I really like the change to the Parrots. Before, I wouldn't bring them to missions because the utility they bring does not outweight the loss in firepower. Or the vessel simply didn't have auxilia slots. Altho, they're still a bit clunky to use since you can't use this scout unit to scout on the first turn.
I also like the early Ninja Bases. It adds a lot of mysticism to the game and makes early game a lot more bustling with activity (even if you can't do anything about it).
I don't like the changes to the gambling much. That's because in the early game you need Jack's tokens to get Jack's prizes so I don't think anyone would waste them on gambling. And by the time you're done getting the important prizes, most of the gambling rewards aren't useful anymore. Another big problem imo is that it makes the whole "robbing captives" part of the game partially obsolete because if you're constrained by tokens, you don't need the 1k chips anymore, and it makes more sense to simply sell the captives instead of robbing them for half the value in 1k credit chips. Lastly, if you do gamble, and happen to get lucky, you can get way too overpowered weapons for the early game, so it enables savescumming.
A bit complicated calculation but... 666x Spin The Wheel! gives 461339 credits + coupons = 461339 + 193504 + 152639 + 168146 + 274033 + 216997 + 305264 = 1771922 (recursion included) or 2660 credit income per spin. But remember, if you simply sold the captives instead of robbing them for the 1k chips, you'd get twice the credits, so each spin effectively costs 2k credits. This translates to 660 credit profit for each Jack's token used. Selling Jacks for 660 each is better than nothing, sure, but for most of the game, until you got all prizes, it's just not worth it.
So yeah, for me at least, robbing and gambling game mechanics are now mostly obsolete. If the problem was with people gambling too much, then maybe it would've been better to restrict ways in which 1k credit chips are obtained, or remove token prizes from the coupons / reduce rewards / increase redeem cost. I dunno. I'd be ok with gambling not being profitable at all, just to get some nice items, but for most of the game, Jacks have more important uses than gambling.
