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Upon the untimely death of my top squad's leader ... I've recruited two rookies to up my total tonnage.

'Til now, this squad has progressed more or less in lock-step (top rank of Ace - average rank of Elite).

Now the ranks will range from Ace to Rookie with an average of Veteran.

I'm having a bit of trouble deciding what the appropriate enemy AI level ought to be. As usual the Rookies are pretty useless - so I'm considering going for even battles against Veteran AI squads and treating the Rookies as "in-training" but not expecting much out of them.

Are there any issues with having a wide range of ranks in your squad that I may not have considered? Does it have ANY bearing on experience earned (i.e. does my Ace suffer from fighting foes that are too weak when I accomodate the new members?)? Do you think the Ace will soak up all the experience by taking the lion's share of the kills?

All input welcome [:)]

Well, I'm not up on the effects on experience, if any, but here's one thing you can do to help your rookies get good XPs - have your better jocks cripple foes and let the rookies move in and finish them off.

Experience depends on the difference between what you rolled and what you needed to pass the check. Most of the time, it'll have no effect. It may have some very minor effect in things like defeating active scans, but not really significant from elite to veteran.

It also depends on what proportion your rookie jocks contribute to your squad's total tonnage. If your running say 1200tons total and your rookies are running around in 2 recons... well... big whoop. The 80 tons they contribute isn't a significant proportion of your total tonnage and you could probably win the battle with them sitting quietly in the corner. If however your only running say 600 tons total, and the rookies are running around in lights...then you'd difenately want to tone down the jock level of the AI, because now you would be in a much tougher fight in your rookies didn't contibute since they make up ~1/4 of your total tonnage.

I'd suggest keeping them in recons with lots of weapons and some electronics if possible and do some dodging and jumping to get them up a level or 2; so that they can pull thier own wieght. Just keep them out of the hottest fire-fights till they get a few battle scars.

The question was about XP being modified by your team's ranks. This has no bearing on XP.
More opposing tonnage means more XP, but the fact that the jocks are rookies has no influence - they could be veterans and the effect would be the same.