Squad Build Strategy?

[zeeter]

What's your strategy?

I took my starting squad and, plus or minus a few here and there, settled on a main assault team with them. I also have a second team, similarly outfitted, that is coming up to speed. They do mostly Light-Moderate or less. Third team is all under Light-Moderate and even then I've pulled them out before finishing a mission. Then a final team of low level soldiers who only do extra-light missions.

I know a lot of people like to have a stealth squad, but that doesn't seem to work for me as I always get caught doing something stupid. Like going up to hack a half dead advent and triggering a new pod whom I'm not ready for. Or I accidentally click to go somewhere and just as I release the mouse I notice the red flag on where I want to go, break a window, and then - screwed.

I want to get as many squads as possible and have a virtual army. Each squad has about ten people with a standard core of a marksman, medic, technician, and paladin. Then I mix and match the rest to suit the mission.

[Skaldy]

depends on the mission. My first task is to get 3 of every class, that's why i go for guerilla tactics school first. Then depending on my class builds(which is basicly building your class around their core stats) For example if i have 70+ aim on an assault i build him like a stun gunner(like to start with slug shot then get some arch thrower perks than choose perks to my liking till chain stun), i team him up with a shinobi for spotting pods, put reaction shotist gunner or ranger for cover fire movements and finally add flamer tech to the mix to burn out tough enemies. This is pretty much my destroy relay/capture kill vip squad.

For hacking missions i build a squad around hacker specialist. Similar to first squad i put at least one gunner/ranger to overwatch, if i wanna put shinobi innit i add psi soldier(because works wonders with right perks) or go with SPARK for heavy fire power and support it with grenadier or sniper.

Since supply raids, base raids and tower and other base oriented missions are too sniper+shinobi friendly, i only use these classes on regular missions for leveling them up

[Darkrage_nl]

I limit my squad size to 6 until I unlock Tactical Infiltrations and 8 until I unlock Large Unit Infiltrations.

For squad build it is: 1 hacker (specialist or spark), 1 shredder (Grenadier, Gunner, Spark), 1 controller (Grenadier, Assault, Psi operative) and also for the main squads a scout and a sniper (the remainer are just random classes not already in the squad)

I do not retrain entire new squads. I instead split and merge them as needed. My first 20 soldiers become the foundation for my 10 endgame squads (4 main, 4 reserves and 2 training squads)

I start as a example with 4 squads but eventually split them to 8 and later 10.

However I had quite a few deaths and so these 10 squads became 6 squads in the end.

[Skaldy]

Originally posted by Darkrage_nl:

I limit my squad size to 6 until I unlock Tactical Infiltrations and 8 until I unlock Large Unit Infiltrations.

For squad build it is: 1 hacker (specialist or spark), 1 shredder (Grenadier, Gunner, Spark), 1 controller (Grenadier, Assault, Psi operative) and also for the main squads a scout and a sniper (the remainer are just random classes not already in the squad)

I do not retrain entire new squads. I instead split and merge them as needed. My first 20 soldiers become the foundation for my 10 endgame squads (4 main, 4 reserves and 2 training squads)

I start as a example with 4 squads but eventually split them to 8 and later 10.

However I had quite a few deaths and so these 10 squads became 6 squads in the end.

squads larger than 4 kind of hinders exp gain from regular missions. I mean Some missions are obviously meant for 6 soldiers but most of the missions are easy to handle with 4 even 3(depending on soldier abilities). I havent even went above total 30 soldiers yet

[Darkrage_nl]

ADVENT gains additional legions over time at a certain point (if you are doing well) these reinforcements ramp up and you will more often encounter a larger ADVENT presence.

Maps with more enemies give more experience what counters the experience penalty of a larger squad.

[Skaldy]

Originally posted by Darkrage_nl:

ADVENT gains additional legions over time at a certain point (if you are doing well) these reinforcements ramp up and you will more often encounter a larger ADVENT presence.

Maps with more enemies give more experience what counters the experience penalty of a larger squad.

ah thing you are talking about is called vigilance. Which is pretty much how much advent is pissed. Mission like monument sabotage or ''get advents attention'' raises it more than regular success missions. Regular one's raise 1 vigilance point if i remember right and attention missions raise 3. I havent been in a region that long to see advent strength raise above 8. Generally i liberate the region before it moves into 6 zone. Than again you get some regions with high power level but you can reduce that number with attention missions in a neighbouring region or simply go into hiding with resistance in that area.

You shouldnt try to do regular mission with heavy enemy presecence though. Not worth the xp. And i cant remember the exact math but enemy number doesnt have that much of an impact on mission xp. It was something like base mission xp+ enemy number*33/100. Than it divides the xp between soldier almost equally up to 4 soldier. Anything more than 4 just hinders everyone's xp gain.

[Darkrage_nl]

Originally posted by Skaldy:

Originally posted by Darkrage_nl:

ADVENT gains additional legions over time at a certain point (if you are doing well) these reinforcements ramp up and you will more often encounter a larger ADVENT presence.

Maps with more enemies give more experience what counters the experience penalty of a larger squad.

ah thing you are talking about is called vigilance. Which is pretty much how much advent is pissed. Mission like monument sabotage or ''get advents attention'' raises it more than regular success missions. Regular one's raise 1 vigilance point if i remember right and attention missions raise 3. I havent been in a region that long to see advent strength raise above 8. Generally i liberate the region before it moves into 6 zone. Than again you get some regions with high power level but you can reduce that number with attention missions in a neighbouring region or simply go into hiding with resistance in that area.

You shouldnt try to do regular mission with heavy enemy presecence though. Not worth the xp. And i cant remember the exact math but enemy number doesnt have that much of an impact on mission xp. It was something like base mission xp+ enemy number*33/100. Than it divides the xp between soldier almost equally up to 4 soldier. Anything more than 4 just hinders everyone's xp gain.

Nope reinforcements. Advent gains more armies per month. Its one of the ways ADVENT grows more powerfull over time. In the early game it is only about 4 strength a month (not that hard) once you damaged ADVENT enough it changes to about 12 legions per month.

Completing landed UFO missions (requires luck to spot) counters these reinforcements.

The odds of you killing 12 legions in a month while possible is not very likely.

[Skaldy]

Originally posted by Darkrage_nl:

Originally posted by Skaldy:

ah thing you are talking about is called vigilance. Which is pretty much how much advent is pissed. Mission like monument sabotage or ''get advents attention'' raises it more than regular success missions. Regular one's raise 1 vigilance point if i remember right and attention missions raise 3. I havent been in a region that long to see advent strength raise above 8. Generally i liberate the region before it moves into 6 zone. Than again you get some regions with high power level but you can reduce that number with attention missions in a neighbouring region or simply go into hiding with resistance in that area.

You shouldnt try to do regular mission with heavy enemy presecence though. Not worth the xp. And i cant remember the exact math but enemy number doesnt have that much of an impact on mission xp. It was something like base mission xp+ enemy number*33/100. Than it divides the xp between soldier almost equally up to 4 soldier. Anything more than 4 just hinders everyone's xp gain.

Nope reinforcements. Advent gains more armies per month. Its one of the ways ADVENT grows more powerfull over time. In the early game it is only about 4 strength a month (not that hard) once you damaged ADVENT enough it changes to about 12 legions per month.

Completing landed UFO missions (requires luck to spot) counters these reinforcements.

The odds of you killing 12 legions in a month while possible is not very likely.

I never had a problem with advent numbers in any level of the game. Mostly they go over 8-10 strength level in a region when they have 3-4 regions left. Well that said advent goes über soldier numbers when i'm under %100 infiltration