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Disappointing ground combat


llunak

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Don't get me wrong, I really like this game. But while I initially liked all the improvements in the ground combat, the more I play it the more I dislike it, to the point of now finding it worse than the combat in the OG. It's not that it would be bad as such, but I find several issues which make me see the ground combat as much worse than it could be. As I'm fairly new to the game, I'd like to check which of these are intentional, which are known/unknown bugs and which are just me still thinking a bit in terms of the OG.

To give you a picture, I occassionally still play the OG even nowadays and I can handle quite easily even Superhuman with xcomutil's altered research (which noticeably prolongs the time before getting armor or plasma weapons). In Xenonauts I play veteran (the plan is to eventually try playing insane, but forced Ironman makes testing hard), I can take down about 4 out of 5 UFOs that I detect and in ground missions I have like 1 casuality per 4-5 missions. I've never really gotten past November as I restarted several times for various reasons.

I can't quite give just a short description as it's several problems that all seem related to each other, but I'll try not to make it too long (and I'll leave out the few problems that I don't find so serious that can be kept separate).

  • Aliens are way too passive and although they come across as intelligent they in fact perform worse than the dumb OG aliens. In short, the game feels like turkey shooting rather than desperately fighting off an evil alien menace. Most of the time aliens stay put in cover or run around like chicken and don't even shoot back much. In the OG the aliens just walked some path, if they saw a soldier, they started shooting, then retreated and repeated the same the next turn. Once one gets the hang of it, it's not that hard to beat them, but they still feel dangerous, because they keep shooting if they can, and they can show up somewhere out of sudden. But I don't get this much in Xenonauts:
    • If I keep my soldiers in cover, they almost don't get fired at. I think the AI maybe computes the chance to hit as too low and decides it's better to do nothing at all, rather than at least give it a shot (pun intended :) ). So I can snipe a Harridan with a precision rifle with just one soldier with a normal rifle, if the soldier is in cover. Or a soldier behind a picket fence can, after several turns, kill an alien behind a rock, even though the alien could wipe out the soldier's cover quickly. The only time aliens at least somewhat fire back is reaction fire (which I guess is automatic).
    • Aliens pretty much don't move during fight in any way that'd matter. I first thought it was because my battle line wasn't giving them much choice, but I even tried with the in-game editor and if I put two soldiers behind cover and next to them 2 'aggressive' aliens behind their cover, they'll just mostly sit there and take the beating until they die. The most absurd case of this I had was when I encountered a group of 2 Sebillians behind a rock and 3 Sebillians inside a building behind a window, and spent more than 20 turns with almost everybody in my squad firing at them until they all finally died. I don't know how the AI works and how much can be realistically expected of AI, so I don't know how difficult it can be to make them flank me, split up or whatever, but they should have done at least something.
    • One exception to not moving seems to be when inside UFOs - there aliens just run back and forth (and mostly don't fire). My soldiers can stand outside, use e.g. a shield and flashbang to take a peek, unload all they can and step aside again. If there's a suitable cover near the (light or normal) scout entrace, I can put somebody there and wait until reaction fire wears down everybody inside.

    [*]Alien stats seem to be needlessly high. Ok, I play on veteran and aliens have a technological edge, but on the other hand I start against supposedly non-combatants, and moreover the high stats feel more like nuisance rather than threat.

