Invisible Aliens Shooting me

[Zohan Dwir]

I play Community edition and it's annoying as hell, since aliens see way further than my soldiers and shoot me from further away than I can see. Is there a way to counter this?

[megalodon007]

Maybe in units folder. Try to find it and then edit it (sorry I dont know where it is)

[-=OF=- Alopard ⚜︎ ㋡]

Personally, I use scout with shield in front of my shooting soldiers. To find alien a bring fire on them. Then my other soldiers can are free to shoot them.

[Zohan Dwir]

Scout with shield. Could work, but sounds silly. Why would soldiers be half blind and unable to see more than like 20m, but then it's good if there's a dude with a shield in the front? It's just gamey.

[Tegga21]

Originally posted by Zohan Dwir:

Scout with shield. Could work, but sounds silly. Why would soldiers be half blind and unable to see more than like 20m, but then it's good if there's a dude with a shield in the front? It's just gamey.

Spotting is not gamey, its a real life tactic.

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by Tegga21:

Originally posted by Zohan Dwir:

Scout with shield. Could work, but sounds silly. Why would soldiers be half blind and unable to see more than like 20m, but then it's good if there's a dude with a shield in the front? It's just gamey.

Spotting is not gamey, its a real life tactic.

But it occurs for targets that are much further out than 20 meters.

If you want your units to see further you need to change the sight range for each armor in the armours_gc config file.

[Greηdel]

Yeah, in real life vision doesn't stop 18 yards away from you, so giving some units vision out to 20 yards is a really dumb "game balance" decision.

"He had an advantage on me because I could only see across the yard to the next house, but he could see a few inches more"
--nobody ever

Also, aiprops file has the alien distances which vary.

[pipo.p]

It is because we are limited in map size and screen size.
How to implement a difference in vision range if the player doesn't become blind at some distance, somehow, even if we have scopes and night vision equipments, It is exactly the same as when the game impose on us a limited number of action and move points in a turn.

What could be modded is a kind of overwatch mode, when still and equipped soldiers benefit from 1 or 2 extra vision range. Also the exploration fog could be removed at a greater range (not the fog of war).

Just role play, and pretend that Alien have nanodrones everywhere around a crashed UFO, or high-res cameras all around the hull of an UFO.

[Greηdel]

There's no way to role play around not being able to see something that you have direct line of sight to, in full day light, out in the open, at close range.

[pipo.p]

Well, I can rephrase it the other way: aliens have cyberimplants and use computerized weapons while you are equipped with Cold War arsenal. Now let's figure how to render this flagrant asymetry in 2D turn based game, at close range, in full day light.

On each side, you can play on two stats: accuracy and situational awareness. In general (at game start), aliens have better accuracy, and their weapons are more accurate. Their AI scripts can also make them "see" the enemy (be aware) a little farer.

Also, let's not forget that the player benefits from something unseen back to this years: an animated tactical HUD/map (= the screen).

Roleplaying, I tell me that these veterans (some of them never really fighted btw, or fighted in asymetric wars, on the powerful side) are just reduced to rookies when balls of hissing, seering hot plasma, seemingly coming from nowhere, fly over their head and change any bodypart they enter in contact with into a charred skeletton.
Remember Monbai: several batalions were needed to repel one corvette-size UFO crew.

And you want to see through the whole map (less than one kilometer) through scopes and direct mortar fire (or PRL in game), from a safe distance perhaps?

[Shahadem]

Really I don't see why sight range is so limited.

I would instead completely change how cover and vision works. Instead of limiting vision just base cover on being used to hide units so that you cannot see behind cover. Thus cover will no longer grant a set chance to miss but completely block sight of the unit and make you have to guess if the target is even behind that particular cover. And cover will reduce the intensity of all projectiles attempting to pass through it according to its mass and material strength.

[DerFinneAT]

Originally posted by Shahadem:

Really I don't see why sight range is so limited.

I would instead completely change how cover and vision works.

Concealment and cover are two distinct different things.
One makes your opponent see you harder, and the other one at least partially reduce the chance that a projectile can actually get to your body.

Regarding sight distance:
Pitch a first-world soldier with 1970 field-equipment versus another one using 2020 equipment, and later one will have a significant advantage on spotting the opponent earlier in an engagement.

Now extrapolate this to an alien race, that mastered space-fare.

In all these game one has to get used to a map, where visual ranges and weapon ranges are significantly scaled down for practicality reasons (unless you want to spend most of your time scrolling over an quite empty map).
So the effect regarding visual range and weapon range looks exgragated.

So you just get hung up on the "can't see further than 20 yards part", while it is the asymmetry you personally dislike.

But technology plays a very important role, when it comes down to who gets seen first.
Which usually translates to who gets shot first.