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is there an easy way to remove equipment from unassigned soldiers?


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Hey guys I've tried searching the forum but am not pulling anything up.

I am finding it really frustrating to unassign a soldier and have him still wearing the equipment he had on before.

Is there a mod or an easy way to remove this gear so soldiers actually going on the mission can use it?

thanks

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That workaround still requires going around to every removed soldier and individually manipulating the interface to strip his gear. "Select basic armor and drag his gun off him" vs. "assign a new role" isn't really any big difference either way, IMO. The painful part is "I have two dozen unassigned troopers. One of them is holding my last sniper rifle. Which one has it?"

Also, a new problem introduced by this workaround is that you lose the soldier's original role assignment and, when he returns to active duty, you have to decide again what role to give him. If the entire list of unassigned troops all have the "no equipment" role, you can't just sort by role and immediately see "I need a replacement sniper, and there they all are". (Granted, I'm sure that many players do frequently reassess role assignments, but I tend towards more of a "once a sniper, always a sniper" approach.)

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Are you dragging items off soliders? You can right-click to do that.

In any case, your OP asked for a mod or an easy way to unequip a solider singular when that soldier is unassigned, and I suggested one. One click to select roles, then a click to assign another one is easier than selecting every item a solider may have and right-clicking it off him/her. You didn't ask for a way to mass-unequip soliders plural. There's no mod and no easy way to do that. You can request a mass-unequip option be put in on the Community Edition forum, but other than that you're going to have to put up with it.

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That workaround still requires going around to every removed soldier and individually manipulating the interface to strip his gear. "Select basic armor and drag his gun off him" vs. "assign a new role" isn't really any big difference either way, IMO. The painful part is "I have two dozen unassigned troopers. One of them is holding my last sniper rifle. Which one has it?"

Also, a new problem introduced by this workaround is that you lose the soldier's original role assignment and, when he returns to active duty, you have to decide again what role to give him. If the entire list of unassigned troops all have the "no equipment" role, you can't just sort by role and immediately see "I need a replacement sniper, and there they all are". (Granted, I'm sure that many players do frequently reassess role assignments, but I tend towards more of a "once a sniper, always a sniper" approach.)

I found it extremely helpful to have one or two "base defense" roles, for instance "Shield guy with pistol and grenades" and "Rifleman with whatever". I never sell my old equipment so base defense gets this. If you only have a few special weapons like sniper or heavy guns, simply don't give them to base defense, so they are available to the dropship crew only.

Additionally, if you assign the base defense soldiers back to the dropship deciding on the stats only allows giving them their best fitting role and not their former job. By changing the role you can raise other stats with a couple of combat tours, with some limitations I know. But this is personal play style I guess.

Hey why not use use "Base Sniper" and give them old model weapons so a sniper stays a sniper.

And yes...stripping soldiers of weapons and armor each time I want to change the crew would make me mad too...dragging & clicking items back and forth...gaaah.

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Deal with the equipment before dropping the craft assignment from the trooper. Once you've selected a soldier for the craft on the unassigned list, issue his equipment before assigning him to the craft so you don't have to fiddle around with finding him again on the craft list.

If you don't want to deal with individual pieces of limited-issue equipment, one way to keep the proper role assigned is to reproduce with general issue ballistics a role kit prefaced with "basic". This way, an injured sniper can be changed to a "basic sniper" before being dropped from the craft, and the new soldier to be assigned, say "basic assault" role can be changed to "assault" which has the state-of-the-art gear. Or get a mouse for your laptop ;p

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Are you dragging items off soliders? You can right-click to do that.

Ah, hadn't noticed that. Thanks for the tip!

One click to select roles, then a click to assign another one is easier than selecting every item a solider may have and right-clicking it off him/her.

I only unequip limited-quantity items (generally weapon/armor). I don't care whether they have a belt full of ammo/grenades or medkits in their backpacks while they're at base, so I never remove those.

Granted, a dropdown selection to change role is easier than a dropdown selection to strip armor plus a right-click to remove weapon for unequipping, but it creates more work when they go active again and need to be re-equipped, at which point I can just click "use default equipment for role" instead of making a dropdown selection to change their role back (...and that's even ignoring the possible need to examine the guy's stats to decide which role to assign - or, worse, having to examine everyone's stats to decide the best person to assign for a desired role - before the role can be set).

