Army

Army Composition and Training
The Templars under your control are shaped by you.

The squad members you will automatically receive are: the Captain, a Scout, an Engineer, 2 Soldiers (all from the tutorial missions) and later a Hydra (Siege at Tundeer) and another Scout (Artifact Vaults). If you choose to skip the tutorial you will be given a Level 5 Captain, Level 5 Soldier, Level 4 Soldier, Level 4 Scout, Level 4 Engineer as your starter squad, along with Operational Command being unlocked on the requisition tree and 475 RP (on easy) to spend. The experience level of the Hydra is subject to how experienced your Captain is when you start the mission.

Everyone else is optional, as you will receive Nyra's aid in most of the missions when you need a healer. It is up to you to decide if you wish to invest in a Neptune, Paladin or Berserker or to stick with the five classes you are given.

The player decides which talents and/or equipment are unlocked on the requisition tree upon successfully completing a mission, subject to the amount of resource points you have accrued. Resource points can be saved for a later mission, if you wish to purchase a higher level skill; do not hoard your points for too long to avoid an unnecessary increase in difficulty. You can not undo a purchase on the requisition tree, so check to see that you've not bought something that no-one can use. On lower difficulty levels it is not possible to unlock everything on the requisition tree in one play through; a second play through will result in the majority, if not all, of the tree being unlocked.

When purchasing a new squad member you can either do this in the main menu or on the battlefield via a tactical point. The difference(s) between these two options is that the main menu allows you to fully customize the load out of your newest member. Whereas the battlefield gives you a preset build (which maximizes a classes primary attack option, even if you haven't yet unlocked that skill level) that you can't change but the cost can be up to 50SP less. In both cases the level of the new recruit is based off the Captain's Level (after the Captain reaches level 6 the new recruit is a percentage of the Captain's level. (See difficulty for details.) In the event you are not using a squad member for a while, they too will automatically be leveled to the point of a new recruit, to ensure they are not too weak to use if called upon.

A factor to consider about squad roster size, is that the performance of your 10 best Templars count toward your leaderboard score. So a small squad of elites will improve your score, but will leave you vulnerable if playing with permadeath enabled.

Mission Composition
A mission will always state if it is an open or closed deployment. Open deployment allows reinforcements & re-supply through ordnance; closed deployments mean your squad are on their own and won't be able to acquire anything including ordnance beyond what they find as Secondary Objectives.

You will always begin with 3-6 Templar, one of whom is your Captain. The Captain is a mandatory selection and whose death is an automatic mission fail, irrespective of the mission objective. The mission dependent mandatory selections are: Major Luthor Kaen, Paladin Nyra Ridaan, and an Engineer; the Engineer may be swapped for another engineer on your roster, but no non-engineer templars. The presence of the Engineer usually signifies the presence of one or more tactical points on the map, even if it is not essential to capture them.

The rest of your squad is initially auto-selected from your roster based on their experience level and a behind the scenes composition guide built into the mission. You can freely swap squad members to suit your play style, subject to the number of spare SP at the start of the mission, BEFORE a character carries out an action. Once a character carries out an action they can't be swapped. Removing an expensive squad member for a cheaper option will rebate SP, whereas upgrading to a premium squad member will cost the difference between the two. e.g. A Scout at 450 SP is swapped for a Neptune at 550 SP, at a cost of 100 SP. You can also use the swap feature to re-position your squad, as a Templar can be removed from the battlefield and re-deployed elsewhere without penalty. This is handy for moving a slower moving Templar closer to the enemy.