Biological actors such as the Ronin and Coalition are fleshy, bleed, and suffer easily from impulse damage.
Mechanical actors such as the dummies and tradestar robots feel lighter, don't bleed on a single bullet, and don't gib into pieces the moment they hit a solid surface.

Dummies are also really cheap.

So are there any actual benefits of buying a biological actor over a mechanical one (other than for the purpose of bloodier explosions)?

Coalition soldiers have armor, they are harder to take out than Ronin, which are mere humans and thus probably the weakest actors.

Anyway, there shouldn't be any real diference, because for modders actors can be as tough or weak as they want without obeying the logic of their material.

In vanilla content, however, I think the difference will be more noticeable when you have to pick a tech in the Metagame, making for example picking the Coalition more useful than picking the dummies because of the heavy sniper rifle which is key in your strategies, etc.

Also, biological actors can look much better than robots.
Look at Dafred, he is simply awesome!

Coalition should (if memory serves) be tougher than Dummies, and have better jetpacks (either due to less weight or better emitters) than the Robots. I believe the same is true for the Browncoats.

Any reason why I would pick Gordon (bullet sponge) over a tradestar robot heavy?

Coalition Soldiers are strong but too heavy and slow. Dummies are lighter but weak to bullets. Finally, robots 1 are the lightest and have medium armor which gives them speed and endurance. So I always use robots 1.

Price, he can soak more bullets than the robot (Gordon's GibWoundLimit = 25, Robot 2's GibWoundLimit = 20), he looks like a human, who the hell knows?

In the end both will get crushed by a dropship, both will die by a Coalition's Heavy Sniper shot to the head, both will die if they stand in front of a dreadnought for too long, both will die if I unload a mag of the Coalition Auto Shotgun on them, both will die if they get inside a minefield, and the list goes on.

The changes are so small, that the only actual difference is if their bleed or not, and the only actor who doesn't bleed (since the leaking machinery wound does generate damage) is the Dummy soldier, and guess what, it's GibWoundLimit is 4. It's the lowest, even humans can take more hits without dying.

So, any reasons why you'd pick Gordon over Robot 2? That problem is much less important than which gun will I equip them.

@Asklar,

Thanks, I understand everything now.