Vx6 (6.23.0) - Ground Combat] Accuracy is not working as intended or expected

[Nodrak]

(Sorry in advance )

Bug: Accuracy is not working correctly or as expected in many cases:

• Crouching does not influence Range Bonus
• Sniper No Movement bonus is added oddly
• Small Enemies benefit less from Cover and Crouching than Medium enemies; Large Enemies benefit the most from Cover.
• Small Enemies are easier to shoot beyond max range than Large Enemies
• Burst Fire x3 Reaction Fire seems too accurate.
• Burst Fire x3 at 0 range might have an extreme hidden accuracy penalty. (I cannot prove this one yet, but it was a staple of mine in Xeno1, and I stopped using it in Xeno2)
• Crouching makes Armor Penalty 10% Worse / Tac Module + Laser 10% Better (Hard to explain why this one is here)
• Only the single highest Cover Level is used to determine accuracy.  Layers of cover only come into play if the shot misses the accuracy roll.
• I will test Smoke later if needed.

Consequences:

• Accelerated Cleaner Rifle is the most accurate weapon for most soldiers, only a stationary/aimed sniper is better at range.
• Pistols are far superior to Shotguns in all metrics
• Attacking (gaining ground) is primarily reliant on Strength Attribute, then TU Attribute, not Accuracy Attribute or Reflex Attribute.
• Smoke Grenade is the best weapon other than Strength Efficiency, making Strength the best attribute.
• +20 Strength is WAY stronger than +8 Accuracy
• Grenade Launcher is in an awkward spot as a result
• High Accuracy Soldiers can wear Heavy Armor for little to no downside
• Low Accuracy Soldiers can wear Heavy Armor for little to no downside
• Missed Shots are WAY more dangerous to your soldier (and enemies!) than they should be. (Hard to explain this one too)
• Cleaners are better at range than aliens until alien plasma.

Details: I just want to be clear, this is not a 'my shots missed' post, I am somewhere around 400+ hours in total Xeno playtime across X1 and X2.  Accuracy has felt 'off' the entire Milestone 6 run so far.  And Xenonauts has always had its oddities with Aiming.  I noticed this on each of my plays of X2 so far (I stopped them all at Phase 2 until the endgame and air was done) so this time with some tech unlocked, I set out to show what I mean.  Brace yourself for math.

The above picture encapsulates the broad 'look and feel' of Accuracy that most people will experience.  In most cases, the non-% accuracy values listed are the value needed to hit 100% hit chance.  Where they represent actual hit chance %, they are colored Red/White/Green or Red/Yellow/Green in relative scale.  The 'Green' section of the chart is the area where the cleaner rifle (and alien plasma) out perform all other rifles if your accuracy is high enough.  If it is low, the laser weapon is best, the red zones.  Any soldier under 53 accuracy, should always use a Laser Rifle or different weapon below.

Some key points:

• Alien Plasma Rifle is less accurate than Xeno Ballistic Sniper unless they are 5 tiles or closer.  13 tiles for Laser Snipers.
• If you use sniper rifles: (Move + Aimed) or (Sit+Shoot+Move) are your go-to tactics.  Any other moves and a normal rifle is better.  Sniper Reaction Fire is insane due to No Move bonus.
• At 63+ Soldier Accuracy, prioritize Time Units on your snipers.
• You don't need your highest accuracy soldiers to be your snipers, but it is hilarious.  Beyond 63 Accuracy, additional accuracy only counters Cover and extended range shots (and size see below).

So far: above 63 accuracy = elite, below 53 = rookie.  So what weapon do you give your cannon fodder, I mean shield users.  Spoilers, its a grenade.  But really, its the Laser Pistol:

If you need exactly '1 more shot' the shotgun is the best, but only out to 4 tiles.  If you need '2 shots', the pistol is better.  If you need 2 hits with a shogun, you can do 2 Normal shots for 17% TU left, and 85 Acc req.  Or you can do 2 pistol shots for 40% TU left and 85 Acc req.  This is a bit hard to read, but the only reason the shotgun looks OK in the top part of this picture is that it assumes 1 tile range, which only gives a +14 accuracy vs pistol (Crouching a pistol with a +8 Tac Mod will give you +8.36 accuracy for 4 TU, giving the shotgun +5.64 accuracy).  Most Pistol + Tac setups will be lighter than a Shotgun setup (strength adv), double so for Laser Pistols.

1. Shotguns are finishers, and Pistols are attackers.
2. Attacking does not mean doing damage.
3. Finishing enemies is WAY less important than 'claiming ground'.  Why?  Suppression and reaction fire.
4. The best way to manage these, are Grenades and Shields.

Ok, so how DO we kill the Aliens? Other than Smoke doing some of the best Damage per Turn of all weapons (and stunning while providing attack and defense) I mean...

Rifles and Machine-guns and Snipers: (Higher = Better in this one)

Looking towards the bottom of the chart, you might think "Didn't he just get done telling me shotguns were bad?".  They are when you consider weight and TU's and Damage.  The shotgun needs to hit ~1.2 times to do similar damage to a rifle and rifles have x3 Burst Fire which is very good if you get close or have high accuracy and strength (not shown).  Anyways, back to the bugs:

Here we see that a small target is penalized relatively speaking for using a 40% cover vs shots over 100% weapon accuracy (snipers and rifles), the higher the weapon accuracy, the better vs small targets in cover. (Red is bad for the enemy in the Rel. column)  The next image can be looked at as a comparison between (Aliens - Xenos - Cleaners), Gauss represents Xeno weapons + Alien Ballistics, and Cleaner represents Alien Plasma + Accel. Cleaner:

Its hard to read because its getting dense, but the take away is:

• Close Range advantage of Xeno/Ballistic weapons counters Small Size advantages more than it should (Green Rel. is good for the attacker)
• Getting closer to Aliens/Cleaners is almost always better than not unless it costs you cover.

"Ok I hear you, but my shots have terrible accuracy even with 70+ soldiers, and I get killed trying to get closer...."

This is what happens when TU's are spent to try to 'shoot through their cover' instead of nuking it from orbit or flanking.  You can't flank if you are not suppressing the aliens, and you can't suppress them without grenades or burst or wasting TU's again.

Enter the Colossus:

It feels, off. I am still going through the 'blind full play-through' right now, so I am not sure if it gets better in some way, but the 100 Strength bonus is not really able to be used, meaning you are trading Auto Med+Accuracy+Grenades and Reactions just to look like a badass who crushes walls.  The 14 armor advantage and 10(8) penetration advantage is a bit weak imo.  If you want to maximize this suit, pick a high Accuracy person with low Strength!

