Small-Squad Tactics games - General

Hey Facepunch. To make a long story short, I've always been a huge fan of tactics in videogames ever since I can remember. and have had an itch I've needed to scratch since I got my hands on XCOM a few years ago. RTS games are too large-scale for my tastes, and while some shooters sort of do it, the importance of raw aiming skill offsets things like positioning, stealth and coordination more than I'd like. Any recommendations?

7.62 High Calibre is pretty good, and absolutely full to the brim of Russian jankiness.

Invisible Inc is great, it doesn't have the scale and customizability of XCOM but it has some extremely tight mechanics that mean you don't need to rely on luck very much. The music and visuals also give it a unique sort of understated feel that I really like. I also got a tactics game called Doorkickers on the cheap about a week ago, but I haven't tried it out yet.

Breach & Clear is similar to the Door Kickers example above, though I've not played either. If you want a squad-based tactical FPS I can reccommend Swat 4 which I've recently completed. Very well-designed and fun game, slow-paced and methodical like I imagine real SWAT police work is like. There's also SWAT 3, but I've not played that... Both SWAT games are on sale for 20% off for about 8 hours, short notice but thought I should mention it.

Dawn of War II I guess?

Men of War?

First title I thought of was Full Spectrum Warrior which is quite a nifty, immersive squad-scale tactics game where most of the time you're controlling 2 US Fireteams of 4 men and on occasion you get a third 2 man squad. Its not an FPS. Basically, you only issue orders from the camera perspective of each squad, and then your sergeants in each squad bark them. Brothers in Arms : Road to Hells Highway is a pretty brutal and good squad tactics FPS game. I can't speak for the other titles and if they dumbed them down from the first game, but the first game punishes you severely for not thinking about tactics. Rainbow Six 3 is the eternal classic where you can plan out what every squad is going to do in the briefing stage and you can either take part as a squad leader or just watch it happen if your plan is good enough. Comes with a campaign where your named soldiers with superior stats die permanently. I occasionally play Arma 3 with SP scenarios off the steam workshop where you command a small squad. That's a game where a lack of tactics will get you killed extremely fast. You need a high tolerance of clunky squadmate AI though. XCOM 2 is good, in some ways even better than the first game, if you haven't tried it.

Door Kickers is great IMO. If you want a XCOM-like experience you might want to try Xenonauts, which is meant to be closer to the original X-COM games. There's also the old Commandos games; Behind Enemy Lines, Beyond the Call of Duty, 2: Men of Courage, and 3: Destination Berlin. Similar to Commandos is the game Desperados - Wanted Dead or Alive. For shooters Star Wars Republic Commando is pretty great since your squad is actually competent and follow your commands well, usually.

Door Kickers came to mind instantly. It's a fantastic game that has as much or as little depth as you want to owe to it. It's a squad based tactics game where you literally just draw out a plan of action and the AI will execute it for you. It takes a little getting used to but once you do, you're in for a treat. You can clear levels by putting together a messy but effective plan, or you can go as far as I went with it and made up my own "full stealth" rules, where you challenge yourself to not be heard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaLpG6bb-WE

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is pretty great if you don't mind a fantasy setting.

Jagged Alliance 2. I bought the version from steam which is wildfire with the classic edition DLC. (they also sold the gold pack) I DID manage to get it running with 1.13. 1.13 is basically a MASSIVE fanmod which overhauls EVERYTHING. New guns, new mercs, all kinds of experimental stuff like the ability to go undercover, food and drink, different inventory system, the enemy faction being able to use helicopters, better AI, kidnapping enemy commanders, and the dreaded Drassen Counterattack being re-enabled. (Never made it this far but I heard it will absolutely kick your fucking ass with 180+ well equipped enemies trying to take the city back, forcing the player to decide if he should stay and try to defend the city, or retreat and let them re-take it only to try again later) Steam version (again wildfire + classic dlc) seems to come with a fixed winelib or whatever preinstalled which fixes stuttering but comes at the cost of the map looking fucked up when you view sam radar coverage. Some say it's a big deal but the map looks fine when you turn the sam coverage off, and the corrupted looking areas are still tiles so it's not like it has a major effect on gameplay. Resolution is a bit fucky but I never messed with windowed mode or whatever. Maybe I should try that and see if windowed mode is better as fullscreen hates being alt tabbed. I also can't name save files for some reason.

If you're gonna go with SWAT 4 (which I recommend as well) you really shouldn't play it without the SWAT: Elite Force mod. It basically fixes a metric ton of bugs in the base game and adds a shitload of content.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! This seems like exactly the sort of game I was looking for, gonna nab it some time soon.

The Steam version also comes with two mods, one you enable in the betas-section called Blue Sun Mod that adds a lot of shit, and one called Hard Life that adds a lot of shit and also makes it more customizable. As for gameplay-tips: Use burst-fire weapons. Not full-auto. Burst-fire has the semi-auto accuracy modifier instead of the debuff of full auto, while retaining the volume-of-fire of auto fire.

