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First mission in v20, my guys suddenly can see through the light scout hull, and at an unusually long distance at that!

So...I just started a mission. An alien shot through the wall. He was at the corner of a wall. My reaction shot hit said wall. Because they did it twice, hit my guy twice, and he died. The plasma bolts definitely went through the square the wall was in. When I try to shoot around the corner of my Chinook, I hit the corner of the aircraft every time. Is the cover system maybe ignoring the first wall or something? Has anyone else seen this?

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.

Just a thought, but why don't any of these troopers carry binos? While only moderately effective at night, they would be a big help during daylight hours. Obviously, it would take some AUs to check out the scene, and the recently-scanned area would be greyed out again as soon as the binos weren't in use anymore, but you'd get a quick feel for the landscape and be able to more quickly identify areas of tactical importance. Indeed, it would make sense that the platoon commander would hang back, assess the situation, and direct your troops based upon what he sees through his binoculars.