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This past April it was reported that that some model casts would come out this year. As it is now mid November, with no update on this, is this even a realistic expectation? Or will be next year sometime? It would be helpful if a periodic update was given on FA progress and model availability to keep interest alive.

After a conversation on FB where we discussed turning Sarah Cawkwell into a WWX character and what abilities she would have (able to change fate with her pen) I wrote this:   She Writes The Stories   She has many names.   To the Warrior nation she is “Tells the World Stories”   The members of the Dark Council refer to her as “The Scribe of Fate”   The Alien watchers have designated her “Observer Alpha”   The Order say she is “The One Who Bears Witness”   And the good people of Tombstone call her “Miss Sara Corkswell”
  Whenever a story happens She's there to tell about it. Always there, just in the background, Just out the corner of the eye. If you were to turn to look she'd be gone. But she WAS there and she saw it all.   And for a few cents you can read about it tomorrow. Always freelance, never tied to any one publication. She sells her stories to as many newspapers who can buy them.   Back East her stories are highly sort after, her readers, used to tall tales by the likes of Bill Hickock, say somehow her stories feel “more real “   She has friends everywhere. Her nature puts people at ease almost instantly and even the notoriously tight lipped Wyatt finds her easy to talk to.   Rumors of her exploits abound, it is said she has had high Tea with Doctor Carpathian in his inner laboratory sanctum, Witnessed a meeting of the Dark Council, explored the Watchers base in Superstition Mountain,  been shown the mysteries of the Spirit World by Raven Spirit. Supposedly her pen nib is made from the very 1st nugget of silver mined in Tombstone and her ink is as blue as the summer's sky.   She may be the only woman ever to keep Broad Arrow Jack at arm's length.   Cerulean mimics are unable to copy her eyes, all who try fall into a state of shock and endlessly repeat “They’ve seen so much” over and over. Countess Byron is known to want them for her “Collection”   She has the fastest handwriting, never uses shorthand, but effortlessly keeps up with even the most talkative of interviewees. Even Doc, a man not known to use just one syllable when there are 4 or 5 that will do just fine, couldn't outtalk her.   After the interview he remarked to Wyatt “Nothing i could say threw her, she kept up with me word for word. She was so fast i started to wonder if she was writing down what i said or was i saying what she was writing down?” Then he laughed and helped himself to another shot of Bourbon.   She has many names None of these are entirely accurate...
 

She Writes The Stories   She has many names.   To the Warrior nation she is “Tells the World Stories”   The members of the Dark Council refer to her as “The Scribe of Fate”   The Alien watchers have designated her “Observer Alpha”   The Order say she is “The One Who Bears Witness”   And the good people of Tombstone call her “Miss Sara Corkswell”
  Whenever a story happens She's there to tell about it. Always there, just in the background, Just out the corner of the eye. If you were to turn to look she'd be gone. But she WAS there and she saw it all.   And for a few cents you can read about it tomorrow. Always freelance, never tied to any one publication. She sells her stories to as many newspapers who can buy them.   Back East her stories are highly sort after, her readers, used to tall tales by the likes of Bill Hickock, say somehow her stories feel “more real “   She has friends everywhere. Her nature puts people at ease almost instantly and even the notoriously tight lipped Wyatt finds her easy to talk to.   Rumors of her exploits abound, it is said she has had high Tea with Doctor Carpathian in his inner laboratory sanctum, Witnessed a meeting of the Dark Council, explored the Watchers base in Superstition Mountain,  been shown the mysteries of the Spirit World by Raven Spirit. Supposedly her pen nib is made from the very 1st nugget of silver mined in Tombstone and her ink is as blue as the summer's sky.   She may be the only woman ever to keep Broad Arrow Jack at arm's length.   Cerulean mimics are unable to copy her eyes, all who try fall into a state of shock and endlessly repeat “They’ve seen so much” over and over. Countess Byron is known to want them for her “Collection”   She has the fastest handwriting, never uses shorthand, but effortlessly keeps up with even the most talkative of interviewees. Even Doc, a man not known to use just one syllable when there are 4 or 5 that will do just fine, couldn't outtalk her.   After the interview he remarked to Wyatt “Nothing i could say threw her, she kept up with me word for word. She was so fast i started to wonder if she was writing down what i said or was i saying what she was writing down?” Then he laughed and helped himself to another shot of Bourbon.   She has many names None of these are entirely accurate...
 

If its ship reliant then it means that a small ship is just better at dodging which seems accurate and encourages small duelling, makes smalls a vital part of your force both defensively and offensively.  The unlimited rerolls of current sustained fire also seems rather overpowered compared to the limited number of rerolls used by Spartan.  Either you are going to have a very expensive weapon or ship or a overpowered vessel.

-1 to hit against smalls is better as a weapon property rather than a ship property because it means that its bound to specific weapons themselves. Thus the attacker is already thinking of that within their attack profile. It also means you can give it to any weapon regardless of its size or scale or the ship it is mounted upon.  For example there might be gunships in the future which have battleships cannon mounted atop a frigate sized hull. Such ships would be classified as a small frigate, but the gun would be akin to a main battleship cannon. Thus the frigate would be a small firing on a small and thus the small -1 to hit when attacked by battleships rule wouldn't trigger. However if the -1 to hit frigate class is on a weapon profile then its always going to be there on the weapon no matter hte hull its mounted on.      As for massing damage one angle is to reduce dice, but then you run the risk that small ships only work if they are taken in huge numbers. Instead what could be done is to base damage and impact on armour and weapon profiles. If a battleship has thicker and heavier armour then frigates might only be a viable threat to them in larger numbers, at least with their main guns. A -1 to damage or to hit or such might well represent thick armour of the battleship shrugging off lighter rounds from smaller calibre weapons. Frigates would thus be better served hunting destroys and other smaller ships, whilst not being a sensible threat to a battleship. Of course smaller ships can then make up for that with weapons like torpedoes, where you can't as easily mass them from a large group due to direct lines of fire. 

I think new devastating needs looking at for that.  3 and 6 explode, while 4 and 5 hit, which can be reduced to 3 and 6 exploding and 5 hitting against obscured models.  Also main weapons do have -1 to hit against smalls, but might be easier to make that a small model rule than a large weapon rule.

One thing that I think would balance the game a bit from huge dice pools which can become a bit silly is that no attack can have more dice than twice the main weapon dice pool.  It is a bit silly when 5 frigates can combine their fire power and heavily damage a battle ship  with their main guns. The reason is that dice don't scale linear in effectiveness due to how the mechanic works.   I also think that main heavy guns are way to efficient when fired against small ships. The main guns of battleships in WWI & II was not terribly good against small ships but their secondary armament was pretty devastating against anything that managed to get close and was small. A small ship that manage to stay at long to medium range should be pretty safe from those big guns but not the secondary guns at medium to close range.

As seen in the Dark Council group Spirit != Spirit Walker is correct.
 

Correct, that way you can block summoning enemy units on certain portal models/positions.