Opening door should trigger reaction fire

[llunak]

Would it be possible to still change the game so that opening door does trigger reaction fire?

I seem to remember this has been already discussed somewhen, but I don't remember the outcome (if any), and apparently the current status is that it doesn't trigger reaction fire.

At http://ge.tt/5G8UqGh1/v/0 is a 22.8HF1 save, where Sgt. Lucy Young has relatively bad reflexes, machine gun and not many TUs left. Yet she can still safely open the door and if she had enough TUs she could safely mow down the aliens behind the door.

It feels really cheap and I think it removes a lot from UFO breaches, as one can repeat the open-fire-close trick until all aliens are dead (shot or die from boredom). I've just done at least 10 medium-sized ground missions on veteran (landingships, corvettes, i.e. they have already somewhat complex layout) and I didn't lose a single soldier, such a shooting gallery it was.

I don't quite see why opening door shouldn't trigger reaction fire. There are so many ways to get around it:

- blast the door with C4 or rockets

- use shields

- use smoke

- attack from more sides (if possible)

If this is because it's perceived the game would be too hard, then it's supposed to be hard on veteran , but moreover I think it shouldn't be hard to adjust it for difficulty if needed (a modifier to reflexes for this case, just like there are modifiers e.g. for alien stats).

On a somewhat related note, it seems to me that aliens quite often don't even face the door when waiting inside the UFO. Do others see this too?

[TacticalDragon]

Yes and feel unrealistic, annoying and lackluster.

I write about this thing multiple times and they no longer listen.

[Mikhail Ragulin]

At the moment, attacking aliens inside rooms/ufo's is made easy because of this.

A better system would be if reaction fire was triggered by a unit appearing in the LOS, instead of the current one (correct me if I'm wrong) of waiting until the unit has performed an action.

For example, I can stack eight troops directly outside the nice wide doors of a scout ship, kinda line infantry style. One in the front line chucks a stun grenade in, then it's mop up time, as the aliens can't react because they're stunned. However, if a soldier shoots or moves, it triggers reaction fire and it's my troops who get a seeing to. But if just appearing in the LOS triggered reaction fire, it'd be more realistic...as soon as the door opens, my men would get cut down in a hail of plasma. However, such a system would have drawbacks...i.e. there wouldn't be anything (at the moment) to prevent reaction fire at the start of a turn if an enemy is in LOS, which could be a bit odd.

[Chris]

This was originally a bug, but I've decided not to fix it deliberately as it actually emulates a key rule from X-Com - the "mutual surprise" rule. Basically, if both units sighted one another at the same tile....so if a door opens or a wall is destroyed etc, then the hostile unit will not immediately reaction fire (in X-Com it was actually that the alien would never fire first, but that's too abuseable).

If you don't have that, then the game would be a lot worse for it. Opening doors costs TU and if an alien is defending a room, it will likely be on full TU. Assuming equal reflexes and weapon modifiers, the alien will therefore almost always get the first shot. That may sound realistic but I doubt being immediately shot dead every time you open a UFO door would be super-enjoyable for the player.

Unfortunately, it is a bit abusable at the moment due to suppression. Flashbangs are the worst culprit and machineguns are also pretty bad for it. I'm thinking of removing flashbangs and toning down the suppression radius down on MGs so they can't suppress all the aliens in a room with a single burst. UFOs are a bit easy to assault at the moment.

[llunak]

If you don't have that, then the game would be a lot worse for it. Opening doors costs TU and if an alien is defending a room, it will likely be on full TU. Assuming equal reflexes and weapon modifiers, the alien will therefore almost always get the first shot. That may sound realistic but I doubt being immediately shot dead every time you open a UFO door would be super-enjoyable for the player.

