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So a few times very early in the campaign I have found missions with a day or less of time to infiltrate.
Rather than ignore them I sent in a team with a gang of rookies and a couple of squadies. The plan is not to try succeed but just move to a safe point and pop the evac flair and gtfo.
All the rookies level up, and normally the squadies too.

One time I sent a pair of DfA snipers and a shinobi spotter, they farmed kills with ease until I was ready to leave.

(Also I think a failed mission has a faster respawn than an ignored mission).

Sorry if this is old news, but it has been a great way of generating squadies very early in game and so somewhat of an early power boost to the troop rosta.
I play with commanders choice mod which makes it even more useful early game strategy.

I didn't even know you get XP if you fail the mission.

That seems like an easy oversight to rectify.

nightwyrm wrote:I didn't even know you get XP if you fail the mission.

That seems like an easy oversight to rectify.

You do get xp, and it's a game design not an oversight. I read it in the very early days when I started playing LW2. Obviously you get more for success in a mission, but currently the game is balanced on mission xp more than kill xp.

I don't know how much you get, but every time all my rookies have levelled and that's enough for me

CasualGamer wrote:

nightwyrm wrote:I didn't even know you get XP if you fail the mission.

That seems like an easy oversight to rectify.

You do get xp, and it's a game design not an oversight. I read it in the very early days when I started playing LW2. Obviously you get more for success in a mission, but currently the game is balanced on mission xp more than kill xp.

I don't know how much you get, but every time all my rookies have levelled and that's enough for me

I know LW2 is mostly focused on mission XP than kill XP. I just didn't know you get that mission XP even if you completely failed the mission....

Seems a tad silly to me. A bunch of rookies took a short plane ride and then they all leveled up.

nightwyrm wrote: I know LW2 is mostly focused on mission XP than kill XP. I just didn't know you get that mission XP even if you completely failed the mission....

Seems a tad silly to me. A bunch of rookies took a short plane ride and then they all leveled up.

You have to actually kill a reasonable number of enemies. If you take a plane ride, and then drop an evac flare and leave without activating a pod, you don't get a squaddie promotion.

While successful missions grant you 80% of the xp for aliens you didn't kill, I think for failed missions you still get normal xp for killing stuff.

With respect, it doesn't seem that way - just before I posted I did a mission where I didn't fire a shot and 5 rookies got squadie levels from the plane ride.

Although it has only been one time I have been absolutly sure i have not killed anything, but for sure I didn't make any kills on that mission.

Edit to add...
I checked this morning.
0 killed from 24 mobs on a 30percent moderate-heavy hack mission. A rookie and a squadie.
Evac after 5 turns - levelled both up.

CasualGamer wrote:With respect, it doesn't seem that way - just before I posted I did a mission where I didn't fire a shot and 5 rookies got squadie levels from the plane ride.

Although it has only been one time I have been absolutly sure i have not killed anything, but for sure I didn't make any kills on that mission.

Edit to add...
I checked this morning.
0 killed from 24 mobs on a 30percent moderate-heavy hack mission. A rookie and a squadie.
Evac after 5 turns - levelled both up.

What difficulty level are you playing on? I've done this quite a few times to get missions off the map so new ones could spawn, and I haven't got promotions. I've sent a rookie on two missions where she just dropped a flare and left, and she still didn't get a squaddie promotion. So I'm not sure what's going on...

To get experience points, you have to either succeed the mission, or fail the mission but kill some enemies.

If you just drop a flare and evac without doing anything, you should not expect to get any experience points. There is a weird exception where if you have accumulated a lot of experiece points, you can get a promotion without doing anything, but that is not truly gaining experience it's just the system only permits you to get one rank per mission so if you built up too many ranks, then it will promote you to catch up to the limit even if you didn't actually earn experience.

CasualGamer wrote:With respect, it doesn't seem that way - just before I posted I did a mission where I didn't fire a shot and 5 rookies got squadie levels from the plane ride.

Although it has only been one time I have been absolutly sure i have not killed anything, but for sure I didn't make any kills on that mission.

Edit to add...
I checked this morning.
0 killed from 24 mobs on a 30percent moderate-heavy hack mission. A rookie and a squadie.
Evac after 5 turns - levelled both up.

