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How Do You Raise Stats Of Your Soldiers?


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How do you improve the stats of your soldiers, and which one is the most important for you?
in xcom ufo, it was very easy to raise the accuracy and reactions, simply camping at the door of supply ships, preferably Snakeman inside -pleease not Ethereals!!! :alientalk: -
And usually i had my psionic experts in one mission, attacking the last alien continiously by panic
i used a muton corpse for the ones with low str

But i found that these methods dont work in xcom apocalypse.
i noticed only accuracy improves in combat, and you have to train your soldiers for psi attack , reactions , speed , strength

is there an other way?
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Guest stewart
I don't know about apoc (I have it but my CD ROM is busted, and I'm lazy). But I boost stats by prolonging my ground assaults. There's anouther thread or two kicking around here that explains everything.

The most important stat (early is reactions) later it's psionic strength, period. This is also explained in anouther thread elsewhere.
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Apoc is much the same as UFO.

If you want more TUs, run your guys farther. Same with stamina.
More strength? Load your guy down with gear and run him around.
Accuracy: Shoot
Reactions: React
Psi attack/energy/defense: This one is kinda tricky to figure out. You actually just have your psi guys constantly using ALL of their psi energy in a battle. Every chance they get, panic attack aliens even if it says 0%. While they may not succeed, they will be practicing, and their skill WILL raise. Doing this will raise all three stats quickly. After about 10 missions, I've raised my psi attack on one guy about 10 points. Man I love those sectoid hybrids!

Health will raise with levels/getting shot. If you take a bullet and recover, it makes you stronger I believe.

My main guy has 74 accuracy, 93 health, 75 TUs, 55 strength, and 65 stamina. He's a pimp, and getting better. Five medals, 125 kills, 56% improvement.

However, some of my other guys are quickly catching up.
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Guest stewart
I'm not sure about being injured makes you healthier; I'll have to check. But health is tied to an increase in your other stats. I have guys whose health improves yet they have NEVER been shot. My guess is that improving strength, stamina, and maybe time units, also improves health.
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I will confirm that both Stewart and Marshmellow Soldier are correct: Health increases (and a good amount) because of sustaining damage in combat (and surviving, of course), but it also increases with the other stats despite whether you are shot or not. This probably works this way for the obvious reason that you shouldn't have to get your innocent soldiers blasted to near-death before they get any healthier. I've had a theory that overall health improvement may have something to do with strength, but I haven't had any chance to try and confirm this (anyone know?).

I'd also like to note that while I think being strong in Psi is the best thing you can have in the game, I still believe (overall) the most important stat is health. Why? Because for the majority of the game staying alive is crucial for your soldiers (it's just no fun when the good ones die). By the time you get Psi in the game, it's just about over for the aliens anyway. One or two months into your psi training you get good enough where you don't have to worry much about losing anymore (and this is around when I usually stop playing and start back from day 1). It's just too easy when you get good at Psi - by that time the game is just about over (for me, anyway), so I'm in favor of health being more important.
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That's right. Health can improve both by combat experience&getting hit. In apocalypse, health is REALLY important, as your soldiers are heavily armored-the disrupter armor in apoc is so powerful that, it absorbs 65 damage, and the user is only damaged by the entropy launcher-. But in UFO, health is less important , because max health is 60 -i remember so, please correct if it's wrong-, and a shot from a heavy plasma SURELY will kill you. And the blaster bombs of course :cussing: ...
But i have a problem in apocalypse. Reactions, speed, strength, stamina NEVER increase through combat.-i increased all of them in xcomufo-
Do you know an other way to increase them?-in apocalypse, please-
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Guest stewart
Crimony! Being shot makes you healthy? These are humans not Saiyans. That's it from now on my soldiers are called, either Goku, Gohan, Vegita, or Trunks! Sheesh! Or Piccalo, he can regenerate.
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Guest stewart
Not sure there may be randomness involved. FYI the most I've seen any stat jump is 5 points. Except Bravery which moves in units of 10 (the most I've seen it move is 10 BTW).

