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In my opinion, and in the opinions of many others, the ranks used by the game are simply too high. You can reach Colonel for crying out loud; that's pretty unrealistic and immersion breaking for many players. A simple fix is to change the ranks that the soldiers can receive. There are eight rank slots. Currently, they are: Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Commander, Colonel. I propose changing them to: Private, Lance Corporal, Corporal, Sergeant, Sergeant Major, 2nd Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Captain. Please vote: Yea (Change the ranks to the proposed above), Nay (Leave the ranks as they are in the game), or Yea, Other (Explain in comment below).

Terror mission: The aliens are confident, we're dealing with trained commandos, overwhelming orgazational and technological superiority. Goal to cause as much havoc as possible. Pre-arrival, enemy troops would fan out individually, seek high spots for better fields of fire and less grouping. Post-arrival, depending on rank in charge, they could either see the Xenonauts as civvies to be slaughtered and persist in single-unit tactics until the kill count starts to climb, morale drops, and they begin to regroup and find somewhere defensible. If the commander is higher ranking, instead of waiting for the cannon fodder to start going down, their units could start to regroup quickly (first couple turns) and attempt to establish sniper perches and flanking positions. This gives the player an excuse to USE those rockets they've been saving. Landed UFO: The aliens are there for a reason, present in nominal quantities, and organized. There would be a perimeter around the UFO itself and fire support elements with the scouts, to protect them while they pick wild flowers, romance cattle, or whatever it is they're doing. Post-arrival, the scouts would fall back toward the perimeter and the advance guard would attempt to advance, suppress, and neutralize. As the kill count starts to climb there would be a retreat (organized, if the highest-ranking officer can override the morale of aliens for longer, blind panic otherwise) back toward the defended perimeter. This might start to tie into an idea where if the aliens have uncontested access to the ship or engine room for X turns, they can take off again. You left an interceptor on combat-air-patrol when you landed the skyranger, right? Crashed UFO: Depends on the highest-ranked officer whether they have enough presence of mind to establish a defensive perimeter (higher ranks = smarter positioning, higher terrain, covering fire, etc) and work to get the craft mobile again (landed turns x 1.5 to compensate for damage) or just all pull back to the engine room, hoping to get it airborne before the scary soldiers arrive, or (for very low-ranking officers, early-game) just run around randomly and shoot if they think they have a chance, but try to get away from their ship because it'll draw fire and they want to live. I like the idea of the local strategic situation changing depending on who's there and for what, and depending how savvy your commanding counterpart is. Especially for that feeling when a sniper and a rocketeer take out the highest ranking alien behind enemy lines and their whole strategy starts falling apart. No, it's not fair, because they can't take you out--unless Chris lets us have avatars--but the point is to progress, not be stymied in one map for six hours because Sectoid Rommel over there read all our books.

Airman Corporal Sergeant Lieutenant Captain Major Colonel Brigadier General Marshal