Flanking gameplay mechanic

[Arthanor]

Cover does reduce chance to get hit. If your behind a fence and a shot hits the fence the fence takes the damage and you don't. I don't see why standing behind a fence would make the alien aim away from you.

Presenting a smaller target to hit means your less likely to get hit, it doesn't mean plasma is going to go away from you though.

XCOM2012 has a lot of different mechanics to OpenXCOM because of the way it is designed, flanking and cover and critical hits are all part of it's experience but OpenXCOM has many of the same features presented differently, flanking with reduced armour, cover with cover being hit, critical hits (and un-critical?? hits) with damage range on weapons

I am well aware cover can be hit if it is in the way and I am not saying that being in cover should make something aim away.

The current aiming/shooting mechanic is that a part of your target is picked when calculating a shot, and a success is represented by a very narrow deviation from that. Since the deviation is very small, the likelihood of cover being hit is minimal (unless the center of the "success area" is badly picked, as described and hopefully fixed eventually by volutar in his post about aiming) and presenting a smaller area is not really meaningful since the "success area" is very small.

Increasing the deviation would mean a larger "success area", which would be more affected by cover. If a success represent "threading a needle", all you need for a success to always be a hit on target is to see a tiny bit of your target. If a success represents hitting a person, hiding half of your body behind an obstacle means a success will actually be a hit on target only 50% of the time (there is only half of the person to hit, the other half of the shots hit the obstacle). Thus cover would play a bigger role. By extension, positioning to avoid giving your target cover (= flanking) would become more relevant as well.

[yrizoud]

Increasing the deviation would mean a larger "success area", which would be more affected by cover

And distance, which I'd appreciate.XCOM gameplay favors out-of-sight-range sniping a bit too much for my taste.

[Arthanor]

Indeed! I very much dislike the idea of dancing in the smoke or at 20 tiles to exploit the game mechanic.

I am unaware if the "success area" increases with distance but that could be a neat way of addressing the distance. Threading the needle at 10m or hitting a guy at 1km can both be considered successes.

[hellrazor]

How about you give all direct fire weapons a maxrange of 20?
So you always have to shoot from insight of the enemy visual field?

[Arthanor]

That would make the game pretty limited.. I use the extender accuracy and set min/auto/snap/aim ranges that vary by weapons which makes the game more varied. It's not as good as changing the shot deviation (low accuracy means more wide misses, larger hit deviation means more close misses) but it manages to create a situation where dancing at 20 is not a great option and every weapon has its use.

[Sharp]

I am well aware cover can be hit if it is in the way and I am not saying that being in cover should make something aim away.

The current aiming/shooting mechanic is that a part of your target is picked when calculating a shot, and a success is represented by a very narrow deviation from that. Since the deviation is very small, the likelihood of cover being hit is minimal (unless the center of the "success area" is badly picked, as described and hopefully fixed eventually by volutar in his post about aiming) and presenting a smaller area is not really meaningful since the "success area" is very small.

Increasing the deviation would mean a larger "success area", which would be more affected by cover. If a success represent "threading a needle", all you need for a success to always be a hit on target is to see a tiny bit of your target. If a success represents hitting a person, hiding half of your body behind an obstacle means a success will actually be a hit on target only 50% of the time (there is only half of the person to hit, the other half of the shots hit the obstacle). Thus cover would play a bigger role. By extension, positioning to avoid giving your target cover (= flanking) would become more relevant as well.

Ah cool I get you now, but it might be a bit tricky to implement nicely. If only half your body is visible but a "successful shot" is aiming at any part of your body it would then always be a max 50% chance to get hit which can then be silly i.e. why aim at someone's leg when you can't see it if you have 100% accuracy.

Typically you aim for what is visible and then from that the centre of it.

Tbh I still think the way it works now is better, might just need tweaking of accuracy in general so you don't get so many successful shots and deviations can still be likely to hit cover.

