Hmm yes now that I think of it, some other stats seem to be caped at lower levels.

I think every soldier has his/hers of potential, or personal maximum that is automaticly determined when you recruit them. This trooper I had, veteran from thirty missions, had less accuracy than a veteran from twenty. Think there were more stats the younger veteran was better in as well... Can't remember.

They evolve in different speed yes, but the statcaps are probably equal to all.

They all have the same caps with the values increasing a random ammount between 1 and 6, I believe, depending on use. Very possible to hit 125 or so accuracy on a lucky roll, though it is very rare.

By the way, the spotting system works outdoors, too. If you are running a soldier into the blackness and she stops because she saw an alien, don't have her shoot! Have another soldier shoot the newly-spotted alien from farther away.

The reason is that if the alien is facing you, if you miss, it might return fire. If it isn't facing you and your first soldier hits but doesn't kill, the alien might return fire. But aliens (and humans) can't return fire against what they can't see. So if your second soldier misses, or hits but doesn't kill, the alien can't do anything about it because it's out of visual range. Basically, you never want to fire at an alien if it can see you.

As for the visiblity thing. Aliens and Xcom both have the same range in daylight. At night, however, your range drops while the aliens' stays at daylight range. Also, when an alien knows you are there, it has a tendancy to move one space into range, spot you, move back, then fire at you from out of your range. It's not very likely that you can reaction fire in this situation (barring a 60+ guy... ;) ), as the alien is near maxed TUs in your visual range then leaves out immediately (best case senario to boot.. >.>).
Defenately bring flares to even it out at night. :crazy:

Ok, so, here's my plan

Two of my soldiers will try to break into a base, steal a ship (a small scout will do), pilot the ship into space, go to mars, plug the computer with an alien pc (we ALL know they us USB) and INFECT the whole MARS civilization or base with a cleverly deviced computer virus!

ER.,.. or not.

Ok, seriously now, I have NEW CRAFTS! What do you guys recommend I spend my hard earned HE in? Lightning? Firestorm?

Greys invaded my base again, but this time, I was ready. Got rid of a large number of things so as not to be bothered by the 80 item thing, and my soldiers all came with their HP and Laser rifles. I got two snipers and a couple of "Spotters" ahead, it works LIKE A CHARM. Sure, you are subject to some reaction fire, but this time they were so far away in the corridor it hardly matter, while my snipers took them out. BAM! One shot, one kill!

Then, it was just a matter of cleaning up the house. One thing though... what about the LOADS of equipment I was promised? LOL, I got only 15 bodies and 9 "alien artifacts" and THAT was IT. :ranting:

I have disposed of my missile defenses as well and switched to plasma. Things are looking bright againg, indeed. Ah, its good to be the commander of the XCOM defense. (plus, the GALA uniform its a killer!) :D

Lightnings suck. They're more expensive than Firestorms and slower, so they aren't as good fighters. As troop transports, Lightnings don't carry HWPs and are basically faster Skyrangers that eat Elerium (noooooo!!!).

Stick with a few Skyrangers for troops and lots and lots of Firestorms with 2 plasma beams each. When you can afford it, replace the Skyrangers with Avengers with 2 plasma beams each (and a few with laser cannons to bring down the smaller UFOs without hurting them so much). But don't build what you can't fuel, because Firestorms eat Elerium... so for a while, you might have to make do with only a few Firestorms.

Glad the spotting system worked for you, too! Maybe you got less equipment because a grenade blew up some of it, or something like that. That's why I don't recommend littering your base with prox mines; it destroys equipment, plus it's less efficient than the spotter-sniper system.

As an aside, if you build zero flying suits with zero engineers, click ok, then increase the number of engineers, and build exactly one suit. You don't have to pay for it. This trick can save you 100s of units of E-115, and I wish I knew about it earlier, but oh well, I can say I passed the game w/o much cheating if any. Now I'm in overkill mode and trying to get 80 top-flight soldiers with flying armor, all-Avengers, $1 billion, etc. just because I can.

How much HE you think is enough to fuel a number of Firestorms? I tried a Firestorm, it catched and downed a Suply ship, wich previously used to outrun my interceptors and got coky, but the firestorm also ATE my HE at base 1. I have some 2600 units between all my bases I think...

For crafts go for mostly Firestorms and maybe a Lightning for a crack squad. No HWPs but you can deploy troops through the walls rather quickly.

For the base defense tactic: Put your guys at the end of the hall around a corner just like the spotters. With a high reaction spotter and the snipers out of a line of fire you are basically invulerable to all but blaster launchers.