I'm pretty sure this can be categorized as a bug. Plane rides are not that enriching.

Incidentally - as there's an advantage to be gained from doing that - we need a way to get missions off the map without sending a single rookie who pops the flare and leaves. It's a stupid byproduct of the design and presumably not intentional, since it's very boring and you have to sit through two loading screens.

3tamatulg wrote:Incidentally - as there's an advantage to be gained from doing that - we need a way to get missions off the map without sending a single rookie who pops the flare and leaves. It's a stupid byproduct of the design and presumably not intentional, since it's very boring and you have to sit through two loading screens.

Missions are always present, whether you know about them or not.

I would argue that there's no exploit here. You can promote rookies for free in the GTS and actually pick a good/needed class for them. Doing this just rolls the dice.

Devon_v wrote:
I would argue that there's no exploit here. You can promote rookies for free in the GTS and actually pick a good/needed class for them. Doing this just rolls the dice.

Only when combined with commanders choice does it seem dodgy, as the choice is not random.

Devon_v wrote:Missions are always present, whether you know about them or not.

Right, but one mission existing prevents a duplicate from spawning concurrently, which means if you discover a mission you really want with a very short timer, it's optimal to send a rookie in there to instantly evac and fail the mission, so that it can spawn again and maybe you catch it with a longer timer.

Your not gaining any advantage at all. Your really just wasting your time. Popping the mission the way you are will not increase how soon that same mission will come back. When a mission is spawned a regional cooldown for that mission is created. These cooldowns are longer than the missions maximum spawn time. So whether you pop it or not, it will still show up again in the same amount of time.

Take HighValuePrisoner for example.
The mission spawn time is 9-13 days, the cooldown is 18-24.5 days. So regardless of whether you leave it or pop it, all your doing is removing it from the UI, your not making it spawn any faster.

Of course, there is an argument for being able to truly 'ignore' a mission so that it does not clutter up the UI as can happen later in the game when you have alot of regions going. This would be useful even in cases where it's not just too short of a timer, but your just not interested in taking the mission for any number of other reasons.

You're right, but there's still a good reason for clearing missions out. High value VIP missions can be guerrilla op missions, and you can only have two spawned in a region simultaneously. If you've got a hack mission and a sabotage mission both spawned with a long timer, you won't get another guerilla ops type mission (e.g. VIP extraction) until you complete, fail or the timer expires on one of them. In that case it can be worth failing the sabotage mission early in order to free up space for a more desirable mission to spawn.

Jadiel wrote:
What difficulty level are you playing on?
...

(Sorry I missed that question earlier).

I have done this on veteran and commander levels, not the hardest level legendary (which I have not played yet).

Having tried a few different versions what I find is that a larger team (say 6 or 7) won't level up as easily from a 'non-contact' evac. But a smaller team (say 3 to 5) will. The lower the infiltration then the bigger the squad I can level.
My tests seem to match my understanding of the experience system; more mobs on a map provide more experience for winning and a fraction of that for failing, even with non-contact. This is in addition to kill xp, and independent so a fraction the mission xp applies to a failed mission, even if there are no kills.

So for axample a big group of rookies on a low infiltration map can expect to level up by sitting tight in overwatch on a flare till evec, or more safely a smaller group on a higher infiltration.

I do think it's a bit of an exploit when coupled with commanders choice, but it is not 100% risk free.

According to my own testing and looking at the logs for mission XP output, you do not get any XP for failing with no kills.

I sent 3 rookies on a capture item mission. Had to abort because they got spotted. Managed to run away and evac out, looked at the logs and it said that Pre and Post mission XP was 0 and I got no level up. I even hit one of the aliens on overwatch on the reveal turn.

If you are getting fresh rookies to level up by doing this then try this.

Start with a fresh load of the game that has a mission ready to deploy saved. This will create a fresh log file. Deploy the mission with rookies and evac out right away. Then go to the log file located here.
Open that up and look at the very bottom as soon as the mission completes. You will see output there about each soldier, how much xp they had pre and post mission as well as other info on mission completion.

Ok Chrisb, I'll try do that this afternoon after work. I didn't check logs, just what happened after the mission.
As I was playing ironman my testing options were limited, but I'm now on honestman as I often have 'help' from the kids which leads to misclicks and causes me stress!

