Is there too much luck in this game?

[Samu]

I get it - there's meant to be an element of randomness. But a run of bad luck can end your early game on Commander or Legend difficulty.

Case in point, I just lost an Ironman game on Commander. 1st mission I had one wounded, which is the most you can hope for without very good luck. 2nd and 3rd missions were flawless. Went into the first retaliation mission, lost my Assault on a Faceless spawn (the three overwatchers missed), one guy panicked, another mind controlled, and entire squad lost a couple of turns later.

I know we all get bad runs and it's part of the game. But I feel it can ruin the early game when you don't have many options to deal with it.

[Ned]

SO just to be clear to OP there is no such thing is Randomness in this game or luck. There are equations and seeds. The chances you get are generated by a seed that will not change on reloads (not a game feature like in EW yet for some reason) if you want to call an equation that does not change luck... Ok... But it is very simple math ie equations your computer is running.

Elzrath wow havent run into that one yet but on a terror mission on the last game I had something like that happen. Was in a building car went boom next to the wall my squad was in. No more wall all squad panic and there were 3 crysilids on the other side licking their chopps lol.

To be clear the % shown is nothing but a UI feature. Unless your have a 0% or 100% chance to hit the rest is eye candy.

Think of it like how a viper can pull people through a building when the viper is on the ground level and your on the 3rd level of the building. That viper has a 100% chance or a 0% chance now the equations are not listed so I assume its a LoS thing.

Anyhow if you wana say it has to do with luck fine thats your thing. Just understand there is much more behind it. Call it pseudo redirection. I just dont like putting my troops in a situation where luck would be the deciding factor. Then again sometimes ya just have to.

Though why the game doesnt take real randomness into account I have no idea. Maybe thats why we have Ironman.

Anyhow hope your next runthough turns out better. Dont give up! The world depends on you!

[Arek]

@samu sorry to point out the obvious, but instead of taking shot with grenadier, why not flashbang the sectoid to guarantee breaking of MC. You mentioned that he got flash but I didnt saw mention of you using it

[Shakaw]

@samu
While following points may not apply some of them might have made a difference:
- You could have killed the trooper instead of wounding the sectoid before alien turn 1
- You could have avoided civilians like a plague and thus avoided a faceless
- Why did you put 3 of your 4 soldiers on overwatch while enemy pod was still alive? You could have used those 3 moves to at least kill the trooper, or maybe sectoid as well
- You could have kited the faceless while killing the rest of the pod instead
- Your turn 2, you should have used the flashbang as pointed out by Arek

[Ned]

The - Grenadier (carrying my Flashbang) is panicked and in bad cover
So couldnt use em
The sniper was mind controled and flanked grenadier so no flashbang thats 2 troops out of action.
I guess he could have kited with the remaining troops but with 2 troops left I would call it a day and try to get out with any remaining squad members so they are a picture on the wall to drink to lol.
But yea overwatch early on isnt much good better to put your %'s into killing the closest threat aka triage.

[Arek]

Also mentioned grenadier missing a shot turn later in attempt to break the MC. If he can shoot, he can chuck a made as well, unless he is on fire

[Giant Space Hamster]

Originally posted by Samu:

Agree, if it only happens once. When it happens two or three times in one turn, you're screwed.

In the later game it's fine - you can regroup and survive, and taking risks is part of the fun. But in the early game there's nothing you can do, which I think ruins the Ironman experience.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe some way to make the early game a bit more survivable and the late game harder (it's quite easy on Commander once you get there).

In my case, I went into the first retaliation mission with an almost ideal squad. Then this happened. I don't think there is anything I could have done differently.

Alien turn 1
- Faceless spawns in range of my troops and charges my Ranger
- Two out of three overwatch shots against it miss, so it survives with 4 health
- It scores a critical hit on my Ranger, killing her instantly
- Grenadier panics
- Sectoid and Trooper pod is also in play, with Sectoid wounded
My turn 1
- I attack Faceless at close range with Specialist, but deal only 3 damage
- I have to use my Sniper to finish the Faceless
- Grenadier (carrying my Flashbang) is panicked and in bad cover
Alien turn 2
- Trooper shoots and wounds my Grenadier
- Wounded Sectoid mind controls my Sniper
- Another Sectoid/Trooper pod moves into range, cutting off my retreat path
My turn 2
- Specialist and Grenadier both flank attack wounded Sectoid, trying to break mind control
- Both miss, at 91% and 67%
Alien turn 3
- Mind-controlled sniper moves to flank Grendier, shoots him dead with pistol
- One of Sectoids raises a Zombie
- The Troopers miss the Specialist, but it's all over the following turn

A couple things I noticed here. One, where is your first turn? Why are the aliens going first? That's probably just mislabeled turns, but more importantly, I don't see any mention of grenades being used. In the early game, especially in a ♥♥♥♥ situation like you described, you should be spamming the grenades you have. Use them to get rid of cover and do some damage making it much easier to flank and finish things off. Abuse grenades in the early game.