After having played a streak of missions, I have to say that shooting turkeys in UFOs isn't super-enjoyable either (at least for a skilled player that I consider myself to be). But that is exactly why I proposed what to do about this instead of simply flipping it. If there was a modifier for the defenders' reactions per difficulty, then easy could have it at 0 and be a piece of cake, while veteran/insane could have it at or close to 1 and the skilled player would have to use all the ways I listed (which in fact would actually be far more enjoyable).

Unfortunately, it is a bit abusable at the moment due to suppression. Flashbangs are the worst culprit and machineguns are also pretty bad for it. I'm thinking of removing flashbangs and toning down the suppression radius down on MGs so they can't suppress all the aliens in a room with a single burst. UFOs are a bit easy to assault at the moment.

Please don't, at least the part about flashbangs. Flashbangs aren't used only for UFO breaches. Moreover to me it feels like trying to find a way around a problem rather than fixing it. It is not necessary to use flashbangs in order to abuse this (see below another post), so removing flashbangs won't really help here much, it still will be abusable.

[kabill]

UFOs are a bit easy to assault at the moment.

I think part of that problem is the design of the UFOs themselves, which are ideal for mass suppression weapons like flashbangs and machine guns due to their openness and lack of blind-spots.

Corvettes really demonstrate the difference design can make. Entering the first room from the entry corridor is really dangerous, because you have limited LoS and can't attack or suppress anything without risk of being shot from behind. It's not an impossible situation - smoke and shields here are excellent - but it's definitely one of the most difficult spots to get past out of all the UFO designs.

[llunak]

I meant to post this separately, but it's somewhat related to the issue of door opening, so maybe it's better to have these two together.

Consider the following situation (saved game http://ge.tt/3wenXPh1/v/0 ):

Here #10 Cpl. Kei Kubo opened door with two big Sebillians right behind it, so she ended up almost face to face with them. That may look like a very poor and terminally stupid life choice, but in fact Cpl. Kubo is still doing fine and walked away safely after all the Sebs behind the door were mowed down by a barrage from all the Xenonauts waiting outside.

This is because reaction fire apparently reacts only to the soldier/alien that has just made an action, so in this case one soldier opens the door, aliens do not get reaction fire because it was door opening, then all the other soldiers get squadsight and can fire at will. The soldier at the door doesn't do anything, so is safe against reaction fire, and the shooting soldiers are outside of the LOS of all enemies, so they are safe as well. If they do not manage to kill everybody during one turn, the opening soldier can close the door again or make a step to the side and disappear from the LOS of the enemy as well. Safe and functional (tested thoroughly by yours truly).

So the open-flashbang-shoot trick above can be easily replaced by open-others shoot-close trick, with about equal results. And it is not specific to UFO breaching, it works the same way everywhere where one scout finds an enemy and others shoot it safely. I'm on veteran and losing a soldier is something rare for me (1 per 10 missions, or maybe even more rare). I guess maybe I should play at insane, but that'd probably just increase the time needed to shoot all the turkeys.

And, the more I think of this, the more it seems like the same problem at the core. It allows (way too) abusable killing of aliens. If it's fixed, it'll make the game more hard. Which would probably make casual players weep while skilled players would like that and try harder . Making aliens (or let's say defenders) react and change per difficulty the chance of that looks to me like a solution that'd reasonably solve it all.

[kabill]

So the open-flashbang-shoot trick above can be easily replaced by open-others shoot-close trick, with about equal results. And it is not specific to UFO breaching, it works the same way everywhere where one scout finds an enemy and others shoot it safely. I'm on veteran and losing a soldier is something rare for me (1 per 10 missions, or maybe even more rare). I guess maybe I should play at insane, but that'd probably just increase the time needed to shoot all the turkeys.

In fairness, squad-sight has *always* been a balance issue in Xcom-like games. Shooting aliens from outside of their LoS was pretty much the single most important trick in the OG and it transforms a punishing game into a fairly simple one. And although Xenonauts has reduced its effectiveness, I'm not sure you can avoid it being overpowered without some extensive redesign of game mechanics.

