Should I augment my soldiers before they hit COLs?

[KSB]

Will they still get promoted if I augment them at SGT or CAPT? I read somewhere that it is not advisable to augment them until you max out their skills. Right now, I have a few soldiers in the hospital for a long stretch and I am pondering if I should hack off their limbs. Lol.

[Incunabulum]

Yes, they will still gain rank even if you Genemod or MEC them.

I think the main thing about waiting till they hit COL is to see if their willpower, HP, and Movement points are good or if MECing them is neccessary.

[KSB]

Originally posted by Incunabulum:

Yes, they will still gain rank even if you Genemod or MEC them.

I think the main thing about waiting till they hit COL is to see if their willpower, HP, and Movement points are good or if MECing them is neccessary.

Usually, I will augment my surplus heavies or my first 6-7 soldiers who got promoted to COLs without the officer cadet school upgrades in the start of the game into MECs. For the later soldiers who got better stats due to officer cadet school, I will usually keep them for gene.

[Quirky2]

MECs get half XP for kills.
I usually turn one or two soldiers into MECs early on and then mid game when I get my first two sniper colonels, I turn them into real end game warden tank mecs. They can use the same mecs as the first one or two mecs and the early mec soldiers if they survived will be back ups.

[KSB]

Originally posted by Quirky2:

MECs get half XP for kills.
I usually turn one or two soldiers into MECs early on and then mid game when I get my first two sniper colonels, I turn them into real end game warden tank mecs. They can use the same mecs as the first one or two mecs and the early mec soldiers if they survived will be back ups.

Nice

[markdb92]

Do not mec people till max rank as they suffer the crappy lv gains from mec class. You can get better mechs if you wait till they are max rank ie better will and aim. A max rank sniper when transfered over will have close to 100% hit most of the time. That mec sniper may steal all your kills when the aliens attack him since he be lets attack that thing instead of people in cover.

[Stardustfire]

Waiting with augumentimng a soldier longer than squady shows u play on a to low difficulty, if u play classic or imposible u dont ask when u shoud do it, if u already hit captain rang u dont need a MEC so pressing anymore, u need them at the start so u survive more easy with less casualtys.

[Quirky2]

The best soldier in the game is a sniper warden tank converted at colonel rank. So you get a mec or two early to help out with survival, and then you get an end game mec in the mid game when you get your sniper colonels. They are not exclusive Stardustfire.

[AceTheGreat]

I just augmented 3 squadie mecs... they suck.

[ARi0S]

I don't augment with Gmods until Lieutenant, you're less likely to lose the investment but not wait too long. Except Mimetic Skin, give that to everyone you can.

MECs are a different thing all together, if you're not using Hidden Potential the best times for the classes are

Assaults and Supports is when they're colonels hands down, highesst HP and Aim they can get.

Snipers are Colonels or Majors, Colonels get higher aim but one lower Hp than the Majors (that's a preference choice, you'll likely pick Colonel for the aim).

Heavies are very similiar to MECs, if you make a MEC at Squaddie, they get the same final aim as a basic Heavy. However, if you turn them to a MEC trooper at Captain, they have the highest aim they can get, it isn't much higher than a MEC from the beginning though.

[Stardustfire]

at me they are exclusivly. my first 2 MECs are in the endmission too, if i dont made a bad decision somewhere in the game and one dies becasue of that. i never Augument more than 2 soldiers if i dont must replace on becasue death. alone waiting for all the medals woud need much to long. my baracks never host more than 8 soldiers after im away from the start and got my team together. But i dont use Snipers for MECs at all (if i dont get the problem there are not one of the 2 classes that are good at MEC) because a Sniper passive is nearly as useless for a MEC than a supports passiv, because my MECs are FRONTLINE units, not backstanders.