    • This is probably just because the AI doesn't handle the case well, as described above, but the high stats just make sniping passive aliens behind cover take needlessly long. I don't really care how much beating the aliens needs to take, I can usually deliver it one way or another, it's just that from a certain point up it doesn't make any difference.
    • Saving TUs for reaction fire seems to be pointless. I don't think I've seen a single or pair of soldiers even stop an aliens from doing whatever it was about to do, unless it had already been softened up. In the OG saving TUs made sense, because it was possible to kill an alien on a comparable level with one or two shots, even a Superhuman Sectoid could die after a single hit from a standard rifle. It wasn't nowhere certain, but it was a fair chance, good enough to bother with saving TUs. Here, what's the point, if even the fraillest Caesan cannot be stopped by the supposedly powerful sniper rifle?
    • Reapers are terrible, but for the wrong reasons. They can take so much damage that they need either a load of explosives or at least half the squad firing at them. Which means that once a Reaper zombifies a single soldier, it's time to run, even zombies are so tough that there doesn't seem to be a good way to stop it. Actually, there is one and that's abusing the AI. Since Reapers run straight for soldiers, it's enough to stay around the Chinook whenever Reapers are suspected, wait for them several turns and put them down (the remaining aliens, as already said above, will not really interfere). It was scary the first time Reapers got me, but I can't how I could be scared again - from now on I expect to be either annoyed or upset, depending on whether I manage to kill them during the first rounds or not, and after that I'll know the area is clear of them. The Chrysalid, which wandered on the map, felt like a bigger threat despite being weaker (especially in the zombie form), and I'd find Reapers much more scary if they could show up anywhere, even if they'd be noticeably easier to kill.

    Thinking of it, it's possible that I would find the high alien stats less of a problem if I advanced my soldier weapons sooner, but if I can usually do the job with ballistics, I don't feel compelled to do so. Especially given that manufacturing weapons feels so time and resource expensive (or maybe at least the time problem is a bug - laser rifle reportedly needs 40 man hours but actually needs 40 man days).

    [*]I often feel understaffed during ground missions. Maybe 8 soldiers do the job for players who somewhat carelessly walk towards the UFO and play on difficulty where they can get away with it, but I like sweeping the battlefield properly. Farm or desert are easy, but e.g. middle east or especially industrial are way too complex maps. Given that aliens are so tough, I don't want to send anyone without backup, so I sometimes have even to resort to leaving somebody watching a chokepoint and having most of my squad running back and forth, making the missions needlessly long. I can't quite imagine to bring the scout car with the squad and have only 6 soldiers (HWPs are the mainstay of my force in the OG and here I don't even bother researching them). Or, if the aliens managed it, have several soldiers killed and finish the mission with a smaller number - it's not enough to clear the map, and it's not enough to breach any UFO and have back covered at the same time. I remember from the demo that there the Chinook could carry 10 soldiers, so I expect this was reduced for some reason, but I don't know why. If it was in order to make the game feel faster, then it actually makes it slower for me. And, by the way, I'd actually like it a lot if the aliens managed like 1-2 kills on average per mission, to give them the right feel. So I'd much rather have a few more soldiers and aliens capable enough to wipe some of them rather than require almost perfect play which would be nothing like the desperate fight it's supposed to be.

There are few more things I don't like about the ground combat (maps feel rather repetitive, grenades always blow up everything upon kill despite being actually weak), but they are nowhere near as bad as these, and I think this is already long enough. Now, is there anything in the list above which seems incorrect for some reason, hard to do, me doing something wrong, being intentionally different from the OG, or similar? I've seen some of these problems pointed at in various places in the forums, so I think I'm not the only one. The game shows a lot of promise, so I hope, if it's agreed that these things are problems, that these could be balanced/fixed.

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About AI problems: I think aggressive aliens not being up to par is less of an issue than the passive aliens that don't actively fire, and the ship defenders that don't seem to have a plan.

On my first mission of stable cand. 1 I ended up with three aggressive aliens and two passive ones. The aggressive ones would fire at my men, the passive one simply wouldn't. I even walked a shieldbearer to ~8 tiles away from a passive alien; the shieldbearer out in the open, the passive caesan non-combatant crouching behind a rock. Instead of firing, the caesan stood up, crouched, and ended his turn.

I also don't see defenders leave the UFO anymore, which they did at one point. Having them charge out of the UFO as the player approached made organising for the breach risky, unlike calmly setting up shop at the UFO door currently.

I'm going to edit the .xmls in /ufocontents and set all aliens to be aggressive, as well as changing minimum accuracy for a shot to 5% in aiprops.xml to encourage them to shoot at me - by default, the threshold is 35%. My hope is that it'll increase the tension a bit, since if I take too long clearing the outside of the UFO out, the aliens will have left the UFO to reinforce their lookouts. I don't know if it'll work that way, though.

