Intro thread: Cius

[Bomb Bloke]

Often all you really need is to send one trooper out of the craft, until such time as an alien is spotted. That can then be controlled and made to find more of it's kind. You can effectively create a "daisy chain" of aliens across the map, then bring them all together and kill them in bulk.

[Cius]

Well right now I only have two soldiers with over 70 PSI str. Fortunately the strongest one is also my commander so he plays a brilliant rear commander and PSI guy. I am facing muton ships all the time now and don't have armour yet so I have not fired any of the weak PSI guys yet but am using them as stormers/spotters instead and they are dying slowly but surely. Hopefully I will get a lot more strong PSI troopers this month as I have about 50 soldiers in training. That should hopefully net me at least 12 decent candidates, or 4 per base.

 

I tried panic attacks with the two PSI guys on a muton and saw no signs of if I succeeded or failed. I also did not see any improvement on their skills like you normally do with time units, accuracy, etc. Odd. Does the game normally tell you if you succesfully paniced an alien or made it go bezerk?

[NKF]

Unfortunately, no. Unlike mind control, which is immediately apparent, just assume the panic attack failed and be done with it. The results will show themselves during the enemy turn.

 

You do have mind probes that you can utilize to check if your panic has reduced their morale.

 

You generally want to put in least 12 failed attacks per soldier per mission (or 3 to 4 successful attacks) . Like any other increases you get (at the end of the mission), the amount that you get will be random. This even includes rolls of 0. The 12 attacks ensures that you get the full range of possible values when the game does the improvement roll.

 

- NKF

[Cius]

That would make sense. Normally stats that improve are apparent as the improved section of the bar graph is a lighter colour. When I did 4 unsucessful attacks for both of those soldiers during the mission and saw no evidence on the bars I thought perhaps I was doing something wrong. I understand better now and will try to make sure I do 12 attacks total per guy regardless of success.

 

Next question, the PSI amp uses 25 time units for the panic attack, so getting a PSI soldier up to 75 TU's is a good idea. I know that stat can only increase when a soldier hits an alien. My question then is during reaction shot training (yet to try as my PSI is still too weak) do your guys get other stat increases like health, energy, and TU's when they take a reaction shot and hit an alien with the pistols?

[Bomb Bloke]

A detailed guide as to improving soldier traits can be found here.

[Cius]

Wow, PSI skills are just insane. Especially against Muton missions. Previously I used to loose a lot of guys on Muton missions but now they are fast becoming my favourite mission type even though my PSI guys are still relatively week in PSI skill. Across my 3 bases I now have about 15 PSI candidates of over 75 skill with one of them being a 100 skill. I am firing most of the non-skilled guys. I use a few as spotters but tend to disarm aliens the turn I get them and move them closer to my skyranger so that the PSI guys can take them down the next turn with laser pistols as a kind of training. Getting over 75 time units is very usefull for strong PSI guys and I have one there now and a few more close from this method.

 

Another qeustion: I read mention of using the rename method to shuffle the order of guys in the skyranger when missions start. Is this possible as I don't seem to be able to get that right? I'd love to get my PSI troops last in the skyranger but am having difficulty doing it.

[Zombie]

Another qeustion: I read mention of using the rename method to shuffle the order of guys in the skyranger when missions start. Is this possible as I don't seem to be able to get that right? I'd love to get my PSI troops last in the skyranger but am having difficulty doing it.

Wherever you read this it is wrong. You can't rename troops and have that put Psi soldiers to the back. Soldier ordering on a craft is accomplished by the id the soldier occupies in soldier.dat. Lowest first, then highest to the rear. So it's a good idea to keep some officers around who have been there since you started the game as they will be placed first on the craft.

 

If you really want to directly change the ordering of soldiers on a craft, you'll have to do it via an editor. I believe XcomUtil and the Clark Wehyr Enterprises have this feature. You can also do it with Admiral Harkov's editor. All are found in StrategyCore's X-COM Editors section.

 

- Zombie

[Cius]

Well, its quickly becoming apparent that your primary stats are the ones that by far take the longest to train. I have been rounding up the aliens using PSI and letting my PSI guys finish them off using laser pistols and time units, energy, str, etc are all shooting up but firing accuracy, PSI skill, and reactions are moving much slower. I am guessing that is why laser pistol gifts are such a good method for training as it excercises all 3 of the important primaries at once.

 

PSI in rounding the aliens up

Reactions when you take the reaction shots

and firing accuracy when your guys hopefully hit the alien

 

Anyways, 14 flying suits are being produced in my main base right now so soon I will try that out with normal pistols.

[NKF]

Secondary stats do shoot up fast considering all the primary actions influence them. Which is a good thing since most of them are very nice to have in large quantities. Besides, you can get by with high secondaries and middling primaries.

 

- NKF