Area weapon zone of effect and visual cue

Hi there,

is there anyway to implement a visual cue so that we see what we're going to affect with area weapons (grenades, rockets, etc.) ?

We know from the description how many tiles they affect, but it would still help.

Since the tiles are squares and not hexes, a light coloring (orange ?) of the affected tiles would be awesome (vs drawing a circle to delimit a zone)

I'm asking, since there is already some similarities with path and shooting path coloring, which are neat

I think someone mentioned this before, and Chris was all for it.

Good news, thanks

I'm lazy enough to not rampage through all those pages.

Maybe a sticky thread referencing "already asked features" and 2 categories of answers "Doable / may be done" and "not possible / not desirable", FAQ-style, if someone in the mod team feels like it

I'm guessing there will be more people looking at the game soon enough (Steam) and all sorts of questions already discussed will pop-up again

The FAQ sticky answers confirmed feature, need one for those "maybe/will not be"

I forgot to add, it would also be cool to have a grenade "throw path", the same way there is for weapon/rocket fire path.

Pretty sure that's also under consideration. At the very least I think its a great idea too!

Yeah with the X% chance of hitting an obstacle on its way, lol. I've had grenadier blow up a grenade in his face because he hit a partial cover. Short of dropping the grenade at his feet, that would of been impossible~

Currently i dont use grenade because they are basically bad(unaccurate/weak) version of rockets. The point of grenade is to throw over and around obstacles and its definitively not the case here! At the very least grenades should be 99% base accuracy or something lol

Yeah, its something that's being worked on. Grenades don't actually arc at the moment, making them dangerous to use from cover. They're better than they were (in my experience at least), but they've got a ways to go.

Yeah, I'll say.

I totally agree on the blast radius and the grenade arc with % chance of hitting obstacles.

maybe they simply need to "ignore cover" in the aiming process since it is the role of lob throwing stuff (opposed to projectiles) as a work around. That would reflect the arc throwing thing. Distance would be a function of strength. No real need to play with precision here, soldiers need to miss the targeted tile.

I'm talking abour partial cover stuff, not walls-type cover of course

Off the top of my head it makes sense to have a reduction to stopping chance for any object along the path (with 99% or lower stopping chance) that varied with distance.

For example (numbers subject to change):

Close up the stopping chance could be reduced by 60 (flat 60, not 60% of object stopping chance)*.

That reduction would get smaller the further away the object was along the path, maybe down to 30%.

Probably related to the distance to target rather than optimal range of the weapon.

You could easily lob a grenade over a wall just in front of you but trying to drop the grenade just past a wall on the other side of the street would be quite difficult and you would be more likely to hit it.

That wouldn't prevent you from dropping a grenade onto a floor tile that was improbable though.

*Stopping chance of a standard cover object is 60%, full sized wall is 100%.

Agreed.

I was thinking something along those lines while watching a couple let's play and from my own play : i don't get why some obstacles block shooting paths, especially when i'm standing just behind it (to cover myself) or not crouching, like a low hay stack or fence do not impair shooting above, unless the target is just behind or within a tile of it.

I'm guessing it's an "either / or" case, "no blocking" or "always blocking". Probably a bit of a headache to differenciate (half / full cover, distance of the cover from the target, cover efficiency only if target close enough, along those lines of thoughts)

If there are only 2 types of cover as you mentionned 60% and 100% stop chance, i'd really rather see 3 types (1/3, 2/3 and full) to account for stuff like fences (low cover), low walls/solid objects (medium) and "full cell" like walls or high / piled objects.

Also a headache for projectile vs thrown since rules need to be different a bit (as your example).

http://xenowiki.goldhawkinteractive.com/index.php?title=Game_Mechanics_Explained

There is some information in there about accuracy calculations and cover saves that might help generate ideas.

hey! i just read it the wiki) while trying to search for ancient messages about armor/damage mechanics

Quite informative. Only 2 covers (half and full) for 2 types of elements (structures and props)

I still think the blocking values are not "ok" atm, and that the blocking aspect should not be triggered all the time along the path : only if within a certain distance of the target (probably depending on the total distance between origin and target), at least for "thrown" projectile.

You could argue that "shot" projectile being a straight line is always blocked, but i have issue with fences and benches (or hay half-stack) being "efficient" blockers compared to a half-wall/metal half-prop cover.

I think a lot of the cover objects could do with individual cover values.

As you say a fence made of wooden slats would provide less of a stopping chance than a wall simply because it has more spaces for bullets to pass through it.

The material type is not so important as that is taken account of in the objects hitpoint value.

Wooden walls have less HP and are therefore shot to pieces quicker than a brick wall.

It may have a knock on effect that the cover indicator feels broken though if it tells you that fence is good cover even though you are still getting shot through it

i'm really pleased to see that in v18.51, Fences have a 20% block factor. Way to go guys if all props can be configured individually

I was able to lob a grenade from a solid half-wall cover with a second solid half-prop next tile (Farm map, delimiting half-wall + water thing for animals, i'm guessing), i mean throw past it.

I also noticed that the % aim for throwing is a fixed value past a few tiles (i had 30, 29%, depending on soldiers) and only goes up if i'm aiming very close (like within 3/4 tiles), i do really like that approach. It was a night mission and used flares a lot. Now, the max distance of throwing would be the next step i guess, can't really throw those as far as the precision rifle shoots

One small issue/bug : i tried to throw a flare from behind a full-cover wall in a corner direction (open side - corner - full wall side) and it did bounce off of the wall, which is fine if it is a probability.

But it ended up in the top most left corner of the map, the soldier being in the bottom right corner approx. Camera did follow the projectile during the throw but did not reveal terrain until it landed in the corner, funny thing

The tiles are coming along from where they were a few builds ago (the last time I looked at them in any detail) so hopefully the changes will be working their way through all of the tiles as they get used in more submaps.

Half and full stopping chances? I thought that each prop spectre could have a stopping chance set from 0 to 100. Where does it say that, Cwell? I've just looked through the wiki and can't find any reference to half or full. The closest I can find are references to walls and props, but it doesn't explicitly state they provide 50% or 100% of a stopping chance.

The tiles can have any value set and will probably have a value that makes sense for the item it represents.

Early on they appeared to be mainly set close to the 100% and 60% stopping chances used by standing or kneeling soldiers.

That is likely because they had not been set correctly at that point.

A grenade should be able to clear any half of full height (one floor) object without any trouble if you're right next to it. Probably a full height object greater than 1/2 distance to the target further away should have some chance to block the grenade. Two floor objects (a two story building) should always block them. Note, that just because you can throw over a full height object doesn't mean that you can see the enemy. It would still block LOS and direct fire. In theory, there probably ought to be a one square dead zone directly behind a one story object that the grenade cannot land in. Of course, the smart player would simply aim one square further back and still catch the target in the blast radius. That's how it's done in real life anyway.

How do grenades work indoors? Like, with a normal height ceiling?

Ideally I could just throw them underhand, or something (no I'm not asking for more animations) to get good distance without height.

Indoors they could only clear half height objects. I think most of the indoor furniture is only half height anyway, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, that's what I thought. I just don't want them hitting the ceiling and bouncing back towards my guys somehow.