---

Another problem with reapers is that they can't handle vehicles at all. They can't harm them, afaik, so a hunter makes handling them fairly easy; it can mosey right up to them and then gun them down, as long as any sebs have been dealt with. A secondary claw attack that inflicts damage to vehicles (or something similar, not insta-death) is needed.

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Since the AI has no ammo limits on direct fire weapons i.e. everything but grenades, I see no reason why they shouldn't always fire at anyone they can see unless they need to move to better cover. They should fire one snapshot or aimed shot and reserve enough TU for a reaction snap. They do tend to be rather passive until the Xenonauts get quite close and this allows you to pick them off from a distance.

The problem could also have something to do with the sight ranges. Human players usually are smart enough to have a vehicle or person scouting ahead to take advantage of squad fire. The aliens do not do this really except by accident. Also, some aliens, like Sebillans have bad vision so I wouldn't expect they'd fire until they were close. I know for sure that if the sight ranges for aliens are increased the combat becomes very hot, too hot, for the Xenonauts because we had a build where they could see too far and it was like landing on a beach WW II for the Xenonauts, shots were coming from EVERYWHERE and you could lose half your squad just getting off the chopper.

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About AI problems: I think aggressive aliens not being up to par is less of an issue than the passive aliens that don't actively fire' date=' and the ship defenders that don't seem to have a plan. [/quote']

I've tried a couple of test fights with the help of the in-game editor and it's rather strange. Sometimes the aliens actually shoot even at soldiers in cover, and run around in order to get into a better position, and then sometimes they act completely stupid and won't fire or shoot. I'm not quite sure what makes the difference. I think the minimum required accurancy you mentioned is one of the reasons. Another reason seems to be that maybe they don't like long distances - if close enough, they'll usually fire and/or charge (not always though), if it's more than like 10 spaces away, they'll often just sit and wait, even though I can still shoot them pretty well from such distance. So it looks like the AI generally would be up to putting up a good fight if it didn't often misjudge the situation.

I also tried a little with V19 and there the AI seems to do better in this regard, although that's a bit hard to judge.

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if it's more than like 10 spaces away, they'll often just sit and wait, even though I can still shoot them pretty well from such distance. So it looks like the AI generally would be up to putting up a good fight if it didn't often misjudge the situation.
I don't know the AI code, but it's possible that the accuracy adjustments that have been made recently aren't being used by the AI in it's calculations i.e. the AI calculates accuracy separate from the "real" calculation OR some factor is not being fed into the AI calculation (like the accuracy multiplier) that should be. So, there is a mismatch between what it thinks is a reasonable chance to hit and actual chance to hit. Based on the symptoms you describe that sounds possible. Of course, if the AI is fed the to hit chance from the same place the Xenonauts accuracy is calculated then I'm all wet.
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Well the later dropships carry more soldiers, so the end-game one lets you take 16 to battle. The Chinook has less to stop the early missions being so grindy.

With regards to the AI, it's something we want to improve and make as deadly as possible. So the experience you're having there isn't how we'd like it to be be.

The alien stat increases are something I'm going to discuss with Aaron, or at least try an alternative balance patch for. See if I can make the aliens much less tough, but possibly make them more deadly at the same time. I suspect I'll be playing a lot of the original game over the next week or two to try and work out where we're going wrong...but I'll admit the game is currently lacking some of the edge of the original game as far as the ground combat goes.

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@Chris - I'm not sure stat increases are the way too go (except for Androns.) The aliens just need to shoot more. They have good accuracy vs. the humans. That's really the bottom line IMO. They seem reluctant to use what they already have unless you are pretty close. In the OG the aliens had no hesitation about blasting away even if they were standing out in the middle of a field (not very smart, but they did shoot.) Your AI could be much better since it already is smart about seeking cover. The combo of using cover, shooting, and good weapons will be plenty deadly without stat changes.

I'd be looking at the sight ranges and AI to see what's going on. If the AI can see a target but does not fire at it there should be a darn good reason (like the alien standing out in the open so moving to cover is very important.) The aliens generally are very tough at the higher levels requiring many hits to bring down. That's not the problem. If you make the aliens tougher AND improve the AI, IMO, that will be going too far in the balance.

