Soldiers (LW2)

Squad

Unlike in Long War or vanilla XCOM 2, the maximum squad size remains fixed for the entire campaign. Players can send up to 8 soldiers on most missions, and up to 10 or 12 on special missions. Network Tower Assaults have a maximum of 5 soldiers. On missions involving Havens your squad will be reinforced by the Advisor assigned to them and in some occasions a few rebels.

However taking as many soldiers as possible on every mission is not advisable due to the new Infiltration mechanics, which make it so the squads sent on a mission have to wait to build up infiltration to carry out the mission without it being excessively difficult. Taking too many soldiers increases the time to fully infiltrate, in turn increasing the time those soldiers are unavailable. To compensate, there is no fatigue mechanic, allowing soldiers that just completed a mission without suffering wounds to go on another one.

Classes

Soldiers begin as Rookies without class, and as they promote to Squaddie they are assigned one of the 8 main classes at random:

Assault

Grenadier

Gunner

Ranger

Sharpshooter

Shinobi

Specialist

Technical

As the campaign goes on, soldiers will be able to be trained into specific classes in the Guerrilla Tactics School, where they'll also be able to promote to officers and learn new abilities. Rookies can also be trained as Psi Operatives, a class unlocked through the Psionic Labs facility. If that's still not enough, for owners of the Shen's Last Gift DLC completion of the Lost Towers or research on Mechanized Warfare will unlock the possibility to build robotic soldiers: SPARKs.

Experience

In Long War 2, experience for soldiers is primarily earned by mission completion rather than getting kills. The XP awarded at the end of a mission is based on the number of aliens on the mission. Mission XP is divided equally among soldiers returning to base, with a cap of 33% of the total experience awarded to each soldier. Therefore soldiers in large squads will gain less XP than soldiers in smaller squads, as the same total XP is split among more people. Note that the 33% limit only applies to squads with one or two soldiers, effectively treating such squads as though they had 3 soldiers. The XP assigned to the unfilled spots is wasted.

Rookie Stats

Stat	Difficulty		Created Equally	Not Created Equally		SPARK
	Rookie	Veteran +		Min	Max
Aim	+5	-	65	55	75	65
Defense	+0	-	0	-10	10	30
Dodge	+0	-	5	-10	20	5
Will	+5	-	25	10	40	40
Hacking	+0	-	5	1	20	5
Health	+1	-	4	3	7	12
Mobility	+0	-	15	13	18	12
Psi Offense	+0	-	20	2	38	-
Armor						1

Defense and Dodge influence your chance to be hit. Having negatives in this area will result in the soldier being an easier target.

The Mobility stat represents how far you can move with ONE action, and the labeled score represents meters traveled, not tiles, with 1 meter is equal to .67 tiles. As a result, you will need 2 mobility to be guaranteed a extra tile per action for movement. Remember that soldiers have 3 utility slots and each equipped item reduces mobility by 1, so the SPARK is as fast as a fully equipped default soldier.

Not Created Equally works by swapping stats and will never produce really bad or good rookies. A rookie with high aim might have low defense or health as a result. For the purpose of those modifications some stats are worth more "points" than others. Dodge, Will, Hacking and Psi Offense are all worth 1 point; Defense is worth 1.5 points; Offense is worth 3 points; Health and Mobility are worth 12 points. The total of "points" a soldier has on all of his stats is 478. This information can be used to determine the psi offense of rookies prior to building the Psi Lab in order to save high psi offense troopers as future psi operatives.

Stats by Class

Total Stats Gained

Class	Total	Total	Total*	Total	Total
Assault	4	16	10+(32-96)	0	0
Grenadier	4	18	8+(32-96)	0	0
Gunner	3	18	8+(32-96)	0	0
Ranger	3	20	8+(32-96)	0	0
Sharpshooter	2	28	6+(32-96)	0	0
Shinobi	2	16	8+(32-96)	10	40
Specialist	3	16	10+(32-96)	0	80
Technical	4	18	8+(32-96)	0	0
Psi Operative⁺	3	16	10+(32-96)	0	0
SPARK	0	20	-	0	65

* The guaranteed will is gained half at Squaddie and half at LCpl, and then every rank it raises a random amount between 4 and 12. Will is also capped at 100.

⁺ Psi Operatives also gain Psi Offense, starting at 45 at Squaddie, and raising by 4 each subsequent rank, up to 73 at MSgt.

See Also

XCOM Units in Long War 2
Starting	Soldiers Assault Grenadier Gunner Ranger Sharpshooter Shinobi Specialist Technical
Unlockable	Psi Operative SPARK Officers