Soldiers to recruit.... elite....

[drugon]

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.

[TaxxiDriver]

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 

[ChainsawAardvark]

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 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.

[ivandogovich]

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.

[drugon]

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.

[yrizoud]

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

[Solarius Scorch]

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?

[yrizoud]

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.

[Warboy1982]

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.

[ChainsawAardvark]

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/SWORD combat robots rather than elite troopers. Arpia already made a scout drone mod - 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.

[yrizoud]

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.

[drugon]

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.

[TaxxiDriver]

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.

Code: [Select]

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 

[Solarius Scorch]

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).

[yrizoud]

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.