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I think hes trying to say there should be two promotion tracks in the game. One for Combat Specialists and one for command specialists. And that command specialists are limited in how many can be in a given squad, and can project an aura to increase the bravery / accuracy / etc. of combat specialists around them. Maybe even higher ranking specialists in each tree have special abilities.

EG:

Rookie---Private---Corporal---Lance Corporal---Sergeant (Combat Tree)

Rookie---Lieutenant---Captain---Major----Colonel (Command Tree)

Edited by A7K
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I think hes trying to say there should be two promotion tracks in the game. One for Combat Specialists and one for command specialists. And that command specialists are limited in how many can be in a given squad, and can project an aura to increase the bravery / accuracy / etc. of combat specialists around them. Maybe even higher ranking specialists in each tree have special abilities.

EG:

Rookie---Private---Corporal---Lance Corporal---Sergeant (Combat Tree)

Rookie---Lieutenant---Captain---Major----Colonel (Command Tree)

So does the rookie in command tree outrank the sergeant or does it have to be a lieutenant before it outranks the sergeant?

PS. As far as I can tell no one else has suggested anything like this. Most that have wanted to change the structure or rank progression have wanted officers to be a progression from the enlisted ranks, with some special hurdle they must overcome to become officers.

Edited by Gorlom
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More like everyone starts as a rookie but in the game you can have say for example 6 officers per base. So 6 of your rookies can be aligned to the command tree and become lieutenants, and the rest get aligned to the combat tree and become privates.

In the real military Enlisted don't often become officers, it does happen but officers are usually commissioned from college graduates and those who have attended some form of military academy.

Maybe even flesh out the stats of individual characters so that those with certain attributes make better commanders and other attributes make better soldiers.

In short Give the player choices, and make those choices matter.

Maybe a better title for the characters that aren't specialized is recruit, rather than rookie.

Edited by A7K
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Oktober, Gorlom, considering what you were saying about different ranking titles, it depends upon the theme of the experience progression structure you'd like to take.

For example, if you wanted to a more "defenders of the earth" theme, you might have:

Sentry -> Sentinel -> Guardian -> Warden -> Praetor -> Paladin

Or one more modeled on types of experience, you might have:

Cadet -> Tyro -> Seasoned -> Veteran -> Specialist -> Master-at-Arms

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It not only gives the player choices of how to evolve their characters. It also adds something that could increase the tension of a given scenario. Losing you CO of a given squad could lose you your squad.

On the one hand you want your commanders out there increasing to combat effectiveness of your troopers. On the other you need to protect them and keep them from dying.

(Basic Risk/reward paradigms are the cornerstone to good game design.)

It gives you choices and losing them could have consequences.

Edited by A7K
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Oktober, Gorlom, considering what you were saying about different ranking titles, it depends upon the theme of the experience progression structure you'd like to take.

For example, if you wanted to a more "defenders of the earth" theme, you might have:

Sentry -> Sentinel -> Guardian -> Warden -> Praetor -> Paladin

Or one more modeled on types of experience, you might have:

Cadet -> Tyro -> Seasoned -> Veteran -> Specialist -> Master-at-Arms

Personally I prefer your second example just because the first one seems like it is trying to hard to look cool to really be cool. But you are right the reanks depend on a nice theme.

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It not only gives the player choices of how to evolve their characters. It also adds something that could increase the tension of a given scenario. Losing you CO of a given squad could lose you your squad.

On the one hand you want your commanders out there increasing to combat effectiveness of your troopers. On the other you need to protect them and keep them from dying.

(Basic Risk/reward paradigms are the cornerstone to good game design.)

That is likely to happen even without any of the changs proposed in this thread. Assuming I have understood the moral system correctly.

It gives you choices and losing them could have consequences.

Doesn't really need to be a choice imo. You could have the consequences without making (forcing) the player to make a choice which soldier becomes an officer.

What I'm trying to say is that this choice feels pointless and superfluous. At least to me. There would require additional functions to be worth it. Unfortunately I'm afraid those additional functions would take away from the game rather than add to it. It becomes something that requires a bit too much micromanagement to really be funny.

