Few suggestions

I agree with you in that it's odd that calls are based on numbers of units and not personnel in some regard. For instance, SWAT is a unit that has to have six people to run it, (and does get overused in some calls, but whatever, it's good to have a use for them) and cannot run with less. However I can staff a high rise fire with one person per vehicle and it'll run fine.

I do like the idea of number of people on scene, but maybe not as a requirement (I'd never keep that straight) but to speed up calls. Like minimum staffing for each call gets you the call at 0.5 speed, and each person on scene speeds it up. I think experience counters for people and training would be nice too. The game already records vehicle mileage, in theory it could do the similar thing to people and the more experienced they are, the better they would be at their job (in theory anyways). I've never played the German version, but I feel like that would be a good addition to the English version.

From my experience having less people in the vehicles makes missions take longer (atleast that's my conclusion)

Quote from PGFEMS8

I thought of something recently. The thing that got me into this game was Lietstellenspiel and the way calls were run in it. I liked how, with some calls, there were not a specified number of units but a specified number of firefighters. Also, there was firefighter training that was needed for some runs, if I remember correctly, or the training helped the calls run faster rather than sending an increased amount of units. Lastly, the calls themselves like the crane collapse that does happen here occasionally can be added too. Just a thought.

On another note, can we change the usage of SWAT around a bit? The guys I play with agreed that either the police units were not used enough or too much (i.e, the Gas Station Robbery which usually uses a bunch of officers instead of utilizing 2 swat units compared to the Hostage situation which utilizes a heckload of officers along with the 2 swat units.) Remember these are just suggestions and I understand that this is just a game but I wanted to see how everyone feels about it too.

I've mentioned this before about the calls needing a certain number of firefighters to complete and it was quickly forgotten. Your are correct about firefighters needing certain training but this is to operate the unit only, a few calls actually require a certain number of trained crew this mainly being the Decon Crew, Water/Diving Crew and more recently chemical/spillage unit. As PortuguesDC mentioned the training has nothing to do with how quick the calls clear its to do with the number of units on scene.