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
• Number of psionic attacks
• 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 (e.g. 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.

Number of Psionic attacks

The number of times a psionic attack was used on an enemy target. It doesn't matter if it's a panic or a mind control attack, nor does the success of the attempt matter. The Mind Probe will not raise this counter because it is not an offensive tool.

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

Soldier stats can be divided into two areas, primary and secondary stats.

Primary Stats

• Primary stats only increase when particular actions are performed. These stats are:
  • Psi skill
  • Firing accuracy
  • Reaction fire
  • Throwing accuracy
  • Melee

• The number of primary skill points you earn relies solely on the number of primary actions you perform in a combat mission. Your current skill level doesn't matter. You heard me right - It doesn't matter if you have the lowest recruit value, or you're one point below the cap.

• Performing just one primary action causes an average increase of 1.5 points for that primary skill (range 0-3). More actions result in more points awarded; by 9 actions you'll get an average of 3.8 (possibly 4; range 2-6). However, it quickly and definitively plateaus around 10 actions, and absolutely forget about it past 20. At 10 actions you're only adding about 0.1 skill points per action (average skill point increase for 9 actions is +3.76; average for 10 actions is +3.84; 3.84-3.76=0.08). By 30 actions, each action only adds about 0.01 skill points (and the range is still 2-6).

• Contrary to what I theorized here earlier, a 0 roll is not possible for primary skills, if you perform enough actions. See ranges (above).

• When you think about it, Ye Olde Programmers Of Yore made a simple and robust system where all squaddies are expected to participate, and hopefully each of them get to make a few primary actions and increase their score some real amount. (And only fools like me go nuts testing out to 80+ actions, lol - Ed.)

• It is entirely possible to get +6 skill points if you did 10+ actions when at Cap -1, which means that an 'overflow' maximum stat value (on last mission before going over cap) of Cap+5 (but no more) is entirely possible. (But see below about Psi Skill, which has no true cap.)

Secondary Stats

• Secondary stats increase when one or more primary actions are performed (except for throwing). Secondary skills are:
  • TUs
  • Stamina
  • Health
  • Strength

• Secondary skill points work the exact opposite way of primary skills: It does not matter how many primary actions are taken; all that matters is that you did one primary action - and your secondaries increase all that they're gonna. It also doesn't matter if you did more than one kind of primary skill - only that you did at least one of any kind.

• Also opposite to primaries, current stat level does matter for secondaries.

• New soldiers can expect to see secondaries go up 2.5 points per stat (range 0-6) at minimum recruit levels. But veteran soldiers with secondary stats at Cap-1 will only see their secondaries go up an average of 1.0 points per stat (range 0-2).

• Another way to say this is that secondary stats with more "room" to grow, will grow more. Best example: Stamina, recruit minimum 40, average increase at 40 is 3.1 (range 0-6), cap is 100. Worst example: TUs, recruit minimum 50, average increase at 50 is 1.9 (range 0-5), cap is 80.

• As stated, all secondaries have "slowed" to getting only 0-2 points when at Cap-1. Thus, you can only have an 'overflow' (on last combat mission when you go over the cap value) of Cap+1 for secondaries.

Particulars Re: Experience Points

• Your brain probably focused on the averages stated above, but the actual points assigned are highly variable. The range is the best indicator of what to expect for any one soldier on any one combat mission. This follows the usual XCOM approach of defining a range and rolling randomly within it.

• The numbers stated above generally had 80 samples per data point. But many of them relied on reloading save games right before the end of the combat mission, and some oddities were seen in the results. Plus there simply is a lot of variability (you might get six +5s in a row when most were 0-2). General rules are ok. The most specific numbers, like the averages, are probably a bit off.

• The numbers stated above were conducted only for psi mind control attempts. An experimental design of 4 soldier levels (Recruit minimum to Cap-1, evenly spaced for each stat) times 5 psi attempts (1, 3, 9, 27, 81) was tested 10 times each. (Always with 8 soldiers, a pair for each of the four soldier levels.) Although results are based on psi findings (the most easily modelled primary action), less rigorous data on other primaries indicates they are consistent with the overall picture.

• In the above design, failed psi mind control attempts always caused secondaries to get their "one" needed checkmark, so that they increase... but seem to have caused a slightly lower increase in psi skill versus successful psi MCs. They did still cause psi skill to increase, particularly if tried more than once. More data is needed but rest assured that unsuccessful MC attempts do cause psi skill to increase, even if it's not quite as much as successful ones. Plus you get the secondaries done. In this respect, Panicking might be useful for psi rookies. Food for thought. I haven't tested Panicking at all. I personally don't plan to ever bother with it in a game, but you can, heh.

• For the record: Even if a primary is over its cap, you can still cause secondaries to increase, by doing the primary. (Even though the primary won't increase.)

• Secondary stats appear to be independently rolled, and it's possible to roll a 0 for secondaries. Because of this, some of your soldiers may be repeatedly unlucky in a particular stat, making it lag well behind others. Secondaries don't seem to have a "memory" and/or influence each other, except for the general rule that the lower they are, the more liable 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 rifle hits as well as 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.

Exceptions

• Bravery is unlike other skills. +10 Bravery is awarded if a soldier loses control due to heavy morale loss. For more info, see Bravery. How might it be increased 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. While it follows the rules for primaries (above), it only increases your Throwing Accuracy, not any secondaries, at all. (It would've been too easy to increase stats, otherwise!)
  

• The game also tracks a Melee primary stat, a.k.a. Close Combat Accuracy, although it's not shown in any screen. Using the stun rod causes this stat to increase and also causes 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 can get secondaries for it. Note: In other games with melee skills (TFTD?), this might be more important.

Putting It All Together

• Do your best to get every soldier you are interested in developing, to get at least one primary action. This makes sure their secondaries grow. And, if spread across a group of, say, 16 soldiers, it's much better for the group as a whole to have them all do one primary, then to have e.g. eight soldiers do two primaries. IF you're interested in everybody growing, not just your better guys. "If they interest you, let them grow."

• Any soldier can (and will!) become a maxed-out superman. In general, the worse a stat is, the quicker it will rise. (Not counting the oddball stats of Bravery and Psi Strength.)

• In the early game, don't spend much time or money fretting over stats. Any soldier is liable to come up snakes when it comes to psi strength. And every soldier can otherwise increase their skills through diligence.

• One of the best ways to max experience - once you have psi on board - 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 powered or flying armor), then 4) reaction fire with standard-issue pistols. This increases your psi, firing, and reaction skills. Secondaries bask in the nuclear glow.

• Along these lines: The truly devious might consider not wiping out a Muton base (once you have psi ability). Milk those thick-skinned muties til you're maxxed!

• 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.

Regarding Caps

Every soldier statistic has a maximum allowed value. To see these values, check the entries for individual stats.

Your soldier will eventually have a value equal to or slightly greater than this value. It is allowed to go over the very last time you have a combat while it is still under the cap. For example, the maximum Firing Accuracy is 120. If you go into a combat at 119, do lots of shooting, and get a +4 roll, you will walk away with 123 Firing Accuracy - but it will never increase again. (Unless you like to hack... heh heh heh.)

Primary skills can overflow their cap by 5, and secondary skills can overflow their cap by 1.

The only exception to this rule is Psi Skill. Combat will operate normally - you'll never see an increase from combat once you're 100+ Psi Skill - but Psi Lab training will continue to add 2-3 points each month, forevermore(?).

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.