I have yet to use the Squad rules from the AoR GM kit in my games, but I'd like to introduce them to my players. I think the biggest thing that has me scratching my head about them is changing how minions take damage. Rather than using the usual minion soak and wound threshold, it's just one hit, one kill if the Squad is attached to a hero.

I imagine some folks have messed with it, having the minion group suffer wounds as normal. Anyone find one method to work better than the other? I'm not usually a fan of changing rules before trying them as written, but I'm seeing a lot of slowdown potential here.

I actually think your way is potentially slower. It's reasonably easy to kill multiple minions on one hit.

I've used both. Which works best involves what effect you're trying to accomplish (though I do prefer RAW for several reasons).

RAW is super fast and easy as it removes a lot of math. One of the nice features is it also mitigates higher damage hits. So the players can take on really nasty high damage opponents without getting pasted. Handy when your players find themselves on Hoth and are handed a rifle and told to get to a trench. Squadding also does weird things with the adversary list, as most leader types on the list have abilities that affect independent minion groups, not attached squads. So they have to decide if the resilience is with the loss of firepower.

Doing damage modeling like normal slows things down a bit. Not hugely, but it does. The big place where it matters is not normal engagements so much as that high damage one. When the damage rolls over a hit from a vehicle or something can wipe the squad, where raw you need to use a blast weapon (which can be worse). A more simple personal level engagement will (probably) see the squad last longer though, since lower strength hits won't remove a squad member like it will RAW....