What the combat system needs

I have for a long time felt the combat system was missing something.
I couldn't really put my finger on it, but it had something to do with the overuse of recruits. Something was wrong, why was it not better to use bigger, better trained and equipped soldiers.
We all know it, we have made the math, slaying a buttload of recruits makes better business sense than sending your soldiers or elites out to die. They take too long to train, and they are too expensive.
I once played another browser game, it was set in space, but the mechanics behind it is pretty much the same, just a matter of calling it a recruit or a small fighter. In this game there was PvP, and some players tried the same trick as we all do here in settlers, just build a lot of the smallest cheapest unit, and try to win on numbers. I went another way and build a fleet of bigger ships, compared to maybe "soldiers" in settlers, I ended up as the best player in that universe (server). I have been thinking, why was the bigger units better in that game, but not in this, and I think I figured it out now. Its not about the combat, I bet that is pretty ok as it is, bigger troops do kill more smaller troops, the big difference is the "recycler".
In my space game every battle left a "ruin field" with a certain percentage of resources from the destroyed units in the battle. you could then build a recycler unit that you could send out and pick up resources. every unit had a certain capacity so you needed enough of them to suit the size of your army, and they counted as units in your population cap.

But this is what we need, some guys we can send out to the battlefield after the battle, pick up armors and swords left behind, some can go direct in store house again, others need to go back to the weapon smith, or even all the way back to the smelters. some of the materials will of course be unusable, but because two armies have fought, you as the victor will have the opportunity to get more back than you lost.

We might also need the possibility for an extra barrack or two to make up for the extra time it takes. to make bigger units.
But I truly feel this would change the need for that many recruits, it would make the game more fun and add more variety to it, and it would be essential if ever PvP should be a reality.

What actually made the diference was the RF (Rapid Fire) system that is active on that game. A single Cruiser can take a load of small fighters. Here we have no RF (rapid fire) hence the recruit cannon fodder works like a charm.

I like the idea. +1.

PvP is still in the too far distant future it seems. In fact our settlers may well be in the space age when it arrives....

I used most battleships, but lets not derail the topic too much, maybe tweaks for the combat system are needed too, then make a big unit and call him beserker and give the similar ability of rapidfire :) The point here are, that if you cannot get your materials back from the battle field, the economy don't support the use of bigger troops for more than a small backbone of the battle.

Agree with Krydolph, this combat system need to be refreshed. and we need a improved barrack so we dont need to click 100 times to make soldiers.

On current system we don't need to send "recycler" to adventure to collect resources from battles we get loot automatically after the adventure. Loot contains resources, weapons, settlers and other resources to rebuild our defeated units. What is missing is that the used units doesn't affect the amount of loot.

If we ever get pvp we will be fighting and defending against forces constructed from elites, xbows, cannons, etc. so we will need better units than recruits to defeat others and defend our selves from attacks with similar forces.