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Could cover feel more substantive?


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Having played X1 for quite a while now, there's a real sense that positioning is important. Alien weapons are generally 2-shot deadly (even with armour) so you have to manoeuvre your troops into good positions to get the baddies while they can't get you as easily. But while positioning is important, cover doesn't feel important. This is difficult to put into words, but it feels to me that the 30% block box that a squaddie hides behind isn't important because the 32% barrier that's between the squaddie and an alien that shoots at him takes precedence.

So could cover feel more like cover? I mean, there's lots of cover in the maps, they just don't feel like cover. I remember in an early iteration of X1 cover granted a "saving throw", which was taking after a shot hit the target. Could we have something like that, perhaps? Perhaps the block % could also double as a malus to damage, so if LOS passes through a piece of terrain which is next to a soldier, then when damage is calulated, the block % is added to any armour when calulating damage. Would that be possible? 

EDIT: Perhaps only if a squaddies is crouched as well? 

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One of the things that feels least satisfying to me is that a crate in the middle of the shot provides as much cover as one next to the target.

The other is that no amount of marksmanship training is able to teach people to shoot around an obstruction.

 

One change would be to care more about how close the cover is to the target; another would be to apply different amounts of protection based on fire mode; crouching behind a sandbag wall will provide a lot more protection from spray-and-pray shots, and substantially less protection from a single aimed shot.

Also of note: Edge behavior. There are two major ways to use a corner of a building as cover; you can pop out around the corner and have LOS all the way down the wall with very little exposure, or you can back up to the wall and have total concealment but no way to see down the street. X-Com split the difference from the second way: you couldn't back up all the way to the wall, but you could stand in the center of the tile next to it, giving you about a 45-degree field of view but no cover. XCOM split the difference the other way= any time you were against a wall at one or more corners, you had to pop your head out around all of them all of the time.

 

In general, it would be nice to be able to made modal selections between fully entering cover and sacrificing the ability to see, and popping out around or over cover to see at the cost of being slightly exposed. That would look like lying down against sandbags instead of kneeling and looking over them, and pressing flat against walls instead of standing a few feet away from them or peering out around the corner.

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Maybe block chance should be 110% effective for obstacles the target is taking cover in, and 125% if crouching? E.g. a crate has a 40% chance to be hit if the target is not near it, 44% if next to it and standing, 50% if next to and crouching. Would make a little sense.

A  final "hunker down" stance could be neat, but adds complexity for only a little more depth.

I also would prefer some smoke that deals a little more or armopiercing/DoT damage so you do more interesting stuff than just throwing it on the most exposed soldier.

Edited by Bobit
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On 4/24/2019 at 6:57 PM, Decius said:

The other is that no amount of marksmanship training is able to teach people to shoot around an obstruction.

After playing the current closed beta for longer, I can say that this part is actually wrong. I fired a few sniper shots on enemies bebind cover with 100% final hit chance after sufficiently increasing the accuracy stat of the soldier with the sniper rifle.

I am wondering how some_hit_chance - 30% * some_hit_chance can be still 100%. The only logical explanation I can think of is that the hit chance calculated from weapon fire mode +  distance can internally actually be >100%, so the calculation result is still >100% and in the end the final hit chance just gets capped to a maximum of 100%? However this means that the block chance of the obstacle is really 0% in this case despite still being displayed as 30%....

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Since the engine is 3D now, couldn't you just have it so that each shot has a cone of fire and all bullets will be randomly placed in that cone? Then chance to hit would simply be the percentage of the target that is exposed in that cone? I can see a problem where the cone is smaller than the target, but maybe some way could be worked out that the best place to put the cone would be used? Maybe quick shots could randomly place the cone, sorta aimed shots could find the best cone, and aimed shots could reduce the cone size and find the best place to put it?

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1 hour ago, odizzido said:

cone of fire based on accuracy

I don't like this. A smaller cone of fire can be a significant downside in this game if you want to suppress. That's why the original has all hits guaranteed to hit and the other shots in a variable cone based on distance (which can still hit the target). Also I don't really know how the engine is now "more 3D" than the last game.

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X1 engine is 2D sprite based I believe. The X2 one is fully 3D. Good point about the suppression, I didn't think of that. Well with a large enough cone you would get that. Perhaps a suppressive spread mode or just playing without setting up the LMGs(what I assume you're talking about) would give you a pretty large spread.

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13 hours ago, Bobit said:

I don't like this. A smaller cone of fire can be a significant downside in this game if you want to suppress. That's why the original has all hits guaranteed to hit and the other shots in a variable cone based on distance (which can still hit the target). Also I don't really know how the engine is now "more 3D" than the last game.

So?

Suppresive fire can also be done with aim but doesn't have to be, and given that the cone would depend on actually AIMING, then you can have both. A wide cone when not aiming and just spraying, and a narrow when you do.

 

The way Jagged Alliance 2 did was the best - the more AP's you spend, the more tighter the shot. As your mouse hovered over the enemy you got an aiming circle shooting AP cost. With a right click you could increase (cycle trough) the cost and the circle became smaller, indicating fireing.

You basically had hipfire/no aim, fast aim, aim, careful aim. With mods it's gotten even deeper (and better).

 

As far as I'm concerned you don't even need a % to hit displayed at all. Something simple as "good line of fire/visibility" / "bad line of fire/visibility" indicator would be more then enough, but I feel even that is unnecessary.

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