wolfpriest95

Are you perhaps Russian or Polish or maybe Czech? That's the only way this makes sense. No one else can have fun doing something so boring. No desire to insult, I'm just confused. Yeah, you have a squad formed with the idea to split it up. I get it. I also have that, you could have 12 soldiers and split them into 2 groups of 6 or 6 teams of 2, or 3 4-man units or vice versa, you don't need 20 people. I will forget to move someone, or I will just stop caring. I sometimes have the trouble of not exiting the game when I need to control 8. 12 is really pushing it. If I had 20 soldiers, I would not even leave the craft with half of them, and would then leave half at the exit, and bring 5 to the enemy. I know what point you are trying to make, but I don't know how to explain to you that having to personally control 20 individuals is extremely boring, to say nothing of your plan needing the player to find all of the snipers, and all of the gunners, and divide them equally, and then slowly march to the ship, or whatever the target is. And, yes, I know what base assault is, I played 2 today. Standing in the crossroad is a stupid idea, and it's much harder to defend than just a simple corridor, from where you can overwatch 2 crossroads.

That's why you never put them on the crossroads, so you can be attacked from the each side. You take the hallway, and so you need 2-3 to cover rear, 3 on the front and 2-3 as a reserve. What you are suggesting is clicking on EACH soldier, and then moving EACH soldier, watching EACH movement animation, while also memorizing exact gear on EACH of them. If I could control 4 at the same time, sure, that's 10 clicks, but 40, no thanks, that's a chore or a job, definetly not fun. I also can't, for the life of me, understand why would you let yourself get encircled in the crossroad. But whatever. We disagree, so there is point to this discusion.

Nothing wrong per se, but the game will be balanced around specific number of soldiers, and if that number is over 20, many/most people wont like it.

I'd rather do it piecemeal, than all at once. The tension and tedium are much higher on the longer mission. If I can't finish my first turn in 90 sec, I probably have too many soldiers. By that logic, why not only have one huge battle that last couple of hours, and that's it? Hopefuly, you get new stuff built and researched, and some new enemies show up on the new map. You have short and sweet battles, with something new in each one. Otherwise, there is no point, at least not for me.

Killing the enemy is better than suppresion, almost every time. If it was some small secondary gadget, just debuff is fine, but it's the heaviest weapon. If it's not anti-heavy, or anti-group weapon, it's completely reduntant next to a rifle, which can fire more bullets from farther away, more accurately. Just make it do slightly more damage that the rifle, and fire way more bullets/beams/pellets per turn than any other weapon. It's drawbacks are that it's heavy, it spends a lot of ammo, and you can't carry too much, and reload is slow, so it's a powerful tool to be used sparingly, kinda like grenade launcher, or any other heavy support weapon.

None of this is wrong, per se, but it's the question of what's more fun, and what takes longer.

That's not the truth, is it? If the game expects me to have 20 soldiers, I can get away with having just 16, lower the tedium somewhat, or as a more median example, 8 out of 10. If the game wants me to have 26 people, I can't put just 5 guys and win, since that is not what the game expects. Yes, I could deploy only a single trooper in the old X-COM (I'm playing it right now), but I can't realistically win. I can't even carry enough ammo on one soldier to win against anything larger than small craft, and even that is pushing it. Edit: I think it would be cool if both playstyles have their chace to shine, but realistically, it's not probable. Point is, new XCOM is popular because of the small number of people, but large number of options each one of them has. Just something to consider.

Some would have to pay me to play the game with 20 soldiers, as the tedium would make it a job, rather than a game. Do you think there is a reason why the entire UFO AFTER series and the new XCOM have 6-7 people max? There is. It's tedius to control so many. It slows down the game. Hell, why not 60 or 80 soldiers in the open battle. That would be fun. It would take only 5 hours to end the first turn.