What classes/starting stats should choose for officers?

[josna238]

My first thought is to get a high rank officer to unlock all the things. So, thinking on survivability I began choosing Gunners, Grenadiers and Rangers, with high health, defense and dodge. So I have officers that are very unlikely to be shooted, if it happens he will receive low damage and a good chance to graze and even if it happen more than once he has a good chance to bleed instead of die.

But with this stats and with the defensive perks (those that improve armor, defense, health, dodge...). They become quite useless as especialists on their classes.

How do you do build your officers?

[Sporadix]

Well, the first thing I do is rotate all my shinobis through the tube for Oscar Mike/Command cheese. I don't like it, but it's the world we live in.

Specialists are my favorite officers for pitched battles. Put them in a good position and you can use Focus Fire/Get Some as a first action, Command as a second action and your soldier can contribute a lot of offense when it otherwise couldn't. I also keep them near the rear of the squad where they'll never be shot at, since the Gremlin operates with Squadsight. Your officer doesn't really need to see enemies often, just the rest of the squad. I'd prefer high health/defense here, but it doesn't really matter.

Shinobis are also decent candidates, since officer abilities don't break Concealment. Technicals are great officers too; the abilities give them something to do when they run out of consumables or when you don't have an opportunity to use them. They also suck pretty bad in the late game, so you can move them to Haven Advisor duty whenever you need to and they'll be better at that with officer status.

[josna238]

I like most of your points but a thing. My technicals usually are flame openers so when dice decide an opening to go wrong they are in serious danger.

[Elder_Basilisk]

I've had some good success with specialists. I have a few different specialist builds I've been using and though things change with AWC abilities (I got grazing fire on one, chain shot or rapid fire would make a big difference), I find there are only a few times that I don't have spare actions for things like rapid fire: when initiating combat from stealth--a good kill zone can turn a grenade, rocket, or saturation fire into a pad kill by itself- and when hacking Mechs. The rest of the time, there's ample actions for focus fire on things like gatekeepers or muton elites and a command on a grenadier, technical, close encounters assault or ranger/gunner/etc is a lot more effective than using a single rifle shot from the specialist.

Shinobi get the nod for stealth missions (though I don't train them all-only the squad leaders) because the conceal abilities are too far down the sharpshooter tree for them to be regular stealth contributors.

[Dlareh]

1. Specialists for battle missions, each one gets their own squad.

2. Low-ranking Shinobi officers for stealth missions (oscar mike/command)

3. As backup officers: usually the shinobis who sometimes go on combat missions as scouts, and technicals.

4. Fourth tier for me is usually assaults. They sometimes get trained up in slack times to rotate duty on mid-tier havens I can't justify having a high rank person in, but are also a little too important to just put a squaddie in.

[Dwarfling]

Shinobis, Specialists, Rapid Targeting Sharpshooters, in that order. I do have an Assault officer tho, but I mostly did it to see if they get extra faceless detection.

[stefan3iii]

1. Shinobis - This is my preferred officer class, as you're often saving their stealth for when you really need to break it, and in the meantime they can contribute with officers abilities.

2. Grenadiers - I build all my grenadiers with rapid deployment so they often have spare actions, and it's very common that you have a fight where you don't want to waste a fancy grenade, when a simple command will do to finish it.

I used to think "Specialists" were good officers, but the issue is that you want to take specialists on Shinobi+Specialist stealth teams, and you need the Shinobi to be the lead officer so that he can command the specialist. On difficult combat missions I don't bring specialists, even as officers their damage output is just so low that they're too often dead weight. To me the specialist class is there for Skulljack and Tower Hack farming, they're the class you take because you're greedy and feel you can easily beat the mission even though you took a specialist.

[Sporadix]

There's definitely some awkwardness with specialists needing shinobis to lead for stealth missions. But I'm pretty much constantly training new Specs/Shinobis in the GTS, so it's usually not too bad. At some point (usually leading up to the first HQ) I'll take a high ranked Spec or two and give them all their officer perks consecutively, once I have enough replacements for them. At that point they just won't go on stealth missions anymore. Don't really want to risk high-ranking officers anyway.

[Jacke]

I think I've found how to make Shinobi and Specialist Officers work together: Have Shinobis trained up to 2Lt with Oscar Mike. And have Specialist Medics trained as squad Officers, usually starting with Focus Fire.

Non-Medic Specialists don't get trained as Officers at all. They're the ones that go with Shinobi on sneaky-sneaky missions, because a Specialist Medic isn't needed there.

You need Specialist Medics on the tough fighting missions. There they can give orders, heal, and do fill-in shootin' and grenadin'. Unfortunately, they can't get Phantom from the AWC, but they can get Conceal.

Otherwise, I think Rangers can make good squad Officers. And Technicals can make good squad Officers and Officer Haven Advisors.