Edited by StellarRat
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I agree with the stellar rodent. Aliens are quite tough in terms of hit points, and they're actually a good challenge on the missions when they do fire. They're simply too passive now, very prone to doing the stand-turn-crouch dance instead of actually firing. Maybe the problem is that they reserve TUs for reaction fire too often, or that they dislike low-accuracy shots too much, but the main problem as of now is in their reluctance to fire, not in any stat.

And, Chris, I think that's exactly why Xeno currently lacks some of the danger of the original game. In the original, aliens were physically weak, at least most races, but they loved to shoot. That's what gave combat that great feeling, you were constantly expecting to get shot at. In a typical mission in the original, there were a lot more alien shots fired (and missed). This should also happen in Xeno, though the accuracy should not be too much, aliens shouldn't hit every time they fire (which fits into my overall point of lowering accuracy multiplier to 1.25 from 1.5).

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Exactly, my Solving friend! If you'll remember back to when the aliens could see too far in that one build there was a no question about how deadly they could be. So, it's not the accuracy, or the alien toughness, or how much damage they do, the problem is with the volume of fire they put out (or don't in this case.) It could be as simple as a slight increase in the alien sight range or a tweak to what they consider to be a "low percentage shot".

Edited by StellarRat
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That's one build I am going to remember for a long time. Go out of the Chinook and immediately come under fire from 3-4 aliens you can not see. And they were not even that accurate then.

Then there's also the matter of AI intelligence largely being a matter of appearances. I know this from a fair bit of first-hand experience. I have no doubt that the current AI is far more sophisticated than in X-Com, but it also does a lot of dumb things very visibly. Seeing an alien to the crouch dance signals, with no doubt, that it's a dumb alien. As does seeing an alien run back and forth between two pieces of cover without ever shooting. The original's game AI wasn't really capable of seeking cover, or planning, or calling for reinforcements, but its simplistic routines also didn't usually allow it to do such plainly dumb things, leading to the original AI appearing much more intelligent than it really is.

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Well the later dropships carry more soldiers, so the end-game one lets you take 16 to battle. The Chinook has less to stop the early missions being so grindy.

Well yes, but as I said, the fact that the Chinook has less is exactly what makes the missions grindy for me. And if the aliens learn to deliver a good punch, maybe I won't be the only one - I perhaps may be the only one who carefully clears the map completely including buildings, but I doubt I'm the only one who thinks there's not much tactics in having just 4 soldiers left halfway through the map. It's not that I'd need the numbers in order to win, it just won't take ages that way, even going back to 10 would make a difference. Maybe this could be different per difficulty level? Or, at the very least, this is modable, right?

With regards to the AI, it's something we want to improve and make as deadly as possible. So the experience you're having there isn't how we'd like it to be be.

Great to hear that. In case you'd be in need of insidious bastards who'd be good at finding ways to beat the hell of out the aliens, I think I might know one ;).

I have no doubt that the current AI is far more sophisticated than in X-Com, but it also does a lot of dumb things very visibly.

Yes, that's what I kind of meant to say, if it didn't across the way I put it. I didn't mean to bash the current AI, it's just that as far as actual results go it currently doesn't deliver anywhere near of what it could, and so it is hopefully fixable. I seem to remember somewhere seeing GJ being somewhat disappointed when grenades were nerfed after he had made the aliens too good with them, so this is exactly the case when making the aliens too good would avoid most of these problems and I would love to see such AI beating me (well, not _way_ too good obviously, I still want to win eventually :) ).

Edited by llunak
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That's one build I am going to remember for a long time. Go out of the Chinook and immediately come under fire from 3-4 aliens you can not see. And they were not even that accurate then.

Then there's also the matter of AI intelligence largely being a matter of appearances. I know this from a fair bit of first-hand experience. I have no doubt that the current AI is far more sophisticated than in X-Com, but it also does a lot of dumb things very visibly. Seeing an alien to the crouch dance signals, with no doubt, that it's a dumb alien.

