Any Mod to make the probability more realistic towards the value it's giving?

[Banana Boat Larry]

I miss most of my shots bellow 75%, it is really unreal. I missed even 98%. In XCOM EW I missed a 99% once but, anyway... there's any mod to make the AIM more realistic towards the value it's giving? Most games that have probability aren't this unforgiving, there must be something going on with XCOM probability or maybe I'm the saltiest man alive!

People are saying the game is hard and no, it ins't... They throw always the double of enemies against you with double attributes. Thats not hard, thats just overwhelming the player!

Well, thanks in advance! I love the game!

[starrynite120]

There's nothing wrong with the probability, and therefore nothing to fix. This is very firmly established. And missing 98% is possible. It sucks, but its possible.

[Aseran]

http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom2/mods/482/?

This mod's from ModNexus and I don't think the workshop has it.

Basically it makes the probability feel fairer to the player by tweaking it a bit, so it should suit your needs nicely.

I personally don't use it, but since XCOM 2 is a single player game for the most part, everyone should be free to play it in the way that suits them best.

Anyway, enjoy!

[Banana Boat Larry]

Thanks guys!

I may be a little too salty because when I played XCOM EW I did it on Hard mode and it was a Challenge. XCOM 2 on Hard mode it's kinda unfair, it's not tactical, they overhwelm you on all sides and you must play with your luck. I'm losing most missions and when I win I always end up evac-ing only one soldier. Anyway, maybe it's because I just started playing, I'll may do another run from the begining.

Thanks guys!

[Brian (The Schmaltzy Cynic)]

You may want to install a mod that makes killing all forces after completing the objective optional. It might help you get started. (Long War 2 basically works like this, so if you want practice it'll also help you there.)

[starrynite120]

I'd also recommend not starting on hard. Its still xcom, but tactics from the first game won't work here. It just takes some getting used to.

[Black Sheep Wall]

You can't evaluate probability anecdotally.
Before anyone accuses me of misusing that word, look it up.
Telling yourself stories, true or otherwise, about numbers is not a great way to generate relevant data concerning large sets.

If you are banking your soldiers life on a 99% shot, that soldier is going to die about 1 in 200 times. At 98%, 1 in 100. 95%, 1 in 40. 90%, 1 in 20, 80%, 1 in 10. That's assuming the shot you take will kill and the computer doesn't have an accuracy above 50% if you miss and it gets to fire back. Don't take bad bets with your soldiers lives. You only have to lose once for it to wipe out all progress you have made with that soldier.

The only sure shots are 100% and if the target has dodge those can graze.
That's still techinically a hit but a graze does less damage and cannot crit, so it can do drastically less damage than you were expecting, and it many cases is just as bad as a miss.

Unless you are playing on Legend, you should be planning accordingly.
I exclude Legend because it's a whole other animal and next level frustration.
If you are playing Legend though, you should already know that and wouldn't be here complaining.

Commander and below, basic squad tactics will carry the day.

Typical real-world squad tactics tend to weight at 3 to 1, meaning you engage the enemy with 3 men to their 1 in each maneuver. This means that when you engage an individual enemy, you should plan realistically, and not expect all your shots to hit or wound. Start with your fringe soldiers that are farthest from the action and either move them or shoot with them. If they miss you have the bulk of your high percentage shots left and can focus down the priority kills. If they hit, it's gravy. You should NEVER be counting on your sniper to hit a low percentage shot at the end of your turn. You should have opened with that shot usually, so that if it missed you could plan around it.

If you aren't accounting for variance, focusing fire and utilizing cover/ordinance properly, that's on you. If you are getting greedy and activating pods at the end of your turn instead of reload/overwatch, that's on you.

Yes, the computer will always outnumber you in a map(a KNOWN variable I'll point out), and will usually match you in numbers in each maneuver (pod). But it doesn't focus fire all that well, and sometimes it doesn't shoot at priority targets, sometimes it doesn't shoot at all. You are a coordinated team that can move and shoot in support of each other, and that is a HUGE advantage. Excluding the very beginning of the game, your squad is better trained and equiped than the VAST majority of enemies. Even the enemy big hitters have relatively low hit chances. You can also unlock 2 additional squad slots, adding 4+ actions to your turn, up from a base 8.

