Game logic regarding LOS and cover

[Boar Head]

I'm starting to enjoy the game quite a bit but I can't help but feel a bit concerned regarding how rudimentary and poor the game's logic still is when it comes to what it considers as cover. See the image below, my soldier is aiming over some waist high objects at a Cleaner. The box is next to him so the game goes "Ok, you're good there, no way that's blocking the shot oh but what's this? There is a waist high wall adjacent to that box and you are NOT next to it therefore, it might block your shot".

It's just a bit frustrating that even with the game's upgrade to 3D from X1, though obviously an immense improvement, there is still stuff like this that just doesn't make any sense and pulls me out of the experience. If the Cleaner in the image was crouching then maybe I'd see why there'd be a chance for the shot to get blocked but he's standing up 2 feet away from my soldier and he's completely exposed from the torso up, the box nor the wall should count as cover.

Are there any improvements or fixes being worked on for things like this? Or is it just going to be something I have to put up with as long as I play this game? I think a basic fix would be to somehow take into account distance and whether or not the target is crouched behind partial cover objects. It might already work like this, I don't know, but I think waist high objects should only provide half their cover bonus if the target is standing, just to alleviate the issue a bit (So that in the situation depicted in the image below for example, there would at least only be a 20% chance of the shot getting blocked rather than a whopping 40%). 

When it comes to the distance, I think waist high objects' cover bonus should vary highly depending on the distance between the shooter and the target. Obviously if I'm standing next to their cover, it should work as it does now, no way the shot is getting blocked. But I don't think it needs to immediately be considered a full low cover block the instant there is an extra tile in the way. It should be like a 5% chance for the shot to get blocked, then increment that slowly the larger the distance. I think overall that would make low cover way more interesting and also only reserve shots blocked by low cover in those types of situations as utter catastrophes rather than common occurrences.

(With the stuff I've mentioned here, the situation below would make the waist high wall a 2.5% chance that my shot gets blocked, 5% divided by 2 due to the target standing).

 

I hope this feedback makes some sense and I hope I didn't come off as too presumptuous, I'm not a game dev of course so maybe you guys have some good reasons for why things work the way they do but I personally feel like the changes I've mentioned above would make the game way more satisfying and "logical". Thanks for taking the time to read!

[Chris]

On 4/1/2024 at 10:54 AM, Boar Head said:

I'm starting to enjoy the game quite a bit but I can't help but feel a bit concerned regarding how rudimentary and poor the game's logic still is when it comes to what it considers as cover. See the image below, my soldier is aiming over some waist high objects at a Cleaner. The box is next to him so the game goes "Ok, you're good there, no way that's blocking the shot oh but what's this? There is a waist high wall adjacent to that box and you are NOT next to it therefore, it might block your shot".

It's just a bit frustrating that even with the game's upgrade to 3D from X1, though obviously an immense improvement, there is still stuff like this that just doesn't make any sense and pulls me out of the experience. If the Cleaner in the image was crouching then maybe I'd see why there'd be a chance for the shot to get blocked but he's standing up 2 feet away from my soldier and he's completely exposed from the torso up, the box nor the wall should count as cover.

Are there any improvements or fixes being worked on for things like this? Or is it just going to be something I have to put up with as long as I play this game? I think a basic fix would be to somehow take into account distance and whether or not the target is crouched behind partial cover objects. It might already work like this, I don't know, but I think waist high objects should only provide half their cover bonus if the target is standing, just to alleviate the issue a bit (So that in the situation depicted in the image below for example, there would at least only be a 20% chance of the shot getting blocked rather than a whopping 40%). 

When it comes to the distance, I think waist high objects' cover bonus should vary highly depending on the distance between the shooter and the target. Obviously if I'm standing next to their cover, it should work as it does now, no way the shot is getting blocked. But I don't think it needs to immediately be considered a full low cover block the instant there is an extra tile in the way. It should be like a 5% chance for the shot to get blocked, then increment that slowly the larger the distance. I think overall that would make low cover way more interesting and also only reserve shots blocked by low cover in those types of situations as utter catastrophes rather than common occurrences.

(With the stuff I've mentioned here, the situation below would make the waist high wall a 2.5% chance that my shot gets blocked, 5% divided by 2 due to the target standing).

 

I hope this feedback makes some sense and I hope I didn't come off as too presumptuous, I'm not a game dev of course so maybe you guys have some good reasons for why things work the way they do but I personally feel like the changes I've mentioned above would make the game way more satisfying and "logical". Thanks for taking the time to read!

Thanks for the feedback. I think you've found a bug in the game there - if there's a string of adjacent cover with the same or less stopping chance than the original adjacent cover (i.e. the box), then it should all be ignored. In this case that means the wall should be ignored because it's adjacent to the box, which is correctly being ignored.

However it doesn't seem to be working here for some reason, so we'll take a look at what's going on.

[Boar Head]

4 hours ago, Chris said:

Thanks for the feedback. I think you've found a bug in the game there - if there's a string of adjacent cover with the same or less stopping chance than the original adjacent cover (i.e. the box), then it should all be ignored. In this case that means the wall should be ignored because it's adjacent to the box, which is correctly being ignored.

However it doesn't seem to be working here for some reason, so we'll take a look at what's going on.

Ah I see, that certainly makes more sense. I hope my post was helpful in some way then, even if just illuminating a bug. Thanks for taking the time to reply back!