Strike Teams - why they matter

I have to spend MF on something:)
Black widows or that thing for 300MF ( exeptional human intelligence or something) are catching my eye.

Some new information regarding strike teams:

- The good: I gained a positive trait after I failed a gold mission (I didn't know you could gain perks when failing, but it is possible indeed).

- The bad: The perk I gained was Kett Specialist (+10), which didn't make any difference at all on the chance of success of the very same mission I failed, which is against Kett. It was 55% before and remained like that after the perk. I must conclude this perk is simply bugged.

Does anyone know,if you can get positive or negative trait after you get to lv 20?
Or what is maximum number of positive traits?

On of my teams has 5,other 4.

Yup, I have an Outlaw Specialist team that is also suffering Outlaw Hysteria. I guess they get so excited when they fight Outlaws that it cancels out.

Could be, just don't trust the listed success percentage as I have already failed multiple ~90% missions.  While I understand that RNG is a factor it works both ways so for every bad streak I have, I should be able to go 20+ missions without a fail and that simply has not happened for any of my teams.

There has to be more to it than that because I am routinely seeing success chances with non-multiples-of-five numbers like 21%, 93%, 78%. I suspect there is a random element that gets added/subtracted to the Effectiveness calculations to determine the Success Chance.

OMG does that team succeed at gold missions? How do you have to choose them? If they are careless can they still do hostage missions? Does the hostage rescue come into play there? Or is it cancelled out? 

If I were running them, I would probably avoid anything outlaw, anything intelligence related, and anything that needs a hero. But i'm not sure if that is how it works. I try to focus my teams on things that they have going for them trait wise. If they don't have a trait against it then I consider that an option they have available but ideally ones they have traits for go first.

I have a team that has night blindness (two in fact) and one of them had some positive traits that made her perfect for certain missions that were coming up except for the night blindness which one of these repeating missions was a night mission. So I bit the bullet and got her some level II night vision goggles. I feel like it was worth it because of my three teams only one can do night missions and those always have components that his negative traits would probably make it a fail ( careless, poor intelligence). 

I think this is where the traits come into play. If you pick them for a mission that suits their traits, then that I don't think is factored into the odds of success but is part of the final reason why they will succeed. Or at least that is how it seemed to me when I started getting very hardline about looking to only send certain teams that had at least one trait that looked like it would match what was required. I did not see a bigger percent increase in their odds for success, but I am sure a few of those golds were a success. 

Sometimes however there is nothing really specific in the mission parameters that matches my teams, so I just wing it with whomever looks the closest, the best or maybe who I want to get a boost in XP.

I always factor in their negative traits and the first reason they cannot go on a mission, too. That's why I caved on getting the night vision goggles for one team. A few missions that were coming up (on gold IIRC)  really only suited their positive traits but were at night. Having two teams with night blindness was leaving me locked out of what I felt would be solid successes if I could change that. It seemed worth it. MP comes pretty fast and I have a lot more time I will be playing that team.

There's definitely more to the way the displayed Success Chance is calculated.  I think after all ±10 ±5 stats are applied there is a correction factor based on your level and it goes both ways.  High level teams vs bronze missions always end up ~90%.  Low level teams vs gold missions are going to have a hard time getting above 20%.  It's also possible that Apex missions have another bonus.

I disagree about an additional random element getting applied.  I think the displayed Success Chance is accurate.  The trouble is that it only bears out over large data sets.  Any given mission is going to have it's own narrative of success in our monkey brains.  Success despite an 8% chance and you're convinced your special.  Three failures with a 90% chance and it's a Bioware stooge with a big red fail button. 

Back when we were figuring out premium spectre pack UR drop rates, there were 50 conspiracy theories about maximizing your chance or minimizing gremlins.  It took a while to figure out and the caveat was always that 3 or 5 or 20 packs were not always going to meet expectations, but over the long haul there was a stable 14% chance to get a UR. 

Remnant/Outlaw/Kett Specialist/Hysteria: +/- 10 agains Remnant/Outlaw/Kett

Bloodthirsty: +10 with Enemies Everywhere
Virtous: +10 with Bribe Attempt
Hostage Rescue Specialist: +10 with Hostage Situation

Hero Complex: -10 with We Need a Hero
Careless: -10 with No Room for Error
Xenophobe: -10 with Alien Presence
Poor Intelligence: -10 with Key Intelligence Component
Cowardly: -10 with Scary

All of the +/- 5 traits I've seen are general.

Also, I just noticed, that if you complete all of the currently available missions, you get a timer for when more will be available (in the app, I don't see it in the game).

My Level 18 Team with four positive traits did a Gold mission that had 37% chance of success. Failed and came back with the negative Hero Complex. So now they have one negative trait.
This mission had one favourable trait for my team (Kett Specialist) and the other two traits my team didn't have - 'We need a Hero' and ???

But, given the overall success rates in Bronze/SIlver and the amount of missions you can do in multiplayer yourself, I actually don't care if my squads fill up with negative traits now because once a team is at level 20 and has full compliment of positive and negative, I'll just train up a new team and each one will have different set of both. In a few months, I should be able to fit one of my six Strike teams with any mission with decent odds of success.

And if two teams are too similar to each other, just retire one of them and get a new one. Seems that if you aim for the greatest variety of traits among the largest number of teams you'll converge on the highest mission success rate. (Without using mission funds to buy any Strike team gear  of course--since those funds are reserved for regular Multiplayer gear).

Is there anyway to improve your chances? I've taken a lot of gold missions and only once did I succeed.