Suggestion: Equipping Haven Advisors

[Poobah]

It would be nice to force-equip haven advisors to at least the level the rebels are, or if this is not desirable / doable I think a notification when you assign an advisor that you probably should equip them with gear would be in order. I realise that to some degree this is a lesson many only need to learn once but I am not a smart man and run into the "oh shit my advisor only has a conventional weapon and no gear, I could probably have saved several rebel lives if I'd given him an old laser rifle and a grenade" problem all the time.

[Arcalane]

At the very least not locking out their loadout would be nice. If I want to upgrade their gear, I have to find the haven they're assigned to, deassign them, modify their loadout, and then reassign them again.

[tracktwo]

The intent here was to prevent "hot-swapping" of equipment, just like LW1's interceptor equip times. Basically we didn't want you sending off your advisers with no equipment, waiting until a mission spawns for them and then equipping them just before launching the mission. However, we can probably look into allowing them to be re-equipped as long as there is no active retaliation/rendezvous mission in the region, exactly as the current rules are for when you can or cannot remove/re-assign an adviser. That'd save a step, at least, but won't help with the "oops, I forgot" moments when a mission is already detected.

[dstar3k]

The intent here was to prevent "hot-swapping" of equipment, just like LW1's interceptor equip times. Basically we didn't want you sending off your advisers with no equipment, waiting until a mission spawns for them and then equipping them just before launching the mission. However, we can probably look into allowing them to be re-equipped as long as there is no active retaliation/rendezvous mission in the region, exactly as the current rules are for when you can or cannot remove/re-assign an adviser. That'd save a step, at least, but won't help with the "oops, I forgot" moments when a mission is already detected.

Honestly, I'd go with both, or maybe just let you re-equip them whenever. If you can't take equipment that is currently equipped by other soldiers (e.g., no 'Make weapons available' button), I think that means it's not likely to be a huge issue, compared to hot-swapping interceptor weaponry in LW1. I guess you could, maybe, abuse it... but that would be micromanagement hell, and if the player is willing to do that, well, they deserve the pain.

But no matter what, I'd say they should be force-equipped with at least what the rebels have... it doesn't make sense for the rebels to have lasers and the advisor still be equipped with a conventional weapon. (This does lead I suppose to the possibility that your advisor is one of your best equipped people... but then again, that makes sense, from a PR perspective. You want the rebels to think you're as strong as possible, to keep morale up.)

[trihero]

On a side tangent, I was kind of hoping that soldier advisers would get a tiny trickle of exp over time (besides just hoping you get to shoot faceless for exp). What I'm noticing is that I'm in November and none of my advisers are above corporal from being in the haven, while my main troops are minimum tech sergeant. I don't expect havens to be a good source of exp, but it'd be nice if they didn't feel completely left behind.