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    XCOM: Enemy Unknown

    Game » consists of 19 releases. Released Oct 09, 2012

    The classic tactical turn-based combat returns in this modern re-imagining of X-COM: UFO Defense.

    XCOM: Not all soldiers are created equal

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    Vigilance

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    #1  Edited By Vigilance

    I assumed the stats of the characters were based on their rank and their specialization but I've begun to notice that experienced soldiers acquired as rewards from missions are much better than soldiers recruited "off the street".

    Especially in their Will stat.

    I've slowly begun phasing out a lot of more experienced recruits for the sniper, assault and support I received as mission rewards. They started at Captain but all had Will ratings in the 90's, where most of my Colonels even had Will ratings in the 70's.

    My assault recruit even had psionic potential.

    Just making sure others were aware of this, because I tended to shrug and gloss over missions that offered a soldier and go for other things, often money, which I always seem to need more of.

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    Mezmero

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    #2  Edited By Mezmero

    Thanks for the tip. I have 2 Colonels who have maxed their psionic skill trees but neither are strong enough to use the device from the story. I typically shoot for money missions during alien abductions but I guess I'll need to scoop some captains.

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    Sackmanjones

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    #3  Edited By Sackmanjones

    Plus it's awesome to get a high ranking officer on the fly. Especially for someone in my position that only has rookies left... The past few missions were extremely rough

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    mesoian

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    #4  Edited By mesoian

    ::Sigh:: I miss my awesome sniper with double tap...I want him back...

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    Vigilance

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    #5  Edited By Vigilance

    @Sackmanjones said:

    Plus it's awesome to get a high ranking officer on the fly. Especially for someone in my position that only has rookies left... The past few missions were extremely rough

    Yeah, it might be me, but the ones you get from missions seem custom designed, where the ones you get from the recruiting office seem randomly thrown together.

    That might be me reading too much into the tea leaves, but it seems that way.

    I mean, I might have RANDOMLY gotten a tough Nigerian Assault spec chick, who looks like Grace Jones and whose nickname is "Bonzai" but, like I say, they seem a little less random and more designed to me.

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    BeachThunder

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    #6  Edited By BeachThunder

    Hm, I'm not sure how I feel about that; I'm attached to my soldiers I've raised from the ground up =\

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    Vigilance

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    #7  Edited By Vigilance

    @BeachThunder said:

    Hm, I'm not sure how I feel about that; I'm attached to my soldiers I've raised from the ground up =\

    Me too and I still have a couple of originals. But with me encountering more and more psychic enemies, and scarier stuff, that high Will is just too good to pass up in some cases.

    It might also be the case that there's a chance (a small one) for recruits to have awesome stats as well. I am still trying to puzzle out the systems running the background.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #8  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @Mesoian said:

    ::Sigh:: I miss my awesome sniper with double tap...I want him back...

    huh? How did you lose him? most ennemies I come across don't even have line of sight with my sniper before they get a hot stream of plasma to the head.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #9  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @Vigilance: it must be equivalent to a fresh soldier promoting with the iron will bonus from the officer training school

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    mesoian

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    #10  Edited By mesoian

    @pyrodactyl said:

    @Mesoian said:

    ::Sigh:: I miss my awesome sniper with double tap...I want him back...

    huh? How did you lose him? most ennemies I come across don't even have line of sight with my sniper before they get a hot stream of plasma to the head.

    One of the game's more common bugs is to warp enemies who are in the fog of war to areas close to your squad. I had shot down an alien ship and placed my sniper on a high elevation cover platform and send the rest to slowly gain ground and take over the ship while the sniper gave them cover. It got to the point where I had eliminated every enemy except for a small squad of Brutes. When I eventually found them, there was a berserker in toe, and instead of them scrambling into cover like they usually do, the Berserker magically teleported to the other side of the stage behind my sniper.

    That happens a lot in this game. Placement of enemies in the fog of war doesn't seem like it actually adheres to any sort of sensible path. I played through an easy mission last night, then redid the mission immediately afterwards only to have the configuration of enemies switch 180 degrees based on whatever my opening action was. It's strange. It's the most apparent on Terror missions where all the enemies are supposed to be on paths, but the paths seem to change and warp depending on how much ground you've covered/have exposed.

    I won a Captain class sniper before I stopped last night, so I'll have to train him up, but I found ANOTHER bug that didn't allow him to see once he touched down from using the jetpack.

    Game's buggy. Fun but buggy. Patch required real bad.

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    BoG

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    #11  Edited By BoG

    @Mesoian: Let me tell you about how much I love this bug. Yesterday, three turns into a mission, a Sectopod appeared right in the middle of my squad. That was SO AWESOME.

    In all honesty, it was better than any other situation with a Sectopod. I was able to use all of my attacks to destroy it. Approaching a Sectopod to take it down seems harder than actually destroying it.

