monkeystador

I finished the game on classic. In the beginning i though i wont win, but after while it was fine. *Lost many soldiers in the game, kinda played ironman style. Guess i had to muster ~ 15 new soldiers. *Wasted some money on nano vest and bought enough scarab amor for everyone. *Had a normal SHIV and a Improved SHIV + LASER. *Two phoenix cannons and a couple if targeting & defense matrix items. There was never a need to build more fighters than an additional firestorm, and this one i didnt even need. Could down the biggest UFO in the game with a combo of defense matrix and targeting. Later no problems with UFOs at all after giving each fighter a plasma cannon. *Retreated from a mission once and worldwide panic had 5 countries remove their support. But i could stop it with some long term planing to get enough satellites up to cover the remaining countries except 1. In this i could manage panic after having that much satellites up. Never lost a satellite to an UFO. *Mostly used medkits in the game as backpack item, since i never had any high level support solder live very long. *Heavy soldiers and snipers, together with an assualt carried the game. *After a while, even losing good soldiers ( lost 2 majors and couple others too, totalling 16 ) every other mission, the troops, even not fully equipped with plasma could do very well in the missions. Mostly because of 2 colonels, after having them, the game started to become very easy. One colonel got nearly downed once but i could stabilise and he survived. After i had a full complement of 6 colonels all wiht titan armor and plasma primary weapons the game was pretty much won. *Never used a psi soldier in a mission except the last one. Thus i never really benefited from the psi powers in the game. *Never used archangel armor or ghost armor. The hardest part for me was to get enough engineers. I had a constant shortage of 1 or 2 to get enough to build more satellite controls or even the laser weapons. That delayed the game for me a lot. Big issue was always the credits, i had to sell most of my alien loot on the blackmarket. But since there was no real need for any UFO parts and most of the dead alien bodies it was ok. Research on the other hand was a breeze and i had always been ahead far enough. Nearly got all officer school upgrades and very few forge upgrades (shiv upgrades, improved medkit ). Only captured three aliens alive in the whole game. The sectoid, outlander and by incredible luck, the first etheral i meet ( in the second attempt of the mission as my whole team was slauthered in the first try) Fi you like i can give you my savegame, from there its just 3 sniper shoots to game finish. Then you can see my game stats.

If the second block is used for the test it looks like rookies have a much bigger chance of having the gift. Somehow offsetting the higher willpower higher ranked troopes have. But what is that iGiftedSix value? Sounds like the amount of gifted soldiers in the barracks. Assuming this: Getting the first to psi gifted is easiest when using rookies. Rookies have around 45-50(?) willpower if i recall correctly. ~ 11.25-12.5% chance. This is modded by +75 for the first rookie. ~ 86.25-87.5% The second is +35. ~ 46.25-47.5%% Goind with a high willpower colonel (assume 70 will ) : 17.5% but no additional bonus to the chance. Ranks are penalised quite heavily by 20% per rank. Thus having a rank 4 solder there is no bonus to the chance either. Best strat for gift checking ? Check soldier of ranks 3 first, and pick the one you really like to have the gift. They have a reasonable chance if getting it. If none is found, check lvl 2 and then 1. By then there is good chance gift is found. If not found yet continue with rookies. It does not matter when to check soldiers of rank 4 and up, pick the highest willpower ones first though.

Keybindings do save. But this is no fix for the "hunker down" function through the bound key.