[ARMOR] Stealth Suit - armor that makes you harder to hit

[kikimoristan]

On the modsite  https://www.openxcom.com/mod/stealth-suit

Stealth Suit



Cloaks your unit making it harder to be shot at.

REMEMBER: Unit rotation does not matter. Looking left or right does not rotate your LOF. Verticality/horizontality/diagonality is relative to the map and does not change on the map.

How or why this works:
This is achieved by giving it a no center  LOF template (rather than the default central cylinder) making the OpenXCom engine targeting calculations fail if enemy is standing up down left right relative to the map and on same x/y as your unit.  In order to hit this armor you ned to be situated only  diagonal angles relative to the map.  Due to lack of LOS to target enemies will be unable to detect you at times. Only exception are melee units that go straight for you. 

Take a look at the following pictures:

3 normal dudes and 1 stealthed guy


Aim straight and this is what happens NO LINE OF FIRE


this is 1st ps view. check the difference between stealthed guy and regular 2 guys. that's why no LOF....game thinks shot just goes right trough him. to hit him you need to hit any one of those 4 corners


Aim diagonally and it works. Also yes cloaking is broken once unit dies and you can see how the armor really looks like cause in active inv is cloaked still.


There are 8 possible perfect positions to fire at an unit. And others in between. What this armor does is it cuts all possible possitions in half to 4 essentially making you 50% invisible. But for melee they don't give a shit cause they gonna com at an angle every time. For ranged units is harder as they need to be in the right firing position otherwise they can't see you. The close they get to you the easier it gets to find the right angle to shoot you.   


Tech is same as power suit but a bit cheaper and much longer build time/research time.

If you have any ideas or find bugs or any suggestions or comments please let me know!

Enjoy

[Ridаn]

Thats really cool concept, do like.

[kikimoristan]

Thats really cool concept, do like.

Thanks .  I updated the description of why or how this works. Just an idea I had wanted to try it out turns out it actually works.

[ivandogovich]

Very interesting concept, but it has the Huge possibility to become OP!

My thoughts are that this stealth suit should make it impossible to use ranged weapons.  You might be able to add huge aiming penalties with OpenXcom Extended.   Lore wise this would make sense, since any weapon fire from the stealthed soldier should reveal its position.  It might be best to only have it able to use melee weapons.  OXE could boost melee skill too, which could greatly help out some melee systems (i.e. combat knife) that rely on melee skill, since standard soldier melee abilities are pretty weak.

It would be interesting to see how it holds up with melee enemies.  Throw it into a battle generator with a terrorship and chrysallids and see if it gets targeted.   (Stealth Zombies O.o)

And... omgerd.  If you can do this for Xcom..... you have to develop a stealthed alien race as well!!!!  Ack!!  Chrysalid incoming! Can't target it!  Prep grenade and kiss your butt good bye!

Cheers, Ivan

[kikimoristan]

Very interesting concept, but it has the Huge possibility to become OP!

My thoughts are that this stealth suit should make it impossible to use ranged weapons.  You might be able to add huge aiming penalties with OpenXcom Extended.   Lore wise this would make sense, since any weapon fire from the stealthed soldier should reveal its position.  It might be best to only have it able to use melee weapons.  OXE could boost melee skill too, which could greatly help out some melee systems (i.e. combat knife) that rely on melee skill, since standard soldier melee abilities are pretty weak.

It would be interesting to see how it holds up with melee enemies.  Throw it into a battle generator with a terrorship and chrysallids and see if it gets targeted.   (Stealth Zombies O.o)

And... omgerd.  If you can do this for Xcom..... you have to develop a stealthed alien race as well!!!!  Ack!!  Chrysalid incoming! Can't target it!  Prep grenade and kiss your butt good bye!

Cheers, Ivan

Thanks Ivan. I'm working on Stalkers a stealthed alien race that gonna unlock this armor . Stealth stuff is easy to do cause is just outlines. Thing is I want stalkers to be like dogs 4 legged and  melee so i kinda wanted the to be terror units but I dunno. Maybe I'll make a whole race of stealth guy and stealth terror . Stalked deff in it. Stalkers are hard to fight cause they cannot be targetted so you need melee . I keep trying to find a way to make my melee weapons relevant as well. Eventually I'll put all these thogether 

Eidit: in my playtest I was literarily walking around aliens and thy rarely reacted but few times they did i insta died. Is kinda risky armor is about being brave and kinda going all in.

