Swapping items in inventory costs you AP (a tad too low), but it's not free.
Fox was dual-wielding pistols. I moved one of them to the backpack during combat and she lost no AP.
"Scoundrel – First weapon swap per turn is free."
I think this is their way exactly to make player's team-building decisions more dynamic. Otherwise it's too easy to fall into running the same "fotm meta" every time and never seeing different mercs.
Already it's hard for me to imagine starting a run without Barry and Livewire.
Well, like I said, I have no problem with there being a web of interpersonal drama that affects your teambuilding,
the problem is with the limited selection of mercs it's all more railroaded than it needed to be.
For example, your only reasonable choice to cover leadership is go Raider or cover that with your IMP.
Picking or not picking Fox as medic will pretty much determine like... half of your possible squad composition?
Because you will probably want to pick Wolf for that permanent +1AP for the two, and she doesn't get along with a lot of the girls.
Picking Livewire means you will pass on Raven and Raider (which means your IMP is now railroaded into max LDR), also doesn't work with Red,
which means if Barry is not available early on, your choice of explosive specialist gets really narrow (and you really want one from the start)
Livewire I don't particularly like she's annoying (not as much as Kalyna) and because her special ability trivializes scouting,
also makes Red lose morale, and I've always enjoyed the guy's banter.
Most importantly, passing on her means I'm stuck with subpar mechanics who are just barely able to install fucking bipods.
(the whole weapon modding system calls for a separate ragepost... maybe sometime later).
Im probably sperging too much over it, but the game kinda forces me to, due of its RPG-lite pretences,
there's plenty of skill checks from early on, all needing quite high attribute values, very few mercs will be able to pass those,
sometimes they're even beyond the range for a maxed out IMP.
An example of this, if you're planning to recruit Flay at the earliest convenience, you basically need to go with Livewire or MD to pass that odd 90+ WIS check along the way.
Or fixing the camera in the tutorial island, the difficulty for this is also set quite high, iirc about 80, which means Livewire is the most convenient pick to get it done.
Of course, none of this is mandatory, and it's debatable if some of the rewards are even worth it, but this sort of shit always turns me into an ocd completionist for some reason.