Barring complaints of bad risk management concerning probability factors, if your complaint boils down to feeling outnumbered, bring bigger guns, more explosives, more heavy weapons and invest in skills that can hit multiple enemies in one turn. If you are defaulting to the base shooting, you are often going to forgo a move command and spend 2 actions for 1 potential wound. If you assume that it's generally going to take 2-3 wounds to eleminate an enemy, you are down to 2-3 kills per turn and that's STILL assuming 100% accuracy. Against the more difficult enemies it will throw at you, and considering the enemy does not suffer attrition but you do, that is unacceptable. Your casualty rate will be through the roof. This is why you need to wound multiple enemies per action as often as possible. Standard shots won't do this, that's why you get all the skills and neat toys to play with. LET ME REITERATE, BASIC SHOTS SHOULD BE A LAST RESORT, THEY ARE INNEFFICIENT AT GENERATING CASUALTIES. Going hand in hand with this principle, stop saving your CD's. This isn't a MOBA or WOW. If you don't put an ability on CD as soon as realistically possible, you will get less uses per mission once you DO start using it. Using the same ability 3-4 times per mission is usually better than only using it once because you were "saving it". This is different than limited use abilities, do not confuse the two.

It's OK to have a soldier or two for priority targets or to run mop up on low health targets, but as a general rule it's better to remove many small guns than one big gun from the enemies next turn.

You also need to be VERY wary about EVER using an ability that has no kill potential. If you spend your entire turn on hacking/healing/flashbangs and moving around, OF COURSE it's going to be killing you. It's taking more shots than you, and the one advantage you DO get, you are wasting. That is your superior firepower, which kicks in with VERY few tech upgrades. Then you need to stay one step ahead of the computer on tech, as it sends better units at you, you need to have unlocked a proper response.

[Zloth]

Originally posted by starrynite120:

I'd also recommend not starting on hard. Its still xcom, but tactics from the first game won't work here. It just takes some getting used to.

This for sure. It took a bunch of missions for me to get used to the whole concealment mechanic.

[Banana Boat Larry]

Originally posted by Ronnie Law:

You can't evaluate probability anecdotally.
Before anyone accuses me of misusing that word, look it up.
Telling yourself stories, true or otherwise, about numbers is not a great way to generate relevant data concerning large sets.

If you are banking your soldiers life on a 99% shot, that soldier is going to die about 1 in 200 times. At 98%, 1 in 100. 95%, 1 in 40. 90%, 1 in 20, 80%, 1 in 10. That's assuming the shot you take will kill and the computer doesn't have an accuracy above 50% if you miss and it gets to fire back. Don't take bad bets with your soldiers lives. You only have to lose once for it to wipe out all progress you have made with that soldier.

The only sure shots are 100% and if the target has dodge those can graze.
That's still techinically a hit but a graze does less damage and cannot crit, so it can do drastically less damage than you were expecting, and it many cases is just as bad as a miss.

Unless you are playing on Legend, you should be planning accordingly.
I exclude Legend because it's a whole other animal and next level frustration.
If you are playing Legend though, you should already know that and wouldn't be here complaining.

Commander and below, basic squad tactics will carry the day.

Typical real-world squad tactics tend to weight at 3 to 1, meaning you engage the enemy with 3 men to their 1 in each maneuver. This means that when you engage an individual enemy, you should plan realistically, and not expect all your shots to hit or wound. Start with your fringe soldiers that are farthest from the action and either move them or shoot with them. If they miss you have the bulk of your high percentage shots left and can focus down the priority kills. If they hit, it's gravy. You should NEVER be counting on your sniper to hit a low percentage shot at the end of your turn. You should have opened with that shot usually, so that if it missed you could plan around it.

If you aren't accounting for variance, focusing fire and utilizing cover/ordinance properly, that's on you. If you are getting greedy and activating pods at the end of your turn instead of reload/overwatch, that's on you.