Incidentally, if you find abusing doors makes the game too dull, you could choose not to do it. I certainly find the game more enjoyable by just not closing the UFO doors after I've opened them (mis-clicks notwithstanding!)

[llunak]

In fairness, squad-sight has *always* been a balance issue in Xcom-like games. Shooting aliens from outside of their LoS was pretty much the single most important trick in the OG and it transforms a punishing game into a fairly simple one. And although Xenonauts has reduced its effectiveness, I'm not sure you can avoid it being overpowered without some extensive redesign of game mechanics.

So you think what I suggested wouldn't work? At least to some extent of course, squadsight certainly does make sense in some scenarios, e.g. with snipers.

Incidentally, if you find abusing doors makes the game too dull, you could choose not to do it. I certainly find the game more enjoyable by just not closing the UFO doors after I've opened them (mis-clicks notwithstanding!)

I don't close the door either. Peeking from a side and directing fire of others works good enough. And I don't think I can reasonably stop myself from doing more. I mean, if I find spamming UFO interior with stun rockets too dull, I either won't do that, or I won't even bring the rockets (there certainly are things I don't allow myself to do in the OG). But how am I supposed to stop myself from not rushing blindly into a UFO? It's natural to play this way, carefully approach a dangerous area, have others provide fire support from a distance, retreat when in danger. Maybe I can tone it down a bit, but I don't see how I can play carefully and not do some sort of this automatically as a result.

[kabill]

So you think what I suggested wouldn't work? At least to some extent of course, squadsight certainly does make sense in some scenarios, e.g. with snipers.

Well, the suggestion you made above wouldn't make any difference to squad-sight generally, since it's about doors!

Specifically in terms of doors, I don't think it would help either as it would be easy to get around it:

1) Use a soldier with a shield to open the door, but otherwise proceed as you already do. Reaction fire will get taken on the shield; job done.

2) Use C4 to open the door, then shoot into the breach. If you need someone to spot, use someone with a shield or fire blindly with a machine gun to suppress aliens who have LoS on the breach (or both).

The other tactics you suggest (smoke and alternative approaches) don't really work since usually there's only one approach, while smoke only protects you if it's between the shooter and the target (and if the door was closed before you threw it, it wouldn't be covering between the door and the alien which is where you need it).

In other words, the change you suggest doesn't really make any difference. It makes C4/shields basically mandatory, since they're the only way to avoid point-blank reaction fire. But otherwise it plays out pretty much the same.

Ultimately - in my opinion anyway - the problem is that in most situations you don't need to enter the room the aliens are in to be able to shoot them. If the aliens were outside soldiers' LoS before physically entering the room (e.g. the first room of a Corvette after the corridor), then you wouldn't simply be able to snipe them or door-spam, since you'd need to enter the room to have LoF.

I don't close the door either. Peeking from a side and directing fire of others works good enough. And I don't think I can reasonably stop myself from doing more. I mean, if I find spamming UFO interior with stun rockets too dull, I either won't do that, or I won't even bring the rockets (there certainly are things I don't allow myself to do in the OG). But how am I supposed to stop myself from not rushing blindly into a UFO? It's natural to play this way, carefully approach a dangerous area, have others provide fire support from a distance, retreat when in danger. Maybe I can tone it down a bit, but I don't see how I can play carefully and not do some sort of this automatically as a result.

Fair enough. I'd inferred from your previous posts that door-spamming was something you did, but clearly that's not the case.

[TacticalDragon]

This was originally a bug, but I've decided not to fix it deliberately as it actually emulates a key rule from X-Com - the "mutual surprise" rule.

Ok, your in your room trying to hide against armed and dangerous people that what to kill you, your just looking at the door with a gun in you hand.... if they open the door what will you do?