As a somewhat contrived example, this is another soldier on the same dropship:

They both look cool, they both pack serious heat. But one guy can carry a team and the other can hold a door with a medic nearby.  Some of my current load-outs:

Stun Tally per Weapon total so far:

• Stun Rod: 1
• Stun Gun: 1
• Smoke: 12+

I am going to hit the post button now, and I will collect any thoughts or errors and edit them in.  (There is probably more, and I also have an Air Combat Balance post to make too eventually)

There is quite a bit more to add, but much of it falls under the realm of balance and choice.  If there is anything that anyone wants clarified so far, let me know.

Edited November 17, 2025 by Nodrak

[gG-Unknown]

Superb post.

I can not  spent enough time to understand  all the details, but I can  recognise it  shows scientific way that my screaming for balance certain things is correct.

I wrote several articles about this topics, not going to repeat  self :

• Shotgun is wrong. Clip size, Efficient Range, Number  of pellets - all is wrong
• Light armour are useless. Offensive buff is needed - plus 2 grenade  range  is most obvious.
• Colossus is all wrong. Power fist  is opposing lore - barely moving suit gets artificial bonuses just to be able fit into melee rules,  while   ignoring  most obvious  colossus advantage is the strength and carrying  capacity. Also usage of regular healing kit is nonsense, as long as soldier is literaly  sealed inside of Colosus suit, out of reach of medick hands, contrary AutoMed module is obvious module to attach is not allowed. Reminding again my proposal of carrying spare shield on the  back like  NinjaTurtle.
• Adv. lasers need  rise noob acc buff  5%  to make this weapon  class viable  for late game  recruits.
• smoke grenade range have to be reduced and smoke density / thickness have to be reduced visually. (smoke  prevents player see the game actually, it is wrong design ! Visually smoke cloud should be just information for player, not actual visual hindrance)

Nodrak, if you could  do a dedicated tables for grenade launcher compared to  sniper and rifle. It is one of the  most interesting AND most broken weapons .... If you  dont know, one of the issue is -  it uses direct  aim method as default so player MUST press  control_key to enforce proper aim method. Crazy.

Edited November 16, 2025 by gG-Unknown

[Nodrak]

 

18 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:

Nodrak, if you could  do a dedicated tables for grenade launcher compared to  sniper and rifle.

I don't really want to get into the 'balance' side of things yet, and so this chart does not aim to show the strengths of the Laser weapons at all.  The main purpose is that the Properties of the Aliens and Cleaner weapons (and thus the Xeno weapons) dictate much more than it might seem.  Since the Cleaner weapons cannot be produced, and the source stops being available fairly early on (right as you are short on funds), the player may end up selling one of the best weapons in the game without knowing it.  The 'Sell Junk' option even keeps these weapons because it knows they are good.  This 'bug/balance' is why we saw patch notes like:

• Cleaners with Accelerated Rifles are now less likely to use them in burst fire mode
• Servitors can no longer reaction fire
• We've therefore equipped alien units with Plasma weapons instead of Magnetic weapons right from the start of Phase 2

The Laser Weapons are fantastically good weapons all around, even rivaling all the Gauss weapons other than the Gauss Sniper.  I specifically limited the number of laser weapons I produced, which resulted in me ending up using Cleaner weaponry and realizing how 'bugged' the system really was.

The Grenade Launcher's issues are not related to its accuracy, other than the 'Missed Shots are Laser Guided Homing Missiles'.  

As an example, lets say it was decided that the shotgun was bad, needed to be fixed by improving its close range performance without impacting its long range performance too much.  Some might want more damage, or less time unit use, but both of those would be mistakes that seriously improve its all around performance to start surpassing other weapons.  The counterintuitive answer in the current system is to add range to the shotgun.  This ironically does not make it better at range, it makes it better in close.  This is why the Grenade Launcher is more accurate than the Gauss Rifle.

It might be easier to see it for some on a graph like this (Laser Bonus does not apply in this graph):

(Helps if I make the graph right ><)

Pistol Accuracy Range vs Size Difference:

One of the single most common situations in Xenonauts is: Soldier ducked behind low cover, shooting alien in open, and alien shooting said soldier:

If the Alien closes 20 tiles closer, it goes from ~65 to ~85% hit (if this alien has stacked accuracy to get 100).  The lower the accuracy, in this case, the less important range becomes.

Unfortunately this is a comprehensive issue, and thus I decided it was a bug that needed to be discussed.

Final Graph to clarify the laser situation (graph editor has no red  ) and the elite vs rookie situation.  The shaded zones are 55-75 Accuracy soldiers.  All lines assume crouch bonus:

I just realized that all the Alien Rifles in these graphs are using the wrong slope, they should be aligned with the cleaner Green on the left side, and I am not remaking the images right now.  Basically the images only show the close range advantage vs Cleaner.

Play with this while I kill some more aliens: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/fgo60dqdwb (Invert Contrast top right)

Edited November 17, 2025 by Nodrak

[Nodrak]

As fate would have it, a new UFO type I had not seen showed up so I shot it down and ran it and it provided pretty much every single example I wanted to discuss in a single mission.  (Also the Air Auto-resolve does not value mobility)

(warning: pictures)

At some point in your game you might run into a situation like below.  A high Accuracy sniper against a target in 'medium' cover.  I forget how many tiles this is, or the sniper's ACC (I think its 90 ish).  The point is, would you take this shot?  Would it kill (Gauss Sniper)?  How sure are you?

Just next to the super sniper, is a crouched heavy with a Laser Machine Gun.  Would you take this shot?  Would it hit?  Are you sure?

The game literally will not let you take the shot it thinks its so bad and dumb!  You cannot even force it with Ctrl Click.

Well, I know better, and the AI knows better (I think), so here we go:

Result:  The animation happens so fast I didn't catch it all without video but:

• Hit vs Enemy (Destroyed Armor)
• Hit vs Blocking Cover (Blue Pallet)
• Hit vs Future Potential Cover (Train Car behind target died, making future shots easier against further enemies and preventing enemy fallback cover)
• Hit vs Civilian (Hes fine, Lasers don't bleed, and it is very very unlikely he gets hit more than 1 time)
• Hit vs Blocking Cover (Red Barricade)

4/10 of the shots were successes.  If the enemy was non-mechanical it would probably be suppressed (the civilian is).  The reality is, this 0% shot has 25% chance to hit PER SHOT once the Blue Crate is gone.  It pops first because 40%(Pallet) > 30%(Rock) > 25% Enemy (iirc)> 20% (Civilian).  This means the Pallet gets popped in 80% of the time in the first 3 shots (if my understanding is right).

