OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Suggestions => Topic started by: Recruit69 on July 21, 2014, 01:05:07 am
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I'm sure many people do this....
Buy Rookies.
Check their stats, if rubbish, use them as bait in battles or sack them..... hire more....
repeat till you have a bunch of clever naturally talented soldiers.
But what about this?
An option to recruit a soldier, of say, specialises in accuracy.... or reactions.... or strength (Arnold Swagnegger!) or bravery.....only the one stat though to avoid excessive hiring of the special soldiers and of course retain the micromanagement feel...! Rest of the stats are still randomised at normal rookie values, as it still reflects the fact that they are inexperienced.
So a standard soldier costs $40,000. But a "specialist" soldier would cost, say £120,000
Thoughts?
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Difficult to do. There are no standard grouping of soliders. It could be milked so that the expensive option chooses a different stat generation modifier or something. But they would still get listed as "soldier". Such could would get tricky because if one bought a mix of soldiers and elite, the engine would have to go through multiple loops to generate as expected.
They're monthly cost would also be 120K...A cadre of 5 of these eliter mercs would more than a skyranger each month.
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I'm sure many people do this....
Right, I did
An option to recruit a soldier, of say, specialises in accuracy.... or reactions.... or strength (Arnold Swagnegger!) or bravery.....only the one stat though to avoid excessive hiring of the special soldiers and of course retain the micromanagement feel...! Rest of the stats are still randomised at normal rookie values, as it still reflects the fact that they are inexperienced.
So a standard soldier costs $40,000. But a "specialist" soldier would cost, say £120,000
I personally decided to raise some attributes in my own mod to avoid such a temptation. All salaries have also been raised (x2).
But a way to have different profiles at different cost could be interesting, even if I think it could have some impacts on some screens.
They're monthly cost would also be 120K...A cadre of 5 of these eliter mercs would more than a skyranger each month.
Right, but it's just a question of balancing. And what is a Skyranger with no valuable crew...
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The best way to enable this would be to allow for multiple soldier types. This is already in the ruleset, kind of, but the code itself only supports one unit type: X-Com agents (HWPs and the like are a different matter; they don't use equipment, don't gain experience etc.).
If more types are enabled, then you could have several tiers/types of soldiers, perhaps even unlockable by tech. And it would be great for conversion mods, like fantasy X-Com (various fantasy races).
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If more types are enabled, then you could have several tiers/types of soldiers, perhaps even unlockable by tech. And it would be great for conversion mods, like fantasy X-Com (various fantasy races).
You could have the Chuck Norris class: 200 TUs, 200 Firing Accuracy and 200 Melee Accuracy, obtainable through researching Muton bodies.
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You could have the Chuck Norris class: 200 TUs, 200 Firing Accuracy and 200 Melee Accuracy, obtainable through researching Muton bodies.
Yes, but you could only have a maximum of ONE Chuck Norris, after all, there's no one else quite like Chuck Norris himself!
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Yes, but you could only have a maximum of ONE Chuck Norris, after all, there's no one else quite like Chuck Norris himself!
Why would you need more than one Chuck Norris? The aliens would start running for their UFOs once they saw him :)
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Why would you need more than one Chuck Norris? The aliens would start running for their UFOs once they saw him :)
Speaking of the 80's heroes, can we also have the Pamela Anderson version? Automatically casts Mind Control on all units that see her from the front... :P
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but if you have a floater in polar region above water pamela runs to save the poor guy
wasn't that more 90s than 80s?
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wasn't that more 90s than 80s?
Well, I wanted to use someone else first, but decided that they might be a bit too obscure. :P
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I'm sure many people do this....
Buy Rookies.
Check their stats, if rubbish, use them as bait in battles or sack them..... hire more....
repeat till you have a bunch of clever naturally talented soldiers
Wel actually all these i hired never sacked anyone then, they fought with me till death :D
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Even those with high risk of panicking to blow your team apart from psi attack?
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Even those with high risk of panicking to blow your team apart from psi attack?
Yep, but then ragequitting strikes O_o mhhh that' probably why i never finised ever the vsniola ufo enemy unknown!!! :) :D
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Has anyone considered how to program multiple soldier types?
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I added buyable merc units in my personal mod combo, HOWEVER they will not improve, can't kneel, can't use armor and use a fixed-weapon pistol. They are technically spoken HWPs. They are excellent rank-fillers at the beginning of the game, but become obsolote very fast.