Oh and my favorite DBZ character: Krillin followed closely by Picallo.
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If it is the same as UFO Intercepter then....







as I see, stats improve two ways. There are occuring raising stats, that raise only when something happens, and general stats that increase not directly because of one action.

These only increase when (don't always increase; random; with a capacity):
Reactions
- Reacting to aliens by taking a shot
Throwing Accuracy
- throwing an item
Bravery
- panicking / going beserk
PSI Skill
- suceeding in a PSI attack / taking control of the alien
- increase also by training... duh?


These inrease when either the soldier kills an alien, reacts, or suceeds in a PSI attack.
- Health, Time Units, Stamina, Strength

These only inrease when either the soldier kills an alien or reacts.
- Firing Accuracy
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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest stewart
Is Bravery increased by being mind-controlled?

I agree with most of what Peter says.

Throwing may require accurate throwing at maximum distance though (nothing needs to die BTW).

For Psionic skill I have found that field improvements stop once you are over 100 as for the limit from training I don't know (I've seen in the 120's I think).

Where I disagree is Health, Stamina, Time Units, and Strength. Aliens getting plugged doesn't matter. Run around with corpses in your pockets and you'll get better.

Firing Accuracy sounds right. I'm not sure if just hitting is enough though or if death/unconsciousness is required.
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No! You'll need to hit something alive :huh?:
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  • 4 weeks later...
ahem... rookies :D

im not sure if that helps, but it sure is funny...

"ok guys, time for target practice"

*groans*



when you get psi, do this, have one or two guys panic the last alien, and MC him into a corner (psi), then go back to ship with the others, get heavy stuff (just before you start losing TU, stregnth) and throw as much stuff as you can in random directions (Throwing accuracy), spend a few turns picking the stuff up (TU stamina), then juggle them some more! When your sick of juggling, run the alien in front of your guys for a last minute reaction shot training session (short, but it works!)switch up the guys doing psi to, that way, everyone gets a share!

after you get bored check out the stats and see how much they improved....

by all means, dont do this for a 100 turns, i mean, you can only go up so much a landing, but doing it once in a while will REALLY add up!
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  • 2 weeks later...
my thoughts:

Favorite DBZ characters: Vegeta (if you disagree, watch episode 222 [American] again) follwed very closely (to a millionth of a point if I were to put it on a scale) by Piccolo (Every time he takes the cloak off I'm just like "Uh-oh, the sh|t just hit the fan....) and a close third (1 point maybe) goes to Gohan (teen gohan -- sayaman is the lamest thing I've heard of since the Ginyu poses and Hercule [aka mr satan]) Krillin is definately in the show for comic relief. :P

Target practice for me starts on day one. Give someone a very inaccurate weapon (like a pistol) and have them just fire it every chance they get from as far away as possible at an alien they shouldn't by any means be able to see. It sounds really lame, but i find that their accuracy increases a lot. I use two to four guys for this, and they don't EVER die. If it is required, they ditch their equipment and run like heck to the skyranger to abort....my snipers do NOT die (too much work put into them, h.ell yes I play favorites) What really sucks is when your snipers turn out to be the ones with 98 psi-defense (because then they are the mind-attackers).

Another great trick is that when you first see etherals throw all the equipment on the floor of the skyranger (everyone throws their gun at the front of the ship) That way if someone gets MCed in the ship, there is nothing for them to do (clips don't have to go, but grenades do) The MCed unit won't pick up equipment to attack, he'll just run out of the ship.

And as a side note: In Apoc psi stats can only increase by a magnitude of 3x (so a guy with initial attack of 33 can reach 99) and if i remember correctly, defense never changes. However, psi attacks are negligible in that game as you have to be "line of sight" with the target and psilords rarely come out of the ships. Just send in all of your androids at once and they are powerless.
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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
[quote name='Radoteur' date='Mar 26 2003, 06:08 PM']Let me get this straight. So, if I shoot my rookies, it's a good thing.
Because they get increased health and the shooter gets increased target practice.

