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Weird alien door-opening-at-a-distance behaviour?


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So, I'm not sure if this is a bug or what, but I've become steadily more convinced that aliens have the ability to open doors from a distance (or that doors automatically open if they are close enough). I've had more than one occassion where I had suppressed aliens inside the UFO manage to open doors despite them never actually being adjacent to the door, and occasionally even when I've had units between them and the door.

Do they have some special ability to open doors at a distance? Is this intended behaviour? Or are they actually pathing to and then away from the door and the game simply isn't showing their movement?

On an a barely related note, how the heck does door health work? I had a door that survived two full barrages and two plasma grenades just fine, and then had it get killed by the flashbang I threw into the room after deciding it wasn't going anywhere. >_<

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So, I'm not sure if this is a bug or what, but I've become steadily more convinced that aliens have the ability to open doors from a distance (or that doors automatically open if they are close enough). I've had more than one occassion where I had suppressed aliens inside the UFO manage to open doors despite them never actually being adjacent to the door, and occasionally even when I've had units between them and the door.

Do they have some special ability to open doors at a distance? Is this intended behaviour? Or are they actually pathing to and then away from the door and the game simply isn't showing their movement?

On an a barely related note, how the heck does door health work? I had a door that survived two full barrages and two plasma grenades just fine, and then had it get killed by the flashbang I threw into the room after deciding it wasn't going anywhere. >_<

I think damage is cumulative, however grenades do normal damage to doors and props I think, while C4 does quadruple. I could be wrong about that, but walls and props seem to completely ignore quite a bit of grenade damage.

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A side effect of aliens being able to open doors when they're blocked is that they're also able to open doors at a distance, yes. I put in a bug report a bit ago about it; don't know if there's a plan to do anything about it though.

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A side effect of aliens being able to open doors when they're blocked is that they're also able to open doors at a distance, yes. I put in a bug report a bit ago about it; don't know if there's a plan to do anything about it though.

Well, nice to have confirmation I'm not just crazy, at least!

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This is a wonderful feature! I dont know why some people complain about this if this is intuitive. Your in their UFOs what you expect? That UFOs become a dead box for them?

Would expect them to be able to open/close doors at will, or have to do it the way the Xenonauts do. There's nothing intuitive about being able to do it the way the Xenonauts do... but being able to do it from further away than they can.

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I don't see it as a problem. I can open my garage door from 1/2 a block away using 80's technology! I'm sure the aliens can do better. I wouldn't have a problem if every door in an alien ship or base was locked to the Xenonauts and could only be opened with HE. I advocated for that during development.

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I don't see it as a problem. I can open my garage door from 1/2 a block away using 80's technology! I'm sure the aliens can do better. I wouldn't have a problem if every door in an alien ship or base was locked to the Xenonauts and could only be opened with HE. I advocated for that during development.

It also applies to non-UFO doors, though. (I watched a cop run by two doors once, magically opening them with telekinesis without even stopping!)

Personally, I'd prefer it if they actually had to be next to the door to open it for consistency's sake. But given the choice between being able to open blocked doors at a distance or not being able to open them at all, the former's much better.

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Personally, I'd prefer it if they actually had to be next to the door to open it for consistency's sake. But given the choice between being able to open blocked doors at a distance or not being able to open them at all, the former's much better.

I'm... I'm not sure what the desired case is for being able to open blocked doors? Why *should* aliens be allowed to open blocked doors?

Alternately, since parity and expected behaviour is important, you could simply allow xenonauts to open doors at two spaces as well - then it wouldn't come as so much of a nasty surprise.

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I'm... I'm not sure what the desired case is for being able to open blocked doors? Why *should* aliens be allowed to open blocked doors?

Because the player can do it, and it was horribly OP beforehand that you could put a soldier in front of a door and be 100% sure that no alien could come through it to attack you. (I'm wondering whether you thought I meant something else by 'blocked'. I really can't see a good argument for the AI *not* being able to open doors your soldiers are blocking!)

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Because the player can do it, and it was horribly OP beforehand that you could put a soldier in front of a door and be 100% sure that no alien could come through it to attack you. (I'm wondering whether you thought I meant something else by 'blocked'. I really can't see a good argument for the AI *not* being able to open doors your soldiers are blocking!)

I thought you meant as in *actually* blocked - as in, you're soldier was in *front* of the door and thus it couldn't open it (presumably to shoot people behind it?)

Because that appears to be what happens now, and it's... disconcerting, to say the least. Can't the aliens open the doors *without* coming through them, without actually doing it from a distance? I mean, as it stands, putting a soldier on your side of a door still means the alien 100% can't come through it, so it seems the sticker is that they should be able to attack you anyway... I'm not sure how "Able to open doors from multiple tiles away" is supposed to be a fix for that problem?

But then, I thought when you said blocking you meant the sensible sort of blocking (prevent them from getting to the door and thus prevent them from being able to open it) so there might well be more weirdness that makes this make sense.

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I thought you meant as in *actually* blocked - as in, you're soldier was in *front* of the door and thus it couldn't open it (presumably to shoot people behind it?)

Because that appears to be what happens now, and it's... disconcerting, to say the least. Can't the aliens open the doors *without* coming through them, without actually doing it from a distance? I mean, as it stands, putting a soldier on your side of a door still means the alien 100% can't come through it, so it seems the sticker is that they should be able to attack you anyway... I'm not sure how "Able to open doors from multiple tiles away" is supposed to be a fix for that problem?

But then, I thought when you said blocking you meant the sensible sort of blocking (prevent them from getting to the door and thus prevent them from being able to open it) so there might well be more weirdness that makes this make sense.

Ah, ok, yes, we're talking about different kinds of blocking. I meant putting soldiers on the far side of a closed door so that the aliens couldn't open it from the other side. But I can see how what you've described would seem odd, yes. (And I'm not sure whether the distant opening is actually intentional or not. It might just be a bug)

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