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, psi, etc.) 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.

Unfortunate, panicking counts as experience and counts towards the promotion 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.

As stated, combat experience influences promotion in the simple case of, one combat with rookie soldiers. However, when combat ends, it is also possible for soldiers not involved in that combat to be promoted. Currently, it is not known how this is tallied relative to soldiers who were just in combat.

I would guess that it's a function of Missions, Kills, and/or the Soldier Value ---MikeTheRed 18:39, 2 Dec 2005 (PST)

I think it has to do with the size of the pool of soldiers you have, say 40 total soldiers has room for 1 Commander, 2 Colonels, 4 Captains etc. If a Colonel dies on a mission soldiers will be promoted to fill the vacant positions.