This is all for show mind you, it can easily be shot like below.  I spent most of this mission thinking about the 'bug' and testing, but still playing as though it were an 'iron man run'.

The lumber pile by the sniper was in the way of something I wanted to do, so I wanted to destroy it.  I forgot all my satchel charges, I only had 1 C4 brick.  So how do I remove it.  I tried to walk over it with the Armor, but that did not work (unless I missed some special key combo).  So I did the cheese method, and took my Rookie Shield, who was suppressed last round, and blew it up for 11 TU.

Why does this matter?

This guy just goes and does it by ACCIDENT the next turn, to the same object.  I suspect it is because he was going to run out of TU. (Bug imo).

Now, lets rewind a bit and talk about why most of this a bug and not balance.  Turn 1, mission start.  What do you do here:

If you chose wrong, this will HURT.  If you chose right, it will look bugged.

Example of choosing wrong:

You shoot at the heavy armor enemy with your heavy armor heavy weapon guy (74 acc iirc).  You 3x Burst thinking you want to move later.  1 Shot hits, 1 Shot hits the cover, 1 Misses.  The enemy Reaction Fires back, hits you in the face for over 40 damage through 50 armor/20 penres and shreds 20 armor off.  This soldier is effectively completely useless for the rest of the map, on the 2nd move of the mission.  For example of a slightly less bad, but still BAD move is the same thing with x10 Burst.  Well the x10 burst while crouched did not even kill it, so the other Marine did the same and it died.  20 Shots, 1 kill.  4 Chances to take reaction fire.

Now we have the same problem, but further away and more cover.  (Lets pretend hes looking at us so movement is risky).  Now what do you do?  We have an old Laser Machine Gun on old Guardian Armor, lets try that:

I forget how many hit the robot, it was at least 1, and all the cover is gone.  There is an enemy at the bottom of the screen, and we can literally just leave it alone for a long time and get better positions:

I know you are thinking "get to the point", but I am.  I end my turn after pushing out aggressively.  Another alien comes from the left, and shoots at.... The Shield!  This might seem odd to many, but it was a burst fire from behind cover (the stop barricade) against 4 possible suppression targets.  A pretty good choice.  I get lucky and only the shield gets suppressed with no damage:

Move the Heavy Marines up, they spot the suppressed (last turn) alien and stop.  This is very dangerous situation, not for the Marine, but for the guy 100 miles away.

I moved or shot or something (I forget) and the alien reaction fired the Marine, missed and almost killed the guy on the edge of the map.  (I estimate around 10% chance of death for him, the cover in-front of him died):

Question.  How many Gauss Machine Gun Marines do you need to kill 1 surrounded alien that is 6 tiles from the front of your drop-ship?  It appears to be more than 2...

Another 0% shot I would take if I had the TU's :

If that woodpile was gone, my sniper in the dropship (off-screen right) could reaction fire that enemy for ~10-30% hit I think (i would have to check)  This is over 41 tiles.  I have killed aliens with reaction fire at this distance before on more open maps.  You cannot even fit the shot on screen.  This is an 86 accuracy sniper on Turn 2(3?) inside the dropship, who can almost reaction fire to the UFO front door (literally, check the next pictures):

Shields IMO are a Xenonauts core.  One of the 2 main reasons for that is 'The Door'.  My normal approach would be Shields scope it out, heavies take their spot, while rifles/snipers cover/flank/clean the map.  Since I was testing the armor, I tried them in various roles.  They were bad at both roles for complicated reasons for later discussion:

I positioned like normal, and the aliens knew this setup had weak reaction fire potential, and walked out scouted the entire team ran back inside away from the 'next turn damage' and then shot the Shield again!  (This is because it was a burst fire and there was again multiple Soldiers in a line).  None of the 3 reaction fired (bad luck).  The shield got suppressed and can still move the same distance as the Armors.

After opening the door, lots of soldiers have 100% hit chances, but I was to test the armor again:

Both armors use all their TU to attack the robot, including a melee, it still lives and the shield moves into nice cover, kills the robot with a cheap laser pistol, then covers the door:

One of the Marines ended up mirror to the shield, and moved to the opposite door the next turn, but again, could not move and shoot in 1 turn:

Wrapping up here.  We get to the top of this UFO I have never once ran before (first time Phase 4 in Xeno 2).  We are testing wild stuff all mission with the "B Team".  We have taken 4 Hits.  1 was a jetpack guy I left on a roof in the middle of map out of cover, who took 1 hit from a Servitor.  The other 3 hits were the Marines and Shields (good!).  The shield is good to breach the final room.  The Marines are not (I had to bring a medikit and heal the marines in this mission).  Now I start getting a bit lazy thinking about testing and mechanics and such, and this happens:

It is rare to get an alignment like this, so I saved for testing, I wanted to try to kill both of these in 1 shot with the Laser Rifle. I have no idea whats in the room, just assuming at least these 2 enemies remain.

Operation 1 shot failed 

Anyways that is basically the point so far.  Aside from the ending, which I just reloaded and finished taking only 1 hit from the commander's burst fire reaction:

This was, 14 turns I think?  So almost 2 kills per turn.

 

My intention here was to show the various crazy situations that might arise that seem wrong, but are right, and ones that seem right but are wrong.  Many of them (most of them) are consequences of global accuracy, and thus weapon stats.  For those at home wanting a reference, this is Veteran Difficulty.  I also have more screen shots that show tactics and choices relating to balance and "how to play well" if people were interested, the situations just seemed to keep presenting themselves on this mission.  I also have a save at the start of the mission, and right before the final room if anyone wants to run through it to see the same bugs to check the difficulty of the current techs and load-outs.

My next mission is the Orbital one.

In the meantime I will refine this thread and that Desmos link in the previous post for better accuracy now that I had some 40-50 range shots while not just on autopilot.

I hope this helps everyone, and that it helps make Xeno 2 the great game it deserves to be.

Broad Overview of the Campaign so far:

I forgot to mention:

• Not a single soldier reloaded in this mission.
• Not a single soldier could not fire due to lack of ammo.
• Not a single enemy was killed by explosives.

Edited November 18, 2025 by Nodrak

[Kouki]

Replying here just to let you know that we've seen this post and very much appreciate the effort you've gone through in making it. I've brought this up with the rest of the team, we'll give this a proper read through once we get milestone 6 to stable as that's the current top priority that we're trying to sort through.

[Nodrak]

Yea no worries, I know how much of pain this one is going to be.  Take your time

I could probably sus out the proper 'Hit% Algorithm' as a stop-gap to make the UI match expected results closer to help align player expectations with actual results if that was something that would be useful for interim patches.  Just hollar.

