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Author Topic: NewbieTacticsForNewbie - Naming your soldier. Even more useful than fun?  (Read 5398 times)

Offline dashyr

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When you choose your soldiers that will take place in the skyranger notice you can change the order in wich your soldiers are listed. But thats not IT yet. From the lander' door to the front, the soldiers will be in the same order than in the list. So it is a really time-saving and efficient idea to rename your soldier and add a tag next to it identifying his speciality.

Example:
(Job)Rocketeer - RCKT(Tag)
Marksman/Sniper - SNPR
Assault - GI
Grenadier - GRN

Having your soldiers lined up according to your strategy can help you avoid tons of useless losses of lives.

My own setup is as follow. (Im using FMP but dosent matter its an example.)
2 Attack Dogs
2 Rocketeers (Holding smoke grenades in their free hand.)
2 Machine Gunners
2 Assaults
2 Marksmen/Snipers
2 Assaults
2 Grenadiers

Hope it will help the new players showing up.

Offline Phoenix7786

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Most of the guys who run LP's (Let's Play videos) name their soldiers in such a way as to easily distinguish roles.

Offline Hobbes

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There's a mod included with OpenXCom called 'XComUtil Statstrings' which automatically adds suffixes to your soldier names based on their stats. You can modify it to your own preferences.

Offline DoxaLogos (JG)

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Which is very useful, "XcomUtil Statstrings" that is. 

Offline Solarius Scorch

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I've never understood this idea at all, I mean I don't categorize soldiers like that, I give them equipment based on stats if anything. But if it floats your boat, sure, try it.

Offline Arthanor

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You give them equipment based on stats, which means you go back to check the stats when you equip them. I just look at the letters appended to the soldier's name, which is a good enough proxy for their stats, and saves me from having to toggle between screens multiple times. As I can remember 2 numbers at most, usually, seeing QMR for a quick marksman with good reactions, is much better than having to check, then forget, then check again, for every soldier, for every few missions (as available equipment and stats can change rather rapidly).

It also helps when assigning armors, for example, I only give armors which take away stam/stam recovery/TUs to soldiers who are already quick (Q in my armor view), otherwise I'd be getting "turrets" (heavily armored soldiers that can't move much). This is much faster than assigning armors from the soldiers panel.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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I know what statstrings are for, Arthanor. :) I meant that it's way easier to just look at the stats than to decipher the string, which also looks ugly as hell in the game. I just find them not only unnecessary, but also annoying and potentially misleading, since looking at the raw stats is way more informative than at the processed form, because it allows you to notice various synergies.

But I guess it's not the right place for this discussion. As I said, the mod is out there, people can use it, no point discussing it further.

Offline yrizoud

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Statstrings (or any naming system) are helpful for the aircraft crew screen. I usually tag hopeless rookies with a "-", and I make sure to order the crew so the first two to exit are "-" (or rookies in need of experience), then two soldiers tagged "R" (reactions)

Offline Arthanor

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I know what statstrings are for, Arthanor. :) I meant that it's way easier to just look at the stats than to decipher the string, which also looks ugly as hell in the game. I just find them not only unnecessary, but also annoying and potentially misleading, since looking at the raw stats is way more informative than at the processed form, because it allows you to notice various synergies.

But I guess it's not the right place for this discussion. As I said, the mod is out there, people can use it, no point discussing it further.

I guess I misunderstood you.. I thought you said you didn't know what they were good for, but I guess you were talking about assigning specific roles (scout, grenadier, etc.)? In that case, I tend to agree for those cases where there are too many toys to play with to define specific roles and loadouts (FMP, XPiratez),

However, in the original game, it works rather well since there aren't many variations. It helps you build a balanced team by quickly checking that you have the right number of each soldier roles, instead of equipping everyone individually and finding out at deployment that you only brought one missile launcher to a sectoid terror. As such, it's a good newbie tactic for newbie! You're just not a newbie anymore :P

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Heh heh, maybe. :P But I'd still recommend to a newbie to check the stats as well, it's educational. :)

Offline Arek_PL

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Its realy usefull to make designated roles?
Spoiler:
I make inventory standarization, (laser) rifle, (alien) grenade, medkit, stun rod and he pack for veteran soldiers later psi amp and blaster is used by high ranked soldiers who just boost morale (if they do not use blaster, they snipe from flying suit above skyranger) and it allways worked for me

Offline 7Saturn

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Well,  I never give them actual roles, aside from »to be trained more than the rest following«. Before I know their psi strength, I usually train them on aiming, putting the low accuracy guys in front, the high accuracy guys in the back. That way, especially in the very first rounds, you either loose the rather expendable soldiers or they get the most action, being trained the most, as well. That's especially useful with psi, as even just trying to use psi will train them, even when they are not successfull. So using them in the order of weakest do strongest, until the attack succeeds, you will train the weakest quite a lot, every round. So the one thing I am missing, is an automatic sort function, executed on button stroke. I remember, that some time ago, someone implemented something like that, but it didn't seem to have made it into the master branch, yet. I'd love to see that, because that would save me the a lot of work, to manually enter every soldiers stat value (aiming, psi, strength, whatever, I want to sort them by) into it's name and then, manually sort them, and that after every stupid mission. Besides, you still haven't got any means to sort them, when no troop transporter is available in that base. The usefulness  may not be obvious, as the starting points during a base attack are random (which is the only scenario, where you'd use these soldiers, not having a troop transport at that base anyways). But when giving them equipment before starting the defense mission, it'd be much more comfortable, knowing, that they are sorted in the order of aiming skill, or something, instead of having to sort that out, by your self.