Sir, they most certainly do not. They cost tech and materials. At least on hero difficulty they do.
If you play on the top difficulty, recruits are hired without armor or weapons. On veteran they get armor but no weapons.
Oh, so on hero they still cost something. Sad.
It’ only a deign flaw if the player decides to do his VERY FIRST playthrough on Heroic - which in my opinion (stated elsewhere) is a stupid decision by the player, not the devs.
If you are learning how the game works, play it on Standard, where you get a fully equipped soldier up-front.
You only get a part-equipped soldier on Heroic and Legendary, which are supposed to be harder because you know what you are doing.
I thought that too, but in fact not, the text is generic then quotes the class with a general comment on the class, it’s not only faction comment. Need an improvement on how it is shown.
1 Like
Some people like to play on higher difficulties, which is something I would think an X-Com fan would appreciate. I also don’t see the point in having to waste an entire playthrough on normal difficulty when the game could do a much better version of just explaining certain game mechanics(which it makes almost no attempt to do). And, how is playing on normal going to help when they change the mechanics on higher difficulty settings Playing on normal, with full gear, is just going to confuse the player when they try a higher difficulty because it will be different that what they’ve come accustomed to at normal.
The whole point is, this game is has a very clunky and confusing new user experience, which can be greatly improved upon. Everyone has to start from scratch, and expecting people to beat the game on normal, rather than making a better effort to explain your game is an asinine argument.
1 Like
First of all, let’s keep things civil eh? 
It doesn’t help progress the debate when you call people who express a different opinion to you names like ‘asinine’. It just reduces things to a slanging match which doesn’t help anybody.
Personally, I’ve played every iteration of the Firaxis XCOM franchise, including both the LWs, and I always start on Normal, to see what’s changed and help get my bearings. Then, when I find things starting to get too easy, I ramp it up to Veteran/Legendary. MY beef with the system as it stands is they don’t give you the opportunity to do that in the Options Menu.
I have no objection to people choosing to start on Heroic, but I do find it strange when they then complain (as they do a lot in these forums) about things being too difficult. That’s the point of being Heroic - when you encounter a new problem you figure out how to deal with it and you move on. Old-style XCOM ‘Veteran’ is the same: you’re expected to know what you’re doing if you choose that setting - the clue is in the name - and if you don’t, then that’s your own lookout.
That said, I do agree with you on a couple of points. I similarly got caught out when I transferred from BB5 to this iteration by the ‘unarmed Suaddie’ syndrome. TBH, I quite like it - it means I have to adapt on the fly and I don’t get any tech gifted to me.
BUT! I do agree that it is utterly stupid that all Squaddies don’t have a basic proficiency in the simplest of weapons. Personally, I think all Squaddies should be able to use pistols, which gives everyone a default weapon when you don’t have the tech for - say - your new Infiltrator (as happened to me). There is an argument for everyone knowing how to use Assault Rifles, but for me that would make things too easy. As someone above suggested, in this current iteration you can always issue them with grenades (and in my case medikits/spare Heavy ammo) and use them as support staff until you multi-class them to use a weapon you can provide. It’s all part of the Heroic/Legendary challenge. You want it easier, play on easy.
However, I don’t disagree that the interface is clunky and could be made clearer. When I have the time I plan to post a series of threads making suggestions as to how the devs can improve on this, but work’s getting in the way at the moment, so it’ll have to wait.
2 Likes
At highest difficulties you need a pre knowledge or it’s not highest difficulties. You cannot anticipate everything without pre knowledge.
If you start at highest difficulties, it’s more by reading advices, or by playing multiple time before to win once. You’ll never get everything from the rules and from very far.
This is actually not always a bad thing. It may be more challenging if you’re not use to it, but in other ways, its actually better to recruit soldiers without gear.
They’re cheaper, for one thing. It only costs food. Which means you can recruit things like specters for nearly nothing, where on normal you are paying for them to be fully equipped.
Since you never know what you are buying, and are looking for some specific combinations for random trait rolls for your A-team, you can fish much easier.
Your assumption is incorrect. Difficulty level is not predicated on whether or not you have advanced knowledge. In fact having advanced knowledge of game systems makes the experience easier. So why would a harder difficulty require foreknowledge?
Some people like to be challenged and figure things out as they go. The problem is this game sometimes expects you to figure things out own your own.
Any game where people need to turn to YouTube or the forums to figure out basic mechanics like, how do I equip my soldier, is just bad design.
