I'll give some feedback to your ideas/plans.

Quote:

As an individual militia won't even get near the amount of combat experience our mercs get, we could alter the speed with which they earn stats.

I think that altering learning rate of militia is a bad idea. Instead make them practice or teach others while they idle.

• When created (by being trained by our mercs), they start with basic, randomised stats. We can rename this process 'recruitment' or 'basic training', it works like the current militia training.
• In combat, they can gain stats and experience just like our mercs. I still think a faster rate would be reasonable here - they don't get near the combat experience our mercs get.
• In some sectors, they will train just by being there. Examples would be the Alma shooting range for MRK or the Cambria hospital for MED. No need to assign anything - any militia there will train those stats somewhat, so we do not require any assignments or orders.
• After 'basic training', our mercs can still train militia, but a bit different this time. This process is now renamed 'advanced training'. It does not cost money anymore, but also does not create new people. For each trainable stat a trainer merc has, we calculate a pool of learning points. These are then distributed among trainable militia present.
  A militia can only be trained in a stat if the trainer has better stats. Similar, a militia will only gain experience if trained by someone with more experience.
  The amount of points a trainer generates in a stat depends on his own stats, his leadership (leadership somewhat represents how good they are at teaching others), their personality, teaching trait etc.. As a result, the trainers need to be good at what they are teaching, but also need to be at least somewhat good and leading.
  I don't see the need to have a separate training assignment for each stat - just have one assignment for all of them. The stat makeup of the trainer determines where this training will work best.

Quote:

We train green militia just like before. Once new ones are created, we tie a new MILITIA to them. Stats are randomized within a certain range for each stat. Thus some of them might be more promising than others.

Agreed.
Quote:

People love deciding on skills and such. For this reason, we can select which traits a militia has - we choose for them. If you have a bunch of rookies and a bunch of shotguns, it would be smart to assign the 'Ranger' trait to some of them, no?
Each militia rank grants additional traits (that's also how it works currently). So a green militia can only have 1 trait, an elite can have 3.

I don't really like this idea. Instead i think of 2 alternative ways for traits.
1. Assign them randomly while individual militia is created.
2. Instead of you leveling them up, make them learn a major trait upon getting preset stats (like let's say 70 in both MRK and DEX gives marksman 80 in both gives sniper). This way you decrease micromanagement by letting militia getting specialist training or get a 2 trait combo by more genera training.
Traits are only select able if a militia has sufficient stats. So, for example, only those with MRK >= 75 can be given 'Marksman'. This way you can't create hordes of similar militia, and you have to plan whom to give what.

Quote:

Certain traits are only available on higher ranks - so 'Deputy 1' is only open to veterans, and 'Deputy 2' requires 'Deputy 1' and is only available to elites.

I think that either stat requirement or random traits solve this completely.
Quote:

'Doctor' could be a viable trait for militia now. We could allow them to be medics, New_feature: AI medics & officers. Perhaps militia doctors should need special training, and should cost even more? Special care should be taken as to not let this be exploitable - merc doctors must not be replacable.

The nerf to NPC medics is pretty easy. Make wounds not heal automatically after a battle - your militia should spend their kits on wounded soldiers. Because of their low initial medical skills they will burn through resources fast. It's your role to make sure that you get highly trained doctors if you want to keep cities.

• Militia medics perform their duties like enemy medics. They also bandage player mercs, but do NOT perform surgery on them, as that would then be an exploit that would allow you to sidestep the need for doctor mercenaries.
• They cannot heal player mercs.
• Militia wounds heal as fast as player wounds (which is very slow), but militia doctors can speed that up greatly. They can also combat disease.

Quote:

If we do not play with 'equip militia', what items do they get? Currently the traits are selected fitting to the items they get, this is no longer possible. We'd thus need new tables that determine what traits grant what items (so that Rangers would get either shotguns or rifles etc.).

You are right, traits are not the way to go. The best way would be to make classes and class related weapons (CQC, long range, snipers, demolition etc.). While inventing classes and setting skill requirements for them should not be hard,weapon assignment is another story. Weapons need more balancing and finding the way to make sure an assault unit doesn't end up with sniper rifle. Someone has done it few years ago (only for OCTH). We need to include both aiming systems.

Quote:

If we do play with 'equip militia', they will pick up gear from the sector if they don't have any. Using the above described, yet-to-code interface, we need to be able to add and remove items to them - we can then finetune their inventory to an absurd degree. How finetuned depends on how much time one wants to waste on this, really.

