Xenonauts Squad Amount Question

[MLGertzert]

What amount of squaddies would you prefer to have?

Edited March 29, 2013 by MLGertzert

[crusherven]

I said 6-10, though I'd like to throw in a caveat that larger missions and hence larger squads would be nice occasionally. I think.

[Gorzahg]

If you don't pick 19+ you're a pleb.

[svidangel]

I'd really prefer in the 12-14 range for some of those Terror maps at the moment. Specially against the roboty folks with their semiautomatic grenade launchers of poof.

[thothkins]

I'm not sure I'll know until the alien AI is complete. I can find 8 a little tough going in terror maps, so there's a concern that I'm 1 or 2 short there if the AI gets tougher.

I'm also one for not taking vehicles. The idea being that it helps my troops gain experience and stats. The reality being it's tough to do that when they are no longer breathing

[crusherven]

I should probably add that I'd prefer a range of 8-12 rather than 6-10. 6 is dangerously small for anything larger than a light scout, atm.

[Azazass]

It mostly depends on the mission... To take on a small scout I usually take 2 veteran troopers and 2 rookies with the veterans providing covering fire and draining most of the health of the enemies so the rookies can finish the job... Terror missions it's usually 6-8 troopers with 2-3 veterans and 4-5 rookies.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Azazass

[StellarRat]

One.

Chuck Norris ought to be enough even for the final mission!

Edited March 29, 2013 by StellarRat

[The New Romance]

The more, the merrier - plus you can always choose to bring a smaller squad, but you can't just override a hard upper limit imposed by the game.

[Gauddlike]

One.

Chuck Norris ought to be enough even for the final mission!

Chuck Norris IS the final mission, good luck.

[Assoonasitis]

One man. One pistol. One mission: murder.

[StellarRat]

Chuck Norris IS the final mission, good luck.

OH SHY-HEAT! So, the game is unwinnable then?

[thothkins]

Why would Chuck Norris need aliens to terrorise a planet? Just a hint of unhappy Chuck Norris face would do that.

[Gauddlike]

Anyway... numbers...

I prefer 9 - 15 as squad sizes in the OG.

I tend to run groups of three soldiers and increase squad sizes by adding groups.

Three groups is the minimum I like to run for tough missions while taking the numbers up above the 18+ doesn't make the mission much easier for me, it just makes the movement phase take longer as the majority of the extra troops don't even engage the enemy for several turns as the front wave clears them out.

It does help when you start to lose people though so depends on how the game is balanced.

[Sathra]

Having played the maps, I'd say 8-12. Any more would end up with most of the maps being 'overcrowded'. Would give enough to have multiple squads, or line advance, depending on playstyle.

[a333]

8-14, if the latter would be available only for a larger transports. Then you can have two squads with some mix of assault, riflemen, one support and one heavy + 2 independent snipers for a most large of missions.

[Chris]

The final dropship goes up to 16 at present (or 14 and 1 vehicle). If this proves too large we could drop it to 12 and have the medium dropship grant 10 instead of 12.

[GizmoGomez]

Well, you don't have to fill it to capacity. I think the option to should stay, so we have the choice.

[erutan]

I generally didn't fill my dropships to capacity unless I was specifically going after a really large target in EU94. As long the game doesn't make it mandatory for you to have a squad of 18 due to sheer attrition (encounters tend to be spaced out) then it should be a matter of choice.

[Chris]

Yes, but the gameplay will obviously be balanced around assuming people will deploy as many troops to the battlefield as possible (we have to assume that), so you'll be at a disadvantage if you don't do so and therefore people will feel they have to fill the dropship up.

So really we do need to experiment with 16 to see if it is too unwieldy.

[Sathra]

Why not multiple vehicles?

[Assoonasitis]

Why not multiple vehicles?

Vehicles are too good to give the player multiples. They have a way higher survivability than soldiers, more ammo and can move faster.

[Sathra]

Fair enough. Makes sense to me.

[Pandora]

Something in-between X-Com Apocalypse and X-Com: Enemy Unknown (2012). In Apocalypse you could have (I think), 6 squads of 6, I personally think 36 is too many and won't go with the current maps. In Enemy Unknown, you get a maximum of 1 squad per encounter with 6 soldiers. This works well in the game and makes you care about each unit. In Xenonauts, I'd like to see 6-12 as I don't think we need another meat grinder-y platoon game where each solider is just a number. I'd like to be able to take more squads into battle, maybe two. This would mean you could have separate squads with different purposes without trying to have 1 mixed squad and it would be in-keeping with X-Com tradition of multiple squads. Too many soldiers would have players abandoning strategy and just wasting units until the enemy is defeated.

Edited September 2, 2013 by Pandora

[thothkins]

The maps using Valkyrie's are pretty busy from the brief moments I've played with them. From there, you could split your forces into fire teams easily enough.