"I'm only doing this for your own good. Aw, damn, I killed him, boss."[/quote]
:erm:... But who cares life of one rookie? 40K for improving accuracy of some important officer isn't bad price for me + if anyone is going to panick because of rookie's death his bravery will improve too.
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  • 2 weeks later...
Another way of increasing heallth and accuracy,
well is using stun weapons, i am sure of it in TFTD but do not know for sure in UFO,
just have soe guys in the vicinity and have another one fire a stun bomb hopefully you do not knock everyone out , :D but hey you have to take some chances
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Guest stewart
[quote name='Xracer' date='May 4 2003, 08:24 PM']Another way of increasing heallth and accuracy,
well is using stun weapons, i am sure of it in TFTD but do not know for sure in UFO,
just have soe guys in the vicinity and have another one fire a stun bomb hopefully you do not knock everyone out ,  :D but hey you have to take some chances[/quote]
Hmmm?

Shoot-stim-shoot-stim repeat ad nausium!

I would bet that it does work in Xcom1

provided . . . .

you are credited for shooting non-enemies.
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  • 2 months later...
The most problematic stat however, is reactions. Most of my soldiers have about 20-40 reactions, so that is the skill i acturly try to improvise in battle.

In most of my games, my soldiers starts having fair accurecy, and the soldiers i uses, the ones that stays alive, often ends having 110+ acurrecy.

TUs, arent that problematic, because most stuff are based of a percentence.

Stemina increases with heavy plasmas. :D

Streangth also increases with heavy plasmas ^_^

Psi strength are fairly problematic, but i've tried to complete a ethernal base mission without lossing a soldier (loading though). If you just drop your "damaging" weaponry, you are quite safe.

Psi ability takes too much time to get up fair, and is always the last thing to get good to.

Bravery goes up with ranks. It aint that harsh, when you load, because if you never lose a soldier, bravery never goes down unless your are MCed.

health? loaders worry about health? :LOL:

I never use nades (after trowing like 3 into a muton without it dying, i'd rather shoot it. same damage!), so trowing acc, with is strangely always higest most of the time, is not importent. Edited by mikker
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Woohoo, lets ressurect dead topics! Less work for the mods!

I agree about the reactions. I find that one the hardest. Once I can afford it I filter my men based on reactions. After that, I filter them on Psi Defense too, but that has to wait until they get tested obviously.

Bravery is the only other thing thats weird, but I tend to only keep an eye on that. I will hire a wimp if he can react in a flash and withstand the mind powers of the entire ethereal race.
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[quote name='miceless' date='Jul 22 2003, 07:22 PM']Woohoo, lets ressurect dead topics![/quote]
Argh....didnt saw date....it was an importent topic!
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all you need is strength and bravery..
bravery so that you won't panic and go berserk (except if mind controlled)
strength to carry blaster with 4 ammo and heavyplasma with 3 extra clips and of course.. flying suite. Then your soldier is ready to rock and improve other stats!
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By the time you have all that stuff stats are much less meaningfull. Where stats are important is when you don't have the good equipment yet.

If you've got blaster launchers and flying suits, as long as you play patiently you're gonna win (even with rookies). And if you lose a rookie, who cares!
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[quote name='stewart' date='Jul 24 2003, 09:39 AM']By the time you have all that stuff stats are much less meaningfull.  Where stats are important is when you don't have the good equipment yet.

If you've got blaster launchers and flying suits, as long as you play patiently you're gonna win (even with rookies).  And if you lose a rookie, who cares![/quote]
true but it's cooler to play with über soldiers.. :D
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I would rank stats as follows:
1. Accuracy
2. reactions
3. psi defense
4. TU's
5. strength
6. bravery
7. stamina
8. health
9. throwing accuracy

Accuracy has to be important as you mostly kill aliens by shooting.
Reactions are important because in many situations when confonted by aliens, the guy with the fastest reactions is the guy who stays alive.

