Ritual of Rebirth: A guide to the New Post-Apocalyptic Person
Version M4 brought an exciting new feature to X-Piratez: The Peasant Revolution. When faced with the choice between embracing gal supremacy or male touch, you can now take a third option focusing which is centered around the common peasant. Can the most humble class of soldiers prevail against the challenges of post-apocalyptic earth? To help you survive, this path offers some extremely desirable techs early on. One of them is the wondersome ritual of rebirth, a human analogue for the gal shakedown ceremony. It costs nothing except for three bottles of moonshine and a five day leave for the reborn soldier, making it easy to apply in large qunatities.
Upon getting reborn, the soldier loses:
25% of their current TU, Stamina, Health, Reactions and Strength
50% of their current Firing, Throwing, Melee, Freshness and VooDoo Power
And gains:
10-20 TU
10-30 Stamina
5-20 Health
5-20 Reactions
15-40 Firing
15-30 Throwing
5-15 Strength
15-40 VooDoo Power
15-40 Melee
15-35 Freshness
In addition to base stat changes, the Revolutionary award itself also gives a stat boost: +5 TU, +5 Reactions, +10 Bravery, -10 Freshness. Like all condemnation-based changes, this does not affect stat growth, which means those stats can be overcapped. Quite helpful, since TUs and Reactions are the two categories where human soldiers are far behind Uber gals, and the extra bravery helps with keeping morale up in long missions, operate weapons that scale with bravery, perhaps even become competent drivers - remember that vehicle weapon accuracy is 50% bravery.
So, if we take a freshly recruited peasant, not even looking at her initial stats, how much will she change? Here are the possible ranges to base stat changes, not taking the award bonus into account:
TU: -4 to +7
Stamina: -8 to +15
Health: -5 to +11
Reactions: -6 to +10
Firing: -3 to +25
Throwing: -3 to +15
Strength: +0 to +11
VooDoo Power: *See summary
Melee: -3 to +25
Freshness: -22 to +5
Note that average results are more likely than extreme ones - the max roll on the post-revolutionary change assumes the recruit had a min roll on initial stats and a max roll on transformation gains, and vice versa.
Summary: There is little reason to not just immediately rebirth every peasant at the moment of recruitment. The stat changes are biased towards improvement, and if you follow up with militia training you can get an adequate soldier who can shoot straight and set a spear in just a matter of ingame weeks. Only freshness is badly affected, but peasants have plenty to spare.
The sole exception to this rule is VooDoo power. Rebirth tends to average out a soldier's VPWR, which is good for those whose power is low, but high. Check the attached graph for details: It shows the soldier's VPWR, with the pre-rebirth value on the x-axis and the post-rebirth value on the y-axis - the blue line is the lowest result, the red line the highest, the green is the average. Not depicted on the graph is the unfortunate fact raise VPWR above the stat cap, 69 for peasants and damsels, 70 for male soldiers. If you want a peasant psi specialist, consider not rebirthing those whose VPWR is high - given that VooDoo implements are taxing on freshness, you might prefer a higher reservoir to get more mind control attempts out of your psion.
Damsels can also be reborn. Their starting stats are not listed in the 'pedia, so feel free to use this data mined from the rule files as a reference:
TU: 45-60
Stamina: 40-70
Health: 30-35
Bravery: 50-70
Reactions: 40-60
Firing: 30-45
Throwing: 30-40
Strength: 10-15
VooDoo Power: 20-69
Melee: 30-40
Freshness: 40-70
Range of changes when rebirthing a freshly recruited damsel:
TU: -5 to +9
Stamina: -8 to +20
Health: -4 to +13
Reactions: -10 to +10
Firing: -8 to +25
Throwing: -5 to +15
Strength: +1 to +11
VooDoo Power: *See summary
Melee: -5 to +25
Freshness: -20 to +15
Stat caps are the same as a peasant.
Summary:
Mostly the same as peasants, but it's worth noting that you get a chance to improve bad VPWR, which means better odds of getting a damsel who qualifies for magicienne, which makes recruting them more worthwhile if you're on the peasant path.
The revolution is not female-exclusive. Male soldiers can be reborn as well. Here's the change ranges for a male recruit:
TU: -5 to +9
Stamina: -8 to +20
Health: -6 to +12
Reactions: -8 to +11
Firing: -18 to +22
Throwing: -8 to +15
Strength: -5 to +16
VooDoo Power: *See previous
Melee: -15 to +27
Freshness: -35 to +20
Summary: Less useful compared to rebirthing peasants, as it has a nasty habit of deleting present existing skills. Harder to train up due to lack of easy followup trainings. Still, having a few soldiers around who can operate heavy weapons without a levitator is always useful.
That's all there is to it. If you haven't given the peasant revolution path a try, I'd highly recommend it. It's a very fun experience, imagine X-Com Files except you a transport that'll turn car-driving X-Com's agents green with envy, or playing IG in the 40k mod, except you still get to keep a limited Space Marine contingent around