Veteran status

Veteran status is a unit attribute gained after a certain amount of kills. There are five different levels, each one requires more kills. Every unit and attack building is capable of getting a veteran status. The veterancy system has been drastically changed with the release of Forged Alliance, and made easier to achieve. Acquiring veterancy increases the unit's maximum health, and grants regeneration (or a boost, if the unit already had regeneration). Veteran units get 1 veteran insignia under their life bar for each veteran level acquired, up to level 5. Veteran Units do not deal any extra damage, although this was the case in the old Vanilla SupCom.

Veteran icons

United Earth Federation:
Cybran Nation:
Aeon Illuminate:
Seraphim:

Veteran status effects

Each Unit gets the same veterancy effect every time they gain a level. Every level, they gain a 10% increase of their maximum original health, and a fixed bonus in health regeneration. Taking the Cybran T4 Spiderbot, which has a +10 regeneration bonus, we get:

• Level 0: Health:45 000, Regen: +10/s
• Level 1: Health:49 500 (+10%), Regen: +20/s (+10/s)
• Level 2: Health:54 000 (+20%), Regen: +30/s (+20/s)
• Level 3: Health:58 500 (+30%), Regen: +40/s (+30/s)
• Level 4: Health:63 000 (+40%), Regen: +50/s (+40/s)
• Level 5: Health:67 500 (+50%), Regen: +60/s (+50/s)

Also, upon gaining a new veteran level, a unit gets a one time heal of about 25% of their maximum health. This can sometimes lead to the "Feeding on Veterancy Effect", where an Experimental unit drastically increase his survivability by destroying mass T1 units in an opponent's base, gaining veteran status and more health.

In Vanilla SupCom, so effects of veterancy vary by level, but also follow the same rules for every unit:

• Level 0: Health:65 000, Regen: +0.5/s
• Level 1: Damage +25%
• Level 2: Max Health:81 250 (+25%), Heal: 16 250 (25% of base health)
• Level 3: Damage +25%
• Level 4: Max Health:97 500 (+25%), Heal: 16 250 (25% of base health)
• Level 5: Regen: +2/s

Veteran status requirements

Again, the arrival of Forged Alliance has simplified things. The only thing required for a veteran status is kills, regardless of the destroyed unit's tech/mass value etc. Because of this, experienced players sometimes purposefully destroy all their T1 units themselves to keep the opponent's experimentals from profiting from easy kills. Forged Alliance has drastically reduced this kill requirement, making it easy to achieve, even for defense structures or T1 bots. It is not uncommon for strategically placed point defense, or light assault bots coming out of a successful ghetto gunship run, to acquire a 5 star rating. The kill requirement for every level is the same as the previous, making it just as difficult achieving level 1 as it is level 5.

Cybran T4 Spiderbot	Cybran T1 Light Assault Bot
level 1: 25 kills level 2: 50 kills level 3: 75 kills level 4: 100 kills level 5: 125 kills	level 1: 2 kills level 2: 4 kills level 3: 6 kills level 4: 8 kills level 5: 10 kills

Vanilla SupCom's requirements are much steeper, and seeing veteran units is quite rare, and 5 star units near nonexistent. As a general rule, if a unit requires x kills to reach level 1, then the next level requirements will be 2x kills, 5x kills, 10x kills and 20x kills. In this manner, the Monkeylord requires:

Cybran T4 Spiderbot
level 1: 100 kills level 2: 200 kills level 3: 500 kills level 4: 1000 kills level 5: 2000 kills

(at a unit cap of approximately 500 to 1.000 units!)

Veterancy and strategy

Veterancy is a balancing factor which adds to the value of higher tier units when weighed against swarms of lower tier ones. A huge horde of T1 units is far easier to deploy than a smaller number of T2 or T3 units, but veterancy partly ensures that sheer weight of numbers is not sufficient. Experimentals especially become exponentially harder to kill when they gain a few veterancy levels, making it difficult if not impossible to grind them down with endless waves of expendables. This makes it imperative to avoid "feeding" powerful units and you should pull back any unit which is incapable of standing against a stronger one rather than allowing it to be destroyed. One of the most notable examples of the power of veterancy is the ACU. Players using a rush strategy to attempt to destroy the enemy ACU with a swarm of T1 units need to beware that they don't allow the enemy to destroy too many of their units, as a veteran commander becomes an extremely powerful and resilient weapon even without upgrades. A veterancy 5 commander is easily capable of overcoming the only unit normally capable of stopping it in the early game- the opposing commander.

A destroyer with level 5 veterancy

A gunship with level 2 veterancy