High Psi defense i think is essential in the later game. Its no joke having your best sodiers MC'ed and ussing their high tus, accuracy , strentgh etc against you.

Throwing accuracy to me is alomist useless as i don't use grenades, etc very much.
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  • 2 weeks later...
There are pre and post psionics rankings I think.

Pre:

1 ) Reactions the hardest stat to train
2-8) Who cares you can train these. And you can't afford to fire people.
9-10) Psionic strength/skill: we're in pre-psionics so of course they're last

Post:

1) Psionic Strength: you're born with it. It does not change.
2-10) Who cares, you've got psionics now and all these can be trained.
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  • 2 months later...
To add to the bravery statistic, experience is the best thing you can give a soldier. Your commander dying won't faze a guy that has been on 100 missions... well maybe not a commander, but you know what I mean. :wacko:
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  • 3 weeks later...
I notice there's no option for Bravery on this poll. Heh.

I, without question, consider psi-strength (in X-Com 1, it's a single attribute, I believe) to be the most important attribute. All other attributes are easily raised, and a soldier's individual defeciency in, say, accuracy or health is not nearly as relevant when he is in a team. heck, I can use him as a spotter or something, or have him throw grenades. If one of my guys misses an alien or gets tired when taking five steps with a pistol, that's all right - he'll improve (or get killed) eventually. But that's just that one guy. If I lose a team because some low-psi dork got mind-controlled or went berserk with a rocket launcher, that gets me riled up. How to counter that? High psi-strength on the guys you send out against the psionic aliens. The low-psi-strength guys usually wind up getting sent out in droves against mutons wearing their T-shirts and equipped with leftover laser guns.

Corollary to that is high bravery, which helps my guys avoid peeing their pants (panic) and shooting everyone around them (berserk). Unfortunately, that doesn't improve unless you panic/go berserk a lot. Kind of a catch-22 I guess...

[edit: duh... psi-what now?] Edited by NickAragua
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  • 2 weeks later...
To me, the most important stat is bravery, since it helps against psionic attacks and panicing.

Second, I look for a high firing accuracy, for obvious reasons. Any rookie with a bravery below 30 or firing accuracy below 50 isn't likely to survive long. I "encourage" them to soak up opportunity fire :D
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[quote name='Jenny' date='Nov 9 2003, 02:08 PM']To me, the most important stat is bravery, since it helps against psionic attacks and panicing.

Second, I look for a high firing accuracy, for obvious reasons. Any rookie with a bravery below 30 or firing accuracy below 50 isn't likely to survive long. I "encourage" them to soak up opportunity fire :D[/quote]
Same here Jen! :D Whenever I "choose" who I want my commander to be, I FIRST make sure they have a bravery rating of 60, and a really high accuracy rating. I love being able to shoot a alien from across the screen past 2 soldiers with Confidence! ^_^
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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
In the battlescape, every soldier has a hidden expeience stat that is raised every time a certain action is performed.

They are:
1. Number of kills (this has no effect whatsoever except count the number of kills this soldier has done so far throughout the campaign - incremented every time an alien is killed)
2. Number of reaction shots (incremented every time a reaction shot is done)
3. Number of successful hits (incremented every time an enemy unit is 'hit' by a bullet or explosive. In the case of explosives, every alien hit by the explosive are counted (i.e. explosives are good!). Note that explosive effects include stun bomb and HE effects (grenades, rockets, shells, etc) )
4. Number of melee hits (in UFO, this would be stun rod hits, in TFTD it should include the drills)
5. Number of times the soldier has thrown and object (says itself, really)
6. Number of successful psionic attacks
7. Number of times the soldier has panicked

The greater the value in numbers 2 - 6, the better. In fact, all these are put together when weighting the soldier to determine promotions. 7 actually decreases from this.

