How do you use Night Vision to your advantage?

[Alucious]

I apologize if this is a very novice question - I'm very new to OpenXCOM but I have a good amount of experience to XEU and Xcom 2.

Very early on in the research tree you learn that your hands have slightly better night vision range than standard enemies - 12 spaces vs. 9. However, when I turn off the personal lights during a nighttime mission, I (the player) can hardly make out anything in the dark! It's very frustrating trying to guess where terrain is or if my hands stumbling around in the dark are actually in the middle of a clearing. I usually end up leaving the lights on during my turn and turning them off right before ending my turn. Additionally, if I do happen to see an enemy in the dark, it's very difficult to see what kind of enemy they are, and what direction they are facing, which is very important to a melee ambusher.

I know my hands are intended by the game lore to have an advantage in night missions, but it's so frustrating playing these missions that I much prefer daytime missions. Am I missing something? Is there an option or hotkey to "turn on" night vision that I haven't found?

[legionof1]

what you are running up against it that "light" and "sight" are different things. the gals can see and shoot farther then there personal lights. However things outside of light are as you described difficult to have good data for knowing what you are doing. You could for instance be bouncing rounds of a terror unit or one shoting a weakling. you the player don't know without light. The solution is the electro flare?(spelling) item buy-able on the black market after a small amount of research. These items produce light in a reasonable radius around them and can be throw like grenades with very high range.  The idea is put the light on the farside of a foe. Or what most of us do just cover the map in light from the safety of the landing craft and ignore what is a fairly fiddly advantage to use. Mercenary faction units and most power armor units have equal or superior sight to a base gal. In addition at turn 20 your units are reveled so only LOS matters for the enemy.

[Arthanor]

I think Alucious understands this much, but he is trying to play with personal lights turned off, so he can take advantage of the range of the gals' nightvision compared to the average humans (12 to 9, if I remember well). If you have personal lights turned on, the enemy will see you at the full 20 (or 30, in the latest version) tiles distance, since you are glowing like a christmas tree, while you will only see them at a range of 12 since they are not glowing..

Playing with personal lights off is a pain, especially since it also affects the minimap so you can't even use that to navigate. If it were possible to turn it on or off for specific units (or armors?) tat would be a HUGE advantage. You could have your scouts stay dark and the rest of the gals be all glowy, since they are probably 20 tiles away from the enemy.

Alucious' way to play it (dark only on the enemy's turn) is one I use sometimes as well, since it allows you to spot the enemy before they spot you as they advance on their turn. This also helps with reaction fire. Of course, on your turn, as you turn on the lights, they also spot you before you spot them..

The only way I have found is to exploit environmental lighting. If there is enough light from lampposts, fires or flares, you can see the enemy from the full 20 tiles away, which is even better. You can use lampposts in urban terrain by staying in the shadows they cast, while the enemy won't be so cautious and will happily stand under the light (the AI isn't clever enough to exploit light). Urban terrain in terrors against low-tech enemies (spartans especially) is the easiest to exploit.

In other terrains, as legionof1 said, use electroflares, but use them scarcely instead of blanketing the battlefield like in the original (in the original, aliens see 20 tiles in the light and dark both, so it doesn't matter if you glow or not). Throw the flares as far as possible, to hopefully light up the enemy while you stay in the dark. Just before your scouts reach the lit up area and have to cross them, throw another layer of flares beyond so they will see enemies on the other sides (nothing worse than the 13 tiles advantage of standing in the light while your enemy is in the dark). Then the first move your scout makes should be to get to the initial flares and pick them up so they stop emitting light, thus hiding them back into darkness.

Even dogs and parrots can pick up flares and with their great TUs and expendable status, they are great at being the first to dart into the light to pick them up. Then once it's dark, you can send the scout gals and the pets can give back the flares for later use. You can also drop flares with your support gals, to light up the areas that are now safe and make it easier to move your snipers around.

[sambojin]

Just remember how much smoke cuts into sight, and realize that it cuts into theirs' more. An advantage in itself. 9 vision through smoke is about 3-4 tiles afaik.

Plus, once you've thrown a bit of smoke, some flares, and torched a few things, you've definitely got the advantage.

Lights on or off is situational. But it can be used to your advantage.

Smoke + "worse vision than your gals" is a walkover. They'll only see you close-up with lights on, and not all at without them. Good for when you know where they are, and they're scary.

[Dioxine]

A chunk of inner mechanics. If an AI unit has spotted you, but no longer sees you (because you're now in the dark, for example), it will know where you are, it will pursue but never attack before it gets a visual again.

[Alucious]

A chunk of inner mechanics. If an AI unit has spotted you, but no longer sees you (because you're now in the dark, for example), it will know where you are, it will pursue but never attack before it gets a visual again.

Thanks for the tip! Maybe I can use that as a way to lure enemies into a trap in night missions...

[Yglorba]

Shouldn't most enemies in night missions have their own personal lights, logically-speaking?

Or are they all just blundering around in the dark?

[Solarius Scorch]

Shouldn't most enemies in night missions have their own personal lights, logically-speaking?

Or are they all just blundering around in the dark?

They're not completely in the dark, they have the night vision sight range (for humans: 9 tiles). So it is assumed the darkness is not total, you can operate in it on short distances.

[Arthanor]

Yeah, the big difference is that the AI doesn't need to see anything on the screen, whereas the player does. So AI units are perfectly happy to operate without personal lights and in fact our units would be too, if only we, the players, could see enough to control them...

The dark darkness of XCom is part of the mood, but it does hinder proper stealthy night missions. Yankes is working on ways to recolor stuff, I think, which eventually might lead to a night vision mode that would be awesome.

[Dioxine]

Indeed. For now, I finally discovered a good use for the little arrows that Meridian added . Press alt, you'll see the facings of all visible units (yours and enemy). Immensely helpful in total darkness.

[Arthanor]

Yeah, in the light it's not so necessary, but at night when you can't even tell what your gals spotted when it's under your cursor, the little arrow helps a lot in knowing if you can safely approach or not.