- Strength defines ability to carry more equipment and more importantly health, which means he can take more shots and live, which is crucial for a grunt. I weight STR 25% more here.
- Dexterity and Marksmanship, you aren't a good trooper if you can't shoot straight because shooting and surviving is trooper's main and only task. I weight both STR and MAR 50% more in the trooper index.
- Agility is nice, it gives an ability to run longer and better responsiveness to orders. I weight it as-is.
- Perception since we don't have FOW doesn't matter all that much since you can schedule shots for your troopers manually and thus don't need guard mode at all. I weight only half of PER in the index.
- Intelligence isn't necessary at all for any trooper task, but it gives him a better ability to level up and improve skills. I made INT% a modifier for "points to gain" from future levels. So if a guy who can achieve 10 points has intelligence of 50, I will only weight 5 points into the equation. This weights their low level and ability to learn into the equation but doesn't make it very significant, since it's not that way in the game.
- Traits. For reference I posted all traits here, and highlighted all the adepts and experts in trooper weapons like shotguns, rifles, machine guns and SMGs.
- Price. It's not weighted into the trooper index itself but it's posted for reference.
Observations:
- A number of cheap mercenaries can do the job as well as the top tier guys. Ice, Malice and Thor shine here at very basic combat skills, so do (to lesser extent) Blood, Meltdown, DrQ. Igor is certainly worth looking at as a very cheap mercenary who can be a very good combat soldier provided shooting enemies and surviving is all you want him to do for your team.
- A number of expensive mercenaries who are skill-tanks don't make it to the top of the list here, most notably Nails who isn't much of a shooter or a runner but has valuable mechanical and explosive skills.
- We all love Raven, but her low strength makes her a very delicate flower and that doesn't fare well when 50 Grumm Warehouse guards rush her in full spectra and start shooting burst fire from their FN FALs her direction.
- When you organize yourself a medic, a mechanic and an explosives expert, most of the people of the top half of the table can fill the rest of spots as combat troops equally well, although those closer to the top will shoot better and survive longer than those close to the bottom.
- Bull, Hitman, Steroid all suck. Grunty is a very bad mercenary despite having a lot of fans. Most Doctors aren't great fighters, with a notable exception of Thor.
