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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Poll: Soldier Gene Pool


zwn

Do you enhance the Soldier Gene Pool at the Start of UFO ?  

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ok, guys, since me and my pals played ufo / tftd MANY times, i stumbled upon something: when you start the game, soldiers stats (like names) are randomized. So there's an important decision to make:
Do I fire the soldiers aren't good enough to stand a real chance and recruit some new ones hoping for better stats ? Or do I spend my entire money on good equipment and base growth knowing that the first is my only real chance (soldiers are getting better) and the second takes very long ? Will better stats at the beginning be for naught if they die on the first Terror trip (this is linked to the "Do you reload" Poll) ? Or will I get extremely good soldiers around July if the Gene Pool was considered from the beginning (Money is not an issue later on - Experience is!)

Hope you catch me! VOTE! This is gonna be interesting...

greetings,
zwn
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No, I use what I have knowing that the bad ones can become good. Besides with me PSI strength is very importantl. I've found many times that otherwise great soldiers are absolute PSI wimps who i end up firing whilst, seeming bad soldiers have great PSI and so i decide to keep them and have them improve through combat.
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yeah, very interesting points so far !

my vote comes from the circumstance that i really HATE loosing my soldiers but don't load when someone dies (except my favorite :) ). In my experience it proved that if i had a couple of guys who were really fast and some who got some above-average shooting ability by a margin, i could specialize from the beginning - the snipers guard my back (with reaction shots if no alien's there) and the runners pushing from hiding place to hiding place for scouting.
When I intend to start a game like that and realise that my team was generally bad-luck low on those stats, i decide to give it a go with up to 3 soldiers which are replaced in the next couple of days. Since i'd play w/o tanks altogether then - i got some cash left at the beginning.
BUT A BIG BUT HERE! I only employ this tactic now and then when i feel like it - but in superhuman i almost always need to do that to increase my survival chance - point ratio at the end of month.

I agree that PSI strength comes with the bad fighters ever so often. But i don't intend to root out psi strength altogether... balance decides, no ?

greetings,
zwn
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[quote name='JWH' date='Jul 25 2003, 04:39 PM']No, I use what I have knowing that the bad ones can become good.  Besides with me PSI strength is very importantl.  I've found many times that otherwise great soldiers are absolute PSI wimps who i end up firing whilst,  seeming bad soldiers have great PSI and so i decide to keep them and have them improve  through combat.[/quote]
i am with you , i once had a rookie, never went to a mission with a strengh of 80 on psi


r00ks can be sometimes usefull.

and yoru right abotu bad ones become good. i never fire anyone, if the soldier dies or or sucky hes dead.
i would feal bad for a strong soldier but game must go on.
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Right , Mark0. when a good soldier dies I feel bad. Especially when he/she has gone through a whole set of missions performing heroic stunts andn improving greatly. Sometimes I 'm tempeted to reload so as to resurrect the soldier but nowadays i try to play by the rules and graciously accept my fate.

You know when i first saw the topic i thought that zwn was talking about using editors to "genetically enhance" soldiers. His idea is novel but I think in the long run it would cost too much and take too long.
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Right at the beginning I take whatever comes. But I very quickly ramp up my selection prcoess as the game goes on. It depends what difficulty im on and how well im doing, but I start to filter as qickly as possible. Good recruits are only in short supply when you are short of money. The useless ones i do get are invariably the first ones to die, so i normally end up with a crack squad anyway.
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whoopps....seams im the only one for "i cheat stoopid".....

Its fun only to have 10 men, but have maxed them out, and not buying anyone, unless i only have 3 left or something, and those i do not turn.


