Experience Training

This page is concerned with training the Experience and thus improving the stats of soldiers, as efficiently as possible.

Unlike much of the wiki, this is a more informal page, because there are many ways to look at this topic. Some of it is links to other good pages on training, some of it is tips and tricks, and some of it is "regular" sections of information. Pitch in!

Note: This page is not about the best way to kill aliens. Quite the opposite! It's the best way to train soldiers, which usually means, the best way to kill aliens slowly - while always keeping your soldiers safe.

Experience training can be divided into two main areas: Training prior to (or without) Mind Control (or MC) and training after one has MC tech.

Pre-MC Training

Prior to gaining mind control (MC) capability, experience training is a very tricky business.

Pages

• For an excellent primer on training (and playing in general!), including a glossy photo, see MB's in-depth page on Reaction Training

Sections

This is a stub. Replace this section with your own section on experience training before having psi. Then delete this note.

Tips & Tricks

This is a stub for the moment. If you have a thought that's too small for its own section or page, enter it here. Then delete this note.

Firing Squads

Once you have psi capability, it is easy to round up aliens and shoot away. At this point, "experience training" (a nice euphemism!) is usually called a firing squad.

Pages

• For a quick and fun overview of the firing squad technique, see Laser Pistol Gifts Anybody know who wrote this?
• A list of tiny details on firing squads, a.k.a. nauseating detail, is here - to be re-worked later
• General details on various firing squad formations - from the typical firing-squad line, up to the seemingly chaotic random soldier placement with soldiers all over the place. Where to best set up said firing squads (like in front of a UFO door). Plus the pros and cons of each (e.g. firing squad line-up = lure for grenades, or when split on two sides, friendly fire becomes imminent. for the random firing squad, the wild shooting angles means not all soldiers in the setup will be able to fire depending on the cover the target is behind), etc. This would be geared not just for the purpose of controlled training sessions, but for actual practice during combat.

Sections

Kill Modelling

This table shows how many hits it takes to kill a target with a particular weapon. For example, it takes an average of 1.65 Laser Pistol hits to kill a newbie soldier (30 Health) in coveralls (12 Front armor, 8 Side armor).

These results are from computer modelling, not in-game testing. However, we think that all aspects of damage are entirely understood (fingers crossed). Each number represents an average of one million modelled kills. Across several runs of a million trials each, the averages only showed variability at the fourth or fifth significant figure. So they are quite solid (fingers crossed that I modelled everything right, though).

The reasoning behind this table goes like this: I knew Mutons were hard to kill with a standard pistol, and way hard with a standard grenade at its edge (more explanation below). Thus, they are good choices for experience training. But how do those two compare? Or are other aliens better targets? And, as long as I had it set up, it was easy to throw in other weapons (and soldiers too!), just for the halibut.

For Ground Zero (GZ) HE hits, only the Under armor is being damaged. For all other situations, the model attempted to target Front armor and one Side's armor. Specifically, with each successive shot, it would shoot either at the Front or the one Side, whichever had more armor. (For experience training, you're trying to keep them alive, not kill them!) The reason two armor aspects was chosen is because 1) it's too much trouble in real life to truly target all four sides all the time, always shooting at the strongest armor, but conversely 2) it's pretty easy to not always be shooting at exactly the same aspect. Thus, two aspects were chosen as a compromise (the Front, and one of the Sides).

See Endnotes for more details.

Table 1: Overview

                                       SG   Standard  Laser     SG    Laser   Aln.G    Heavy Blaster
                            Armor     @Edge  Pistol   Pistol   @ GZ   Rifle   @ GZ    Plasma   @ GZ
       Target         HPs  (F/S/U)    10 HE  26 AP    46 LA   50 HE   60 LA   90 HE   115 PL  200 HE

SOLDIERS                                                                                           _
   Coveralls Noob     30    12/8/2    17.41    2.61    1.65    1.14    1.46    Dead    1.21    Dead  
Pers. Armor Soldier   40   50/40/30     Inv  106.25    5.24    2.54    2.94    1.28    1.59    Dead  
   Power Suit Vet     50  100/80/60     Inv     Inv     Inv   16.44   25.60    2.25    2.56    1.05  
 Flying Suit Elite    60  110/90/70     Inv     Inv     Inv   63.16   71.81    3.28    3.09    1.15  

