Effect of away team size?
 

I checked the manual, but as far as I can tell it never explains the effect of away team size. What is the advantage of a larger away team? Will it do more damage in combat since there are more people fighting?

Right now it just seems that having a larger away team means I lose more crew on away missions. Returning to the shuttle with an 88% survival chance usually means everyone survives if my away team only had 4 members, but when it has 8 members usually one or two will die. But I assume there is also an advantage to having more crew on the away team?

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

The larger the away team is, the more hit points it has to absorb damage. Adding officers also increases this. I think the HP are calculated by the hit points in the space suit x # of bodies in the away team. Note that even when you have away team damage, it doesn't seem to take effect until you go back to the ship. If you have self-sealing suits or the field medic skill, you can heal your team as you move around and may even be able to mitigate all damage.

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

Hmm... I could have sworn that the away team health was always the same as what was listed on my space suit stats. Unless the space suit stats already take into account my away team size?

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

Easy enough to test (pause), oh yeah, officers make a big difference in HP (and with their skills survival and lethality.) I'm a strong advocate of taking a Field Medic Captain on the away time.

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

I don't think it is, actually... there's not an easy way to change my away team size, that I konw of. Unless I find a life support module somewhere, I guess.

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

OK, turns out I was totally wrong, and JimSB is correct... the space suit HP is simply multiplied by away team size to give the total away team HP. Officers seem to add to the away team size, so if you have 10-person away team plus one officer, then the total away team HP is space suit HP times 11. And of course, as zircher mentioned, certain officer skills can increase away team HP also.

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

Somewhat related to this topic: if you take officers on an away mission with the captain, and you return to the shuttle with 1 hp, would you lose any of the officers? I know that they die when they're on an away team and the whole team dies, but I'm just wondering if the HP listed for the group really only applies to the "red shirts" or if it would be everyone other than the captain.

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

Nope. They can return as vegetables with 1 HP and they won't die for as long as anything remains of your away team.

Although, if you are sending your officers on an away mission, it's presumed that you do have one with the Field Medic trait which sort of makes it a non-issue in most cases.

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

Interesting you should mention officers being killed... Here's a shot from the beta for the first update :)

Re: Effect of away team size?
 

The only question being, what exactly does “injured” mean for officers?

Them being disabled for away missions and maybe even completely some time but not dying randomly? Sure, I'm cool with that. It feels like an acceptable price to pay for the risk one takes with taking them to the surface.