Soldiers.... question

[NCC-1701-F]

Hey, some of you may remember me from UFO comme center, if you don't, hello. I've been playing UFO defense and TFTD for about 2 years now, and it really doesn't make sense that that, even if there are lower ranking soldiers that are, statistically, and experince wise, better, it will still promote the highest ranked person. Why????????

Also, if you could say any one line after you kill any of the bugs, what would it be????

And last, but not least, how many people would be interested in a version of x-com where you could also control the aliens, not just in tactical, but on geoscape too, and then do a multiplayer against a human opponent.

[JellyfishGreen]

1. I think promotions are based on kill count.

2. "Hey, Fox Mulder, do you believe now?" also "Rookie shoots...he SCORES"

And the favorite "Eat hot plasma death, bugeyed alien scum"

3. Who's this human opponent you have such a grudge against?

[NKF]

Promotion appear to work on a sort of round robin system. Who gets the highest promotion first, they'll get to wear the commander's lapels.

 

So we have soldiers Jane and Joe, and a couple hundred nameless rookies. Joe gets lucky in the first mission and is promoted , but soldier Jane is definitely the better soldier but was unable to make a few kills. After a couple of missions, even if soldier Joe doesn't see much action, and soldier Jane does all the work and has a kill count two, three or maybe four times greater than soldier Joe, soldier Joe will still be the higher rank.

 

It's a bit unfair, but that's what you get.

 

I suppose, if you look at it in a different perspective, it's quite a good system. The worst soldier gets to be the commander, so you have to keep them out of combat more often than not, while your front-line soldiers, who are vastly superior in every way, don't get such high ranks. So if they get killed, overall morale loss isn't so severe.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

Firstly promotion is very unfair but if I find one of my guys is getting promoted without pulling his weight I just send him off to another base for a while to think about what he's done... Also I try to keep my soldiers relatively similarly gifted by checking their stats before each mission. That way I can decide which soldiers need to go off and kill more aliens. In my current game I have only six guys so I only have five squaddies and a sergeant. BUT! Because I was trying to get other guys promoted (this is before I was told it worked on numbers of troops) my sergeant had only six kills when my squaddies all had over twenty! Best is 26 now I think...

 

Secondly, depends what kind of alien... I'd love to be able to quote termintator though so I think I would reserve "You've been terminated" for the Cyberdiscs and Sectopods. Reapers would probvably be "Down boy" while the celatids would be "Little Jimmy will have to wait a little longer for that organ transplant he wanted..." Silacoids? "Who says you can't get blood from a stone?" Chryssalids would be "Never did like seafood much" and Ethereals would be "Brainfreeze" Sectoids Snakemen and Floaters would probably be something along the lines of "You aint moving no more" (Check the signature)

[Psy Guy]

Promotions are unfair unless you make your higher ranking people work. I think that the idea behind the x-com promotion system is to make you use your high ranking people so they eather a. die and are replaced with a better solder or b. become better (fitting to there rank). (Line) (using the UT Voice) "OWNERSHIP"!! (Alien verson of x-com) Only if i can use ethereals from the start. (I'ed have battleships doing research missions on day one) (ethereals and chryssalids!!!)

-PSY GUY-

 

(i wonder if Chryssalids taste like crab?)

[Whtemg]

1. Can't say that I've ever thought about it, my x-com operatives don't tend to live long enough to worry about it.

 

2. "Little prick...." or "Outta MY way"

 

3. I would love to see this feature in a remake of x-com. I think some balancing issues may need to be worked out, but multiplayer.....*competitive* multiplayer!

[The Veteran]

I didn't answer question three earlier as I was at college and my bus was leaving but I can do it now instead!

A human v human XCom would be great. Indeed there is a patch to allow human alien missions for the original. I'd like to be aliens I think because it would just be so much fun to play as Chryssalids!

The aliens shouldn't be able to reload though...

[Solfius]

I don't like the way the promotion system works, it's ok if you use small teams, but i don't I max out the amount of men, and end up with a totally out of proportion amount of officers compared to troopers,

 

Q2) "NEXT PLEASE"

 

Q3) multiplay would be mental!!

[Alan]

1) well, in my book commanders just have to be able to command... although the good combat skills are a bonus

 

2) i try not to talk to my computer... however "now that beats a can of raid" said with reference to x-com laser rifles... now i think that would be appropriate.

 

3) *nods* multiplayer would be good. As would be being able to play as aliens.

[Solfius]

Like on command and conquer you can play as both GDI or NOD

[NCC-1701-F]

1. I don't mind so much now because my commander is up to 19 kills, about 2 per mission, whereas my colonel is at 31, 3.1 kills per mission

 

2. "Wipe yourself.... you dead"- Rush Hour 1

 

3. With the multiplayer, the easiest handicap would be making it so they have very limited resources at the start, like, maybe one armed ship, 3 unarmed ones, and like 8 sectoids and a cyberdisc or something, but the ability to play against a human opponent is unique, a human can adapt to changes and use specialized and flexible tactics, an AI as good as X-Coms (considering it's better than most of them today....) still isn't as good. And also, as opposed to multiplayer, a major mod for UFO and TFTD that really changes things, making it harder but more practical, and then having a standings board, kind of like the carlos challenge, but not, based on efficiency

anyway, g2g, more 2morrow

[Snikers]

I would just like to point out that I am early in the game and my highest ranking soldier, a captain, has zero,

count 'em, Z-E-R-O kills. Top that!

