Quote Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami View Post
Have the squadron members be "shards" of the one you have. There easy peasy.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind having to step apart (i.e., to a different bank of members) while in the Far East, the First Shard, etc., so long as I get to keep any other benefits of using a Squadron over using a Trust.

That means actually getting to tell the story NPCs what to do, for starters. By all means, beef up the enemy HP values a bit in ShB AI-Party runs to compensate for their finally being able to AoE and so forth, but we shouldn't be losing functionality, let alone enjoyable agency.

In that way, each expansion (or each after HW) that takes us somewhere completely apart at least gives us a reset or catch-up threshold. You didn't have time to level your Squadrons to Stormblood level before hitting Stormblood dungeons in Othgard? Not a problem; you've got the story NPCs available for the first run, and you gather further Squadron members while in the Far East, filling a separate pool, hitting enough for a full Squad run by level 64 or so. Maybe in Shadowbringers, those story NPCs truly become your squadron for the First; if so, fine... as long as they maintain at least all of the functionality we're used to.