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Ways to address the soldier skill gap


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As I play through, I'm finding that the skill gap between new and old soldiers is far too great. Losing a couple of my elite troops is DEVASTATING. I've managed to recover, but I am admittedly using various exploits and doing my best to powertrain my lower-level troops to mitigate this. (Seriously. While my elites do the actual clearing of a UFO, I'll just have everyone else run calisthenics. It's really boring.) In addition, the later dropships have much larger troop complements, and adding new troops to your combat roster means you will be have some rookies. (Also it dilutes accuracy and reflex skill points.)

Now then, in fear of Chris deciding to make troops indestructible, I decided to start coming up with some ideas to help mitigate this gap WITHOUT putting in any crutches. If you guys have ideas also, feel free to suggest them. Here's what I've got:

1.) Increase soldiers' starting stats while reducing the rate at which they gain stats. The most obvious way to reduce the skill gap is to literally reduce the skill gap. Go figure :P This would also add to the idea that our soldiers are the best in the world when they join us, not random village folk.

2.) Some form of skill and progress-based ways of increasing odds of survival. XCOM2012 had the bleeding out/stabilize mechanic, which is a reasonable way of approaching this. (Although they did make the stupid decision to have it come with a permanent hit to an important attribute, but that's beside the point.) Some other ways to go about it is to have researches and base buildings that increase the chances of a soldier's survival. In the buildings.xml file, I noticed a "Biosurgical Center," and I wonder if this was something that is/was intended to do just that.

3.) A "mentor bonus," where if a soldier is on a mission with / working closely with a better soldier, the rookie will gain stats at an increased rate. So it wouldn't help you get good soldiers at the beginning, but training replacements is more possible.

4.) Off-duty management, where you order the soldiers to actually DO something in between missions, rather than just chilling in the barracks. Things like "Obstacle course" to increase TUs and bravery, "Firing range" to increase accuracy and reflexes. "Weight training" to increase strength and resilience. It's more realistic than gaining skill ups in missions, because spending two days lifting weights does a lot more in the long run than five minutes schlepping gear about a battlefield. Of course, this option doesn't allow for battlefield experience, which is why I'd also recommend giving a flat +2 bonus to all skills per rank up. (Many of the things listed here would require a rebalance of how skills and promotions are gained.)

5.) A ticker- or research-based increase over time to rookie starting stats. Similar to 1.) but with this the starting troops would still have 50-60 in each stat but by lategame rookies would have perhaps 70-80 in each stat. Not enough to overcome the benefits of keeping troops alive, but allowing for easier replacement of elites by lategame.

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I would like some debate on the point of whether losing your elite troops actually is devastating, though. I mean, that is kinda the point (particularly if you're not really using your rookies much). Is it too much?

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Oh, don't bring them back, atleast, give us an option in that case, which we can set before we start. I know for certain that I would not want them to come back lol.

Personally I always bring rookies with me as much as I can to help them along, but an option to build a trainign facility would be great too, similar to the way you train your first rookies you get for 10 days.

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Idea #3 is pretty good. I strongly oppose #4 - to me it goes against the ideology of X-COM, which is that your soldiers should improve through combat, not elsewhere. #3 is probably not too difficult by doing something similar to morale. The way morale stays higher with higher ranked soldiers present, skill increase after a mission can factor squad ranks into the calculation.

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I'd like to ask a question. What's the most important stat that you miss when you loose an elite? For me, I miss two stats - AP and strength. Strength is super important if I want my rocket guys to carry a reasonable number of rockets (i.e. 3 or more). It's also very important for my heavies, my riot-shielded guy, and anyone whom I want to carry more than their gun, two magazines and a few grenades. AP is just as important, because AP directly translates to what a guy can do, which is also super important for my heavies if I want them to fire then move in the turn, or if I have a guy who gets caught out by an alien and needs to get into cover, or if I want a guy to throw a smoke grenade or.. or.. there's lot so things that AP is really, really important for, so it is perhaps the stat that I miss most of all when I loose an elite.

Now, what are the stats that I don't miss when I loose an elite? HP. Meh. A solider can't take many hits before he keels over. Cover and armour are way more important than the HP of a solider. Bravery. Meh. My soliders don't loose that much morale. Accuracy. Meh. You'd think I would consider this to be super important. Not really - if an alien is out in the open he's a dead man. If he's in cover he's really hard to hit. There's no in-between. So, meh I say!