For those at home, the 'bug' is that accuracy works WAY differently than you expect, and so you are almost certainly 'playing wrong' and thinking its balance issues or bugs.  If you see the AI do something and you don't understand WHY they did it, you don't understand the accuracy and damage systems.  The AI is very smart and fair.  I spent 3 or so turns with 3+ solders in the open in-front of aliens in these pictures, and no one was killed.  Only 1 of the pictures shows a shot in the 20-80% range, and I am shooting a box.

The displayed % hit chance in game is closer to a 'Shot Difficulty' value rather than a 'Hit Chance' value.  A low number in the open is a shot you should never take, it will miss.  A low number for other reasons, requires knowing WHY the number is low, and if your setup is designed to deal with the 'Harder Shots'.  Low numbers from 'Range Difficulties' can almost always be ignored if there is no risk of collateral damage, EXCEPT when using Explosives.

Edited November 18, 2025 by Nodrak

[Chris]

7 hours ago, Nodrak said:

Yea no worries, I know how much of pain this one is going to be.  Take your time

I could probably sus out the proper 'Hit% Algorithm' as a stop-gap to make the UI match expected results closer to help align player expectations with actual results if that was something that would be useful for interim patches.  Just hollar.

For those at home, the 'bug' is that accuracy works WAY differently than you expect, and so you are almost certainly 'playing wrong' and thinking its balance issues or bugs.  If you see the AI do something and you don't understand WHY they did it, you don't understand the accuracy and damage systems.  The AI is very smart and fair.  I spent 3 or so turns with 3+ solders in the open in-front of aliens in these pictures, and no one was killed.  Only 1 of the pictures shows a shot in the 20-80% range, and I am shooting a box.

The displayed % hit chance in game is closer to a 'Shot Difficulty' value rather than a 'Hit Chance' value.  A low number in the open is a shot you should never take, it will miss.  A low number for other reasons, requires knowing WHY the number is low, and if your setup is designed to deal with the 'Harder Shots'.  Low numbers from 'Range Difficulties' can almost always be ignored if there is no risk of collateral damage, EXCEPT when using Explosives.

As Kouki has mentioned already, we appreciate the depth you've gone into here.

Note that I wrote this post before your post with all the pictures from your Harvester mission, so I'll post another one below in reply to that. It's possible that will explain some of my questions but I've already written this mini-essay so I can't be bothered to revise it!

Basically, I guess I'd like you to clarify some of these issues a bit more. It seems to me like you've identified some balance issues with specific weapons, and some examples where the systems aren't working quite as intended, and then you've drawn some conclusions from them. I don't think I'm entirely understanding some of your conclusions, but let's work through the first two categories first.

Weapon Balance Issues:

• You've spotted a bug with the Cleaner Accelerated Rifles, which I'll patch in the next hotfix for M6. These are meant to have identical stats to the human versions, but the range bonuses have got out of sync.
• This feeds into a broader issue where the alien weapons have differing range bonuses to the human equivalents, which they shouldn't really. I'll fix it so that alien rifles have the same range bonuses as human rifles, but I'll do that in Milestone 7 because this will potentially significantly affect the game balance and it's too late in the day to do this in M7.
• Yes, I could believe that pistols are a bit too strong at the moment. I'm not sure what the table you've made showing pistol vs shotgun means though - I understand the axes, but what are the actual values in the table? Expected total damage? Cumulative accuracy?
• Regarding sniper rifles:
  • I noticed a bug where the low-TU fire mode had a 40 No Move bonus, which was meant to be 20. I'll fix that.
  • Yes, it's true that a soldier with ~63 accuracy can get a guaranteed hit on an alien stood out in the open if they use the best fire mode, but I don't think that's a massive problem. You could make the argument that the shot accuracy could be a bit lower, but they can only fire once per turn and there's usually intervening cover in the way, and if you move more than about 5 tiles you won't have enough TU to fire it. Having high accuracy is still valuable because it does negate cover, or permits a soldier to reliably use the lower accuracy fire mode to give them more TU to play with.
  • Why would you expect an alien plasma rifle to be more accurate than a human sniper rifle? That's apples and oranges.
• Overall, I'm not sure I see the major issues you seem to be implying in your post - basically the Cleaner Accelerated Rifle gets about 10% higher hit chance at most ranges than it should? And the pistols are a bit stronger than they should be? Although those are issues, for me that doesn't add up to a player having a dramatically different experience to what you'd expect. So maybe I'm missing something.

Mechanical Issues:

• In general, I'm 99.9% certain that the RNG and shooting numbers are working as intended. By which I mean that I don't think there's a bug causing reaction fire shots to be more accurate than normal shots, or that short-range burst fire has a hidden hit penalty. In fact, I think on the experimental game branch it might print the shot debug info in the logs so you can check the hit chance vs the hit rolls if you want to see yourself. I think short-range burst fire has been made weaker compared to X1, though. The short range bonus in X1 was much stronger but only kicked in over 5 tiles, whereas in X2 it kicks in over a longer distance but totals to less at point-blank range. But the hit chance values on the cursor are most likely correct.
• Is your suggestion that Armour Accuracy penalties be multipliers (e.g. -10%) rather than a flat -5? So then they'd affect high accuracy soldiers more?
• Again, I'm not entirely clear what your tables are saying when it comes to the relationship between small / large enemy sizes and the short range bonus. Could you further explain your argument that this unduly benefits rifles / sniper rifles?
• Why would crouching affect the range bonus? The short range bonus reflects the fact that the target is larger when it is closer to you, and the long range penalty that a projectile becomes less effective beyond its maximum range. The crouch bonus modifies your accuracy because it makes it easier to shoot more accurately at the target, which is a different thing. Plus in game terms the shotgun gets most of its accuracy from being close to the target and I don't it to get a huge extra bonus simply because the soldier also crouched (and the reasons why the long range penalties aren't affected should be self-evident).

Conclusions:

• I don't understand what you mean by the % hit chance being more like a "shot difficulty" value, and to be honest this makes me think you might have misunderstood something important along the way. Basically the game rolls a random 100 against the hit chance you see on the cursor, and if you roll less than or equal to that number then the shot hits. Even if that means the bullet has to clip through something solid or that the soldier has to contort in a ridiculous way to find a shot path capable of hitting the target collider. If the roll is higher than the hit chance, then the game runs a "miss" shot calculation and figures out the potential deviation and what intervening cover can be hit. That calculation isn't perfect (there's a few things I'd tweak if we have time) but the shot is prevented from hitting the target even if the soldier has to contort ridiculously to find a way to not shoot their target.
  • That said, it'd still be interesting to hear what you think is going on, because the symptoms might be worth discussion even if you've misdiagnosed the disease.
• You've not explained your argument that miss shots are more dangerous than they should be, but you also mention that miss shots are too accurate further down. Could you elaborate?

