How to Eliminate Tired Soldiers in XCOM 2: A Comprehensive Guide
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Tired soldiers in XCOM 2 are a serious liability on the battlefield, leading to decreased performance and potential mission failures. Getting them back to fighting fit is a key part of managing your squad effectively. The short answer is, to get rid of tired soldiers in XCOM 2, you need to use the Infirmary. This facility, once built, allows you to treat soldiers suffering from negative traits accumulated from fatigue. The process takes several in-game days, but the result is a soldier completely free of those detrimental effects.
Understanding Fatigue and Its Impact
Before diving into the solutions, it’s important to understand why soldiers get tired in XCOM 2 in the first place. Over time, soldiers accumulate fatigue, especially if they are used frequently in missions back to back. This fatigue manifests in the form of negative traits that directly impact their combat effectiveness. Tired soldiers will have a significant reduction to their Will stat. They are also highly likely to panic, or possibly go berserk or become shattered when subjected to adverse situations during a mission. This makes their behavior unpredictable and significantly increases the risk to the entire team. The Will loss they suffer is also significant; it’s equivalent to half the Will loss they would sustain if a squadmate were killed, making it crucial to manage soldier fatigue effectively.
The Infirmary: Your Solution to Tired Soldiers
The Infirmary is the primary solution to address tired soldiers. This crucial facility can be constructed within your Avenger base. Once built, it provides a single soldier slot where you can place fatigued personnel for treatment. During their time in the infirmary, they will not be available for missions, but once they are released, they will return to duty with all negative traits removed.
How Infirmary Treatment Works
When you place a tired soldier into the Infirmary, the game initiates a treatment period. The base treatment time is 5 days on standard difficulty, but this can increase to 10 days if you are playing on Legend difficulty. Each additional negative trait the soldier has will also add to the overall treatment time. This means a heavily fatigued soldier with multiple negative traits could be out of action for quite a while. However, this downtime is a worthwhile investment as it ensures that the soldier returns without any hindering negative traits.
Managing Soldier Fatigue: Preventing the Need for Infirmary Treatment
While the infirmary is the primary cure for fatigue-related issues, you can take steps to minimize how often you need it by managing soldier fatigue in the first place:
Rotating Your Squad
One of the best ways to prevent fatigue is to rotate your squad regularly. This means you should not use the same core group of soldiers for every mission. By giving soldiers time to rest between deployments, you can help ensure that they don’t accumulate too many negative traits from being overworked. Ideally, keep a larger pool of soldiers available to ensure you have replacements ready to go, when your front-line troops are in the Infirmary.
Monitoring Soldier Status
Pay close attention to the soldier fatigue status, both before and after missions. The game provides indicators of their fatigue levels. Use this to determine which soldiers need rest, and try and keep at least a few well-rested and high-performance soldiers. This way you’re always ready when a tough or unplanned mission appears.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. How long does it take to cure a soldier in the Infirmary?
The base treatment time is 5 days on normal difficulty, and 10 days on Legend difficulty. This duration increases based on the number of negative traits a soldier needs to have removed.
2. What are the negative traits caused by fatigue?
Negative traits can include a reduction to a soldier’s Will stat, and significantly increase their chance of suffering panicked, berserk or shattered states during missions.
3. Can I speed up the Infirmary treatment time?
Unfortunately, there are no in-game methods to speed up the Infirmary treatment process. The time required is fixed, and scales based on difficulty level and number of negative traits to be removed.
4. What happens if a tired soldier panics in combat?
A panicked soldier loses control and may fire randomly at allies or run into the open. This significantly jeopardizes the mission, and the chances of a soldier panicking are much higher if the soldier is tired.
5. Is there any alternative to the Infirmary for treating negative traits?
The Infirmary is the only way to remove negative traits caused by fatigue. Other healing methods and facilities can only treat physical wounds.
6. How does Will affect a tired soldier?
Will is a soldier’s mental fortitude. Low Will makes them more susceptible to panic or other negative psychological states, which can lead to disastrous outcomes. Tired soldiers automatically have their Will greatly reduced.
7. How many soldiers should I have in my roster?
A good rule of thumb is to have around 12 soldiers for Normal and Easy difficulties. You should aim for 24 or more for higher difficulties like Impossible, to ensure you always have well rested troops ready to go.
8. Can you get more slots in the Infirmary?
No, the Infirmary only has one slot for treatment. Effective squad management is key to avoiding needing multiple Infirmary slots.
9. Does the difficulty level impact fatigue?
Yes, higher difficulty levels can increase the chance of soldiers becoming fatigued and require longer Infirmary treatment times.
10. What happens if a fatigued soldier is mind-controlled?
Tired soldiers are particularly vulnerable to mind control, and can become highly effective units if controlled by the enemy, potentially doing considerable damage to your troops, and having a higher chance to attack them.
11. Does losing soldiers contribute to other soldiers becoming tired?
While losing soldiers is a huge blow for a variety of reasons, it does not directly contribute to other soldier’s fatigue, although they may experience a loss in Will stat, and it is a terrible psychological blow.
12. Is it beneficial to carry dead bodies in XCOM 2?
Carrying dead soldiers to the extraction zone allows you to recover any equipment they were carrying. This is useful to salvage weapons and armor lost to enemy fire.
13. What are the best soldier classes for a balanced squad?
A good squad setup includes 2 Rangers, 1 Specialist, 1 Grenadier, and 1 Sharpshooter. This combination provides a balance of offense, defense, and support capabilities. Reapers are also considered a very strong class for all round combat.
14. How do I deal with Faceless?
Use Overwatch on revealed civilians, as Faceless have a 0 defense stat, and are easily hit by most weapons. Avoid rushing into unchecked civilians unless you have a scanner ready to spot them ahead of time.
15. Are there any ways to improve soldier healing times in combat?
You can use a Medikit or have a Specialist with Medical Protocol to stabilize and restore a downed soldier with 1 health point. These methods can be used to make a soldier combat effective for a short time and get them to the extraction point for actual healing.
By understanding the effects of fatigue, and making use of the Infirmary, you can effectively manage your soldiers’ condition and maintain a high level of operational readiness. Efficiently rotating your squad and using the provided tools in game are the key to success in XCOM 2.