Officer training times and using squads

[Undershaft]

One aspect of LW2 I never made use of is the squad system. Most of the time, I've found it more distracting than useful, mainly because I end up sending out different combinations of soldiers more often than not (except maybe in case of the alpha team). At first, I thought I might be playing the game slightly wrong, since the squad mechanic is so strongly pushed on you now. You even get infiltration and other bonuses for using the same guys as a team time and again.

But this is all dependent on the officers, and the officers spend so many weeks in various tubes to develop their skills (in addition to getting wounded sometimes) that you end up rotating them *a lot*, which in turn reinforces the mix-and-match-approach I've been taking, and *not* the esprit de corps the squad system is meant to encourage. My main officer, who has just reached the rank of field commander, has been absent so long now that I don't associate alpha squad with her exclusively anymore - she is just one of many possible officers.

So here's my suggestion: Officer skills should be learned instantaneously or at least a lot faster. This would allow them to be more present in the field, which in turn would lead to stronger squad identity. To prevent officer spam, you could:
a) Keep the requirement of some tube-time to *become* an officer but drop it for subsequent promotions.
b) Actually limit the number of officers XCOM can have at a given time. The number could be directly tied to GTS projects, so indirectly to your highest seargent rank. These projects could be repeatable for each rank and rise in cost.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

Honestly, while the "squad that experienced some shit together" idea might be flavourful, I question its place in the game. Why do I get punished for choosing the best soldiers available for the job? This is especially annoying since the squad management itself has more downs than ups to me. Need a quick haven adviser? Well too bad, the only available soldiers are in squads already! I would rather have a generic "officer experience" buff independent of the squadmembers. Yes it would be boring, yes it would be less flavorful. But in the end, the fun I have with the game increased significantly in the very moment I stopped caring about officers and squads.

[aimlessgun]

So here's my suggestion: Officer skills should be learned instantaneously or at least a lot faster. This would allow them to be more present in the field, which in turn would lead to stronger squad identity. To prevent officer spam, you could:
a) Keep the requirement of some tube-time to *become* an officer but drop it for subsequent promotions.
b) Actually limit the number of officers XCOM can have at a given time. The number could be directly tied to GTS projects, so indirectly to your highest seargent rank. These projects could be repeatable for each rank and rise in cost.

I like the idea of this. It's also an indirect nerf to mass stealth missions since you can't make every single shinobi an officer anymore.

[Jacke]

Honestly, while the "squad that experienced some shit together" idea might be flavourful, I question its place in the game. Why do I get punished for choosing the best soldiers available for the job?

Because your soldiers are human, that's the way people behave. Their mutual experiences lead to trust and cohesion with their comrades.

That's what keeps soldiers together in battle since humans took up arms. To stick with their buddies, to not fail them in the crucible of combat.

All XCOM's troops barely make up a platoon plus in size, so they should get most of this quickly with everyone. But actually going on missions under a particular commander and with particular troops should matter and give a benefit to future combat.

LW2 already has part of this with its Officer system from the initial Officer perk Leadership. Troops get better the longer they've served under the same officer commanding a squad. I add in the mod Squad Cohesion to give squads a benefit from serving together. They're only small benefits, but they're there and I like them.

The squad system is difficult because there's not enough troops and so many missions to do. You will have to put troops together into new squads with new commanding Officers. Different missions will need different soldier classes. But there should be an incentive to use the squad system as much as possible.

[KevlinTallfellow]

I suppose you can completely ignore the squad system, and just pick your guys for every mission the old fashioned way.

Personally, I like to task squads with specific mission types, and since the soldiers in those squads have specific perks for their designated mission, those squads tend to stay together, because having such a specific skillset often makes them poor choices for other mission types. Sure, you can still take a few random guys if you think you'll need one tool or another, but the squad's core will be the same, because the mission will be the same: eliminate the target, hack the device, kill all the things, etc..

To me, "A team" doesn't exist, because one squad of soldiers can't do every mission type with the same efficacy.

