Ask any serviceman - or sportsman for that matter - which is more valuable experience, training or action; and most of them will tell you that you need to get the reps to make sure you have the right moves in your muscle memory, but nothing compensates for experience in the field. You can buff up in the gym all you like, but until you get that sixth sense to duck when the bullets start flying in combat, no amount of training is going to hone your survival instincts.
Which is why the suggestion on the table is that you can Train troops up to Lvl5, after which they need real combat experience to level up. My A team is a constant mix of Lvl 5-7 soldiers, as new recruits cycle in to replace casualties. Lvl 5 squaddies are perfectly capable of holding their own in a Lvl7 fight: theyāre just not quite Supermen yet.
6 level ups where level 2 soldier is still a scientist who is sent to die in the field and level 7 soldier is super-hero killing aliens on sight,
that you will meet 4 Sirens +1 Chiron during one of the missions in January 2047 and that later on it will be only worse.
With such approach you really would need that training center to level up rookies to level 5 or have some light missions in the mid-game to be able to do that in the field.
But as @BoredEngineer mentioned somewhere (sry for being lazy with search functionality) it should be reworked that soldiers on max level are only 25%(? or 50%?) better than rookies. That would mean that rookies still can have their impact during fight even in late game. That would of course mean that enemies would have to be toned down - and I think that reducing just their number in the deployment could make miracles here.
Repetitive training gives you muscular memory so you know what to do without too much thinking. When drill instructor shouts at you during that he trains you to do that under stress. But real combat is much worse than stress you get from drill instructor. In training you learn skills.
Experience on other hand gives you nerves of steel. After initial stress you get used to that and you can think more clearly while bullets fly around. You can do what you learned on training with less and less chance to block. At some point that stress becomes trill and act like a drug. Without exp chances to block or blackout are high. But experience canāt replace good training.
In game example for that is that you canāt learn to deploy turret by snipeing 100 pandas.
Like that solution. I would also add that more experienced soldiers have more will, less chance to panic and some abilities better then non exp soldiers. For instance master marksman bonus could be 15% for rookie, and 30% for experienced soldier. That way you can benefit from both, training and experience.
EDIT: Or to have two separate perk sets, one you get from training and one you get from exp.
Which is represented in game that up to lvl 7 soldiers can learn new skills from training. After lvl 7 they can progress only by battle experience. I am fine with that system.
What Iām taking from these comments is that training isnāt ābrokenā but rather the game is way too reliant on skills. A heavy with Rage Burst or a Sniper with Mark for Death is carrying the exact same weapon and wearing the same armor as a new recruit with 0 xp. If both canāt fight side by side something else is wrong.
It is not very good solution. Better than classic X-com, but not good either. You can keep soldier in the base and pump his skills after lvl 7 using PP skill points. He could never leave the base and become superhero. I would like to have system where both, training and experience have impact on soldiers effectiveness.
I think for now that @MichaelIgnotusā solution with some tweaks is optimal.
iād say one of the reasons i made that suggestion is the fact this game has RPG character development, but Training Centers take that away from you, because they train your characters to full without any combat fought. That means you just dont care about them, because if you lose one, you have another readyā¦ One of the biggest weakness this game has, comparing it to Firaxis Xcom/Long War, is the connection you as player have to your soldiersā¦
I honestly donāt get this post. If a Lvl 1 soldier canāt survive in a fight weighted for Lvl7 soldiers, nothingās wrong with that - itās no different to XCOM, where I wouldnāt dream of pitching my Rookie into a fight where Iām expecting to go up against a Sectopod supported by Muton Elites and Chryssalids.
To use a real-world example that Iām obsessed with, no-one expects Lvl1 High School American Football players to hold up in an NFL game - hell, they donāt even expect LVl 5 college graduates to cope well in a game until theyāve had some real NFL action and got used to the speed of the game. Training camp gets them ready for it, but every NFL player will tell you that you only learn how to play in the NFL by actually playing in an NFL game.
PPās TC system does a very good job of getting round the frankly tiresome slog of having to take your Rookies on a series of tedious lesser missions in order to get them to a point where they can hold their own in the interesting fights, itās just doing it too fast in mine and othersā opinion, is all.
All that weāre arguing for is a slight rebalancing so that the default TC mode doesnāt automatically make missions completely irrelevant for soldier progression, but it is still possible to make the strategic choice to create a Training Base that will speed up the process if you want to.
