Skill and rank increases!

[Esli]

Do skills increase as you fire, so that you could fire at nothing and gain sniper skills?
Also, how does soldier's rank increase? My most active soldiers (the ones with the highest kill counts!) don't seem to gain ranks as quickly as the runner ups. How's that work?

[Elbenfreund]

im not sure about the skill increase but afaik promotion isn't fully implemented yet. the suprising promotion priority comes from the fact that your soldiers "mind" skill is quite important. He becomes a leader for his mental stability more than for the daily blood work

[Anderskorn]

^^ that makes a LOT of sence.  


You never want to go into battle with a leader that has killed 5 times more  guys than everyone else but cant handle it if half his squad gets waisted in one turn.  


 To this end.....  i would like to say that in my X-com days, i would ALWAYS pick out ONE guy that had a rediculous mind rating and used him till he had like 100 kills....  (at this piont i would like to point out that quick save and quick load actualy worked in the x-com game IN MISSION)  Sooooo yeah... i cheated a LOT during the first 30ish missions in my old x-com days.... just to get one super bad ass leader that spit nails and kicked ass like it was his job from birth.      :twisted:

[Opeth666]

With regards to skill increases, I tested it, and it seems each skill goes up by one point per mission.  It doesn't matter which weapon you used, all skills gain a point.  As to rank, I have one guy who gained 3 ranks, but none of the others gained a single rank.  The successful guy has the highest mind skill, I think.

[Esli]

@opeth
ya, i actually noticed that myself after i started taking notes. at the same time, i've installed all the latest patches hehe.
none of my guys have had a rank increase yet and we've just defended the base from alien invasion :o

hehe, did rank even do anything in x-com?

-- oh, and now i've beaten the game for my first time. none of my guys got a rank upgrade :(

[Opeth666]

How did you manage to beat the game?  I'm on my first one, but because missions aren't tracking, all the continents are on the verge of giving up.  Are you playing the regular version?

[mlisowsk]

Actually, promotions are the task of the big boss, i.e. the player. So actually there should be a message box after a mission:

"Squad leader Antoine Leblanc has shown an outstanding performance recently with 8 kills in 2 missions and seems to be a natural leader [high intelligence stats, high morale stats]. Do you agree to promote him to Sergeant? YES/NO".

This way the player would have some influence on who gets promoted.
...or the player could choose between the two best guys.
Of course, a promotion would boost the morale (not necessarily his intelligence ;-) of the soldier. Just some ideas for the future...

Y'know, the morale boost could also have a responsibility factor. I mean like this:
Death of a grunt (rookie-[What comes before Liutenant? ])= -30 to all higher officers -20 to all lower or equal officers
Death of a  Junior officer (Liutenant-[the one that is before commander])= -30 to all Higher officers, -20 to all in the same class, -50 to all below
Death of a senior officer (anyone after (including commander aswell) commander)= -30 to all in the same class -70 to all grunts, -50 to all junior officers

P.S I have no intention of stealing the thread, I'm just proposing an idea connected with this thread

[Irinami]

Comparative Military Ranks at Wikipedia.org. Thought it might help.

[Nevyn]

Y'know, the morale boost could also have a responsibility factor. I mean like this:
Death of a grunt (rookie-[What comes before Liutenant? ])= -30 to all higher officers -20 to all lower or equal officers
Death of a  Junior officer (Liutenant-[the one that is before commander])= -30 to all Higher officers, -20 to all in the same class, -50 to all below
Death of a senior officer (anyone after (including commander aswell) commander)= -30 to all in the same class -70 to all grunts, -50 to all junior officers

P.S I have no intention of stealing the thread, I'm just proposing an idea connected with this thread

<.< >.>
Great idea, actually.... X-Com 1/2 had this, and the presence of a commander also increased the morale of everyone on the mission, when the big brass comes along you feel it matters.

I love the option to give a promotion to people also, make a promoted soldier cost more of course, and some other reason to leave people unpromoted, but it gives you much more of a commander feel.

[Czert]

yes, if you have ability to choice to promote selected soldier - this give more depth to game (but this not remove auto-game promoting - e.q all soldiers who serve for more than 20 missions (and for another 20 missions) are auto-promoted for one rank).
And it will be nice if soldiers with certain rank gain special abilities - e.q captain increasing accuracy of soldier up to 10 squares, sergants increasing morale rocovery and decreasing chance of paniced soldiers up to 5 squares...etc.

[tempsanity]

Btw. I saw the proper skill increase (assault guns skill increasing when you actually use this kind of weapons etc) on the to do list and I really hope it will be implemented.

[Getix]

I've got a personal idea about ability improvement.

Ability improvement after every mission is 100 - (current skill)% ONLY if the skill has been used.

Ex:
Using a assault rifle with a skill (pre-mission) of 40 means that the soldier has a 60% chance of increasing it.

For the other skills not related to fight, I'd prefer a "xp" system related to killing aliens.
Stat advancement should be something like

Skill 30
To get to 31 -> need 31 xp.

This for all stats. XP are equally divided into skills.