But yeah, the best start now is the USA, because Cheyenne Mountain. Seriously, a lot of the bonuses are nice, but none are quite as sweet as being able to build the absolute optimal base. It doesn't hurt that you can rush the continent before you start your main interceptor buildup, either.
That said, Nigeria is also an excellent choice, especially if you're playing without the random stat options.
How does Cheyenne Mountain give you the "absolute optimal base"? You can do that already quite easily I find. Also, AUSTRALIA. Nigeria gives your guys +1 move, South Africa gives them +1 health, UK gives you Aim, and Something gives you Will, but AUSTRALIA gives you a random +5 spread across stats, meaning your guys could come out with an extra +5 defense, move or health. Worst case with Aussies is you get +5 will or aim, which is hardly a bad thing. Combining this with other random stat options means you can make a fucking super soldier.
Just restarted with 15e, was running beta ELEVEN, and already everything is better. I want to rush the Russia bonus so bad right now because MOAR HEALTH to the two most useful classes, but might end up hanging off on that to blanket the rest of Asia. Aliens took Canada, which sucks asshole because it means no cheap planes and satellites for me anytime soon 
Oh, and Commanders Choice is just barely beaten out for the title of "Best thing ever" by the removal of the scrappy mechanic I mentioned in previous posts.
I WILL HAVE MOAR INFANTRY! MOAR OF THEM! ALL OF XCOM WILL BE BLUE!
Cheyenne Mountain means that you don't have to worry about putting off building things or removing buildings in order to get optimal arrangements of workshops, labs, satellite uplinks, &c. The bonuses you get from an optimal base vastly outweigh any of the other starting bonuses, though they don't become relevant until lategame when you
have a mostly complete base.
AUSTRALIA gives you a random +5 spread across stats, meaning your guys could come out with an extra +5 defense, move or health.
That's not how it works. Per Ardua Ad Astra adds +5 to their initial point-buy total of 48. Yes, it could mean an additional +5 Aim/Def/Will, or it could mean +1 Mob & +1 to one of the other three. That +5 alone isn't enough for even a single extra point of HP. Nigeria is vastly superior because Mobility is
always a god-stat. It's a god-stat early because it lets your rookies with shitty aim get to flanking positions or move to hard cover without dashing. It's a god-stat late because it makes it easier to cover ground, reposition, flank, and kite melee enemies.
What Australia
is good for is if you unwisely didn't use Strict Screening, because (IIRC) it tends to bolster the dump stats. That said, I've switched to exclusively using Strict Screening + Hidden Potential for good reason. Randomized starting stats, like many of the randomized elements of LW, tend to fuck you more than they help you. For every potential supersoldier you get, you have half a dozen PFCs with 22 Will, 65 Aim, 11 Mobility, or something equally stupid. With Strict Screening
every PFC at least has the baseline 30 Will and acceptable stats all around, so you don't end up throwing any away because they're too slow to do anything or complete psy-wimps.
You still get the randomization from Hidden Potential where some emerge as real heroes while others stay fairly mediocre, but it saves you the trouble of firing/killing off half the PFCs you hire. Actually, there's been some joking speculation that Per Ardua Ad Astra was added as a joke about Beagle, 'cause he always plays with Strict Screening.
How randomized initial stats are calculated, from Amineri:
Unfortunatly the Rookie initial stats stuff I ended up having to hard-code in a rather hacked-up manner due to some problems with not having access to local variables in the RandomizeStats and RollForStat code.
>> HP = 3; Offense = 50; Defense = -5; Mobility = 9; Will = 16
The above represents the floor for stats. All stat randomization adds to the above. In vanilla it started with the average and used +/- from there, but I coded it starting from the lowest and adding stats.
There is a "points" system present. By default each rookie gets 48 points for stats. If World Diversity is enabled (without Strict Screening) then each rookie gets 38 + rand(11) + rand(11) starting points instead.
Stats are worth the following points:
HP : 6 points
Mobility : 4 points
Aim : 1 point
Defense : 1 point
Will : 1 point
How it's actually rolled works like so:
1) Roll Mobility -- 4 50% rolls, so +0-4 mobility
2) Roll HP -- 2 50% rolls, so +0-2 HP
3) Roll Aim -- 3 rolls of 2 * rand(6), so +0-10 for each roll and +0-30 aim total
4) Roll Defense -- 2 rolls of rand(6), so +0-5 for each roll and +0-10 defense total
5) Remaining points into Will
At each step the either the 50% coin toss or the rand(6) roll is tweaked based on the remaining points vs expected points left which helps keep the final points spent to the total allowed for the soldier.
For example, a soldier with 48 points to spend after having rolled Mobility and HP on average will have 34 points remaining (6 points spent on +1 HP and 8 points spent on +2 Mobility for 14 out of 48 points spent). Each aim roll is adjusted with the formula :
>> AimIncrease = 2 * Min(5, int(FRand() * float(6) * float(RemainingPoints) / float(19+5*(3-NumberAimRollsMade)) ))
So the first roll has :
AimIncrease = 2 * Min(5, int(FRand() * float(6) * float(RemainingPoints) / float(34)
Second roll has :
AimIncrease = 2 * Min(5, int(FRand() * float(6) * float(RemainingPoints) / float(29)
Third roll has :
AimIncrease = 2 * Min(5, int(FRand() * float(6) * float(RemainingPoints) / float(24)
What this does is biases the randomization up or down based on previous rolls. If lots of points have already been spent then it's less likely to get high rolls, and conversely if few points have been spent its more likely to get higher rolls.
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Topic: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis) (Read 970032 times)