X-com Purge

[teukros]

Now in my third month of psionic screening, I've implemented some new and rather draconian standards for my troops. A soldier must have a bravery of 30 or higher _and_ a psionic strength of 40 or higher, or that troop gets sent back to his or her country of origin.

 

I've sacked a lot of veterans.

 

My main base in Switzerland lost 14 out of 30 of its soldiers.

 

Overall, my seven active bases have just replaced 63 out of their 210 troops (all of whom had bravery of at least 20).

 

(I've actually retained two guys with psi of 38, but their stats are otherwise pretty impressive, and one of them is a commander with 22 kills...)

 

EDIT: And then, of course, 23 of those 63 replacements had bravery of 20 or less and had to be immediately replaced...

Edited January 18, 2005 by teukros

[XComOnyx]

I do the same thing. *All* the time. When I first start a game, I check the stats of my guys (long before Psi comes into play). Anyone with a bravery less than 40 is out. I figure it's better to spend game time (I'm a big "combat re-loader" when I don't get my way) on guys who are just going to be a liability in the end. Spending the cash for quality men up front is worth it to me, even if it means sacking 8 of 10 repeatedly until I have a decent startup squad.

 

And once Psi does come into play, anyone with a rating of less than 65 doesn't make my Cydonia Squad. In fact, I try to only equip my final mission with Psi 80+.

 

I don't sack the good veterans who have high bravery/low psi. I just ship them off to other bases so they can be there to protect in case of an alien infiltration. But only the elite "high bravery/high psi" crew gets attention and training during the last 3 months before Cydonia.

[[NKF]]

As for myself, I don't sack anyone. Low bravery is only a problem if you lose your soldiers a lot and cannot make up for the lost morale by killing sufficient aliens in time.

 

I only sack a soldier if:

 

1. The soldier fails to a panic attack or is mind controlled. Once I get the psi-lab, I only keep 80 to 100 psi-strength soldiers.

 

Everything can be trained, psi strength can't.

 

My needs aren't that high, so that's about it for me, really.

 

- NKF

[Snakeman]

For me, my needs are semi-high for the first 20 or so soldiers.

 

My criteria for those are:

 

- Stamina (don't much care where TUs fall, but the stamina bar I like to be a little over that number)

- Health 35-40

- Bravery - 50+

- Reactions 50 roundabouts

- Firing Accuracy 50+

- Throwing Acc. 50+

- Strength 25+

 

- Psi Strength - high 90s preferable for that first core group.

 

For everyone else, the only factors I look at are stamina (same basic criteria as above, just has to be a little more than TUs they have), bravery (I accept 40 as a minimum if everything else looks ok), reactions 40+, accuracies (throwing and firing) 50-60. Psi Strength 80+

 

Like NKF said, Psi strength can't be trained so I find myself being lax with some of the stats I get for the others since they can be trained over time.

[teukros]

Hey, the XcomUtil stat string 'x' represents lack of psionic strength. But just what does the 'x' stand for? The soldier is cross-eyed?

[Torgulf]

I used to sack a lot psi-weaklings too, until I discovered that my best soldier in my most recent game had a psi strength below 10 so instead I send them out to missions that contain no sectoids or ethereals. You're bound to get some losses with mutons and snakemen anyway and in most cases you still have(/want) to take those missions - so you might aswell sacrifice expendable people.

 

So in short, they now function as my suicide squad

 

Of course, you need a hyperwave decoder to do this... but by the time you're fighting ethereals you should (soon) have a couple of those...

 

After I got over that manic reloading I was into earlier (I never reload now gives a whole new dimension to the gameplay) I don't send anyone with less than around 70 psi strength out to ethereal/sectoid missions (unless it's by mistake, in which case I either dust off or execute the low-psi myself before some idiot decides that it's a great idea to blow up the entire Avenger with a blaster bomb ).

 

But I don't really sack anyone anymore they're all beautiful and unique snowflakes, of special unique specialness...

[[stewart]]

Starting off I'm not draconian in terms of sacking. On the other hand my motto is why sack a soldier who can open door instead; I'll let you make the call there about draconian. BTW if I were to sack early (early meaning pre psionics) based on stats. I'd look strictly at reactions; everything else can be trained (reactions of course can too but low reactions are the hardest stat to budge). I dont work about low bravery or anything else like that, I figure darwin'll work his magic and away we go.

 

At any rate later on when it comes sacking over bad scores, I just care about psionic strength, at that point I'm 95-and-up. I hire-and-fire 140 soldiers/month till I get what I want (that's 70 sacks and 70 new hires BTW).