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I only registered here to say - YES WE NEED THIS MOD! ^__^ You see I have a personal problem in games like X-Com. I mean - games with retained crew that can be lost in battle. The problem is that loosing such soldiers usually is very critical for further gameplay. It's not just - oh, this soldier died, it's a shame, well nevermind, I'll replace it with not so good, but still pretty effective one. X-Com is not a Cannon Fodder or Alien Assault. Loosing veteran fighter here is very painful. And if you'll accidentally lose all veteran crew in one battle - it will be disaster. It's definitely one way load game situation. Especially on a higher difficulty settings. So I play X-Com that way - if I'll lose someone, I just loading the game. And must admit that it very extends walkthrough not in a good point of view. Game becomes a pain in the ass pretty soon in this case. So it would be wonderful if OpenXCom would have a mod that allows to buy more experienced soldiers or maybe train them pretty fast for a reasonable amount of money. Though there should some balance so these possibilities couldn't be used at the beginning of the game.
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I only registered here to say - YES WE NEED THIS MOD! ^__^ You see I have a personal problem in games like X-Com. I mean - games with retained crew that can be lost in battle. The problem is that loosing such soldiers usually is very critical for further gameplay. It's not just - oh, this soldier died, it's a shame, well nevermind, I'll replace it with not so good, but still pretty effective one. X-Com is not a Cannon Fodder or Alien Assault. Loosing veteran fighter here is very painful. And if you'll accidentally lose all veteran crew in one battle - it will be disaster. It's definitely one way load game situation. Especially on a higher difficulty settings. So I play X-Com that way - if I'll lose someone, I just loading the game. And must admit that it very extends walkthrough not in a good point of view. Game becomes a pain in the ass pretty soon in this case. So it would be wonderful if OpenXCom would have a mod that allows to buy more experienced soldiers or maybe train them pretty fast for a reasonable amount of money. Though there should some balance so these possibilities couldn't be used at the beginning of the game.
Experience cannot be bought with money. That's even true in real military life. I'm not really into history, but I know a few cases where operations failed or severed a great loss because of an inexperienced commander. This is also true for soldiers. You think it's funny when soldiers panick and go berzerk but actually a lot of soldiers are killed by other inexperienced comrades (literally, or by mistakes of them). Hell, just play close combat series and you'll at least understand what I mean. The fear is the worst enemy, indeed.
I find absolutely nothing wrong about losing a veteran soldier causing a serious trouble. Actually, XCOM is not harsh at all: you can easily get several good soldiers with 50ish reaction and 60ish accuracy after some gamblings and usually that's more than enough. That being said, I sort of agree to the point that since gambling is just too tedious, one should just be able to identify the stats beforehand(not totally, though). But if one just advocates this just because he doesn't want one of his soldiers being killed, the only conclusion I can make is that he is just not good at this game. I don't think it is a valid argument that others can agree on.
Nobody likes one of his operatives being killed. But inevitably someone should die. The word 'strategy' it itself implies that the game cannot be played by a single superhuman soldier, since if then nobody needs a strategy. What players can do is to reduce the possibility that the veteran units (if possible, every units) will be killed. The process of thinking itself brings a lot of fun in this type of game, IMHO.
Don't take this too hard, though. Everyone has his own way of playing games so play it as you wish. I'm just saying that I cannot agree with the logics you're using. Maybe you might be interested in several different LP series in the 'Let's Play OpenXCOM' section: they're quite fun to watch and also gives a lot of useful information :)
For the main topic, I think it would critically depend on the combination of mods one is going to use, but in general if it becomes able to identify the stats beforehand, I think the maximum stat cap should be lowered from the current cap. Maybe reaction around 50 and accuracy around 50~60. Requiring more money won't be enough since after certain points nobody won't ever give a look at those inferior soldiers. We can also imagine there is a limited amount of those high-level soldiers and the stack is being refilled every month, but I think it will be quite tough to actually implement it :P
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Let us look at this from a different angle. How about instead seeking to have a pool of great soldiers from the start, we modify the way soldiers level up? Very few people start off ready to fight otherworldly horrors, but X-com is very much a sink or swim environment. New weapons, armor, and camaraderie with the other fighters should quickly raise competence.
