How Do I Put Soldiers First

[Adun_Toridas]

and tell me, how do i do to put a soldier first? i say that because my captains are first and that`s not so good and can put them back.

[[NKF]]

The unfortunate fact is that promotion is given on a first come first serve basis. And the fact that the first few soldiers off the Skyranger always get to make the first few kills (and often the only ones to get any experience by the time the mission ends) does not help in any way.

 

For the Avenger or Skyranger, a tank is a better 'sacrificial' lamb. For the Lightning, you have plenty of room to muddle about, or even plenty of exits to choose from.

 

Also note that the ordering of your soldiers is highly dependant on how they're ordered in the list.

 

Soldiers in the Skyranger are ordered like so:

 

1 2

3 4

5 6

7 8

 

and so on.

 

Depending on what order your soldiers appear in the Skyranger, that's how they'll be placed. The first soldier in the list will end up in slot 1, the second soldier in slot 2, and so on.

 

So if the first person on the list is a captain and you want to push the captain back to slot 3, you need to place two soldiers who are much higher up on the list than the captain. This can be a problem when your best soldiers are at the top of the list.

 

It might be a good idea to get into the habit of unloading your Skyranger and then have the soldiers at the back go out and get a lot of experience over a few missions. That way the soldiers at the back will get a higher chance at progressing to a higher rank.

 

Or you could just get into the habit of rotating your soldiers frequently by swapping out all the ranked soldiers with rookies.

 

Personally, I just ignore the ranks. While useful, they are also a major hinderance.

 

- NKF

Edited March 20, 2005 by NKF

[mikker]

getting people 'a chance to get higher ranks' is useless. What they get is up to who gets a sqaddie first, and a hidden order in which your soldiers are hired. They don't have a higher chance becomming a captain just because he killed 15 aliens in one mission. Just get all your soldiers squaddies, and just leave them alone like that. Edited March 20, 2005 by mikker

[[NKF]]

Well, that's exactly my point. I know it's not kill based - but it certainly is when the soldiers at the front do little or even nothing while the soldiers at the back do all the work. Experience (or rather - effort) helps the game determine who'll get the next best promotion when it has to decide who to pick to give the promotion to (especially for promotions after squaddie - not entirely certain about promotions after that).

 

Let's say all your soldiers manage to kill some aliens - but the soldiers from the back killed the most aliens or used the most effort to kill the aliens (i.e. riddling them with pistol bullets as opposed to blowing them to smithereens in one shot with a rocket).

 

So if the soldiers at the back put in the most effort, they should get a higher promotion. They should also continue to stay in relatively high ranks if everyone survives. Of course, it's not uncommon to have the commander at the back get pushed to the front after everyone before the commander perishes in combat. Again, as soldiers at the top of the list are often the ones off the Skyranger first, they tend to be the first to get killed.

 

- NKF

[mikker]

Well, that's exactly my point. I know it's not kill based - but it certainly is when the soldiers at the front do little or even nothing while the soldiers at the back do all the work. Experience (or rather - effort) helps the game determine who'll get the next best promotion when it has to decide who to pick to give the promotion to (especially for promotions after squaddie - not entirely certain about promotions after that).

 

Let's say all your soldiers manage to kill some aliens - but the soldiers from the back killed the most aliens or used the most effort to kill the aliens (i.e. riddling them with pistol bullets as opposed to blowing them to smithereens in one shot with a rocket).

 

So if the soldiers at the back put in the most effort, they should get a higher promotion. They should also continue to stay in relatively high ranks if everyone survives. Of course, it's not uncommon to have the commander at the back get pushed to the front after everyone before the commander perishes in combat. Again, as soldiers at the top of the list are often the ones off the Skyranger first, they tend to be the first to get killed.

 

- NKF

 

are you 100% sure of this? I doubt that using a pistol, or killing more aliens, have an impact on who gets promoted.

[[NKF]]

Yes indeedy it does. It helps the game determine who to give the promotion.

 

Let's say two squaddies have killed three sectoids each (we'll assume the others killed off the rest - but they wouldn't have put in as much effort as these two).

 

The first squaddie used a rocket launcher and got them all in one blow. That's 3 hits.

 

The other squaddie used a pistol and used reaction shots to kill the other 3 aliens. Let's assume one alien is killed per turn. On turn one, the squaddie kills the first sectoid with two accurate reaction shots. 2 hits, 2 reactions. Next turn, the other sectoid shows up and the soldier reacts five times, but manages to kill the sectoid in two hits. That's 4 hits, 7 reactions. On the last turn, the last sectoid is killed in three hits after three reaction shots. Now the soldier has 7 hits and 10 reactions.

 

At the end of the mission, first squaddie's total amount of effort totals to 3. The second squaddie's total amount of effort totals to 17.

 

Assuming the game has the next promotion along the line, the game will choose the second squaddie to promote. (not to mention that the second squaddie will have a chance at getting a greater random stat boost range than the first squddie)

 

Now let's say the scenario went differently and we have several soldiers who've put in the exact amount of effort. You can't have everyone promoted if the underling requirements aren't met, so the game randomly selects one of them to promote. I checked a few times and the soldier that got the promotion was always amongst these soldiers.

 

So far, from my few observations, I think this is mainly true only for determining promotion from squaddie (or from rookie if there's a chance at skipping squaddie completely - given enough soldiers). Soldiers that have already achieved a high rank appear to automatically get promoted to the next rank up assuming the subordinate requirements are met.

 

- NKF

Edited March 21, 2005 by NKF

[Hobbes]

and tell me, how do i do to put a soldier first? i say that because my captains are first and that`s not so good and can put them back.

 

A way to have your soldiers sorted out inside the Skyranger by rank and experience is to use Scott Jones' XComUtil. Just run XCUSetup and when it "Do you want your troops automatically sorted before combat?" just click Yes. It also has a lot of other features included.

[SaintD]

and tell me, how do i do to put a soldier first? i say that because my captains are first and that`s not so good and can put them back.

 

A way to have your soldiers sorted out inside the Skyranger by rank and experience is to use Scott Jones' XComUtil. Just run XCUSetup and when it "Do you want your troops automatically sorted before combat?" just click Yes. It also has a lot of other features included.

 

 

If you can't use xcomutil to run the game (it's not always completely compatible with other patches) you can do this to use it on semi-automatic:

 

1. save your game.

2. run XCOMUTIL GAME_?? SRT WRT

3. Load the game back up.

 

Replace the ?? with the game number. When you load the game back up, your most experience guys will be last on the list and least experienced ones first. Which means rookies off the bus first.

 

Do this right before you launch for battle.

 

-D

 

p.s. for the advanced class you can run this to hit all the saved games at once.

for /f %i in ('dir /b game*') do xcomutil %i SRT WRT