Wrangler Units

[Emerelle]

Hi there! Is Commander the strongest Wrangler or will there be more?

[Starpilot]

Strongest depends on the map. There's maps where the Commander is completely worthless, because his weapon loadout isn't as useful as "lower ranked" wranglers.

[Emerelle]

Oh.. ok, I see.. thought, that each new Unit is stronger than the Units before.. well, that changes a lot. :D

[Starpilot]

It is an easy assumption to make, since the sergeant has two weapons and the private only has one. That's a complete upgrade. But after that, it is just a matter of weapon load out.

Remember that you have to upgrade the squad members as well. So just getting a team full of majors won't be as effective for you if you haven't upgraded them at all versus a squad full of sergeants if you have maxed them out.

So feel free to experiment. Remember to upgrade your squaddies and yourself and feel free to swap your squad around if the current set isn't doing you any good on a particular level.

[Wolfhound]

@StarPilot
Good advice - I hadn't thought of that. I just upgraded the Commanders to the max and have three of them in my squad all the time...
But now that you say it, I can imagine it might sometimes be better to have a mix of types.
For example, I notice that the commanders often end up just using their feeble melee weapons when things get tight, whereas shotgun-wielders might be better in close-combat.
Time to experiment, methinks.
I've completed the game on Easy, and run the first five missions or so on Normal (and some of them were a complete bitch), but so far I've been despairing of having any chance of completing all missions on Hard to unlock everything.
Food for thought...

[Pointman]

Hard mode wasn't so bad for the most part, the most annoying mission would be the one where you have to activate the altars. I nearly pulled my hair out getting this one done, endless enemies with no letup and it seems as soon as you move from 1 altar, you already have worshippers clamoring around it.. Combat is still wretched in this series since the developers have it in their head that "hard" just means infinite spawns and your character spending half the mission on his back from being knocked down. Not expecting a whole lot here, but they could do with turning the cheapness of the ai down.

[Starpilot]

The enemy also have a lot more hit points or just take less damage from your weapons on hard versus medium (and versus easy). Once I was geared up and understood the game mechanics, I found hard was just a longer play through of the map, except for mission 3's 3rd round. The problem with that level design is that the spawn area is by the objectives. The only effective way I found of beating it consistantly is to run all the time, and use the "magic" aspect of the rifle (the rifle can fire through trees, hills, etc, so you can lay down serious suppressive fire very quickly, clearing out a margin before running off to defend a converted alter or running off to the next alter to be converted). I also found the order you do them VERY important to get around the spawning near objectives. 1-2-3-5-4. Got to do 5 and 4 last, because they are too close to the spawn points and will be overrun before you can swing back and get 1, 2, or 3.