SHOT

The answer is pure common sense, no one needs to be a genius to know that. The game lacks of real challenge.... don you think that if Aliens makes reaction shots if you open the door the player will be forced to look tactical alternatives? Use shields? smoke grenades? take the risk of fire?

Come on, you reach Wolf Armor in this game and most of the aliens don't do significant damage.

[Mikhail Ragulin]

...the alien will therefore almost always get the first shot. That may sound realistic but I doubt being immediately shot dead every time you open a UFO door would be super-enjoyable for the player...

It's a risk I'd be willing to take to get my hands on the UFO bounty.

Plus, a skilled player would find ways to lessen the chance of death using the weapons already in the game...combat shield, c4, rockets, etc.. It would liven things up a bit; storming the UFO should be the most dangerous things our Xenonauts face on a ground mission...at the moment, it feels like an exploit (and that's coming from someone who's never door-spammed).

[legit1337]

Or you could just limit the door to being activated once per turn.

[AvistTorch]

Or you could just limit the door to being activated once per turn.

I'd prefer to see a solution like this. It would be a little closer to the way the original game handled doors, and far better than forcing the player to do one of the things listed in the OP, since

-shields aren't a good solution if there are multiple enemies behind the door

-it would be silly to have to bring explosives for every single door in one of the larger UFOs

-Sebillians can see through smoke.

Besides, base doors and UFO doors look like automated doors, which logically might take a while to open and close independent of the TU it takes to press the open/close button or however they're opened.

Edited May 18, 2014 by AvistTorch

[Gauddlike]

I would quite like to see doors, for the UFOs at least, that once opened cannot be closed until they close themselves automatically.

Not the end of your turn but the start of your next one.

Like the TU damage taken from suppression it should last all the way through a full turn so opening the door has some risk attached.

If you open it you know it will stay open over the alien turn giving them the chance to shoot at you.

Even if aliens open it I would have it close at the start of the players turn.

They are used as defensive structures so give the advantage to the defending side.

Xenoanut base doors can close at the start of the alien turn, alien doors close at the start of the xenonaut turn.

Normal house doors can be opened or closed at will, they are just normal doors after all.

The down side is that it still doesn't address the problem of using a stationary scout to spot for squad sight.

Maybe when a unit takes fire it should do an immediate initiative check on enemy units it can see, regardless of who is firing?

If your scout has lower initiative than the enemy that has just been affected by a shot (even suppression damage, not just hp damage) then that scout is going to get a face full of plasma just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It might resolve the passivity without breaking the mutual surprise rule Chris likes.

Opening the door would work as now but if anyone takes a shot at the aliens inside they check initiative on everyone they can see and then shoot the poor scout if he is lower.

Coupled with automatic doors that might work nicely.

You could still get around it by hitting every enemy inside with enough suppression to prevent the reaction shot but toning down flashbangs should also make that trickier.

[Max_Caine]

I can see how people would want opening doors to be accounted as an action but we've been through this before. I can't find the threads now (and it's not for lack of trying) but I know builds and builds ago back when reaction fire was still a RNG test verses reflexes there were massive complaints about the "OP bullshit" that was aliens reaction-firing after the UFO door was open.

I also remember thxiotrop's problem of Androns waiting in ambush on the upper half of Cruisers, and that was just one in a litany of complaints about 3+ aliens waiting in one place and murdering troopers as they came. Each and every Scout has the potential to be "thxiotrop's last stand" as the map is open-plan, has no less than 5+ aliens lie in ambush and at least 2 are armed with the reflex-levelling plasma pistol. I can see strategies being formed to match that (StellarRat's "arm C4 and run away" srpings to mind), but I can also see way more complaints like:

I just opened the door and the Andron killed me before I could do anything! This is stupid!

There will be a certain percentage of people who will respond

lol LTP noob

And that's possibly quite true, but is it worth it?

[llunak]

Well, the suggestion you made above wouldn't make any difference to squad-sight generally, since it's about doors!

