You need dead rookies, brevs. They're what keeps the Random Number God amused by your antics. Stop spilling blood and soon you will find yourself struck by Disaster Dominoes. Besides, I never waste men - the average rookie who charges at aliens with a stun prod is a equal to any hero of legend, and his death is much lamented.
(when a captured alien's usefulness runs out, they drag him above the tomb of a dead rookie, and there he gets vivisected slowly)
I don't get those people who are totally anal about casualties. Soldiers bellow Seargent rank don't have human rights anyway, except if the X-COM Commander declares you a freako super-soldier rookie.
In vanilla you can just exploit the fact that you can manufacture laser cannons for massive profit and then recruit shittons of rookies (100 at a time works well) and sort through them to pick out the very best. (And in fact you
should probably do this way before I did, which was around July or something.)
And that's how you get rookies like this.
What of the rest, and particularly the low rollers?
You send them on suicide missions in the front as living meatshield, to either spot the aliens for the others or to distract them so that your more valueable troops don't die.
and that's how you get a memorial page that looks somewhat like this, though a good third of that is just ethereal terror psi+sectopod slaughter