[Chris]

@Nodrak OK, some thoughts on your mission playthrough:

• You should absolutely take the first shot against the Heavy Servitor in the screenshot. You're slightly beyond weapon range so it'll do reduced damage but there's no downside, particularly as those enemies can't reaction fire. And there's only a 3% chance of missing.
• I don't really see that there's any bug in the situation where you have an Andron looking into your dropship. You can't suppress robots, but Androns have low Reflexes so you won't get reaction fired unless a soldier drops to relatively low TU, and you really don't want it reaction firing into your dropship because it'll suppress everyone. If you don't know how Initiative works for reaction fire then it's worth reading the tooltips on that, as it'll make a big difference here. Anyway, you've got a few options to deal with the situation:
  • Advance with the shield guy, then shoot the Andron with the shield guy until his TU drop low enough to bait out the reaction fire (which should be angled away from the rest of your team). You can do the same with a MARS or a Colossus, which might be able to tank the damage, or just your most expendable soldier.
  • Alternatively toss a Demo grenade at it to shred its cover and armour and then just wreck it with rifles / sniper rifles.
  • If you're not going to kill it, you can toss a smoke at it so it'll have very low accuracy reaction fire. 
• If cover is crushable, you have to path through it to crush it - the game doesn't let you simply walk onto the tile containing the cover. But I can't remember if the full height wood stacks are crushable.
• I think the LMG 0% shot might be the crux of the issue. How did you force the shot if the game was preventing you from doing it? I assume you chose to aim at the ground a few ties in front of the target, right? Because that's the big accuracy hack in the game (same as in Xeno 1).
  • If you aim directly at an alien, then any miss shots are disallowed from hitting that alien. But if you aim at the ground just in front or behind it, then the miss shots suddenly can hit that alien because you're no longer aiming at it - and we've got no way of knowing whether the player is actually aiming for the floor or instead trying to cheese hits on the alien. We could fix it by making miss shots have more deviation, but we get endless complaints if miss shots fly well wide of the target as it looks silly (even novices can shoot in the general direction of a target). The solution which we've had in place since Xeno 1 was to set units to have a 25% stopping chance unless they were being specifically targeted, which means a miss shot passing through their tile should only hit them 1/4 of the time. If you did actually get 4 hits from a 10-round burst in this setup then you got very lucky even if every single miss shot passed through the alien's tile. Unless the system is malfunctioning, which it perhaps could be.
  • Damage is only applied at the end of a burst. We do get complaints that you can blast 10 rounds at a thin wall and you've got no chance of injuring a unit stood immediately behind it, and we'll fix that in M7 if we get time.
• Shooting beyond range reduces the damage done. You can shoot a unit 40 tiles away if you want, but you're not going to hurt it much. I think if you're testing this stuff you might want to enable the damage numbers in the campaign options. That said, I hadn't quite realised how much stacking accuracy could allow you to shoot beyond max range and I might need to tweak the formulas to make it fall off faster.
• Shields are overpowered at present; they're too reliable at blocking damage. They'll be getting slightly nerfed on the higher difficulty settings in M7.
• The Colossus is still underpowered in M6. We did make some improvements compared to earlier iterations, but not enough to stop it being underwhelming.

[Nodrak]

Hi Chirs, its going to take a bit to navigate to the root on this one I think, I will try my best.  I am aware of the accuracy 'hack' and that is why I only take shots the game allows.  Generally speaking, I am playing by the same rules as the AI, except it has the better capability to find the 'right spot', and I have the better capability of 'foreknowledge'.  If I want to blow up a wall, I try to use a satchel charge or C4 charge instead of abusing shooting terrain.  Much of the 'exploits' I showed are exploits because they abuse the real accuracy system.  Part of the main issue is all of these systems influence the scaling of the game (in pretty much all ways), resulting in probably a greater 'win more/loss more' situation than expected.  It has gotten to the point where the AI has decided the best course of action vs my soldiers most of the time is to run away.

• I have surpassed them in general accuracy (I would have to research fusion weapons to check)
• I have surpassed them in general armor level (I think?)
• I am entirely gas immune
• Neither side can 1-shot each-other right now outside of burst fire due to all of the above basically.

Because I have close range advantage in accuracy, their smartest moves are grenades, burst fire, and falling back to cover (essentially the same as my choices, but I also have 100% shots with local number advantage, which is why I take no damage).  I suspect you guys tuned the grenades somehow for the AI, because I have only been grenaded twice I think?  Which is probably a Strength issue on the aliens.

I actually think the weapons are fine where they are, the problem is how they scale with soldier accuracy.  Laser weapons are way too strong overall, if you took away the accuracy bonus, the damage tech, and the reload tech, I would still use at least 1 or 2 per dropship, even with Gauss Tech and the lower clips.  The reason for this is the 'bug' with missed shots.

I guess the best way to elucidate the issue is:

• High accuracy is good because it will hit the target.
• Low accuracy is good because it will hit what is causing the low accuracy, turning follow up shots into high accuracy.
• Medium accuracy is BAD because you don't know which one you are getting.

I took a 50/50 shot to clear some terrain because I knew it was actually 100%.

• The Aliens don't take those 40-60% shots the player does, because it knows it can make the return shots worse (or it just knows there is a better shot?).
• The Aliens will make low accuracy shots to suppress the player, resulting in the 'miss bug' devastating players who position their team wrong or trigger bad reaction fires.

I feel like I should clarify again, this is not about weapon balance and how powerful the weapons are.  I am almost certain I can complete the game on the easier difficulties without even using weapons.  The only reason I am using weapons outside the starting ones is to deal with suppression immune mechanical enemies.

More Details:

I suppose I should have clarified that the graphs and images above do not show the bug at all they are just there to make sure I understood accuracy correctly, and then to highlight the Alien/Xeno accuracy split.  I am not even abusing this knowledge in my game, all I am doing is not falling for the 'bad shots' that it hides as 'decent shots'.  How much of a 'bug vs balance' this will feel like will likely be determined by how often you use Ctrl Shoot to shoot cover manually vs not.  I think I have used it 2 twice, and one was for that picture.  If anything I would say that the game has been balance to become too easy because people were 'falling' for the accuracy indicator.  Since I don't use Ctrl Click, bad shots become good shots.  This will be the experience intuitively for anyone who has NOT played X1.  As a result, mid accuracy shots will feel BAD.  Because they are.

