That entirely depends on how many RPG elements your game has. Do your units have an MMO's worth of active abilities? Or is the game more simulationist and instead of pressing "Mercenary's wrath" for +10% critical chance for the next 2 rounds, "Male privilege" to refresh all of your abilities, a second MW, sip a beer (+5 flat damage for the next 4 attacks) and using the "Suppressive Fire ability" to do 10 attacks in a round at -50% accuracy or are you just telling him to attack with the Suppressive Fire mode toggled?

If it's the latter, you can easily control like 20 units, if each unit just takes you 1-3 seconds to command. If it's the former kind of game, then I would not go too far away from 4 character with 8 as a maximum.

>>1888186
Six, plus or minus two. Between four and eight. Bigger sizes and you end up getting bogged down making all the parts move, smaller means you don't have enough map presence, error room, and unit variety.

So squad-level tactics instead of strategy?

2 teams of battle buddies, times 2 makes 8, then a commander and deputy on top is the usual baseline in reality, maybe with extra special weapons team for 12.

since armchair commanders are by definition unable to perform at the level expected by reality and pay for "entertainment" instead, just dumb it down with less things to keep track of and give the machine gunner the rocket launcher too.

just draw him bigger and he can take the weight.

and just in case you're serious, there's no optimum unless you introduce time limits to take turns which stops you from creating a masterplan at any chosen amount of moving parts

>>1888186
12 max
Even in something like XCOM where you don't have too much to keep track of, I would start adding some automation beyond that. Maybe add more general commands like "go here and defend in this direction" and the units will find cover themselves
Considering how many units you can control in RTS games it's odd that they haven't gravitated towards this. They should take some inspiration from Close Combat.

>>1888186
Just my opinion but I wish there were more turn based multiplayer games with massive armies. Something like giant Battle Brothers. It would take too long though and is too niche so a community could probably never work. So I guess don't do my idea.

>>1888186
A lot. At least two fireteams

>>1890944
This guy has a good idea, do it.

>>1888186
10-20 seems like a good amount
The main issue is not with the number imo, but with non-turns
For exampe in old-com and especially in mods there are a lot of situations where the outcome of the battle is basically predetermined but you still have to put in effort to find and kill the remaining 5 guys
It's tedious, and the more units you have to control the worse the problem gets
I would kill for a old-com style game where each battle is a self-contained skirmish where each side sets up, fights and doesn't have to check each bathroom in 3 different apartment blocks for the single remaining survivor that has no chance of changing the outcome

>>1892931
>old-com style game where each battle is a self-contained skirmish where each side sets up, fights and doesn't have to check each bathroom in 3 different apartment blocks for the single remaining survivor that has no chance of changing the outcome
So, a CRPG then?

>>1888186
It all depends on how long it takes to disseminate orders to your units. I think the ideal max time clicking over and over to finish a turn, personally is 3 mins max. Shorter is better of course. Anything more and the game slows down into a slog.

The number of units you can order in that 3 minutes can vary greatly depending on how much QoL features that the game has. For example, if a game has queued commands or similar multi-turn memorized command system, then I can justify spending something double the time to prep multiple turns of orders in order to let the next turns pass by very quickly, and with little tweaking on my end. Another potential QoL feature that barely if ever exist in turn based games is something that is pretty much standard for RTS games - drag box group-orders. There are times when I just want to move my units from one side of the map to another without any expectation of danger. For that, I don't really mind leaving it to an algorithm to select the exact path each unit takes, or even the exact box each one ends up in. I can just take over when they're 1 turn to the frontline again. But group-move simply does not exist in a vast majority of turn based games, which greatly reduces the number of units I am prepared to micro one by one each turn.

>>1888186
I like large numbers of moving parts, but I think in such cases units should be comparatively simplified. There should be lots of different units with little to no customization rather than few units with a lot of customization. Firaxis XCOM vs classic XCOM is a good example, where you have 4-6 guys with a bunch of customization elements vs 12+ guys who are basically "Guy with X weapon" and maybe "Guy with high stats". I also wish units were more often disposable, obviously you always want to minimize losses but having tons of leveling and customization for your units always makes it a huge pain to lose even one guy if there's permadeath.

Optimal: 6-8
Fun: Whatever the player can manage without the turns becoming 10 minutes long.
It's single player, if the player wants to larp it up and have a realistical approach, bring 2 squads + 1 heavy weapons team / sniper + spotter on ja2 1.13 let him do it.

You could pretend to be an officer commanding a platoon, or an NCO commanding a squad, idk.
I loved taking casualties in xcom, bringing in more guys than I needed, saving my good ones and risking my worthless rookies. Couldn't do that with smaller squads.

>>1888186
Depends on scale of battle and how many different abilities the unit has. Advance Wars (which isn't a tactics game but i'm using it for an example here shut up) gets away with max 30 or even max 50 units per player, because most of the units are simple "get in direct combat range and slap the enemy unit" with only a few outliers like artillery pieces and transports and lategame submarines/stealth jets.
XCOM the old one hangs around 6~15 per troop transport plane because most soldiers can be equipped, in theory, with any gun, for close, medium, or long range engagements, plus grenades/stuns/psionics, that complicate things further. Firaxis X-Com took it another step forward with unit abilities on levelup (like a special shot that forces the enemy to get out of cover, triggering overwatch fire) and reduced the unit count further.
But, I could also see a game where you have a mixture of 2~3 pimped out battle pieces and 10~12 mooks supporting them, and it won't be too difficult for players to use eficiently.

>>1888186
5 is definitely too few. I dislike small squad based games like that, from SRPG style games to mech based games. How many is too many depends on the scale. If it's a big battlefield I want it to feel like a big battlefield, however if it's very large it's okay to represent units as groups or even be groups of separate units. There's a point where it becomes a turn based strategy with intermissions however. A small amount of controllable units can be alleviated if there are allied characters not under direct player control, but I think 10-15 controllable characters works. It can be a little higher if it uses some sort of size system where units can take up more than one unit's worth on the team. e.g. old xcom's tanks being the size of 4 people, an SRPG where something like monster or mountable units count as 2 units in size

In truth I feel you should be able to deploy as many as you want and just have to deal with some other limitation like risking them all getting blown up in an explosion, or have many more take lots of small short term injuries instead of a few long term wounded, or have a deployment-fatigue system, or cost money to deploy, or take some resource to maintain until you reach a soft cap.

>>1888186
>optimal number of units
Depends on the playfield size and complexity of the tactical gameplay elements. For a game like old xcom it's around a dozen, +-50%
>How much is too much?
When all roles are already filled, ie. when you have so many units out in the field that you don't know what to do with someone.
>How much is too few?
No such thing, even solo missions can be a fun change of pace. As long as the strategic side of the game has solid gameplay reasons for deploying teams of varying sizes.

>>1888186
As many as possible so it feels like a war instead of some gang shot out

>>1888186
depends on how the game handles combat vs. movement. if you look at JA3 for example, i wouldn't mind controlling 20 mercs because i can actually move them all at once outside of combat

>>1892931
X-Com has motion detectors.