Getting killed with critical hit through full cover so demoralizing

[White Rabbit]

Just had my top grenadier get killed by an Advent Officer who one-shotted him through FULL cover from 10 tiles away with a critical hit. How is that even possible? I am on Legend/Ironman and have played well over 1,000 hours of this game and while I know that there must be some mathematical possibility for things like that, it's still so demoralizing when you don't do ANYTHING wrong and your guy who is behind full cover and in full health is instantly killed. I don't have the percentage mod for shots, but I'm curious what those odds for both a HIT and a CRIT were. That was unreal.

[TwinuX]

Hits and Crits use the same RNG roll, so, say, a 10% hit chance and a 10% crit chance will always crit when it hits. A 20% hit chance with a 10% crit chance will crit roughly half of the time.

There are mods that seperate these rolls, so that a 10% to hit with a 10% crit will translate to 9% regular hits and 1% crits, should you want to change this.

[White Rabbit]

Thanks for the explanation. I realize that I need to accept losses through no fault of my own, but I also watch a ton of YouTube players who do the exact same tactics yet they never have their players get shot through full cover. Oh well, I'll get some sleep and soldier on with my backup grenadier...

[ArkAngel]

The first mod I get is almost always EU Aim/Crit Rolls, because like TwinuX said, Crits use the same roll as hits (which is weird imo).

Kudos for playing on Ironman haha, I play honestman because I don't have big enough balls to do it.

[Glitch]

At the end, even if it's 1%. you still have 1%... so ♥♥♥♥ might happens.
Agree its demoralizing. but hey, its even more rewarding to recover from that.

[ArkAngel]

Yeah, there's this quote I read from someone somewhere which said that you can do everything 100% perfectly, and something can still go wrong. That's the charm of the game though!

[Wantoomany]

Originally posted by White Rabbit:

it's still so demoralizing when you don't do ANYTHING wrong and your guy who is behind full cover and in full health is instantly killed

You did do something wrong. You treated full cover as immunity, it is not. Enemies with high accuracy can still regularly hit you from behind full cover, the negative to hit modifier isnt as significant as you might think.

Full cover should not be considered decent protection, but minimal protection. Hunker down, use smoke, do anything to boost your protection before you hit that end turn button. Otherwise you are just rolling the dice, and the odds are not really in your favor.

[White Rabbit]

You're right - I think full cover is like 40%? My soldier was in overwatch behind full cover, not hunkered down. And I almost never use a slot for smoke because my "goal" is to never allow the enemy a chance to take a shot at me (which they still get plenty of chances, lol)

[CRAGNAR]

Welcome to combat, where the only law that applies is that of Murphy's Law. Make sure to write a nice epitaph for that soldier. On the flip side, I am sure there have been numerous instances where your squad made some fantastic shots that flipped the entire combat scenario on its head. Yup, it works both ways for sure.

His death has learned us all a valuable lesson. Full cover, isn't. 99%, is not 100%.

[looplick]

I have my game setup where my soldiers always bleedout, but the bleedout timer is random. So it could be just one turn, or possibly three. But just having that one turn, even if I can't save the soldier, seems to have helped my enjoyment of the game considerably. I no longer get so angry when ♥♥♥♥ like that happens.