But, also, as I said in my earlier reply, my issue isn't with the interface manipulation involved in actually removing the equipment, which is, really, not significantly different between how I do it and what you do. What bugs me is the process of "Someone at the base has a sniper laser that I want to give to someone in the dropship. Who has it?!?"

You didn't ask for a way to mass-unequip soliders plural.

Actually, I have mentioned it before, in another thread. :D (Note I'm not the OP on this one.)

Deal with the equipment before dropping the craft assignment from the trooper. Once you've selected a soldier for the craft on the unassigned list, issue his equipment before assigning him to the craft so you don't have to fiddle around with finding him again on the craft list.

I generally change troop assignments from the personnel screen rather than the equipment screen, which is, I suppose, why I always end up having to search through all the unassigned troops to find the guy holding my limited-quantity gear. In theory, I guess I could avoid ever having to go through the unassigned troops on the equipment screen if I removed troops from the dropship crew on the equipment screen (so I could strip their gear first), then assigned replacements from the personnel screen (so I can sort by role and compare stats at a glance), but it really seems more natural to do both from the personnel screen, in one shot, rather than as two distinct operations on two separate screens.

(Yes, I know about double-clicking on a soldier in the personnel screen to bring him up in the equipment interface, but that doesn't work reliably for me. It tends to get "stuck" on one guy and keep showing his equipment even when I double-click someone else.)

Or get a mouse for your laptop ;p

Already done. :D

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I don't understand your problem at all. If I were you, I would go to equipment screen, select "Unassigned" group, click on the first soldier on the list and then go "Next" (there is a button for that or I believe you can use mouse wheel?) until I find the soldier with desired weapon. How long would it take? 30 seconds to minute max?

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I don't understand your problem at all. If I were you, I would go to equipment screen, select "Unassigned" group, click on the first soldier on the list and then go "Next" (there is a button for that or I believe you can use mouse wheel?) until I find the soldier with desired weapon. How long would it take? 30 seconds to minute max?

Yep, and that is exactly what I have been doing. And the mouse wheel does work (although it occasionally skips over someone, so I usually run through the list twice, just to be sure). It's not an insurmountable problem, but it is an ongoing, persistent annoyance to have to do that instead of having an Enemy Within-style "reclaim equipment" button that instantly removes all limited-quantity gear from all unassigned troops.

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Yep, and that is exactly what I have been doing. And the mouse wheel does work (although it occasionally skips over someone, so I usually run through the list twice, just to be sure). It's not an insurmountable problem, but it is an ongoing, persistent annoyance to have to do that instead of having an Enemy Within-style "reclaim equipment" button that instantly removes all limited-quantity gear from all unassigned troops.

Remember though that Enemy Within doesn't deal with multiple transports nor base defense operations while your assault crew is out. There can be very good reasons to keep soldiers on hand with advanced weapons, and even better ones to let your home guard rock your finite reserves of lasers once your away team is packin' plasma.

Other than the aforementioned juggling of roles, I'm not sure how you'd go about a solution to this from a UI perspective, even ignoring the technical limitations.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I try to take gear off my people then remove them from squad, although I seem to get plenty of people injured enough to autoremove them from squad and they require their own cleanup.

I don't understand your problem at all. If I were you, I would go to equipment screen, select "Unassigned" group, click on the first soldier on the list and then go "Next" (there is a button for that or I believe you can use mouse wheel?) until I find the soldier with desired weapon. How long would it take? 30 seconds to minute max?

There are ways to deal, for sure, but that doesn't change the fact that the system could be better. That 30 to 60 seconds for every mission you run adds up to a lot of wasted time that could be eliminated with better design. One major element of computers is efficiency, eh? Maybe since I'm a programmer I expect more...could be. The game has the whole default loadout feature which is very cool and saves you a lot of time and hassle - it's not really asking for much more to have an equally slick way to deal with unequipping gear!

Play style is also possibly a factor. My troops get hurt and sit out and/or I rotate people doing missions so I'm having to juggle gear every time out.

Another simple solution would be to have any soldier in unassigned drop their limited supply gear (or make it an option for this to happen since some apparently enjoy pain).

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