Soldier Loadouts

I've been playing for a while now, and I've noticed that I spend entirely too much time messing with the gear my troops are carrying. Do other people do this? What, in general, do you have your soldiers carry into battle?

With the starting team, I usually change one of the assaults into a shield. I make sure everyone has a medkit, a stun baton, two reloads and the stun or electopulse grenade. I give the shield a standard grenade, flashbang, and smoke. When I get the Shrike I add three riflemen and another heavy, same addition when I get the third dropship (forgot what it was called right off hand). I drop the pistols from the heavies and sniper (they don't serve much purpose, not sure why they default on them). When I get the Heavy Assault Armor (Think it was the Predator that prevents you from using anything other than heavy weapons) I load the heavies down with spare ammo clips and drop the grenades, stun baton, and medkit. They can't use the other items, and they turn into a walking ammo depot if one of my guys is running low on ammo (at this point all your weapons should more or less be using the same ammo, so this is very useful). This should have each of you heavies carrying about 20-30 spare clips into battle. You probably won't need them, but if you do run completely out of ammo, you were doing something wrong.

Hah! Nice. Apparently I'm way too into contingency planning, because I have each of my soldiers carrying at least a pistol along with their primary weapon, as well as a few grenades of various types, based on their individual strength.

2 Extra Magazines are mostly sufficient - maybe in late game or for Terror Missions - at least for me.

Hah! Nice. Apparently I'm way too into contingency planning, because I have each of my soldiers carrying at least a pistol along with their primary weapon, as well as a few grenades of various types, based on their individual strength.

Pistols are next to worthless, but I suggest carrying as many grenades as you possibly can without affecting TUs. And like Silencer says, 2 extra clips are normally enough for your average mission

I take 4 Shield-Pistol and 2 Rifles; plus 2 Snipers for Ufo attack, 2 LMG for base attack, 1LMG-1Rocket for terror. Many grenades, when shields are lost, they become grenadier, if its a base, they take extra LMGs in backpack and equip them if shield lost. If we get droppable shields back, everyone will carry them and put down in dropship. I build laser pistol first when I get them, but I go armor first and often have Wolf armor before laser.

I tend to prioritize weapons before armor. In the words of Malcolm Reynolds "If someone tries to kill you, you kill them right back." Works better when your bullets don't just bounce off. Doesn't matter how many hits you can take if you can't hurt your target, eventually, you will lose. Besides armor is just there to give you a shot at survival in the event you do get hit, not good to rely on it all the time. Roman legionaries found that out the hard way when they were fighting the Celts. Weren't trained to block overhead because of how effective their shoulder armor was. Celtic response was to create a weapon (the falcatta) that's primary purpose was to cleave through Roman shoulder armor.

On a side note, I would like to see the addition of true melee weapons. Maybe start with a basic combat knife, have an alloy blade as an upgradable weapon, possible even an energy blade at plasma level tech; and have them deal damage in relation to your strength stat.

Melee weapons would be pretty cool, although why not just make the stun baton do stun damage relative to your strength and leave it at that? Seems like that's all you would ever need for melee at that point.

I was just thinking it would add a little more flavor to the game, that and a Knife is standard issue equipment for almost every soldier in the field for just about every military in the world. It is mostly a utility tool, and doesn't see as much combat as it could, but I just think it would be a cool alternative, and you could give it to the scout and shield roles right off the bat. Shield breaks, pull out the knife for the off hand. Also great those OMGWTF moments when you hook that corner and something is standing one hex from you. Or it runs around the corner to within one hex, but doesn't have the TU's to attack. Helps you save a little ammo, and there is no chance of those retarded miss 4 consecutive shots at 95% chance to hit occurrences (happens more often than I would care to admit, at least I haven't seen any bullets hook 90* to hit the friendly 2 squares to the left when the alien is standing three squares from me). The Knives themselves would also predate the stun batons, and the advanced forms would be more powerful, thus creating the later game conundrum of: do I try to bring it back alive and risk not stunning it, or do I just stab it a couple times for the clean kill. I realize some people wouldn't even touch them, but I think it would be a cool addition. Just my personal opinion.

Generaly the loadout is something like:

2-3 Shields with stun batons and/or backup weapon

3-4 Riflemen, 1 with Rocket Launcher

1 Machinegun with smoke grenades

Pistols are of pretty limited utility once/if the shield breaks so I like to give the shield carriers a backup weapon based on their stats. If they have decent accuracy I give them a rifle if not then a shotgun. I tend to drop these backup weapons once I get heavy armor because unless they have Hulk tier stats it slows them down too much. They also carry flashbangs and stun grenades.

The humble battle rifle is a very usefull weapon so no reason to not bring them along. Rocket launchers are handy but not quite mandatory. I still like to carry at least one around. I give them as much grenades as they can reasonably carry. I tend to drop 1 grenade and add 1 laser battery once I get to laser weapons.

Machine gun mostly supresses stuff. Since burst fire eat up a lot of TU and MGs might end up unable to shoot I like to give them the smokes. Should the situation arise they can redeploy and pop a smoke at the same turn. The machinegunner isn't the only one to get smokes but I feel like they make good smoke carriers.

I may move to something like 2 shields, 4 rifles with 2 rockets and 2 machineguns. I like to sweep the levels in 4 man teams and too many times I've wound up in a situation where the MG is at the other end of the level. It would be nicely symmetric too. I feel like the Shields start to lose their value a bit when you get Wolf armor so I might replace them with Assaults towards the endgame.

