A soldier is an elite XCOM operative who has military training and executes combat missions in XCOM 2.
Soldiers come from many walks of life: bodyguards, prisoners, and resistance members are all part of XCOM's pool of hirees. Regardless of their background, they are united in their desire to take back their planet from the alien menace. While they start as unskilled "Rookies", they can gain special abilities through combat experience and promotion and eventually become a force to be reckoned with - if they survive.
Purpose[]
Soldiers are the ground-level troops of XCOM, sabotaging ADVENT activities in guerilla raids, protecting civilians from retaliation, and acquiring intelligence regarding the alien threat. They are usually deployed in squads of 4-6 soldiers, often covertly, through the Skyranger, a VTOL troop transport.
As the ground-level troops of XCOM, soldiers act as XCOM's eyes, ears, hands, and weapons. On every Turn, soldiers can be commanded to take Actions to move across the field and interact with map objectives, hostile aliens, or their fellow soldiers.
Every soldier has a given Sight radius which is shared with XCOM command to allow XCOM to view the entire (currently visible) field. However, this sight radius is lost if an operative is incapacitated, or is mind controled by hostile forces.
However, soldiers are not immortal souls. Soldiers who are hit by enemy fire can be wounded. Soldiers hit too many times can also become Unconscious or killed. This is generally not a good thing to have happen to your squad but is also unfortunately an extremely common occurrence.
When not in combat, soldiers recover from their wounds and, optionally, receive training, either through the Advanced Warfare Center or the Psi Lab.
Squads[]
Initially, soldiers are fielded in squads of one to four units. The Squad Size I and Squad Size II upgrades available at the Guerrilla Tactics School increase the squad size to a maximum of five and six soldiers, respectively.
The composition of a squad for any given mission is left to the discretion of the Commander. The choice of units deployed in the field greatly influences the squad tactics that are most efficient to complete the objectives.
Customization[]
The appearance, origins, and personalities of soldiers are randomly generated, but can be deeply customized, though some features are not unlocked until the soldier is promoted to a certain rank. Soldiers are not allowed a nickname until they reach the rank of Sergeant.
Commander must visit Armory in order to customize something.
- Character Info ( First / Last Name, ** Nickname, Nationality, Gender, Biography)
- Props ( Helmet / Hat, Arm / Leg type, Torso type, ** Armor / Weapon pattern, ** Tattoos / Scars)
- Face
- Hair / Facial Hair
- Hair / Eye / Skin Color
- Race / Voice
- Main / Secondary Armor Color, Armor Pattern
- Weapon Color, Weapon Pattern
- Attitude (Normal, Laid Back, Twitchy, Happy-Go-Lucky, Hard Luck, Intense, By The Book, Smug+, Angry+, Suspicious+, Cocky+)***
** - Some customization features are locked until your soldier achieves a veteran rank.
*** - Unchangeable until a veteran rank is achieved.
+_ Tactical Legacy Pack required
Classes[]
Soldiers have several specializations available, known as classes. Freshly hired soldiers start as the Rookie class, and upon Promotion to Squaddie rank, they are randomly assigned their true class. Each class has a unique set of equipment, and comes with additional abilities.
- Ranger: Wields a shotgun or assault rifle and carries a blade for melee attacks.
- Grenadier: Wields a chaingun and grenade launcher, and can carry more grenades than other units.
- Specialist: Uses a Gremlin Drone to heal allies and play havoc with electronic enemies.
- Sharpshooter: Uses a long-range sniper rifle and a pistol.
Alternatively, a Rookie can be sent to the Psi Lab to train them to instead become a become a
- Psi Operative: A soldier with psychic powers. Uses a Psi Amp to amplify their natural abilities.
The Shen's Last Gift DLC adds new soldier unit type with a unique sixth class:
- SPARK: An autonomous heavy robot class that must be found in the Shen's Last Gift story mission or manufactured in the Proving Ground. Uses a SPARK Autocannon, an embedded heavy weapon, and a Bit Drone which behaves much like the Specialist's Gremlin.
After constructing the Advanced Warfare Center, soldiers can gain an additional ability upon ranking up. This additional ability, called a Hidden Ability, is a randomly selected ability which is normally only available to one of the other classes.
Multiplayer uses slightly modified versions of the standard five soldier classes.
War of the Chosen[]
The War of the Chosen expansion pack adds another new type of soldiers, "hero classes", which can only be recruited from the three Resistance Factions added by that expansion. Rather than unlocking one ability per promotion, hero classes interact with their ability trees exclusively through the ability points.
Attributes[]
Soldiers' attributes affect their survivability and effectiveness in combat. Attributes increase with promotions, and can be increased or decreased through armor, items, weapons, and status effects (like Poisoned).
Attribute | Description |
---|---|
Hit Points | How much damage the soldier can take before dying or being critically wounded. |
Armor | Directly subtracted from damage dealt to the soldier. (Unless it's damage that somehow ignores armor, obviously) |
Will | Resistance to psionics and Panic
51 Will and above: +1% (+2% with Stay With Me upgrade) Bleed Out chance for each Will point above 50. 4 turn Bleed Out timer. Will also determines how fast a character becomes Tired. |
Aim | Soldier's base accuracy. This is combined in the field with factors such as target's defense, cover bonuses, height advantage and ability effects to determin actual accuracy of the shot. Each point of aim adds a point to that total accuracy and as such is worth 1% hit chance (up to the obvious limit of 100). |
Defense | How difficult the soldier is to hit. Directly substracted from opponent's shot's accuracy. Worth the same 1% per point as Aim. |
Hack | How accurate the unit is when hacking. |
Mobility | Determines the maximum distance a soldier can move per action point. Mobility number does not equal number of moveable tiles, but rather the length of actual ground covered. For this matter, sprinting covers more ground than two standard moves combined. |
Sight Radius | How far a unit is able to view the battlefield. Hidden stat. |
Dodge | How likely the soldier is to take less damage than normal. Seperate from hit chance. |
Crit chance | How likely the soldier is to deal a critical hit. Separate from hit chance. |
Psi Points | Dictates the likelihood of chance-based psionic attacks, like Insanity and Domination, to succeed. |
Ability Points (War of the Chosen)[]
The War of the Chosen expansion introduced the concept of ability points. Soldiers are individually awarded their own ability points with each promotion after squaddie. The squad is also awarded global ability points for employing good combat tactics during missions. Among other things, these tactics include ambushes, flanking attacks, and high ground attacks. The global ability points earned this way can be used by any soldier. The Training Center allows soldiers to spend ability points to activate new abilities in their skill trees.
There is also an option to retrain the soldier at the training center. This will allow the player to reset the soldier, and re-choose an ability for each promotion level. All the ability points the soldier originally earned through promotions will also be refunded. However, any global ability points that had already been spent on that soldier will not be refunded.
Combat Intelligence (War of the Chosen)[]
Combat intelligence is a new game mechanic introduced in the War of the Chosen expansion. Every soldier is assigned a random combat intelligence level, which determines how many ability points they gain with every promotion after squaddie:
- Standard: 3 points per promotion
- Above Average: 4 points per promotion
- Gifted: 5 points per promotion
- Genius: 7 points per promotion
- Savant: 10 points per promotion
A soldier's combat intelligence can only be increased through covert ops. Once combat intelligence has been increased, the ability points are adjusted retroactively.
Trivia[]
- Wounded soldiers cannot be deployed with two exceptions: the Greater Resolve Resistance Order, and on the Avenger Defense mission, which can periodically spawn wounded soldiers during the mission.