Sometimes guys do not fire in overwatch

[RippieFlippie]

I had four guys in overwatch, only two fired before the enemy had their turn again. Needless to say, that was not according to plan. Is this when I blue move them and put them in overwatch? I can not figure it out why they sometimes fire and sometimes not. They were definitely in range.

Any chance for a written ingame manual? You know, good old times. Back when players were told what the heck is going on. Like this?
www.xcomufo.com/x1manual.pdf

Man, the game can really pizz you off with hundreds of bits and pieces floating around that can do something and you need to get all of it from forums and google. (rant over)

[Tiasmoon]

Apart from being in range, they also need to have line of sight.

[Mr. Nice]

For a standard overwatch shot, they need to see movement, which means visibility on two tiles in a row that the enemy moves through. Building corners are the most obvious time your soldier can't seem them before the final tile at the corner, where the enemy will often stop for the full cover. Some advanced forms of overwatch, like speicalists covering fire or sharpshooters killzone, will trigger on any action as well. In particular in the previous building corner example, while never will trigger as the enemy reaches the corner, they will trigger when the enemy then takes an action (probably shoot or similar), and that reaction shot will take place before the action which triggers it.

[hghwolf]

There`s a few reasons why a soldier in OW wouldn`t fire on a target.

One is that no enemy actually triggered the overwatch; it`s not enough to appear in range, they have to actually MOVE within that range, so if an enemy moves only to the very edge of a soldiers vision, OW won`t trigger.

The other common one is that the soldier is in concealment. Soldiers in concealment won`t use their OW shot unless they are revealed; you typically see this with Rangers who take the perk that lets them remain concealed when the squad is revealed.

A last possibility is that the only enemy that would have triggered the OW shot has Shadowstep, which is basically only the case with the Assassin Chosen.

[RippieFlippie]

I am done. They should at least mark line of sights or ranges that my guys can view or ranges that the enemies can act in. I am constantly puzzled if I am at the right distance. Then this snake thing turns out to be a sharpshooter shooting my guy while he does not even see it and so on and so on. This stuff on top of the RNG is just too painful to play. I am not the gambler type. How many hundreds of hours does it need to get accustomed to those intransparent actions that constantly catch me on the wrong foot. Not worth learning all the strange things by heart to eventually succeed. Just not my type of game. Give me chess with a clear and complex rule set and then everything is really up to my brain.
No bad feelings. I got it on sale for $19.99, so no loss. Also thanks for the help in the other thread! That was actually really nice! Looks like some fab community actually and the game was fun after all for a few days. The presentation is really well done in the game! Really immersive.

[Artek [General]]

Wait, overwatch only triggers if the target moves 2 tiles in soldier's LOS?

Well, that exaplains things...

Also i heard AI is a smart ass and actually can develop special courses for his units in order to avoid your overwatches.
Which is probably why sometimes i see things like archons and faceless to run around in weird zig-zags for no apparent reason.

[Eggy]

Rigt click game in steam, "view player manual". Its not been updated for wotc but most of it is still valid I expect. Also there is a pretty extensive set of tutorial levels.
If your putting 4 guys into overwatch your going to struggle anyway. Each one of those overwatch shots has a penalty to aim. Your just leaving yourself open to flanks and ganks.

[Mr. Nice]

Originally posted by Artek General:

Wait, overwatch only triggers if the target moves 2 tiles in soldier's LOS?

Maybe I wasn't clear. Even a one tile move will trigger overwatch, of both the stand and end tiles are in LOS. All moves include at least two tiles in their path (the stand and end tiles), so that's what I meant about having to see two tiles in a row of the movement path. Like I said, it's generally building corners where this effect is noticable.

[RippieFlippie]

Originally posted by Eggy:

Rigt click game in steam, "view player manual". Its not been updated for wotc but most of it is still valid I expect. Also there is a pretty extensive set of tutorial levels.
If your putting 4 guys into overwatch your going to struggle anyway. Each one of those overwatch shots has a penalty to aim. Your just leaving yourself open to flanks and ganks.

Concealed. Idea was to have four guys on elevated position. Number 5 goes ahead, waits until enemies red vision squares got him. Then runs back to the other guys, triggers the enemies. They run after him and exhaust their two turns by doing so and getting the crap overwatched out of them in their second turn. They exhausted their two turns, are almost down, now it us my turn again. Done. Well, actually not as it turns out because it is impossible to accurately set it up.
It is an interesting question what makes people come back actually. I am sure it has to do with gambling or something. I mean you play a game, where you know even if you are at your best and make no mistakes, you can still loose due to RNG, or if you are less experience with all the LOS and ranges, due to missing movement by a square or so because there are (by design?) no indications about viewing range and so on. It must be a gambler's reflex that is triggered. A stonecold logician, say Mr. Spock, would not touch the game because he knows the outcome can vary (very?) significantly independently of his actions, unlike chess for example. It's the casino gambling reflex, is not it?

