Officers (Long War)

Officers are a new mechanic in Long War, replacing the medal system from Enemy Within. It constitutes a new upgrade path for soldiers, granting abilities that benefit the entire squad.

To begin promoting officers, an Officer Training School is required, which becomes available for construction after a soldier reaches the rank of corporal. Once it is built, officer upgrades can be purchased in the OTS menu to make billets available.

Any soldier that has the rank of at least Corporal, isn't a MEC Trooper or a Psionic and has participated in at least 5 missions can be promoted to Lieutenant as long as there is an open billet left. After that, further promotions, in addition to another OTS upgrade, require that:

The officer must have been on at least 5 missions (3 by default with the Dynamic War second wave option) at his current officer rank.
The officer must have gained a certain minimum standard rank – for example, Sergeant or higher is required for a promotion to Captain.
The officer with higher will stat will be commanding a mission if several officers of the same rank are on the squad.

Officer ranks

All officers are granted Lead by Example and Command for free. Each officer level grants one Command ability charge; thus Lieutenants have one charge, Captains have two, and so on.
Each promotion presents a choice between one of two rank-specific Officer perks. This selection is permanent (and cumulative), but a different perk can be chosen for every officer.
Only the perks of the commanding (highest-ranked) officer are beneficial to the entire squad. Officer perks of a second, lower-ranking officer present on a mission benefit only that officer.
Officers recover slower from post-battle fatigue. The additional time is 12 hours per officer rank (reduced to 6 hours with Gift of Osiris - Egypt's starting bonus).


Officer Rank	Minimum Level Requirement	Officer Ability
*(All Officers get both* of these abilities)**		Lead by Example This officer substitutes his or her Will for that of all lower-Will squadmates within an 8 tile radius.	Command Grant a yellow move to an XCOM soldier in sight ranger whose turn is complete. Cannot be used on soldiers on Overwatch, who have Steadied their weapon, who have Hunkered Down, or used One For All. Does not allow use of multi-action perks like Close Encounters or Hit and Run. Four-turn cooldown. Note that this will NOT allow you to fire move-limited weapons (sniper rifles and LMGs), if you have taken a costly action (e.g. if you double-moved and then were commanded). The only exception to that is, after using double-tap, a unit can be commanded to fire once more, effectively triple-tapping.
Lieutenant	Corporal	Legio Patria Nostra Squad receives +1 Will per different nationality in the squad.	Stay Frosty All units in the squad have post-mission fatigue reduced by one day.
Captain	Sergeant	Semper Vigilans Squad receives +5 Defense when in cover.	Fortiores Una Nearby allies (8 tiles) receive an additional 2/3 damage reduction if they are in half cover and 1 damage reduction if they are in full cover.
Major	Tech Sergeant	Into the Breach All soldiers in the squad at Sergeant rank or lower gain +25% XP for completing missions.	So Shall You Fight All units in the squad receive +25% XP for every kill.
Colonel	Gunnery Sergeant	Band of Warriors Squad receives +2 Aim per continent bonus XCOM has earned.	Esprit de Corps Squad receives +5 Will and +5 Defense in battle. Robotic units receive only the Defense bonus.
Field Commander	Master Sergeant	So Others May Live Squad members receive a permanent increase of +1 Aim and Will for completing a mission under this officer with no soldier deaths, up to a maximum of +8.	Combined Arms Ignore one point of the enemy's damage reduction. For officers, this ability is provided to the entire squad.

Tactical Advice

Lead by Example

Lead by Example

Rewards stacking high amounts of will on your officer, since they can help non-psionic builds against psionic attackers. While panicking from mundane sources like wounds and other soldiers panicking is not generally a big deal beyond the very early game, enemy psions remain a deadly threat; a high will officer can go a long way towards babysitting low-ranked soldiers with low will while also encouraging enemy Sectoid Commanders to pick less dangerous Psi skills like Mindfray or Psi Panic, rather than the extremely deadly Mind Control. Keep in mind that since the range is only 8 tiles, your officer should generally be a class that is normally positioned in the center of your formation.

To maximize its benefit, Medics, Assaults, and Infantry have a good combination of base will gain per level plus bonus will from perks:

Assaults: Assaults have 25 base will progression by MSgt, which is average. A Biotank assault build with Steadfast (+5), Will to Survive (+3), Close Encounters (+3), and Extra Conditioning (+4) will have 15 bonus will from perks.

Infantry: Infantry have 25 base will progression by MSgt, which is average. A taunt-tank suppression build with Steadfast (+5), Will to Survive (+3), and Extra Conditioning (+4) grants +12 total bonus will.

Medics: Medics have +28 will progression by MSgt, the only class with that much base will gain. They don't have good choices for will-boosting perks, as taking all four of Steadfast (+5), Revive (+2), Ready for Anything (+3), and Extra Conditioning (+4) doesn't really make for a coherent build, but if you do it's worth a grand total of +14 will.