Yeah, I really don't understand why aliens crouch and uncrouch without moving. What is the AI thinking at that point? That would be interesting to know. I could see them moving over a couple tiles as your forces change position if they're prioritizing cover over firing (something they probably should put less priority on if there is a chance shoot it you), but crouch/stand dance makes no sense to me. The aliens probably shouldn't shift covers unless there is large advantage to be had (like blocking 1/2 potential fire they'll receive i.e. now only 1 guy can shoot at them instead of 2 or degrading the Xenonauts chance to hit by 50% because the cover is that much better) instead they should open fire. Edited by StellarRat
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On that subject, AI could become much stronger (but that's also hard to implement) if it every single alien wasn't required to complete his own turn. That is, if an alien could expend half TUs, than another alien moves, then the first alien expends the other half. In some situations that would be very powerful, but that's hard.

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I've tried a couple of test fights with the help of the in-game editor and it's rather strange. Sometimes the aliens actually shoot even at soldiers in cover, and run around in order to get into a better position, and then sometimes they act completely stupid and won't fire or shoot. I'm not quite sure what makes the difference. I think the minimum required accurancy you mentioned is one of the reasons. Another reason seems to be that maybe they don't like long distances - if close enough, they'll usually fire and/or charge (not always though), if it's more than like 10 spaces away, they'll often just sit and wait, even though I can still shoot them pretty well from such distance. So it looks like the AI generally would be up to putting up a good fight if it didn't often misjudge the situation.

I also tried a little with V19 and there the AI seems to do better in this regard, although that's a bit hard to judge.

Yeah, I'm also not sure what's going on with the inconsistency in behaviour either. I'd assumed setting all aliens to the aggressive script would mean that the UFO would be empty by the time Xeno get close to it, but it doesn't seem to be the case. (Not got a lot of testing in on this, though, since at this point I instinctively hit "i" to drop the current weapon for a cheaper TU grenade toss, which is unfortunate right now...)

Another point I think bears mentioning: I don't think the AI considers suppression at all. An entrenched alien who fires despite the odds and suppresses anyone who comes close is going to be harder to deal with than an entrenched alien hoping to clip someone with reaction fire.

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I've tried a couple of test fights with the help of the in-game editor and it's rather strange. Sometimes the aliens actually shoot even at soldiers in cover, and run around in order to get into a better position, and then sometimes they act completely stupid and won't fire or shoot. I'm not quite sure what makes the difference. I think the minimum required accurancy you mentioned is one of the reasons. Another reason seems to be that maybe they don't like long distances - if close enough, they'll usually fire and/or charge (not always though), if it's more than like 10 spaces away, they'll often just sit and wait, even though I can still shoot them pretty well from such distance. So it looks like the AI generally would be up to putting up a good fight if it didn't often misjudge the situation.
I've noticed too. I've had some Caesans shooting, manuevering, etc... putting up a great fight when I got close to their ship, but they were totally passive at distance and I was able to pick them off one by one. I'm really thinking this has something to do with hit % and sight ranges. Like I said, since they don't have to worry ammo limits, why would they ever not take a shot if they have nothing else to do? If I were in a war and had a weapon with unlimited ammo and autofire I'd shoot up everything that even COULD hold an enemy whether or not I could actually see one there. Edited by StellarRat
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It's not that I'd need the numbers in order to win, it just won't take ages that way, even going back to 10 would make a difference. Maybe this could be different per difficulty level? Or, at the very least, this is modable, right?

Yes, it can be modded. I had 10 men and a vehicle in my Chinook last time I played.

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Agreed with stellarRat for the most part.

I do think passive AI needs to be tweaked so the aliens are more trigger happy. I'm seeing the crouch dance far too often.

However, I also think that alien health/armor is a bit ridiculous. A caesan non-com should go down in 1-2 shots to ballistic weapons. In the current version I've had one take 3 assault rifle shots and 2 LMG hits to bring down, which is too much for caesans IMO. Sebs feel about right.

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In previous builds - and by that I mean v17 and earlier, the trend was for aliens to have a moderate HP, and high armour values to offset that. This trend was reversed v18 and later, where in general aliens have low armour and high HP (in fact, if you go through the alien stats you can see that alien HP is carbon copied across races). Perhaps it's time to return to a mix of HP/armour.