As far as "not enough troops" goes, how many soldiers do you intend to have in your roster? 20? 50? 150? Once you start having lots of missions available, and lots of troops to do them with, the squad system is very useful for keeping some order to the roster, especially when certain guys only ever do certain missions.

[burns]

Honestly, while the "squad that experienced some shit together" idea might be flavourful, I question its place in the game. Why do I get punished for choosing the best soldiers available for the job? This is especially annoying since the squad management itself has more downs than ups to me. Need a quick haven adviser? Well too bad, the only available soldiers are in squads already! I would rather have a generic "officer experience" buff independent of the squadmembers. Yes it would be boring, yes it would be less flavorful. But in the end, the fun I have with the game increased significantly in the very moment I stopped caring about officers and squads.

I like the concept very much. You don't get punished, you get rewarded. A team that knows each other well is often more capable than a team of individual talents who don't. At least that's what sports taught me. If we had an experienced SWAT member or such here, I would not be surprised if he or she preferred her well known team over a bunch of never before seen guys who nailed a 100 in shooting training.
But you seem to have fun, so everything ist alright.

[Jacke]

I start building up squads with first a Shinobi and then a Specialist. The Shinobi gets trained as a Officer eventually. I'll then add in more troops as they get trained, Grenadiers, Technicals, Assaults, Rangers, Gunner, Sharpshooters, even 2nds of some, maybe with alternate builds. I train more Gunners to be added in as a strong firebase for heavy combat mission. I also will use troops to fill spots in other squads as I'm filling them out. I also train other troops (Technicals right now, maybe laster Assaults) including 2Lt as Haven Advisors.

[Undershaft]

To me, "A team" doesn't exist, because one squad of soldiers can't do every mission type with the same efficacy

Then A-Team probably is the squad you'd do 0% Raids and Golden Path missions with, I guess.

This is especially annoying since the squad management itself has more downs than ups to me. Need a quick haven adviser? Well too bad, the only available soldiers are in squads already!

I agree. Also, my first action on the squad select screen is usually pressing "empty squad", since I'd rather start picking soldiers from scratch than analysing the often fragmented group presented to me by default, which is a first indicator that the entire process is still too cumbersome. Making squad membership mutually exclusive is another part of the problem, since most of the time, I don't have enough troops to pay real attention to keeping pre-existing teams together. I'd rather use certain class combinations as a default setting than having to reserve one shinobi and one sniper as a defined and exclusive specialist team for the rare assassination mission.

[Antigonos]

Squads are a wonderful thing... in theory. In reality, they require too much micromanagement to shine as a QOL feature. It's far more convenient to use the pen + paper sheet combo to keep track of your squads.

Could squads be modified so that soldiers can be assigned to havens/training or is it a limitation of the base game?

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

Honestly, while the "squad that experienced some shit together" idea might be flavourful, I question its place in the game. Why do I get punished for choosing the best soldiers available for the job?

Because your soldiers are human, that's the way people behave. Their mutual experiences lead to trust and cohesion with their comrades.

That's what keeps soldiers together in battle since humans took up arms. To stick with their buddies, to not fail them in the crucible of combat.

All XCOM's troops barely make up a platoon plus in size, so they should get most of this quickly with everyone. But actually going on missions under a particular commander and with particular troops should matter and give a benefit to future combat.

LW2 already has part of this with its Officer system from the initial Officer perk Leadership. Troops get better the longer they've served under the same officer commanding a squad. I add in the mod Squad Cohesion to give squads a benefit from serving together. They're only small benefits, but they're there and I like them.

The squad system is difficult because there's not enough troops and so many missions to do. You will have to put troops together into new squads with new commanding Officers. Different missions will need different soldier classes. But there should be an incentive to use the squad system as much as possible.

You basically repeated "its flavourful" in a long winded form . I know its flavourful! But it's not fun (to me at least) to try to micromanage squads. So I have to resort to play less optimally while saving a whole lot of time, or restricting the fun that I have when "mixmatching" by trying to accomodate the strict squad system with its officer related boni.