I think you missed that I listed two (related) cases and suggestions:

- opening door should trigger reaction fire

- a soldier making an action should trigger reaction fire against all soldiers aliens can see, not just the one that did the action

The second one certainly does make a difference to squadsight.

Specifically in terms of doors, I don't think it would help either as it would be easy to get around it:

1) Use a soldier with a shield to open the door, but otherwise proceed as you already do. Reaction fire will get taken on the shield; job done.

2) Use C4 to open the door, then shoot into the breach. If you need someone to spot, use someone with a shield or fire blindly with a machine gun to suppress aliens who have LoS on the breach (or both).

...

In other words, the change you suggest doesn't really make any difference. It makes C4/shields basically mandatory, since they're the only way to avoid point-blank reaction fire. But otherwise it plays out pretty much the same.

I disagree. Of course there will be ways to solve the problem (who'd want to play a game where they basically can't win, huh?). But open-shoot-close or open-squadshoot are cheap and perfectly safe. The solutions you listed do not come for free and are not completely reliable, so you need to evaluate the possibilities (and I think there are more than you listed) rather than have one have true way that solves it all.

Or you could just limit the door to being activated once per turn.

The changes things only for a rather limited subset of cases. It still doesn't make a difference if aliens get shot right after opening the door or if the soldier can run away to the side of the door.

I can see how people would want opening doors to be accounted as an action but we've been through this before. I can't find the threads now (and it's not for lack of trying) but I know builds and builds ago back when reaction fire was still a RNG test verses reflexes there were massive complaints about the "OP bullshit" that was aliens reaction-firing after the UFO door was open.

...

I can see strategies being formed to match that (StellarRat's "arm C4 and run away" srpings to mind), but I can also see way more complaints like:

That's because it's different per skill of the player (i.e. game difficulty). That's why I suggested the chance should be low (or non-existent) for easier levels so that less skilled/experienced/whatever players can have their walks in the park while more hardcore players could actually have a challenge they'd like (I certainly would).

Edited May 18, 2014 by llunak

[Gauddlike]

Most of the complaints would have been from experienced players as there have not been many new players around on the forums until recently.

Most of the time the experienced players far outweigh the newer ones.

You can duplicate your suggestion for testing I think Ilunak.

Save a game where you are just about to start breaching the UFO.

Adjust the aliens reaction score to whatever level you want to test.

Load the save and start the breach, remembering to perform at least one action after opening the door to simulate the instant initiative test.

I don't like the idea of having bonuses to reactions while sitting in the UFO personally though.

Having a different set of rules for different situations just leads to confusion for players.

Your scout with fantastic reflexes and a pistol manages to avoid giving the enemy the initiative in every situation, giving up protection and firepower to do it.

Then you walk past a door in the UFO and die instantly because the rules changed on you.

What situations would you give this bonus in?

All aliens inside a UFO?

Just some sitting near the doors?

It needs to be clear otherwise it gets seen as a bug.

[llunak]

Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about. I said that I think that opening door should trigger reaction fire and that reaction fire should consider everybody visible as a target not just the soldier who did the action that triggered it. Doesn't that clearly define in what situation and to who that would apply? And, since this would make the game harder, I also said that there should be a modifier per level, let's say 0 for easy, 0.3 (=30%) for normal, 0.6 for veteran and 1 (i.e. the normal 100% value) for insane. What bonus and different rules are you talking about? It is perfectly consistent with the rest of the game (and also with many things being adjustable per difficulty level).

Edited May 18, 2014 by llunak

[kabill]

I think you missed that I listed two (related) cases and suggestions:

- opening door should trigger reaction fire

- a soldier making an action should trigger reaction fire against all soldiers aliens can see, not just the one that did the action

The second one certainly does make a difference to squadsight.

Ah, it wasn't clear that you were suggesting that as a change (you discuss the problem in your post, but it's not apparent that you were suggesting changing the system so that reaction fire is made against any unit in sight).