So perhaps either the threshold for learning is lowered, or the die rolled for each action taken is raised. According the the UFOpedia on experience (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Experience) one or two shots is a coin flip for skill advancement, 6-10 successful shots is 1d4, and 11 plus is 2d6. How about instead it becomes 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10? Or more esoteric distribution of: 1d3, 1d4+1, 1d6, 1d5+2?
This means that now there is more pay-off for everyone trying to get in a shot or three, rather than relying on a few good soldiers to do everything and advance the most. Since it tops out lower, there is less focus on glory/kill hogs - but those who take any action are better rewarded.
Some care and feeding of rookies is still required, but you won't be limited to one elite cadre either.
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Just to chime in here, in my LP I'm trying to get 50 soldiers promoted from Rookie status so that they can be named after subscribers (no one gets a name until they get at least one promotion in my universe). That makes me spread the experience out a lot. I usually have 2-4 rookies per mission that I am trying to feed kills to, etc to get them promoted. I have some pretty good soldiers but they aren't a single squad of superstars. I have split base operations and a transport and strike team in each. A squad wipe would be painful, but not a show stopper. Even Cydonia has been done with soldiers in starting equipment. It just takes a change in tactics.
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Experience cannot be bought with money. That's even true in real military life. I'm not really into history, but I know a few cases where operations failed or severed a great loss because of an inexperienced commander. This is also true for soldiers. You think it's funny when soldiers panick and go berzerk but actually a lot of soldiers are killed by other inexperienced comrades (literally, or by mistakes of them). Hell, just play close combat series and you'll at least understand what I mean. The fear is the worst enemy, indeed.
I find absolutely nothing wrong about losing a veteran soldier causing a serious trouble. Actually, XCOM is not harsh at all: you can easily get several good soldiers with 50ish reaction and 60ish accuracy after some gamblings and usually that's more than enough. That being said, I sort of agree to the point that since gambling is just too tedious, one should just be able to identify the stats beforehand(not totally, though). But if one just advocates this just because he doesn't want one of his soldiers being killed, the only conclusion I can make is that he is just not good at this game. I don't think it is a valid argument that others can agree on.
Well, X-Com is a game first of all - not a simulator of military action. This means that gameplay rules should always be in a priority. As for system of hiring new troops - it should be definitely more clear. Maybe something like Griswold shop in Diablo. You have a list of recruits with shown parameters that (list, not parameters ^_^) change regular. Maybe something like - the oldest offer (if the list is full) leaves the list and the new offer appears in the list every in-game day. As for skill - I don't say that I can't play the game without loadings even on the easy setting. But to my opinion it's not very good when game creates one way game over situation. Anyway - this should be a mod that you can choose if you want, but if you don't want just don't use it.
Nobody likes one of his operatives being killed. But inevitably someone should die. The word 'strategy' it itself implies that the game cannot be played by a single superhuman soldier, since if then nobody needs a strategy. What players can do is to reduce the possibility that the veteran units (if possible, every units) will be killed. The process of thinking itself brings a lot of fun in this type of game, IMHO.
I don't say about superhumans. Of course if you made a mistake you should be punished for it. I just say about size of that punishment. As I said the rule that new recruits are weaker than your veterans is absolutely fine. But only at the beginning of the game. The further you play the more problems will bring you deaths of your experienced troops. Until it becomes almost impossible to fight with aliens with your new recruits. Even if you'll say in terms of realism - it's OK for organizations to hire experienced soldiers that were on some war if that organizations have enough money for this. Yes, these soldiers shouldn't be so strong as your elites. But they should be in the same time much tougher than green recruits that you hired at the beginning of the game. Anyway I don't say about rebalance of default rules. But with such mod the game would be much more interesting at least for me, cause I like rogue-like games and don't like to use load function if anything goes wrong.
ChainsawAardvark
Not sure that I understood all, but it sound pretty interesting. ^__^ Maybe it can be reasonable to give less experience for personal achievements of each soldiers, but more for successful mission. Like - hey, greeny, although you didn't do something special in this operation, but you saw real battle and smelled some gunpowder, so you know now how to fight. In this case mixed teams consisting of rookies and veterans will be much more effective in terms of learning.