Of the two stats that I miss, both are super easy to get. Strength? Carry stuff. AP? Walk around a lot. It's not that hard to train up rookies to have decent AP and decent strength - all they have to do is survive missions. So I neither find it devastating to loose an elite, nor do I find it particularly hard to replace one when I do.

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Honeslty I don't want any of those ideas. but if it has to be one then let it be.

Just Don't what ever happens make indestructible soldiers. Just that one thing would make this game completely not fun for me. I hate games when developers gloss over death. I don't play games to win or lose, i play games for the challenge to one day win. if a game is set so i can't fail from my own mistakes (or even that random chance from now and then), then from my point of view it is no longer a game I am intrested in.

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As I play through, I'm finding that the skill gap between new and old soldiers is far too great. Losing a couple of my elite troops is DEVASTATING.
Wasn't this the case in the original game too? Anyway, I have a simple solution to the problem that would be EASY to implement. Just have soldiers gain skills on a curve. So, the newbies move up quickly, but later the gains come much more slowly. Something like this maybe: Accuracy Gain = (Number of shots * 40)/(Current Accuracy - 49)^2. So, a newbie with a starting accuracy of 50 comes back from a mission having taken 5 shots in combat. He'd get (5 * 40)/(50 - 49)^2 = 4 point accuracy gain. An experienced trooper with 70 starting accuracy would get (5 * 40)/(70 - 49)^2 = .45 for the same mission. Your experienced trooper would need to take twice as many shots to even gain 1 point of accuracy increase. The newbies will move up quickly to good troops, but good troops will take much longer to become super elite. The formula could be applied to every stat that can change.
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So a couple people cited the original game -- Let me point out, I've never played the original game. It was a bit before my time, coming out just two years after I was born. :P So I have no idea what the "OG" had.

And yeah, the indestructible soldiers thing was completely intended as a joke.

As to the overall value difference between elites and rookies: Yes, it's pretty huge. In current balance (being changed, I know), 40 is pretty much the "standard" cost for attacks. Grenades cost 40 with a two-handed weapon, all autofire costs 40, accurate shots cost 30-50 depending, so we'll just use 40 as the baseline. A recruit has 50-60 AP, so they can move a bit and shoot once. An elite gets 122 AP. If they don't move and just rotate a bit, they can fire three accurate attacks. As for strength, I'm finding that you can't really use MAG weaponry practically without having a minimum of 70-80 strength. I'm not finding the accuracy difference to be too great, but then again -- I'm using only LMGs, so I guess that makes strength more important and accuracy less.

When I lost two elites to a fusion reactor going off on the top level of a carrier, I had to honestly question whether I was able to proceed. In fact, it was only the fact that I was running lots of calisthenics with my rookies that I was able to absorb that loss -- and rookie calisthenics is really unfun to do. Just select a person and tell them to run someplace. Repeat 4-10 times per turn, depending on rookie count. Just to grind up strength and TUs in every single mission. And make sure everyone's carrying lots of stuff -- hate to miss out on 'dem strength bumps!

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Woah, I thought AP was capped at 100? Does it go up to 122? That's not meant to be happening.

Ah, it's 120.

<APProgress comment="A progress point is earned every time a soldier spends a TU on a mission" globalMaxProgress="120" maxPointsInSingleBattle="600" pointsToProgress="300"/>
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EDIT (and to actually adress the OP's point)

I deeply hate the idea of adding a training mechanic beyond the basic one. These recruits are already the best the funding nations have to offer. The only way they're going to get any better in fighting aliens, is by actually fighting aliens.

Troops are supposed to die a lot in this game. It will happen, and the best you can do is minimize the chances of losing your most valuable troops.

My method for training up rookies is a... slightly less humane one. My rookies all get to be heavy weapons troopers (because of the powered armor, and the fact that lots of shooting is bound to hit something), and they all get to be the pointman. While Nooby McNooberson is scouting ahead and soaking up reaction fire, my crack team of elites is behind, in cover and ready to back him up when he inevitably misses his first shot.

Repeat until dead, or until Private McNooberson gets a commission. When Colonel McNooberson finally hits the point where he's maxed his AP and has a very good hitpoint total, he gets rotated onto the bench. Here he gets to sit until his buddy, Veterany Oldman, gets his molecules scattered across the tundra by a plasma cannon, or when his expertise is needed for a downed capital saucer or a terror mission.

