Soldier XP

[ChristopherOdd]

Hi everyone, I thought I had read somewhere that XP for missions works a bit differently than it did previously (in xcom 2). Something about XP on the mission being based on how many enemies are on the map, and it being distributed evenly among the soldiers on that mission. So a larger squad could mean less xp/soldier and vice versa.

Have I lost my mind or is this captured anywhere?

[Amineri]

Note sure if it had been captured, but yes, Mission XP is in and is weighted more heavily than kill xp. So even if you go on a stealth mission and never kill a single unit, you'll still get the good chunk. IIRC it's somewhere around 75/25 or 80/20.

[rakoon79]

Note sure if it had been captured, but yes, Mission XP is in and is weighted more heavily than kill xp. So even if you go on a stealth mission and never kill a single unit, you'll still get the good chunk. IIRC it's somewhere around 75/25 or 80/20.

You mean 75(or80) for mission completion, and 25(or20) per kill?

ADD : Is there benefit of completing mission stealthy (i.e. 0 encounter) over elimination? (Other than obvious factor of your soldiers not getting injured). Cz from what I understand, unless we are heavily outnumbered, I dont see much reason to go stealth (mission completion exp + kill exp > mission completion exp ?)

[ChristopherOdd]

Would love some clarification on how it works exactly. I'm sure I read it somewhere I just can't recall where.

[Arcalane]

Note sure if it had been captured, but yes, Mission XP is in and is weighted more heavily than kill xp. So even if you go on a stealth mission and never kill a single unit, you'll still get the good chunk. IIRC it's somewhere around 75/25 or 80/20.

You mean 75(or80) for mission completion, and 25(or20) per kill?

If I had to guess, Amineri means %-wise there. That means 75% of the XP you get total is going to be from the mission XP and only 25% will be from kills.

Keep in mind that reinforcements no longer award kill XP (or loot) - only the initial pods. Those reinforcements will be a big part of what you're up against if you go hard and loud on a low-prep mission, so you're not getting any extra credit for it.

xwynns (one of the testers) mentions it in the last couple of minutes of his Introduction to Long War 2 video.

[xwynns]

I'm not sure if I misspoke in that explanation, rnfs do grant kill xp but they do not add to mission xp. There is technically a benefit to killing them but it's largely irrelevant (almost everything I said in that video had an edge case I had to ignore or the video would never end). Our best estimates previously put kill xp at approximately 16% of overall xp on average IIRC, with mission xp around 84% but this is going to vary some and they are somewhat loose estimates to begin with based on lots of assumptions I can't remember now. The same assumptions had vanilla XP landing around 55% kill xp and 45%killassist xp, again IIRC.

As for how the system works in detail, it's been some time now so this may not be perfect but:
1) Count number of enemies on a map when it starts.
2) Divide 1 by number of soldiers present when missions starts. So if someone dies that XP is essentially lost, the others don't get a bigger share.
3) Multiply that by the class weight in lw_overhaul.ini (they range from 5.7-5.9).
4) That's the effective number of mission xp 'kills' the soldier has. Add your actual kills to that and check against gamedata_xpdate.ini for rank ups.

Some other limitations:
A) Objective must be complete. If the objective is not complete the mission XP awarded scales based on number of enemies killed up to 50%, so best case you kill everything on the map and only get half the mission XP. Kill nothing and fail and you get nothing.
B) Soldiers are limited to a maximum 1/3 share. So bringing 4 soldiers = 1/4 share each, 3 = 1/3 share each, 2 = 1/3 share each with one share lost, 1 = 1/3 share with 2/3 shares lost.


So your assumption that large squads level slower is accurate on a single mission, though you can perform more missions with many smaller squads so who knows how it all averages out. One thing is true though, you can power level specific soldiers, to a degree, albeit with larger risks as smaller squads don't have as many options at their disposal.

[rakoon79]

1) Count number of enemies on a map when it starts.
2) Divide 1 by number of soldiers present when missions starts. So if someone dies that XP is essentially lost, the others don't get a bigger share.
3) Multiply that by the class weight in lw_overhaul.ini (they range from 5.7-5.9).
4) That's the effective number of mission xp 'kills' the soldier has. Add your actual kills to that and check against gamedata_xpdate.ini for rank ups.

So, let's say the scenario is "5 soldiers against 20 enemies" on a specific mission. [Legendary Difficulty]

1) # of enemies = 20

2) 1 / (# of soldier) = 1 / 5 = 0.2

3) I couldn't find lw_overhaul.ini, so nvm that. Let's just assume this one particular soldier has 6.0 (for simplicity's sake). Then we have 1.2

4) I don't get how the 20 from step 1 relates to 1.2 from step 3 relate. And then we just add the actual kills this soldier made. So it will be n+(# of kills)

2 successful missions + 1~2 kills seem to be sufficient "# of kills" to rank up twice from rookie.
Do we compare the final value against RequiredXp[] or PerDifficultyConfig[3]'s RequiredKills[] ?

FYI, I'm not trying to be all math-wiz and play lw2 on paper, but trying to figure out how to compose my squads and all. If I'm losing, I want to know why

[mattprice516]

In general it's balanced such that you probably don't need to minmax all that much (there aren't really invisible breakpoints other than the fact that 1 and 2 man squads get slightly less XP overall to prevent crazy exploitative powerleveling- blame Xwynns and JoINrbs for that ). The jist of it is: do missions, succeed at missions, and you'll get XP. Don't worry so much about killing aliens to get XP, it'll happen but only about 1/6 of the total XP your soldiers get will be from kills.

[xwynns]

So, let's say the scenario is "5 soldiers against 20 enemies" on a specific mission. [Legendary Difficulty]
1) # of enemies = 20
2) 1 / (# of soldier) = 1 / 5 = 0.2

Do we compare the final value against RequiredXp[] or PerDifficultyConfig[3]'s RequiredKills[] ?

Sorry, by 1 I meant #1. so 20 enemies / 5 soldiers = 4. With your example of 6.0 that's 24. Add regular kills and check against RequiredKills for your difficulty.


So I'm pretty into microing strategy game stuff yet I don't feel any need whatsoever to even think about XP in LW2. There are just too many wounds, and too much variance in who you'll need to bring to what missions based on activity and expiration to bother worrying about trying to count it (like I absolutely did with lw1, even built a spreadsheet to count XP for that).

I would be far, FAR more concerned with how the heck you are doing 20 enemy missions on legend with squads of 5!

[rakoon79]

I would be far, FAR more concerned with how the heck you are doing 20 enemy missions on legend with squads of 5!

The numbers up there were just for the purpose of easy math (short decimal numbers) XD sorry for the confusion.

Either way, thanks for the answers to both xwynns & mattprice