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I made this post in the Experimental discussion thread for v21.1 Figured it'd be better served in the actual suggestion forum. The context was that getting rid of Squad Sight entirely for aliens was too hard, in terms of programming the AI to cope with it. I offer this as a way around that, if it's actually possible to weight the AI to choose certain targets like this, and if it's actually possible for an entity to "know" which targets it can "see" directly and which it cannot, targets that it merely knows of because of allies "telling it" about them. At least I assume that's the rationale behind squad sight in general. The accuracy penalty itself may very well serve to weight the AI in that regard, as I assume they are programmed to take the better shot more often than not. So I suppose this idea mostly depends on if it's at all possible to differentiate "seen" targets from "squad-sight" targets, from the perspective of a single entity, and add an accuracy penalty accordingly.

So this is one of the major mechanics that strikes me as unbalanced in the current game: the combination of squad sight and persistent LOS (i.e. a unit can look at a location and move away, but that location still stays "revealed" for the rest of the turn). This means you can game the system pretty effectively by sending your soldier into range of an alien to spot him, then run him out of fire range to keep him safe but still pick the alien off with your snipers. That only leaves you vulnerable to reaction fire during the entire process. It also leads to a problem where if an alien spots your team, they will all be able to shoot at you even if you then kill that alien. It's frustrating because there's nothing you can do about it. I'm therefore thinking we'll make these two changes: LOS is no longer persistent throughout the turn. The only areas revealed are those that are directly in the LOS of a unit at that particular time. Therefore if a unit is killed or turns away from an area, it is no longer revealed. If a unit is suppressed, it loses all LOS. This does more to address the second issue, as if you come across an alien in your turn you either need to kill or suppress it or you'll possibly get enemy squad fire at you during the alien turn (or retreat out of range). It only partially addresses point 1, but unfortunately that's always going to be a valid tactic so long as we don't decide to force to utilize their units sequentially without letting them swop between them - and I've no plans to change that. Thoughts and comments welcome.

I'm not even kidding! Ooh, I'm so mad. Complaint, the first: Squad sight is so broken! Especially when my soldiers are the one's getting killed from it. (When it works to my advantage I don't mind as much). What really rustles my jimmies is when the drop ship is already surrounded by aliens, it's a slaughter house. There's just no way for me to know whether I can move my soldiers out safely or not. Moving them to any piece of cover is worthless because no piece of cover protects you from all directions. It's just too brutal, and it doesn't feel like good game design: It just feels like blind luck, and I have no way to protect against it. Frankly I'd be happier just losing squad sight altogether. If I can shoot it, it should be able to shoot me, I don't see how anything else makes sense. Or, at the very least it should be restricted to snipers and precision weapons. I'm so mad. Complaint, the second: I told one of my jet fighters to disengage, and it did, by flying directly back into the weapon cone of the Corvette. Dammit, I needed that jet! Also, air combat is too brutal. My first play through, it wasn't so bad. I got about half way through November and never saw anything too savage, just the little squadron of three fighters that took me by surprise. But this play through (and I'm still only in November), man, I am getting owned in the skies. Fighter squadrons and Corvettes all over the place. I have to hide in my bases like a little girl until they go away. I'm so mad, I can't even remember what the other things are I wanted to complain about. I wish I didn't love this game so much and then I could just stop playing and I'd be happy again.