Since weapons will have to balanced around the players, and they won't even be able to agree on what a good shot is, balance cohesion will be impossible.  Imagine a run where you Ctrl Click every enemy cover with your laser pistol shield compared to one where you use duck and cover rifles.  The difference is so vast, the AI won't even behave the same.

Combined Accuracy

I guess this can be thought of as 'out going' accuracy its hard to explain because its a back end mechanical distinction between accuracy effects that are modified by shot accuracy vs those that also modifiers themselves.

{ [ (Solder + Tactical - Armor) * Crouch * Shot ] +/- Range, Size and No-Move } * Cover * Crouch

This is what the on screen accuracy is displayed as, and what all the above charts and graphs are generated with.  The Blue section is the area I refer to as 'combined accuracy'.  A -5 armor penalty on a shotgun against a ducked, 40% cover is only -1.8.  Cover is the single largest contributor to missed shots, and it also causes its own defeat.

• ( (50 Accuracy * 1.00 Shot Sniper) -50 Range )             > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~12.5%
• ( (100 Accuracy * 1.00 Shot Sniper) -100 Range )         > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~25%
• ( (100 Accuracy * 1.60 Shot Sniper) -135 Range)          > 25% Displayed Hit Chance, Actual Hit Chance ~25%.  (The numbers show someone understands)
• ( (100 Accuracy * 1.35 Laser Sniper) -100 Range)         > 35% Displayed Hit Chance, Actual Hit Chance ~35%.
• ((100 Accuracy * 0.68 Shotgun) - 200 Range)               > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~96.7% (for 1 hit)
• ((100 Accuracy * 0.4 3xBurst Fire) - 40 Range)              > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~57.8% (for 1 hit)
• ((100 Accuracy * 0.45 10x Burst Fire) - 50 Range)         > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~94.4% (for 1 hit)

Every single possible target between the enemy was hit, and then those behind the enemy too.  The AI knows this, and it has begun to get neutered for balance.

I could also just Ctrl Click the civilian, or the rock, or the box, or all number of things.

This shot is mathematically likely to do more damage (it caused damage numbers), and more likely to suppress the enemy, than the 97% sniper shot I also showed.  Making the 0% shot the better shot in all choices, other than the game telling you its a bug.  This means that only Single Fire shots you want to take should be well into the 95%...  This is why the sniper rifle feels good for bad players, and limiting for good players.

I am aware of damage falloff, and that is not really relevant here IMO unless damage falloff also applies to Armor Damage?  Judging by Terrain Damage at range (and the number of reaction shots where I say "well something just got sniped"), falloff is either not working correctly, or not comprehensively applied.  Another issue.  When the accuracy malus is something other than Range, the bug gets BAD, because then falloff does not apply.

There are two issues here, Shot Accuracy scales soldier accuracy.  This is probably the biggest thing to change to 'fix' the shotguns (which have the lowest modifier, when they should have the highest modifier).  However fixing this changes other things, mainly the interactions with Range and Size bonuses.  I should also reiterate, shotguns don't really compete with pistols, you should use both.  This is fairly easy to check by just giving a soldier both and seeing which one you use to shoot with.  Shotguns are competing with the Laser Rifle, which is busted.  I used only Pistol+Shield and Normal Rifles until after first weapons unlocks, mostly just to try something different and non-meta.

Depending on how you 'fix' the '2nd bug', you might also want to 'cap' outbound combined accuracy to 100 (It already is, but the sniper scales it to 160, and the rifles to 110/115/120).  This 'fixes' some issues like snipers invalidating cover, and some other things, but also just hides the 'issue'.  That being, shotguns require high accuracy due to the shot scaling, but it also means they will always be the least accurate weapon on any given soldier (before range modifiers).  If the current mechanics are kept, all the values should be reversed, snipers should have low shot modifiers, and added range bonus.  Shotguns should get the no move bonus for reaction fire, they also need the accuracy scaling to compete with the current laser accuracy bonus, which is absurdly strong till 50.

Where the bug starts to show itself:

Then, if we add shotguns and pistols;

Increasing cover to high levels flattens the curves (the 2 lines of the same colors below is snipers vs large/small), making weapon differences irrelevant outside of range and shot number, both of which 'the game' will prevent the player from abusing via the 0% system:

I will have to do some extra math for sub-100 accuracy min hit%, but that can wait.  These graphs are why damage falloff was needed in the first place.

A quirk of this as an example:  You should ALWAYS take ANY sub 25% shot with ALL lasers.  It is mathematically impossible for it be a downside unless you moved and run out of TU.  I was attempting to see how bad this really felt, which is why the 2 Marines in all the pictures are using Gauss Machine guns, and why they did so poorly. 

• 20x Gauss Shots, broke 3 covers, 2 behind the enemy.  They did kill the enemy, but he was close and it should kill the enemy.
• 10x Laser Shots, broke 5 covers, 1 behind the enemy, from 2x the distance. 
• Both had similar hits per shot on the enemy. (4v2)
• 10x Laser Shots, broke 5 covers, 1 behind the enemy, from 4x the distance, and still hit.

I have been clicking on various Milestone 6 videos since recently in order to see how others are playing to verify my suspicions.  I just saw this video pop up and almost immediately this player encounters the 'bug' and grenades 2 of their soldiers.  I assume they were expecting the grenade to land in the Orange Stars or something, but I knew it would land in the Red Stars.

He also attempts this grenade, which is something no X1 player would do, but it DOES make intuitive sense, hence being in the bug realm (UI bug vs game-play balance)...

If the game will stop a good player from making a 94%+ shot for at least 1 hit plus suppression, but will let a bad player grenade their entire team, that is a massive bug imo.

Also the if the game takes low % reaction shots due to range or cover, it will automatically abuse the bug.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak

[Nodrak]

7 hours ago, Chris said:

• Advance with the shield guy, then shoot the Andron with the shield guy until his TU drop low enough to bait out the reaction fire (which should be angled away from the rest of your team). You can do the same with a MARS or a Colossus, which might be able to tank the damage, or just your most expendable soldier.
• Alternatively toss a Demo grenade at it to shred its cover and armour and then just wreck it with rifles / sniper rifles.
• If you're not going to kill it, you can toss a smoke at it so it'll have very low accuracy reaction fire. 

This is what I was talking about with 

• Attacking (gaining ground) is primarily reliant on Strength Attribute, then TU Attribute, not Accuracy Attribute or Reflex Attribute.
• +20 Strength is WAY stronger than +8 Accuracy

The single reason why all my soldiers have auto-med on them is this bug.

Also the comical 'forced spin on burst mode' does not seem to be present.  I have not seen it in 100+ hours of X2.  Laser Machine guns will reaction fire 1 target for 100+ dmg.