TANKS                                                                                              _
        Tank          90   90/75/60     Inv-    Inv  240.61     Inv-  19.98    8.70-   3.05    1.69- 
     Hovertank        90 130/130/100    Inv-    Inv     Inv     Inv-    Inv     Inv-   5.57    2.76- 

ALIENS, high armor ( > Beginner difficulty level)                                                  _
      Sectoid         30    4/3/2      4.72    1.98    1.46    1.14    1.33    Dead    1.16    Dead  
      Floater         35    8/6/12     9.03    2.50    1.64    1.44    1.46    1.02    1.21    Dead  
      Snakeman        45   20/18/12     Inv    5.15    2.33    1.68    1.87    1.13    1.35    Dead  
      Celatid         68   20/20/20     Inv    7.38    3.23    2.71    2.34    1.49    1.51    Dead  
       Zombie         84    4/4/4     13.60-   6.96-   3.58-   2.73-   2.91-   1.74-   1.75-   1.05- 
      Ethereal        55   35/35/35     Inv   18.01    4.14    3.81    2.66    1.56    1.56    Dead  
       Muton         125   20/20/10     Inv   34.24-   5.06    3.38    3.72    2.14    1.97    1.17  
     Chryssalid       96   34/34/34     Inv   24.34    6.02    5.35    4.00    2.26    1.92    1.15  
       Reaper        148   28/28/4      Inv   20.73    7.07    3.57    4.88    2.24    2.35    1.25  
     Cyberdisc       120   34/34/34     Inv-  74.70-   7.16   22.67-   4.69    5.39-   2.15    1.90- 
      Silacoid       114   50/50/10     Inv+ 246.79   11.99    2.50+   6.45    1.56+   2.38    Dead+ 
      Sectopod        96  145/130/90    Inv-    Inv     Inv+    Inv-  24.54+  26.15-  21.12-   1.97- 

 ALIENS, low armor (Beginner difficulty level)                                                     _
      Sectoid         30    2/1/1      3.86    1.86    1.42    1.12    1.31    Dead    1.15    Dead  
      Floater         35    4/3/6      5.29    2.19    1.55    1.31    1.39    Dead    1.19    Dead  
      Snakeman        45    10/9/6    16.32    3.38    1.92    1.51    1.64    1.07    1.28    Dead  
      Celatid         68   10/10/10   21.99    4.60    2.53    2.24    2.00    1.36    1.42    Dead  
       Zombie         84    2/2/2     11.72-   6.38-   3.41-   2.67-   2.81-   1.70-   1.72-   1.04-
      Ethereal        55   17/17/17     Inv    5.36    2.51    2.20    1.97    1.30    1.40    Dead  
       Muton         125   10/10/5    28.22   13.81-   4.04    3.16    3.18    2.03    1.84    1.15  
     Chryssalid       96   17/17/17     Inv    8.18    3.85    3.21    2.91    1.82    1.70    1.06  
       Reaper        148   14/14/2    74.83    9.86    5.01    3.53    3.81    2.23    2.10    1.24  
     Cyberdisc       120   17/17/17     Inv-  14.23-   4.56    6.98-   3.45    3.47-   1.89    1.66- 
      Silacoid       114   25/25/5      Inv+  14.38    5.33    2.37+   3.79    1.52+   1.95    Dead+ 
      Sectopod        96   72/65/45     Inv-    Inv    6.73+  18.77-   3.85+   3.80-   3.69-   1.39- 

Table 2: Weakest Weapons

Here are kill stats for hitting a Muton Soldier, at Beginner difficulty level, with the two weakest possible types of hits in the game. At Beginner level, all four facings of Muton Soldier armor (Front, Left, Right, Rear) are 10 Armor. The numbers are stats for one million trials, as usual.