I like the concept very much. You don't get punished, you get rewarded.

Maybe economics ruined me, but missing out on a reward can also be considered a punishment (and logically speaking it's basically the same).

[Jacke]

You basically repeated "its flavourful" in a long winded form . I know its flavourful! But it's not fun (to me at least) to try to micromanage squads. So I have to resort to play less optimally while saving a whole lot of time, or restricting the fun that I have when "mixmatching" by trying to accomodate the strict squad system with its officer related boni.

XCOM is a game about humans fighting back against an alien invasion. Having our soldiers acts like humans is a damn important thing about the game to me.

There's not a lot of micromanagement. Squads are just a method to select a bunch of soldiers initially for a mission. You can freely drop soldiers and add available soldiers from other squads without affecting or having to change squad membership. You only have to remove a soldier from a squad when you want to use them as a Haven Advisor.

So keep the pool of Haven Advisors and special troops like new Rookies and extra Gunners outside of the squads. Build up the squads like I said, a Shinobi, then a Specialist, then some more boom (Grenadiers and Technicals) and bang (Assaults, Rangers, Gunners, Sharpshooters), eventually more of each up to the max 12 soldiers. Got a mission, pick a squad to deploy or start forming a new one. In the formup screen, drop and add extra soldiers as needed.

It's how humans lead humans. Or are you just a heretic collaborator, Citizen?

[nightwyrm]

The way I use squads is like this:

Most of my squads are set up as 5-men teams with 1 Shinobi, 1 Specialist, 2 shooty-killy dudes (Gunner, Ranger, Snapshooter or Assault) and 1 crowd control dude (grenadier or tech). Usually the Spec or Tech will be the officer. Then I have a giant pool (at least as many dudes as I have in a pre-assigned squad) of non-assigned soldiers. When a mission comes up, I pick one of my 5-men squads to use as a base and then add or remove soldiers as needed to specialize for that mission or to fill in for injured soldiers. This saves me a bit of clicking by giving me a versatile base squad to start from but also allows for easy squad customization for mission.

I also have 1 or 2 Shinobi+Spec squads I reserved for sneaky missions.

[Hobbes]

On my last campaign I came up with squad/officer system that was working well, that requires at least 40 soldiers divided into 5 squads (with one of each class on them) and 8 officers (4 for squads, 4 for havens)
* Alpha squad - mainly stealth missions
* Beta squad - mainly raid/HQ/etc. missions
* Gamma squad - back up for Alpha, same skills
* Delta squad - back up for Beta
* Sigma squad - haven advisors (when no assigned to a haven)

So if my Alpha squad has a lot of people unavailable (training, injuries), I can either deploy Gamma squad or use it to fill empty slots on Alpha. This also maximizes the leadership bonus since Alpha/Gamma soldiers will serve mainly under the 2 officers of both squads. And, if both officers are unavailable I can pick a reserve officer from the haven advisors pool.

You can add more squads to this system if you need them, although I find it hard to deploy more than 16-20 soldiers with the latest weapons/armor because of the cost of equipping the extra people.

[steave]

The way I use squads is like this:

Most of my squads are set up as 5-men teams with 1 Shinobi, 1 Specialist, 2 shooty-killy dudes (Gunner, Ranger, Snapshooter or Assault) and 1 crowd control dude (grenadier or tech). Usually the Spec or Tech will be the officer. Then I have a giant pool (at least as many dudes as I have in a pre-assigned squad) of non-assigned soldiers. When a mission comes up, I pick one of my 5-men squads to use as a base and then add or remove soldiers as needed to specialize for that mission or to fill in for injured soldiers. This saves me a bit of clicking by giving me a versatile base squad to start from but also allows for easy squad customization for mission.

I also have 1 or 2 Shinobi+Spec squads I reserved for sneaky missions.

