A7K

I have to change my bug, apparently it is pausing the game that stops the scroll keys from responding. i just happened to be in other windows and returning while the game was paused on the geoscape. please edit the title if possible.

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.

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.

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)