Lets see...Starship Troopers Army List construction in its basics...
OK, stripping it down as much as possible from other considerations (like no arachnids, no skinnes, and ignore the PL levels, ignore certain validation rules for Platoons vs point levels, etc):
The basic core unit is the Power Suit Platoon. Everything else is based off of options for each platoon, and a list may have more than one platoon. So, there are basically no units that are say 0-3 in an army at all, they are all 0-3 per Platoon.
A power suit platoon consists of 2 power suit squads and a power suit NCO. You can add one additional power suit NCO, and one power suit LT, and up to 6 total squads. You can also add a variety of things like air support missles, robot missle and gun platforms, weapon emplacements, bunkers, air support fighters, bombers, a few platoon level weapons (Nukes!) and a Military Intelligence officer. You can only have 2 squads per "officer", and the power suit NCO counts as an officer.
The power suit LT comes with a weapon set of a main rifle with an underslung grenade launcher that can fire various grenandes. He can choose lizard lines (A rappelling/climbing kinda thing) or WASP pack (Jet pack kinda thing) for equipment options. He can "Go career", which allows him to choose up to a certain number of points of various "Heroic Traits". He can choose a few additional weapons like frag grenades or plasma munitions (plasma grenade kind of thing). He can replace his grenade luancher with a trench sweeper laser. At certain PL levels, he can take a Sprite recon skimmer (a sort of rocket sled) that replaces his basic stats with it, and invalidates certain other options he can take. He can have drop capsules (unless he has a sprite skimmer). He can be: "Any LT or NCO may be upgraded to an M8 "Ape" Marauder suit or M9 "Chickenhawk" Marauder suit. Any LT or NCO so upgraded becomes a Marauder model of the appropriate type (M8 Marauder suit LT, M9 Marauder suit LT)."
The NCO's have essentially the same options as the LT.
A power suit squad consists of one sergeant and 4 cap troopers. You can add up to three extra troopers. Each comes with a standard rifle/underslung grenade launcher, that can fire various grenades. One trooper may be promoted to Corporal (but this does not changes his stats, or options, it has game mechanic effects). The entire unit can choose Lizard Lines or WASP packs. The Squad SGT can choose "Heroic Traits" up to a poinst value. The squad can choose to add weapons; shock sticks and frag grenades to all troopers. Up to two troopers may swap weapons for: a missle launcher (that fires a choice of missles), a sniper rifle, a flame thrower, or a bigger grenade launcher. At certain PL levels: "0-2 models per power suit squad may be upgraded to an M8....or M9...Any sergeant, corporal or cap trooper so upgraded becomes a Marauder model of the appropriate type."
An M8 Marauder suit comes with a standard weapon pack which can not be altered. An M9 Maruader suit comes with some standard weapons, and some options.
The options that a Marauder suit (of any type, LT, NCO, Corporal, Cap Trooper) have are diffrent from the power suit version. (For instance, the M9 LT can't take the grenades, laser, sprite skimmer, etc, but can still choose his "Heroic Traits").
Useful things to know:
"Heroic Traits" is a lot of choices. There are three major categories, with 10-15 choices in each category. A big problems I've had with implementation is fitting all the possible options into a useable amount of space.
Missile Launchers have about 4 diffrent missle types they use, but the same missle launchers use the same missles all the time. (So if you take a Javalin missle Launcher, you get all three of its missles. If you take a Birdbolt missle Launcher, you get its one missle, etc).
Oh, a Marauder suit is a large, Battletech looking thing. A power suit guy is a standard size guy in armor (think Space Marine).
So, where my noggin is hurting is in my implementation, the way a Marauder suit is taken is diffrent for the squad vs for the officers. For the officers, you select an option for the platoon of an officer of whatever type; straight LT, M8 LT, or M9 LT.
To add a Maruader suit to a squad, you buy a suit for the squad as an option (of the squad), and it adds a model count of zero suit unit, which displays nice and lets you pick any suit specific options.
But it means, at least in my mind, that you wind up choosing it diffrently, and I'm worried people won't be able to figure out how to add a suit to each location as a result. Its very likely when you are building the list that you don't know if you want the LT in a suit or not, but you would know you want the LT. Same with the squad, you want the squad for sure, but adding suits may come later.
So I add my LT, and mess around in my list a bit, and add two Marauder suits to a squad. I decide I want to give my LT one as well, so I click on him just like I did my squad to add the suit....and bang, thats where I hit the wall. Adding it to a multi model unit is just adding it on. Adding it to the LT causes him to be *replaced* by a Maruader LT.
And, in my implementation, since he (the LT) is an Option to a Unit (the Platoon unit), you get my original question of how an options' option can replace an option. I can't imagine why that wasn't clear from the first reading
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Now, for rules junkies I left out a *ton* of things, but nothing I think that will efect this. If you need me to type out all the various weapons swap outs and such, I can, but its a long list and its going to take some time....someone should write an Army Builder file for it so you don't have to do that kind of thing
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Also, obviously if you need me to clarify, ask. I'm not 100% sure what you needed to have to forumalte the best answer, so I may have missed the mark there.
Better? See what I'm trying to pull off?
I have no fear of needing to change my implementation radically; I've rewritten it several times already, and I get better with AB each time I do it, so its nothing big to me anymore. I won't be suprised at all if there is a better way to implement the platoon "container". And, of course this file isn't released yet, so I won't be bothering anyone with major re-writes.
I also think the cheap and easy solution is to just alter the wording on the options a bit and live with the diffrence, or maybe put design notes on the officers mentioning how to get Marauder suits on them (deselect them, then choose the apropriate option type).
Oh, and thus far, rules updates for the Mobile Infantry have added new types of Platoons, rather than alter the core platoon type or its construction. I suspect thats going to stay the case. (So, you could take one platoon of Cap Troopers (the one described above), one platoon of Light Mobile Infantry, and one Pathfinder Platoon.) Each of those other platoon types (currently also Marauder Platoons) has similar types of issues, where a model is replaced utterly by an option, so I want to get this as clean as possible here at the begining.
*whew* Rechecking the rules as I typed that in gave me a huge urge to go play a few games while I wait for feedback
. Where is that list with the nukes on it.....