I do it similarly.
I instead have 8 man squads consisting of all classes which stay the same for the entire campaign (mostly, there are sometimes some small changes during the early stages of a squad forming, such as replacing a LCPL with a SGT equivalent bought from the black market or whatever).
These are the results: http://imgur.com/a/f6saa (december 30th first year). You can clearly tell the difference between members of the squads and people that have just been subbing in, and throughout the campaign, I literally NEVER felt limited by it, because I never let it.

I really don't understand the complaints about squads. They are not strict and they are not restricting.
When I get a mission, I click the squad button from the load out screen and have a quick look at which squad is the most intact one at the moment and use that as a base. Early game, this will often mean 5-6 guys or so, which is the amount you are able to bring anyway.
If I can fit and want to bring more people than are available from the base squad, I simply add either reserves (people who have not been assigned to a squad, you can see most of mine in the first screenshot. The reserves include officers for when officers are training) or people who are in an another squad.
If there is a full squad available, there is no problem. Simply send the squad.
If there is not, I do the exact same thing people who don't use squads do, except I start with a core of the best available squad and then pick the best available people to go with them.

Honestly, while the "squad that experienced some shit together" idea might be flavourful, I question its place in the game. Why do I get punished for choosing the best soldiers available for the job?

You are making a choice. Either you take the short term benefit of picking the absolutely best team for the job, or you take a more long term approach and take a slightly less than perfect, but still very good, team and get the long term reward of building team cohesion. Since you will have many missions going at all times, taking a good but not perfect team on every mission is the right approach anyway though, otherwise you end up with really good team on some missions and an underpowered one on others.
This is the way a good game SHOULD be: Full of choices that give different rewards and pros/cons with all options.

This is especially annoying since the squad management itself has more downs than ups to me. Need a quick haven adviser? Well too bad, the only available soldiers are in squads already!

Well, then you failed to recruit and GTS up enough troops to fill those slots, and you simply need to remove someone from a squad to send in. This aspect could use a UI upgrade though, so sending someone who is in a squad to a haven is possible but removes them from the squad at the same time.

I would rather have a generic "officer experience" buff independent of the squadmembers. Yes it would be boring, yes it would be less flavorful. But in the end, the fun I have with the game increased significantly in the very moment I stopped caring about officers and squads.

You have the right idea, but the wrong execution. The key is to stop caring about officers and squads....but still use them. Use them, but do not let them limit you. If it makes sense to send this guy from alpha and that other guy from charlie on a mission with bravo, while leaving bravo's assault home....Do so.
If it makes sense to send 2 from A, 3 from B, 1 from C and 4 from D....Do so.

Squads are only a nuisance if you let them. Use them correctly and they are great.

[Elfich]

I suppose you can completely ignore the squad system, and just pick your guys for every mission the old fashioned way.

Personally, I like to task squads with specific mission types, and since the soldiers in those squads have specific perks for their designated mission, those squads tend to stay together, because having such a specific skillset often makes them poor choices for other mission types. Sure, you can still take a few random guys if you think you'll need one tool or another, but the squad's core will be the same, because the mission will be the same: eliminate the target, hack the device, kill all the things, etc..

To me, "A team" doesn't exist, because one squad of soldiers can't do every mission type with the same efficacy.

As far as "not enough troops" goes, how many soldiers do you intend to have in your roster? 20? 50? 150? Once you start having lots of missions available, and lots of troops to do them with, the squad system is very useful for keeping some order to the roster, especially when certain guys only ever do certain missions.

You will find after a point the number of troopers isn't an issue. You can easily get a stable of 40-50 troopers on the lower levels. The supplies to arm and armor your troopers will become very scarce very quickly. Unless you deliberately set up a "kill supply mission" squad whose entire mission is to destroy supply missions (mass snipers and sninobi, etc) you will find yourself starved for alloys and crystals. From. A practical point of view you will find yourself limited to 30ish troopers +military advisors+one man squads.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

Well, then you failed to recruit and GTS up enough troops to fill those slots, and you simply need to remove someone from a squad to send in. This aspect could use a UI upgrade though, so sending someone who is in a squad to a haven is possible but removes them from the squad at the same time.

