One possibility to offsetting the loss of a quality player would be to make new recruits start with higher stats as the game progresses, maybe an average of your best 10 guys or something. Even tie it to the difficulty level, with easier modes using few people while harder modes would use more people to keep values lower. Example:
Hard - averages 50 best players. The recruit pool is watered down by lower stat base-watchers.
Medium - averages 20 best players. New recruits would be based mostly on your best two teams.
Easy - averages 10 best players. New recruits would be based mostly on your best team.
Or something to that effect. This mainly kicks in in end game and offsets the penalty you encounter when you lose a high quality player and sets it up to bring a new recruit up to speed faster. Having terrible soldiers to recruit from only tends to encourage save/reload. I've always felt this was appropriate in a game like this because those soldiers in the recruit pool represent the troops, which will also get better as the war progresses and everyone learns how to battle the enemy, not just the few elite teams going into direct conflict. The ground troops will also learn more about them as our knowledge filters down to them. At least by my theory.
I also don't mean exactly the same as the team members you've lost; there should be some penalty for losing a member and that adds to the challenge. Some percentage would be required of the average. Doesn't have to be complicated, just balanced enough so that the new recruits are not as good as your best.
And sorry if this sidetracks the thread. Just an idea that's indirectly related to the stat system in general.
Very nice Idea!!! I totally agree with that.
Obs: I prefer Bettlescared idea, but this would lead to a complete reformulation of the actual new soldier stats generation. Alternatively we could add a fixed (Min=x, Max=y constant) experience to every stats multiplied by the game month to new soldiers (eg. 10th month of the game, new soldiers would get the month experience constant multiplied by 10).
This would require some testing to ensure recruits would never be generated better than a veteran soldier, but enough so that veteran soldier deaths don't have a huge impact on the game (causing to simply load game).
Again not as guaranteed and balanced as the average of ur top solders minus a constant percentage. Just less coding work.