I'm putting together my first ever Lancer game (just a one-shot), and I just picked this up. I was attracted by the Bespoke Grunts and the changes to the Assault in the example page, and I'm already glad I did. Reading your three issues with the Assault, I was like "Yes! Exactly! As a newbie Lancer GM, I *did* assume the Assault was a good generic filler unit! I *was* thinking of the Archer and Rainmaker as nice generic support-fire guys! I *did* think it was kinda boring that the Assault gets no penalty for using Hunker Down every round!"
And so on and so on. It *did* annoy me how many frames had two or three different abilities that did essentially the same thing, but with mechanics just different enough to be confusing.
I'm up to Berserker now, and I love the Designer's Notes especially. I feel like I'm understanding how to use these frames much better than I ever did from just reading the core book.
Have you considered adding the full page of designer's notes to the example pages? I saw the five lines of notes on the example Assault page and assumed that was all there was, just a paragraph or two to fill white space; I was delighted to find more.