Soldiers (Long War)

Squad

Long War's starting squad size is 6. It can be increased to 8 with Officer Training School upgrades (though the prerequisites for the upgrades are a little different). Covert extraction missions are fixed at 4 + the covert operative. The Super Skyranger Foundry Project will allow an additional 2 soldiers on Alien Base and Exalt HQ assaults, and an extra 4 soldiers on the final mission. When defending the XCOM HQ, up to 12 soldiers can be equipped for the mission, but a random 6 will be provided at the start, with additional reinforcements only available upon soldier deaths. For all other mission types, the standard squad size listed above is used.

Classes

Like the base game, soldiers are divided into classes. Soldiers start out as PFCs (analogous to Rookies), where they have no class, and when they progress to Specialist (equivalent to Squaddie) they are assigned a class. Long War allows you some control over which class the Private is assigned to; when a soldier becomes a Specialist, they will be assigned one of four supra-classes (Tactical, Weapons, Scout-Sniper, or Support). Each supra-class allows you to choose one of two classes associated with it, by choosing the appropriate perk:

• Scout-Sniper specialist-> Scout (Lightning Reflexes) or Sniper (Squadsight)
• Tactical specialist-> Infantry (Light 'Em Up) or Assault (Run & Gun)
• Weapons specialist-> Gunner (Suppression) or Rocketeer (Fire Rocket)
• Support specialist-> Medic (Field Medic) or Engineer (Grenadier)

If you don't want either of the classes for that soldier you can choose the third option, Random to choose a random class (selected from one of the other 6). If you have the Commander's Choice Second Wave option selected, you can choose whichever Supraclass you'd like in the perk select screen using the buttons that would normally switch between soldiers.

The new classes are all designed with certain roles in mind, and they work best if they have other roles that synergize with them. For example, a Gunner's ability to Suppress works well with an Assault, as the Gunner can pin an enemy and prevent it from overwatching while the Assault moves up for a flank. Alternatively, a Scout can draw out overwatch fire for the Assault, allowing the Assault to move up, meanwhile also checking with a Battle Scanner that the Assault's destination doesn't have extra enemies hiding nearby.

By default, the game has a 33% chance of automatically assigning a newly-promoted Specialist into your least-common supra-class; otherwise, the game selects from one of the four supra-classes at random, with each equally likely. Since you have two different ways of randomly rolling your least-common class (1 in 3 chance, or if that fails, another 1 in 4 chance afterwards), the cumulative probability is 50%.

Fatigue

In Long War soldiers suffer from Fatigue. After finishing a mission they must rest for several days; by default, a random amount of time between 3-5 days is picked, though Officer ranks, Gene Mods, and Psychic abilities can increase this amount. You can deploy a fatigued soldier if you must, but then they'll receive a fatigue injury, and need a longer rest session that can't be skipped (equivalent to taking one hit point of health damage on a mission, see Injury Time below). This is very important to how you play the game, since your roster of soldiers must be much larger than in vanilla to allow for rotating soldiers in and out due to fatigue.

Fatigue Time: 72-120 hours (i.e. 3-5 days), rolled randomly, each result equally likely

Officer ranks: +12 hours per officer rank

Psionic rank: exact amount added varies depending on the psion's rank, see Effect of Psionic Training on Fatigue

Applied Gene Mod: exact amount added varies depending on the gene mod, see the chart of Gene Mods

Ideally, you should have several teams of soldiers ready at any given point. This means that you can take most missions that the game will throw at you, which can sometimes be several in a row, especially if the Slingshot and Progeny DLC are activated. Try to spread the experience around, and take advantage of easier missions to get low rank soldiers ranked up - the last thing you want is for an important mission to come up and only have raw recruits ready to go. Note that OTS upgrades are no longer tied to your highest soldier's rank, but rather the total number of ranks across your entire squad.

Fatigue on soldiers also highlights the value of the S.H.I.V, as they do not suffer any fatigue, meaning that they can effectively be taken on several missions in quick succession (provided they aren't damaged during a mission). However, they do not gain any XP, which could be potentially given to soldiers.

