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Author Topic: kneeling for cover or aiming  (Read 9364 times)

Offline scyt4l3

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kneeling for cover or aiming
« on: November 22, 2016, 07:12:03 pm »
I'm listening to Ivan Dogovich let's play up close and personnal and I noticed that he never kneels.
I'm wondering why and if the majority does this.

Also, thanks for these recordings Dogovich, you da Ivan

cheers

Offline Meridian

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2016, 07:19:12 pm »
I am also not kneeling at all.

Kneeling for cover doesn't bring any benefits at all... really... like 0.1%

Kneeling for accuracy brings a few more percent, but the 12 TU to kneel (4 TU) and stand up (8 TU) are too much to pay... I'd rather have TUs to move into safety and have a bit lower accuracy. Difference between life and death...

Offline Arthanor

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2016, 07:39:25 pm »
With 12 TUs, you can move 3 more tiles and hopefully get into good cover where the enemy won't see you instead of kneeling behind a rock and praying. "Defensive kneeling" is pretty useless indeed. It is a flaw in the XCom aiming mechanic that the "exposed area" doesn't really matter when trying to hit something, so hiding 50% of yourself doesn't make you much more likely to be missed.

A hit (a simple roll of 0-100% compared to your hit chance) is a hit on some exposed area and it will find it the vast majority of the time, and a miss is a complete miss that doesn't even go near. There are some edge cases where what should have been a hit misses because of terrain, but they're either bugs where you shouldn't have been allowed to fire or a very unlucky situation.

For firing, "aggressive kneeling" generally gives you ~10% to hit more. It's worth doing in some situations, like when you have soldiers in a good position from where you can reliably reach a good chunk of the map (on top of a hill, on top of a transport). But for your scouts and skirmishers, it's better to walk around more and, again, get into good cover to not get shot.

"Overkneeling" is a typical XCom mistake. It makes you feel like you're doing something to help, but you really aren't. In some rare situations, a piece of terrain is high enough to hide you when kneeling but your head will poke out if you stand. But that's rare. Certain mods (like XComFiles and XPiratez) have some weapons that really benefit from kneeling, like HMGs (where the extra chance to hit is quite a bonus and a soldier manning those weapons are not really mobile any ways).

Offline ivandogovich

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2016, 07:46:06 pm »

Also, thanks for these recordings Dogovich, you da Ivan

cheers

Heh!  I'm glad you are enjoying them!  I hope they are entertaining, though for greater educational value I highly recommend Meridian as a guru of tactical combat!   Cheers!

Offline scyt4l3

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2016, 08:27:38 pm »
Heh!  I'm glad you are enjoying them!  I hope they are entertaining, though for greater educational value I highly recommend Meridian as a guru of tactical combat!   Cheers!

I'm there for the entertainment, but Meridian is on my list for sure!

Thanks for the answers, it's quite clear now. I must admit that I was wayyyy overkneeling.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2016, 10:57:54 pm »
I kneel often, because kneeling is cool.

Offline scyt4l3

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #6 on: November 23, 2016, 12:16:16 am »
I kneel often, because kneeling is cool.
I know right? It was a shock.

Offline 7Saturn

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #7 on: November 23, 2016, 08:14:50 pm »
Well I do so, too. Especially when your soldiers are used as snipers, it is useful. Having 85% oder 100 % Acc makes a difference. I'm not sure, if there's some benefit in terms of cover, at least in some situations. But I do know for a fact, that there are some situations (like behind a rock wall like on the farm map type) when kneeling gives you trouble with seeing and aiming at enemy units. If you do, you can't see them any more (especially Sectoids) or at least you can't aim at them any more (no LOF).

Offline kkmic

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2016, 09:22:43 am »
Accuracy should take into consideration what % of the target voxels you can hit from the current position. That way, kneeling or standing behind cover would have made sense, and having an unobstructed LOF would have been paramount in order to hit the target.

Just my two cents.

Offline CanadianBeaver

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #9 on: November 24, 2016, 03:33:49 pm »
perhaps, kneeling = covering... but not in the game...

Offline 7Saturn

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #10 on: November 24, 2016, 03:35:32 pm »
To be honest, I can only imagine taking cover behind some shrubs or something, but I never had any chance to check that one out. Aside from that, are there many tiles, that provide some visual cover? The moment they can spot you, the will be able to fire, too.

Offline hellrazor

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #11 on: November 25, 2016, 11:55:35 pm »
Kneeling grants your soldiers a accuracy bonus of 15%.
Which can make the difference, especially if spotter/sniper tactics are used.
Despite of that soldiers units have a kneeling height defined, which is lower than their
usual standing height, reducing their voxel hitbox.
Kneeling also makes you slightly harder to hit, because of this.
So using it makes sense.
Btw the survivability of scouts increases drastically when the advanced option "Alternate Movement Methods" is used.
Which allows for sidestepping, forcing mutual surprise in many cases.
It also allows running, which lowers time unit consumption, for a increased energy use, allowing a soldier with 80/81 tu to move 26/27 tiles instead of 20, you will love those medikit stims suddenly. ^^

Offline Slaughter

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #12 on: November 28, 2016, 07:17:28 am »
You wanna know what I think would be cool? Prone position.
- Uses more TU to go from standing to prone and vice-versa (less if going from kneeling to prone and vice-versa) - say, 8 or 10? 12? More?
- Greater accuracy bonus
- Makes soldier harder to hit
- Another penalty? Fallout Tactics had bonus melee % vs prone targets.

Btw, a thought: Why someone never made a mod for aliens to kneel? Most of the aliens are humanoid.
- Sectoids are small so probably no need
- Floaters are weird, not sure.
- Snakemen are, well, Snakes, but they could just go slither instead.
- Mutons are fairly humanoid.
- Etherals are weird too.

Offline Countdown

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #13 on: November 28, 2016, 08:36:08 am »
Thinking back on all the TUs I've wasted kneeling behind worthless cover makes me sad. Oh the lives that could have been saved!

Offline Arthanor

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Re: kneeling for cover or aiming
« Reply #14 on: November 28, 2016, 08:37:08 am »
Prone could be interesting, but there's no support for that in the engine.

And for alien kneeling, I can see two reasons:

1 - You've sort of said it yourself:
- Sectoids are small so probably no need
- Floaters are weird, not sure.
- Snakemen are, well, Snakes, but they could just go slither instead.
- Mutons are fairly humanoid.
- Etherals are weird too.
So, useful for 1/5 of the alien races, less if we consider terror units, none of which make sense kneeling.

2 - You'd need to change the AI, which means changing the core engine (although that might be easier than for lying prone, since the AI can presumably already handle standing up since I think you can kneel enemy units after MCing them)