Yes, the computer will always outnumber you in a map(a KNOWN variable I'll point out), and will usually match you in numbers in each maneuver (pod). But it doesn't focus fire all that well, and sometimes it doesn't shoot at priority targets, sometimes it doesn't shoot at all. You are a coordinated team that can move and shoot in support of each other, and that is a HUGE advantage. Excluding the very beginning of the game, your squad is better trained and equiped than the VAST majority of enemies. Even the enemy big hitters have relatively low hit chances. You can also unlock 2 additional squad slots, adding 4+ actions to your turn, up from a base 8.

Barring complaints of bad risk management concerning probability factors, if your complaint boils down to feeling outnumbered, bring bigger guns, more explosives, more heavy weapons and invest in skills that can hit multiple enemies in one turn. If you are defaulting to the base shooting, you are often going to forgo a move command and spend 2 actions for 1 potential wound. If you assume that it's generally going to take 2-3 wounds to eleminate an enemy, you are down to 2-3 kills per turn and that's STILL assuming 100% accuracy. Against the more difficult enemies it will throw at you, and considering the enemy does not suffer attrition but you do, that is unacceptable. Your casualty rate will be through the roof. This is why you need to wound multiple enemies per action as often as possible. Standard shots won't do this, that's why you get all the skills and neat toys to play with. LET ME REITERATE, BASIC SHOTS SHOULD BE A LAST RESORT, THEY ARE INNEFFICIENT AT GENERATING CASUALTIES. Going hand in hand with this principle, stop saving your CD's. This isn't a MOBA or WOW. If you don't put an ability on CD as soon as realistically possible, you will get less uses per mission once you DO start using it. Using the same ability 3-4 times per mission is usually better than only using it once because you were "saving it". This is different than limited use abilities, do not confuse the two.

It's OK to have a soldier or two for priority targets or to run mop up on low health targets, but as a general rule it's better to remove many small guns than one big gun from the enemies next turn.

You also need to be VERY wary about EVER using an ability that has no kill potential. If you spend your entire turn on hacking/healing/flashbangs and moving around, OF COURSE it's going to be killing you. It's taking more shots than you, and the one advantage you DO get, you are wasting. That is your superior firepower, which kicks in with VERY few tech upgrades. Then you need to stay one step ahead of the computer on tech, as it sends better units at you, you need to have unlocked a proper response.

Ok then, I think I was just salty. Thanks for the tips!

[Wolfiefang]

Yeah sorry about that salty feelings! Glad you posted it though and are responding VERY well! =D I used to work for a certain game company that seal with RNG on a daily basis. I got to see the real numbers compared to what websites would post as the "real number" based on multiple people reporting.

In short, people feel they are less lucky then they really are. It's easy to see why they don't win the lottery, but it's hard to see when they don't win a 50% chance after 2 tries. In short, just keep at it =) The numbers are not lies (the system is not like Fire Emblem where some were very fake numbers), and you can do it =D

[Banana Boat Larry]

Originally posted by Wolfiefang:

Yeah sorry about that salty feelings! Glad you posted it though and are responding VERY well! =D I used to work for a certain game company that seal with RNG on a daily basis. I got to see the real numbers compared to what websites would post as the "real number" based on multiple people reporting.

In short, people feel they are less lucky then they really are. It's easy to see why they don't win the lottery, but it's hard to see when they don't win a 50% chance after 2 tries. In short, just keep at it =) The numbers are not lies (the system is not like Fire Emblem where some were very fake numbers), and you can do it =D

Yeah and if you think about it, its like life, bad things stay on our memories more than good things Hahahaha.

Anyway, thank you!

[Aelies von Saladir]

I can understand how you feel. I just yelled at the screen for missing two 90% shots in a single turn (and got one of my favourite guy killed for that). But still, come to really think about it, by 90%, it means that you will still miss 1 out of 10 ♥♥♥♥♥, and I sure have hit many, many more 90% shots before this. Overall, it kinds of balance out, even when each missed shot is so irritating.

[Banana Boat Larry]

Just about now I lost a mission where I lose the game. Will start another run. The salt is burning me! I hope I'll do better now Hahahaha.