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    Turambar

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    #12  Edited By Turambar
    @Mezmero said:

    Thanks for the tip. I have 2 Colonels who have maxed their psionic skill trees but neither are strong enough to use the device from the story. I typically shoot for money missions during alien abductions but I guess I'll need to scoop some captains.

    Put one of them in the psionic armor.
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    mesoian

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    #13  Edited By mesoian

    @BoG: Yeah it is! I got my first large ship takedown last night that has 7 sectopods in it running patrols in rooms with no cover and full drone accompaniments. I don't even know how to begin taking them down, but I know they have a big laser that does 9 damage to whomever it touches! SO THAT'S FUN!

    During the story mission where you find sectoid commanders for the first time, I had a small group of Crysliloids (or whatever they were called) burst out of my sniper's face, only to be taken down by my overwatched heavys. It was awesome, but stupid. My sniper was fine, he just looked confused.

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    mike

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    #14  Edited By mike

    @Mesoian: This has happened to me numerous times. I was always wondering how that random alien had appeared right behind my front lines...now I know. The last two times it happened it killed half of my squad.

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    KimChi4U

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    #15  Edited By KimChi4U

    I think that a soldier's will score is also affected if he or she is wounded (or gravely wounded). I remember reading that somewhere. Your newly acquired soldiers from mission rewards could have a higher will because they haven't been through the meat grinder yet.

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    BoG

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    #16  Edited By BoG

    @Mesoian: SEVEN?!?!

    I think the most trouble I've had in this game was taking down the pair of Sectopods in the final mission. No other encounter has left me so battered. I don't think I'll ever attack a large UFO now.

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    mesoian

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    #17  Edited By mesoian

    @BoG said:

    @Mesoian: SEVEN?!?!

    I think the most trouble I've had in this game was taking down the pair of Sectopods in the final mission. No other encounter has left me so battered. I don't think I'll ever attack a large UFO now.

    It was funny, the entry point I chose was from the side, so I lined my guys up to do a controlled breach, looked in, saw THREE of them in one room and was like, "....nah, let's go around" Which in and of itself is dumb because you have to kill everything to win anyway.

    But I climbed on top of the ship and went around them, there were two more doing a route along the outside edge of the ship, and then another two on the far end with some Brute elites, sectoid commanders and heavy floaters.

    And I didn't have my sniper with double tap.

    I want him back.

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    RenegadeDoppelganger

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    I think it's best to assume that almost every facet of this game is rolled for. I didnt know recruits from mission rewards rolled higher stats on average, that's cool, but it's also not a big surprise.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #19  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @Mesoian said:

    @BoG said:

    @Mesoian: SEVEN?!?!

    I think the most trouble I've had in this game was taking down the pair of Sectopods in the final mission. No other encounter has left me so battered. I don't think I'll ever attack a large UFO now.

    It was funny, the entry point I chose was from the side, so I lined my guys up to do a controlled breach, looked in, saw THREE of them in one room and was like, "....nah, let's go around" Which in and of itself is dumb because you have to kill everything to win anyway.

    But I climbed on top of the ship and went around them, there were two more doing a route along the outside edge of the ship, and then another two on the far end with some Brute elites, sectoid commanders and heavy floaters.

    And I didn't have my sniper with double tap.

    I want him back.

    This is complete madness

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    zaccheus

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    #20  Edited By zaccheus

    @KimChi4U said:

    I think that a soldier's will score is also affected if he or she is wounded (or gravely wounded). I remember reading that somewhere. Your newly acquired soldiers from mission rewards could have a higher will because they haven't been through the meat grinder yet.

    Yes, I saw a tooltip that said that gravely wounded soldiers will recover, but their will is permanently lowered.

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    mesoian

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    #21  Edited By mesoian

    @pyrodactyl: A big part of XCOM is learning when to say, "No! The person who designed this level is an asshole and he can get fucked. EVERYONE BACK ON THE PLANE, WE'RE GOING BACK!" Because eventually, that's what I did with that mission. And it was for the best. Didn't suffer terrible penalties, got my main squad back and proceeded to roll through the rest of the game.

    I'm almost done with my first playthrough. Hit the point of no return about an hour ago and decided to stop for the night.

    Also got a glitch that turned my SHIV into a headless rookie. So that was fun, until I found an ethereal...

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    Undeadpool

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    #22  Edited By Undeadpool

    I had a support captain pop up as a reward a mere two missions after I'd lost my main medic. Sometimes XCOM is generous. And yeah, as Zaccheus points out, I'm pretty sure they make it to Captain with all the will bonuses intact and none of the penalties, but I hadn't considered that, so it's good to know.

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    crusader8463

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    #23  Edited By crusader8463

    Well that sucks. Kind of makes ranking up your guys not so great if they can never match reward guys.