Command

Command

Probably the single most significant ability in the Officers arsenal, allowing the officer to donate their action to another soldier. The ability can only be used on a unit that has expended all its actions, and the unit cannot have utilized Paramedic, Hit and Run or Close Encounters for a bonus free action (other abilities that improve action economy but still cost an action point, such as Double Tap, Light em Up, Lock n'Load, and Smoke Grenade, are fine). Some potential uses:

Double Capture: The officer can give an Engineer who has just failed a capture attempt a second shot at capturing. This is by far one of the most common use cases for command, since Capture attempts are roughly a coin flip in the best of cases.
Meld/Bomb/Relay Dash: If a Meld can, Bomb node, or EXALT hack relay is more than a blue move away and you need to hit it right this turn or else, you can dash a unit in range and an officer can use Command on that unit to allow them to interact with it.
Impromptu Lock n'Load: The officer can ensure that another unit who has expended all their ammo can reload it and still take an important action this round, such as Suppression on a Gunner, or Disabling Shot on a Sniper.
Double Rocket: The officer can allow a Rocketeer (mostly snapshot rocketeers, due to the significant penalties otherwise) to fire a second rocket this round. Alternately, a rocketeer can fire their rocket and then be given an extra action in order to steady another rocket for next turn.
Shoot and Scoot: The officer can allow units who have expended their actions but find themselves in a risky position (e.g. after an accidental pod activation) to break LoS or Hunker in order to avoid retaliatory fire.
Triple Tap: The officer can allow a high damage carry who has shot twice with Double Tap or Light em Up a third potential shot in the round. Similarly, a unit with Rapid Fire can potentially use it twice in a single turn for four total shots, trading ammo economy for raw alpha strike.
In the Zone: The officer can allow a unit with In the Zone to continue their kill chain if it ends early, e.g. as a result of running out of ammo or missing a kill.
Turn Mulligan: The officer that can't actually make use of their action this turn for anything useful can give it to someone else. As a simple example: move-limited units like LMG Gunners, SR Snipers, and non-Snapshot Rocketeers who find themselves out of position without any good shots this turn could move with their first action and give up the rest of their turn using Command.

Note that when using Command on a unit that has its actions restricted or enabled as a result of a perk, such as Run & Gun and Double Tap, those restrictions remain in effect when Command is used. A unit that has activated either Run & Gun or Double Tap cannot move. A unit that has activated Double Tap can fire even if its actions would otherwise be limited (such as using an LMG or Sniper Rifle without snapshot).

Class and Build

Which class to make as your officer is a difficult choice with no clear-cut answers; there are always tradeoffs depending on your priorities. Generally, an ideal Officer build will fulfill the following requirements:

It's a class that can stack high will for use with 'Lead by Example
A reliable and valuable build or class that you want to take into every mission
It's actions aren't too valuable, so that it can afford to donate its action to another unit when an opportunity arises, via Command.
It's not the kind of class that could get a ton of use out of having Command being used on them
It's not the kind of class that really wants to invest in Psionics, either a little for a Neural Gunlink or a lot for Psionic active abilities.

No specific class or build clearly stands out as the obvious answer that fills all criteria, and some criteria are practically contradictory (e.g. compare 2 and 3, or 1 and 5).

Assault: On the one hand, there are many situations where running forward into shotgun range will activate a pod, so assaults sometimes have to sit back and do nothing; giving up your action to someone else via Command can kinda make sense. And assaults generally don't like having Command used on them due to its bad interactions with Run & Gun, Close Encounters and Hit and Run, plus tank assaults happen to have incredibly high will. So weirdly enough it seems like assaults might make for a good officer build. But assault action economy is actually so incredibly situational that Command really isn't enough: sometimes your best choice with an Assault is literally to sit there and do nothing for five straight turns while the rest of your squad picks off targets at range. So assaults really like to have access to offensive psionic abilities that they can be using every turn, instead of Command which has limited charges and a long cooldown.
Infantry: Taunt-tank infantry tend to have high will, though they aren't considered a particularly valuable build. And generally a taunt-tank infantry want to be Suppressing most of the time rather than giving up their action to someone else (not to mention it just being a bad idea in general to stick Command on any other infantry build that has Suppression, given how useful it is). And Crit Infantry have an absolutely cracked quintuple shot enabled by Command (Light Em Up > Rapid Fire > Rapid Fire) which is one of the main use cases for Command outside Engineers.
Gunner: Gunners tend to have slightly above average will given the right perks, but not so much better that they can be considered a High will class like Assault, Infantry and Medic. They also tend to really like Command being used on them, whether for Double Tap, Rapid Fire, or just ensuring you have full Suppression uptime.
Rocketeer: Rocketeers generally want to either fire their rocket or keep it steady to get ready to fire in a future round in case some powerful pod strolls into the fight while you're busy with another. But if you're the kind of person who fires a rocket as a fight starter instead of keeping one in reserve and have no plans on using Snapshot double rockets, then its a respectable choice, because Rocketeers happen to fulfill the seemingly mutually-exclusive niche between "you want them every mission" but "they don't necessarily have anything useful to do with their action". But much like Assaults, their action economy can be so open that Psionics becomes valuable enough, like it does with Assaults.
Scout: They don't have much in the way of Will, but other than that, Hit and Run scouts aren't an awful choice for officers, especially since Hit and Run and Command don't synergize. This is especially true if you prefer support perks like Battle Scanners or Holo-Targeting over more aggressive options like Aggression and Bring em On, since such a build doesn't mind giving their turn up to other classes. In the Zone Shotgun scouts are easily one of the better uses for Command however, either to let them keep a kill chain going or bail them out if their chain ends early.
Sniper: Snipers tend to have much lower will than other options and sit too far back from anyone else anyways. They get a lot from having Command used on them, specifically the In the Zone and Double Tap crit builds.
Engineer: Engineers make awful Officers if for no other reason than capture attempts being your #1 use for spare Command charges for large portions of the game.
Medic: Most medic builds tend to have actions that aren't quite valuable enough that you'd have to reason to pass it on to someone else via command (with one exception), but not so useless that you need to give them a whole new action set with Psionics. But medics are generally the weakest Long War class unless and until you start actively tanking damage and need a dedicated healer... and once again Suppression is that big, glaring exception to the rule of medic actions being kinda bad that you often don't want being mutually-exclusive with Command.

