Experience

A soldier earns experience during combat. After the mission, the soldier will then earn a random amount of stat increases based on what experience the soldier acquired during combat.

Experience

The list of experience that a soldier can earn during combat are:

• General Hits
• Melee Hits
• Successful Psionic Hits
• Number of times a unit panicked
• Number of times reaction fire was used
• Number of times objects were thrown

General Hits

General hits take count of how many times you hit an enemy target with any shot or any area effect weapon such as rockets, grenades and stun bombs. General hits make up the bulk of your stat improvements.

The more hits, regardless of shot type, the better. (If an auto-burst hits three times, it counts as three hits.) Therefore the power of your weapon is inversely proportional to how many hits you can earn. To improve your accuracy faster, fight with weaker weapons.

Note: Only hits on enemy units count. Scenery, civilians, and friendlies (including mind-controlled aliens) do not count. So firing at random into your nigh indestructable troop transport's wall or at innocent trees do not count.

Influences: Time Units, Energy, Health, Strength and Firing Accuracy.

Melee hits

This covers how many times a melee attack (eg Stun Rod) succeeded against an enemy target. For Terror From The Deep, this also includes Vibroblades, Thermic Lances and Heavy Thermic Lances.

Influences: Time Units, Energy, Health, Strength and Melee. Melee is a "hidden" variable. You don't see it in the statistics screen, but it does increase when melee is done.

Successful Psionic Hits

How many times a psionic attack succeeded against an enemy target. It doesn't matter if it's a panic or a mind control attack, as long as it works. Failed attempts do not get counted. The Mind Probe, being a non-combat tool, will not affect this counter.

Influences: Time Units, Energy, Health, Strength and Psi Skill

Number of times Unit has Panicked

How many times the unit suffered from severe morale loss (i.e. panicking or going beserk when Morale < 50%). +10 is awarded if a soldier loses control due to heavy morale loss. If your Bravery is improving, it can be due to several reasons. On the one hand, it could mean you're not doing very well and you're losing so many soldiers that the others are panicking. Getting hurt also drops morale. Or it could mean that the soldier isn't good at resisting psi attacks.

Influences Time Units, Energy, Health, Strength and Bravery.

Number of times Opportunity fire was used

How many times a soldier performed a reaction shot. This not only influences Time Units, Energy, Health, Strength and Reactions, the shot, if it hits, is counted as a successful general hit. Basically this stat has the potential to do double the work.

Influences: Time Units, Energy, Health, Strength and Reactions

Number of times objects were thrown

This experience counter is the simplest of the lot. It counts how many times the soldier has thrown an object. It does not have to be a grenade, and can be any object that can be picked up.

Influences: Throwing Accuracy only

Regarding Strength

A soldier CANNOT increase strength by being overly encumbered. It can only increase through the above listed methods. You will only receive the encumberance penalty on start of turn replenishment of time units.

Regarding Kills

A soldier does not necessarily get more experience from the number of kills that are made. A soldier with 16 one-shot kills will have the potential to earn just as much experience as a soldier who killed one alien with 16 shots.

This is a very good reason to hang on to weaker weapons such as Pistols and Laser Pistols, if only for training purposes. If it takes a lot of weak hits to bring an alien down, you're getting credit for each of them. It's hits that count toward stats, not kills per se.

How Experience Points Are Applied

Soldiers' stats can be divided into two areas:

• Primary stats only increase when particular actions are performed. These stats are: Psi skill, firing accuracy, reaction fire, and throwing accuracy.

• Secondary stats increase when one or more primary stats increase (except for throwing). These are: TUs, Stamina, Health, and Strength.

Individual stats increase as follows:

• A random number up to 6 is rolled. The closer you are to the cap for a given stat (e.g. if your psi skill is nearing 100), the higher the number of primary actions needed to make the roll cap equal 6. But it is still a random roll. It could be high, it could be low, it could even come up snakes. On average, though, stats rise quickly if you're far from their cap, and more slowly as you near it.

• Secondary stats are rolled independent of each other, but are still dependent on the number of primary actions. That is to say, if your Strength is currently very low and you do a lot of primaries, it can more easily get up to a 6 roll. But if your Stamina was near capacity, the same number of actions probably wouldn't make 6 be the roll max.

• Because each stat is independently rolled, and it's possible to roll a 0, some of your soldiers may be repeatedly unlucky in a particular stat, making it lag well behind others. The secondary stats don't have a "memory" and/or influence each other, except for the general rule that the lower they are, the more likely they are to increase.

• Performing more than one kind of primary action does not cause two separate rolls for your secondary stats (which would cause them to increase faster). Instead, if you e.g. get four hits and four psi controls, secondaries are rolled as though eight things had happened. Not two rolls of four things happening. Secondaries still generally increase faster than primaries, though, because your soldiers are probably doing more than one primary action (we can only hope). Thus the base count for secondaries is usually higher than for any one primary.

Bravery is an odd one. +10 is awarded if a soldier loses control due to heavy morale loss. If your Bravery is improving, it can be due to several reasons. On the one hand, it could mean you're not doing very well and you're losing so many soldiers that the others are panicking. Getting hurt also drops morale. Or it could mean that the soldier isn't good at resisting psi attacks. The only way to increase Bravery is through morale loss. So how does one go about increasing it without sacrificing lots of soldiers (or tanks) or failing psi attacks? Neither prospect is favourable. It's perhaps best to treat Bravery increases as a reward for living through a very bad experience and not seek to actively increase it.