The Thing is you WANT your best troops in havens, since - guess what - they are the very best at rooting out those pesky faceless. Usually the best troops are also the ones that have a fixed spot in their respective squads. Seriously, this issue alone is what causes me so much constipation! Dont even get me started on having to pull guys out of the haven to give them equipment.

What I dont like is the strict squad layout this method "softly" imposes of you. I dont know, I guess I just dont see the gameplay value in trying to deter the player from freely choosing their squad composition on a mission by mission basis. Also, as you have already noticed, there isnt much of a "deep strategical" choice. Building up long term stats buffs in the most cases is the superior decision. The only reason I personally dont bother much anymore is because using the interface is too annoying for me (mainly because of the haven advisors). But even without this annoyance its not a feature that adds anything to my personal enjoyment of the game. Its no interesting mechanic or interaction, no meaningful hard decision that lets you consider the ramifications and think for a while, it's just kinda flavourful ... but judging from this thread it seems that is what people want.

[steave]

Well, then you failed to recruit and GTS up enough troops to fill those slots, and you simply need to remove someone from a squad to send in. This aspect could use a UI upgrade though, so sending someone who is in a squad to a haven is possible but removes them from the squad at the same time.

The Thing is you WANT your best troops in havens, since - guess what - they are the very best at rooting out those pesky faceless. Usually the best troops are also the ones that have a fixed spot in their respective squads. Seriously, this issue alone is what causes me so much constipation! Dont even get me started on having to pull guys out of the haven to give them equipment.

I disagree with that completely. Yes, high ranking troops are better at rooting out faceless, but doing so a bit faster isn't vital. Reserve troops (squaddies early on, up to CPL/SGT or so later on) are more than capable of doing the job. Your best troops should be out doing the hard stuff, aka missions, not sitting on vacation in havens.

What I dont like is the strict squad layout this method "softly" imposes of you. I dont know, I guess I just dont see the gameplay value in trying to deter the player from freely choosing their squad composition on a mission by mission basis. Also, as you have already noticed, there isnt much of a "deep strategical" choice. Building up long term stats buffs in the most cases is the superior decision.

No, I haven't noticed that.
I am very often in a spot where I need to decide if it's worth waiting a few hours to a day for a squad to get their own X back, or if I should just go anyway when I get long timer missions, or if I'm going to assault a GP mission/tower/HQ, if I should cancel the members training to send them out or if I should send someone else in their spot, or maybe just go without the member. Those are interesting choices.
(Yes, this slightly contradicts the "don't care at all" advise - that is the first step to learning to use squads well, next step is to see when caring doesn't cost very much, so might as well do it, such as if you have a 8 day mission, it takes 7 days to infiltrate and a guy comes back in 1 day)

The only reason I personally dont bother much anymore is because using the interface is too annoying for me (mainly because of the haven advisors). But even without this annoyance its not a feature that adds anything to my personal enjoyment of the game. Its no interesting mechanic or interaction, no meaningful hard decision that lets you consider the ramifications and think for a while, it's just kinda flavourful ... but judging from this thread it seems that is what people want.

The various squads build character. Various AWC perks make them work differently.
There's too many soldiers in the game for me to really care about them individually, but I do remember my squads, and their different styles, like how Alpha has serial, a gunslinger assault and half the squad has damn good ground, so they excel at fighting from roofs while other squads would prefer to take the full cover under the roof instead and they have firestorm instead of bunker buster, unlike most of my other squads. Beta has AMF, a full gunslinger sniper, a ton of shredding thanks to a shred specialists and a light em up+shredder+low profile grenadier, and combat rush from the ranger. Charlie has the shredder rapid fire assault, ghostwalker+field medic technical and, since they have the technical, a combat protocol+airdrop specialist instead of a medic. Delta are the poor newbies who formed four months later who go on easy missions, and are interesting to play with and overcome fighting late game enemies (but very few) with lower ranked troops that don't have all the abilities the other squads have.
You can dismiss that as just flavor, but flavor matters. The whole story of xcom VS alien invaders is just flavor. We could replace it with different geometric figures representing various types of friendly and hostile entities with the same abilities, but it wouldn't feel as interesting or engaging.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

I disagree with that completely. Yes, high ranking troops are better at rooting out faceless, but doing so a bit faster isn't vital. Reserve troops (squaddies early on, up to CPL/SGT or so later on) are more than capable of doing the job. Your best troops should be out doing the hard stuff, aka missions, not sitting on vacation in havens.

