Soldier Attributes

Learn how to boost your Xenonauts' Time Units, Health, Strength, Accuracy, Reflexes, and Bravery. Essential stats for surviving alien threats and leading your troops to victory!

Alright, let's talk about your soldiers in Xenonauts. The manual covers the basics, but I'll break down the six key performance stats you'll be watching. Getting these right is crucial for keeping your squad alive and kicking alien butt!

1. Time Units (TU): Think of this as your soldier's action points for the turn. More TUs mean they can move further or take more actions like shooting or crouching. You'll naturally increase TUs by just fighting and using them – the game bumps them up after each mission. Most actions cost a fixed amount of TUs (like 3 to crouch), but firing weapons and throwing grenades use a percentage of your available TUs. This system is smart for game balance: rookies can move and shoot, but your veterans won't become unstoppable gods.

2. Health: This one's straightforward. Your soldiers gain health as they survive missions and get promoted. Keep 'em alive, and they'll get tougher.

3. Strength: Want your grunts to be stronger? Make them carry as much gear as possible during missions! When you're outfitting them, stuff their backpacks with grenades and ammo until they're just a *little* overloaded – you'll notice their TUs start to drop. Before you get your hands on late-game powered armor, strength is a big deal. It affects what weapons they can handle, how much they can carry, the armor they can wear, and even how far and accurately they can toss grenades.

4. Accuracy: This stat goes up simply by shooting at aliens. Keep in mind that your actual combat accuracy will also depend on the weapon's own accuracy, the distance to the target, any obstacles, visibility, and other battlefield conditions.

5. Reflexes: Your soldiers get better Reflexes by using reaction fire. During their turn, they can choose to save some TUs instead of using them all. This gives them a chance to shoot at an alien if it moves into their line of sight. Whether they actually get that shot off depends on a few things, including their Reflexes stat, the alien's stats, and how many TUs you've reserved.

6. Bravery: This is the trickiest stat to boost. It mainly increases when soldiers recover from psionic attacks or panicking (which you definitely don't want to encourage!), or by earning medals. You can earn one of nine medals for feats like killing multiple aliens in one battle, participating in terror missions, or destroying alien bases. These medals give a bravery bonus from +1 to +3. Some medals are rare (like capturing an alien leader), and others are pretty grim (being the sole survivor). Most experienced troops will have 4-5 medals, maybe giving a +10 bonus. Since a rookie's starting bravery can range from 35 to 65, that initial stat is super important. Bravery is your soldiers' main defense against mental attacks, making it arguably the MOST important late-game stat, and also the hardest to improve. This might influence which rookies you decide to recruit – a soldier with very low starting bravery can become a dangerous liability later on, no matter how good their other stats are.