Are "Standard" Combat Intelligence soldiers worthless?

[Lampros]

Should they be dismissed?

[phillip_lynx]

No, raise their CI via COps.

[red255]

yeah. the difference between a standard and a savant CI is like 20 AP its not game breaking either way.

just means you gotta upgrade them or spend points from the pool.

whats more important is their selection of bonus perks.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by phillip_lynx:

No, raise their CI via COps.

But there is a limited number of those missions though ;(

Originally posted by red255:

yeah. the difference between a standard and a savant CI is like 20 AP its not game breaking either way.

just means you gotta upgrade them or spend points from the pool.

whats more important is their selection of bonus perks.

Hmm, the more bonus Perks the merrier? ;)

Also, it seems like every hero class I've gotten is only standard? Is this just bad RNG - or another inexplicable dev limitation on the hero classes?

[red255]

Standard is the most common thing. my first reaper was a genius.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by red255:

Standard is the most common thing. my first reaper was a genius.

Sigh. Jealous :(

But 5 standard in a row just seems awful RNG :(

Edit: In my new game I have a whopping 5 cross-class skill Perk slots for my Templar. I am not sure how he's gonna fill up those.

[rzL]

without tinkering around the ini settings, it's quite rare to see more than 2 base level genius/savant per campaign, savant is like 5% chance if i recall correctly, genius might be 10% and standard something around 60%

[red255]

I've never seen any natural Savant, I get genius in about 1 in 6 soldiers.

[rzL]

ComIntAboveAverageChance=50

ComIntThresholds[0]=50 ; 25% chance (above average)

ComIntThresholds[1]=80 ; 15% chance (gifted)

ComIntThresholds[2]=99 ; 9.5% chance (genius)

ComIntThresholds[3]=100 ; 0.5% chance (savant)

these are the defaults, remembered there was a 5% on savant, unfortunately it was 0.5%

[red255]

so one in 200 soldiers. whereas genius is slightly less than one in 10 and gifted or higher is one in 4.

[learnedhand]

I agree with the others that standard combat intelligence is perfectly fine. What matters more is the extra perks they will get which you can't know in advance unless you get a certain mod.

Really there's no situation I can think of for dismissing soldiers.

A couple of unconventional perks worth trying out are squadsight on a Reaper and saturation fire on a skirmisher. No one ever talks about them among the usual list of must have perks, but they can really add new tools to these classes. A reaper with squadsight means they can finish off basically any unit you have LOS on and adds a lot of flexibility to the reaper. Saturation fire is one of the most underrated skills in the game. Its a much better version of kill zone giving you a shot on every enemy and obstruction in a cone. On the skirmisher it means you can grapple into position, fire it, and still have another turn left over. Of course, you need decent aim on your skirmisher to take full advantage of saturation fire and an autoloader gives it much more utility as well.

[Aranador]

Yah - I recently had a bit of a fiddle where I made higher combat intelligence more likely - and you know what? It didnt make a lick of difference really. You gte plenty of XCOM points, and you buy the good perks, not the bad ones. If your dumb guy gets the good perks, he spends XCOM points and is your best soldier, while if your Super Genius gets the bad percs, they get to warm the bench with their big brain - spending neither XCOM points nor their own.

So while it is nice to have a genius with good perks, the real story is combat intelligence is just so much less important than what perks they get given, that it becomes a non factor.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by red255:

I've never seen any natural Savant, I get genius in about 1 in 6 soldiers.

I saw a Savant in literally my first game. I did not know they are so rare. Of course, never seen any since then.

[Azure]

Sure if you dont have any attachmet to your soldiers, by the end of a campagin its not goint matter that much as your going to have the A Team with all the best stuff no matter what you do early on. That said im majorly modded and have one that doubles normal point gain (2 instead of 1 for normal actions ~ if your luck enough to get the faction order that does it aswell you can get 10 per Chosen kill)

[wckowalski]

Remember you could make them psi troopers, for whom combat intelligence doesn't matter.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by wckowalski:

Remember you could make them psi troopers, for whom combat intelligence doesn't matter.

Excellent point; thanks!