lame soldiers in v2.2.1

[Striker-SVK]

Hello everyone.I searched around here for an answer to my problem, but I didn't find it, so I'll ask it here :why are the soldiers in v2.2.1 so lame?The stats are all so low-then the soldiers don't hit almost anything, get killed very easily, and so on.Is there a place where to set up my first base so the soldiers aren't lame or something like that?In v2.1 I found such a place, so does it exist in v2.2.1 too?If not, what should I do then?And also, PHALANX is a supra-elite unit,so why are the soldiers shooting like if they were blind?
TIA for any useful info.

[Yatta]

tbh, it has always bothered me too, that most 'elite' soldiers you recruit seem to have never held a weapon before, and more importantly never thrown a ball in their whole life (maybe dad was away when it was time to teach baseball to the son ?) ... look at how they throw grenades -_-; ...

Id rather have a game system with soldier having their random stats fixed - until implants are applied - and getting experimented at killing aliens, giving them chances to score critical hits on the alien types they know well.

One thing I liked in UFO:EU is that you 'bought' soldiers. It was quite like a trading card game : you buy a pack of cards, if you have luck you get good ones, and you can continue spending money to try to get a very good team..

But i suppose that would be too different from the actual game design / the old ufo game.

[Striker-SVK]

look at how they throw grenades

I didn't notice the grenades,but the shooting...first mission, there was a Taman, like not even 20m away from my soldiers, and guess what..NOT A SINGLE HIT (it was an MG, Short burst=6rounds)...already when I noticed the stats, I was thinking..."what the heck?so lame?oh my..."...in v2.1, my soldier with the worst acc of the whole team would hit and kill the alien....and the TUs because of stats...around 30, while in 2.1 i got 40+
I never played UFO:EU, so I can't comment what you said....but the question is: what should I do?With such lame soldiers, one can "kiss all that good-bye"as Ellen Ripley(Sigourney Weaver) said in Aliens , here "all that" meaning "defending the Earth"

[Sgt. Hatter]

Although I'll agree with you that it's rather unrealistic, having lame, talentless starting soldiers is a long-standing gameplay tradition in the UFO/X-COM series.  I can't think of a single game where any soldiers you could get started out competent or excellent in any given area.  There's no way I know outside of editing your save games to get starting soldiers that are extremely competent in one or more areas.

On the bright side, soldiers improve with combat and experience, so if you can bite the bullet, deal with the lame stats, keep them alive and win your missions, your soldiers will eventually become howling demons of men and women, capable of putting a hole through a Taman's eye at a hundred meters with a snap-shot.  Helps to use high-accuracy (low spread) weapons early on and some degree of autofire.  Sniper Rifles and Assault Rifles are great primary infantry weapons early on, alongside flamers and grenade launchers for your heavy/explosives.  Upgrade to Bolter and Laser weaponry as soon as you can, but keep the flamers and grenade launchers around.  Never, ever send a guy out without some form of armor on.  Even lowly combat armor will help you survive a shot or two early on.

[Yatta]

There are games where you pay to hire soldiers or staff, and the better they are, the most it costs. I do prefer the "trading card game" effect tough.

[Sgt. Hatter]

There are games where you pay to hire soldiers or staff, and the better they are, the most it costs. I do prefer the "trading card game" effect tough.

This is true - they did this in X-COM: Apocalypse, but mainly for scientific staff (who only had a single skill related to their profession and a fixed value in it.)  There was virtually no way you could hire a soldier with a combat stat over 30, with the sole exception of androids; they simply aren't randomly generated that high.  You could, however, easily train a soldier higher.

Especially if you exploited the organization-relationship mechanic to attack "friendly" organizations with stun weaponry; you can loot them to your heart's content and they never get angry at you because you never kill their employees.

[Striker-SVK]

I didn't notice the soldiers' stats increasing..thanx a lot...one more thing..does the max.HP value increase too?
EDIT : also, I don't like grenade launchers much because of the low range and the flamers for the same reason...my favourite weapons are laser,bolter and assault rifles..accurate at range and powerful..3-round burst from an assault rifle(if it hits) is guaranteed to kill an alien even if he wears medium alien armour...

[Yatta]

3-round burst from an assault rifle(if it hits) is guaranteed to kill an alien even if he wears medium alien armour...

I ... dont think so. Unless you're playing on easy - i didnt try it.
The only aliens I manage to kill with 3 hits from rifle are the unarmored taaman.

[Striker-SVK]

I ... dont think so. Unless you're playing on easy - i didnt try it.

Yup, right...I didn't try a harder level yet....

[Edi]

Half the fun is trying to assemble a competent team out of the crap you get every month. And occasionally you get the kind of supermutant monsters whose lowest stat is 25, second lowest is 27 and everything else is above 30.

Given how accuracy and weapon skills feed off of each other, those guys start racking up a kill count really fast and just keep on improving.

Of course, 2.2.1 is much lamer than the dev versions of 2.3. where there's a lot more going on and done a lot better. And you still need to sort the chaff from the wheat, except in 2.3 you can actually permanently eliminate the useless crap from the roster so you don't need to ever check them again. Eventually you end up with good teams on several bases.

[Striker-SVK]

I already noticed some improvements in combat, but not in stats...

[Sgt. Hatter]

I already noticed some improvements in combat, but not in stats...

It takes awhile to accumulate significant gains from combat training.  Typically, a soldier will only gain 1-2 points in a few skills with each battle.  Freshly-hired soldiers will never really be excelsior; this is why keeping your starting soldiers alive and healthy while still sending them into combat frequently is important.  Fresh hires are only good for filling out new bases.

Right now, there's no way to train soldiers outside of combat - missions are the only way to improve a soldier.  Fortunately, all stats can improve with repeated mission successes; even health.  And as Edi said, accuracy and weapons skills synergize; characters with high accuracy will get lots of kills and thus rapidly improve their weapon skill, which improves their kill ratio even further, which leads to them improving even faster... etc.  This is how you get the howling-demon-bullet-through-tamaan-eyesocket soldiers I mentioned a few posts back.

Long range weapon + low spread + modest TU cost + mid-high damage + lots o' kills = lame soldiers don't stay lame very long.

[Legendman3]

Right now, there's no way to train soldiers outside of combat

so your gonna make a thing that allows you to train them outside combat? SWEET! and dont say no it WILL eventually happen

[Sgt. Hatter]

Whoa there, Legendman3; don't jump to conclusions.  I'm not a developer, so I don't know if there's an out-of-combat training method planned.

However, out-of-combat training was available for most of the classic X-COM series, so it'd stand to reason that it'll be included here sooner or later.  I'll go look over the wiki to see if there's any info on it.

EDIT: Aha.  Apparently they are in the works.  I've found these UFOpaedia and Wiki articles regarding soldier training.