Sodier specialisation

[Hobbes]

With the current system the two ways to make classes unique are class restricted weapons/armor and soldier stats.

After your main squad has completed a number of missions the tendency will be for their individual TUs/Stamina/Health/Strength and even Firing Accuracy of these 10-14 soldiers to reach or be close to the limit for those stats. They'll be less 'unique' but they'll be able to take any roles on the battlefield. The main exception is Reactions, which is very difficult to train since reaction fire often ends in death to the soldier attempting it, so the main division between soldiers during the mid/late game will be in Reactions.

This means that, with the current stat system, different classes may start with different stats but at the end the soldiers will most likely end up with similar stats, regardless of their class.

   

[Sturm]

On the contrary, if I put even more soldiers on "sniper" role, they will get on average even less shooting experience - because there's still the same number of aliens in the open with no hard cover. The assaulters will have even more aliens to kill, and if they use rapid-fire low-damage weapons like pistol and laser pistol, they easily maximize shooting experience. If I follow the figures on Ufopaedia, such assaulter will progress 800% faster than a sniper who shoots twice and gets 2 kills (which is already pretty good for an average-size mission).

Increase reaction/accuracy of the aliens. You won't have experienced assaulters .

Also, to me assaulter suggests a dude with high strength and throwing and lots of grenades.

[luke83]

I always wanted to pick Special skills on levelup ( rank increase in OXC), have a list of possible options presented to you when one of your soilders changes rank  you then pick form a small selection of skills(a small selection of total possible skills, every person can not be allowed to be the same)  All skills should have a graphical icon presented within the Overhead STATUS window ( see my old thread https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1551.0) so as i cycle through units i can look for this info also.

Skills could be thing like, weapon preferences ( increase skills with that weapon), hatred of enemy type, Bonus for particular skills ( so you choose markmen as a option, so he gets instants increase in accuracy and additional % bonus as he increases in this skill in the future) 

This will give you more "Feelings" for a particular solider which is always a good thing.

[Aldorn]

I always wanted to pick Special skills on levelup ( rank increase in OXC), have a list of possible options presented to you when one of your soilders changes rank  you then pick form a small selection of skills(a small selection of total possible skills, every person can not be allowed to be the same)  All skills should have a graphical icon presented within the Overhead STATUS window ( see my old thread https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1551.0) so as i cycle through units i can look for this info also.

Some kind of RPG   
+ 1

[Solarius Scorch]

For a theoretical total conversion, yes. For X-Com, please no.

[luke83]

For a theoretical total conversion, yes. For X-Com, please no.

Sure its not for everyone but still i think we need Level up options, even if stage 1 just allows you to upgrade stats at players discretion.
  If any coders were to decide to work on this feature i would provide them a financial reward

[yrizoud]

Since there tends to be a lot of soldiers, manual tweaking should be minimized - I don't think anyone wants to assign dozen of points after each mission. One mechanism that could help this is to select a "growth profile" for each soldier. Then, as soldier gain experience, the profile determines which stats get improved. A "general" profile improves a bit of everything, other profiles are more specialized for marksmanship, or reactions, or physical prowess etc.

I made an experiment with "kill-based experience", it may be a start to award stat increases. The selected "current profile" could be set in the soldier name.
However, in its current state it recomputes the stats from scratch, so it won't let you have soldiers who spend some time with a profile, an then some time with an other profile.