Well I more based my characters on their background rather than minmaxing for high effciency.

Lead ranger is a scientist with very high intelligence and charisma. He uses energy weapons and also is the primary medic of the team.
Second ranger is a sniper and survivalist. Uses sniper rifle (duh), later also assault rifle. Has the skills that one needs to survive in the wild.
Third ranger is a heavy weapons user/demolition expert/bruiser. Nuff said. Heavy and melee weapons.
Fourth ranger is the token sneaky type, with skills largely pertaining to extralegal activities. Uses pistols for weapons (later SMGs)

Cheers mate

Yeah im not so much looking at the min/max stuff, that can be found im more interested in what individuals use and find fun.

My current build has gotten me pretty far. I'm into the nomad and prison missions.

Leader - Assault weapons. High on leadership and coordination.

Doctor - Sub machine gun. High on med stats and speed/intelligence to give him more AP options during combat.

Tank - Heavy weapons (BAR) and melee. Maxed out strength. Also loaded with pipe bombs and TNT for max carnage. Giving him my weapon smith skills.

Tech - Sniper. High on mechanical, toaster, cracking, speed and awareness.

Rose - Picked up from AG Center missions. Backup doctor. Energy weapons. High on perception, medic and electronics.

I usually keep plenty of health packs split between my doctor and Rose, that way in case one of them goes down in combat, the other can pick up the healing.

It's good to have at least 1 or 2 people in your squad be good at blade or blunt weapons, so in case you run out of ammo at least you'll be able to keep fighting. Bonus to that is AI tends to send enemies closing in. That makes melee fighters that much more useful.

I tend to go all-out roleplaying in most games I play, including games that have no rules or mechanics to enforce roleplaying.

My awesome team (all designed to have a military look to them):

- Abu Yousef, the former farm hand who was more concerned with personal defense than crop rotation. He has enough leadership points to keep NPCs in check, uses Assault Rifles and Pistols and started out as a field medic now dabbling with surgery as well. He is a straight arrow type, all business and concerned with the safety of others. May have to take over Outdoorsman duties eventually.

- Pleasant Disposition, the odd but talented (mostly enthusiastic) hyperkinetic native american girl. Energy Weapons, Blades, Mechanical Repair and Computers. I didn't know she would turn out to be such a competent fighter, blowing up pod people (they have armor 1) with her energy weapons and chopping things in two with a machette. I'm building her up to be a Smart Ass because it just seems right for her to butt in on a conversation and say bewildering stuff.

- Waingro, the born-again former troubled youth. Shotguns and pistols. He is the first man in most of the time. Lockpicking, electronics (alarms is a very misleading name) and a few points in Perception. My favourite thing is to see him demolish weak obstacles with the shotgun. Breach and clear! Daddy issues and a lousy attitude, though basic training has straightened him out some.

- Killjoke, the imposing quiet type. Assault Rifles and Pistols, and has discovered a natural talent for Sniper Rifles along the way. He is also EOD certified (Demolitions) and is the one who does all the digging. Can't tell if he is laid back or just one passive-aggressive sarcastic remark away from putting you in a choke hold to prove a point. Might have to start putting points into Bad Ass soon because I need him to suddenly say the most off putting and alarming stuff. He also needs Brute Force.

NPCs come and go in whatever way makes most sense for the overall story. I don't keep them around just because they have good stats or because I need warm bodies, they follow me to places where I think they would want to go. I don't treat them like mules or extensions of my team but rather like individuals who have similar goals on occasion. I like to roleplay the conversations and stick only with stuff that my characters would actually ask about, and may switch between different rangers and NPCs as I feel makes most sense (Rose delivering bad news to various Ag Center characters etc).

In a pure game sense, I really like the Assault Rifle and Pistol combination, it is very ammo efficient and works at all the useful ranges. I also like the way skills are spread out among the characters with the 1. Team leader/medic 2. Energy weapon/mech/computers 3. pointman/can opener and 4. Tough combatant/bomb defuser. They can handle most things and get a lot out of exploring the environment. Certainly not optimal, I haven't even attempted or considered min-maxing.

I don't like SMGS and Heavy Weapons, the ammunition efficiency is terrible. When in doubt, fire 3-4 rounds with the pistol at short range when you can't use shotguns, assaults rifles, sniper rifles or energy weapons.

