very good all rounded pilot, even Agility 4 doesn't cripple him as much.
• Crystal & Milano: The strong focus on agility makes them play similar, the difference in power isn't that big and usually won't be noticed much, while Crystal's great endurance really helps if you make a mistake.

Now let us say that we're forced to pick a better one among the similar ones, I have no basis to ground this on but let us just pick Angel and Cossette over Steffan and Jean Paul (They look cuter at least). This means that we efficiently have 5 different characters that are viable. Crystal (better than Milano), Christian (Better than Ibrahim), Cosette (better than Steffan), Angel (better than Jean Paul), and Raven (better than Shiro). This is a good bit of forcing things, but it gets the point through. We have essentially 5 effective characters.

Yes, I know I can't change this. I still like the mental exercise.

Now for the second part, lacking play styles. After all several sort of “expected” arc types of stat setups are missing entirely, example the standard over aggressive high Power+Agility but next to no Endurance (Xanthe in omfbg, was that right?). There are to many variants missing to really list them all, but I'm most surprised at the lack of two strong and one weak stat, with the exception of the Raven setup. And the lack of some one slightly high with the other twos in moderate amounts similar to Cossette but with other stats. Some stats also seems present in high or low numbers, especially agility seems to be low in the lists, with only two characters having higher than 10, and only two more with 10 in agility.

All in all it could be interesting to take a spin around and try to fit some new stats to a few of the characters, to create as much variety as possible, create useful setups, and try as well as possible to stay within character. Let the speculations begin ?

And I think I've just done a sin so unforgivable that it might not even have been done back in 2000, and qintodruple posted…. I do believe that the proper punishment is the removal of fingers with a mixmaster, but you will have to catch me first!