Black Market soldiers gain ranks too fast?

[Lexcalibur]

[Veteran; Started on 1.0 but now on 1.2; Steam/Windows 10; Cosmetic and QoL mods only - will detail if required]

I have noticed that some soldiers rank up faster than others.

One of my gatecrasher soldiers is still a GSGT with ~18 missions and ~45 kills, yet I somehow have 2 MSGT soldiers with only 4-5 missions and less than 10 kills. Several other soldiers have reached MSGT with less than 10 missions. I am fairly sure that the fast-levelers were all recruited from the Black Market, with the 4-5 mission MSGTs being recruited as SGTs.

I've never looked into the code, but I suspect that the part that determines how much XP a soldier requires for next level does not use the soldier's current rank. Rather, it keeps track of some other variable (e.g. PromotionsEarned or something) which perhaps only increments properly during mission-earned level-ups. This would mean that Black Market recruits level up like Rookies, regardless of their starting rank.

Or maybe I am just overthinking it, and this is an intentional feature to help players replace dead MSGT soldiers faster?

[chrisb]

It's a known issue that is being fixed in 1.3

LW2 1.3 Patch Notes

- Fix a bug causing newly-hired units to rapidly level up, especially mid/late game black market purchases.

[Lexcalibur]

Ah, thanks. Not sure how I missed that - it's the first one on the list!