How do I change the order of the soliders in my unit not only in the squad roster, but also during game play.
This seriously annoys me!
Currently you canât. It is randomized at the beginning of each mission.
Yea, super annoying! Thanks.
I canât imagine a tactical military unit acting like that.
This is super annoying and adds a level of cognitive load that is not needed and has me making unnecessary mistakes.
Hopefully, they will change this.
Are you talking about what order the units take their turns? Because I just cycle through them until I have the soldier I needâŚ
You can cycle through your units with the tab key, or you can select them with their class icons in the bottom left of the screen. You can also take actions with a unit, switch to another unit and take actions with them, and then go back to the previous unit and continue their actions. You can do this any number of times until youâve used all of their available time units, or selected an actions which ends their turn (such as overwatch).
Yes, but I should not have to go through all of that.
I should be able to set the order I want them to go in since it goes from bottom to top.
There is just so much wasted time and errors because I have to deal with that.
Being allowed to set that will make things easier.
Even if you could do that (which may come at some point) you will often find the order you wish to move your units it could change from turn to turn. Itâs very situational.
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I suppose he knows that.
For me it is also annoying. I would like to set order of my team and donât bother thinking which soldier is next in line after I press Tab. With 4 or 5 soldiers my preffered set is Heavies > Snipers > Assaults > Technicians. With more soldiers I would like to create 2 teams where 1st team is moving after 2nd. Not Tab endlessly between them or selecting them with mouse. When you want to do some actions fast you need to have predefined order as in XCOM:EW and it would be quality of life change.
Currently I play using this order (yes I click with mouse and rotate camera to do that) and change it only in unexpected situations.
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What @Yokes said.
Maybe they could implement a âFormationâ feature that lets you set turn order before the mission.
Still, it doesnât make any sense because youâre going to have people all over the map and situations and lines of sight changing and enemies engaging where it makes more sense for other people to make moves first.
Like, if you come to a point where it makes more sense to send your assault team up, but itâs the technicianâs turn, are you just going to waste your technicianâs turn to get to the assault turn?
If they could do that in Roster - you can set specific order in soldier list and it is represented while switching soldier inventories (in BB 3.0 order in those two screens were not connected, in 3.1 it was changed), they can do that between Roster and tactical missions.
You argument is not valid. First of all I would not have my soldiers all over the map. 
And secondly, of course there will be situations where I would need to manually select soldiers and act with them in different order. But for at least half of the time my set order would function perfectly. Particularly:
- when you move your squad without engaging in any fight:
- heavies would trigger enemy overwatch or at least set teamâs travel distance with their maximum movement range, the rest would follow them and stay back
- in fight:
- heavies would bu(r)st most dangerous enemies, also âaggro-ingâ bullets from alien return fire
- snipers would cripple limbs from those dangerous enemies who would stay after heavies barrage, or finish those with small amount of hit points
- assaults would flank (or not) and pepper all other enemies with their bursts, or finish off with shotguns those enemies who can pose any additional threat
- technicians would heal those soldiers which currently are most endangered, to prepare them for alien turn
believe me in 50 to 70% of engagements that order works perfectly.
Of course I would skip technician in the order and click the assault if that would make more sense (actually I prefer move assaults before technicians ). And it would also work the other way, if it would make more sense to move technician first I would move him first. But like I have said in most cases I prefer order I set than random one. Order above all else. Maybe you could saw this in orther threads, that I have analytical mind and like when everything is sorted and structurised.
And believe me it is easier to switch soldiers with Tab when you know their order beforehand, not when you cycle through them to find that proper soldier. I like to remember for example that:
- First heavy is with Firecat
- Second heavy with Deceptor
- Next are two snipers and first one just bust some limbs of enemies,
- And the the second of them have more pistol ammo so can shoot with PX Pistol more often than with Sniper Rifle to finish weakened enemies.
- Then is assault with Assault Rifle
- Then assault with Shotgun
- And then 2 technicians where the first one follows first heavy,
- And second one follows second heavy.
Of course my order will change in final release, because we wonât have technicians in Phoenix Project faction, but definitely I will set it somehow.
EDIT: Imagine frustration where you need to cycle through your squad to find assault with Mercy. And in every turn you need to do that. Really annoying.
For me it would be perfect implementation if I could switch order just by dragging those icons on the left side of screen during the mission to set them properly. Becase the fact, which you have mentioned - tactical situation can change during the mission. And maybe setting snipers after assaults would make more sense during the mission.
I am working on a large post which details a lot of UI improvements which will include a screenshot for a formation tab on the Squad Management screen.
This is basically what I will l say - formation tab and then also be able to drag and drop the order on the tactical screen.
btw could you edit first post and put it in Phoenix Point / Feedback section? 
It is easier to follow such thread.
I think a moderator may have moved it already!
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It would be a nice feature if the game could remember the order in which you used the team in the previous round, that way you would only have to cycle through in the first round and it would also mitigate the problem of changing your preferred order mid game.
In that case, why always the previous round, instead of âsave this roundâs orderâ button? If you have to use a different order for a sudden change in environment, why should that be used the next turn again as default?
That could work aswell, both options would be an improvement compared to what we have now.
This is pulled from the document I am working on:
Squad Management Layer
Soldier Initiative
With veloci-aliens who are part honeybadger, chaos is how a soldier gets killed!! Follow the plan! A military squad would operate with a set Tactical Mode of Operation (TMO).
OK, so this one really, really annoys me. The initiative order of the soldiers seems to be randomized for each mission. I cannot for the life of me imagine that a crack military organization would operate in such a chaotic method. Having each and every missionâs soldier initiative randomized greatly increases my cognitive load and has me making mistakes that I do not need to be making, and it also increases my frustration with the game.
We should be able to set the default initiative order we want them in. Perhaps this could also be another tab in the Squad Management Screen. To maximize affordance (clickable area) we can allow the entire row to be drag and drop with the hover event showing the drag-n-drop arrows so that people know that they can drag and drop.
First Bar: Similar to game play, by default, the bottom would be the first to go. I have added a bar to the bottom to ensure that this is made apparent. We could also make it so that if you click on it, that the bar moves to the top (with arrows switching to down) so that initiative starts from the top for this screen to match the personâs mental model for initiative. The top/bottom thing for who goes first can be disconcerting. This may also determine the way the tactical screenâs initiative flows too - bottom here then bottom on the tactical screen for consistency.
Tactical Layer - Soldiers
Soldier Initiative
For each mission the Soldier Initiative order is pulled from the Initiative tab in the Squad Management layer. This sets the default starting initiative order for each mission.
At any time during the mission, I should be able to drag and drop those icons to dynamically change their initiative for this round/mission and it should be saved from round to round, so I can change my round order as needed and as combat conditions require. These changes to initiative would NOT affect the Initiative order in the Squad Management layer.