Lieutenant

Stay Frosty

Generally the better overall pick on most officers, getting your entire squad back in the fight quicker and mitigating Fatigue spirals. Base fatigue is 3-5 days, plus a couple extra days for psionics and officers; knocking 24 hours off that timer is about a 15% to 33% reduction in fatigue time, which is important when you're fielding a mission every couple of days.

Legio Patria Nostra

An interesting idea on your highest-ranked officer, giving your entire team up to +12 will on the toughest missions like Alien Base Assaults, EXALT HQ Assaults, and the Temple Ship. Since panic is generally not a significant issue for high level soldiers, the main value is to help you utilize (and defend against) offensive psionic abilities like Mindfray, Psi Panic, Mind Control, and Rift.

Captain

Semper Vigilans

If you primarily use MECs to tank, it's generally your better option, since they can't take advantage of Fortiores Una. It's also good in situations where your game plan revolves around taking no hits at all, such as where you've skimped on good armor in favor of other research and so any hit has the potential to knock your soldier out for a month. Defense stacking gets better the more of it you stack (up to a limit): reducing a 90% hit to 85% is not too significant, but reducing a 10% to 5% means taking half as many hits as before.

Fortiores Una

On bio units the effect of extra DR is generally much more significant of a survivability increase than the 5 defense from Semper Vigilans, but it has no real help to MECs and SHIVs since they don't take cover. Much like Defense Stacking, note that DR gets better the more of it you stack: reducing a 7 HP hit to 6 HP probably won't make you take fewer hits before being killed, but reducing it to a 1 HP hit with DR-stacking (e.g. Cover, Fortiores Una, Will to Survive, Iron Skin, Mind Merge, Combat Stims) can allow you to shrug off dozens of shots without even taking injuries.

Major

Into the Breach

Mission completion XP is generally around 100, or more if you spot high-level aliens like Outsiders, so this adds around 25 XP to your low level troops per mission. On a standard 8 man squad, that's at least 200 total extra XP, assuming nobody is Tech Sergeant or higher, which is generally way more than you could get from So Shall You Fight. But the main issue is that it doesn't apply to any units above Sergeant rank. It's a really strong pick with your first officer to hit Tech Sergeant, but falls off after a couple of months, though it can still be valuable later in the game when taking council reward Sergeants to crashed Scouts and Fighters alongside a babysitting GSgt or MSgt.

So Shall You Fight

Generally you get around 20 XP for killing weak enemies and more from tougher foes, so adding this gives you at least 5 extra XP per kill. To match the approximately 200 XP per mission that Into The Breach gives you, you'd need about 50 kills per mission spread across your squad, which is obviously unrealistic... but keep in mind Into the Breach doesn't apply to any units ranked above Sergeant. In the long run,this is probably the better choice, since the grind from Tech Sergeant to Master Sergeant requires a ton of XP and troops in that range tend to play lots of missions where they get a ton of kills.

Colonel

Band of Warriors

Killing enemies with big alpha strikes remains a great idea so the offensive benefits of more Aim are usually better in general, particularly for fliers or targets in indestructible cover. You can generally bank on having 2 continent bonuses by the time this comes out and the extra resources you get from raiding Alien Bases makes securing all 5 continent bonuses a nice idea regardless.

Esprit de Corps

If you've developed builds and a playstyle around Defense stacking as your primary means of tanking and you like using offensive psionics, there's a possibility for this to be a better choice than Band of Warriors, but in general killing enemies more reliably with guns thanks to your higher Aim is the better choice.

Field Commander

So Others May Live

Eventually, you might be able to get an alpha team to +8, but that could take almost two months given the ~1 week fatigue between missions that a bunch of MSgts have. That's a lot of time to spend for a modest benefit, but at least the benefits carry over into missions where the officer isn't present.

Combined Arms

Almost everything in this game has at least some DR, either from cover or innate DR, so this is at minimum a +0.67 damage increase against anything in low cover, and +1 damage against everything else. 1 damage is a lot in the early game, but by the time you have a MSgt Officer, it's closer to average. But you get it all up front without needing to grind for two months.