I particularly think XCOM2 is notorious for this, where the player can have a hundred troopers but only be able to deploy 1 squad at a time. It can be particularly nasty in hub based worlds since hub worlds force the entire party to move to travel to the next hub and they often separate these dilemma's that way. Or worse, let me place a character in the same room the thief appears after I agree to talk to the distraction guy with another squaddie, then I get a cutscene of my character doing nothing while the thief steals something.

What gets me most is that time essentially freezes until you make your choice and there never really is an in-universe dilemma. It's a pure gameplay dilemma, in that you have to make a choice for no reason other than gameplay. Even then, the choices you're given never are that complex either, very left or right type stuff.

Phoenix point manages to be completely different as a squad manager. Both games are perfectly enjoyable though. Does the whole ' empire building/rebelling against the king not provide enough reasons for immersing yourself?

That's obviously done for the sake of gameplay balance, which is reasonable.

So what would your alternative be then? To let the player deploy as many soldiers as they want, onto any mission, all at the same time?

In that case, the game would have zero challenge and therefore be zero fun to play.

And in addition to that, it would cause the game to crash or freeze and/or become a slideshow, because there is a limit to the amount of items that hardware can graphically process simultaneously.

For reasons like that, that is why games will never be 100% realistic. And if they were, then they would suck as games.

This. Same reason stealth games have guards that forget seeing you and go back to their posts.

Games should try as hard as they can to provide suspension of disbelief though, as in making it seem reasonable that you're only taking 2-3 people with you out of 10. Even if it's just a short line of dialog about a small force slipping through security better or whatever, it helps with immersion.

Yeah, even games like Close Combat don't let you take a whole regiment or battalion out.

You wanna spawn armies, try an RTS like Warzone 2100, or Impossible Creatures. And try not to complain when The Swarm® happens to you. I hope you also enjoy feeling like a traffic director.

not to mention total war in that respect! 4 to 5000 single units under your control max! where is the unit upgrade enabling 40 units in one army doubling that during battles max 80 vs 80 ! They should have done that like 10 years back! of course there is the so called pvp crew that will have more trouble with directing so many units ( though why beats me since most online games seem to be ordinary slug fests ), a.i. control which seems to be granted with CA having the most trouble configuring the a.i. in such a manner it acts in a decent manner with 40 units under its control, not to mention their campaign values where, money/recruitment and small armies add to creating this controlled expansion game which can be guided into a better player experience ( please don't ask about mods enabling other income and upkeep values while configuring the ai in such a manner it does behave more authentic, or at least sane with more armies under its hand )

The same kind of fake dilemma is also present throughout roleplaying games, strategy games and other games where you have a party or army with limited size. Sure, the fate of the world is at stake and we are facing huge odds and fierce enemies. But I'm going to leave most of my squad at home doing nothing. Because it is impossible to travel in groups bigger than X.

Somtimes, games try to handwave this as 'a big group would be too noticeable'. Which makes sense, if stealth is an issue. For example when covertly operating in enemy territory. But it doesn't make any sense when you are the big hero defending the realm.

Of course, there are gameplay reasons to limit party size in Roleplaying games. But it would be better to find in-world reasons to limit that size. Either balance the game for a party size of all the characters courageous enough to work with you. Or find reasons while some characters won't be in the same group. Alignment, for example, can be used here. "No! I'm not going to work with THAT scoundrel!"

But it gets really bad when the game punishes you for limitation it places on you. A big offender is, for example, Divinity 2. You have a castle on an island. You can take 4 people as servants into the castle. All others will die. You know that a magic attack is coming that will kill anyone not in the castle. But you have no option to take in others to save them. You have a huge castle with plenty of space for everyone, but the game makes you leave people behind to die, just create a false sense of drama. That is awful game design!

It's not exactly a squad shooter, but I think EYE Divine Cybermancy allows 32 players in a squad for co-op.