We had a discussion about this in the tactics section a while back. Since then, I've gotten a few more games of 2.0 under my belt, and my thinking on SS has come to this: You don't necessarily need to build your list around them, but you can't ignore them either. The PE simply aren't a strong enough faction overall to dispense with the powerful synergy offered by SS + Tesla and still have a reasonable chance of success, IMO. Simply put, it is the best tool in the PE's limited bag of tricks. This goes for the table as well as list building. I've found I tend to be more successful with my PE when I'm actively looking to pull off the SS + Tesla "combo."