As the only person who knows the LCM results, I would strongly recommend you not count your chickens before they hatch. Particularly as Standstill has already said she would need a template to justify the hassle of rebranding and moving to an entirely different city, and you can only give one every 6 weeks.
Now I totally agree with you that Missy (the name and image of Vista technically belong to the Protectorate) would be a totally badass little cyborg ninja, but there are other and honestly better ways to do that than spending a template on her.
While the confirmation that Standstill would be willing, with a Template, to shift to Philly is nice and all I can't say I'm particularly thrilled with the idea. To start with she is essentially an OC (sure she is mentioned in canon but she is basically Daphne Greengrass) who has appeared in a couple scenes here but was only really characterized in her
Interlude. She might grow on me over time with enough exposure but so far she hasn't really shown anything that makes her worth the effort.
Edit: Actually in hindsight Standstill isn't even Daphne Greengrass, that would be Browbeat, since I can't name a single other fic she has appeared in. Standstill isn't even
Fay Dunbar levels of popular and she wasn't even named in the books or movies.
End Edit
The other big sticking point is that she is Protectorate. Missy can get away with stuff precisely because she is a Ward so they don't really have much meaning way of punishing her. Standstill meanwhile is not only Protectorate, and reliant upon them paying her wage (something we can't yet), she is a
turncoat twice over having betrayed the Protectorate for the Adepts and the Adepts for the Protectorate. Swapping from New York to Philly, especially so close to when Missy is almost certain to be leaving the Wards, combined with the existing fears of Team Calamity's growing power bloc and she is going to be under all manner of scrutiny. Greatly reducing her use as a Template Mage.
As for their being better ways for Missy the Cyborg Ninja well there might be more
efficient methods but I'm not sure about them being better. Templates are straight up better then non-Templates both in spell count and learning speed. The new system has made non-Template mages
dramatically more attractive then they used to be but they are still inferior. Which is good since creating Templates is a pretty major game mechanic and if random chance was better we'd never use it given the time and resource cost.
Now certainly using a Template on an AAA-Rank Vista compared to a D-Rank Vista is
vastly less efficient. However one of the key "issues" with the quest has been players just straight up not being interested in recruiting mage candidates and those people we
are interested in not being viable. There is a reason we've only created two Template mages and both have been background support characters Taylor has worked closely with and known for years*. We've pretty firmly established a pattern of not handing out Templates to people we don't trust 100%. Missy is basically the
only character remaining who fits that profile.
*Tim was actually first named in
1.8 by Danny.
As for counting chickens; I mean the only way this discussion isn't viable is if after everything Missy ends up flubbing the LCM and doesn't develop a Linker Core and that goes against multiple WoG statements from you.
Maybe if she has an AAA-Rank core
and a Rare Skill it might be worth not giving her a template but even then it would be a hard sell for me.
Fake Edit:
EDIT: I actually have an idea for her that would be cool as hell, but it's super unconventional, high moderate risk high reward, and requires a non-template Device because one of the tricks just can't be done with a template.
Just noticed this right before posting. I'll be interested to see what your idea is. Not sure I'll be sold on it however given that Templates are
safe vs. this "moderate risk", and gambling has
never turned out well for us in MGET, and the dearth of viable alternatives for Templating.
