Training Skills

[Taghmon]

You might have noticed that your chars only increase their skills by using them. Thats easy for shooting but gets annoying for secondary skills. I will try to explain a training solution for all skills, but beware training skills takes time and resources.

 

Attributes

Till now I have found no way to train them.

 

Secondary Attributes

VP - Just get hit. Never tried it yet, but shooting yourself should work too.

AP - Just run around much. Needs enemies around(on map?)

Evade - Don't know but i guess get shoot at with low hit chance (near misses)

 

Skills

Shooting- Just shot somethings; line up your soldiers and shot some additional clips after battle

Close combat - Attack someone with a knife; just attack a dead body for some minutes(10 per point)

Throwing - Throw knife, shurikens, grenades; it takes 10 throws a point

Hinterhalt - Use that aiming rilfe skill offen; You need an alive target...

Salvo (autofire) - Use weapons in burst or autofire mode; just shot a few 100 bullets at a tree

Hide - Winning a Stay hidden role (staying hidden in view of enemies) or start hiding; After battle just hide and unhide. Once the skill is high enough train by sneaking up to enemies.

Detect - Just move around finding enemies

engineering - A hard one; 8 actions give 1 point; possible actions: plant a grenade/explosive at a door, disarm an mine or trap, try to open a lock. Everything takes resources (tools and grenades) so plunder every char you usually leave in base; place every grenade you can spare at a door, window or box, use up most tools just for training.

medic - Heals wounds; shot your teammates and heal them; skill VP, shooting and medic in one ;-)

Break (unterbrechen) - Only trainable in combat; change your tactic to wait around corners and shot a few rounds to attract enemies. While your skill is low train this on random maps. Story maps have better enemies that are harder to surprise. The english town map is good for training, I get around a half point per combat.

 

The best map for training i have found so far is the english town(3 houses). Lots of enemies, 3 grenades on lowest difficulty, lots of doors to plant explosive, lots of corners to attract enemies.

 

Hope that helps keeping your soldiers up to task

 

p.s.: Iam playing the german(axis) campain, best training map might be different for english(allied) campain.

[Cookie]

Evade - Bleeding increases Evade. (Don't ask me why.)

 

 

A note aboout Shoot / Snipe / Burst skills - The amount of APs spent on the action seems to be irrelevent, you increase skill with each action.

 

So, if you're just doing training, use Snap Shots for Shooting, Short Bursts for increasing Burst Skill, and don't bother aiming when incresing Snipe Skill. Also, try and use weapons that require less APs (so you increase that much faster).

 

PS - If someone has any idea what improves STR, DEX, and & INT, I'd really love to know.

[Taghmon]

Evade - Bleeding increases Evade. (Don't ask me why.)

 

Yep, found it out to yesterday.

Wound someone to about 40% VP left and he will start to bleed; let him bleed till short to death and heal his VP(that heals his bleeding to) => gets about 2 VP and 2 Evade per try. But it only works once per map.

 

PS - If someone has any idea what improves STR, DEX, and & INT, I'd really love to know.

 

I have noticed that attributes increase while using skills, but it seems that they don't always increase while training or different for each class.

examples:

Training my scout in Throwing and Close Combat didn't give much Str(didn't look close enough though). But training my engiener in Throwing did raise Str(about 15% for 20 points).

My sniper did get Dex up; but no other char got that much Dex, but at least one has skills close to him.

My Grenadier also has an up in Str, but a lower skill in throwing, than scout(no Str up). But Salvo doesn't increase Str.

 

Attributes are still a mistery ...

[Krabjuice]

>_< Bleeding ups evade? What, does a bad session of the bleeds convince you to dodge more often? Oh, and don't use grenades for training throw, its just inefficient. Toss knives and other re-usable equipment.

Oh, and to improve AP, just run.. alot.

[Casual]

>_< Bleeding ups evade? What, does a bad session of the bleeds convince you to dodge more often? Oh, and don't use grenades for training throw, its just inefficient. Toss knives and other re-usable equipment.