And they do that, thats why it is so annoying. I have several high rankers that I dont need to take on every mission (e.g. snipers, medics, technicals after they peaked). But I still need them from time to time (snipers/medics for big untimed missions, others when i got many wounds).

Just one last remark: Yes flavour is important. However flavor - for me - almost always takes a backseat to gameplay. Your example of xcom as a game of "geometric figures" totally misses the point, because introducing the flavor of fighting aliens instead of squares doesnt mess with the gameplay and the way I do things. The officer and squad system does. What I read from your post is, that you already tend to play the game in a way that works fine with the officer/squad system. If so: good for you, the officer system adds to your experience. I myself remember most of my individual soldiers, but i have no clue what stories a squad has (other than i named one squad liberty because they were created to do the first liberation). See people work differently. It's not that I do things "wrong", but apparently I have a different approach to the game. And this flavour element detracts from my way of doing things, while working fine with yours.

If pavonis wants to accomodate people of both camps (squad lovers and individualist types), the system needs at least some QoL improvements (havens!), thats all I am saying.

[steave]

Just one last remark: Yes flavour is important. However flavor - for me - almost always takes a backseat to gameplay. Your example of xcom as a game of "geometric figures" totally misses the point, because introducing the flavor of fighting aliens instead of squares doesnt mess with the gameplay and the way I do things. The officer and squad system does. What I read from your post is, that you already tend to play the game in a way that works fine with the officer/squad system. If so: good for you, the officer system adds to your experience. I myself remember most of my individual soldiers, but i have no clue what stories a squad has (other than i named one squad liberty because they were created to do the first liberation). See people work differently. It's not that I do things "wrong", but apparently I have a different approach to the game. And this flavour element detracts from my way of doing things, while working fine with yours.

It is literally impossible for squad mechanics to interfere with gameplay. At the very worst, it does nothing at all, because you choose to go on the "I want a perfect squad for every mission" side of the spectrum instead of "I want to build long term bonuses more efficiently" side of the spectrum by manually picking soldiers for every mission. The only way for the squad system to be detrimental is if the user allows it to push you into following it too strictly.

If pavonis wants to accomodate people of both camps (squad lovers and individualist types), the system needs at least some QoL improvements (havens!), thats all I am saying.

You've been saying a lot more than that, and no one has disputed that point

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

It is literally impossible for squad mechanics to interfere with gameplay. At the very worst, it does nothing at all, because you choose to go on the "I want a perfect squad for every mission" side of the spectrum instead of "I want to build long term bonuses more efficiently" side of the spectrum by manually picking soldiers for every mission. The only way for the squad system to be detrimental is if the user allows it to push you into following it too strictly.

It rewards specific behaviour and the game is (in part) balanced around this. Otherwise you wouldn't need it in the first place. I dont want to be pushed at all when it comes to choosing my squad (at least not in this way since it has long term ramifications and isnt a short term tactical decision like for example fatigue was), so yes it quite literally interferes with my gameplay.

You've been saying a lot more than that, and no one has disputed that point

Yes i have been saying more, because I didnt recognize people actually liked this feature, thats on me. However there was also a lot of "you are just doing it wrong" flying around, so yeah, people actually disputed the point of usability, if not explicitly, than implicitly. I mean you yourself did it just a few posts ago ("You failed to recruit up enough troops").

[steave]

It is literally impossible for squad mechanics to interfere with gameplay. At the very worst, it does nothing at all, because you choose to go on the "I want a perfect squad for every mission" side of the spectrum instead of "I want to build long term bonuses more efficiently" side of the spectrum by manually picking soldiers for every mission. The only way for the squad system to be detrimental is if the user allows it to push you into following it too strictly.