Edited by Gorlom
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For example, if you wanted to a more "defenders of the earth" theme, you might have:

Sentry -> Sentinel -> Guardian -> Warden -> Praetor -> Paladin

Or one more modeled on types of experience, you might have:

Cadet -> Tyro -> Seasoned -> Veteran -> Specialist -> Master-at-Arms

Sorry, but these ranks sound like a nightmare version of either He-Man Master of the Universe or a World of Warcraft guild. Leave the realworld ranks. Tweak as needed, but no candyland please.

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I'm glad that these ideas are spurring you onto your own, Citizen844. What tweaks would you suggest to the real-world ranking system that would be acceptable to, say, Oktober who I feel is representative of people who find a hatful of captains in a squad unacceptable.

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I wouldn't be opposed to a CoC that is represented on each dropship - One or two Officers, one or two NCO's and the rest being made up of grunts. Only allowing so many Colonels, cpts, Lts, sgts and corporals relative to the number of living quarters would also be acceptable. If a player wants to promote someone up the ranks, he will have to demote a living person or have a KIA spot to fill.

Is that possible? I don't know. I do know I don't care for a bunch wierd ranks. Maybe this is best left to the modding community once the game is live.

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I wouldn't be opposed to a CoC that is represented on each dropship

I would.

It would force me to take specific troops on missions or to avoid promoting my best/favourite troops because otherwise they would be off the team.

I feel that would limit my choices and the fun factor significantly for me.

The limits on the number of people in certain ranks was present in x-com:eu and hopefully will be present here.

I don't like the sound of manual promotion/demotion though.

If I have 50 troops I know I will not mess around with that.

I would probably just keep promoting the ones I use most often, in which case the game may as well auto promote depending on which ranks open up and who has the most combat experience.

As you say 'weird' ranks are not to everyone's taste but then neither are the current ranks.

People have found a dropship full of captains to be very weird.

A dropship full of Defenders is less odd as that has no real world rank/job description associated with it.

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How is that show rank heavy? they mention what? 5 ranks in the entire series? corporal, captain, major, colonel and general?
There were a few sergeants around, too. The problem was that their flagship team consisted of:

- a full bird Colonel

- a Captain (later promoted to major, then lieutenant-colonel) as his second in command

- a former General (remember, Teal'c was Apophis' First Prime) who served as a common grunt

- and a translator/diplomat who wasn't even a member of the military.

Even their secondary SG-teams were commanded by Colonels (Makepeace, anyone?) and Majors, and rarely a lowly Captain, and most of those teams' background members were non-coms with a decade or more of experience and seniority - which is pretty high, when you consider that the typical SG first-contact team was only four people!

Now, there are extentuating circumstances, in that SG teams needed people with the experience and seniority to address all manner of situations (both military and diplomatic, like negotiating off-world alliances on a plenipotentiary basis!), but the fact remains that even in 'black' spec-ops unit like the SGC (or Xenonauts), a bird Colonel should be a rare sight in a field-operation, not leading a glorified fire-team against the Alien Menace on a weekly/daily basis. That's why you have sergeants and lieutenants. :rolleyes:

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Death - Thanks for the details... Fellow nerds :)

However, i dun agree with the last part as the soldiers in Xenonauts are supposed to be elites fighting to save earth... The group of people they tend to recruit tends to be more experienced soldiers aka SGT and above

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Death - Thanks for the details... Fellow nerds :)

However, i dun agree with the last part as the soldiers in Xenonauts are supposed to be elites fighting to save earth... The group of people they tend to recruit tends to be more experienced soldiers aka SGT and above

Goldhawk may be borrowing from SAS practice on that score. The SAS won't even let you try out for them unless you've got four years' active duty and Corporal's stripes to your name, and many of the men who go into Selection are Sergeants... but if they're accepted, their previous rank is ignored within the Regiment and they're back to being Troopers. After 2-4 years, they might get back up to Corporal again; another 2-4, and they might get their third stripe. If they get returned to their original unit, they get their old pre-SAS rank back (or retain the SAS one if it's higher) and are expected to pass on their advanced skills to the average squaddies there.

So one can presume that Xenonauts recruits were all Corporals and Sergeants with sparkling records in their prior service, but once they get to your base, they're considered just grunt Privates by Xenonauts standards.

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