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I had similar thoughts about how soldier deaths are so devastating in the endgame, which led me to an experimental system which gives diminishing returns of experience : First combat experience boosts soldier's efficiency a lot, but then it requires more and more kills to keep improving. Soldier deaths are still punishing, but fresh recruits only need 3 or 4 active battles to be almost as effective as hardened veterans.
I haven't updated it for a while though, the build is older than OpenXcom 1.0 - but the ideas may be interesting.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=2067.msg20157#msg20157
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I had similar thoughts about how soldier deaths are so devastating in the endgame, which led me to an experimental system which gives diminishing returns of experience : First combat experience boosts soldier's efficiency a lot, but then it requires more and more kills to keep improving.
To be honest, I thought it's already been like this in the vanilla version?
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No, the vanilla system ignores 'current skill'. Veteran soldiers get the same stat increase/XP as rookies. Actually, since veterans are much more successful in their actions (and only success gives XP), they improve faster than rookies.
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if you have a choice between a "good" soldier and an "average" soldier, why would you EVER buy an average one? as soon as you offer the player something BETTER they'll use that every single time, to the exclusion of all else. think of it in doom terms: once you pick up a chaingun, why would you ever switch back to the pistol?, or back in xcom terms: why would you use anything other than a heavy plasma? adding the "option" for elite soldiers will instantly make the average ones completely obsolete. you may as well just mod the stats that soldiers are generated with and call it a day.
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There is already an alternative to rookie troops, in the forms of the automated tanks. More armor, more TUs, and heavy weapons in one platform, with no monthly salary or need to micromanage equipment. Of course, the trade off is they're expensive, large, only a few go on the mission, don't really get better (indeed if they get the kills, the rest of the solders don't advance...) etcetera.
Perhaps what we need is something like the modern TALON (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster-Miller_TALON)/SWORD combat robots rather than elite troopers. Arpia already made a scout drone mod (https://www.openxcom.com/mod/scout-drone) - give it an assault rifle rather than a smoke launcher, up the cost a bit, and there you go.
Since these are remotes operating on cameras (and in 1999, not even mega-pixel class digital units yet) even if they're cheap, they're not accurate, and have fairly low TUs due to limited control schemes.
To make this even more strategic, maybe there are a few different types of drones with specific specialties, so you need to pick and choose what you have. A standard Talon is a decent shot, but has no reaction fire ability, while sentry guns have high reaction and a sniper rifle, but don't move fast. Bomb disposal drones may be able to plant heavy explosives/grenades and have electronic disable units (ie stun rods) but no ranged weapons. Human soldiers have greater adaptability.
Unfortunately, I'm not all that good at programming, so I can't make a complete mod for remote robots myself, but if someone wants to take this and run with it, you have my interest.
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think of it in doom terms
I like the way you think :)
as soon as you offer the player something BETTER they'll use that every single time, to the exclusion of all else.
Yes if both options are available, and even if the best one is in limited supply, the player will systematically use as many of the best option as possible, so it's not very rich in term of gameplay choices.
Note that the original post was about specialists : Sometimes you'd be willing to pay for a soldier who is under-average as long as he has the single stat that you need to fit a role.
About the issue of replacing precious casualties in late parts of the campaign (in order to replace "reload savegame")
- One option could be that as the campaign advances, all recruits get better. +1 per month or something.
- A more complicated system would pool the stat increases of your lost soldiers, with a penalty (ex: halved). New hires would draw from this pool of points.
- any school/training system where your veterans can train the rookies.
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Warboy1982
That's why I said that this system should be balanced and possibility to hire veteran soldiers should appear not at the beginning of the game.
yrizoud
I like all three variants (not sure that +1 per month will be enough, but still it's much better than now). Is it possible to release or it's just abstract ideas without concrete plans? I mean, I can't even imagine if this is hard to make or not.
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Warboy1982
That's why I said that this system should be balanced and possibility to hire veteran soldiers should appear not at the beginning of the game.