Both fuel tanks are unhit, but both marines fired on that straight line, but a 0% laser shot will vaporize the entire map into the fog of war.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak

[Skitso]

2 hours ago, Nodrak said:

This is what I was talking about with 

• Attacking (gaining ground) is primarily reliant on Strength Attribute, then TU Attribute, not Accuracy Attribute or Reflex Attribute.
• +20 Strength is WAY stronger than +8 Accuracy

The single reason why all my soldiers have auto-med on them is this bug.

Also the comical 'forced spin on burst mode' does not seem to be present.  I have not seen it in 100+ hours of X2.  Laser Machine guns will reaction fire 1 target for 100+ dmg.

Both fuel tanks are unhit, but both marines fired on that straight line, but a 0% laser shot will vaporize the entire map into the fog of war.

You clearly have a point there, but I just unfortunately fail to get it. I hope Chris and the team are able to decipher your posts better than I am. XD

Edited November 19, 2025 by Skitso

[Nodrak]

2 hours ago, Skitso said:

You clearly have a point there, but I just unfortunately fail to get it. I hopd Chris and the team are able to decipher your posts better than I am. XD

That is ok, and I expect it.  This is why this is going to be a doozy.  The bug has to be explained to 2 audiences at the same time, and it influences ALL SYSTEMS.  Why did this alien not kill the guy behind the box?  If all of my assumptions are correct (and I have proven most are), he literally cannot, and he knows it.

How many systems?  All of them.  I have over 500 alloys, without building any.  Completing that mission gave me 800,000 funds.  I built 3 laser weapons this entire campaign.  I have not even stopped the orbital strikes yet.  And this is with me doing every thing I can to play fair with the AI.

Xenonauts is a fair game with high information, thus it is heavily based on math.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak

[Nodrak]

I have more or less a step by step of all the turns, but its over 100mb zipped, so I didn't want to upload all of them to the forum: https://gofile.io/d/LUBUZR

[Nodrak]

Looking through some of the pictures

• Laser Accuracy Bonus actually counters 'Wounded Soldier'...

7*2 = 14

59 + 14 = 73

73 - 5 - 3 = 65

How to stun with math:

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak

[gG-Unknown]

Nodrak, sometimes you have a point, but it is incresingly difficult to get your point. You tend to mix too many things together and asume that other people somehow know in  advance what you would want to say.

1. use proper forum. Suggestion no Bugs

2. focus at one point for one  topic

3. prepare your topic, in MS Word editor, then let it be for two days. Then read again, And polish. only after  that post. Do not spam other people by tons  of half baked ideas.

 

Thanks

Edited November 19, 2025 by gG-Unknown

[Chris]

@Nodrak so I think there's a couple of things to discuss here. I think the first is you're giving the AI way too much credit and then working backwards from that to draw conclusions about the game mechanics. Why didn't that Wraith shoot the guy behind the box and kill him? I genuinely don't know, and I'd expect it to do that. If you can provide the save I'll ask the AI programmer to take a look.

At present the AI will make the combination of attacks with the highest chance of hitting given the TU it has available, and the only explanation I can think of is perhaps the TU cost of rotating towards the box soldier would take it below the threshold needed to perform an extra attack (or a more expensive one) so it shot a target in front of it instead, even though that unit had a shield (which the AI doesn't consider). But it could also be a bug in the AI decision-making.

It's nice to know the AI is good enough that people ascribe it intelligence but the rules are fairly simple in places. It has the advantage of being able to see the most TU efficient tiles to stand in while performing the most TU efficient attack combination to score hits, but beyond that it's not that advanced. It only uses grenades when your soldiers are grouped together, for example. It's purely random whether an alien decides to open the front door of a UFO and look whether you've got units stacked there. So don't read too much into what it's doing. If there was a bug where it became possible to shoot through building corners, the AI would immediately start using that against you, but for more complex stuff? It's just not that clever.

The second issue is this "bug", which I'm still not understanding. Firstly, can you explain how you managed to fire at that soldier in the previous example if the game wouldn't let you take a 0% shot? Because it's quite important for me to understand what's going on.

Then can you give me a more detailed explanation of what you mean by this? 

Quote

( (50 Accuracy * 1.00 Shot Sniper) -50 Range )             > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~12.5%
( (100 Accuracy * 1.00 Shot Sniper) -100 Range )         > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~25%
( (100 Accuracy * 1.60 Shot Sniper) -135 Range)          > 25% Displayed Hit Chance, Actual Hit Chance ~25%.  (The numbers show someone understands)
( (100 Accuracy * 1.35 Laser Sniper) -100 Range)         > 35% Displayed Hit Chance, Actual Hit Chance ~35%.
((100 Accuracy * 0.68 Shotgun) - 200 Range)               > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~96.7% (for 1 hit)
((100 Accuracy * 0.4 3xBurst Fire) - 40 Range)              > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~57.8% (for 1 hit)
((100 Accuracy * 0.45 10x Burst Fire) - 50 Range)         > 0% Displayed Hit Chance, actual hit chance ~94.4% (for 1 hit)

What do you actually mean when you say the actual hit chance is 12.5%? Where are you getting that 12.5% number from? Because if you're aiming at an enemy and the cursor displays 0% hit chance, you should have exactly 0% hit chance against them. If you've got a save where you can take a 0% shot at a target and actually hit them, please post it up. That would be a serious bug.

I don't think it's really worth commenting on the rest until I fully understand what you're trying to say here. But to answer the question about armour destruction - yes, that should also fall off with range.

The grenade problems are a separate unrelated issue, one that should be fixed in 6.23.2. But they use an entirely different hit calculation / projectile arc / miss scatter model to normal direct fire weapons so they're probably not very relevant to this discussion.

[Nodrak]

23 minutes ago, Chris said:

What do you actually mean when you say the actual hit chance is 12.5%? Where are you getting that 12.5% number from?

When the shot 'misses', it treats all objects as 'cover', and most standing targets are 25% cover, and the Small Hover enemies are 25% cover iirc.  The only reason it is 12.5% instead of 25% is that I am assuming that it is 'Combined Accuracy' that influences 'Shot Spread'.  It is impossible for a Laser Weapon to have Combined Accuracy below 32.5, therefore almost all laser weapon shots under this value, are either:

• Burst Fire
• Blocked by Cover
• Reduced by Range or Size

Due to the properties of probability, 're-rolling' the shot will ultimately always end up hitting via 'missing and hitting the people cover'.  This is also why it is almost impossible to hit more than 1x with the 3x burst.

