Still don't buy reaction fire

[kabill]

There has been discussion of people getting suppressed in their own turn.

Mainly questions about if losing 100% of their TU is correct or a bug so I would assume it is possible.

Not suffered enough reaction shots to notice it personally though.

I think this is from friendly fire rather than reaction fire. Certaily I've never seen a soldier get suppressed by alien reaction fire before (and I'd have thought it would have come up assaulting a UFO command room if it could happen at all).

[Monifix]

I personallly like that the Aliens can get a lot of reaction fire in certain situations, It's one of the few things that make them challenging. How boring it would be if Goldenhawk nerfed everything people complain about on these forums. It's supposed to be a hard challenging game people. I wish it was harder than it is now really.

[Gauddlike]

That could be true kabill, I haven't seen it personally and I would have thought I would have seen it by now if it was possible.

[Burzmali]

I've had the following scenario play out on the desert map with no buildings:

To cover the road I have two troops covering the gap between the rocks roughly near the middle of the map with a couple extras on the lower left side getting ready to push across. My MG trooper is on the upper right. On the enemy turn a Seb turns the corner on the lower right stone, my MG troop reacts and sprays a bunch of bullets at him, wounding him, but also suppressing all of my troops on the lower right. The Seb continues moving and point blanks one of my suppressed troops, before getting killed by reaction fire from a rifleman behind that low cover in the middle.

[Gauddlike]

Interestingly enough the 0.5x modifier for machine guns actually gives them a better chance to reaction fire than the assault rifle does in some situations and is actually not far off the same value as the pistol/shotgun assuming equal reflex stat on the soldiers.

That is likely why your machine gunner fired before your other soldiers and suppressed them, removing their chance to react that turn.

For example look at three soldiers with 35 reflexes who have reserved exactly the right amount of TU to reaction fire that turn, one with a pistol or shotgun, one with an assault rifle, and one with a machine gun.

Using the formula Chris posted here:

With a pistol/shotgun they would have 28% TU, 35 reflexes, and a modifier of 1.5 for a total initiative of 14.7

With an assault rifle it is 28% TU, 35 reflexes, and a modifier of 1 for an initiative of 9.8.

The machine gunner would have 80% TU, 35 reflexes, and a 0.5 modifier for an initiative of 14.

You would need to reserve 40% TU with the assault rifle to have the same chance of reaction fire as a machine gun.

If your machine gunner had as little as three points more in reflexes than a pistol or shotgun user then they would have a higher initiative in any situation where they both reserved the minimum amount of TU required to fire.

I am not sure if that is intended behaviour.

It appears that machine guns should have a modifier of 0.35x in order to match the reaction chance of an assault rifle with snap shot reserved.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Gauddlike

[StellarRat]

True, but a machinegunner is basically set up and waiting for something to shoot or shooting, that's all they do most of the time. They can't do anything if they move. So, your scenario makes a lot of sense from a "realism" stand point (I know you hate that word.)

One thing I complete disagree with is Xenonaut weapons suppressing Xenonauts. They are nothing like alien weapons and the Xenonauts shouldn't be nearly as fearful of close friendly fire as they are of alien fire. I would imagine that the Xenonauts could easily distinguish between the two. At a minimum the suppression chance and/or radius should be much smaller for friendly weapons for both sides. In fact, does anyone know if the aliens can even be suppressed by friendly fire? I don't recall ever seeing that happen.

Edited April 10, 2014 by StellarRat

[Gauddlike]

If they have reserved 80% of their TU then they have moved or done something with the other 20% so possibly not really considered as set up and waiting.

If they have 100% left then they are definitely set up and waiting, they also have a reaction advantage over the assault rifle who has reserved a snap shot, even with a reduced modifier of 0.35.

An important advantage is that the assault rifle user can choose to reserve more TU so increase their chance of a reaction shot above the chance of the machine gun, I just don't think that is very clear to most people.

The 0.5x modifier makes the MG look like it will always be the slowest to react when in fact in a very common situation it is actually one of the fastest weapons.

I don't have any problem with realism, as long as gameplay is put ahead of it when balancing game features.

I am not convinced the current implementation is even a problem, I was only posting the information to clarify the situation in the scenario posted by burzmali.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Gauddlike

[Burzmali]

I don't have any problem with realism, as long as gameplay is put ahead of it when balancing game features.

I am not convinced the current implementation is even a problem, I was only posting the information to clarify the situation in the scenario posted by burzmali.

If you want to get technical, the MG trooper fired first because:

1. MG are lethal and level very quickly, trooper was at 90 TUs and had quite a healthy RFL

2. The corner of rocks block LoS, the MG acquired the target one square earlier than the shotgunner on the other side.

I'm not too worried that my troops were suppressed, it was a night missions and it must have looked like the MG trooper was spraying indiscriminately. What bugs me is that the advancing alien took two bullets and was able to advance at least one more step, turn and fire before a second soldier was able to beat it's initiative.

[Gauddlike]

I was specifically talking about the mechanics behind the actions rather than the positional aspects or those related directly to your soldiers as only you would know those details.

Most people don't realise how good machine guns are at reaction fire as they don't look beyond the 0.5x modifier so thought it was important to point it out.

Reaction fire is pretty deadly already and would need to be nerfed in a different way to balance the increase in power taking TU away as well as health would give it from my point of view.

As always I assume that the same mechanic would be used for aliens reaction firing on my troops.

I also assume that taking damage from directed fire would reduce TUs which I don't really like on top of the suppression system.

In fact a similar effect could be had if reaction fire caused suppression damage on enemies without adding a whole new mechanic.

Going back to the previous example if the machine gunner had been able to suppress the sebillian then he would have been unable to reach or kill your soldiers.

[Dirk Ralthar]

I think the easiest way to smooth out the reaction fire in the terms of time consumed, is have the game do it's processing for hits, damage, and missed shots for guys based on the reaction fire initiatives, then run all of the animations at the same time. Or you could just have everyone who has the TU and Line of effect take their shots together. It would use less time for the total reaction fire so you don't sit there through 6 or 7 Xenos wondering if Jimmy is going to bite it in the doorway. Plus it would give a slightly more realistic feel for the reaction shots, if I was with three other guys and a Xeno came through a door, I'm not going to wait for Freddie to stop shooting and see if it is dead before I lay on the trigger.

*Missed the part where there was three other pages of posts in this thread.*

As far as the way it functions, I really can't complain too much about the balance of the way I works. It sucks when one of your troopers walk into a room and just get gunned down immediately, but that's how battle works.

Edited April 12, 2014 by Dirk Ralthar