Edited by alcari
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Yeah, I dunno why, but the max AP is actually 122. The xml files say 120, but my troops consistently hit 122, exactly. Strength is normal at a max of 100, and I think accuracy actually hits 109 or something like that. Don't have any max-accuracy troops right now, though. And I can't tell you about reflexes or bravery because I never get those significantly trained.

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Training.

Maybe sen "rookies" on extended trainign where wthill will be unavailalbe for a period.

OR

Send them out to support the regular military. This would work similar to training, but there's a chance that a rookie won't come back (or will come back ian bodybag).

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Or we could have a danger rating on missions and keep getting easy missions later in the campaign as well. We could have a research that enables coordination with local forces which enables us to either direct local forces to the easy missions, or send in our rookies (or whoever we want). If the local forces handles it we simply don't get anything from it, but it could fail too which could have a negative rating.

Well, just brainstorming really.

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Here are some Ideas I came up with.

EXTENDED TRAINING

This would be a second stage of training you can send rookie solders to, this one will increase their stats even more as well as their rank. However at the cost that they will be unavailable for some time and that it will cost you money to send them to this training. Say between $10,000 to $50,000 a soldier. This will mean you can get a Rookie up to a good standard at the cost of a lot of money and time.

RAISE LOWER SKILL LIMIT

As the game progresses make it that the stat points given to rookie soldiers increases, this would be a passive method that would not create highly skilled soldiers from the get go but would make new soldiers somewhat more useful against the more advance Aliens.

BIOLOGICAL IMPLANT

Allow the player to research and build an implant building that would allow you to implant biological improvements to soldiers, this could be further specialized by allowing you to implant special implants that are tailor to a specific play style, so a Sniper could get a implant that improves their Aim at Range for example.

However at the risk that the implant could fail and kill the soldier during the implant process. A sad way to lose your high ranked Commander.

ELITE SOLDIER RECRUITMENT INCENTIVES

If the player does well enough for a region block, or wins a Terror Mission, then that nation might donate a relativity good solider to the Xenonauts. This soldier would not be a high ranked and tired unit but would still be a useful addition and add another incentive to help a nation block aside from funding and hoping they won't mousy up with the Aliens.

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Also, a soldier who goes down might not necessarily die, but just go unconscious. That way he/she could be recovered if the mission is a success and would be in surgery/sickbay for a while, but most likely return. That way the total loss of experienced soldiers don't go down as fast either.

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I think the training idea is a good one, but it should be more complex than (timetraining)=(skillgain).

Soldiers should have an untrained base stat and a max trainable stat. (Ie base recruit str of 50, max trainable of 60).

Soldiers not training or participating in combat should have stat decay. The untrained minimum should be much lower than the max is higher. (IE base str 50, min str 20, training cap 60)

Stats over trainable max should only be gained through combat, and should decay at a fast rate without upkeep training or combat experiance.

This method would imo reduce the gap, reduce peak soldiers, and give the player a feeling of more control over his favorite soldiers.

There should be a default 'maintenance training' that keeps players who don't want to micromange put all their soldiers into a default training state that keeps stats from decaying but will not improve stats.

Edited by xcorps
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It could also be such that all personnel who sit at the base doing nothing would in fact be training by themselves, and sharing the experience from those who has gone on more missions than they have. They would learn tactics and whatever information those experienced soldiers could teach the rookies.

This could account for a small free boost, mind you they would never ever go up to the same experience level as those who has actually gone on missions, but it would help keep the rookies at a level they would atleast be of some use throughout the whole campaign. Unless you completely wipe of course.

But I still think a training facility would be the best. It could be a big building even, with shooting range and MOUT facilities. Could even be so that you would put such a facility in a smaller base that is mainly a training base, and perhaps research.

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Yes, I left out of my post that if you want to benefit from training by gaining points, you would have to build facilities. Otherwise your troops are in maintenance training.

A simple gym that can stat boost 10 soldiers slowly, a high tech facility that can house more soldiers and train more quickly, and as you mentioned full ops training facilities complete with live fire rooms where you can send your whole complement for the fastest stat boosts complete with cash costs for each training period. (ie 10k per soldier, soldier can use it once biweekly or monthly, something like that)

Soldiers in wound recovery should have increased stat decay.

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