If above point is done, this should be easy. Check what classes are available and then seek a combination of assigned weapons that has the lowest number. This may lead to strange situations like a sniper having AR, because nobody around is skilled enough to get it but generally should work.

Quote:

A problem in this case is ammunition. Even if we allow them to restock after battle, it could happen that a gun runs dry. We then either need to warn the player of this, or have them drop the gun and select a new one - but this could then be an override to the player specifically giving them that gun.

I see 2 ways to solve it:
1. If you liberated Drassen/travelled to San Mona militia can resupply automatically. They should suffer a penalty for long distance to these places.
2. The way harder way which I doubt you will consider. Militia can 'request' weapons and ammo from other sectors (weapons if they see that a weapon of the class they are assigned to is way better than what they hold [see above with weapon balance]) and mobile militia can carry requested stuff (this includes health/repair kits too) either directly to the requesting unit or chain order to have another mobile militia carry that.

Quote:

The militia redistribution in cities won't be useable any more. We need to come up with an easy way to order masses of individuals to different sectors - easy to use for lots of people, while still allowing to select what each individual does.

And yet again i see 2 ways to do that:
1. Make redistribution split by equal class/total skill
2. Assign each sector some kind of battlefield type (urban/base/semi-open/open) which gives priority to some kind of classes (snipers are more likely to appear in open than base sector scenarios)
Quote:

When we order a squad of militia to move, we need to be able to select who from a sector moves and who stays behind - selecting all of them is not good enough.

Just use the point 1 of the above.

About idle behaviour:
Each merc and militia unit with some leadership should be able to train new/current militia.
Militia training done by a unit should give a bonus of third of their skill as percentage bonus so a 100 MRK militia can train new militia that has random MRK and 33% bonus to it or train existing militia in MRK 33% faster. While obviously this could lead to some abuse, you have to remember that first that unit has to reach 100 MRK (and you can't do that only in practice because of set limit) and has to survive battles to be of any use.
Training for militia could be classified as special/general/balanced:
-special as in individual stat (let's say you need some units as snipers and they are lacking MRK)
-general would be specialization for a role:
*unarmed(physical) - 35STR/35DEX/20AGI for max melee damage and generally useful stats
*sniper - 60MRK/40DEX for getting highest CTH
*cqc - 20MRK/20STR/20DEX/30AGI/10EXP for general combat stats
*medic - 80MED/20DEX for almost pure medical training
*utility - 25MED/25LDR/25MEC/325EXP for general healing/repairing
*demolitions - 40DEX/60EXP for explosives/grenade throwing
*mechanic - 20DEX/10EXP/70MEC for repairing stuff
-balanced to train skills lower than average by 10 points
Militia color could be determined by their average class skill points (<60 green / 61-85 blue / 86+ elite).
Militia may practice/teach others/repair/heal.
For teaching others there should be a check if teacher teaches students faster than they all (teacher included) would be practicing.
Healing would be priority for units with medical skills if the troops in sector are low HP. Otherwise medics can do normally assigned task.
Maintenance crew should try to repair every item in sector using current repairing logic. If a repaired combat item is way worse than others existing in city it should be sold or sent to city for full repair (if that item is better in stats for some specific class than other weapons).
When new, better weapons are available, militia should try to get them. This means that militia takes your money for purchasing weapons, kits, attachments (in that case militia training cost/daily fee should be lowered) or militia gets a secret account where percentage of daily fee gets transferred and they use these funds to get stuff.

I don't really like tha idea of having doctors within militia. It wouldn't make sense since there are only 2 real doctors in Arulco (both in Cambria Hospital) and that's why combating the diseases and healthcare in general are a problem in that crazy country. "Paramedic" should be max. Profesional doctors are trained in schools/academics and not "in the field".

It would be wonderful to have an option to train a specific, specialized group of militia, whose equipment and numbers would then be dependent on their role in the field. For example:
1. Gunmen (gunslingers and autoweapons) - you can train as many as you wish - equipment: pretty obvious
2. Heavy (heavy weapons and bombardiers) - 1 per squad or 2:32 (max militia) - equipment: grenades, granade launcher, bazookas and mortars
3. Medics (paramedic)- 1 per squad or 3-4:32 (max militia) - eq.: armor, knife and medpacks
4. Snipers? - 1 per squad or 2:32 (max militia) - NO armor (you have to protect your precious snipers!), sniper rifles, binoculars (or not), some kind of camo

Ideally, heavy and snipers should cost more, but that could be problematic for moding I guess.