IвЂ™d start it higher and not increase it at all, except for kit bonuses. It makes the early missions of the game the least forgiving, and discourages you from mixing up your squad lineup later: every time I brought a rookie along to try to diversify my squad, they were insta-brained by a single shot. You donвЂ™t want to tongue-snare Bladestorm, for reasons weвЂ™ll get into if you try it.Д¬urrently this starts extremely low and increases fast as a soldier levels up: faster than than the enemyвЂ™s damage output. IвЂ™d have every mission come with a squad size: вЂњWe can only get three people past the checkpoints leading to the mission area for this VIP extractionвЂќ, or вЂњSecurityвЂ™s light here, we can drop six people in for this Retaliation mission.вЂќ That way itвЂ™s not snowballing, and it also adds more variety вЂ“ I took the same six people on about 80% of my missions, which meant my tactics were pretty similar each time. The game does this once, and that mission was refreshingly brutal. IвЂ™d take squad size completely out of your hands, and make it a per-mission variable. You donвЂ™t want to reserve that for the players who are already doing well. Even one more troop is a huge advantage to everyoneвЂ™s survivability, and having a team 50% larger makes the game more than twice as easy. The number of soldiers you can take on a mission starts at 4 and can be upgraded to 6 if youвЂ™re doing well enough in the strategy part to afford the facility, and well enough in the tactics part to already have soldiers of high rank. Stop getting more badass, you stupid badasses. So you canвЂ™t scrap that, but what could you do? Here are some ideas.

And some parts of XCOMвЂ™s snowballing are too good to lose: unlocking cool abilities for my favourite troops is why I play XCOM. And itвЂ™s not just theory-crafting, thatвЂ™s exactly how my XCOM 2 campaign played out: early on we got crushed repeatedly, then a few lucky missions got us off the ground, and after that my people became almost unstoppable for 35 missions straight вЂ“ even after I upped the game difficulty.ДЄny game with persistent resources will have some snowbally tendencies: success has to get you something, or failure has to cost you something, otherwise itвЂ™s not really persistent. If youвЂ™re finding the game hard, it gets harder.

If youвЂ™re finding the game easy, it gets easier. If they die, theyвЂ™re replaced by vulnerable, weak rookies, who are likely to die and be replaced by vulnerable, weak rookies. WhatвЂ™s snowballing? In XCOM, if your troops survive the mission, they get stronger, tougher and get more abilities, which makes them more likely to survive future missions and get tougher still.

Xcom 2 remove facility