Brains beat brawl 4 rangers of 9-1-1-1-5-10-1 (Level 10 - +1 coordination, everything else into perception)
9 coordination - Brain lets you use your hands effectively.
1 Luck - smart people don't believe in luck.
1 perception - nerds without glasses
1 strength -neeeerds
5 speed - fast nerds
10 Int -exactly.
1 charisma - neeerds
Slaves:
Rose's slave Leia cosplay on a leash in dog collar inspires party
2 dumb mules to carry stuff

Enough skillpoints to cover everything.
12 AP - 2 steps + 2 shots. or sit down + headshot triple shot. or triple shot+shot or triple headshot + pistol fire.
strength isn't needed - there are strenghtless armors(tactical armor 5, power armor 9).
charisma isn't needed - if you need more exp, get more random encounters.
luck isn't needed - just buy everything with maxed merchant perk.

Sorry all, been away for a few weeks, home now will read these tomorrow

I tweaked and tweaked and tweaked my team while learning the game at the beginning (replaying partway through ag center 3 times until I had it right) until finalizing upon their builds. At first I was trying to do heavy role-playing with them and build them around those ideas, and then I moved away from that (just a little, mostly keeping my characters the same) to try and make my skill use more efficient and couldn't quite find anything to be exactly how I wanted so went back to simply role-playing and building around the characters I wanted to create and stuck with that; which really seems to work great for this game and I love it. I wanted a balanced group (balance in all things) but not an average group. I wanted 2 males and 2 females. Most importantly to me in a game like this, I wanted all the dialogue options I can get (meaning all 3 convo skills.) I knew I wanted to use energy weapons (because their effects are so cool. I know this isn't fallout, but to me energy weapons were a huge part of the feel of fallout 1/2 and I've never done a play through without using energy weapons, I couldn't imagine playing through this without using them.) I knew I wanted a sniper because I almost never play a sniper-type and had a strong want to do so in this game. From playing into it slightly a few times I knew I wanted at least 3SP a level from each character (4 int each, except for my 4th ranger), and 4 charisma for each (to keep the XP average higher, except 1st ranger.) I also knew I would use Rose as my Surgeon and Field Medic and that allowed me to role-play even better with the rangers I created and give them more skills (I had had Vigmar being my field medic until I decided to try and last without one until Rose leveled; which I was able to do.) I also found STR to be a mostly unnecessary stat and all but 1 of my chars have 2STR. So from those things I created my characters:

Zax - 7charisma is his strong stat. Also 6 Coordination and 6 luck (I'm finding luck to be very helpful with extra APs and lucky misses and lucky crits.) He uses smart-ass, energy weapons, and toaster repair, with a little leadership.

Kalari - 9 Coordination is her strong stat. 5 awareness. She uses sniper rifles, animal whisperer (great for keeping the animals away from combat since she's the sniper, only a slight issue so far when she's on a roof, they're also great stat boosters for her), mechanical repair, and weaponsmithing. She has less skills than everyone else because she is going as high as possible with sniper rifles so she can head-shot more accurately.

Pem-So - 9 strength is her strong stat. 6 luck (helps her a lot I find.) Blunt weapons (primary), shotguns(secondary), hard-ass, perception, and brute force. I might do outdoorsman with her, or I might give that to Rose since she has so many skill points to spend, but there's also another companion that has high outdoorsman, so I haven't decided yet, I've not had any problem running from any random encounters yet and until I do I'm just sitting on skill points.

Vigmar - 8 Int. is his strong stat. He also has 6 coordination and 5 luck. He uses assault rifles and is the kiss-ass. He does most of the other skills unless Rose does them: lockpicking, safecracking, demolitions, alarm disarming.


I'm having a blast with combat, it was annoying at first until I figured it out better. There are so many varying encounters that require varying levels of thought. Some you can just go in and not think at all and do okay, some you need to put some definite placement thought into it for at least a few rangers, some require very good placement with all rangers as well as smart execution of the entire encounter (which means not just keeping everyone in the same position, but moving them around strategically on various turns to keep them well positioned) to best execute disposing of the baddies.

A lot of the time I find good spots a good ways away from the enemies and put everyone in crouch and next to walls (and the sniper on the roof), then take Pem-So and run her up close with her shotgun to blast on the first enemy and start the encounter. I set everyone to ambush on their first turn, Pem-So soaks up some hits and then runs back towards everyone on her 2nd turn, usually half my rangers execute ambush on the first enemy that comes into view, and then the 2nd half execute ambush on the 2nd enemy when it comes into view. Aside from that a lot of the time I just keep my rangers in range (right at the edge of a reasonable %hit range, I'm usually okay with 60%+), crouch them all into position once I find them each their spot, and open fire on 1 target with everyone (Pem-So and Rose usually don't get a pre-encounter attack in in this situation.)

