Hi there,
I don’t want to just rant and ramble and instead I want to offer solutions to the problems I’m experiencing, but to explain why the suggestions I’m making need to be added I first need to explain the problems they solve. So apologies if this initially seems like rambling.
-The issue
As a new player (~25 days in) I don’t have a massive reserve of soldiers to sift through when trying to fill new squads with good soldiers (good soldiers being ones that have high amounts of starting perk points), and I don’t have a reserve of bad soldiers to fill all my unused squads with in an attempt to ensure that my “reserve” is primarily filled with good soldiers. Instead I have next to no reserve soldiers, because I’m constantly using every silver order I have to fill up my squads across the campaigns I’m interested in. It wasn’t too bad at first, but now I’m at the point where I’m no longer getting any more silver orders through achievements so I can go days without seeing a new troop. This means my reserve is empty and I’m trying to field every man I have in my current campaign, and often find that I can’t even fill them to capacity if I go for squad upgrades before personnel upgrades or workshop upgrades.
This isn’t a major problem when it comes to engineers, assaulters, machinegunners etc. because I don’t have any spares, I just use what I get given. But for rifleman it is, because whenever I unlock a new squad I find myself having to go through the long, tedious process of digging through all my unused squads to find which ones have the best perk points. Because of the ‘You do not have a full squad of soldiers (minimum #)’ warning that prevents you from emptying squads or easily swapping soldiers from one squad to another I have to -
Equip the new squad
Note down the stats of the new riflemen in my new squad
Equip and sort through all my reserve squads
Note down any riflemen in these reserve squads who have higher stats than those in the new squad
Equip a squad I’m actively using which has extra riflemen
Put these extra riflemen in my reserve
Equip my reserve squads which have better riflemen than my new squad
Replace the reserve squads riflemen who have higher stats than the new squads riflemen with the extra riflemen I have taken out of the squads I’m actively using
Equip the new squad
Put the riflemen from the reserve squads into the new squad
Equip the reserve squads
Put the bad riflemen removed from the new squad into the reserve squads, replacing the soldiers I had to take out of the squad I’m actively using
Return the extra riflemen I took from the squads I’m actively using to their correct squads
This is a long and arduous process which I feel like I shouldn’t have to go through, and sure I could always just ignore perk points and field whatever I’m given with the new squads. But as someone who likes trying to maximise the effectiveness of my squads by ensuring that I have things like soldiers with vitality (which requires having high initial starting perks) and throwing perks so I can take out tanks more easily, it’s something I want to do and I’m sure many others do it too. So it shouldn’t be as awkward as it is.
-The solution
So that all your reserve troops are in one place where it’s much easier to sort through and organise them when equipping squads you want to use in-game, so that you don’t have to open and close multiple menus and equip and swap out multiple different squads to view all your available troops, you should be able to put empty squads in the reserve and move all troops from reserve squads into the soldiers reserve.
This would make organising and equipping new squads with your best soldiers much easier, and is currently prevented by the ‘You do not have a full squad of soldiers (minimum #)’ feature. I understand that you do not want to allow people to enter games with empty squads, or ‘squads’ which only have one man, but instead of forcing people to /always/ have a minimum number of soldiers in a squad you should change it so that the '‘You do not have a full squad of soldiers (minimum #)’ warning only triggers when you try to hit ‘start’ when a squad you actively have equipped does not have the minimum number of soldiers. Reserve squads should not have to contain soldiers.
-Closing
I would like to know if other people experience these issues, and if they would like to see this change or some other solution introduced. I’ve come up with other solutions to this problem but do not want to extend this any longer by including them, but please share your suggestions in the comments below and let it be known that the current system is not user friendly, especially for new players.