EDIT: I used to bring along a Sniper but I really haven't found an effective niche for them.

The snipers kind of come into their own in maps with buildings you can land on (or buildings with a second story) if you have buzzard/sentinel armor. You do need good fields of fire, but a well selected rooftop gives good protection for the sniper, plus the sniper rifle's increased range over the assault rifle starts to come out then.

When breaching I also tend to put the guys just to the sides of the doors whenever possible and line up the sniper as far away as possible, while being directly in front of it (not always attainable, but useful when you can). And I use the sniper to try to clear the entry of what targets I can to avoid some reaction fire against the entry team.

Agree with all this ^, plus, since my snipers are rarely in the middle of a firefight, I keep them in basic or jackal armor for a long time, which in turn allows them to carry a lot of grenades/extra ammo and act as mobile resupply units for the rest of my squad

Bwahahha, silly people. I just give all my guys rocket launchers and tell them to have fun.

JK, my current Shrike loadout comprises 4 Predators, 4 Riflemen, 1 Assault, 1 Sniper, and a Hyperion.

Assault: Wolf armor, Highest tech rifle equipped, highest tech shotgun/carbine in backpack, 1-2 C4 based on strength, at least 1 of each grenade, couple of spare clips, medkit, stun rod if possible.

Shield: Wolf Armor, highest tech pistol equipped, shield equipped, backup shield in backpack, 2 C4, stun rod, at least 1 of each grenade, couple extra clips, medkit.

Sniper: Wolf armor (not researched sentinel yet), Highest tech sniper rifle equipped, possibly backup rifle in backpack, medkit, at least 1 of each grenade, couple of extra clips.

Heavy: Predator if possible (only one set at current) or Wolf, Highest tech lmg, spare clips, at least 1 of each grenade(not for predator), C4 (not for predator), backpack full of rockets (predator only).

Rocket: Wolf armor, RL equipped, split between explosive and gas rockets.

8 Man team: 2 shield, 2 assault, 2 sniper, 1 heavy, 1 rocket.

Shrike team: 2 shield, 2 assault, 3 sniper, 2 heavy 1 rocket, 1 scimitar w/plasma.

For my starting loadout, I have 4 riflemen, 1 designated marksman, and 1 automatic rifleman, and of course I bring along the Hunter armored car.

Hi I am new to this forum, cause I still played UFO: Enemy Unknown up until a few weeks ago, when I discovered Xenonauts

I probably haven't go as far as you guys because I am currently in Feb 80. But my current most effective config is:

2 x Shields + Highest Level Sidearm, lots of flash bangs, armor & stun baton if strength allows, generally of private rank, lol

2 x Assault + Armor, med-kit and as many grenades as can carry, needs above ave TU, preferably high HP

1 x Sniper, lots of smoke grenades, needs high ACC and good TU

2 x Rifles + med-kit + 1 of each grenade, armor if strength permits, almost any soldier will do for this roll

1 x Heavy Weapon + Medi-Pack, Needs good ACC and HP as tends to be a bullet magnet, TU's don't seam to matter so much as I will hide the rest of my squad in good cover and end turn if I find my heavy in an unfavorable position, but generally place him behind low cover with a good wide open view.

Depending on strength troops will carry up to 2 spare clips for main weapon, as I always need 1 spare clip but seldom 2

I currently have 3 drop ships with this configuration and am able to mop up all crashed UFO's

All other troops, generally all new recruits and wounded (display red in equip screen) left at base are designated Home Guard which are loaded with a Shield + Pistol + Rifle + Medkit + 2 Spare Rifle clips and then loaded to the brim with grenades, regardless of strength.

I often have wounded and maybe a casualty returning from medium craft, but seldom have less than a perfect run returning from the small ones.

I always go with:

2x Shields&Pistol / Shotgun in the backpack (highest priority to get armor and weapon upgrades) and whatever explosives and knockout grenades they can carry

1x Dedicated Medic with Assault Rifle, 2 x Medpacks

1x Sniper (with Sniper rifle ofc )/ Shotgun in the backpack (in nearly all situations where the Sniper rilfe doesnt help the shotgun really does)

1x Rocketeer (its usually safer to just rocket those ufo doors then opening them.. at least in my experience) and for those dmn aliens that are out of reach of your grenades and still dont want to come out of cover

3x Rifleman Assault Rifle / Grenades / C4

when i hit the Laser MG one Rifleman ususally gets one of those and a Laser pistol

After this basic setup is done everybody gets as many grenades and C4 and medpacks until they loose > 1 TU

I tried with only one shield but too often the shield gets destroyed before I even reach the UFO and I simply dont feel safe breeching a UFO without one. Also imho pistols do fine dmg for their TU usage in the beginning.

I find the following loadout most promising:

2 Squads of:

1 x Shield

2 x Predators

3 x Rifles

1 x Sniper

+

Hyperion Tank

The snipers kind of come into their own in maps with buildings you can land on (or buildings with a second story) if you have buzzard/sentinel armor. You do need good fields of fire, but a well selected rooftop gives good protection for the sniper, plus the sniper rifle's increased range over the assault rifle starts to come out then.

When breaching I also tend to put the guys just to the sides of the doors whenever possible and line up the sniper as far away as possible, while being directly in front of it (not always attainable, but useful when you can). And I use the sniper to try to clear the entry of what targets I can to avoid some reaction fire against the entry team.

That said, are the devs working on tightening up the animations for multi-story shots? They tend to just kind of fly around at odd angles and then "pop" someone falls over.