[Psy Guy]

hehe my commander's first five kills were civs.

 

-PSY GUY-

[The Demi-Godly One]

A multiplayer would be nice, aliens money would be converted to ellerium, tanks

would turn into sectopods and cyberdisks. And soldiers would be a random alien.

Grenades would be alien grenades, and all your units start with the plasma pistol.

Reaserching would be changed too- Laser pistol-plasma rifle, laser rifle-heavy plasma

heavy laser-blaster launcher etc...

Although I think a multiplayer would be unbalencing between the aliens and the humans.

[Xcom-Warblade]

My highest Ranking Officer (Commander) is currently in critical condition with 78 days to heal. He's my best soldier too. I am sooo dissapointed.

[AcidBoot]

1) I don't really care. Promotions are meaningless.

 

2)"Stop or I'll shoot" :crazy:

 

3) It could be interesting. The thing is that the aliens have a wide range of complex and... well... alien objectives. Ultimately they seek to capture/destroy the Earth, but that's not all. What human player would send a bunch of bugeyes on a cattle mutilation mission? <sarcasm>I can see that really annoying the human opponent.</sarcasm>

 

Further more, alot of alien missions go unnoticed by X-COM. I don't think that the human player would appreciate waiting for an hour or so while the alien player subverts the US government, and kills a few yankee cows... especially if his only base was in Europe.

 

It would pretty much have to be a completely different game.

[The Demi-Godly One]

I think promotion is unfair, but try to think of it this way, the first guy gets a kill. He looks good. Then someone else gets

way better. What would you do? "George get outta here this guy is better" Poof it's done? He might go beserk!(Knowing X-com Agents) Why would you promote him anyway, the guy in the top position isn't always the best. But maybe you are not willing to go through all the work, (just pretend it's real life, you don't just go "Joe you are a commander, enjoy"). Or maybe what the lesser guy did looks better. OR it could even be that (since it's determined by the first mission) it's not as impressive any more to do _______. When _____ is what the first guy did when you had less experiance.

[tftd fan]

1. AFAIK, the promotions are earned according to the oportunity in the battle filed in early times of the game.

So, if one soldier gets the luck of shoot down analins that was spotted for example (lucky shot), he will probably get promoted. And so goes on.

 

2. Miss!

 

3. fighting aginst humans would be awesome though, can you imagine a world scale weapon development run to see who has the better weapons and use them against other countries?? That sounded more like Star Wars Galactic Battlegorunds anyway, but it would be nice.

[Orac]

Personally, I like the way xcom handles rank. It works out great. Afterall, the higher the rank of a soldier that gets killed the more negative impact it has on morale of the entire squad. As a result I tend to use my higher rank soldiers more as rear echelon troops (scouting, scanning, psi etc). I leave the heavy combat to the majority of my forces that consequently tend to be lower ranked soldiers because of how the game handles promotions (it being based upon how many soldiers you have total and the higher the rank the few positions for said rank are available. i.e. how you can 1 captain per 11 soldiers etc.).

 

Squaddies and sergeants tend to work out plenty well as frontline troops. Afterall, you don't need to develop a frontline troop as much as a rear echelon troop to be plenty effective at that role - backbone of the assault to bring firepower to the front. Also consequencely, frontline troops tend to have a lower life expectancy.

 

If I try to play in a way that I try to turn my higher ranked soldiers into frontmen, it often tends to be much more of an uphill battle to the point I feel more like I'm doing nothing more than working against the natural grain of the game and trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Also any losses that I experience (expect some casualties no matter what, especially to your pointmen) are much more likely to have a more profound impact upon the whole campaign.

 

Also sometimes no matter what, you're COs are going to get wasted. That's ok though, because if that happens, then the next troop is up for promotion and sometimes that works out even better. The main thing seems to be you don't want to loose too many high ranking soldiers in a single mission. Losing more high ranking soldiers than less seems to be a good recipe for disaster on a mission (due to the ramifications it has upon squad's morale. And let's face it, low morale is one of those things that works against the possibility of turning the tide of the battle back in your favor - paints your squad even more into a corner).

[Asmodai]

I don't even care ab00t rank. I just throw a buncha guys in the mix. If they get promoted, good for them.

[NCC-1701-F]

Ok a few things.............

1. Wouldn't it be better with rank if the higher your rank got, there were special bonuses you could get for those troops, like perks, IE- +5% accuracy, +10 strength etc............... in addition to the normal gains

 

2. I'm changing my line to one of the following: "Oh, did you see that, a muscle spasm, i've been getting them lately, whoops....... there it goes again (gun goes off spraying more bullets into already dead sectoid)"

(for tftd) "OK, someone get me a HUGE pot, were going to have some lobster......."