Trouble understanding targeting

[Dormammu]

I think the game needs to improve how it communicates what you are able to target. Often I'll move to a spot to make an attack and I cannot, but I can't be sure why. Are enemy units blocking line of sight to one another? Can I shoot around corners? It says I can't usually target other elevations, but sometimes I can only target a different elevation...

Anyone else having this issue where they move and undo, move and undo, move and undo trying to find a spot from which they can make the attack they have in mind?

[kyu bey]

Default weapons got a + shape range to shoot.
It might hit other enemy / your ally depends on how you place them.

[Hitachi Makita 工場]

+

[BlackjackGT]

Although I could see myself doing another of my lazy screenshot Steam game guides to try to help explain concepts in this game, it would certainly be nicer if the release version communicate that kind of stuff more clearly.

I think part of the confusion is the game's weapon's limited attack paths reminding me of some late 1990s TBS squaddie games like Odium. That game had all these weapons that could only fire one direction, or cardinal directions or a few tiles etc. Nothing that could fire at tiles in a 360-degree aiming cone.

I so often find that my guys/gals can't target anything because of the diagonal-only firing path or a 4-tiles only firing path or a "can't fire a grenade that will hit the enemy who's wide open" syndrome.

It's all stuff I think I can get used to in time, but I certainly have lots of instances where I think I'm moving soldier to a good spot and then he/she simply can't target anything.

[Dormammu]

Originally posted by BlackjackGT:

It's all stuff I think I can get used to in time, but I certainly have lots of instances where I think I'm moving soldier to a good spot and then he/she simply can't target anything.

This is it exactly. As you said, it’s really not communicated. I think if this one element were more clear, I’d have no real objections to the design of this game.

[Sekoku]

+1. The UI and information needs to be better. I can move Marco to be standing right next to a grenader on a 2 elevation map but can't fire because he apparently used a Sync attack or special ability before that point. If that's the case, the special ability should be warning you that you can't attack that turn with that unit outside of syncs.

Same for in-cover. You can move a unit know that you can fire on an enemy but for some reason can't over cover.

[SoloQ]

I had an issue where part of a map with elevation had a row of cubes basically missing. I was up high and could hit 'below' it, but if I moved to where I thought the next row is to the side of it (down from the elevated position, to the right), there's a space between them and there's nowhere to stand to hit between those two points to hit that middle square(except for of course moving to the opposite side of the map or to the left or right sides of the map.) It felt very weird.