So my military overseer got popped during combat, and the entire squad reverted immediately to untrained workers, causing them to get slaughtered. Not only that, but when I placed the survivors into a new combat squad, it seems they need to be fully retrained. This can't be right, can it? Am I missing something? Without the ability to micromanage combat and keep your NCO out of trouble, this seems massively flawed.
Sadly, that is in fact the way it works. The main trick some of us use is to try and make sure the NCO has the longest range weapon out of everyone in the squad (eg: Musket vs Pistol) so that the lower-class will tend to run up closer to the enemies. But as you say, it's no guarantee the NCO won't run out by themselves... sigh
Is there actually a way to assign weapons to colonists yet? I thought they just sort of picked up whatever they fancied.
Forbid all weapons (including ones people are holding). Now assign all the lower-class soldiers to someone else. Then unassign your nco from barracks (they will turn into normal overseer). Wait for them to drop weapon. Now look about and make sure there's only one weapon claimed (eg: a Rifle). Now reassign nco to barracks, They have only 1 choice, so they will grab it. Repeat for other soldiers.
Ugh. I was afraid it would be something like that. Will the soldiers all have to retrain into redcoats again if I unassign/reassign them?
When doing things like this they would lose redcoats yeah. The actual NCO keeps their skill in "The Art of War", and if good, will be able to train them back up pretty fast.
I actually think that may be the case. I promoted a brave, "durable" (I forget what the name of that trait is...can take more damage) to an NCO thinking those to be good combat qualities, and she died almost immediately upon achieving her redcoat, causing a squad wipe.
It's still better than before we had barracks if you lost the squad leader then you were pretty much " plucked "