You can do it very easily by modifying the ruleset. Open Xcom1Ruleset.rul and check here.
soldiers:
- type: XCOM
minStats:
tu: 50
stamina: 40
health: 25
bravery: 10
reactions: 30
firing: 40
throwing: 50
strength: 20
psiStrength: 0
psiSkill: 0
melee: 20
maxStats:
tu: 60
stamina: 70
health: 40
bravery: 60
reactions: 60
firing: 70
throwing: 80
strength: 40
psiStrength: 100
psiSkill: 16
melee: 40
statCaps:
tu: 80
stamina: 100
health: 60
bravery: 100
reactions: 100
firing: 120
throwing: 120
strength: 70
psiStrength: 100
psiSkill: 100
melee: 120
Just lower the maxStats as you wish and now veterans would be a real veteran (no startup veterans). I'm thinking of putting the max reaction to 50 and accuracy to 50 in my next playthrough. This would also lower the variance of the distribution of stats so one would not (or less ;)) complain about the gambling property of buying soldiers but still maintaining the diversity of soldiers, hopefully :)
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No, the vanilla system ignores 'current skill'. Veteran soldiers get the same stat increase/XP as rookies. Actually, since veterans are much more successful in their actions (and only success gives XP), they improve faster than rookies.
Okay, what I meant was that the lower the stat, the faster it progresses; it has nothing to do with soldier's overall experience or rank, but still boils down to the same issue. It's especially visible on very low stats, for example Melee in normal X-Com or Strength in Piratez (for the really weak characters): it is normal to get an increase from 10 to 18 in just one mission, but I don't think you can advance from 50 to 58 in one mission. But I could be wrong, since I don't have any hard information to back this up.
I'm not sure if it belongs to this thread, but I'm all for allowing more than soldier type. It's not really important for the vanilla game, but it would give plenty of goodness for some mods, especially the aforementioned Piratez (more than one mutant type to recruit from). Some people also dream of specialists like engineers or combat medics (though not me personally to be honest).
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Okay, what I meant was that the lower the stat, the faster it progresses;
Nope, see the detailed article on ufopedia website. Only a successful reaction shot will give a "reaction XP", and on mission debriefing, these "reaction XPs" will occur a stat increase that doesn't depend on the soldiers starting or current stats.
So a soldier with reactions 30 will fail all his reaction tests and never improve, while a soldier with reaction 60+ will succeed his tests and improve a lot.
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Nope, see the detailed article on ufopedia website. Only a successful reaction shot will give a "reaction XP", and on mission debriefing, these "reaction XPs" will occur a stat increase that doesn't depend on the soldiers starting or current stats.
Sure, s/he must be eligible to advance the skill in the first place. But if they are, they seem to advance much faster if the skill in question is low, or at least it seems to be so - like I described.
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a +3 for a stat with 25 is "more" (12 % increase) then a +3 for a stat with 60 (5% increase) so the increase seems to be faster early on even if the absolute value stays the same
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Sure, s/he must be eligible to advance the skill in the first place. But if they are, they seem to advance much faster if the skill in question is low, or at least it seems to be so - like I described.
it's not.
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it's not.
Oh. Sorry then. :P
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One thing that most XCom player do is hire a bunch of soldiers and keep the few that meet their expectations. This hire and fire mechanic is boring and really adds nothing to the game.
It could entirely be replaced by something where the initial hiring cost of soldiers is higher but soldiers come with better stats. Set your soldiers' hiring cost 5x more and set the stats so that you keep all of them instead of 1 in 5. End result: You paid 5x the hiring cost of vanilla soldiers and you got the number of soldiers you wanted. And you saved yourself the tedium of screening.
Of course, you can't always afford to pay 5x the cost (especially in the early game) so that not entirely equivalent. Also, I think in OpenXCom the hiring cost and monthly costs are the same, so setting hiring cost at 5x means you're paying 5x the monthly costs and that's certainly not equivalent.
Personally, I have a set of statstrings that significantly speed up the screening process and that seems to take care of the useless rookie problem.
There are also plenty of ways to train your useful rookies so that they become decent. Give them the "easy" weapons so they hit aliens easily. Anything explosive is good for that, arcing explosives are the best. Missed the alien by 5 tiles? Who cares, you hit the ground, stuff explodes and you hurt the alien. Since the alien wasn't at ground zero, it survived so now rookie #2 can take a shot too!
Always give them priority in trying to kill aliens too. Your 90+ accuracy sniper sure is awesome, but let the rookies who are scouting take a few shots first (not the guy who just spotted the alien and will take reaction fire to the face though!). With laser weapons it doesn't cost you anything (except making the battle a bit longer) and once in a while, they'll hit and become better, saving your sniper's fire for when you really need it.
