Ahoy strategy gamers,
I'm curious to know how you equip your squad. I'm asking because I just finished the S3 A4 Rocket Side mission and spent another ten minutes at the base e- and re-quipping my squad to my liking.

I like a bit of a standard procedure, meaning every character has his main weapon in the first hand, sidearm in the second hand and a melee weapon in the inventory.
But that's were the similarities end. The two best melee fighters (scout and soldier) get one of those big, nasty sword-substitutes, a Katana for the scout (if available) or Khukuris or Machetes instead of Ka-Bar knives.

The scout additionally gets about 8 shuriken or throwing knives and light grenades. His standard weapons are silenced smg/melee weapons and later silenced carbine/silenced smg, so that he can harass PKs without being seen and slug baddies who surprise him close-by. Without PKs, the scout doesn't even need the carbine in the late levels, because he's doing everything with katana and shuriken anyway.

The sniper gets the only scoped rifle of the team. He's carrying a pistol as sidearm and additional medical and technical low-level items.

The soldier and grenadier are the heavy gunners of the squad. Both carry a truckload of grenades of all types and ammunition for their light MGs. The soldier eventually ends up with a MG 43/pistol setup, the grenadier with the Johnson Light Gun and pistol or Panzerschreck for PKs.

The technician starts with a carbine and a pistol and ends up with an assault rifle and a bazooka. He's carrying all the high level technical stuff the others can't use, and some 'technical' charges as well. Although technicians are usually good in medicine, I rather let my sniper be the second medic of the team.

The medic gets a bolt-action rifle or heavy carbine and a pistol/laser cannon for PKs. He's only there for fire support and usually the one with the fewest kills in my squad. His packload consists mostly of high-level medical items and mid-level technical ones.

I used to play my party with two snipers in S2, but for S3 I always decided for the full role play game party. I try to outfit every character according to their origin and nationality (even down to their uniforms, fitting their rank as either seargents or lieutenants). Works well in S2, but in S3 the best equipment is always from the allied side, either Russian like the SMGs and rifles, or British/American like the pistols and heavy weapons.
The equipment is my rpg element in S3, but I still switch the equipment immediately when better stuff gets available. But I think on my next run I'll pick a favourite weapon for every character and let the factors AP costs, penetration level and origin overrule maximum damage and range.

So, how do you outfit your team? Always individually, or after some kind of standard pattern as I do?

That's a lot of information

For the record the only person I normally give meelee weapons is the scout. The others I don't bother with. Lots and lots of throwing knifes, a big knife/sword and a silenced Smg. I always give him the Sterling-Patchett as soon as it appears!

Best Scoped rifle I can get for the Sniper, although I always seem to end up using the Mannlicher-Carano for the longest time. Once the familiarity is up and the "always critcal" skill has been acquired, he is lethal with this! By the time you get the SVT you get Pks about 2 missions later so I never build up familiarity enough to guarantee ones shot kills. He also gets a good pistol as well.

The grenadier gets lots of grenades plus a Smg. The russian models are best here I find, until I get rocket launchers and he gets one of them. Mind you these are very expensive to run so I tend to wait until after the german bank job mission is complete and there are lots of PKs to shot at. Otherwise grenades are better.

Sometimes I give the medic a scoped rifle, sometimes not. Familiarity is the key here, I use him/her to soften people up for the others. He also gets a smg, small and powerful. The M1A1 (Or whatever) I find a good choice.

The engineer I give a carbine and a pistol, plus as many explosives and picklock etc as he can carry. Once repeater rifles appear (the volks thing, the FG40 and eventually the AK47) then he gets one of these until he's in a PK with an MG and mortars. I save the mines for the first two Pk missions. I like to lay down a massive mine field for the defend the base mission, it saves a lot of heartache and dead mercs!

The solider gets a MG, a high capacity smg and lots and lots of haemostatic agents. He always gets shot up a bit in my games, he spends a lot of time bleeding

I only place the Grenadier, Engineer and the sniper into a PK. The grenadier handles a PIAT with AP rockets plus a machine gun, the sniper a cannon with mortars. The sniper can do so much damage with the cannon it's stupid not to use one IMHO. I also tend to spend a bit of money on medical training for the scout and soldier as well so they can save themselves while waiting for the medic. These two take the brunt of my attacks so it only makes sense.

Anyone else?

P.S. Apologies if I've got the names of some of the weapons wrong, I can never remeber them well enough

I never give melee weapons to anyone but the scout, and even sometimes, only for fun. In S2, I had my scout using the welrod silenced pistol. He had massive familiarity with it, and could consistently hit someone from quite a distance with it. 2 shots in close the guy was dead. Just no need for a melee weapon. In S3 I haven't picked up my scout yet so we'll see, likely something similar.

My sniper has the lee enfield scoped currently (I just finished the second of the first set of choiced missions), and a pistol which he rarely uses.

The medic has a 33-40 rifle. He's getting to be a decent shot, about 10 or 15 points behind the sniper. In S2, he was almost as deadly as my sniper.
Plus all the obligatory medical gear.

Gator has the machine gun that only has a long burst. Keeps breaking, so I think he's going to get something else, he's got a handful of grenades too.

Nessie my grenadier has an SMG. The 64 clip sized MP 40-II or something like that and an inventory full of grenades

My engineer also has an SMG, a beretta 28. with a pile of gear, a few grenades and mines.

In my first run, I had three snipers, engineer, scout and soldier. Weapon loadout pretty boring. Snipers with whatever quick-firing sniper rifle that was available (anything that shoots for 18 or less AP is good) and any quick-firing pistol with JHP ammo for close range.

Both engineer and soldier an MG and a rifle for long-range, lots of grenades. Scout a silenced SMG and lots of grenades.

I never bothered with any bazookas/panzerfausts as they take up so much room.

Fighting PKs with snipers (always critical) is easy.

On the second run, I got Shade and recruited Viper and Fritz, for a total squad of 3 snipers, 2 soldiers and a scout. Fritz and Shade were about the only ones who carried grenades. Fritz had his MG42 from very start, Shade whatever silenced SMG I could get for him. Another soldier took whatever MG was available, sticking to DP once I got it.
Viper with his superb shooting skill was a real killer - snapshots from ANY smg or assault rifle were really deadly.

Again, no fancy heavy weapons, finishing the last level (assault variant) with the help of 3 PKs with snipers and all the PWM-1 grenades I could find in that level (Just enough).

In either case, absolutely no melee weapons or throwing knives. I never bothered with stealth too much - I failed the only "sneaking" mission on purpose to play all four missions. (Similarly, I failed Snitch on purpose, sniping the informant into right hand to cause him to drop his silenced Sten - and then letting him escape).