And hard strategic choices are a good thing, in my opinion
You can āreal worldā it all you like but in the game there is very little beyond skills different between level 1 and level 7. Thereās nothing wrong with them having a lesser chance to survive but there is something wrong with no chance. Itās not training centers then thatās the issue in that scenario itās overreliance on skills.
And as I said in the section youāve just quoted, itās no different to a Rookie in XCOM getting crucified on a mission designed for top-level soldiers who can cope with Sectos and Chryssalids.
Real World, game comparison, it makes no difference. Thereās nothing wrong with Lvl 1 Rookies not being able to survive in a fight designed for grown-ups.
Iām with Vipre here - Thereās too much disparity between soldiers at Lvl1 and Lvl7. Certainly a Lvl1 solider should be less effective than a Lvl7, but they shouldnāt be is totally ineffective. The skill system is a real problem IMHO, but the training centres are exasperating it by letting players bypass the situation of having to play a Lvl1 solider whenever they suffer a loss to someone more experienced.
Iād prefer a total rework of training centres so that XP only came from battles, but the training centre could be used to actually perform the action of a level up, the training of perks, or possibly a temporary boost to abilities. Just something different to an XP ticker especially one that overpowers actual combat.
As I said in a different thread, I can basically agree with this.
The argument I can buy is that TCs are currently too fast/donāt represent sufficient strategic commitment for the benefits they offer.
Realism is not issue, IMO, because it depends on how you look at it. I donāt know about SAS, but I recall reading some Navy Seals autobio where it is clear that a vast majority of them didnāt have any combat experience prior to the āWar on Terrorā. I venture to say that this is probably the case of most, if not all, soldiers in SFUs during peacetime.
In any case, this is a Sci-Fi future, where they have AIs. Iām pretty sure that their virtual simulations will be at least as good as those provided by the facilities of Dr. Xavier
Gameplay wise itās also not an issue, because this is not an RPG, where each characterās progression is what the game is really about. Also, IMO the current SP pool mechanic balances nicely the benefits of training and going on missions: a ājustā level 7 soldier is not really elite, it takes considerable SP investment from the common pool to make them so.
My main objection to limiting the effect of the TCs to some level is that I hate the grind, especially at mid to end game. As in, oh I lost my key level 7, so before going on the final missions now I have to bring some rookie up to speed by taking him on missions.
Also, I like very much the freedom of suddenly having a fully trained squad that I can spec out to try out something new.
If this is not convincing enough, one thing I was considering is to somehow tie the output of the TCs to the tac missions. For example, that you canāt advance a specific class via training to a certain level until you have advanced a soldier of this class to the same level on the field.
And of course this is something that would be easily solved with a custom difficulty optionā¦
XCOM is apples and oranges. The skill tree in XCOM contains absolutely basic class abilities. Thereās a world of difference between levels. In PP beyond STR, WILL, and SPEED disparity thereās absolutely nothing different between a level 1 heavy and a level 6. A level 1 XCOM soldier canāt even be a heavy because they canāt use weapons outside their āclassā.
Thatās the point. Thereās no reason presented in that list that would be cause for a level 5 heavy to survive over a level 1. Itās not training centers thatās an issue in that situation itās skills.
To be able to replace dead soldiers right away. I have done that. I lose key soldier, I go to base where I have 8+ soldiers who are lvl 7 and who have 200+ points to distribute, and I just make a clone of a soldier I just lost. A bit lame IMO but necessary in current game state.
One more example is base defense. Instead of full garrison (5+ soldiers) you could put less soldiers there and if base is attacked quickly make them āsuperheroesā using PP skill points. Theoretically I could make āsuperheroā infiltrator with 100% stealth who can alone do base defense missions. So one 100% stealth infiltrator in every base and I can defend 10 bases with 10 soldiers.
What I would really like to see in the game is that both experience and training have effect on skill. For instance you can get quick aim in training center and it reduces shooting to 2 AP. But when you kill 15 enemies using quick aim you get 20% precision bonus for that skill too.
Of course there is, by your own admission - their skills. In this game, itās Skills and the way you combine them that makes the difference between life and death (which actually is a better way of doing it imho). But that doesnāt make the way soldier progression works that much different to XCOM. No matter what you slice it with, the Lvl 7 cake is still bigger and richer than the Lvl 1 cake, itās simply a case of whether you put an apple-flavoured filling in it or an orange-flavoured one.
