squad sight is stupid and breaks the game. remove it and be happy and playable!

[Lightzy]

I'm sorry but squad-sight is a silly idea to begin with, and because it does not represent reality in any way, it cannot be balanced properly.

Just because johnny sees X, doesn't mean that jeff can now aim at X with 90% accuracy as if he now magically sees him.

The silliness of it is one thing, but it also leads to many bugs and undesirable behaviors in ground combat which can be fixed instantly with the removal of this broken system.

1) It causes almost every bug that exists in ground combat, crazy AI behavior, "bolts from the blue", AI shooting at walls repeatedly etc..

2) And adds nothing to the game but an exploitable hole for the human player to cheat with (the AI does not think tactically like a human. The AI does not walk around in big groups covering each other and having snipers and rocketeers hang well back while a scout or two scout for them and allowing them very accurate shots. a human player consistently wins by exploiting this. At least I do.

Real squad sight is when one of the squad encounters an enemy, and you as the commander now know where the alien is and can use your squad tactically to take it out. And that's all you need, and all that makes sense. And it's already in by default.

Sometimes the best solutions to problems come from thinking about the problem from a whole different direction. Not trying to lamely balance around something that is fundamentally flawed. removing this silly representation of squad sight is the way to go. Good luck!

[StellarRat]

But squad sight exists whether or not you actually place a sighted target on the map. Consider, I'm playing Xenonauts one of my guys (soldier A) sees an alien off to the left (because he is in sight range), now, me the player, notes in my head that the alien is standing in front of a barrel. I now switch to soldier B and he CAN'T see the alien, but what's to prevent me from targetting the barrel the is standing in front of will a rocket launcher OR just firing in a direction that intersects the barrel??? Either way the alien gets blown up. Same with every other weapon because they can all target objects on the map. In real combat, it's very rare to see the enemy. Generally soldiers just target areas where they think fire is coming from and hope that they can either suppress or kill the enemy by the shear number of rounds they are putting down. Or they simply call in artillery or airpower and blow up the whole area.

[Bromley86]

Ideally you'd get around that by using something like the JA2 or SS ghost icons for squad members who can't see that particular enemy. They could still target them but would suffer an accuracy penalty, perhaps unless they possessed a scoped weapon. That'd give the real life suppression effect you mention.

Not going to happen now though and, anyway, it might be a little irritating as you'd have to click on all your guys to see who had direct sight of an enemy and who was relying on squad reports.

[Lightzy]

I understand, but my problem is with soldiers suddenly getting perfect aim on a target that they can't see.

from no chance to hit because you can't see an enemy to as much as 95% to hit if you're a sniper

I don't recall how jagged alliance 2 fixed this but I'm sure it has the answer :>

[StellarRat]

I understand, but my problem is with soldiers suddenly getting perfect aim on a target that they can't see.

from no chance to hit because you can't see an enemy to as much as 95% to hit if you're a sniper

I don't recall how jagged alliance 2 fixed this but I'm sure it has the answer :>

Well, we can assume the soldiers have personal radios. So, even though the guy can't see the alien "normally" he can certainly be directed to the target by the guy that can see it. "Charlie 57, check out chem barrel at nine o'clock in front of the grocery store. This is 57 - tally, have lizard in sight now. I'm taking the shot." OR "This is five-seven, that Tesco grocery store about eight blocks down is loaded with skinnies. This is Actual, copy five-seven. Five-six put two rounds HE into the grocery store. Five-eight put 20 rounds same. This is five-seven copy." Edited May 15, 2013 by StellarRat

[erutan]

If you are a sniper, you have a scope... it makes sense if someone points out a target that you can shoot it fine. Iron sights not so much. Having accuracy decrease at a proper level past optimal range would essentially mitigate this... if you have a 5% to chance with a rifle/lmg to hit an enemy that is out of your optimal range (and hence most of the time vision aside) you can still get lucky or suppress (someone yelled that a lizard was by thataway, you fired in thataway) but it's not a standard tactic.

imho I'd like a "deployed" sniper (e.g. no movement penalty) to get a much narrower cone of vision but more range, but the idea didn't seem to get much traction.

Edited May 16, 2013 by erutan

[Fatbooboo]

I would actually support a penalty in accuracy for any soldier trying to shoot an alien or any tile that he does not have Direct Line of Sight

Because that's basically shooting blind even if there was a man on the radio trying to tell you where to aim your crosshairs, because it would still be nowhere near as accurate if you actually had line of sight.

It would discourage the player from sending a scout to spot aliens, then run into cover and he has a whole squad far back out of visual range of the alien, acting as Indirect Fire Support.

[lightgemini]

I see squad sight its not very realistic but thats how it worked on OG and it should work here. The aliens do get it wich is a nice way to even it out, and before bashing on how aliens dont get to use it properly etc. we should wait for the full AI with squad tactics etc. to be implented and see how it works then. Many threads about balance difficulty etc. seem to forget about the AI we have now its not the final one.

[Sathra]

Squad sight was considered being changed too so you need a soldier to have line of sight all the time. Basically it'd update real-time like it does with night missions.

