A little bit of both. It's not a bug, but it is the result of a restriction that the base game has. Whenever a pod of (non-Advent) aliens is generated, it will determine the pod leader first. Then, out of the aliens that can appear as followers, only one is chosen and is used to fill up the whole rest of the pod.

As a result, i can either allow an alien as leader-only or risk having massive pods with that one. I went with the latter because they were too rare otherwise.

As a sidenote, i wouldn't take the designation "Captain" too literal. Aliens likely don't follow human military structures and the names 'Captain' or 'Champion' were just nicknames the XCOM soldiers gave to particularly tough specimens of Muton.

Originally posted by DerBK:

A little bit of both. It's not a bug, but it is the result of a restriction that the base game has. Whenever a pod of (non-Advent) aliens is generated, it will determine the pod leader first. Then, out of the aliens that can appear as followers, only one is chosen and is used to fill up the whole rest of the pod.

As a result, i can either allow an alien as leader-only or risk having massive pods with that one. I went with the latter because they were too rare otherwise.

As a sidenote, i wouldn't take the designation "Captain" too literal. Aliens likely don't follow human military structures and the names 'Captain' or 'Champion' were just nicknames the XCOM soldiers gave to particularly tough specimens of Muton.

You can enter a limit of 1 on the pod.

Originally posted by DerBK:

A little bit of both. It's not a bug, but it is the result of a restriction that the base game has. Whenever a pod of (non-Advent) aliens is generated, it will determine the pod leader first. Then, out of the aliens that can appear as followers, only one is chosen and is used to fill up the whole rest of the pod.

As a result, i can either allow an alien as leader-only or risk having massive pods with that one. I went with the latter because they were too rare otherwise.

As a sidenote, i wouldn't take the designation "Captain" too literal. Aliens likely don't follow human military structures and the names 'Captain' or 'Champion' were just nicknames the XCOM soldiers gave to particularly tough specimens of Muton.

Ah... I can sort of understand that. So I guess this is like an unlucky dice roll. Well, I have gotten passed it now. Here's to hoping I won't be seeing that again for a while.

However, atleast make most of those dreaded Codices "Pod Leaders Only". They are supposed to be quite a rare enemy anyway, and it really does get frustrating when my squad is attacked by a group of 5 enemies that with in three turns, become 15 enemies that can teleport around and disable all my weapons. I especially cannot tell you how many times that "Codex Reflexes" ability ruins everything for me. I believe the intension was to prevent players from slaughtering them with a mass Overwatch like in the vanilla game, but the thing is, they are even capable of using that ability when ambushed from a concealed position, ruining the whole element of surprise. Imagine how much of an embarrassment it would have been, if that Texan posse that ambushed Bonnie and Clyde in 1934 with assualt weapons just downright missed every hit on their target. I mean this situation is pretty much just that.