There are many speculations about what effects our Experience Level has on our merc's capabilities. Some of the effects are so obscure that they are hard to discern. But, thankfully, we can read the code and find out for ourselves. So the third part of my research will uncover the mystery about Experience Levels.
The following is a list of all (or, hopefully all) of the effects of higher experience levels. Once again please note that the actual calculations are often very complex, so ExpLevel factors in differently with each effect.
- Increases Doctoring rate.
- Increases Repair rate.
- Increases Militia Training rate.
- Increases priority for character's items to get repaired first in the squad.
- Decreases chance for the squad to be ambushed by enemies.
- Increases chance of merc to go on another assignment, or to get another contract before his service to you is done.
- Increases chance of merc to gain points in skills, through experience or practice.
- Decreases chance of merc to improve his skills while available for hire (I.E. not working for you or for someone else).
- Decreases chance to get killed while working for someone else.
- Decreases chance to fire unwanted "extra" bullets in autofire mode.
- Increases the difficulty level of this merc's planted bombs/mines.
- For enemies and militia - increases chance to carry Heavy Weapons (like rocket launchers, mortars, GLs).
- When the merc dies or is captured, a higher Experience Level means a more severe hit to the player's reputation.
- Above level 3, the merc's hearing range is increased by one tile.
- Helps reduce noise made while moving.
- Increases resistance to Suppression Fire.
- Increases chance to pick locks (both electronic and normal).
- Increases chance to succeed in planting bombs.
- Increases chance to succeed in disarming traps.
- Increases chance to notice an enemy firing (silent) darts at the merc (assuming you haven't been hit and passed out!
). - Increases chance to succeed in attaching together electronic items (Not sure which items those are).
- Increases chance to detect traps.
- Increases base APs to spend per turn.
- Decreases noise made when screaming due to bomb explosion. Means the enemy is less likely to hear you stepping on mines
- Increases medical skill when bandaging wounds.
- When using the Soldier Tooltips - increases the range at which you can view enemy soldier tooltips.
- Increases chance to interrupt enemy.
- Increases chance for merc (if holding the robot remote control) to make the robot interrupt enemies.
- When attacking an NPC that is not currently hostile, helps your merc be able to shoot first.
- Increases CTH with rocket-launchers.
- Increases maximum attainable aiming bonus from extra aiming APs.
- Increases chance to Dodge Bullets (Yes, dodge bullets. This effectively decreases the CTH of the attacker... but not by much).
- Decreases enemy's chance to dodge bullets (Errrr....)
- Reduces the penalty to CTH caused by injuries. (That's a good thing)
- Increases base damage with Melee attacks.
- Increases CTH with Melee attacks.
- Increases chance to dodge Melee attacks.
- Increases chance to steal.
- Increases chance to prevent stealing.
- Increases CTH with high-arc launched weapons (Mortars, high-arc Grenade Launchers)
- Reduces the penalty to CTH of Thrown/Launched weapons caused by injuries. (That's a good thing)
- Increases profile - enemies will want to shoot at a higher-level merc first.