Finally, having advanced armors with stat bonuses helps a lot for the rookies too. Veterans need heavy armors because you don't want them to die. They already have awesome stats so they don't need the bonus. Rookies can weak crappier armor that boosts TUs/Reactions/Accuracy, allowing them to do more and thus get more experience. If the rookie gets shot and dies because his armor wasn't heavy enough, who cares? He was a rookie any ways. If he gets enough experience to become valuable, give him a heavier armor. (Or course you could also have heavy armors with stat bonuses, but then it becomes OP armor..).
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There are also plenty of ways to train your useful rookies so that they become decent.
Except that it's extremely wasteful to train soldiers with accuracy <50. The amount of efforts you need to make them average is the same amount that would turn an average troop into a sharpshooter.
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TaxxiDriver
Oh, you mean decrease max possible stats so rookie soldiers would be not so weak comparing to veterans? That's... interesting decision. ^_^ I'll take a note of it and use this method in my next playthrough if nobody will create some interesting training/hiring mod by that moment.
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Everyone has their own way of playing, but... aren't you guys taking it a bit too far? I never fire anyone, and everyone who survives becomes a decent soldier soon enough. I can't see any reason to do anything more.
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Everyone has their own way of playing, but... aren't you guys taking it a bit too far? I never fire anyone, and everyone who survives becomes a decent soldier soon enough. I can't see any reason to do anything more.
I'm in complete agreement with you Solarius. I like grooming rookies. :)
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@Solarius & Ivan: I don't know.. It's all about what you enjoy. I don't like my soldiers repeatedly missing a target a few tiles ahead of them, especially when the missed shots have this weird tendency to go ~45 degrees off and hit other soldiers/civilians.
Except that it's extremely wasteful to train soldiers with accuracy <50. The amount of efforts you need to make them average is the same amount that would turn an average troop into a sharpshooter.
That's why I say "useful rookies". I don't tend to keep rookies with accuracy <50, unless they have really good reactions and decent TUs, both of which help with the training.
Then I give them either explosive weapons (even if you can't aim, clipping an alien with an explosion from 5 tiles away will give you XP). I also aim at the floor next to the alien instead of at the alien. A shot aimed downward will hit the ground in a radius of ~3 tiles, clipping the alien in the explosion, instead of flying off the map when aimed horizontally. Or I give them shotgun like weapons and walk them real close to aliens to get at least 1 hit.
(I also have a class of armour in the XAE that's perfect for rookies, adding TUs, Accuracy and Reactions, at the cost of protection. This way they don't require as much effort to train. Even though they might die a bit more, if they were wearing that armor, they weren't really valuable yet.)
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I don't understand why we don't just make a Combat Simulator base facility that works like a Psi Lab. It slowly trains soldiers in all stats, lower the stat, the faster improvement.
Tec that eventually lead to it would be
-medikits
-psi lab
-psi amb
Maybe
-Alien Food
-Alien Entertainment
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Totally on board with that.
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Maybe we could take care of this problem with either manufacturian and/or research.
Have your scientist research better screening methods or have your engineers build special training equepement that acts as a buff to all soldiers at the base. Obviously you could do a combination.
On a different line of thought. I don't understand why the Commander doesn't force his troops a psi attack each other every day. Even if they did it twice, the attackers would gain more skill and the defender could build up his bravery.
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You can easily make armors that boost soldier stats, although that doesn't take care of "in base training", it can represent technological development.
One could argue that the psi-lab does exactly what you describe in terms of increasing the psi-skill of soldiers. It might not be great for morale/cohesion to have people psi-attack/MC each other regularly either.
In the end, training is a feature that plenty of people want, including Warboy when he was working on his own mod/Tweaked OXC. We'll probably see it happen, after TftD.
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i've actually recoded that just recently by request for someone on IRC, i'll probably PR yankes with it.
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Well, X-Com is a game first of all - not a simulator of military action. This means that gameplay rules should always be in a priority. As for system of hiring new troops - it should be definitely more clear. Maybe something like Griswold shop in Diablo. You have a list of recruits with shown parameters that (list, not parameters ^_^) change regular. Maybe something like - the oldest offer (if the list is full) leaves the list and the new offer appears in the list every in-game day.