BTW, if you are unhappy with their stats, you restart the game....stoopid! Edited by mikker
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  • 2 weeks later...
I always fire people..
Not in the beginning though. I give all the bad soldiers name "rambo" or something to know they are full of 5h1t and use them as rambo would do, alone against impossible enemy :D
Later when Psi comes relevant, I fire all with below 60 psi defense.. Often it means that I have to fire my best soldiers but who cares if you can't use them anyway? (I won't use them 'cause they are allways panicked and in alien control :cussing: ) So then sometimes a Rambo from beginning has survived from a lot of missions and has become a great warrior with 99 psi defense. This really happens sometimes.
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Same here, Nyyperoid. If my soldiers don't have at least psi defense of 70 i fire them regardless of their other great stats. sometimes its kind of tough to fire great soldiers who have survivred countless missions and are doing wonders. But they quiclky prove expensive liabilitiies when they easily succumb to psi attacks and use their great attributes AGAINST you!
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  • 1 month later...
i always stick with my initial soldiers. after all, i still have half of my initial soldiers (as Lieutenants or Commanders). the other half, obviously, died :P but that's what tells you which are good and which are bad.
also, i waste far too much money at start to buy replacementsd ;)
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For the first month I couldn't care less about any of my soldiers except the ones who are actually strong enough to move with the auto cannon :D They come in useful when I feel like lighting up some sectoids, also seems to be a really easy way of stunning aliens sometimes, for some reason they usually get stunned if I stop them moving around by a ring o fire :flame:

Other than them they are all dead in not too long. Next month I actually start to care about anyone who has managed to survive "H.E.L.L Month" and they get some armour after a little bit. I go through quite a few soldier until I get Psi :LOL:
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  • 1 month later...
Well the title kinda speaks for itself. When going through a fresh batch of rookies how low do their stats have to be before you sack them or hand them a primed gernade before running them through the battleships front door?

Personally I look at accuracy first. If they don't have at least a 40 accuracy things arn't looking rosy for their continued carrier as an X-Com rookie.

Next Strength, minimum of 30

Bravery minimum of 20.

PSI minimum 90

Reaction minimum 30

I will occasionally accept lower stats in other areas if either accuracy or strength is praticularly high. I had one sniper in a game a while back who showed up on my doorstep with a bravery of 10 but an accuracy of 70. He actually did pretty well since once I got PSI tech he had rediculously high stats in that too. Those are definate exceptions though. Edited by imperialus
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I guess I don't look at the numbers. Just if they continuously are running out of energy before TUs, and if they ever get psi attacked - they're out the airlock, though I prefer to execute them in the battlefield myself.
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I only sack late in the game based on Psionic Strength; any new soldier under 100 is axed. Early in the game I /would/ only sack for low reactions (and nothing else) but in this case sacking is better known as scouting, opening doors, etc.
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yes I suppose I should ammend the question to include kamakazi squads.

I suppose I just don't like paying the monthly fees for a soldier better suited to peeling potatos. I also try and keep my casualty rate as low as possible so anyone not worth keeping I sack.

I've never worried too much about money. Once I get a pair of manufactureing bases turning out lazer cannons I'm pulling in enough to make microsoft's quarterly profits look like a mom and pop shop.
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I don't sack any trooper at the beginning. But once the psi training module has been contructed i remove the poor psi troops from the main infantry squad and place them far far away in a siberian base somewhere for guard duty LOL. (dont like sacking troops that have had like 5 months experience, might as well use them as reserves)
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[quote name='stewart' date='Nov 28 2003, 10:52 PM']I only sack late in the game based on Psionic Strength; any new soldier under 100 is axed.  Early in the game I /would/ only sack for low reactions (and nothing else) but in this case sacking is better known as scouting, opening doors, etc.[/quote]
Oops one exception to that early on: if the soldier is gonna take like 2 months to heal they're gone.
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  • 3 months later...
I always sack the ones with the highest total of statistics. :o Those always got mindcontrolled very easily. Apparently the stats all ad up to some total (maybe a bit random) wich is divided over all stats. My best soldiers always got mc'd later in the game and when I got mc-lab they indeed turned out to have low mc-strength. Since I started sacking the ones with highest total of statistics I started ending up with peops who all had very high mc-strength. And the bad statistics increase through fighting anyways. ^^
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