The most fun thing about that mission as far as I was concerned was the fact that some of the forces you had to work with in that mission weren't any of your regular soldiers; they were essentially security guards, randos in blue starting-type armor with basic weapons. I liked that because the rank-and-file scrubs (meant in the nicest way :) with the IPO in UF have always been described as wearing blue outfits, so, well, it's basically them.

The best time I played through that mission, in the first EU campaign I played all the way to the end, I had one of the blue-armor mallcops go on a dang rampage, racking up far more alien kills than any of the "real" squaddies. In that universe, that lady basically saved the world.

The equivalent in XCOM 2 happens when the aliens manage to intercept the Avenger with a UFO and shoot it down with some kind of EMP weapon. You have to send a squad out to simultaneously prevent the aliens from boarding and blow up a gadget they've set up nearby to keep the Avenger's power off. In that version, you do get to pick and equip your starting squad, but Bradford keeps throwing out random reinforcements as the mission goes on.

Last time I had one of those, the first two reinforcements to emerge were a couple of people from the bottom of the soldier list. In that campaign, I didn't start with a large enough pool of custom troopers, so the starting roster included a few RNG-built ones at the end; they were still Rookies, since I'd never used them.

They did all right! Not only did they earn promotions (not hard to do when you're a Rookie, admittedly), one of them scouted the Thingy and the other was the last person back aboard, covering the withdrawal to the ramp. And they were so compatible that they came out of that one mission with a level-1 bond, to boot. Let's go D-team!

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.