Feature Request - Promote Rebel to Soldier

[tekronis]

I'm still early in my LW2 campaign playthrough, so apologies if this is already in the game or on the roadmap.

In Havens where you have more rebels than maximum, it would be great to be able to promote rebels who've already have combat experience into rookie soldiers.

This way the extra rebels doing nothing but 'hiding' can move into useful slots and you have one more possible source of scarce rookies.

It would be nice if the promoted rebel kept the perks he or she gained on combat outings on becoming a soldier.

Thanks

[Arcalane]

This would be pretty neat, but I'd tack on a supply cost and a minimum 'rank' for the promoted volunteer, like they have to have at least two perks and cost 20-30 supplies (e.g. 10 + 5-10 per extra perk) to offset the fact you're not babysitting them through AWC training.

[redscare]

Good idea. That's exactly what I think when I see a rebel starting to get good combat perks. It would be even cooler if it was for free, but he needed to survive a combat mission (faceless/retaliation) for getting the promotion.

[JLtheking]

This is a cool idea. Perhaps instead of recruiting soldiers from the avenger, you have a button next to the manage haven UI to recruit rebels directly for XCOM (with supplies of course). For every mission they personally go through, such as Rendezvous or RealityMachina's Rioting VIP assassination, they gain a random perk, just like a Squaddie, up to a max of 2. These random perks take up the first row of AWC offense and defense perks respectively, so you can still train them if you recruit them before they gain it for free.

Narratively, you might think of these perks as the Virtues from Darkest Dungeon, them gaining after going through a harrowing experience in the field, before they are even conscripted. With experience, they can now be recruited by/want to join XCOM after seeing what's at stake for the aliens.

Once on the Avenger, they can then train into a class through the GTS or just be issued a random class as usual.

Recruiting soldiers from the pool of rebels you have collecting intel and fighting in missions for you make for much better stories, stories that can be created before they even become soldiers. Maybe they can even be more efficient when staffed in the Haven they were recruited from?

Anyway, I love this idea so much that I might end up creating a mod for it Probably after LW2 releases most of its balance and fix patches though.