After a day of playing and reading the forums, I think the only unique observation I might have is that it is very unclear how XP is awarded. For example:
My vehicle driver got 0 xp after doing major damage to and killing many creatures. I understand that awarding full XP to a driver may not be right since the kill / damage potential of the vehicle is many times that of dismounts, but he still deserves some. Speaking as a former mechanized engineer soldier, I can say that drivers do learn from encounters and from performing vehicle repairs, and I’d like to see that reflected in game.
Healing / Fixing / Getting partial kills seems to award no SP. This is straight bogus and reflects an “action movie” attitude. In reality the mechanics and medics who have to move and work under fire get quite crafty and good at it, and this experience should be reflected in game. If it is not, it will lead to firaXCOM’s 1’s rapid levelling of classes who get kill shots and slow levelling of classes that make it possible to get kill shots.
Lack of defensive / utility perks in progression. Almost all the perks seem focused on improving the character’s offense, with none on defense. If I want to build a character who is stealthy or resistant to enemy fire, I have no perk options.
I think the same that soldier should at least receive half of normal xp for actions done in vehicle.
Currently xp is awarded for:
Doing damage to enemy
Killing enemy (I think this can vary, the more experienced the soldiers the less xp he receives for same kill than less experienced soldier?)
Taking damage from direct fire (need actual HP drop, not the potential stopped by armor - so yes heavy in his armor receive less xp than other classes, at least from this source)
Taking damage from constant sources like poison, acid, bleeding (more xp than from direct fire)
Healing (using heal skill, not being healed) - so repair probably too
Opening crates for the first time
Reaching objective zones
Removing mindfragger with mech arms
Most rewarding are kills, but taking or doing damage or even healing are not far behind in xp rewarding.
What more, I think that Technician should also receive some xp for his turrets kills. And maybe spotting enemy for the first time (if he is not spotted from the start) should be also awarded.
Skill points are awarded after leveling up. 50 points on each level. You have amount of xp required for next level on top of training screen.
Hmmmm…I had at least two missions since I started paying attention to the issue where it seemed that the only ones who got XP were the ones who made the kills. I’ll have to play some more and see if I’m overlooking something. Or, maybe I’m confusing XP and SP rewards to characters: can you have one without the other?
Soldiers’ SP (50 Skill Points) will be only available to soldier after reaching level 2. For that they need at least 100 XP (Experience Points) from missions. This is 2nd or 3rd column from the right in mission summary. There is also some green bar showing how much xp they have collected to this point on current experience level. First soldiers should level up after few missions.
There are also collective Phoenix SP between 3 to 5 which you gain after each mission and which are available to each soldier.
After each mission each soldier should have some XP (unless they performed really poor) but they will gain SP only 6 times during whole campaign (since there are only 7 class levels), so in most cases it won’t be after 1 or 2 missions.
Wooo what a bizarre difficulty difference, not at Normal and Easy. Gee it looks fun but make them a bit pointless. I understand players requesting it costs only two slots in planes.