squad sight is stupid and breaks the game. remove it and be happy and playable!

I do have to reinterate that my accuracy formula would also pretty much fix this problem and wouldn't require any changes to the game mechanics.

Support this. Accuracy will be fine tuned and if it drops well beyond "sight range" it should solve this issue. Snipers obviously need to be able to target like this else there is no long range for them, while heavy weapons destroy the loot. Soldiers will also not be able to carry too many heavy weapons once the equipment balance is done.

What else? Whell the maps will not always make SS abuse possible due to buildings, and ship interiors in the way. If aliens get more smarter, start to flank and backstab with teleporters, this issue will become rather small.

I'm actually all for the whole map being revealed, but that's a subject for a different thread. for now, I justify it as a soldier's non black zone is the zone he is paying attention to, his immediate vicinity. He can still see stuff everywhere around the map, just doesn't pay close attention to it.

I agree with this statement. It is difficult to see that stuff is trying to hide. You usually have to pay close attention and be fairly close too. I'm sure the aliens aren't singing drinking songs and wearing bright soccer tops while they are out looking for cows and farmers to experiment on.

IIRC, JA2 handled it with scopes, binoculars and aiming down sights (or ready weapons).

How it SHOULD be IMHO:

Soldier has a default sight range.

If he aims down the sights (readies a weapon, brings it up - which costs TU's) he gets extended view range but reduced view cone - depending on the sights. The better the scope on the rifle, the more range he gets, but the narrower the cone.

Iron sights provide no range increase.

Also, moving with a weapon raised is slower, but also is better for reaction shots (since weapon is already up, you have a TU and accuracy advantage over whoever runs in front of your gun)

If you are fighting in close quarters, you want to go with raised weapons, submachineguns and reflex sights - maximum reaction fire, slow progress, good accuracy

If you have a sniper you could also have a spotter with binoculars that gives a sniper a 5-10% accuracy bonus as long as he is "tagging" an enemy.

You can fire at enenmies outside of your LOS, but at a significant penalty.

Shooting without raising a weapon is possible (hip shot basicly), but the accuracy suffers.

IIRC, JA2 handled it with scopes, binoculars and aiming down sights (or ready weapons).

How it SHOULD be IMHO:

Soldier has a default sight range.

If he aims down the sights (readies a weapon, brings it up - which costs TU's) he gets extended view range but reduced view cone - depending on the sights. The better the scope on the rifle, the more range he gets, but the narrower the cone.

Iron sights provide no range increase.

Also, moving with a weapon raised is slower, but also is better for reaction shots (since weapon is already up, you have a TU and accuracy advantage over whoever runs in front of your gun)

If you are fighting in close quarters, you want to go with raised weapons, submachineguns and reflex sights - maximum reaction fire, slow progress, good accuracy

If you have a sniper you could also have a spotter with binoculars that gives a sniper a 5-10% accuracy bonus as long as he is "tagging" an enemy.

You can fire at enenmies outside of your LOS, but at a significant penalty.

Shooting without raising a weapon is possible (hip shot basicly), but the accuracy suffers.

Well, all that sounds good, but I'm sure it won't get put into this game. It sounds like a few people here would be happy with a modded version of JA2 where one side are aliens. LOL.

I think it'd be doable if you removed binoculars and moving when readied, though realistically the only scoped weapons are precision rifles.

There is already an animation for bringing your weapon up. Combine ready costs with the first shot if not already readied, and jack up the ready cost of HWP (and add an unready for those). You can manually ready if waiting outside a UFO door, etc, where you think you might get UFO fire for reaction time or if you stop behind some cover you're going to shoot from next turn.

I'm rather pessimistic about getting that much added to the combat mechanics at this stage unless the current system proves to be pretty unworkable. Although if there were ever a time to get much changed this would be it and probably the last chance (pre-beta). I'd just be happy with getting the accuracy calculation changed at this point and getting the grenades fixed. Part of the problem is that I really have no idea how strongly Chris and company are attached to the current combat mechanics.

Ready costs most likely won't make it in... I think it makes a certain sense but without being able to move readied (a meaningful cost/benefit action) you really only gain a bit more control over balancing weapons + adding in another level of micromanagement that was abstracted before. It is possible though, as the animation already exists.

re: squadsight in general... i wonder how hard it'd be to add something like "if soldier has fooPrecisionRifle equipped and movement penalty = off then squadsight" and have everyone else not have it but have larger vision ranges. It'd require rebalancing all the weapons and possibly maps, but we're sort of in that state now anyways. I feel it's more likely that we'll get a real time squadsight and keep it more "classic XCOM" though!