This table demonstrates the difference it makes, if you could (magically) ensure that every single hit targetted the armor that is currently strongest, whichever facing that might be. The model rolls each shot's strength randomly and tracks each facing, always choosing the highest armor facing for the next hit. Thus, "1 armor facing" means only one armor panel (of 10 AC) was shot at. "2 armor facings" means that two were targetted (and whichever was strongest as of the next shot, was targetted by it). So on, up to 4 facings. As you can see, having two armor facings does not mean it takes twice as long to kill as with one armor facing, because penetrating damage is cutting away at Health, over and above armor damage.

Also, because I have a lot more room for this little table, I have shown the minimum number of hits it took to kill, the maximum number, and the standard deviation (of the sample). The bolded numbers are ones that are also shown in Table 1; thus this table helps show how it would look if it had been extended to be more than just two armor facings.

Armor  Min  Average  Std.    Max
Faces Hits    Hits   Dev.   Hits                                            _
  1     5    11.33 ± 2.49    26         Standard Pistol (0-31 AP; 40% resist)
  2     7    13.81 ± 3.14    32
  3     7    15.31 ± 3.47    33
  4     7    16.21 ± 3.75    37                                             _
  1    14    20.68 ± 2.82    35            Standard Grenade at Edge (5-15 HE)
  2    19    28.28 ± 3.98    50
  3    23    35.31 ± 4.78    59
  4    27    41.38 ± 5.95    66

The minima and maxima are interesting numbers. They are not the theoretical min and maxxes. They are the observed min and maxxes. Since one million trials were run, this is actually a clear cut case of "one in a million" numbers, especially for the maxxes. The minima have somewhat tighter constraints, especially with a strong weapon vs. a weak critter (especially when the minimum can be 1!). But the maxima could in theory be infinitely high... how many times in a row might the random number generator roll zeroes? Who knows. Quite a bit of variation is seen for the maxima if the model is re-run; considerably less for the minima; and the averages only varied at the fourth or fifth significant figure. Indeed, there is a difference between the Grenade results from this table (28.28) and the one in Table 1 (28.22) due to this, but the Pistol results happened to coincide. (This table is from a different run than Table 1.)

The point of this table is to demonstrate to players dedicated to Experience Training, how important it is (or not) to worry about armor levels, when trying to prolong the kill. As you can see, it is a complex function of weapon type and target. When the damage is close to the armor level, it can take a long time. This is especially true for HE. In the above example, the Grenade is delivering an average of 10 damage - equal to Beginner Muton Soldier armor - but it can only have a maximum of 15. Conversely, the Pistol can do up to 31.

Endnotes

• HPs = Hitpoints a.k.a. Health
• Armor (F/S/U) = Armor (Front/Side/Under). Underarmor is used for Ground Zero (GZ) explosions; everything else targets Front and Side armor.
• SG @ Edge (10 HE) = Standard Grenade at edge, 10 high explosive. See below.
• Inv in the table means "Invulnerable" - the damage in question can't possibly harm the target.
• Dead means just that. A guaranteed kill with one hit; survival is impossible. Only happens with explosions, when minimum damage is greater than armor plus HPs. (Unlike HE, firearms can have minimum damage of 0, which means it's always theoretically possible to survive them.)
• The plusses and minuses after the kill numbers indicate the target is more or less sensitive to the weapon type than the normal 100% - see Modifiers, below.
• The Soldiers have somewhat arbitrary combinations of HPs and armor, to show a range of what you can expect. (Armor is much more important than HPs.)
• Alien Health does not vary by difficulty level. However, alien armor has two levels: one level for Beginner difficulty level, and then twice that for all higher difficulty levels. XCOM tanks and of course soldiers have the same armor stats, regardless.
• All aliens show armor levels corresponding to the Soldier rank for that alien race. (Alien terrorists don't have ranks, however.) Other, higher ranks will have slightly better armor. Because Soldiers are the most common rank (and thus the ones you'll be training on the most), I kept the table simple.
• The table is roughly sorted so as to have the easiest targets in the upper left, and the hardest in the lower right. More specifically, it is first grouped by category, and then sorted on the Laser Pistol kill number. Then low-armor aliens mimic the sort for high-armor aliens, so that the eye can readily compare them. (There's too much going on for there to be one simple sort that will both show vulnerability, and have all columns smoothly changing.)