• 100 Accuracy * 0.40 = 40%
• 1 - (1 - 0.4) ^ 3 = 78.4% to hit once.
• 1 - (1 - 0.4) ^ 2 = 64.0% to hit twice
• 0.4 ^ 3 = 6.4% to hit all 3.

I have seen a 3x reaction fire hit this play-through, on a non-100 Accuracy soldier.

• 70 * 0.4 = 28%
• 0.28 ^ 3 = 2% chance.

It was the only 3x Reaction Fire that happened in 20 missions, and it hit all 3.

I WILL NOT take 95% grenade throws, it happens every time.  It happened in this mission in the commander room.  The grenade will not miss every time, but every miss will hit the soldier in-front.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak

[Nodrak]

If you take this shot, who gets hit?

 

OK, next test;

I have killed 11 enemies in 1 turn before, this play-though, before lasers.

The system that is stopping me from taking 0% shots that are 94% chance to hit, is killing everyone:

The only reason I have mastered this bug, is that it is 11 years old.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak

[Chris]

40 minutes ago, Nodrak said:

When the shot 'misses', it treats all objects as 'cover', and most standing targets are 25% cover, and the Small Hover enemies are 25% cover iirc.  The only reason it is 12.5% instead of 25% is that I am assuming that it is 'Combined Accuracy' that influences 'Shot Spread'.  It is impossible for a Laser Weapon to have Combined Accuracy below 32.5, therefore almost all laser weapon shots under this value, are either:

• Burst Fire
• Blocked by Cover
• Reduced by Range or Size

Due to the properties of probability, 're-rolling' the shot will ultimately always end up hitting via 'missing and hitting the people cover'.  This is also why it is almost impossible to hit more than 1x with the 3x burst.

• 100 Accuracy * 0.40 = 40%
• 1 - (1 - 0.4) ^ 3 = 78.4% to hit once.
• 1 - (1 - 0.4) ^ 2 = 64.0% to hit twice
• 0.4 ^ 3 = 6.4% to hit all 3.

I have seen a 3x reaction fire hit this play-through, on a non-100 Accuracy soldier.

• 70 * 0.4 = 28%
• 0.28 ^ 3 = 2% chance.

It was the only 3x Reaction Fire that happened in 20 missions, and it hit all 3.

I WILL NOT take 95% grenade throws, it happens every time.  It happened in this mission in the commander room.  The grenade will not miss every time, but every miss will hit the soldier in-front.

So the bug we're talking about is the accuracy hack I mentioned in my initial post, where you deliberately choose not to aim at the target you want to hit? Is that the approach you're using everywhere in your post?

Any miss shot will be disallowed from hitting the intended target. It'll then deviate a certain amount (often not too much at short ranges) and then travel down the deviated path and test each individual blocking object it encounters and roll against each other to see if it hits it until it hits something or strikes a floor / ceiling / edge of map.

If you're choosing to use the accuracy hack, and there's only one intervening 25% blocking item between you and the target you're actually trying to hit (but choosing not to aim at), then the hit chance is 12.5% modified by the shot deviation. This uses a bell curve but you'll be at at least 10 tiles if you're taking a 0% shot, and the deviation has more of an effect as you get further away. At 20 tiles your actual hit chance is probably less than 5% as I suspect well over half the shots will deviate enough that they won't pass through the "target" tile. But I haven't run the numbers on that.

However the fundamental point is that I'm not sure it's a good idea to balance the game around the assumption that most players will decide to cheese the game by attacking enemies by shooting at the ground in front or behind their target. If it was really that big a problem I'd just drop the 25% block chance for non-targeted units to 5% or so. But then that negatively affects normal players by making it less likely a stray shot hits another unit, which was always a fun thing to have happen in a battle.

Re: grenades - as I said, there was a bug in the grenade logic that would cause the behaviour with the grenade you're talking about, and it should already be fixed in 23.2 which we released yesterday. If it's not then please report it as a bug in a separate thread, with a save where we can test it, and we'll fix it. It'll just get lost if we talk about it here. It's a completely different system to normal shooting and doesn't use accuracy at all, so let's not conflate them.

[Nodrak]

7 minutes ago, Chris said:

So the bug we're talking about is the accuracy hack I mentioned in my initial post, where you deliberately choose not to aim at the target you want to hit? Is that the approach you're using everywhere in your post?

[...]

If it's not then please report it as a bug in a separate thread [...]

It is the same bug, and I am specifically avoiding it, and that is why I am able to complete missions with taking 0 damage.  Please see the above post.
 

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak

[Nodrak]

[Nodrak]

I wanted to see if the alien would use burst fire, he chose a grenade.  Only the 2nd damage grenade I have seen from start to day 270.

His fusion grenade, did less damage than the only Laser Machine gun I built (not sure how to count the gibs)...  If I stand in a line, it should burst fire me instead, but it is scared and ran.

[Chris]

OK. Well, you've got two options here - first, you could stop deliberately cheesing the game by not aiming at the target you actually want to hit. I've told you that it's a known exploit and the reason why we don't fix it is because the cure is worse than the disease for most players.

If you don't want to do that, you can take the second option change the value yourself. Go to this file:

\Xenonauts2\Assets\Assets\xenonauts\template\groundcombat\masters\actor\combatant\combatant.json

Change this:

{"$content":25.0,"$type":"Common.Components.StoppingChanceComponent"}

to this:

{"$content":5.0,"$type":"Common.Components.StoppingChanceComponent"}

Now all units will have a stopping chance of 5% if they're not specifically being aimed at, and they'll get hit by far less miss shots. It sounds like that'll fix the majority of the issues you're having.

For the Wraith not attacking you, please provide the save. It's not useful to just post screenshots of the AI not acting smart, we need a save to see why it acted like it did. Had it been suppressed on the previous turn, so it would only have had 50% TU?

[Nodrak]

What will this alien do?user_thebug-18.json

Hes trying to run away because it knows, any non-burst, non grenade will get it killed.  It still did not attack, and tried to run again, and died to reactions:

If you remove reaction fire, it will burst fire to kill someone, then find cover.

It gets reaction punched:

Twice:

Trying to run and hide from my better accuracy, better armor, superior numbers.

We got Rocky III over here, eye of the tiger stuff:

It stopped here and took bleed damage:

 

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak

[Nodrak]

14 minutes ago, Chris said:

first, you could stop deliberately cheesing the game by not aiming at the target you actually want to hit

I have ONLY done that for the purposes of getting these pictures.

I have not used it ever in my current run, I drain all my TU's so reaction fire doesn't do it.  I limit lasers, so they don't do it.

The AI still runs.

Sadly the pre-mission save I have is pre-map gen, so you get a different map than I did.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Nodrak