officer-fighter jobs advice?

[OrcaFlutter]

I was wondering

—what you all like for your doctor/combat medic’s third job? (Or your combat medic’s other two jobs if you only use crew doctors)
—do you try to get all of your officer-fighters a stealth job? 
—I’ve been making all of them learn a basic fighting job (swordsman, pistoleer, soldier) so they can advance/retreat. (Exo-scout could get by with soldier lvl 5 but soldier still takes up a job), but is this necessary?
—does anyone use the mission officers (Vytautas, Elsa, Nikolai)? I was doing that but not so sure now.
thanks

playing on iPad

[drspendlove]

"What you all like for your doctor/combat medic’s third job? (Or your combat medic’s other two jobs if you only use crew doctors)"

A common strategy is to use your starting doctor officer and give combat medic to it early on for the extra skill save talent. Then the opinions branch. Military Officer is popular with some for the third job. However, I almost always choose pistoleer. This gives two major advantages. 1) Tons of Evasion. Doctor gives a tiny bit of tactics which helps slightly with ranged defense but otherwise the pairing is defenseless. 2) Dueler's Stance, for the same reason.

"Do you try to get all of your officer-fighters a stealth job?"

No. That seems like an interesting tactic. Why are you thinking of it?

"...advance/retreat..."

There's a few ways to advance retreat without using those three base combat jobs and without the high initiative move. Military officer can move others around. Assassin has mobility, as does Sniper. I wouldn't use that as my reason to grab ranks in those jobs.

"does anyone use the mission officers (Vytautas, Elsa, Nikolai)?"

Elsa can be very skilled in combat as can Vytautas. I definitely use them in combat.

[divini]

—what you all like for your doctor/combat medic’s third job? (Or your combat medic’s other two jobs if you only use crew doctors)

SPY.  On Impossible difficulty I just love the ability to place my Doctor in the back while still retaining the ability to attack with a pistol.  Only Spy can do that.

Otherwise, pistoleer works fine.

—do you try to get all of your officer-fighters a stealth job?

Not particularly.  It's more like you end up choosing the most effective job that comes with stealth skill.  Like Assassin/Swordsman/Wing Commando or Engineer/Spy.

—I’ve been making all of them learn a basic fighting job (swordsman, pistoleer, soldier) so they can advance/retreat. (Exo-scout could get by with soldier lvl 5 but soldier still takes up a job), but is this necessary?

It's not a bad idea, but keep in mind the rest of your team's advance/retreat talents automatically cause someone else to retreat/advance respectively, so it's not absolutely imperative that every single combatant has that ability.

Also look into the Military Officer's Tactical Edge talent, it's cheap, it moves whoever you want, and gives you a powerful buff.  That can totally make up for going into taking a job just for movement purposes.

Finally, for pistols, the Spy has Distracting Shots.

—does anyone use the mission officers (Vytautas, Elsa, Nikolai)? I was doing that but not so sure now.

Elsa's a great hybrid explore rifle officer I keep her almost all the time.  I usually take Nikolai too for his Negotiation skill.

Vytautas kind of has a contradictory skill set (Rifles and Blades) so I haven't used him as much, but if your focus is heavily on crew combat he makes a nice combat officer.  He can also fly a Shuttle for you freeing up a crew slot.

[OracaFlutter]

Thanks drspendlove

Thanks for the advice. I hadn’t thought about being parsimonious with movement talents. That would open up, for example, Elsa’s third job to be sniper rather than soldier as I had been doing before.

Regarding stealth, it was a thought from the first time I beat the vat born monster after having been frustrated several times. In the first successful game iirc I trained the captain and 2 officers in a stealth job.

[OrcaFlutter]

And thanks divini just saw your post my screen doesn’t auto-update

I was just thinking about Spy vs Pistoleer, thanks for the info. I admit I haven’t tried impossible, I’ve only played Hard when I have to unlock something. But it would be good practice to wean myself off of compulsive saves! I do appreciate that this s a turn based game so you can plan your Impossible play thoughtfully.

In another thread IIRC fallen said that Vytautas’s odd new mix is a nod to a previous game’s narrative I forgot which one. I tried out using him as the wing commando but since I use a boarding strategy anyway, I didn’t notice much