Modifiers

Here are the modifiers used for Kill Modelling; they were taken directly from the Damage Modifiers listing. However, they are presented below as their offset from 100%. For example, a silacoid takes +30% (i.e., 130%) High Explosive damage.

  Race            HE       AP      LA      PL

  Soldier*        -        -       -       -
  XCOM Tank     -30%       -       -       -

  Celatid         -        -       -       -
  Chryssalid      -        -       -       -
  Cyberdisc     -40%     -20%      -       -
  Ethereal        -        -       -       -
  Floater         -        -       -       -
  Muton           -      -40%      -       -
  Reaper          -        -       -       -
  Sectoid         -        -       -       -
  Sectopod      -20%       -     +50%    -20%
  Silacoid      +30%       -       -       -
  Snakeman        -        -       -       -
  Zombie        -20%     -40%    -30%    -30%

*Soldiers have normal susceptibility to all four of these damage types. However, Personal Armor and higher is somewhat stun resistant, and entirely invulnerable to incendiary damage.

Putting it all together

I started out just wondering whether Mutons at the edge of a grenade blast were worth bothering with for experience training, relative to the standard pistol firing squad (Table 2). But once that model was set up, it was easy to expand - and show a lot more.

For one thing, I knew in theory that probably some critters were invulnerable to weapon damage. But I hadn't worked through the numbers.

With the table, though, it's clear that many critters are invulnerable to a grenade at its edge. But it's more work to train experience with grenades, and they only provide Firing Accuracy experience. The really interesting finding is for the Standard Pistol (SP), which gives both Firing Accuracy and Reaction experience.

Although the sectopod would be great for target practice - being invulnerable to a SP or even laser pistol - it can't be disarmed. Same for the cyberdisc, another tough creature.

Mutons, reapers, chryssalids, and especially silacoids are great for target practice. Indeed the silacoid (a muton pet) is invulnerable to SPs, and better for training, at higher difficulty levels - an interesting twist due to its higher armor. So it can be moved away with mind control every other turn, then reaction-shot when it moves toward your soldiers.

Once one pistol clip is shot off (12 rounds), you've got more than the eleven Reaction shots needed for maximal Reaction shot increase potential. You've probably also got a good head start on landing 11 hits, for the maximal Firing Accuracy increase. Then just shoot off a second SP clip with direct fire, and you should be good to go.

If unsure of the number of hits landed, you can always peek at Unitref[81]. This (and the Reaction counter at [80]) needs to be at 11 or more, for maximal increase potential (a 2-6 skill point increase dice roll).

Mutons, reapers (floater pet), and chryssalids (snakeman pet) are also good targets - but of course, the latter two have to be kept out of melee range via mind control.

For the record, pets - oops, I mean Terrorists - only accompany their masters on these five types of missions/scenarios:

• Terror Ships, including city Terror Missions
• Battleships, including XCOM Base Defense missions (always performed by a Battleship)
• Alien Bases

Note that you can use Table 1 to see how many soldiers you can give 11+ or 3+ experience points - these are the best "bang for buck" breakpoints. Example: You're on a Snakeman mission at higher difficulty level (greater than Beginner). Table 1 shows you they'll die from 5.15 SP hits, on average. If there are, say, 8 Snakemen, that's approx. 40 hits to go around. IOW, approx. 13 soldiers can get 3 hits, or approx. 4 soldiers can get 11 hits. Don't forget that Table 1 is for Soldier ranks - higher-ranked aliens have a little better armor, and can take a little more shooting. Also, it models the target being hit on two armor facings - do your best to vary the facings that you target, to prolong their life.

In the future, I will post extended Kill Modelling data on another page, for anyone that wants to see it. ---MikeTheRed 10:56, 17 December 2005 (PST)

Tips & Tricks

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