Reaction fire hits/kills my own soldiers

[Bansheedragon]

I dont think this can actually be classified as a bug, so I'm posting it here for some feedback.

This is a problem that has been annoying the hell out of me.

Why does soldiers fire reaction shots when one of their own is standing between them and their target?

It makes no sense and far too many times it has resulted in them killing members of their own squad instead of hitting the alien with their shots.

This gets very frustrating in the later stages of the game when I lose high ranking soldiers to things like this.

I had one mission where I lost 3 soldiers to this, which made it very difficult to complete subsequent missions.

I had to hire replacements, and they were of very little use until they had gained a rank or two, and resulted in me losing more soldiers again.

Sometimes the reaction fire dont kick in until the alien has moved to a certain position relative to the soldier who is firing, which can cause one of my own soldiers to suddenly be in the line of fire, and as such become the victim of friendly fire, even though I have tried to place the soldiers to prevent just such an occurrence.

[kabill]

At one point there was a function which cancelled reaction fire if there was a sufficiently large chance of friendly fire. It never worked/got broken at some time, though, and there was never a chance to fix it.

[Simulacrum]

It's especially jarring when your commander-rank sniper manages to one-shot-kill your own guys this way.

Sometimes when they're not even in the line of fire. I had a reaper run up to one of my shield-guys, and my sniper fired a shot at something like a 45 degree angle off hitting the reaper, scoring a perfect instant kill on my own vehicle instead.

Though I guess it was appropriate, considering his nickname was Commander Teamkill... after an earlier incident.

[Bansheedragon]

I havent had a commander rank soldier yet.

But I have lost my highest ranking soldier, a Major, to this kind of reaction fire.

He was injured from enemy fire and a reaction shot from a private hit and killed him.

Its a shame to hear that a function to prevent friendly fire was not working properly.

It would have been very helpful to have it, but not much to do about if it cant be fixed.

[ViniJones]

Try to prevent it, keeping enough ap to reaction fire is silly when the costs are so fucked up anyways. If I do keep enough, its intentional and I clear the line of fire of course.

Im sorry for your loss.

[StellarRat]

You really, really don't want to place your LMGs in positions where they can fire through your own troops. I learned that the hard way. Generally speaking you should always do your best to assure your troops don't have LOFs that go through other friendlies on your axis of movement/facing. This is a "real life" consideration too. That's one reason why infantry moves in a V formation or line abreast with spacing when closing with the enemy.

[Bansheedragon]

You really, really don't want to place your LMGs in positions where they can fire through your own troops. I learned that the hard way. Generally speaking you should always do your best to assure your troops don't have LOFs that go through other friendlies on your axis of movement/facing. This is a "real life" consideration too. That's one reason why infantry moves in a V formation or line abreast with spacing when closing with the enemy.

This would work fine is not for one critical detail I mentioned in my OP.

Sometimes the reaction fire dont kick in until the alien has moved to a certain position relative to the soldier who is firing, which can cause one of my own soldiers to suddenly be in the line of fire, and as such become the victim of friendly fire, even though I have tried to place the soldiers to prevent just such an occurrence.

[StellarRat]

This would work fine is not for one critical detail I mentioned in my OP.

I know, I saw that. I was suggesting a way to mitigate the problem not completely stop it. The reaction AI isn't perfect unfortunately. It's way better than it used to be though. The chance to fire variable is adjustable if I remember right. Maybe someone can tell you how to lower it some more. That might make it so you're troops don't fire when you really want them to though. I don't know if it's currently working though.