I'm playing on Ranger difficulty and more and more am finding better ways to execute the encounters as they get harder through the game. It really feels like my beginner squad, that was already good but just needed real experience to get better, is becoming an elite team each with their roles and making good work of most encounters. Sure there are difficult encounters, but if we play smart and each do our job, we usually come out on top (which really just means Rose needs to survive, but it's never been THAT bad yet.)

I don't like extreme min-maxing and prefer well-rounded but still optimized characters. The roleplaying system in Wasteland 2 is... not great. But it's not terrible either. Here's a skill monkey Echo team I'm running right now (stripped down to mechanics for presentation). Has been successful and satisfying enough so far at normal Seasoned difficulty, but for combat you will be heavily leaning on Angela for support during the early game.

Brotip: Don't rush to assign skill points after leveling up. Wait until you encounter challenges (traps, locks, safes, broken machines, hostile territory, etc) to decide where to place the next skill points. It's a constant balancing act deciding how to allocate limited skill points, but so far this team has been able to do almost everything. (Can't promise that'll last the whole game tho: I haven't finished it yet.)

Echo1

Coordination 4 | Luck 3 | Awareness 3 | Strength 3 | Speed 3 | Intelligence 8 | Charisma 4

Major Skills:
- Primary Weapon
- Smart Ass
- Leadership
- Surgeon

Minor Skills:
- Close Range Secondary Weapon
- First Aid

Echo 2

Coordination 3 | Luck 3 | Awareness 3 | Strength 3 | Speed 3 | Intelligence 10 | Charisma 3

Major Skills:
- Primary Weapon
- Alarm Disarming
- Computer Science
- Mechanical Repair

Minor Skills:
- Close Range Secondary Weapon
- Toaster Repair

Echo 3

Coordination 4 | Luck 3 | Awareness 3 | Strength 3 | Speed 3 | Intelligence 8 | Charisma 4

Major Skills:
- Primary Weapon
- Kiss Ass
- Lockpicking
- Safecracking

Minor Skills:
- Close Range Secondary Weapon

Echo 4

Coordination 4 | Luck 3 | Awareness 4 | Strength 3 | Speed 3 | Intelligence 8 | Charisma 3

Major Skills:
- Primary Weapon
- Perception
- Demolitions
- First Aid

Minor Skills:
- Close Range Secondary Weapon
- Surgeon

Angela Deth

Major Skills:
- Assault Rifles
- Hard Ass
- Brute Force

Minor Skills:
- Blunt Weapons
- Outdoorsman
- Weaponsmithing

I recommend using the Level 10 attribute point for each Echo Ranger to increase their Strength to give them an extra action point, more Constitution, and increased carrying capacity. Probably Speed next for an extra action point and higher initiative iirc.

The Leader – Assault weapons and energy weapons, this leader is wise-cracking tech-cowboy with a penchant for computers.

The Brain – Super intelligent shotgunner with skills in lockpicking and safecracking. He’s got a heart of gold and hair of green. Sonic ain’t got nothin’ on his speed.

The Muscle – This big bearded guy is a demolitions and mechanical expert, lotta strength, turns into a giddy child upon finding a new heavy weapon to play with.

The Doctor – first aid, surgery, outdoorsman, the doc is all about survival. Dour and serious. Odd religious practices make him the butt of the team’s practical jokes.

I tend to min/max, but I threw conventional wisdom out the window as well and rolled with characters that have 8 INT. Here's my team (I think this was the starting stat array):

M'alys Vayne

Coordination 4 | Luck 1 | Awareness 6 | Strength 4 | Speed 4 | Intelligence 8 | Charisma 1

Assault Rifle
Leadership
Surgeon

Added Kiss Ass and Field Medic after gaining some levels.

Maya LeStrange

Coordination 4 | Luck 1 | Awareness 6 | Strength 4 | Speed 4 | Intelligence 8 | Charisma 1

Assault Rifle
Perception
Demolitions
Field Medic

Added Outdoorsman after gaining some levels.

Mercury DeLune

Coordination 2 | Luck 1 | Awareness 4 | Strength 4 | Speed 6 | Intelligence 10 | Charisma 1

Assault Rifle
Lockpicking
Safecracking
Alarms

Veruca Salt

Coordination 6 | Luck 1 | Awareness 4 | Strength 4 | Speed 4 | Intelligence 8 | Charisma 1

Sniper Rifles
Mechanical Repair
Toaster Repair

Added Weaponsmithing after gaining some levels and after a certain event.

Brute Force is covered by Angela and/or Chisel
Smart Ass is handled by Pizepi, and she took over Perception after joining the team.
Computer Science is handled by Rose, as well as being the main surgeon.

All leveling points are added to Awareness.

Thanks for all the responses folks, some really interesting reads in here.