[ivandogovich]

It seems like the simple counter to stealthed units is grenades.  See one coming?  Just hit it with grenade, etc.   Therefore, their underarmor should be significantly strengthened.  Maybe only killable by HE Packs, or 2-3 grenades.  Making for really, "Oh, Cr*9!" moments.

[ivandogovich]

So, can they target you from the sides? 

[kikimoristan]

yes the LOS template I use  i think is #65 (if I remember correctly) which is kinda like this

XXXXXXX
XOXXXXX
XXXXXXX
XXXXXXX

so only when center of fire lands on that O LOS calculation is a success...sides more chance for hit %...front and back too much gap. diagonally might work.

is deff not untargettable just less targetable.

yeah grenades and he packs deff will work and stun and he and anything with area damage cause you just hit beside them but you know if they have like 100 hp you gonna run out of grenades eventually fighting 3,4 of these guys.

also not in the picture but when the guy dies he's no longer stealthed  as a corpse and you can kinda see how the suit really looks like. only then. that's an easter egg

[Arthanor]

There was a stealthy alien in the mechtoid race mod earlier, although it was only graphical. You can also play with the height to make the target area smaller.

Does the suit work in the open? In theory, there would be nothing obstructing LOS to the target, so it doesn't really matter where relative to the graphic it is..

Once you figure out how to use it, it feels a bit gamey. Obtaining it right at the beginning with personal armor sounds really early. Personal armor rarely save the life of an operative getting shot with anything but a plasma pistol, whereas rarely getting shot at is definitely going to extend your life.

To me it seems like it might be a better concept for aliens than XCom.

[Mono]

Aliens and Soldiers can be stealth? I have no words! 
This is super effective!!!!
Can be a whole new branch tech: Hyper-wave, Ufo Construction, Psi-Lab and now Stealth!

[kikimoristan]

you can't play with the height is hardcoded  to maximum amount of layers in a unit tile. you can only play with the type of LOF.  if anyone knows better post code here.

yeah i might make stealth appear later in the game like  power suit level but it depends on the effectiveness of stealth suit. might be that is not as OP or maybe it is that op. also once volutar fixes the aim might make this not as affective but luckily will be an optional setting so for now it works.

positioning matters..essentially it reduces the locations and alien can be to more like corners and sides . what you need is to have that LOS Template orange stick be at the center so if you move your guy around  eventually you will find a position you can hit them from. those positions are left right and kinda diagonal. whee before they could shot from any directions now they can shoot from only about 6-10 positions out of all possible squares around you.

yeah i got an alien planned that unlocks this tech.

[Solarius Scorch]

Wow.

I'd have to test it in game to be sure, but... wow. Such a simple concept.

[Dioxine]

Very inventive. Thumbs up!

[Arthanor]

you can't play with the height is hardcoded  to maximum amount of layers in a unit tile. you can only play with the type of LOF.  if anyone knows better post code here.

As far as I know, you are limited to height 25 but you can make a unit that is very short and floating, which would have a really hard to hit target (essentially a floating disk that you can miss from above and below when shooting straight). How useable it is to reduce the likelihood of being shot/hit, I'm not sure (depends on the hit area of a successful shot).

[kikimoristan]

As far as I know, you are limited to height 25 but you can make a unit that is very short and floating, which would have a really hard to hit target (essentially a floating disk that you can miss from above and below when shooting straight). How useable it is to reduce the likelihood of being shot/hit, I'm not sure (depends on the hit area of a successful shot).

thanks for feedback Arthanor. in my tests aliens don't reaction fire like 50-80% of the time when walking past and even if they do  they seem to miss shots even if you're sitting right beside them . fist time i seen a cyberdisk miss a shot 1 square away. but  abut 20% of the time (perhaps more) they hit you and you're insta dead.  i could experiment with standing height floating height stuff making it be a floating ball but i kinda like the stick makes it a bit more fair.  is hard enough for them to hit me as it is. i  still gonna try for aliens.

edit: also chryssalids don't give a shit they just bust you down really fast as it checks if a unit is there not los. right?

i can make an alien with LOF Tmplate 0 meaning cannot be targeted at all.   i have tried it and it works and is annoying. haha.

i was debating in making stalkers lof 0 so you need to use melee/explosives only but that kinda breaks the game also makes my mods a bit more useful (but this is not the scope). breaks  the game cause what if you are against stalkers and you have no explosives/melee/stun on you. is gg. they cannot die.