Pavonis Interactive Forums

I'm not sure if it is possible within the confines of the engine, but my opinion is that EXP should be given for damage, not for kills per se. It can even be translated into the current "kill system", just by counting percentages.

Like this: A soldier attacks an alien with 8 health and deals 6 damage. That's 3/4 a kill. Then another soldier kills that alien. That's 1/4 a kill.

I believe that this system will reduce the "distributing kills" scrappy mechanic even more. Recovering from "shaken" could take 1 kill in any combination of partials, i.e., getting two 1/2 kills.

You're thinking vanilla. LW awards XP to the surviving team based on mission objectives. You don't need to fire a shot to level up. Kills just provide a small bonus to the soldier who scores them.

Devon_v wrote:You're thinking vanilla. LW awards XP to the surviving team based on mission objectives. You don't need to fire a shot to level up. Kills just provide a small bonus to the soldier who scores them.

I saw a kill assist in the LW2 code, I thought. Is it inactive?

RapidFire wrote:

Devon_v wrote:You're thinking vanilla. LW awards XP to the surviving team based on mission objectives. You don't need to fire a shot to level up. Kills just provide a small bonus to the soldier who scores them.

I saw a kill assist in the LW2 code, I thought. Is it inactive?

It might be functional, I'm not familiar with the coding. I just know the design intent was to replace vanilla's X kills to next level system with something that rewarded success, not combat.

My understanding was that the game takes the total XP value of units on the map and divides 40% of that amongst any survivors of the mission, plus another 40% if the mission objectives were successfully completed. I'm not clear on the last bit, but I believe kills award 20% of the normal XP, so a full sweep of the map would be worth exactly the same as vanilla, while a perfect stealth run is still worth 80% of a vanilla sweep.

Soldiers with lots of kills (and maybe assists?) will pull ahead of others, but not the way they could in vanilla, and since the lion's share of XP is awarded as an even split at the end of the mission, you don't have the issue where a trooper gets a promotion on the first kill of the mission and is "wasting" XP with any more kills, nor is there a kill quota that you have to aim for to develop rookies.

I've trained up multiple Shinobi by sending them on three-man extractions in the early game (the game will never divide XP by less than 3, so a 1 or 2 man squad is losing potential XP) and gained them ranks without ever leaving concealment.

Devon_v wrote:

RapidFire wrote:

Devon_v wrote: My understanding was that the game takes the total XP value of units on the map and divides 40% of that amongst any survivors of the mission, plus another 40% if the mission objectives were successfully completed. I'm not clear on the last bit, but I believe kills award 20% of the normal XP, so a full sweep of the map would be worth exactly the same as vanilla, while a perfect stealth run is still worth 80% of a vanilla sweep.

Close, but not exactly. On a successful mission, soldiers get a flat amount of xp equal to the number of enemies on the map divided by the number of soldiers on the mission (minimum 3) times a per-class multiplier (average 5.7). They then get +1 for each enemy they kill (or +1.33 with Wet Work).

So, if you have 4 soldiers in a mission with 12 enemies and they each kill 3, they get 20.1xp, 15% of which comes from kills. (Soldiers who kill a lot more enemies getting a larger proportion of their xp that way.)

On a failed mission, soldiers get mission xp equal to the enemies they killed divided by the enemies on the map times half the base mission experience, so you get up to half as much, but only if you kill everything on the map. (They still get kill xp in addition to this.)

fowlJ wrote:

Devon_v wrote:

RapidFire wrote:

Close, but not exactly. On a successful mission, soldiers get a flat amount of xp equal to the number of enemies on the map divided by the number of soldiers on the mission (minimum 3) times a per-class multiplier (average 5.7). They then get +1 for each enemy they kill (or +1.33 with Wet Work).

So, if you have 4 soldiers in a mission with 12 enemies and they each kill 3, they get 20.1xp, 15% of which comes from kills. (Soldiers who kill a lot more enemies getting a larger proportion of their xp that way.)

On a failed mission, soldiers get mission xp equal to the enemies they killed divided by the enemies on the map times half the base mission experience, so you get up to half as much, but only if you kill everything on the map. (They still get kill xp in addition to this.)

Good to know. So Specialists and Shinobi have a better mutiplier I take it, while Rangers and Gunners are expected to work for their levels? That would explain some of my roster given my love of stealth.

Devon_v wrote: Good to know. So Specialists and Shinobi have a better mutiplier I take it, while Rangers and Gunners are expected to work for their levels? That would explain some of my roster given my love of stealth.

They do, though only slightly (5.9 for Specialists, dunno about Shinobi but I think maybe 5.8?). So over the course of an entire campaign low-firepower classes don't need to do quite as much fighting, but mission to mission there isn't much difference.