Oh, and to improve AP, just run.. alot.

 

About runing hmm I think its limited on each levels you have level 12 you run alot you get 1 AP point then you can run run run and run and your AP increase just a little, then you get on level 13 and you run and each time your AP increase more.

So runing when your AP increase just a little is waste of time.

[Krabjuice]

About runing hmm I think its limited on each levels you have level 12 you run alot you get 1 AP point then you can run run run and run and your AP increase just a little, then you get on level 13 and you run and each time your AP increase more.

So runing when your AP increase just a little is waste of time.

 

Uh, yes?

Its like most character stat-action games. Once you up a level, the next level takes longer, then longer and longer. But, you've got to see the eventual rewards. You may need to run for an hour, but you'll get an extra 6 or 8 action points. Those extra points could save your life.

[Cookie]

Yes, what Krabjuice said - any sort of training only works up to a point. If a character is behind in his skill, each action he does (shoot, throw, hide, etc) will increase the relevant skill by a full point. However, as a character approaches his maximum for any given skill (based on his class, level, and relevenant stat -STR, DEX, or INT) his improvement will slow down dramatically, and eventually stop when he hits his limit. At that point, training becomes useless.

 

Oh, one more thing - the little blue grenades (Mk3A1 in S3, M61 in S2) are useless in Combat, but quite handy in training IMO. Since they do little damage, they can be used to wound a few of your own guys without killing them. This gives your medic a chance to practice, plus it should cause some bleeding, which will help Evade.

 

Odd what sort of morbid things the game mechanics force you to do. :mad:

[Taghmon]

Odd what sort of morbid things the game mechanics force you to do. :mad:

 

Jep, I'm quite adept now at bleeding. Shoot one below 40% Heals(this starting 7 shooter has the lowest damage for surgical shoots ;-) he bleed for 1 point increasing while his health drops.

Then use a low bandage and bring him back up to 40% to start bleeding at 1 point again. My Grenadier could do this for hours with a minimum of healing equipment.

The sniper was a different problem; starting at 85 HP there wasn't much to bleed; but it's coming...

 

Engineer Training:

I used up near all equipment and have only around 30 grenades and 10 explosives left. Now at 65. I don't want to cheat. Assaulting Koch Mansion right now; hope i find new equipment and grenades soon.

Is their a random Zone with lots of grenades or such? (playing axis at normal)

 

Attributes:

I seems, that Skill don't matter enough to get Attributes up; I guess they advance mostly on Xp based on their starting value.

[Zombie]

I found that the best map for training is the campsite. Really. It's got mostly everything you need to train (except enemies of course). Wanna shoot? Go ahead and give everyone the same type of gun, select them all and have everyone shoot at a log until one clip is gone. Simple. Wanna train throwing? Well, throw stuff around etc.

 

Just ran a few melee training missions by having my soldiers beat each other up. Got some good girl-on-girl action (CATFIGHT!) as well as boy-on-girl too. (Boy-on-boy seemed a little sick so I didn't do that). Anyhow, after getting beat up for a few rounds I sent the crew back to base to get healed in the hospital. VP's increased from this. (Suppose I could have trained my medic by healing the wounded, but I'm afraid of running out of bandages). Some soldiers saw a little improvement to the throwing skill from performing melee against each other. I'm assuming this is because they threw punches instead of kicking. Not sure how to force soldiers to punch each other instead of kick-boxing though. Would be nice to train two things at once.

 

When I went to another campsite training mission and had one soldier kick the ground in front of him for giggles I found that increased his melee skill. Ok, now that the cat is out of the bag I had everyone perform melee on the ground. Seems like my soldier and grenadier got some good increases out of this. Somewhat the same results for the medic as well (though not as much). My 2 engineers didn't see much improvement if any from melee training though, so I'm guessing improvement is based off abilities as well as how close you are getting to the next skill level. My sniper didn't see any improvement in melee whatsoever from kicking 200+times in a mission. Still, I now have 3 soldiers with low 30's/high 20's for melee (sniper and 2 engineers). A couple (grenadier and soldier) are around 42-43 while the medic is at 39. Not bad considering melee skills for most of my crew was in the low 20's-30's to start. Now I don't feel so bad going toe-to-toe against an enemy with nothing but my hands. Though, a knife is still a little better to use.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Spot/detect: this is a little hard to train. Every once and a while you can actually "spot" a teammate walking around the map. Don't know why this works but it does. Not all the time either. You can also train the spot skill by getting your team to watch someone setting mines and traps (preferably someone with bad engineering skills so it's easily visible).