I am not going to strongly argue that you are wrong. But I am equally pretty sure I have levelled up numerous rookies on numerous instances in different games through this method. Almost all these rookies being on their first outing too.

I wonder if it's a sideeffect of any mods I have running, assuming it did/does work for me but didn't/doesn't work for you.

I'll feedback test results shortly, and maybe a screenshot of after mission summary and level ups if I can reliably reproduce the results.

Well, after some testing l have figured out what is happening in my game. I would like some other player(s) to see if these results can be replicated.

In summary (counter intuitively) rookies level up from non-contact failed missions ONLY when accompanied by one or more experienced soldiers. Results in detail below.

I saved a mission with 8 days plus infiltration available but ran it (the same mission) at zero infiltration with several different groups. It was at very heavy. Each was at zero out of 28 kills. Max squad size allowed 10. Each time I holed up in the corner and popped evac which took 6 turns.

Here are the results in the order I ran the same mission.

4 rookies - zero levelled up.
3 rookies - zero levelled up.

3 rookies plus one shinobi - 3 levelled up.
4 rookies plus one shinobi - 4 levelled up.
5 rookies plus one shinobi - 5 levelled up.
7 rookies plus one shinobi - 7 levelled up.
9 rookies plus one shinobi - 9 levelled up.

When I had 10 guys, a 3 wide, 3 deep block of rookies in overwatch I was so tempted to pull the pod which passed just out of sight range ☺

This requirment for a more experienced soldier may be why some players know for a fact rookies dont level up from zero kill failed missions but I know for a fact that they do.

Next I'd like to find out its a bug in my game, a bug in everybodies game, or a result of game design.

That's interesting. In my example I did only have 3 rookies alone that had to abort because they got busted with their hand in the cookie jar. I'll have to try this with a ranked soldier, and see If I can get some logging details on it. If that is the case, that sounds like a bug that needs fixing.

Another test that should be run, is trying this with various other ranks. Like what about 1 MSGT and 3 Squaddies? Does the squadie get XP as well?

CasualGamer wrote:Well, after some testing l have figured out what is happening in my game. I would like some other player(s) to see if these results can be replicated.

In summary (counter intuitively) rookies level up from non-contact failed missions ONLY when accompanied by one or more experienced soldiers. Results in detail below.

I saved a mission with 8 days plus infiltration available but ran it (the same mission) at zero infiltration with several different groups. It was at very heavy. Each was at zero out of 28 kills. Max squad size allowed 10. Each time I holed up in the corner and popped evac which took 6 turns.

Here are the results in the order I ran the same mission.

4 rookies - zero levelled up.
3 rookies - zero levelled up.

3 rookies plus one shinobi - 3 levelled up.
4 rookies plus one shinobi - 4 levelled up.
5 rookies plus one shinobi - 5 levelled up.
7 rookies plus one shinobi - 7 levelled up.
9 rookies plus one shinobi - 9 levelled up.

When I had 10 guys, a 3 wide, 3 deep block of rookies in overwatch I was so tempted to pull the pod which passed just out of sight range ☺

This requirment for a more experienced soldier may be why some players know for a fact rookies dont level up from zero kill failed missions but I know for a fact that they do.

Next I'd like to find out its a bug in my game, a bug in everybodies game, or a result of game design.

Did you check the logs to see how much xp the rookies are getting?

I checked my logs after running a mission with 1 Squaddie and 1 Rookie. They're not getting XP, rather the game thinks they already have the XP.
Madasa is a Squaddie Shinobi from Gatecrasher, Klein is a fresh rookie. Compiling a bug report for it now.

Here's the bug report from a full test run using a Shinobi that I took on a Flech killing spree to level him up.

Rookie XP Bug Report

Nice work Chrisb.

I see it is resolved for 1.3.
(So i must have only ever taken squadies as my higher rank troops as I never noticed them gain more than a level.)

CasualGamer wrote:Nice work Chrisb.

I see it is resolved for 1.3.
(So i must have only ever taken squadies as my higher rank troops as I never noticed them gain more than a level.)

The game restricts you to only one promotion per mission. Even if it thinks you have MSGT levels of experience, it won't promote you straight from Rookie to MSGT in one mission