Jagged Alliance 2 w/1.13 is THE game you want to play here. 7.62 is its janky retarded half-brother and makes it real-time with pause which I wasn't too keen on. It's a bit better in JA2 in some respects, particularly 3d environments that make using cover, defilade etc part of the game. I'd also strongly recommend Mount & Blade (Particularly Warband with the Prophesy of Pendor mod, but it's hard mode so I'd recommend starting with vanilla and google open to learn the game). As someone who usually only gives a shit about modern military stuff, it's quickly become one of my favourite games. ArmA is the king though, if you can find a good group of people to play it with. The issue is it's the internet and each community and the people in them each cares about adhering to or implementing tactics to varying degrees, so finding one that suits you can be a pain in the arse. Since you're European, Team One Tactical might be a good place for you to start - All you need to do is download their modset and be on teamspeak to participate. Also, if you have ArmA 2 go play the Cold War Rearmed mod, recreates OFP/ArmA:CWA's campaign very faithfully and is the best SP experience I've had with the series. On those same lines, Project Reality (free) and Squad are also MP shooters with a relatively high standard of teamwork. You can reliably find squads full of people using mics, and they'll usually be using them to coordinate to some degree. Other favourites of mine: Brothers in Arms Rainbow Six (Up to Vegas 2, but Raven Shield is the best imo) Ghost Recon (Up to GRAW2) Space Beast Terror Fright (It's basically 4-player MP Space Hulk) Starsector (Mount & Blade with top-down space ships, still in development, loads of high-quality faction mods - and check Nexerelin, adds more M&B style features)

Star Wars: Republic Commando is a really good one.

It's really starting to show its age though.

One I forgot earlier. Shadow Tactics, Blades of the Shogun. It's a lot like Commandos but it's set in feudal Japan, each mission has you playing as a combination of 5 characters with their own abilities and limitations (the old sniper has a raccoon thing he can use to distract guards, but he can't climb ladders or move bodies).

I know it's a FPS, but positioning and stuff is still very, VERY important in Escape from Tarkov. I think it might be worth checking it out.

Try Final fantasy Tactics,a grid styled turn based tactic game Since its hard to explain for me,look up on its gameplay on youtube,you will like it.

That game deserves a sequel

7,62 High Calibre already mentioned, other Apeiron's games are also worth mentioning. "Brigade E5 - New Jagged Union" was one of these "new JA2 successors" and long story short - it was the best from them because rest of these titles were terrible. And there is Marauder-Man of Prey set in russian Mad-Max1 like world. There is nice surprice near endgame where you fight with US army. But you need to tweak some .cfg file for camera control and make 40mm grenades working. 7,62 Hard Life is for free if you bought HC but name speak for itself. ....and there is Planet Alcatraz (sequel still not translated) which is, dumb, have a fistful of offensive stuff ("my spear overcome your spear!" and else) and janky. But I loved that walking tank armor + assault rifle w/40mm GL combo. Jagged Alliance - Back in Action but only with mods.

There's also ARMA Tactics, though it's a mobile port of dubious quality, but uhhh... It's there. It exists.

Surprised I'm the first to mention this, but [url=Battletech]Battletech[/url] just got released. Turn-based mech tactics, though I hear the pace of the gameplay is glacial

Silent Storm Gold Edition is cheap on steam it's set in a HEAVILY fictionalized WW2 and features hilarious physics based combat and destruction. Be careful not to blow up a stairwell you're supposed to go up, you'll fuck your game over.

The Men of War series is worth mentioning here, though it's generally at the platoon/company level especially in MP. Most of the games in the series though have linear and very small-scale missions, with Assault Squad adding the Skirmish mode which is basically "Push through and capture these AI-controlled territories". All of it can be played co-op too. I'd also strongly recommend the Dynamic Campaign Generator, particularly for Men of War as it's the most feature and content-complete and actively supported version. AS and AS2 versions do exist as well, but development on them is glacial and right now, the AS2 version is hamstrung with your units' gear resetting between missions. Infested Planet is a great game for its price. The relatively simple art-style almost put me off but it grows on you. It's real-time, and you get a fixed number of requisition points per mission, used to choose your marines' classes, build defensive, offensive and support structures or call in extra marines. You gain more by killing the alien hives and capturing the control points they occupy. There's a campaign with hand-crafted missions, a "Planetary Campaign" mode with a metagame - You unlock new structures, classes and abilities as you take territories and hit targets of opportunity. Of course, Firaxis' XCOMs, the original X-Com series, Xenonauts which is more in line with those originals. There's also the UFO series which I haven't played. Also, Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate is almost Jagged Alliance: 40k. Very antiquated by now but still just about playable once you figure out the interface and controls. I guess Dawn of War 2 sort of counts in this regard, at least the single-player.

It should be mentioned that the console ports take a different approach. In those you don't have the pre-planning stage and control just a single squad in real-time.

I am actually surprised that no one's mentioning Frozen Synapse. A nice small scale (usual multiplayer matches are 4 on 4) post-cyberpunk game where you plan for the next 5 seconds and turns happen at the same time as your opponents. Outside of the game itself not really teaching you some things very well (such as advantage priority of Aiming > Not Moving > Crouching), it's damn fun and has a great soundtrack.