[kikimoristan]

this thread somehow ties in with this one Topic: Aiming algorithm

this thread i about  flanking/cover/aiming bonuses
volutar's thread is about aiming/cover

both thread discuss the mechanics of cover/aiming in Xcom. both game mechanics are being thoroughly being analyzed by the community . everyone has good points and if you got time i'd read them all. i did. i recommend going over both threads for extracurricular reading

[Sharp]

Yeah I just read that one now and see that many arguments have already been hashed out I will say that I am more on Volutar's side of it

[kikimoristan]

i'm also with volutar 

and if he could do his thing as an optional advanced setting  it would KINDA enable my idea but in a completely different way..

he proposes aiming to be on the part that is visible rathe than always center. OR make shots go trough cover and affect accuracy based on how much is obstructed. that means fences, bushes, and half solid objects won't provide as much cover as before forcing you to flank more by going around or employ hit and run tactics.  you wouldn't wanna just go heads on with his adjustments on cause you'd always be hit unless is a fully solid object in front of you.

[Arthanor]

Ah cool I get you now, but it might be a bit tricky to implement nicely. If only half your body is visible but a "successful shot" is aiming at any part of your body it would then always be a max 50% chance to get hit which can then be silly i.e. why aim at someone's leg when you can't see it if you have 100% accuracy.

Typically you aim for what is visible and then from that the centre of it.

And that's why I think a larger "success area" combined with volutar's "always aim for the center of the visible area" would make a great shooting/cover mechanic.

You should always aim for the center of the visible area, but cover will make that area smaller and if you can make your visible area smaller than the success area, success shots may hit cover = cover is relevant. The problem now is that the success area is so small that it is almost impossible to obstruct so much of your area that the visible are is smaller than the success area. Aiming for the center of the visible area will almost always ignore cover. Increasing the size of the success area fixes that.

It comes down to two different reasons for flanking:
1- Shoot at your target without giving it cover (= increase chance to hit). This works regardless of where the target is looking, but the direction is given by which side of the target is protected by cover.
2- Shoot at your target from a direction it's not looking. This is independent of cover and will reduce retaliation (= increase your survivability) and also allow you to hit side/rear armor (= increase damage).

Ideally both mechanic should be in, but #1 is already not really potent currently (playing LoS shenanigans is more worth it than kneeling behind cover) and it will be worse after volutar's fixe, hence some of us being worried.

[kikimoristan]

yeah but Arthanor you guys gotta compromise and have his option be in the game as advanced setting optional. That way everyone is happy. remember h's doing this work for free he really cares bout this aim thing being perfect. why not let the man do his thing? non vanilla optional but in the game. ultimately the more flexible/customizeable/setting the more powerful the engine and the more fun.

[Arthanor]

I'm not sure why you think I'm opposed to his fix or think that the current "bad target placement" should remain in the game. Bad aiming should not stay in the game and I very much support volutar's proper target placement.

I am simply suggesting here a different mechanic that would allow cover to play a larger role (regardless of the aiming scheme, actually, although it might be more needed with the new aiming since it makes cover less relevant). Increasing cover in turn favour flanking to deprive your target of said cover.

The argument that the AI does not understand cover and flanking manoeuvres of either kinds (to remove cover or to deal extra damage) is however quite relevant. (I think it's from the other post?) It is a good argument to limit mechanics that favour flanking (to at most optional settings), since increasing the role of flanking is in a sense adding a new tool for the player to use when the AI can't.

[kikimoristan]

true. like ai would act as if nothing has changed. perhaps if deviation from center is non 0 all NON terrorist units go 1 aggression step backward to passive or cautious

[pilot00]

What I dislike in modern games and their cover mechanics, is that their cover is statick and predetermined. You can blow up a whole building in the 2012 x-com and have a ton of debri in front of the soldier (such as plasma ridled walls) and the soldier wont take cover because its not programmed as cover. Likewise a hair thin pole can provide half cover. Call me nostalgic, but I prefer the calculations of the old game. No matter what it is, if the shot hits it, it counts as cover, and quite possibly gets destroyed.

And lets not get started with 2012 shot tragectories. You miss the alien, and there is a football team behind him and the shot just gets through without hitting anything.....grumble grumble.

[Solarius Scorch]

Call me nostalgic, but I prefer the calculations of the old game.

Not just you, bro... Not just you.