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If I recall correctly pre-release version had a sight range bonus for being on higher ground, why is it removed ? It's ridiculous, and a sebilian standing in open field, with bad eyesight as xenopedia says, can see and shoot at my hovering soldier with a bleeding edge headgear on, but not the other way round. I'm all for hardcore xcom, but limitations such as this look to me like punching player in teeth just because "xcom:eu is for wussies, we be making real xcom cuz its hard hurr durr, and yeah we make computer cheat to know your soldiers' exact location and remaining action points because it's cheaper than to program a half decent AI" Anyway, is there a way to get LOS at least as long as of aliens' ?
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- high ground
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Having been a US Cavalry Scout (forward reconnaissance) for some years, I have some suggestions regarding tactical intelligence - otherwise known as battlefield comprehension. I also realize that gameplay may not allow for these ideas, but I'd like to point them out for consideration. Number one, and most important: Vision is not the only sense that a person has. If a ~experienced~ soldier (or an enemy) hears movement or weapons fire, they can reckon force and distance reasonably accurately. Indeed, a trained tracker will immediately be able to spot or smell (ever smell atmospheric plasma? It's wild!) where an enemy soldier has been, night or day. I don't advocate turning the game into a full-immersion, nit-picking, bogged-down experience... but I think that each soldier should have some kind of "gut feeling" or "sense" of tactical movement outside the range of their vision (Green chevron for known friendly. Red chevron for known enemy. Yellow chevron for unknown?) ... which brings me to... Number two: A target that is identified as hostile or friendly may be out-of-view, but absolutely no soldier in their right mind would ignore or disregard them. Instead of defaulting to "Hidden Movement", there should be some very basic indicator of the direction of an identified civilian behind friendly lines, a denotation that a particular noise or movement is unidentified, or that an obvious enemy is leaving footprints and clear echoes in a particular direction. Giving the good guys the ability to do this would remove some of the challenge of the game, but giving the aliens the ability to do this as well would return that challenge, and multiply it threefold. Number three: As a counter-balance to number two, combat is wildly chaotic. Given that the Xenonaughts are trained and hardened soldiers whom don't break at the first sign of automatic fire, it doesn't mean that they can necessarily identify a friend from foe in obscure visibility. In thick smoke or twilight conditions, most of the aliens are humanoid in basic appearance. A soldier would have to get closer, or throw a flare, or even get shot at, in order to identify an obscure figure as a hostile. Number four: Friendlies. They're your friends. In combat. If a local farmer has a shotgun, and is willing to help out, then it makes sense that said farmer will go off into the fog of war and either get killed or kick ass. On the other hand, if you land in a highly militant society, they should be able to engage your uber-commandos in radio contact. Perhaps they're not interested in following your orders, but they can at least report what they're seeing to you. Any local force engaging the alien enemy at the same time you are should have some level of shared intelligence. Low levels may give some non-visual indication (#1) of what they think is going on. High levels will share what they are seeing over radio, even if they're not members of the XNs. I'm totally open to the concept that this might be a nightmare of mechanics. I'm also totally open to rebuttals or better ideas. In fact, I welcome them.
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As I somehow find vanilla sight distances too short for my taste I messed around and made a mod for myself. Expecting total nonsense it actually turned out quite good so I want to share my findings in hopes it may help improve the current game. before boring you all with long explanations I directly present you the changes and conclusions: Sight is changed to a base of 27, wich is 150% of a rifle effective range. Different ranges of armors/aliens is maintained with sebilians getting 25, Harrigans 35 and all others 30. What does this screw up? - It mostly removes the explore & surprise/tensión from the game, as was expected from such a massive change, making this surely a "No Go" change for retail game. What does it actually improves? -It creates a very different Xenonauts. It removes the problem with reaction fire & insta-death because it takes place outside most weapons effective range making incoming fire non accurate and hit for less damage, while still being dangerous. Hunter still proves too big and get pounded easily. So how this Hax/blasphemy can help? -The key is to have longer sight range than weapon effective range so reaction fire and crap takes place in the less lethal área of weapons performance. You may try to increase sight 2 or 3 tiles beyond rifles 18 max range and things improve. The more you increase it the less deadly reaction fire is. This together with other balances may help the game be more enjoyable. So how the nonsense 27 sight range fared? - I love it really. instead of exploring and getting shot from FOW you get a clear picture of the battlefield and things turn into tactical firefight/ battle. You spot aliens from afar and try to pin them down with machine guns while rifles manouver to get inside effective range, moving from cover to cover under long range fire wich is not so lethal but still hurts like hell. Fireteams fires at long range trying to get the lucky shot while advancing wich results in higher ammo use. Its not unusual to use up 2 or 3 mags in the battle. Instead of hunting aliens 1 by 1 you get engaged by multiple aliens shooting from different parts of the map. While this is only a pew pew gallore in early game, when you get to androns and plasma cannons and rifles things turn deadly and interesting. Aliens seem to like long range too. I get the feeling that they work better as a team globally as they charge you and retreat when taking losses. It may be the increased sight revealing them more info about you and giving them time to get to cover/ manouver, even if this part of AI is not really here yet, but I cant really assure this to be true. In CQC maps it does play like in vanilla game with house searching, corner peaking etc. but used to long range firefights it really feels deadly when exchanging fire inside effective range, giving more flavour to combat IMHO since you get to experience both long range and close range firefights. The most epic single firefight I remember with this mod: -In a farm map 3 xenonauts with 1 laser rifle+1 sniper laser+ 1 scatter laser engages 2 caesians with rifles + 1 drone . Aliens were trenched behind a low wall with an open field infront. Xenonauts took cover behind some hay blocks. Range was like 22 tiles with chances to hit aliens behind cover quite null, and flanking not posible due to map layout. After 5 turns exchanging fire the aliens got the upper hand as their burst blow some of the hay blocks. Xenonauts were hit again and again and although Wolf armor and long range damage decrease doesnt let them die in 1 shot, they struggle to use medkits to survive the next hit. Combat ends when the drone and 1 caesian finally die and the last one retreats to the ufo. Xenonauts lost the rifle guy with the other 2 having less than 25% health and all medkits depleted.The team was send back to the Charlie while the rest of the troops assaulted the ufo losing a Hunter and another soldier in the process. Note that the team was elite with stats on the 70s and the ufo was either a corvette or a landing ship, I cant remember. Also note that I played a game with this sight mod from start to human plasma rifles and wraiths & harrigans, and as the game progressed and more firepower and upgraded aliens were trhow into battle, the more interesting and more natural the combat felt. Now for the future of this mess im tweaking supression values so long range fire may not kill easy but at least helps suppress while rifles get into range. Same for the aliens. Also since a way bigger part of the map is used in the firefights im testing using increased blast radius for rockets so it becomes more a médium range weapon and not a choice for CQC ( no more nuking a reaper 4 tiles away of your own soldiers). I may try to change damage of the weapons to increase lethality on extreme ranges, or try to reduce base sight to 22 to get back a bit of exploration/surprise feeling. But Im sure this will slowly become a full mod with probably bringing back the old xcom cannon that fired HE rounds, to increase the long range fun.
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Just seems a bit weird to me that a guy stepping off a Chinook only has 90 degrees frontal arc view. Sure, stopping to look left and right is cool and realistic, but it just seems weird. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye#Field_of_view - bad picture but you get the point. Granted, with adrenaline and guns and explosions I always get tunnel vision, and most of my fellow soldiers/cops, too.