This has always been my opinion. I mean, I'm the leader of a (somewhat) prioritized multi-national defense force. Are you telling me I can't even see the soldiers I can get before they arrive? I'd expect to at least be able to see a list of potential candidates before I decide who I recruit, and not just settle for whatever dregs the governments scrape off the bottom of the barrel (even if it IS the very nicest of barrels). Then I can pick who I need based on priority. Maybe increase the range of both caps, so if I want that guy who can thread a needle with a bullet, I have to accept the fact that his target can run a marathon before the shot ever comes. My thought was more to have a set number of candidates each month, and the next month replace them with new applicants, or maybe just fill in the gaps. If you use all up your wannabes before then, then you DO have to accept whatever random guys (and gals) the feds can conscript to your cause. Although I do like the idea of adding one (or some) more each day. Either way works, really.
Oh, and as for the "Stats improve more when they're lower or not" debate, you have to be more specific. Primaries (accuracy, reactions) don't, but your secondaries DO improve faster at lower levels (statistically speaking, of course).
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So no one made such a mod yet? I wonder is it possible to make dynamic starting characteristics of recruits depending on time or some events in the game?
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you can probably be able to make this by making them as human HWP that can be buyable from beginning but not manufactured and no ufopaedia
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Being HWP, you will only be able to load a few in your transports and they will never improve though, that doesn't quite work.
Unfortunately, one can only define one type of soldier, with one set of stat ranges, and the actual values of the stats are only generated when the soldier is ordered. You have to do your own screening. That is OK by me. In XCom the commander does everything. In a real military organization, the commander would have people doing the screening, but he would also not micromanage the equipment of soldiers or their action in battle. We do everything (or the game turns into a strategy level game where the commander only plays in the geoscape).
What could work in the current micromanagement game is if, like crafts, soldiers had a "costBuy" and a "maintenance". You could make buying soldiers cheap (it's the plane ticket to the base for the interview) and the maintenance expensive (that's the salary + health insurance).
It would also remove stupid stuff like hiring a soldier on the 30th of a month means he gets paid when you buy him and again at the end of the month.
Of course, you can also raise the minimum values for certain stats to make soldiers a bit less useless (50 or something accuracy instead of 40, higher min bravery, etc.) if you think they aren't good enough.
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change HWP limit to 100000 on all transports ..it won't matter because HWP take up 4 space units so you can only have a fixed amount + few soldiers no matter what
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I know the solution to that part... What are you gonna do about xp? Allow tanks to gain stats?
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they are supposed to be elite and already maxed out in level . when you recruit them they are all very expensive and already captain level. and selling them is 0 cause you just fire them . and otherwise are regular troops.
elite soldiers are mercs designed for specific purposes like heavy (high str high health high melee and throwing), sniper (high firing acc), scout (high stamina and tu) and psionicist (high psi skill) only available to purchase once you build psi labs
and by high i mean these guys are pros heavy is like 80 health 100 throwing, 80 str, and 80 melee, sniper is 100 acc, scout is 110 stamina and 100 tu, psionicist is psi 100 psi skill 60 etc but all other stats are average.
heavy
tu 50
stamina 60
health 80
firing acc 50
throwing acc 100
melee 80
str 80
psi str 0
psi skill 0
scout
tu 100
stamina 110
health 35
firing acc 60
throwing acc 40
melee 40
str 25
psi str 0
psi skill 0
etc
they all come with their own armors that are like power suit. scout can fly. psionicist's armour is kinda like personal armour.
..but they cost 4 times more than regular soldiers and don't level up like regular soldiers
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Well, actually how about new technology - robot soldiers? It will take a sense that they are not leveling up. More than that - it will be realistic in a measure. Cause nowadays there are many army programs in all the world that suggest to change people soldiers for robots. But we'll need some research changes and new sprites in this case beside new code for such units.
Also - is it possible to make one or two more base facilities? Like shooting range and gym for example?
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there is a mod like that. scouts or something . robotic soldiers can use weapons and equipment but not wear armor
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Well, actually how about new technology - robot soldiers? It will take a sense that they are not leveling up. More than that - it will be realistic in a measure. Cause nowadays there are many army programs in all the world that suggest to change people soldiers for robots. But we'll need some research changes and new sprites in this case beside new code for such units.
Also - is it possible to make one or two more base facilities? Like shooting range and gym for example?
