Going over this for my own sake, there are probably 4ish main factors?
1. The danger of fighting now vs later: If we delay we will have Black Swan, John, and Leizi with a weapon plus no Brass Shield as a wildcard vs no Ronin to help with pincering Yellow Qilin and no potential surprise factor. However, we wouldn't be starting split up and could potentially have more control over the battlefield. We do have a lot of defensive measures set up here with shields and the symbiote which should help in practice, but Hero Worship is also around the corner (though we have a mission for Handyman to heal alongside a fresh John and Black Swan).
2. The income tempo loss from using 6k income over potentially gaining 3k: Given we will be on the path to gain a sponsorship next turn potentially, this could be a 1 turn issue potentially. However, the sponsorship is technically not guaranteed and a lot of our global actions are income hogs, due to Spoonful spamming, so this could be a genuinely major issue.
3. Is there enough goldnine to maintain things: We know that Noelle's girls can currently hold out to the end of turn 4 without issue and that each dose of goldnine buys them an extra turn. Pushing our luck let's us extend their position to the end of turn 6-turn 7, which likely gives us time to get a supplier from the R-Train. My question is more that while I doubt three doses worth is all that Yellow Qilin has left, given Noelle took a lot of Yellow Qilin's supply to reach the end of turn 4 benchmark, how much is left? Since how many more magical girls does Yellow Qilin have compared to Noelle's side, how much does she have left to stretch between both of these groups till we can get the R-Train supply running by the end of turn 5 ideally?
4. The optics of this from Crusade and Noelle. From the Crusade side we know that Ronin will likely try to cover for us to some extent, but Brass Shield will absolutely be doing his fair share of undermining us. Does taking this fight now do anything to make it harder for us to be dragged in some way publicly? On the flip side, does Noelle likely have an issue with either side of the choice? Taking Qilin out would cut off the supply to save her people but prevents things from getting worse, barring making her reliant on us getting R-Train up. Kicking the can down the road with pushing our luck is probably fine with this being framed as an information mission, but if not, giving her some of the doses might help and are something we want to do anyway?
Though I do feel like if we bargain for three's worth but only give Noelle two's worth it will lead to questions as Noelle would see the amount we're bargaining for here.