[D.Cub3d]

It's just an inherent "issue" with probability based anything. RNG at times will just destroy you, but coming from Fire Emblem, I'm kinda used to it. Old fire emblems were terrible with this and now they impliment a dual rolling system and average them out instead of using one roll. I'd say it helped a little, but any time you're dealing with probability you're going to get dissapointed. Probability doesn't take into account previous results, only the case being worked on at the moment. You can technically miss on 10 straight 99% to hits, but the chances of it happening are incredibly slim. You could also hit on 10 straight 10% chances, again incredibly slim chance but it can thanks to the way probability works. There's unfortunately no real way to reliably determine if you'll hit outside of 100% chance.

[D.Cub3d]

I like how you elaborated on it comparing to 100. And to add to it, just because you have 99 out of 100 chances to hit, doesn't mean that 1 chance can't come up, or won't come up. As was said before in this thread, probability takes no concern with previous or future results, only the current result matters.

I'm sure if this game wasn't so punishing and you took shots that were around 50% you'd find you will hit or miss far more than 50% of the time. It's just how that ♥♥♥♥ works.

[Black Sheep Wall]

It's not just about accurately factoring probability, it's about risk management.
If the result of a failed shot is that you have 3 other soldiers to take another shot and all your guys are full health and in strong cover and the enemy is a scrub with a low damage weapon, then it isn't a big deal.

On the other hand, against a 1 HP Sectopod, parking your ranger next to it to take a 90% shot at the end of your turn MIGHT be a horrible idea, the risk is MUCH higher.

It's not just what can happen, but how you can deal with the range of possibilities and factor failures naturally into your planning so that you aren't exposed to catastrophic risk. Keep in mind that you get multiple actions per soldier per turn and you don't need to take a soldiers full turn before choosing another. This could be something like moving a soldier into firing range on a high health target, holding the kill shot, then shooting with others. If you don't get it into kill potential range on other shots, you just move the soldier back to cover. If you move and shoot, you might hit, but it won't have kill potential and you're stuck. One ordering leaves you with an out the other commits you to a bad position.

I take sub 50% shots all the time, and sometimes they shape the battlefield because they hit and get a kill, but that just makes the rest of the turn easier because I wasn't counting on that shot landing anyway, it's just a bonus. If it whiffs, it's not a big deal because I wasn't banking on it anyway, I had other outs. This is why guaranteed damage abilities are so good, if you whiff all your shots you can still eliminate critical threats, even if it takes more actions to do so at lower damage.

Example: I'll toss an EMP at a Sectopod and if it fails I'll put it in stasis. If I did it another way, and used my Psi Op on another action, and the EMP misses, I'm screwed with no outs. On the other hand, if the EMP stuns, it frees up my Psi Op to engage other targets. Or I could just put it in stasis and potentially have a suboptimal action for my EMP carrier. Proper order allows you to maximize beneficial RNG in your favor and minimize detrimental RNG. This is where the law of large numbers can be used to your advantage. If you have many risky actions, it is far less likely they will ALL fail. So even though it was low percentage, a shot can shape the field by hitting and killing, and then you commit your reserve actions to the targets you missed, instead of focusing on all targets evenly and then taking high risk shots. In one scenario you can react to the failures and successes, the other puts you at the mercy of RNG where you MUST get lucky IN A SPECIFIC WAY, rather than JUST GET LUCKY SOMEWHERE.

You should look at the shape of each turn and think about the sets of actions you CAN take, and what CAN happen and roll the dice on the risky things FIRST, then run your guaranteed/high probability actions LAST.

I'm not trying to be a ♥♥♥♥, but you have to understand that as a human being, you have a biological disadvantage when calculating probability. A human brain is EXTREMELY bad when dealing with probabalistic scenarios, it prefers binary things. This WILL happen, that WILL happen. Introduce the word probably to those statements and you start getting really screwy outlooks on what's going on or what WILL or DID happen. If you want to be able to deal with probability, you need to train your mind to do it, just like anything else you learn to do. Your basic wetware just isn't up to the task, you need to upgrade it.