I don't think JA2 actually had any way of stopping you do it beyond making shots beyond visual range very low accuracy most of the time. In a couple places I used a scout so snipers could shoot with impunity too I think (one of the mines).

Edited May 16, 2013 by Sathra

[Phoenix]

<for some reason i double posted>

Edited May 16, 2013 by Phoenix

[Phoenix]

To be honest, I prefer the X-COM:Eu way of dealing with it. You can't see it, you can't aim at it unless it is a rocket or you can throw a grenade at that range.

This tactics is as stupid as the original game psionics was.

To some disbelief I could understand a feature "aim area" with machine gun. I could also be in favor of some quasi solution where guys with scoped weapons have greater sight radius than guys with other weapons, which would still make some crawling tactics possible, but not excessive.

I guess in order for this system to work, you'd have to implement something like effective LoF, beyond which you cannot aim at targets, but at the specific area with bursts only. Scoped weapons would have greater effective LoF.

Edited May 16, 2013 by Phoenix

[zolobolo]

Squad sight makes perfect sense both in terms of gameplay and reality:

1. It would dismiss the sense of long range weapons if you limit the guys range to its sights while simoltaniously limiting that for the gameplay to be enjoyable.

2. Even in WWII, fireteams were communicting via radio to pinpoint enemy locations, not to mention modern microphone and alien tech. What would happen in reality? Everyone would be able to see everything within the battlefield. This means all aliens except for those who do not have direct sight to them, no limitation whatsoever except in night time missions. This is a turn base tactical egagement though, which means it is not a question of who can "see" the enemy per se, but who takes the reaction time to pinpoint a specific enemy and tell the others. Everything happens within a few minutes or even second in a small map, and it really brakes the sense of reality if one goes with the EU recipe of a sniper who cant shoot a 10 foot tall alien from like 20 meters, only if he takes 2 steps forward.

The game only needs fireteam tactics for the AI in my opinion to balance the engagements and since the AI is still under development, I just hope the DEV team pick this one up as well.

Edited May 16, 2013 by zolobolo

[Phoenix]

pinpointing a location for artilery, airstrikes or mortar teams is far different then yelling "nazis in the bushes" and sending a random volley of shots in the direction

If your soldier does not have the ability to see the target, then the base accuracy should be cut by 60% on single shots and by 20% on bursts.

It makes no sense whatsoever to be able to shot at targets with full accuracy when the soldier has no vision and only was given a general direction, hostile at coordinate xy234 or alien last seen on the second floor left window.

One thing that XCOM EU did right is the effective LoF not exceeding the range of sight of the soldier unless you have a scoped weapon specialists with specific training. Another was making you commit to actions, so no silly tactics, hide behind some door, then next turn just open it to spot aliens then close them again and let others shoot from way back.

It can be tweaked so the weapon can fire for much longer range, but your base aim takes severe penalties if the soldier doesn't have the target in his own vision range. Again, if you do not see it, you can't aim properly.

[zolobolo]

pinpointing a location for artilery, airstrikes or mortar teams is far different then yelling "nazis in the bushes" and sending a random volley of shots in the direction.

I agree. They are different things just like the ability to see something and viewing it. You can see via light, you could even see the end of the world if no fog or solid objects would stand in the path of the photons. Every human has the ability to see everything that fulfills the above preconditions, it is just a matter of orientation and focusing on a specific object consciously recognising it as a tree or a giant panda bear with plasma rifle.

Just like in real life, if we go for a round of paintball. The problem is never range of sights just like in case of soldiers, the problem lies in recognising a pattern as something relevant especially in the distance. When several soldiers move in fire teams, they talk to each other, communicating the location of objects of interest. If one would like to stick to reality "squad sight" falls in line with reality as long as the person benefiting from it has direct view angly to the target. In terms of gameplay, the different weapon classes would surely suffer withouth it. One could of course go around the problem of why I cannot shoot a target with a sniper from 20-30-100 or even 500 meters away - that is exectly what the sniper class is for but why complicate the game mechanics with perks? The original did not have snipers (may have been a wise choise there), and they make litle sense when you constantly have to move your troops in "sight" range. EU chose a path which went agains the original concept. This is no problem, but this game should follow the path of the original building on it and enhancing the enemy AI rather then restricting game mechanic like EU did for the sake of difficulty. The aliens have teleporting units, let them harass our snipers, or counter us with their own snipers on rooftops.

Edited May 16, 2013 by zolobolo

[Max_Caine]

Okay, let's say there is no shared sight whatsoever. What style of gameplay does this enourage?

MOAR ROKKITS.

MOAR GRENADES.

MOAR LMGS.

That's what it encourages. Nothing would really change, except anyone sitting in the back row would have their guns swapped out for rocket launchers, LMGs would be back in vogue with their 6-shot spray and pray and anyone nearby a spotted target without a rocket launcher could just lob grenades. These weapons don't depend upon accuracy, so their value shoots up when firing indirectly at a target (which is exactly why Chris has not included "true" indirect fire weapons beyond grenades). The losers in this case are not humans, but aliens, because they don't have any rocket launchers or LMGs and have pre-set equipment.

