Advice on skilling-up soldiers

Hey gang,

I have read up on the ways soldiers increase their various stats, but I'm curious if anybody has any specific tips on leveling up troops with certain roles. All my troops are leveling up along pretty much the same curve: high TU and decent accuracy. Those are obviously the two things you do the most often so it makes sense, but do people 'train' their heavy-weapons gunners differently than their shotgun assaults?

Basically the schema I'm going with is this (still using ballistics at this point):

Very high accs get sniper rifles, obviously

Stronk soldier gets SMAW or M240.

High reflexes are CQB specialists, either shields or shotguns.

Soldiers not obviously excelling in one area over any other get assigned as riflemen and generally get the odd jobs like medkits and C4 duty.

Here's the thing that's a bit strange to me - TU, strength and accuracy all go up very easily, so even though they have different combat roles, all their stats look pretty much the same at higher ranks. At this point I feel like could take the M240 and give it to the guy who's been carrying the Beretta and shield and nothing would be different. In fact I reassigned a rifleman as a sniper just because I wanted a backup sniper and she had the ACC to make the reassignment a non-issue.

Is that weird? Do people 'spec' their soldiers more narrowly than that, and if so, how?

You pretty much got it. Hence why reflexes and bravery are the stats I look for when recruiting soldiers, with some consideration for hp. The rest will sort itself in time.

Uhm... this would take them out of service for a few days after each mission, but I guess you could have them shoot each other with ballistic pistols before storming the ufo to train their HP, and IIRC, the friendly fire lowers morale, so they might panic and up bravery too.

The morale drop happens regardless of how much damage you cause, so Mr Crazy can work out his personal issues on his wolf armour equipped buddies, and they can skillup their bravery without spending very long in infirmary.

Uhm... this would take them out of service for a few days after each mission, but I guess you could have them shoot each other with ballistic pistols before storming the ufo to train their HP, and IIRC, the friendly fire lowers morale, so they might panic and up bravery too.

If you want to game the game instead of simply playing it, it'd be much simpler to just edit morale settings in the relevant .xml file the way you want and be done with it.

If you want to game the game instead of simply playing it, it'd be much simpler to just edit morale settings in the relevant .xml file the way you want and be done with it.

He was asking if there was a way to train them, I just answered. I like to keep some sort of roleplaying on, so I usually avoid stuff like that.

Let the rookies do the scouting and the veterans do the killing. Some of the rookies will make it and others, well, you get the idea.

Before I modded the game to make everyone basically a flatline clone, yeah, I would change people's jobs based on stats. High STR gets heavy, high ACC gets sniper, high REF get's shotty, and the dunces that suck at everything get a rifle.

As far as training, here's a little cheatsheet:

Each skill caps at 100, I don't THINK it is possible (in vanilla or X:CE) to completely cap someone out, as you stop gaining points at max level, and you can only earn so many points per battle. HP goes up 1 point for every 5 points you gain in other skills, and is capped at 99.

TU - best way is to just make your guys run laps. It takes 250 TUs spent to earn 1, and you can earn a max of 2 per game.

STR - overload your guys so their weight bar turns red a little, and then go run around.

ACC - Find an alien, and take a shot at it from absolutely as far away as possible. You don't even have to hit it.

REF - Dangerous to level. Either shooting your own guys, or camping near a UFO entrance in hopes of shooting at something. Works best with shot guns and pistols for their higher reaction fire chance.

BRV - Same as REF, not safe to train. All you really have to do is get a soldier to panic, and it'll earn the 1 point per mission it can earn.

HP - Again, every 5 points you earn elsewhere will give you a point of HP, to a cap of 99.

If you manage to do everything each mission, your guys can gain a max of 7 points - 2 TUs, 1 each of STR, ACC, REF, BRV, and 1 HP.

The max rank requires 100 rank points, and you get a rank point for each point you gain in one of your stats. In other words, be careful what you level, you may find that you cap out and don't have the stat spread you want.

Would shooting at your own troops train reflexes? They don't make a check to return fire against each other, so I wouldn't expect that to increase reflexes.

If you wanted to, bravery could be trained (with some risk) by standing on the opposite side of a wall you fire a machine gun near until suppression causes enough bravery loss for panic. Flashbangs could probably accomplish the same with minor injuries (but no real risk of death).