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Shooting over adjacent, crouched soldiers


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Looking over the V13 change log, something caught my eye. The new accuracy calculation disregarding adjacent cover. So I thought what if you could shoot over adjacent, crouched friendlies (the shooter would have to be standing). Obviously gameplay > realism , but it does seem odd that trained troops don't have the self-control to shoot over someone, without firing a burst into the back of the head (or it could just be classic X-COM accuracy).

This mechanic would really come into play when fighting in tight, inclosed spaces, allowing you have more firepower without a lot of repositioning. The downsides is positions and lines of fire would be slightly less important (but the decision to crouch would compensate that, and it would only be for adjacent squares, anything outside of it would act just like now).I understand developement time is precious but I think it could add another layer of tactics.

So what do you guys think?

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Quite sadly I have to disagree, you'd be stunned if not horrified about rl life military activity when it comes to friendly fire. To be honest I lost a childhood friend to such an event and when the military investigation was done, it was mind boggling how such a mistake could be done. These things are much more common then people normally consider. I doubt the devs meant it to be as it is at the moment, but I think that actually adds realism.

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Agreed. This must be addressed. It is a normal SWAT tactics to move in tight groups with lots of crunching and firing over kneeling mates. It was possible in Apocalypse for your soldiers to fire over lying or sitting team mates, it was so in Extraterrestrials and UFO:AS/AL. Not to mention JA2 that allowed to fire 'through' even standing mate.

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I think this is one aspect where gameplay must win over realism; stuff happens BUT I would like to be able to shoot over someone crouched down in the tile immediately adjacent to me without worrying about blowing their head off by accident.

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I think this is one aspect where gameplay must win over realism; stuff happens BUT I would like to be able to shoot over someone crouched down in the tile immediately adjacent to me without worrying about blowing their head off by accident.

What about their eardrums? :P

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Realistically, it makes sense. During my time in the army we learned that one kneeling soldier and one standing soldier is a good way to double the amount of firepower you can put around a corner, for example, without exposing anyone too much. Not to offend anyone, but you'd have to be rather incompetent to hit your mate in this situation, if you do it properly. Basically the one standing is leaning against the kneeling dude, or otherwise making sure the muzzle of the gun is in front of the kneeling man.

As for gameplay, not sure if it would offset balance too much. I for one would like to see it.

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+1 here for being able to shoot over crouched team-mate.

Drives me insane when egressing from chinook on terror mission; first guy crouches say rear right of Hunter and shoots, but 2nd guy (say sniper) cannot shoot (without shooting first guy or Hunter), because there aren't the available squares to move sideways and get clear LOF

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It would also open new tactics to be used with the combat shield

From the changelog-

- Shooting over cover: When a unit fires a weapon, any cover in the adjacent tiles is disregarded for the purposes of the accuracy calculation (provided it does not have 100% stopping chance, which would mean it was a solid object such as a wall). This means that it is now far more advantageous to take cover, as your soldiers will no longer fire their weapons directly into objects only a few inches in front of them.

The same reasoning can be used for shooting over soldiers so I see no reason it shouldn't be added (apart from time constraints).

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in the original xcom this tactic was able to be used, but instead of total disregard for adjacent friendlies, it was a significantly reduced chance for friendly fire. similar to shooting through an adjacent window, sometimes you still hit the frame (which is pretty bad for the situation of adjacent friendly). tanks were also a great source of mobile cover, a miss into cover rarely resulted in damage of any significance early on.

the thing that gets me currently with adjacent friendlies, is grenades. you can't throw a grenade over someone else if they are right next to you.

i am sure chris will have this sorted out before the final version.

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  • 3 weeks later...

(This is my personal opinion)

I'd would support this; if units were adjacent (and one crouched), I would want close to 0% chance of friendly fire.

Friendly fire ingame should come from wrong positioning within the squad. Crouching/lying indicates intentional, thought-out positioning and should not be penalized by friendly fire.

However, if you open fire while one of your squad mates is in the line-of-fire.. All bets are off, because you as a commander made a mistake. I would go even further and say that friendly fire should have increase morale cost.

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It's not quite as cut and dried as that. If the enemy A.I. controlling the squaddie targets something over the head of a friendly unit (for whatever reason - perhaps the kneeling unit has a pistol and a unit a square away has a heavy plasma gun), then as I experienced it in the original, the kneeling unit would always be hit. If "shooting over heads" was implemented, how would this situation be addressed in general?

Should kneeling friendly unit in front of an alien/and or mind-controlled squaddie

  • Always be passed over (as per usual rules)
  • act like cover, and therefore have a percentage chance to be hit
  • always be hit first
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Always be passed over or have small percentage chance to hit (whatever's the default) unless they are aiming directly at the unit would probably be most intuitive. "If I can shoot over my own units, why shouldn't the enemy?" is the way I look at it.

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It's not quite as cut and dried as that. If the enemy A.I. controlling the squaddie targets something over the head of a friendly unit (for whatever reason - perhaps the kneeling unit has a pistol and a unit a square away has a heavy plasma gun), then as I experienced it in the original, the kneeling unit would always be hit. If "shooting over heads" was implemented, how would this situation be addressed in general?

Should kneeling friendly unit in front of an alien/and or mind-controlled squaddie

  • Always be passed over (as per usual rules)

  • act like cover, and therefore have a percentage chance to be hit

  • always be hit first

Remember this game has suppression as well.

Even if it was always the front one that was hit the one behind would be getting suppressed.

As far as I know a kneeling soldier has a 60% chance to block any shots that pass through his tile.

If fire was coming back at the person who was standing then the kneeling person would likely intercept the shot.

Not always, but then that would be as realistic as shooting over a friendlies head.

If someone is in front of you they are partially blocking sight of you and the direct path of bullets/plasma.

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