#Xcom enemy within classes how to
#Xcom enemy within classes upgrade
#Xcom enemy within classes plus

Colonel - Mayhem - additional damage for suppression and all area-effects.

Colonel - Rocketeer - 1 additional rocket per battle.Unfortunately here XCOM doesn't do a very good job (see Sniper class for details). And some skills are basically must-haves - so powerful it would be stupid to take anything else over them. Some skills are class-defining - you have to pick them, or other skills dependent on them won't work (see Heavy class for details of that). This makes it really important to get rookies on the front lines, not just keep them behind farming mission participation xp while high level soldiers do all the work - but even without much luck all rookies will get their promotion on the second mission.ДЄnd there's a reason why some levels don't give you a choice.

#Xcom enemy within classes plus

Soldiers mostly get xp for participating in missions and killing aliens - and the way it's tweaked is that one mission participation (60xp) plus one alien killed (30xp, more for some high level aliens) is exactly the amount (90xp) needed to get that first promotion. Some levels are much more valuable than others - especially getting a Squaddie matters since then the soldier gets their class - and then depending on class different levels might have more or less important skills to choose from.

Random game elements are aДЄnother really neat design gem is with xp levels. You have ways to deal with this frustration - by training more rookies, or investing in Officers Training School, or going for missions where you get a higher level soldier as a reward, and slightly unbalanced team can still deal with most missions - but this random assignment just keeps on giving.ДЇortunately they didn't overdo it - since there are only 4 classes and you have enough outs, you'll eventually be able to get the kind of squad you want. If your only soldier of a class you need gets killed or wounded (and will require long hospital stay), you won't have any replacement easily available. This random assignment can also increase frustration.

#Xcom enemy within classes upgrade

Later in the game if you really want to have all-Heavy team you definitely can - either by hiring and training a lot of rookies until you get all the Heavies, or buying an officer school upgrade that makes all new recruits start at squaddie (with a class you want already).Д«ut early game the path of least resistance most new players will take is a balanced team - which happens to be pretty decent strategy (not obvious, in a lot of strategy games spamming one or two unit types is optimal, and some are clearly awful), and get the player to enjoy more game elements than if they had full choice. It's even more interesting, since classes are random with same chances, except your first four rookies will always all get different classes (if it was left completely up to chance, you'd most likely get some duplicates only 9.375% would be all-different).

Squaddie - character gets their randomly assigned class, one class-defining skillД®ven before seeing individual class trees, there's a lot of very interesting design going on here.ДЇirst - you can't choose class your rookies are going to get, so pushes the player towards a balanced team.

Then as they get XP they get levels, and on each level they get HP, Aim, and Will bonuses, plus one skill, either mandatory or one of two to choose from. You get a bunch of 0xp soldiers, who don't even have character classes. It's just much easier to discuss this with a concrete example than on purely theoretical terms.ДЇirst, the basics in case you never played it. I'll be explaining what they did right and what they did wrong in designing skill trees, and then I'll summarize design points at the end of the point.

#Xcom enemy within classes how to

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is an amazing game, and this post is about how to choose optimal skill tree for various character classes in XCOM, but really it's just using that as a game design exercise.