Editing Soldier Stats in Xcom EU/EW after you hire them

[Ichthyic]

There hasn't been an update to this topic for a while AFAICT, so here's a quick and dirty guide to how to edit your soldier stats when they are in your barracks:

1. you will need 3 programs:
a. a good text editor. I highly recommend Notepad++ (google it; you can grab it from many places)
b. a program to convert the save file into editable .json format and...
c. a program to covert the save file BACK into standard game ready format.

b+c are made by "tractwo" and can be found here:
https://github.com/tracktwo/xcomsave/releases/download/1.8.2/xcomsave-1.8.2.zip

unzip the two files directly into your savegame directory, which should be here:
C:\Users\[yourloginname]\Documents\My Games\XCOM - Enemy Within\XComGame\SaveData

or

C:\Users\[yourloginname]\Documents\My Games\XCOM Long War\XComGame\SaveData
(if you are using the long war mod)

ok, now open your savegame directory in a command prompt, find the file you want to edit, and type: xcom2json "filename" (leave out the quotes) like:

xcom2json save3

this will convert save3 into the file save3.json, which you can then edit with any text editor (but again, I highly recommend notepad++).

once you have the .json file loaded into your text editor, pick a soldier who you want to edit, and do a search on their last name in the file. the program will scroll to the line where that is listed. Note: that is the BOTTOM of the file for the soldier you want to edit. scroll up (or reverse search) until you find the line:

"name": "aStats",

that is the block where your soldier's primary stats are listed. Look down 2 lines from the "astats" line, and you will see:

"int_values": [ 6, 95, 5, 16, 0, 0, 0, 54, 0, 0, 27, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ]

the first number is your soldier's health, the second their aim value, the third is their defense value, 4th is their max movement, 8th is their will, etc.

edit the values to your liking (make small edits at first, until you are more familiar with the effects of your changes), and then save the file.

go back to your command prompt, and type:

json2xcom save3.json

this will make the file "save3.out"
backup the original save (which will just be "save3"
change the name of save3.out to just save 3.

done. go back to the xcom main menu (if you aren't there already), and load your now modified save file.

this is just the quick overview. you can edit nearly anything in your save file, like the number of scientists/engineers you have, how much money you have, etc.

it might seem a little daunting at first, but it doesn't take long at all to get the hang of it, and then you will see it's actually quite easy.

have fun!

[Just me n my pc...]

Well done sir. Well done indeed.

[Ichthyic]

yeah, every few years I post this info somewhere, as people forget, and google forgets as well. btw, you can also use the standard windows file explorer to drag and drop save files or edited files on the respective compress/decompress programs in order to run them if you don't want to deal with the command line console. I'm just used to using it since before windows was even a thing.