Long war officers

[Boj'ana]

What classes make the best officers and specifically do assaults make good officers? On average atleast.

[red255]

I use Medics are officers. as they have high will and I am most able to sacrifice their action to pass it to a different class. but carrying multiple medkits on a mission makes carrying medics worth while.

Generally with assaults I do hit and run tactics spend an action to move close to an enemy. shoot with close encounters, run back to safety.

So I don't have spare actions to use command with. I generally use COMMAND on assaults to deal a final shotguns strike or on Engineers to attempt a second stun attempt.

so it shouldn't be on those classes. scouts, infantry, snipers, gunners, just don't have actions to spare for it, I mean maybe infantry

Honestly not a fan of even BRINGING rocketeers on missions.

the main problem with using medics as officers is they need rank of CPL be LT and +1 rank for CAPT and so on. and they take a while to level up.

but you also need 5 missions as LT for the next rank so its not that bad.

[mk11]

I like infantry. Equipped with a heavy rifle and with platform stability their second shot is a lot worse than their first so I don't mind using it for an emergency command.

Scouts, gunners, engineers and assaults I would avoid because they are often the one that needs the command. Snipers are bad because they often are out of range for the command. Rocketeers tend to take the first shot of an encounter so that just leaves medics and infantry both of which work well.

One fast scout LT might be of use on the EXALT missions where you recover the operative. In those cases being able to get in range to command the operative can be very useful.

[red255]

uh, Infantry don't get platform stability. not sure if the battle rifle aim penalties apply to overwatch. so if you were using a battle rifle it would be best to shoot, then overwatch. with opportunist and sentinel.

[Fadeway]

The beautiful things about LW is that few things have a clear right answer, but personally I use infantry, scouts, engineers and gunners, roughly in that order of preference.

One problem with assault officers is that you can't benefit from Fortiores Una (you would usually have a biotank with an officer standing next to him giving him +1 DR, this does not work if the biotank is himself the officer). But missing out on this is not game-breaking and you may not even notice if you don't run biotanks.

Anyway there are three important things to think about with officers - will, positioning, yellow actions. You want your officer to be in the center (spreading his auras), so classes that position like that have an advantage (infantry, gunner, etc). You want your officer to have medium or high will - I prefer medium because high is better spent on psi, other players don't care about psi; in any case this is more down to individual soldiers than classes.

Finally you want your officer to have low-impact yellow moves, so that your command is efficient. For example if you activate too many pods, you may want to suppress the biggest robo, to fire a rocket at the rest, and then maybe command for another rocket. This does not work if your officer is the rocketeer or gunner.

A biotank assault can play from the center (nice positioning), has low-impact yellow moves (nice command, though not the best), generally will have some of the highest will (bad in my book, would rather psi) and has the previously mentioned Fort Una incompatibility. A crit assault has bad positioning (but that is the least important factor of the three), has very high impact yellow moves (big antisynergy with command), and will have medium-high will and little reason to go psi (since his yellow moves are better than anything psi can give him).

[red255]

If the ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan, the medic uses a dense smoke grenade, the engineer pops a TK field and the medic can still use a command charge. + 80 defense. even without cover.

if you got 3 people with TK field you can keep it up for 3 turns. which I've managed to survive some pretty hairy situations where massive pods attack from 3 sides.

I'd be screwed. except I am not. because my medic uses smoke and command.