It is not currently possible to have other facilities of the training kind, no. It is possible to invent new facilities (Dioxine has an "outpost" or something, which has both storage and beds, for example).
Robot soldiers could work. There is already the Enforcer mod that is based on some XCom game which featured a robot-soldier.
Another problem with HWP soldiers is that HWPs don't have maintenance costs or salaries. Can you give them one?
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It is not currently possible to have other facilities of the training kind, no. It is possible to invent new facilities (Dioxine has an "outpost" or something, which has both storage and beds, for example).
Really? But shouldn't these parameters have the same algorithm as psi ones?
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you're thinking of mecs but is not possible. : )
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Really? But shouldn't these parameters have the same algorithm as psi ones?
Really.. Having a generic "training facility" with moddable target stat and moddable training time would be awesome. However, the psi-lab is the facility and it increases psi-skill (psi-strength too maybe if you turn on that option?).
One day, maybe.. And then we would be close to having a hospital facility as well (which "trains" hp back to its maximum)
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Well that sounds reasonable for me.
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The training facility could be the answer for this. I read somewhere that the game has code for it but its not complete me thinks? Could be wrong.
Another way to do it, is limit the number of recruits per month to a pool (say 20-30 soldiers) and make their stats viewable prior to hiring (apocalypse style). How could this be done is beyond me though.
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This has always been my opinion. I mean, I'm the leader of a (somewhat) prioritized multi-national defense force. Are you telling me I can't even see the soldiers I can get before they arrive? I'd expect to at least be able to see a list of potential candidates before I decide who I recruit, and not just settle for whatever dregs the governments scrape off the bottom of the barrel (even if it IS the very nicest of barrels). Then I can pick who I need based on priority. Maybe increase the range of both caps, so if I want that guy who can thread a needle with a bullet, I have to accept the fact that his target can run a marathon before the shot ever comes. My thought was more to have a set number of candidates each month, and the next month replace them with new applicants, or maybe just fill in the gaps. If you use all up your wannabes before then, then you DO have to accept whatever random guys (and gals) the feds can conscript to your cause. Although I do like the idea of adding one (or some) more each day. Either way works, really.
Oh, and as for the "Stats improve more when they're lower or not" debate, you have to be more specific. Primaries (accuracy, reactions) don't, but your secondaries DO improve faster at lower levels (statistically speaking, of course).
I remember that at a time, there was a reoccuring joke among the player base, that X-COM was not intentionally created to succeed. That it was actually funded just to give the impression that it did something and nobody of the funding nations actually expected any results. One guy had suggested that the ground troop equiment contractor was the one offering the less costs and less quality (hence why a rifle would sometimes shoot in complete illogical angles and miss terribly) and that the soldiers were drop outs, or psichopaths.
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I'm sticking to the idea that X-Com operatives are recruited from among the government agents, not soldiers. :)
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i'm pretty sure they are soldiers but not fresh recruits but seasoned soldiers that have been in battle before like peacekeeping missions or wars etc.
they pick best soldiers from all over the world to fight aliens.
elite soldies should be augmented, cyber-solders, alien-human dna soldiers, genetically engineered soldiers. there are no better soldiers than the best soldiers from all over the world.
they are deff NOT government agencies like FBI, CIA, KGB etc.. they little war training and mostly solve cases , do spy/intelligence work stuff.
to fight aliens you need marines , you need fighters, soldiers, warriors that can use weapons and not afraid to die not smarty pants.
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i'm pretty sure they are soldiers but not fresh recruits but seasoned soldiers that have been in battle before like peacekeeping missions or wars etc.
they pick best soldiers from all over the world to fight aliens.
elite soldies should be augmented, cyber-solders, alien-human dna soldiers, genetically engineered soldiers. there are no better soldiers than the best soldiers from all over the world.
they are deff NOT government agencies like FBI, CIA, KGB etc.. they little war training and mostly solve cases , do spy/intelligence work stuff.
to fight aliens you need marines , you need fighters, soldiers, warriors that can use weapons and not afraid to die not smarty pants.
Yes, that's how it should be. But I'm betting on the possibility that X-Com is extremely secretive and unwilling to hire outside people, being surrounded by alien spies, MiBs and so on. Therefore they send their field agents who are initially more accustomed to investigations and paper pushing than real combat.
I know it's not overly realistic, but I think it's cool. :)