 

Medals: not sure on this. But you do get medal "points" every time you spot a mine or booby trap. Spot enough of them and the game does a "check" to see whether you will get a medal at the end of the mission.

 

- Zombie

[justinstyles]

Spot/detect: this is a little hard to train. Every once and a while you can actually "spot" a teammate walking around the map. Don't know why this works but it does. Not all the time either. You can also train the spot skill by getting your team to watch someone setting mines and traps (preferably someone with bad engineering skills so it's easily visible).

 

Enlarge upon your theory; it works better than you think.

 

For example, try the Swiss mansion random mission.

After eliminating all hostiles, if one stands on the first storey above the living room (where the three civilians congregate), most squaddies' Spot ability will increase at least one level. The exception seems to be folks whose Spot is below 70 and they have no abilities to increase (or haven't chosen them yet); those folks might not be able to increase the skill.

Example: engineer Doug and medic Yves did fine detecting folks, but soldier Jerzey (whose ability to increase Spot I had not chosen at the time) had spot of 64 and did not increase at all (no blue bar movement).

 

This Spot skill increase method works anywhere where you can't "see" folks, but you get the red silhouettes.

 

Medals: not sure on this. But you do get medal "points" every time you spot a mine or booby trap. Spot enough of them and the game does a "check" to see whether you will get a medal at the end of the mission.

 

A bit off-topic: are you the same Zombie who compiled the Excel file with the stats?

 

Best regards.

[Zombie]

Enlarge upon your theory; it works better than you think.

 

For example, try the Swiss mansion random mission.

After eliminating all hostiles, if one stands on the first storey above the living room (where the three civilians congregate), most squaddies' Spot ability will increase at least one level. The exception seems to be folks whose Spot is below 70 and they have no abilities to increase (or haven't chosen them yet); those folks might not be able to increase the skill.

Example: engineer Doug and medic Yves did fine detecting folks, but soldier Jerzey (whose ability to increase Spot I had not chosen at the time) had spot of 64 and did not increase at all (no blue bar movement).

 

This Spot skill increase method works anywhere where you can't "see" folks, but you get the red silhouettes.

Oh, so spot skill increases whenever a team member "sees" a silhouette (enemy or civie)? Makes sense I guess. Though, that skill is pretty hard to train safely unless there are only civilians left on a map (or maybe an enemy camped on a different level who refuses to move). I was just pointing out that your spot skill may increase just by walking team members around or watching someone set a mine or booby trap. Admittedly, even employing those options aren't simple methods to train this skill.

 

A bit off-topic: are you the same Zombie who compiled the Excel file with the stats?

Aye, but... See, Novik originally created the tables. Pete sent them my way recently so they wouldn't get lost. All I did was put them in Excel format and upload it to the files section. Looked at the Medals tab of that sheet and have a vague idea how medals are dished out, but it still isn't 100% clear to me. If you (or anyone else) can explain it, that would be very helpful.

 

- Zombie

[Knan]

Huh? I find the spot skill the easiest to get to a high level. Keep your guys hidden near each other, then have one of them run around making noise, still hidden. They'll "hear" him and increase spot. I find it's the highest of my skills, without effort.

 

The real difficult one to raise is engineering, I find. You get little experience from setting booby-traps, and lockpicks and mine tools are a very limited resource. Any good tricks, anyone?

[Zombie]

Huh? I find the spot skill the easiest to get to a high level. Keep your guys hidden near each other, then have one of them run around making noise, still hidden. They'll "hear" him and increase spot. I find it's the highest of my skills, without effort.