EDIT: I don't think the AI has much in the way of a holistic view of the battlescape. Is that a bad thing? Do we really want the AI to have the same strategic advantage that a human has in being able to take the whole battlescape in as a whole?

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EDIT: I don't think the AI has much in the way of a holistic view of the battlescape. Is that a bad thing? Do we really want the AI to have the same strategic advantage that a human has in being able to take the whole battlescape in as a whole?

It's needed in some sense. For example, right now, the aliens will always end their turn facing towards the nearest Xenonaut. However, they have no concept of walls blocking LoS. So take a landing ship: the entry hall is one long corridor, usually with four or five aliens waiting inside. If one xenonaut goes to the outer northeast of the ship, as close as he can to the aliens, and another to the southeast, the aliens will never face towards the entrance as long as the xenonauts' breaching force are further away than the guys sitting to the NE/SE. That force can happily pop into LoS without fear of reaction fire.

A human in control of the aliens would always face the entrance, since it's impossible for the enemy to approach any other way.

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I've not been so active during v20's development, so the new stuff in aiprops.xml was a surprise to me. Have you done any tinkering with it? I'm wondering what effect mucking with the various weights would have, like ProbabilisticSearch. Also, AlliedLOS is set to 0.25 - doesn't that make AIs avoid being in the line of sight of other aliens? Sorry if I seem dumb asking these questions, but I'm not so good at this kind of stuff.

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EDIT: I don't think the AI has much in the way of a holistic view of the battlescape. Is that a bad thing? Do we really want the AI to have the same strategic advantage that a human has in being able to take the whole battlescape in as a whole?

Yes, we do. One thing I've learned over the years is that it's not a good idea to hold back on smart AI behaviour. Even when you do your best to make a smart AI, it of course still falls short of human intelligence. Intentionally limiting the AI's intelligence is not a good decision.

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Yes, we do. One thing I've learned over the years is that it's not a good idea to hold back on smart AI behaviour. Even when you do your best to make a smart AI, it of course still falls short of human intelligence. Intentionally limiting the AI's intelligence is not a good decision.

I completely agree that the AI should be as hard, smart and tactically advanced as possible. Otherwise groundcombat gets boring and repetitive really fast.

I try to avoid using the same moves over and over again, but after a while I always catch myself using one xenonaut with a battleshield to get close and draw fire, while I move my snipers behind the aliens cover and wipe them out. Aliens, especially a group of several of them, should activly try to avoid getting pinned down or surrounded, and they should be capable of using the terrain to their advantage, even if that means retreating.

At the same time an advanced AI will hopefully take care of the annoying behaviour of the civilians that keep running towards the aliens, instead of looking for cover behind the xenonauts battleline.

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I've been mucking around with aiprops.xml but I can't seem to get the aliens on a light scout to take advantage of shared LoS. I set the sebs to reaper-like behaviour, relentlessly charging after some poor git, but they'd never fire until the target was in the unit's personal LoS, it seemed like. I also set the minimum accuracy they'd fire at to 5% and the alien plasma pistol to a 99 tile range, but neither seemed to make a difference. Does this chime with everyone else's experience, or is there something else I've mucked up?

Edit: actually, it seems to be less than LoS with alien plasma pistols. The sebs feel the need to get really close before firing. Weird.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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I would definitely agree with the two commonly cited points in this post.

1. That the aliens don't fire enough. Although they seem to make plenty of reaction fire shot in my missions?

2. That the majority of tier 1 and 2 aliens are too tough at present OR... that ballistic rifles are too weak (taking 3, 4 hits from a rifle is no fun). One way to adjust this might be to make the basic ballistics a little cheaper to fire, so that you can fire 3 rifle shots off, 2 shotgun blasts etc. (everyone apart from pistol totting maniacs are lucky if they fire more than one shot per turn).

I'd also like to see the AI use their shotgun equivalents more effectively instead of firing them from 10 tiles away. They should be using half their AP to close the gap before firing.

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