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Accuracy fire cone and other observations


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Great game from the demo. Love it.

But I do notice one thing that's waaay off. Namely the accuracy cone. It seems like there is NO limitation to just how badly you can miss. The way bullets fly around is redicolous.

I end up hitting (and killing) my own guys who are no way in the line of fire. The shot goes 45° off it's intented trajectory. Burts shots also spray in redicolous deviations. I have two hiting the ground 10 degreees to the left of the target, and the 3rd one going 60° right.

Just a idea, but you might want to put some limit there..like 20°-25° (on either side). And a small diviation between shots in a burst.

Also, not sure if this is what you are going for, but 9 times out of 10 the UFO you attack will end up destroyed, it won't crash.

Oh, and civilian AI. It ends up walking right into the fire (as in burning, smoking fire). I realise right now it probably just wanders around aimlesly, but i just tought I'd mention it.

Edited by TrashMan
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Some people find the ridiculous accuracy nostalgic or true to the original

The UFO crashing 9 out of 10 times could be because of 3 things. 1) you are shooting down Fighters, Heavy fighters or Bombers. None of those will leave crashsites. 2) You overkill the UFO beyond it's 120% hp threashold. if you deal damage equal to 100-119% most UFOs will crash. dealing damage equal to 120% or more will destroy them. 3) You shot them down ovr water.

Edit: forgot reason number three.

Edited by Gorlom
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Yeah, the UFO crashing thing is either you're using too much firepower, shooting them down over the sea, or shooting down craft that don't create crash sites. We're going to improve the invasion AI so it's less weighted towards non-crashable craft in the future. I understand it can be frustrating to fight endless numbers of fighters.

For the accuracy cone - I dunno, there is some joy in accidentally shooting your own soldiers so I think we won't reduce the accuracy cone too much (though there is one) but we may tighten it a bit in beta if it is getting ridiculous. It's one of the fine balancing things we'll look at when we have done the core features.

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I tend ot use guns to finish UFO's so it's not overkill. But most of them were fighters, so I guess that's it.

For hte deviation, I propose a simple max value, that is enforced.

So if the RNG decides your shot goes 61° to the side, and the max deviation is 30°, 30 is used. Accuracy and chance to hit are unaffected, and a miss is still a miss (anything over 20° wil ldefinately miss anyway), but it missed in a tighter area.

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I actually like the large amount of fighters. Too many crash sites gets a tad old, as well, and keeping fighters away makes you feel like you're really battling for air superiority. The only issue is that they come in large waves, meaning you need to split up your fighters every which way---it'd be better if they formed squadrons of two or three fighters more often. (And a single fighter can be defeated easily anyway.)

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Maybe make it an option to have more/less fighters? so that those that want to have more ground missions can select one, and others that want to blow things up and have an less ground missions also have that option?

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Nothing wrong with fighters showing up, but it doesn't make sense to me that they'd just fly around for no reason. They should either escort other ships or actively engage your ships while they try to fly somewhere.

Or, if they fly patrol, they shouldn't do it alone.

Also does it not seem strange that the aliens air superiority fighter is basically useless against basic human tech even from the start? I know its a balancing issue, or gameplay before lore, but I just can't wrap my head around it.

The fire cone thing, I second. A certain width is expected but right now it gives a whole new definition of the broadside of a barn ^-^

Anyway, something totally unrelated, I hope its ok to not open a new thread just for that...

I recently got to laser weapons for the first time and it got me wondering if it was possible to set production to unlimited, so you constantly have a few engineers churning out ammo.

For some reason I have a mental block about just using a high nummer and clicking it back up every so often.

Also it would be nice to do repeatable queues.

Like for example

1:Build one armor

2:build a laser rifle

3:build some other alien tech equipment

4:start over

That would make outfiting several soldiers less micromanagey...

Not that important in the big scheme of things though.

regards

Davoren

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Also does it not seem strange that the aliens air superiority fighter is basically useless against basic human tech even from the start? I know its a balancing issue, or gameplay before lore, but I just can't wrap my head around it.

Technically basic human tech doesn't have any chance against even the scouts. The F-16 and MiG-32 has been specially adapted by Xenonauts and are unique tech to them. Xenonauts are the only organization that has a fair chance to down UFOs. (Which is why the nations of the world, during the cold war era, band together to fund them instead of just sinking money into their own militaries)

Anyway, something totally unrelated, I hope its ok to not open a new thread just for that...

I recently got to laser weapons for the first time and it got me wondering if it was possible to set production to unlimited, so you constantly have a few engineers churning out ammo.

For some reason I have a mental block about just using a high nummer and clicking it back up every so often.

Also it would be nice to do repeatable queues.

Like for example

1:Build one armor

2:build a laser rifle

3:build some other alien tech equipment

4:start over

That would make outfiting several soldiers less micromanagey...

Not that important in the big scheme of things though.

I like the idea, but it deserves it's own thread. It's kind of troublesome discussing the idea in an unrelated thread.

Edited by Gorlom
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Technically basic human tech doesn't have any chance against even the scouts. The F-16 and MiG-32 has been specially adapted by Xenonauts and are unique tech to them. Xenonauts are the only organization that has a fair chance to down UFOs. (Which is why the nations of the world, during the cold war era, band together to fund them instead of just sinking money into their own militaries)

Ah, completely forgot about that.

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The deviation on a miss should be tied to how badly you actually miss.

