Less social mobility than the people with hereditary nobility? It's not great, but the IoM are pretty poor at it. I suspect you misunderstand the T'au caste system; admittedly it probably shouldn't be called that as it doesn't really function like a real world caste system.

Counterpoint: Tau were added well after GW had largely stopped with the topical political references, and were strongly unironically positive in their earliest appearances. The addition of gets-hot railrifles was a notably darker element in Tau at the time and was still lighter than the IoM.

Darker elements have been added, but the faction functioned without that element in their original form which has changed far less than other factions' (due to the relative newness of the faction) so it's not core to the faction's identity.

Additionally, virtually all of the early dark elements in the Tau were either commonplace in the IoM or significant improvements over the IoM's status quo. Through your suggested lens, this would have some interesting implications.

Hot take there.

I feel like having more aliens that aren't powered by evil is pretty important for the themes around 40k and the IoM.in particular. If all the aliens are as evil as IoM propaganda implies, it justifies their xenophobia, which is supposed to be baseless and reactionary fear mongering.

We clearly run in different circles, though I wouldn't be surprised to find that mine is less typical.

I can't speak for more female minis, since giant robots don't have genders generally, BUT my first interaction with Battletech wasn't about a conglomeration all-male posterboy factions that comprise fully half the game and have their own prequel game with even more All-Man Space Marines.

Again, not in my experience. I don't know which of our experiences is more common, but it'd be interesting to see some data. Though more focus on non-SpaceMarines can only be good for the hobby.

That has not been my experience at all. The key difference between FSM and "More lady drone pilots flying rainbow drones!" is that one of these.is a game that we want everyone to play. We do unironically want more ladies to feel comfortable playing the oppressors because it's a game and the space should feel inviting to people generally.

It's still a transport thing, but not a poorly optimised transport thing: You can fit 2 meganobz and an 8-man burna squad with 7 Burnas and only one Spanna in a Trukk. The extra burna and extra spanna might not matter much compared to having a second unit in the transport. (This is effected by the fact that spannas have been somehwat a downside of a mandatory upgrade - now that weapons are free I'm not sure how much a second kmb and a burna is worth vs the meganobz.)

@shepherd Is the community here big enough to support splintering into faction mags yet?

The Ork index has a few oddities:

• Spannas are compulsory, Runtherds are not

• No options for tankbustas, forced rokkit pistols

• Meks can't join burna boyz mobs

• Less an oddity, more a gripe: Is it just me or are lootas hot garbage?

I'm not sure the community is active enough that we can support an Ork sub, but good luck.

I think often the RPGs can be better at the Satirical angle than the central wargame. Dark Heresy does encourage DMs to explore the themes — although the mechanics are a bit all over the place as far as supporting that goes.

Necromunda seems to be the one sub-property that actually tries to execute on the satire regularly and with any success, although it's not particularly focused. Don't know why, but I suspect having more Dredd\2000AD in its memetics helps.