So what do all these stats raise?

Kills - nothing. It's just a counter of the number of kills you've done so far.

Reactions - raises the reaction stat.

Successful hits - the most important stat raising stat in the game. Raises firing accuracy, health, time units, energy and strength. The more, the merrier. Note, you actually have to hit an 'enemy' unit to get this incremented. It will not work on friendlies or neutrals. Raising this stat can be done with area effect weapons (like grenades, stun bombs, rockets, etc) and single bullets. Also, the attack needn't do any damage to have this stat incremented. So hitting a sectopod with a bullet does count - if you can last long enough to get away, that is. :)

Melee hits - Same as above, minus firing accuracy. But don't quote me on this one. You get so few melee attacks as it is in UFO.

Throws - Raises the throwing stat only. So throw a lot and your throwing stat will get incremented. Note - throwing accuracy does not determine throwing distance. Strength does.

Successful psi attacks - the next most important stat raising stat. Does the same as successful hits, minus firing accuracy. It also raises 'psi-skill'.

Times Panicked - The only one that raises bravery. Is incremented every time you 'panic'. This, however, is a bad thing when determining promotions.

What does NOT raise stats:

Walking a lot.
Carrying more than you can carry.

None of these are recorded by the game, and have no effect whatsoever. In the case of carrying too much - well, you're just giving yourself a disadvantage there. So don't do it. A soldier with light armament can raise his or her strength stat a lot better than a weakling with a heavy load.

Yes, I've actually tested the above a lot by having an encumbered soldier at the back of the Skyranger walk about for a lot of turns before ending the mission. No change in stats, but the soldiers who did less and went out and clobbered a few sectoids with pistols did have their strength raised.

- NKF Edited by NKF
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You sure know a lot about x-coms. I never understood this "carrying a lot of stuff increases strength" either.

How do you know the game counts all these actions?
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Well, mainly from lots and lots of experimentation - and then confirming my theories by sneaking a peak at the unit table data in one of the battlescape files in a savegame between several turns helped. :)

Then I further experimented by raising some of these experience stats and ended the mission to see what was being raised. Thus I derived the list I posted (the only one I'm still not too sure about is the melee attacks)

Let's just say that curiousity and a lot of persistence can get you anywhere. Besides, I was was very curious as to why firing accuracy stat was being raised when my soldier was using grenades exclusively. I mean, it doesn't make sense, but it happens. Now I know why (since hits with explosives are counted in the same manner as hits with bullets).

- NKF Edited by NKF
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[quote name='NKF' date='Dec 27 2003, 09:39 PM']Well, mainly from lots and lots of experimentation - and then confirming my theories by sneaking a peak at the unit table data in one of the battlescape files in a savegame between several turns helped. :)

Then I further experimented by raising some of these experience stats and ended the mission to see what was being raised. Thus I derived the list I posted (the only one I'm still not too sure about is the melee attacks)

Let's just say that curiousity and a lot of persistence can get you anywhere. Besides, I was was very curious as to why firing accuracy stat was being raised when my soldier was using grenades exclusively. I mean, it doesn't make sense, but it happens. Now I know why (since hits with explosives are counted in the same manner as hits with bullets). 

- NKF[/quote]
NFK, your research could be a great asset for the Xenocide project. UFO and alien behaviour and how the game counts the stats, promotions and everything are surely needed.
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I'm afraid that I couldn't trust myself to be on any project. Just being honest - as I've never been able to complete any projects of my own.

But if any information that I've gathered and shared can help your project, or any other project, in any way, then so be it. As for myself, I only do this so that I can understand why the game does things the way it does.