If you have a 10% chance to hit and get an 11 then you should only deviate slightly.

If you get 99 then it is the equivalent of dropping the rifle on your foot and it going off.

The shot could go anywhere.

A limit would be imposed by the accuracy of the trooper and the difficulty of the shot he was attempting.

A long range, difficult shot might veer wide while a closer one, even if you managed to miss, would not miss by as much.

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The deviation on a miss should be tied to how badly you actually miss.

If you have a 10% chance to hit and get an 11 then you should only deviate slightly.

If you get 99 then it is the equivalent of dropping the rifle on your foot and it going off.

The shot could go anywhere.

A limit would be imposed by the accuracy of the trooper and the difficulty of the shot he was attempting.

A long range, difficult shot might veer wide while a closer one, even if you managed to miss, would not miss by as much.

The best humanity has to offer can't hit the broad side of the barn?

bad-guys-are-such-terrible-shots1.gif

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If they are really unlucky, something startles them as they fire etc.

That is why I specified that a really unlucky shot (represented by a really bad roll) would be more likely to be wildly off target.

In general a wall would be easy to hit so a wild variation would be less likely.

The example I used was that of someone trying to fine aim at a small target at long range.

If you read the line after the one you highlight you would see that I also suggest that the accuracy of the trooper would affect how wildly the shot can deviate.

The best accuracy troops are less likely to hit the ground 20 feet from their target and more likely to hit, or at least ping their cover.

Someone who is less able to aim straight while under pressure, taking fire etc may not be the best person to be stood in front of when he opens up.

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I think a superhuman tool like that might make it a bit too easy, and would clutter the battles. You can already see whether someone is in your line of fire, and if your soldier happens to be a completely awful shot, well, that's collateral damage for you. I prefer forcing players to use their own judgment over giving them a tool which makes it for them.

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I think if an accuracy cone were to be added, it should be added as something that a scout armour should do. Of course, the problem with adding it even as part of a scout armour package is that I would always then pack that scout armour as a observer, to help guage my other troops.

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I think a superhuman tool like that might make it a bit too easy, and would clutter the battles. You can already see whether someone is in your line of fire, and if your soldier happens to be a completely awful shot, well, that's collateral damage for you. I prefer forcing players to use their own judgment over giving them a tool which makes it for them.

The player would still have to decide whether to take the shot or not using their own judgement and all available information available to them. Also iirc the "to hit" percentages in X-COM were directly linked to the firing arc; no reason not to display it visually as well. More intuitive for on thing. Wouldn't force new players to learn the game system rather than the game for another (what with the isometric view not being fully intuitive and all).

Edited by Infinitum
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I don't see how a cone showing where your fire may go would be all that useful.

It would just tell you that your trooper may or may not shoot badly enough to hit someone who is not quite stood in front of him.

That is a widely understood risk.

If the cone is wide enough to reflect every possible wide shot then it would be useless for actually deciding if a shot was worth taking.

All you need to know for that is your chance of hitting the enemy and chance of someone getting in the way.

I have seen some games that also display your chance of hitting other targets over their head.

That was useful in that if the alien had a 10% chance to be hit but your trooper behind a barrel halfway to him had a 25% chance then the shot was too risky.

A visible cone feels like a less useful version of that same system.

With the current system where any miss seems able to generate a wild shot it doesn't help.

I suppose if my suggestion was used with it then it would be more useful as the cone would alter depending on shot difficulty and trooper accuracy.

Also iirc the "to hit" percentages in EU were directly linked to the firing arc; no reason not to display it visually as well.

I am not really sure what you mean by that line.

Accuracy and firing arc are two very different things in my mind so I reckon we are using the terms to describe different things.

Generally I think of accuracy as chance to hit while firing arc in this sort of game is the 45 degrees (or so) that the soldier can fire in without having to turn.

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So using a cone to represent that would actually be an inaccuracy depiction?

Seems counter intuitive as you say.

It might be nice but I don't think it is necessary.

The whole point is that a high accuracy leads to low deviation while a low accuracy has a wide deviation.

I think that is self explanatory enough without needing a visual cone on top of an accuracy number.

The only thing that needs doing to make it more obvious is to ensure it is linked the same way in Xenonauts.

At the moment it is not obvious because it seems as if any shot can veer wildly off target.

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It would certainly be nice to have some kind of "friendly fire warning". At the moment it seems it's perfectly possible to fire a rocket launcher into the back of someone who's standing two hexes away from you. Given that isometric grids aren't hte world's easiest thing to calculate flight paths on by eye, some warning would have been nice...

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If someone is in your line of fire they light up with a green circle around them.

It is only if you miss and the shot goes outside of your line of fire that you hit someone who wasn't lit up.

The cone idea would help with that because you would have an idea who you might hit if you miss your target.

I am not convinced that would be all that useful though as the cones could cover lots of targets that you MIGHT hit but not give any useful feedback otherwise.

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I think a superhuman tool like that might make it a bit too easy, and would clutter the battles. You can already see whether someone is in your line of fire, and if your soldier happens to be a completely awful shot, well, that's collateral damage for you. I prefer forcing players to use their own judgment over giving them a tool which makes it for them.

You should...but as it is, practicly everyone is in your line of fire... Like I said.. I saw my soldiers hit someone who was 60° to the side.

A person would have to be drunk, dizzy and spinning to miss like that.

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