It rewards specific behaviour and the game is (in part) balanced around this. Otherwise you wouldn't need it in the first place. I dont want to be pushed at all when it comes to choosing my squad (at least not in this way since it has long term ramifications and isnt a short term tactical decision like for example fatigue was), so yes it quite literally interferes with my gameplay.

You've been saying a lot more than that, and no one has disputed that point

Yes i have been saying more, because I didnt recognize people actually liked this feature, thats on me. However there was also a lot of "you are just doing it wrong" flying around, so yeah, people actually disputed the point of usability, if not explicitly, than implicitly. I mean you yourself did it just a few posts ago ("You failed to recruit up enough troops").

It rewards different behavior differently. Your behavior is rewarded with stronger short term squads.

Yes, I said that if all your available soldiers are in squads, you need more soldiers, while also saying that "this aspect could use a UI upgrade though, so sending someone who is in a squad to a haven is possible but removes them from the squad at the same time. "

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

Yes, I said that if all your available soldiers are in squads, you need more soldiers, while also saying that "this aspect could use a UI upgrade though, so sending someone who is in a squad to a haven is possible but removes them from the squad at the same time. "

We both know this "advice" is worthless. You dont even know how many soldiers I have in the first place and if your statement is actually true. Maybe I have like 50 and tried to use the squad system extensively which led to my complaints in the first place? These kind of condescending replies rub me the wrong way ...

[steave]

Yes, I said that if all your available soldiers are in squads, you need more soldiers, while also saying that "this aspect could use a UI upgrade though, so sending someone who is in a squad to a haven is possible but removes them from the squad at the same time. "

We both know this "advice" is worthless. You dont even know how many soldiers I have in the first place and if your statement is actually true. Maybe I have like 50 and tried to use the squad system extensively which led to my complaints in the first place? These kind of condescending replies rub me the wrong way ...

I assume you are not an idiot, so if the issue was your squads were too big, you'd just remove them without any issues. You've also clearly stated that it was a conflict between wanting your good soldiers in the squads and in the havens. Yes, I know.
If you think assuming that you're not an idiot is condescending, then that's your problem.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

I assume you are not an idiot, so if the issue was your squads were too big, you'd just remove them without any issues. You've also clearly stated that it was a conflict between wanting your good soldiers in the squads and in the havens. Yes, I know.
If you think assuming that you're not an idiot is condescending, then that's your problem.

You assume I am not an idiot and tell me "well go recruit some more soldiers" when I have a legitimate gripe with an unnecessary restriction when it comes to assigning soldiers to havens? The statement "well go recruit some more soldiers, duh" is somehow less condescending than "well your squads are too big, duh"?

And it's not even true, why is my squad "too big"? Why do people have to leave their squad, to oversee a haven for - say - a month? Your alternative suggestion ("ending someone who is in a squad to a haven is possible but removes them from the squad at the same time") still misses the point of not adding unnecessary busywork. The game should display if a soldier that gets assigned to advisor is in a squad - yes, but it shouldnt remove them from the squad. Because then I would still have unnecessary clicking to do as soon as he leaves his advisor role (what squad was he in again?).

[steave]

Removing someone from a squad is a click of a button. Having enough soldiers requires making the right call on how many rebels to set on recruit, how much to spend buying soldiers from the black market and the deciding to spend resources on those rookies early enough to let their GTS timers process or prioritizing taking them on missions to level them instead of top soldiers. It also requires not getting a bad streak of missions that kills a bunch of your guys. Yes, if the problem is too big squads, you need to be an idiot to not be able to solve it. Having the right amount of soldiers requires careful balancing and is easy to get wrong, either by having too many or too few soldiers, both of which are bad since too many means they are not leveled enough and you didn't spend the supplies on other things.
Maybe I was wrong in my assumption if you think there's no difference.
Either way, you are derailing this into talking about your sensitivity issues instead of officers, so unless you go back on topic, I have nothing more to say.