The issue here isn't shared sight. It's having a backfield group of operators who can strike at any target without taking any risk themselves. Shared sight is a contributing factor whose issues have already been identified.

[Fatbooboo]

I kinda have to agree with you Max_Caine on the real issue, which is that I believe the best tactic right now is to send one or few scouts for a whole group of snipers, rockets, to just take Long distance shots all day without any risk.

A better AI will help a ton but I am still concerned about the above mentioned tactic becoming abused.

[StellarRat]

If you are a sniper, you have a scope... it makes sense if someone points out a target that you can shoot it fine. Iron sights not so much. Having accuracy decrease at a proper level past optimal range would essentially mitigate this... if you have a 5% to chance with a rifle/lmg to hit an enemy that is out of your optimal range (and hence most of the time vision aside) you can still get lucky or suppress (someone yelled that a lizard was by thataway, you fired in thataway) but it's not a standard tactic.

imho I'd like a "deployed" sniper (e.g. no movement penalty) to get a much narrower cone of vision but more range, but the idea didn't seem to get much traction.

Even someone firing over iron sights can target an area if directed. Also, there are a lot of times when people don't see something until someone else points it out to them even if they are just using plain Mark 1 eyeballs. That's why fighter pilots call out contacts to each other.

[erutan]

There is no way to avoid someone firing a rocket launcher at an alien another player sees, and snipers should be able to see a spotted alien as they have scopes.

A large problem is that accuracy doesn't drop off fast enough - if we moved to something like stellar's formula squadsight becomes less of an issue because lower ranged weapons simply won't be that accurate past a soldiers sight range... it'd simulate taking potshots in the dark. Knowing where something is lets you focus on that area beyond a general scanning, so a bit beyond normal vision range you could still be fairly accurate... but if you don't have a scope given the compressed battlefield don't think that range should extend too far.

Adding in a ready cost to weapons might help balance things (as discussed elsewhere), we could make it much higher for HW plus add an "unready" cost to them to make them feel a bit more stationary in practice.

Bumping up vision ranges and going to the EU12 model would work as well, but this is supposed to be a more faithful recreation of XCOM. Those lucky shots that take out an alien from a screen away are part of the magic.

Edited May 16, 2013 by erutan

[StellarRat]

If your soldier does not have the ability to see the target, then the base accuracy should be cut by 60% on single shots and by 20% on bursts.

Normally, I wouldn't be opposed to this, but I have a feeling it would tilt the game even further toward the use of explosive ordnance UNLESS the penality also applied to targetting objects then we might have something here. If targetting a object or area that was beyond you sight range were also penalized then things could get pretty exciting specially if you end killing a bunch of friendlies or civilians "up front" because your taking wild shots from the backfield. This really might work.

[Bromley86]

Making corpses & equipment far more vulnerable to explosives will help keep a check on RPG spamming, as will massive penalties for humans being killed by Xenonauts. Also, if strength becomes a fixed (or very slowly increasing) stat, then it'll be hard for players to spam RPGs/HMGs without lots of hiring and firing.

I don't suppose the explosion damage dropoff factor is moddable? Because if it is, then RPGs could have high damage at point of impact, but be effectively useless against tough/armoured aliens without a direct hit.

[Phoenix]

Normally, I wouldn't be opposed to this, but I have a feeling it would tilt the game even further toward the use of explosive ordnance UNLESS the penality also applied to targetting objects then we might have something here. If targetting a object or area that was beyond you sight range were also penalized then things could get pretty exciting specially if you end killing a bunch of friendlies or civilians "up front" because your taking wild shots from the backfield. This really might work.

I would apply a same rule as on the burst (because of the potential collateral damage) + weight already kind of limits amount of explosives on the field (+ potential loss of artifacts and corpses like in XCOM:EU?)

[StellarRat]

I do have to reinterate that my accuracy formula would also pretty much fix this problem and wouldn't require any changes to the game mechanics.

[MikeV37]

What we should have is less open air maps. The realistic "range" of the guns is probably around the entire size of the map, so the limiting factor is noticing the enemy. Once an enemy has been noticed by anyone in your group and he calls him out, anybody can look for them and shoot them. They are not calling in an airstrike/artillery strike, they're saying "Hey, check it out, alien 6 o'clock at the gas pump." And the rest of the soldiers look over there for a second and are like "well gosh darn, that IS an alien" at which point shooting him is no more difficult than if they had been the ones to originally find him

[Phoenix]

@Mikey

If they can see that well, then what's the point of black map and revealing it? The whole map should be then visible if soldiers can see and shoot clearly from one end of the map to the other given no hard obstacles like buildings in the way (to be honest this is one of the points that makes me annoyed... they are flying over the UFO crash/landing site, probably some sort of aerial recon as well and yet you walk in the dark as if the cone of active sight would not be enough)

The cone of sight of a soldier simulates his visual perception ability (sight range) so obviously if there is another solider 100m furhter he can't see clearly the same objects like that solider.

[MikeV37]

I'm actually all for the whole map being revealed, but that's a subject for a different thread. for now, I justify it as a soldier's non black zone is the zone he is paying attention to, his immediate vicinity. He can still see stuff everywhere around the map, just doesn't pay close attention to it.