Injury Time

Soldiers who receive damage may suffer an Injury timeout. Specifically, injuries occur if a soldier receives damage in excess of the bonus HP provided by their armor. The length of time that a unit must recover is proportional to the total amount of health they lose compared to the maximum amount of time.

The max injury time is standard across all soldiers and scales based on the amount of days passed in the campaign:

absolute max injury timeout = 1320 hours (55 days)

scaling factor = 27 / (days passed + 45)

current max injury timeout = (1 - scaling factor) * absolute max injury timeout

With Day = 0, this results in 27 / 45 = 0.6, so the maximum injury timeout on day 0 is reduced by 60% to 55 * (1 - 0.6) = 22 days of injury timeout. With Day = 30, this results in 27 / (30 + 45) = 0.36, so the maximum injury timeout after 1 month is reduced by 36% to 55 * (1 - 0.36) = 35.2 days of injury timeout. With Day = 365, this results in 27 / (365 + 45) = 0.066, so the maximum injury timeout over 1 in-game year is reduced by 6.6% to 51.4 days of injury timeout.

As time goes on, this asymptotically approaches the absolute maximum injury timeout (55 days).

The actual amount of time a soldier is injured for is randomized with a linearly scaled block based on % HP lost. If a soldier has lost 2 out of 6 max HP, then (s)he uniformly randomly gets between 1/6 and 2/6 of the current max injury timeout, in hours. For a barely wounded soldier that has lost 1 out of 6 max HP, this means between 0/6 (minimum 1 hour) and 1/6 of the current max injury timeout. If said soldier is critically wounded and then stabilized or revived during a mission, they roll in the range of 5/6 to 6/6. Note that this means soldiers with larger HP totals have proportionally reduced wound timeouts when suffering the same amount of damage.

Fatigue timeout (see above) is always added to injury timeout for wounded soldiers (thus making it that injured soldiers are wounded for longer than soldiers are fatigued). Originally the max injury timeout was 60 days, but since the base fatigue timeout is 3-5 days, this was reduced by 5 days to 55. Thus officers/psi/gene-modded soldiers also get injured for marginally longer times because of their increased fatigue timeouts.

Stats

The default option for Long War is that soldiers have randomized starting stats. The stats for soldiers are generated with a points system, so while soldiers will be different, their overall quality should be roughly the same. 35 points are allocated randomly to a soldier's starting stats to increase them, with certain stats being worth more points to reflect their increased value relative to other stats.

Starting Aim: 58 to 72 (1 pt), avg 65

Starting Mobility: 11 to 15 (4 pts), avg 13

Starting HP: 3 to 5 (3 pts), avg 4

Starting Defense: -5 to +5 (1 pt), avg 0

Starting Will: 18 to 42 (1 pt), avg 30

The Second Wave option Strict Screening will give your soldiers fixed starting stats (all stats will be at their average values).

In addition to the normal stats of mobility, aim, will and HP, Long War soldiers also have a built in defense stat, which is applied as a penalty (if positive) or a bonus (if negative) to an enemy's chance to hit the soldier. Note that you can expect your soldiers' starting Will to be much lower in Long War than in vanilla XCOM, making panic much more of a problem early game.

Stat Progression

Soldiers gain increased stats as they level in their chosen class, as with vanilla, but the scaling is different.

The aim progression of the various classes do not differ as wildly in Long War as they do in vanilla. For example, the vanilla Heavy gains +10 aim from ranks, compared to the vanilla Sniper's +40, for a 30 aim difference. In comparison, the Long War Engineer gains 18 aim to the Sniper's 28, a much smaller, though still significant, 10 aim difference. HP progression on the other hand differs slightly more between classes. In vanilla, excepting gains from perks, the classes all gain 4 HP except the Sniper who gains one less. In Long War HP progression varies from 2 HP to 4 HP.

