Soldiers (LWR)

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XCOM soldiers are those who risks their lives going on missions. On mission squad setup screen, an arbitrary mix of soldier classes (and SHIVs) can be chosen for the task at hand. Soldier slots can be scrolled with arrows when higher squad sizes are available, e.g., on all UFO missions.

Classes

Like the base game, soldiers are divided into classes. Soldiers start out as Privates (analogous to Rookies), where they have no class, and when they progress to Specialist (equivalent to Squaddie) they are assigned a class. You have some control over which class the Private is assigned to; when a soldier becomes a Specialist, they will be assigned a specialism of Tactical, Weapons, Scout-Sniper, or Support. You can then choose between the two classes for each specialism by choosing the appropriate perk. When assigned to become a MEC each specialism creates one MEC class.

Specialism	Soldier Classes	MEC Class
Sniper-Scout	Sniper	Jaeger
	Scout
Tactical	Infantry	Marauder
	Assault
Weapons	Gunner	Goliath
	Rocketeer
Support	Medic	Shogun
	Engineer

The Long War Rebalance 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 Medic can cancel out overwatch fire for the Assault using Concussion Grenades with Smoke and Mirrors, allowing the Assault to move up, providing cover with a Smoke Grenade afterwards.

Retraining

You can reset the perks of any soldier at a rank of LCPL or higher but they will suffer 15 days of fatigue.

Only healthy soldiers are candidates to be retrained.

You can access this by clicking on the soldier in the barracks and then accessing their perks. Once there, a button on the bottom right of the screen called "RETRAIN SOLDIER" should appear.

This can be useful if you find a certain build was working for you previously but is not competitive enough in the later game.

Also, if you require a certain type of soldier, you could reset perks to turn, for example, a shooter engineer into a support engineer.

See also

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