- NKF
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So I can encourage people from the project to ask you some questions if they need to know something? This doesn't tie you to any obligations. You just answer if you want to help ok? I mean this is some very important stuff you have digged up!
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[quote name='NKF' date='Dec 27 2003, 09:39 PM']Now I know why (since hits with explosives are counted in the same manner as hits with bullets).[/quote]
Probably so that shots with HE ammo blast would count. My guess is that the programmers overlooked that implication. Drewid might know though.
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[quote name='stewart' date='Dec 28 2003, 12:46 PM'][quote name='NKF' date='Dec 27 2003, 09:39 PM'] Now I know why (since hits with explosives are counted in the same manner as hits with bullets).[/quote]
Probably so that shots with HE ammo blast would count. My guess is that the programmers overlooked that implication. Drewid might know though. [/quote]
That sounds like a good explanation.

If you throw exactly to the spot where you aim, does it increase accuracy more than missing the target by few blocks? Assuming in both cases the blastradius hits the alien..?
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The accuracy of the throw has no effect whatsoever on determining improvements. As long as you hit an enemy target, your 'number of hits' counter will go up one point for every alien caught in the blast radius.

The actual experience gained at the end of the mission for various stats seems to be a random number of something like 0 - 5 points for any experience stats that you've improved during the battle. But I do not know for sure. All I do know is that the more your experience, the better the chance that you [i]will[/i] get an improvement. The size of the improvement is still random, but I think the maximum size of the improvement increases as you gain more experience.

So what does this mean? If you have a soldier with hopeless accuracy but good stats (100 psi strength, for example) that you want to keep - hand them area effect weapons and grenades to train up their firing accuracy. :)

- NKF
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Because of new information received, I implore everyone to ignore my previous experience gain list. Here's an updated list.

What increases what:

Melee attacks[list]
[*] TU
[*] Stamina
[*] Health
[*] Strength
[/list]Successful Psi attacks[list]
[*] TU
[*] Stamina
[*] Health
[*] Psi Skill
[/list]Number of Thrown items [list]
[*] Throwing skill
[/list]Successful hits (bullets, explosives, etc)[list]
[*] TU
[*] Stamina
[*] Health
[*] Strength
[*] Firing Accuracy
[/list]Number of times reaction fire was used[list]
[*] TU
[*] Stamina
[*] Health
[*] Strength
[*] Reactions
[/list]Number of times unit panicked[list]
[*] TU
[*] Stamina
[*] Health
[*] Strength
[*] Bravery (either 0 or +10 increment)
[/list]It seems that with enough reaction fire attempts, even if you don't hit anything, you will raise your stats just as well as hitting an enemy target can.

The size of the possible stat bonuses as the end of the mission is influenced by two factors - the amount of combat experience you got from the battle and the size of your current stats (edit: as a percentage against the maximum stat level).

So, if you have 20 in one stats, you can get huge (but random) stat gain with little combat experience ( 0-6 points for 1 action).

The closer you reach the maximum level for a particular stat (such as 60 for health), the smaller the bonus.

In some cases, for the throwing, reactions and psi skill stats in particular, this also means that you have to perform 'more' in order to get the maximum bonus. For example, say you have quite a high reaction level. You should be able to earn 0 - 6 maximum points after the mission, but you've only reacted once, so you only get 0 - 1. React 10 to 20 times, and you'll be able to get the full random bonus of 0 - 6 points. So, stop complaining if your super soldier starts earning less and less experience as he or she kills every enemy with a single shot. :)

You can get more stats than the caps. For example, 61 health when health maxes at 60, or 125 accuracy, when accuracy caps at 120. The game just rolled a higher number, which is a good thing!.

edit: Added panic information. I still find it totally amazing....

- NKF Edited by NKF
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  • 2 weeks later...
My most important stat when first selecting soldiers is firing accuracy above 60. Then, when I have psi, I hire about 60 soldiers at a base with psi labs and get them tested. Then only the ones with greater than 80 psi strength stick around. True, it does take about 2 months to do this, but the most annoying thing is for my guys to get mind controlled.
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