I'd agree with you that this would make squadsight less powerful than it is, since it wouldn't allow you to ignore reaction fire. In principle, actually, it's a reasonable solution.

However, I think there's some important technical issues. Aside from the fact that the reaction fire system would need an overhaul, allowing the game to know when to check for reaction fire without this being exploitable doesn't seem easy. The best way I can think of would be to check if a unit is targeted by a shot. But you'd be able to exploit that still by using AoE weapons or shooting at a tile behind the intended target.

I disagree. Of course there will be ways to solve the problem (who'd want to play a game where they basically can't win, huh?). But open-shoot-close or open-squadshoot are cheap and perfectly safe. The solutions you listed do not come for free and are not completely reliable, so you need to evaluate the possibilities (and I think there are more than you listed) rather than have one have true way that solves it all.

I wasn't trying to indicate that there are solutions (as you say, of course there are solutions!). My point was that the solutions you end up with - the best ones anyway, so far as I'm concerned - look almost exactly the same as the best solutions at the moment. Either you use a spotter with a shield who is required to take the (potentially point-blank and otherwise unavoidable) reaction fire on the shield, or you destroy the door from a distance and then use a spotter (with a shield!) to allow soldiers to fire in. In other words, they're almost identical to what you say you do at the moment, except shield are mandatory because there's no other way to avoid reaction fire.

So while I'm sure there are other solutions, I'm not sure any of them would be better than two which more or less end up doing the same thing as is done now. And if they're not completely reliable, it's not because you've added to tactical complexity, but because you've created a situation where the player's units almost always have to get fired on without them being able to do anything. In other words, this change ups the difficulty, but doesn't really change the way you have to approach the situation much.

[Skybirduk]

So, if we have the situation of aliens opening fire at the moment a door is opened, the solution is simple.

Buy a bunch of rookie Redshirts whose job is to open the door and get shot at. Once the aliens have used up their TU's send the experienced soldiers around the corner to slaughter the aliens.

[TacticalDragon]

So, if we have the situation of aliens opening fire at the moment a door is opened, the solution is simple.

Buy a bunch of rookie Redshirts whose job is to open the door and get shot at. Once the aliens have used up their TU's send the experienced soldiers around the corner to slaughter the aliens.

Music to my hears

[Skybirduk]

Music to my hears

If we end up having to use OG tactics then we might as well play the OG instead. "Nothing new to see here, move along."

Edited May 18, 2014 by Skybirduk

[Skitso]

I'm forcing myself to not play the door game and pretend they can't be closed once opened. I hope this doesn't have to lead into a situation where flashbangs are removed from the game.

Maybe reduce flashbang throw range and supression radius and remove players ability to close ufo doors.

Edited May 18, 2014 by Skitso

[kabill]

To be honest, I don't think flashbangs need to go anywhere at all. It's worth noting that a flashbang is only especially powerful against Caesans who are all more-or-less one-shot suppressed by a flashbang. In contrast, many Sebillians (either from Guard or Soldier upwards, I can't quite remember) are resistant enough to suppression that one flashbang isn't enough (and therefore they get to fire on the flashbang thrower) while Androns are entirely immune. The same is true for the machine gun.

So I'm not sure that a nerf to these items would make a huge amount of difference. It would certainly make Light Scout and Scout assaults more difficulty, since those are the instances where suppression is especially powerful. Elsewhere, though, I'm not sure it would matter all that much.

(And I like flashbangs a lot. Non-direct-damage equipment is cool; it would be a shame to lose some of it).

EDIT: Not sure whether this would actually help much with the problem, but - randomized suppression damage? Part of the reason why flashbangs and machineguns are good against early aliens is that they always suppress their targets, therefore are a safe bet. If suppression damage was randomized, this wouldn't always be the case so you'd have to take additional precautions or else take a different approach instead.

Edited May 18, 2014 by kabill