Budgeting and number of soldiers to recruit

[Elfich]

Full discosure: I'm on Rookie. (I played and won the last LW, and knew from the beginning I wanted to start at the bottom).

Interesting trade off:
Having more troops available means you can try to strike at more targets (I'm skipping the discussion on trooper disposition within teams for this discussion). But it also means you have to outfit all of those troopers.

For example: To outfit a single trooper with a tricked out laser rifle, vest & plate is going to cost about 100 supplies (The weapon costs 20+30 for add ons, each starter vest or plate runs 20-30 each).
Suddenly to outfit a stable of fifty troopers means you need 5,000 supplies to kit everyone out. To move entirely up to the next tier is going to cost even more.

Does anyone have a good idea what a reasonable stable size for troopers? If you get to many you'll never be able to kit them all out (or are running around in equipment 1-2 tiers down), if your stable is to small you can't cover all the things you need to hit or keep tamped down.

[trihero]

It depends on where you are at in the game, but I am comfortable with my stable of 40-50 soldiers. It means I can do a big ops (10 men), a handful of lesser ops (maybe a 6 man mission, three small two man missions = 12 more men on lesser missions), have some people sick (3-4), some people training in the AWC or officer, all simultaneously, and still have enough on reserve to defend any rapid reaction missions like retaliations or avenger defense.

Oh, and this doesn't count my haven advisers where I put one soldier in each.

But this is a very gradual goal, don't sacrifice all your money to get 50 soldiers as fast as possible. You do need to hire a lot of recruits early on but not at the expense of getting laser weapons researched.

Note that you shouldn't try hard to level up everyone's equipment. It is unfeasible until extremely late in the game, and also not necessary. Level up people whose weapons are most necessary (like sharpshooters, rangers, assaults NEED good weapons), armor I only build about six or so really good armors, and those are reserved for the hardest missions (network, HQ assault). Some classes are cheap to outfit (like grenadier, shinobi) since they essentially just need an SMG + gear you already have infinite amounts of (grenades).

Also, I only tend to build weapons right before a mission, because you know then that you will use them. I wouldn't put a laser on everyone just to feel like it's cool. Also, I share weapons a lot. If I want to level up a lower soldier I'll strip a higher soldier's equipment and put them into the battlefield.

[ZenGilgamesh]

Playing on the normal (Veteran) difficulty, so my experiences could differ from the more hardcore players.

Like Trihero said, I wouldn't focus on kitting out individual soldiers; I focus more on upgrading certain aspects of my roster in a systematic format, and always (always) favoring offense over defense in this game. This is just an impromptu list but I generally follow this kind of budget order:

-Heaviest hitters on my most prominent squads get weapons first (Gunners/Rangers/Assaults/Sharpshooters)
-Upgraded Gremlins for my main Specialists (turned so many battles in my favor by hacking MECs)
-Upgraded utilities (plasma grenades for grenadiers, gauntlets for technicals, upgrade holotargeters if affordable)

Once offense is taken care of, then I'll put armor on my meatiest soldiers (usually the Gunners/Technicals/Assaults first) as they're the ones most likely to jump out on the front lines and take shots, and only for them until pretty much later in the campaign when it's easier to gear everyone. Until then, hardly anyone even takes damage unless I want them to.

I play by that cycle most of the time. Any reserve soldiers I have only get upgraded as they get hand-me-downs from the main squad members. This has kept budgeting fairly manageable. Beyond that, just trade gear around as needed when people are injured/training. They don't need it during those times anyway.

[Valaska]

Typically you want to keep 20+ in Commander, you want a baseline of predator armor on anything other than your top 12. Its simply too expensive to outfit large amounts of troops say 40+. Later in the game as you are getting warden and such and passing your hand-me-down magnetic weapons to your lower people they actually get reasonably viable.

Coilguns aren't too expensive per unit cost, mind you. You can pump out quite a few of them without much issue, its the armor and plating thats the problem... Heck I'd suggest skipping laser in higher difficulties and go right for the elerium research, I could have saved a lot of pain while upgrading from laser to magnetic then coil.

[Devon_v]

Yeah, I agree that upgrading full kit isn't necessary. Plenty of troopers are only carrying a gun because the game won't let them go in sans primary.

Just hang on to the supply and spend as you need it. I just had an ADVENT invasion pop and I built a bunch of armor and weapons becauee it's going to be a war. But there was no need for them prior to that.

[trihero]

I just had an ADVENT invasion pop and I built a bunch of armor and weapons becauee it's going to be a war. But there was no need for them prior to that.

Yup exactly. Don't spend money unless you need to right now. I recently made the mistake of dumping a lot of cash into GTS tactics upgrades because I thought well in 4 days I'm about to get +700 cash pickup, then what's up a retaliation occurred and I didn't have the money to buy advanced guns for my reserve group. I still stumbled through, but man =.=