You need to only look at this very forum and how many people are confused on this very subject, about the cost of recruiting soldiers. It varies depending on difficulty, but nowhere does it tell you that, so everyone assumes whatever their experience is is the same for everyone else.
Excuse me. Why in first place you thought that recruits should join equipped? Really? Do you go into army with your own uniform, AK 74 or M4A1 or Steyr A1?
Second thing: Do you go there being proficient with any weapon?
No? So why are you complaining? Why do you expect your fresh recruit to join ranks on the battlefield and behave there like trained soldier killing horrific monsters? Sorry but your logic is broken from the beginning. It is pointless to answer what you can do and what are the game options (along with difficulty settings).
EDIT: Impressive that people tried to answer your question in more like 40 posts, and you still see some kind of flaw there.
I did not personally call you asinine, sir. Simply the argument that a few people expressed here that if one is confused about how something in-game works, go replay the entire game on normal first to figure it out. That is asinine when a simple text box a few lines of text can inform the user and enhance the experience. This game has a lot of layers, and I appreciate that, but it does a horrible job of explaining them. Expecting the player to fumble through their first playthrough by trial and error is not good design.
Every game does this, and by that I mean tool tips to explain things. It’s likely that a lot of the finishing touches got put on hold simply to get this game shipped, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that things could be vastly improved.
Also, no one is complaining about difficulty so please stop conflating the difficulty mode with the specific game mechanics that the player has no warning of. I got around the recruits not having any basic weaponry. I looted some random weapons and gave it to them, they then fumbled more often than not and were relatively useless for many missions, hindering their XP gain because they couldn’t kill anything. So, no it wasn’t too difficult to equip them, it was just time consuming and not particularly fun to have them be dead weight for several missions until you randomly loot something they can use.
Because they aren’t raw recruits, they’re fighting soldiers in their own faction. So, yes they should have equipment.
Two, I’m not recruiting them to basic training, I’m bringing them into an active war. Your analogy makes no sense. You’re talking about civilian recruitment and the game’s setting is about already trained military soldiers You don’t bring soldiers into an active conflict empty handed and just expect them to find something along the way.
And thirdly, you gain proficiency through training, and you sure as hell don’t make it out of training without basic weapon proficiency. So why are these guys coming along on missions empty-handed?
1 Like
For one is because how game played out before.
I mean let’s stretch further. How about following:
- on legendary sirens do a permanent mind control, can’t be removed ever
- on hero, mindfraggers strangle victim to death when killed
- on legendary, armadillo has 5% to blow up from any damage taken
- on hero, jumping from 3rd floor disables legs
- on legendary, disabled limbs are permanent injury that can’t be healed
We can go on endlessly with this, having a difficulty level introduce or remove game features or rules is not the best way to go about balancing. This is what officials mods can do and you Have to be clear about it from the start.
I would be really fond of such design solution, except maybe:
- permanent mind control. But if taking control over soldier’s mind could have some cool-down, like she “cast” that spell and you have 1 or 2 turns to try to free soldier from this spell and if you fail she then takes control, then why not.
- instant death from mindfragger.
Question should be why soldiers comes fully equipped and trained when they have 0 experience. Not the other way around, why do they come without weapons or proficiency.
It doesn’t matter which way it is, the problem is that it’s inconsistent across the game.
If you want to make sure that people understand what they are getting, you can show a window, just as one with soldier equipment and big “BUY” button - problem solved.
They are. They have like what? 0/100 XP? If you don’t threat it like raw then I don’t know what can fall under this description.
Lol. Every man and woman during World War II was a soldiers and could fight just after recruitment.
Sorry sir but there are still cilivians in the world. No you don’t recruit military trained soldiers. You gain fresh recruits. They don’t have experience except some basic training in factions weapons. It doesn’t mean you have access to those weapons or that the factions should present it to you. You take these people from training facility doorsteps before they had a chance to gain any experience in real combat (thus they have 0 XP).
So they had basic training in faction’s weapons. And they come empty-handed because you have recruited them like that. If you want them to have equipment then manufacture weapons and armor before you will click that “recruit” button.
Those where hyperbola to illustrate that arbitrary rules introduced/removed by difficulty level are just that - arbitrary. They are not fun when sneakily added into the game which you think you already know how it works.
But it doesn’t mean that higher difficulties are bad in PP. It means that lower difficulties are. But Ramzi didn’t even tried them.