[Eggy]

Originally posted by R.C. Bot Inc.:

Originally posted by Eggy:

Rigt click game in steam, "view player manual". Its not been updated for wotc but most of it is still valid I expect. Also there is a pretty extensive set of tutorial levels.
If your putting 4 guys into overwatch your going to struggle anyway. Each one of those overwatch shots has a penalty to aim. Your just leaving yourself open to flanks and ganks.

Concealed. Idea was to have four guys on elevated position. Number 5 goes ahead, waits until enemies red vision squares got him. Then runs back to the other guys, triggers the enemies. They run after him and exhaust their two turns by doing so and getting the crap overwatched out of them in their second turn. They exhausted their two turns, are almost down, now it us my turn again. Done. Well, actually not as it turns out because it is impossible to accurately set it up.
It is an interesting question what makes people come back actually. I am sure it has to do with gambling or something. I mean you play a game, where you know even if you are at your best and make no mistakes, you can still loose due to RNG, or if you are less experience with all the LOS and ranges, due to missing movement by a square or so because there are (by design?) no indications about viewing range and so on. It must be a gambler's reflex that is triggered. A stonecold logician, say Mr. Spock, would not touch the game because he knows the outcome can vary (very?) significantly independently of his actions, unlike chess for example. It's the casino gambling reflex, is not it?

This is exactly the cheese move that got overwatch altered. Its also why there is a chance for the enemy to fire at you instead of moving when they are revealed.

[Mr. Nice]

Overwatch itself hasn't changed much between eu/ew and xcom though has it? Maybe the exact aim nerfs, but the trigger mechanics are the same.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by R.C. Bot Inc.:

Concealed. Idea was to have four guys on elevated position. Number 5 goes ahead, waits until enemies red vision squares got him. Then runs back to the other guys, triggers the enemies. They run after him and exhaust their two turns by doing so and getting the crap overwatched out of them in their second turn. They exhausted their two turns, are almost down, now it us my turn again. Done. Well, actually not as it turns out because it is impossible to accurately set it up.
It is an interesting question what makes people come back actually. I am sure it has to do with gambling or something. I mean you play a game, where you know even if you are at your best and make no mistakes, you can still loose due to RNG, or if you are less experience with all the LOS and ranges, due to missing movement by a square or so because there are (by design?) no indications about viewing range and so on. It must be a gambler's reflex that is triggered. A stonecold logician, say Mr. Spock, would not touch the game because he knows the outcome can vary (very?) significantly independently of his actions, unlike chess for example. It's the casino gambling reflex, is not it?

People comeback to the game because of the gamling, yes, but not the type you think of.
The game offers insanely high replayability. With nearly everything in the game randomised including skirmish maps and wolrd-map continent bonuses every playthrough is most likely to be unique to all others.

I honestly couldn't understand what tactic you were proposing here. To get one of your soldiers to get flanked-revealed so that they reveal the squad and enemies get shot by overwatch squad while giving your a free next turn?
I mean yes, its a legit tactic but... You risk your soldier getting butt-shot.
Usually its better to either initiate the fight yourself or to have SPARK unit on the team. Aliens dont get a chance to have a free shot at it when they reveal it, unlike normal soldiers.

[RippieFlippie]

Originally posted by Artek General:

I honestly couldn't understand what tactic you were proposing here. To get one of your soldiers to get flanked-revealed so that they reveal the squad and enemies get shot by overwatch squad while giving your a free next turn?
I mean yes, its a legit tactic but... You risk your soldier getting butt-shot.
Usually its better to either initiate the fight yourself or to have SPARK unit on the team. Aliens dont get a chance to have a free shot at it when they reveal it, unlike normal soldiers.

Hmmm, my guy who played the bait was always able to run away. Never got shot in the butt. I was hiding behind cover, then when they moved and the red square was over my guy, I started running for all his two turns, breaking concealment and having the baddies run after him.

True, replayability is really strong. I generally like the game design and so on with the random maps. It is quite well done. It is really just personal preference that I dislike the randomness by design. Not just the RNG, but also the guesswork with the tiles due to the absence of clear indications. But then I am also a hard logician in real and if something has too many unknowns, then I tend avoid it in most cases. But that's really just me. Some like apples, some like bananas. This kind of thing.

Actually also the combat protocal looked good for triggering pods from a distance and have them run into overwatches.

[Eggy]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/41utlq/jake_solomon_on_twitter_the_beaglerush_maneuver/

[Thradar]

Originally posted by R.C. Bot Inc.:

I am done. They should at least mark line of sights or ranges that my guys can view or ranges that the enemies can act in

Hold down your right Alt key while you move your mouse around to see where a squaddie will move. It will show which enemies will have visibility to that tile, if you move to that tile. Coversely that means you will have LOS to them (assuming they don't move their next turn).

A huge pop up shows up early in the game literally telling you how to check LOS before you move.

[Mr. Nice]

Oh yeah, I know that the pod popping mechanics were tweaked during development to make enemy turn concealment loss less of a good idea, but overwatch itself wasn't changed.