Breaking Concealment - What Are The Rules?

[Yxklyx]

I was surprised last night to find out that Remote does not break your squad's concealment. Is there a comprehensive guide somewhere? The wiki does not have all the info.

[Yxklyx]

Does opening/closing a door that is visible to an enemy break conceal?

[Veritas]

Stepping on a detection tile or moving if a unit starts a turn while in a detection tile will break concealment. If a unit is in a detection tile at the start of a turn and does not move they won't be revealed.

Dashing through windows and doors breaks concealment.

Being flanked on the enemy turn will break concealment.

Activating objectives will break concealment unless there is a hack reward stating that the hack will not break concealment.

Failed hacks break concrealment, and any hacks that involve applying status effects to enemies break concealment (disoriented, stunned, controlled, etc)

Opening a door while in concealment without dashing through it DOESN'T break concealment, however enemies will be able to see through the open door, expanding where they can detect units. It usually isn't worth keeping open after poking your head out, so to speak, so closing it again is a good idea.

Abilities that don't break concealment will tell you that they don't in their description.

[Zyrrashijn]

actions that will break concealment show a red eye symbol on the UI.

[76561198034396398]

bloody civies that hide behind posts,always give em a few acid bombs for being collaborators,there's a mod True Concealment,while it won't stop you getting spotted,sometimes the game just decides to be a ♥♥♥♥ and says ..... "such and such saw you do that ",even though the tiles say otherwise

[Torus]

Originally posted by Yxklyx:

Does opening/closing a door that is visible to an enemy break conceal?

If that's done as part as a move through the door, yes.
If you move up to the side of the door then open it as a free action, no.
(if you stand right in front of the door and open it instead, then obviously yes.)

[AlexMBrennan]

Is there a comprehensive guide somewhere? The wiki does not have all the info.

Why do you need a wiki page if the ability description explicitly states that remote start does not reveal the reaper?

[Yxklyx]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Is there a comprehensive guide somewhere? The wiki does not have all the info.

Why do you need a wiki page if the ability description explicitly states that remote start does not reveal the reaper?

The rest of squad is not revealed either. I will look for the red eye symbol that was mentioned - did not notice it.

[gmsh1964]

Super frustrated in that I thought I understood this. Here is what just happened. Whole squad is in concealment. I have a guy on the second floor of a building. He moves to the edge of the building that has a 1/2 cover wall. And it is a long wall, there are no breaks in it. As I move the edge, two stories directly below on the sidewalk is a trooper and a rattle snake guy. They spot me!! Two stories up, behind a wall. You have to agree that something is wrong here. The only thing I can think of is does the rattlesnake guy have super abilties, like a real snake? Thanks again.

[Vozati]

Originally posted by gmsh1964:

Super frustrated in that I thought I understood this. Here is what just happened. Whole squad is in concealment. I have a guy on the second floor of a building. He moves to the edge of the building that has a 1/2 cover wall. And it is a long wall, there are no breaks in it. As I move the edge, two stories directly below on the sidewalk is a trooper and a rattle snake guy. They spot me!! Two stories up, behind a wall. You have to agree that something is wrong here. The only thing I can think of is does the rattlesnake guy have super abilties, like a real snake? Thanks again.

Your elevation doesnt matter. You moved into a tile that can be seen from the ground and were spotted. If you had vision of the enemies you would have seen the red indicator on that tile.

[gmsh1964]

I saved and tried several different tests. There was no red tile. Amplify that with me being two floors up and behind a wall, and that just makes it all the more mysterious. Anyway, thanks. I will just take a zero on this.

[NorionV]

Originally posted by gmsh1964:

I saved and tried several different tests. There was no red tile. Amplify that with me being two floors up and behind a wall, and that just makes it all the more mysterious. Anyway, thanks. I will just take a zero on this.

Did you have sightlines on the enemies that spotted you, BEFORE you approached the ledge? You won't see red tiles unless you can SEE the bad guys that would make the red tiles. It took me a few missions to realize this. Also, half cover does NOT protect you from being noticed, and a single tile of full cover is the same - enemies can see you on a corner of a building, for example, and pillar that is one tile in size will get you noticed on the start of the enemy's turn if you're standing on a red tile. As previously stated, no amount of elevation will prevent you from being seen if you get close enough to the edge to be seen.

I got washed out on the first campaign, pretty hard, mainly because I was having difficulty using my stealth to its fullest - taking forever to set ambushes, poor movement, poor positioning, not covering with overwatch... even activating ambushes improperly on occasion. So, I restarted and save-scummed the hell out of the next campaign to master all the little intricacies. Now I can murder any pod composition in record time.

One thing I can tell you, is to get a conceal ranger if you haven't already. One of THE most useful things in the game - being able to scout a pod without activating it is just gold. You can drop grenades, heavy weapons, and sniper fire outside of concealement and beyond the enemy line of sight, and the pod will either run around in circles because you broke the AI, or take some moves to get to you. Psi operatives can even use most of their abilities beyond sight range.

Make wide swings on turns, instead of approaching the break in your line of sight right where sight is lost.

Never approach an edge or corner that you don't have sight on - even within a few tiles of the edge. There might be a bad guy on a more elevated position that can see further. If you're on a building, you'll need to send someone around the building via the ground to make sure there aren't any enemies on the other side, before setting up on the ledges of said building.

Grappling hooks can usually go over red tiles. I say usually because I have not tested it in every possible circumstance, but I've grappled directly over sight squares and remained undetected many times. This is useful if you want to reach an elevated position, but wouldn't be able to with good time / at all without running into red tiles.

There's a lot of nuance to stealth, more than I first assumed. Experiment where you can without incurring major loss, or just save scum until you've got it down, and pay close attention to everything you're doing - right or wrong.

[gmsh1964]

"Did you have sightlines on the enemies that spotted you, BEFORE you approached the ledge? You won't see red tiles unless you can SEE the bad guys that would make the red tiles. It took me a few missions to realize this."

Whoa, never thought about that. I guess I did always wonder how that red tile thing worked and sometimes it did not. GREAT. Thank you.