Throwing is also an oddball. It only increases your throwing accuracy, not secondaries, no matter how much you do. It would've been too easy to increase stats, otherwise!

The game also tracks a Melee primary stat, although it's not shown in any screen. Using the stun rod causes this stat to increase, and can also cause the four secondaries to go up. Since most folks would rather increase their firing and reaction stats though (and stun-rodding aliens is liable to knock them so far out that even lots of medkit stimming won't wake them), this is not a very useful primary to try to get experience from. But if you do need to bag some bad guys for the research boys, it's nice to know you're getting some secondaries for it.

The way experience points are applied leads to some observations:

• Any soldier can (and will!) become a maxed-out superman. (The worse a stat is, the quicker it will rise.) Not counting the oddball stats of Bravery and Psi Strength (which never changes).

• Because of this, intensive screening of recruits really only accomplishes things such as: decreasing the number of low-stat folks on the field for a time, increasing the average level of soldier stats, and decreasing the time until they max.

• As many have observed, one of the best ways to max experience is to 1) mind control aliens, 2) line them up for a firing squad, 3) put a couple of laser pistols in their hands (once everybody has flying armor), then 4) reaction fire with standard-issue pistols. This increases your primary psi, firing, and reaction skills (as many hits as possible with pistols, the weakest weapon!), and gives you a big count for your secondaries.

• At the start of the game, it's best to adopt the mentality that any soldier, no matter how bad their stats, can always do something else for a while. It's a lot better than heavily screening soldiers for the best stats, only to find out later that they get mind controlled at the bat of an eye. It saves the frustration, and your precious starting funds.

• In the endgame (when you have tons of cash), if you're a micromanager role-playing to make soldiers who are maxxed across the board, it's arguably more important to pick recruits who are not anomalousy low in any one stat, rather than ones who are high in a few things. In other words, if your goal is 100% stats, one really bad stat may slow you down more than e.g. being a particularly good newbie shooter. This can also be the basis for throwing out soldiers who "aren't performing" - if one of their stats is much farther from the maximum than the rest.

Another thing to keep in mind is that rank is only window dressing. The only thing it affects in the game, is the morale hit to your other soldiers, if that soldier dies. It doesn't cause your stats to increase faster, shots to hit better, or anything else AFAIK.

[ MikeTheRed: NKF - thanks for the tips. I worked them into the text (above). As you saw, I have very little experience with Bravery increases. I'm in an endgame with super-psi guys that even Ethereals can't panic. There's little in this wiki about Bravery (yet) so I inferred what I could. Some other things, like the affect of Rank, also are what I've gathered. Take a look and edit all you want!

One thing I've been meaning to talk to you about... the Psi part of this wiki says that only successful Psi actions cause it to increase. I have not found this to be true. For one thing, secondaries definitely increase with unsuccessful psi attempts. Also, I'm quite sure I've seen psi skill some for guys who have failed every attempt. This one's a hassle to document, because 1) the soldier has to fail every time (if they succeed, it mucks the waters), and 2) ideally you'd want to fail a number of times (if it only happens once it's less likely to produce a gain, just like all the others work), but if you do try it a bunch of times, you may well succeed (ruining that trial run). Anyway, give it a look if you can.

Also worth noting: Someone who has maxxed their psi skill, can STILL get secondary skill increases from successful psis, even if their psi skill can't increase any more.

Finally: I have several soldiers that went over 100 in their psi skills in a given month - and then still got 2-3 more skill points, at the end-of-month training, that month. So now they have skills up to 108, which theoretically shouldn't be possible... but there it is. Maybe the gain for each month, is tracked in from the beginning of month? I'll keep an eye out to see if they get even more, next month.]

Misc Notes

• With the exception of Psi Skill training in the Psi Lab, all stats can only be trained through combat experience.

• Any combat experience earned will influence promotions. The soldier with the highest amount of experience in total will have the best chance of being promoted to the next rank. Yes, panicking counts towards a promotion as well.
  

Determining Promotions

Who gets what promotion depends entirely on the existing ranks and whether there is room for promotion. Promotion to squaddie for a new recruit is automatic as long as the soldier acquires some combat experience (shooting or psi) in battle. Ranks beyond this have specific criteria that need to be met before they are offered - namely, having a certain number of suboordinates of the previous rank.

In an equal environment, say all you have are new recruits, the soldier that obtains the most experience in battle will be in the best position to be take on the best available promotion above squaddie that is up for grabs. Every action a soldier performs in battle that is recorded will be tallied at the end of the battle and the one with the highest gets the best promotion, the next highest the second best promotion and so on.

If there is one position available but two eligible soldiers have an identical amount of performance, the game will randomly pick between the two.

It is unfortunate to note that panicking does indeed count towards this tally. It is also unfortunate that once a soldier has been handed a rank, they can continue to rise in the ranks even if they do nothing and are surpassed by other soldiers. First come, first serve, as they say.

More information to follow, and the content to be reorganised appropriately

NKF - In this piece, you talk about Promotion as if it's all based on experience in one combat. But sometimes, soldiers at other bases (besides the ones that just fought) get promoted, too. Does the game only compare Missions and Kills for that or... ? - MikeTheRed