Agreed on not seeing it as essential, but really I'm more concerned with Tacit Mark 4 due to being more expensive than a city (or another new Jaeger). I mean, Mark 3 Phenom is a pretty obvious requirement, Fangs I can see uses for (but can do without), the AKBs have been previously stated to help with hooking up whatever we're salvaging faster, and the other conventionals are perfectly understandable. Gating Oblivion Bay behind getting a Mark 4 Jaeger, on the other hand, seems greedy to me, kinda like talking about gating expansion behind sealing a Breach before we claimed Everett.
Personally, I'd switch Tacit Mark 4 with KRAUN support in the priority list; while the higher stats would be nice, they don't really equal the ability to call in another Jaeger or two, in my opinion. Not to mention whatever cons they see fit to supply us with. Plus we can probably convince them to help us pretty easily if we go about it right. Remember: Getting distracted by the latest shiny (and the associated expenses from building said shiny) is exactly why we've made almost no progress on our long-term goals. Personally, I think it'd be more likely for us to max out our Mark 3 engines and update our equipment; remember how long it took us to build Phenom? I mean, if we procrastinate long enough to get a Mark 4 then Fyr might get impatient enough to bring Oblivion Bay to US before we can get the resources to make the generator (he has, after all, previously threatened to have Anaklusmos attack us for putting Oblivion Bay off too long, and was only talked down by us confirming that we were, in fact, planning to go back at some point).
Oh, and another thing I just thought of for our talk with KRAUN this turn: Share the schematics of the special rounds we've researched for the M-9914, if we haven't already. I'm sure they'd love the Special Bakelite rounds.
