I seem to remember reading (maybe in an old strategy guide for this game) that promotions for a soldier were based on their bravery score - the higher the bravery, the more likely that character would be promoted.
however, there are a couple caveats. one, as mentioned before, you have to at least hit (maybe kill?) an alien to be eligible for promotion. Also, you can only have so many of any given rank, and it's based on how many soldiers you have in total through all your X-Com bases. Finally, it does seem to help if a character has lots of combat experience and kills, but I've observed that the most experienced/highest scoring killer isn't always the one who gets a promotion.
I don't remember the numbers anymore, but I think they're in the game manual. I think it's something like 1 Sergeant for every 4 soldiers (could be 5, 6, 8, I'm really guessing here), 1 Captain to every 3 Sergeants, 1 Colonel to every 3 Captains, and you can only have 1 Commander, ever, no matter how many Colonels you have. If you want a new Commander, get your current one killed off or retired, then pray the desired Colonel promotes.
Has anyone else noticed that characters which promote highly tend to be more accurate with their weapons but always seem to use so many TUs for it that their movement suffers?
|