So how do I go about making all this "noise"? I assume you mean you run one guy around and that's it. Still, when I do it on my game the guys trying to spot the movement only rarely catch it. In the past I haven't specifically trained spot skills so the stat is pretty low in everyone. That would mean that someone should see a spot increase almost every mission. It just isn't happening for me.

 

The real difficult one to raise is engineering, I find. You get little experience from setting booby-traps, and lockpicks and mine tools are a very limited resource. Any good tricks, anyone?

There are none unfortunately. From my current test scenario I found you'll gain 1 xp for approximately every 10-12 mines or booby-traps you set. (Taghmon claims it takes 8 in his first post above, maybe that is for a "true" engineer instead of a "wannabe" ). So it's trainable if you have plenty of explosives to waste. (You can only get them from missions it seems, refreshing your inventory doesn't give you more). You can always pseudo-cheat. Just add a whole bunch of lockpicks to your inventory with the "getitem 395" command in the console, then try to pick the Panzerklein hangar door back at base. You'll never get through it, but it trains engineering pretty fast. I don't really consider this a cheat since the game is unrealistically putting a very low cap on the number of uses a lockpick has. This is very tedious though.

 

- Zombie

[Knan]

So how do I go about making all this "noise"? I assume you mean you run one guy around and that's it. Still, when I do it on my game the guys trying to spot the movement only rarely catch it. In the past I haven't specifically trained spot skills so the stat is pretty low in everyone. That would mean that someone should see a spot increase almost every mission. It just isn't happening for me.

 

Heh. I bet your guys have become too good at hiding

 

I don't specifically train spot, but nevertheless it increases for someone every mission.

 

My L6 guys, as an example:

 

Medic - hide 35, spot 48
Soldier - hide 39, spot 33
Sniper - hide 44, spot 65
Engineer - hide 32, spot 46
Scout - hide 40, spot 45
Grenadier - hide 23, spot 39

 

... care to list your guys for comparison?

[Zombie]

Heh. I bet your guys have become too good at hiding

It's possible I guess. Some of my guys are pretty high in this area.

 

I don't specifically train spot, but nevertheless it increases for someone every mission.

 

My L6 guys, as an example:

 

Medic - hide 35, spot 48
Soldier - hide 39, spot 33
Sniper - hide 44, spot 65
Engineer - hide 32, spot 46
Scout - hide 40, spot 45
Grenadier - hide 23, spot 39

 

... care to list your guys for comparison?

Sure, here it goes:

 

Name	   Class	 Level	 Hide	 Spot
Katya (H)  Scout	   6		70!	  47
Nessy	  Grenadier   6		30	   33
Gator	  Soldier	 6		41	   35
Arvid	  Sniper	  6		57	   65
Viper	  Sniper	  6		57	   62
Abala	  Medic	   5		39	   43

So comparing notes I guess we both have approximately the same Spot values. Still, I didn't train my guys specifically for spot either - if I could find a way to do that effectively I'm sure my team could be much better than the levels they are at now. My scout is fairly low in spot even though it should be one of the easier classes to train in that area (besides snipers it seems). Suppose I could take a junk rookie along for a mission sometime who has terrible hide and run him/her ragged while hidden. *shrugs* I just have this feeling that my naturally trained team in spot should be much higher in that area if I could get them to train it every mission...

 

- Zombie

[justinstyles]

Hide is the easiest skill to increase.

Detecting anyone (enemy, civilians or your squadmates) counts towards Spot. I found myself "training" a squad if someone was close to gaining a level in Intelligence.... One can gain Spot (and Hide) at base simply by keeping everyone hidden then moving someone to speak with one of the shopkeepers.

 

Best regards.

[Zombie]

Why hide the "spotters" though? I don't think that is a necessary component, is it? And to be quite honest, I don't think that you even need to hide the "runner" (the person who wants to be spotted) either. When I was fooling around with the setxplevel cheat back at base the other day and edited my main visible hero to be L0 (everyone else hired or not are also L0 too), then hired a group of solders and looked their stats, all of them saw an immediate increase in spot. So hiding probably isn't necessary.