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    Rayeth

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    #24  Edited By Rayeth

    The deal with the reward guys is that they have never been injured. Soldiers that are gravely wounded (maybe less than that? For sure the ones who you stabilize with medkits tho), will suffer a PERMANENT Will penalty when they get back. That means they will be less than useless against Berzerkers and Mutons, and ever more likely to panic. If your start of game soldiers are still with you, that is likely why they have such low stats.

    All of that said though, the soldiers from missions are meant to be very good, otherwise why take them over $200, or some scientists/engineers?

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    SmilingPig

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    #25  Edited By SmilingPig

    2 snipers, 2 assaults, 1 heavy and 1 medic and so far the game as ben extremely easy at normal difficulty for me. I just encountered the giant mother ship that shook the planet.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #26  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @Zaccheus said:

    @KimChi4U said:

    I think that a soldier's will score is also affected if he or she is wounded (or gravely wounded). I remember reading that somewhere. Your newly acquired soldiers from mission rewards could have a higher will because they haven't been through the meat grinder yet.

    Yes, I saw a tooltip that said that gravely wounded soldiers will recover, but their will is permanently lowered.

    for about 20 points to, which is a lot.

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    zaccheus

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    #27  Edited By zaccheus

    @pyrodactyl said:

    @Zaccheus said:

    @KimChi4U said:

    I think that a soldier's will score is also affected if he or she is wounded (or gravely wounded). I remember reading that somewhere. Your newly acquired soldiers from mission rewards could have a higher will because they haven't been through the meat grinder yet.

    Yes, I saw a tooltip that said that gravely wounded soldiers will recover, but their will is permanently lowered.

    for about 20 points to, which is a lot.

    Yeah after writing that my sniper got knocked out and I got to witness that personally... Well I don't think it really matters since she almost never gets hit since she is way in the back killing aliens like crazy. She has 5x more kills than anyone else in my roster... Double tap + plasma sniper + advanced scope is a bit OP on easy.

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    Barrabas

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    #28  Edited By Barrabas

    I'll ask this question here since we're talking about soldier attributes. Do your guys continue to level up after they hit max rank? By that I mean, can you improve them further or are they just the best they'll ever be (barring new equipment)? I'm asking because if they don't improve I'm real tempted to not use my Colonels for standard abduction missions. It seems smarter to save them for things like terror and story missions, unless you're worried about losing a country.

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    Anupsis

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    #29  Edited By Anupsis

    @Mesoian said:

    ::Sigh:: I miss my awesome sniper with double tap...I want him back...

    I fucking LOVE double tap. If I lost Vogel I would cry...

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    Tennmuerti

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    #30  Edited By Tennmuerti

    There are two factors at play here:

    Will can be permanently decreased if your soldier is critically wounded. Secondly the officer training perk that increases will with every level does not apply retroactively to your dudes, but does work for the dudes you can get during missions.

    It's quite possible to get your own normal recruits to 90-100 will if they don't get critically injured and have had the will officer perk in effect before starting to level up.

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    Tennmuerti

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    #31  Edited By Tennmuerti

    @Barrabas said:

    I'll ask this question here since we're talking about soldier attributes. Do your guys continue to level up after they hit max rank? By that I mean, can you improve them further or are they just the best they'll ever be (barring new equipment)? I'm asking because if they don't improve I'm real tempted to not use my Colonels for standard abduction missions. It seems smarter to save them for things like terror and story missions, unless you're worried about losing a country.

    Normal progression stops at max rank. No further improvements in stats. So go ahead and put your colonels on ice for easy missions.

    However later on if you successfully test a soldier for psionic powers they can level up their psionic abilities, this is however totally separate from their normal progression.

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    Barrabas

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    #32  Edited By Barrabas

    @Tennmuerti: Alright, thanks.

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    Vigilance

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    #33  Edited By Vigilance

    @Tennmuerti said:

    There are two factors at play here:

    Will can be permanently decreased if your soldier is critically wounded. Secondly the officer training perk that increases will with every level does not apply retroactively to your dudes, but does work for the dudes you can get during missions.

    It's quite possible to get your own normal recruits to 90-100 will if they don't get critically injured and have had the will officer perk in effect before starting to level up.

    Thanks for the info, I knew something was going on.

    So basically, because of PTSD and an aggressive playstyle, I wound up "retiring" a really good heavy and assault trooper.

    Does the game tell you this anywhere? If they did, I missed it. If they didn't, that's kind of shitty. I would occasionally throw a heavy into a heavy fire zone, thinking "I can stabilize him and let him rest, he'll be fine".

    Once I figured this out, I invested heavily in SHIV technology and used them for those situations where I really want to flank someone, but he's going to take some heavy fire.

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