This is the very point I stopped playing this.
Four team members on overwatch, multiple enemies dance across an open space, none of them get shot at by my team.
I’ll be back in a year to see what’s changed.
Yes THIS. Overwatch & return-fire seem super-duper broken in opposite ways right now. The former almost never happens when i expect and the latter always happens when it should have a chance of failure.
Diego
Something i didnt realise at first with overwatch, your character can only shoot at the highlighted parts in the cone, not the whole cone.
Yes, there’s a highlighted part that represents what they can actually see
Wait! Huh?! Was this explained somewhere that I missed?
I cant remember the tutorial, but i noticed it a few battles into the game.
Think you!
Still doesn’t work for me because my guys are staring at an open area these enemies crossed thru.
And not only did none of my guys shoot, both of the enemies got to cover AND shot one of my two snipers.
This may well be working as intended, but it’s most certainly not something I’m interested in playing.
The targeting behind full cover seems really buggy, maybe it was that?
Funny you should mention that, because as a habit I try and put my guys in full cover. Even thought it didn’t seem to matter much, other than complicating their ability to shoot.
But I have this as a save, I’ve tried where I didn’t move my guys anywhere, literally left them standing in the open where they started, and I’ve tried it where they are all behind full and/or half cover.
The outcome was the same for my guys not shooting, there was variance in who the aliens shot.
I actually followed Phoenix Point on Twitter just to mention this. I haven’t used Twitter in a very long time, but I think I’ll start repeating this until they block me. :)
I’m not sure what this means, but for me I’ve never had my guys not fire at enemies moving within my cone. So not sure what triggers that bug…it would REALLY annoy me IF it happened to me!
Its a pointless activity once you get the return fire skill. Anyone within line of sight with that skill, will attack an attacker, even if not directly targeted. An alien attacks one of my guys and 4 guys return fire shredding him into paste.
I have one of those stealth guys, but Ive not leveled him up, He is on my c team, which i rarely field. I have two of the repair techs, and i just have found no use for them. They sit at my base and repair my tanks (which serve as guards) if my base is invaded. their Turrets are ok, and their hack turret ability is unclear to me what that does.
And vice versa. Especially since in the early games they still do that. And you just stand there.
Very true, which is why (when i can) i peak out shot around a corner and then draw them streaming around a corner. At most I get 2 returning fire, my snipers lead off with the heavy damage/pen from height/cover and then my assault finish them off as needed.
They may have the bio and tech advantage but they are not Seals thankfully, and i like that the game gives you a way to equalize the playing field with tactics. Considering the theme, it feels thematic unlike most games AI behaviors.
I’ve only had cover once block line of sight from a sniper perch, and yes it was annoying but most of the time my own cover has not been a hindrance.
I’ll give you a new one. I have a guy that HAS to move one square to shoot the alien. If he moves one square, in any fucking direction, he gets LOS to the alien. But the spot he is standing in is the same as any move.
I have tried this several times. If I stay where I am, and go to shoot, I get the same target as if I have moved.
Shooting without moving? Always miss. So I don’t get that two shot goodness. Essentially the game forces me to move. For no fucking reason.
Ok, no iron man mode on this one. Got a team wipe and my team c is not up to the task of ANY mission…sigh…restarting…I thought i could cut their teeth on haven raid missions, but those ramp up difficulty as well!
Overwatch stacks with return fire, so I wouldn’t call it pointless. It also triggers before you get shot at, so it’s sort of like a Bush Doctrine version of return fire. You can also use it to restrict when and where your dudes shoot, such as telling someone with a shotgun or pistol not to waste a shot until the target’s within optimal range.
I forget if I’ve already posted this here, but one of the issues is that snipers kneel before they fire, which lowers the point where the bullet leaves the gun. If you’re checking line of fire from a destination tile with a pistol or grenade equipped, you might get a rude awakening if you try to use a sniper rifle.
-Tom
I haven’t played the game, and I don’t have a real dog in the fight, but this seems so bizarre to me. In a turn-based tactics game like this, I simply don’t get why you would bring in what are essentially action-game mechanics like direct aiming and tracing lines of fire through the level geometry on a pixel by pixel basis. It would seem perfectly fine, indeed preferable, to simply have states like “covered” or “partially covered” and calculate fire that way. You could even abstract body part specific targeting if you really wanted to–full cover giving you very low chances to hit certain parts, etc.
The idea that in a turn-based tactical battle I have consider minutia like how high the gun barrel is relative to things like fence rails is mind boggling, and not in a good way. Pretty much kills any interest in this game for me. I really don’t see any conceptual integrity here, just a hodgepodge of mismatched ideas. I mean, it may play out fine for a lot of people, but the conceptualization seems whack.
That’s exactly the abstraction vs simulation. Xenonauts, Jagged Alliance etc already do this properly with abstracted bullet trajectories, but since firaxis xcom went with cover only being boardgame like, snapshot felt they could use this gimmick to pretend they made up the concept of calculating bullet trajectories, but they went so literal, they’ve created massive gameplay issues.
That’s a bit over-dramatic. They’re created some gameplay issues, but they’re not massive in the sense of being problematic. So long as you realize how the game works, it’s smooth, intuitive, and uniquely satisfying in a way that percentages aren’t. It’s actually quite the innovation for how it feels more like playing a boardgame with minis, where you sometimes have to get the string out to trace LOS. I would compare it to the difference between a wargame that uses CRT’s for die rolls and Combat Mission. Abstraction can be all good and well, but it’s nice to see someone trying something different for a change. That hasn’t happened with these sorts of tactical RPGs in quite a while.
-Tom