 

With all the ways of increasing spot, my soldiers should be constantly maxed out in that area. They are definitely not. There has to be some "stops" in place to keep this skill from spiraling out of control skyward. (And I'm not talking about soldier stats, something else is limiting improvement).

 

- Zombie

[Knan]

Oh yes. Class and level. There are hard caps.

 

There was a skill I trained very actively on a low-level character... I got an increase message two times for the same skill number. Then after leveling it actually started to increase for real again.

[justinstyles]

Why hide the "spotters" though? I don't think that is a necessary component, is it? And to be quite honest, I don't think that you even need to hide the "runner" (the person who wants to be spotted) either.

 

You're correct; no need to hide anyone (spotters or targets) for the Spot skill. I usually attempt to increase multiple skills simultaneously; might be counter-productive in the case of Spot.

 

Hmm, does "training" work as compared to simply playing? For example, after I finished a mission, I was fetching loot and saw that character's AP increase to the next "level". So then I began using each character to fetch loot in an attempt to increase their AP... but I wonder if it helped or if the characters would have "levelled" their AP without the extra "training"? Or does "level" depend on the skill / attribute?

I'm inclined to believe to "train" Hide or any of the direct skills (e.g., "Shoot", "Medicine") is better / faster than passive increases, but does attempting to increase "Spot" or "Interrupt" actually have a significant effect? Or, is it as if exceeding the posted speed limit in an auto? One feels that one's arriving faster somewhere, but it's a fraction of the time improvement as opposed to travelling at posted limit...?

 

Best regards.

[Zombie]

Hmm, does "training" work as compared to simply playing? For example, after I finished a mission, I was fetching loot and saw that character's AP increase to the next "level". So then I began using each character to fetch loot in an attempt to increase their AP... but I wonder if it helped or if the characters would have "levelled" their AP without the extra "training"? Or does "level" depend on the skill / attribute?

I think it's just the opposite: skills/attributes depend on level.

 

I'm inclined to believe to "train" Hide or any of the direct skills (e.g., "Shoot", "Medicine") is better / faster than passive increases, but does attempting to increase "Spot" or "Interrupt" actually have a significant effect? Or, is it as if exceeding the posted speed limit in an auto? One feels that one's arriving faster somewhere, but it's a fraction of the time improvement as opposed to travelling at posted limit...?

My belief is that training skills to a new level will have the same effect as if you just leveled out. Training does have some benefits though: the skills you increase help your characters out in missions. So if you are on the verge of getting to the next level, don't train. If you just got promoted to a new level, start your training regimen again. It only helps.

 

Leveling does have a good effect: it increases the values of the attributes which you couldn't (or wouldn't) train.

 

- Zombie

[BlunterII]

You're correct; no need to hide anyone (spotters or targets) for the Spot skill. I usually attempt to increase multiple skills simultaneously; might be counter-productive in the case of Spot.

 

Hmm, does "training" work as compared to simply playing? For example, after I finished a mission, I was fetching loot and saw that character's AP increase to the next "level". So then I began using each character to fetch loot in an attempt to increase their AP... but I wonder if it helped or if the characters would have "levelled" their AP without the extra "training"? Or does "level" depend on the skill / attribute?

I'm inclined to believe to "train" Hide or any of the direct skills (e.g., "Shoot", "Medicine") is better / faster than passive increases, but does attempting to increase "Spot" or "Interrupt" actually have a significant effect? Or, is it as if exceeding the posted speed limit in an auto? One feels that one's arriving faster somewhere, but it's a fraction of the time improvement as opposed to travelling at posted limit...?

 

Best regards.

The maximum value for any given skill (shooting, melee, spot, etc.) and attributes (Str., Dex., Int.) is capped.

The cap is determined by the amount of experience that character has accumulated/earned.

Once that cap is reached the increase in skill and attribute growth is halted until that character earns more experience.