Class	total	total	total*	bonus
Assault	4	18	25
Infantry	3	21	25
Rocketeer	3	21	25	-1⁺
Gunner	4	18	25	-1 or -2⁺
Sniper	2	28	21	0 or -1⁺
Scout	2	25	24	+1
Medic	3	18	28	+1
Engineer	4	18	25

* All soldiers have a chance to gain an extra 1 will per level, for up to 7 additional will over their class baseline.

⁺ Mobility penalties are from the class' standard weapons: Rocket Launchers (-1), SAW-class weapons (-1), LMG-class weapons (-2), and Sniper Rifles (-1). Snipers can avoid this penalty by equipping a Marksman Rifle, while Rocketeers restore 1 mobility for every rocket they fire.

Master sergeants also will gain a +1 bonus to a random stat every four missions. The stat chosen has a 10% chance to be HP, 30% chance to be aim, 30% chance to be will, or a 30% chance to be defense. These stat boosts are capped at 20 HP, 120 aim, 120 will, and 20 defense, which means if, for example, your soldier has 120 aim and rolls for an aim boost, aim will not increase.

Hidden Potential

With the Second Wave option "Hidden Potential" enabled, stat gain will randomized from within a larger range. Chance to gain HP is a percentage chance at each rank up, while Aim and Will pick from a range randomly and uniformly. The exact amounts for each class are as follows:

Chance to get +1 HP

	Assault	Infantry	Rocketeer	Gunner	Sniper	Scout	Medic	Engineer
Specialist	70%	60%	60%	70%	20%	20%	60%	70%
Lance Corporal	40%	30%	30%	40%	20%	20%	30%	40%
Corporal	70%	30%	30%	70%	50%	50%	30%	70%
Sergeant	40%	60%	60%	40%	20%	20%	60%	40%
Tech Sergeant	70%	30%	30%	70%	20%	20%	30%	70%
Gunnery Sergeant	40%	30%	30%	40%	20%	20%	30%	40%
Master Sergeant	70%	60%	60%	70%	50%	50%	60%	70%
Average at max rank	+4	+3	+3	+4	+2	+2	+3	+4

Aim per level

	Assault	Infantry	Rocketeer	Gunner	Sniper	Scout	Medic	Engineer
Specialist	1-5	1-5	1-5	1-5	2-6	2-6	1-5	1-5
Lance Corporal	1-3	1-5	1-5	1-3	2-6	1-5	1-3	1-3
Corporal	1-5	1-5	1-5	1-5	2-6	2-6	1-5	1-5
Sergeant	1-3	1-5	1-5	1-3	2-6	1-5	1-3	1-3
Tech Sergeant	1-5	1-5	1-5	1-5	2-6	2-6	1-5	1-5
Gunnery Sergeant	1-3	1-5	1-5	1-3	2-6	1-5	1-3	1-3
Master Sergeant	1-5	1-5	1-5	1-5	2-6	2-6	1-5	1-5
Average at max rank	+18	+21	+21	+18	+28	+25	+18	+18

Will per level

	Assault	Infantry	Rocketeer	Gunner	Sniper	Scout	Medic	Engineer
Specialist	2-9	2-9	2-9	2-9	2-9	2-9	2-11	2-9
Lance Corporal	2-9	2-9	2-9	2-9	2-9	2-9	2-11	2-9
Corporal	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-7	1-6
Sergeant	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-4	1-6	1-6	1-6
Tech Sergeant	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-4	1-6	1-6	1-6
Gunnery Sergeant	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-4	1-6	1-6	1-6
Master Sergeant	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-6	1-4	1-4	1-6	1-6
Average at max rank	+25	+25	+25	+25	+21	+24	+28	+25

See also

Long War: Soldiers
Soldiers	Soldiers Assault Infantry Rocketeer Gunner Sniper Scout Medic Engineer
MEC	MEC Troopers Marauder Valkyrie Archer Goliath Jaeger Pathfinder Guardian Shogun
Sub-classes and abilities	Officers Psionics Gene Mods S.H.I.V.s