If you have cash to spare - paying for training is a faster way of instantly increasing the skills (allowed by the current character level).

-------------

Some skills can be trained simultaneously.

In the following "exercise": Hide, Spot, AP, and to some degree Dex. and Int. are going to be affected.

On any map without any enemies try to hide your squad, and run (preferably through a bunch of trees), unhide, hide again and run back. Repeat until they reach their max (allowed by their current exp.)

- Hide in S^2 and S^3 is developed by simply hiding (pessing the hide button). Takes some time to "recharge" though. In H&S you'd have to stay hidden in front of an enemy to gain any hide what so ever.

- Spot seems to increase upon every "discovery" of another character. Works with friendly units too. That's why hiding and running though the trees helps. "Oh, Gator is that you?", "Ha! I see you Gator!", "Wow, Gator, it's you again!", "Now, Gator, don't go hiding from me!", "Oh, my! Gator, you are still at it!", etc. Tada! Spot skill UP!

Silly, of course, but works nonetheless.

- Running increases APs. Simple...

- Training anything associated with Dexterity or Inelligence contributes to their increase. It is slow though.

--------------

To train Str., Melee , Hit points, Evasion and Medicine you could punch your squad mates and heal them. Or shoot them (to increase shooting).

--------------

Interrupt might be one of the the hardest to train. It's probably better to just pay for it. Otherwise you'd have to:

- either find a roaming enemy with a low spot skill, hide, have them in your sights, go into turn mode and keep pressing "end turn" hoping to interrupt their turn (as that's when your charcters' interrupt increases)

- or do the same without hiding with an enemy who ran out of ammo... Generally those silly enemies will continue hiding behind some cover and then coming out. When they come out there is a chance to interrupt them and thus develop the corresponding skill.

--------------

Engineering is also one of the harder ones to train. Having a lot of eng. gear (lock picks, etc.) and a very hard lock or (many screwdrivers), a knife and some indestructible object might help.

Placing mines and disarming them is a perilous task, and therefore I wouldn't recommend it.

 

Blunter

[Knan]

Alas, in S2 you can't pay in lieu of training, so engineering, interrupt, evade tends to stay very low.

 

While in S3 you can fix up your skills by paying money, yes. In H&S as well?

[Zombie]

Alas, in S2 you can't pay in lieu of training, so engineering, interrupt, evade tends to stay very low.

Aye wrong game. I just wonder, is there a way to increase the number of uses a lockpick/mine probe has? If so, I could see setting it's number of uses up to 100 or so. (I mean, picklocks don't wear out in 5 uses in real life, do they?). I know I've said this before, but you can try to pick the Panzerklein door back at base till you are blue in the face and it'll remain locked. So that's a great way to safely train Engineering skill, but requires a lot of picklocks and some time.

 

Evade can be trained like BlunterII mentioned: go to a campsite and beat each other up. (Try to match a character's melee and hitpoints to another character of equal value so the fight isn't lopsided). When your soldiers start to bleed, patch them up with some Adhesive Plaster (or fast Haemostatic powder/liquid) for another round in the ring. Each time they bleed, their evade skill increases. (I recently had a soldier who had a hidden "slow bleeder" somewhere on his body. My medic was able to stop the bleeding with the plaster patch, but only for 2 turns. After that, the soldier would bleed out again. I did this until I ran out of plasters and my soldier increased by 10 full evade points!). This scenario doesn't happen too much, but when it does, evade can go up very fast if you have enough cheap medical supplies.

 

Just like to reiterate: you don't need to hide in order to spot. The two are completely different stats and have little to no bearing on each other. Just run your guys around through the trees normally and someone might increase in Spot. Getting an increase is "spotty" (please excuse the pun) though. You might want to try running a guy around indoors while your troops are stationed outside with their ear to the wall. That might do it as well.

 

- Zombie

[Puksiskissa]

OFF: Had my grenadier/soldier Bob shot in combat. Raised his evasion without medical items to 55! (Suffered from bleeding critical of zero damage).