[Dr.Fumetastic]

Originally posted by FireFix13:

*snip* I don't acknowledge that seeded RNG is still random.

1. A moderator already told you to stop this discussion on this thread. I wouldn't recommend you to push your luck.
2. I'd rather discuss this in a different thread but I just feel the need to say this:
Despite the numbers being drawn at the beginning of the mission they are still drawn/generated/whatever randomly. And unless you Save-Scum it is entirely irrelevant when those numbers that are compared to your hit chance are created.
It is only "Pseudo"-Random if you decide to manually mess with the game. And even then the creation was still random. The only difference to "regular" RNG is that you have a rough idea of how high that number is IF you load a save( in which case you always mess with your gaming experience regardless of the type of game).
Sorry for derailing this yet again.

But b2t:
As others have pointed out you do have options to mitigate bad luck. Still the first few missions can ( and will be) quite a pain on higher difficulties. The thing is; you not only struggle with the new difficulty level but also the fact that the first( and in some cases the second and third) can be quite RNG- dependant. Annoyingly enough they are often the most crucial for overall development. The way I see it however, this mostly holds true for Legendary but significantly less so for Comander - either that or I had a lot of luck in my C/I- Campaign which I doubt. It was very doable and despite some bad luck I was able to deal with most things rather appropriately. Just keep in mind that you should also consider swapping up your research if things keep going bad at a certain time.
Still, at those seemingly luck based points you have the option to restart with minimal time loss or keep playing for some more experience with the difficutly level (which I would recommend for your first few times so you get a bit more first hand knowledge about more advanced enemies).

[Abjuration]

Hi man. If you are average player and like casual matches, you use saves and you dont play at commander/legendary, then yes luck might seem very important to you.


But if you start understanding the real core of the game, and that is playing ironman, or at least playing without save scumming AND at commander/legend, you will see that you have to plan everything to AVOID a luck based future. I can tell you something for sure, people who can win ironman commander/legend are people who never , and again never rely on luck. You can plan the attacks to kill every pod in 1, and never more than 2 turns. How ? Read some guides that will help you with the game mechanics which are extremely important if you want to play without relying on luck, and then you will be able to enjoy the game like if its a new whole game. Trust me :)

[Abjuration]

those " 3 overwatches missed" is something you should never rely on to survive a turn.

Do not use overwatch as an offensive technique.. Only use it if the enemy can already see you going on overwatch, so he will take that into account and maybe will not take the risk to move. (there are exceptions of course) But anyway NEVER rely on overwatch, unless is your real last option to survive, but I would rather move and hide in that case, if you can move to a tile where the enemy cannot see you. Always think that the computer acts like if its a human, so if he cannot see anyone, he will take the first blue movement to scout, and then act accordingly. Think about that always :)

[Giant Space Hamster]

Originally posted by Areeon:

those " 3 overwatches missed" is something you should never rely on to survive a turn.

Do not use overwatch as an offensive technique.. Only use it if the enemy can already see you going on overwatch, so he will take that into account and maybe will not take the risk to move. (there are exceptions of course) But anyway NEVER rely on overwatch, unless is your real last option to survive, but I would rather move and hide in that case, if you can move to a tile where the enemy cannot see you. Always think that the computer acts like if its a human, so if he cannot see anyone, he will take the first blue movement to scout, and then act accordingly. Think about that always :)

I don't think it's fair to say that overwatch should never be used offensively. There are times, such as with Killzone, when you really do want to use overwatch offensively. Similarly if you are not currently engaged in combat and you expect an enemy patrol might come into view, overwatch can give you a few bonus shots before combat starts.

The specialist abilities Overwatch and Threat Assessment are also useful against a Codex. They are not targeted like Suppression, so teleporting doesn't cancel them, and they let you fire before an enemy fires which can sometimes be the most effect way to prevent a Codex from teleport-flanking you. Not always the best move but it can come in handy.

That said, there are definitely bad times to use overwatch. Keep in mind that overwatch against an enemy in low cover is always worse than just taking the shot, so if you're not willing to risk the shot because of low percent then you should probably hunker down or get out of LOS. Even overwatching against an enemy in high cover is not ideal since they can just stay there and shoot you.

[SamBC]

Originally posted by FireFix13:

SO just to be clear to OP there is no such thing is Randomness in this game or luck. There are equations and seeds. The chances you get are generated by a seed that will not change on reloads (not a game feature like in EW yet for some reason) if you want to call an equation that does not change luck... Ok... But it is very simple math ie equations your computer is running.

Elzrath wow havent run into that one yet but on a terror mission on the last game I had something like that happen. Was in a building car went boom next to the wall my squad was in. No more wall all squad panic and there were 3 crysilids on the other side licking their chopps lol.

To be clear the % shown is nothing but a UI feature. Unless your have a 0% or 100% chance to hit the rest is eye candy.

Think of it like how a viper can pull people through a building when the viper is on the ground level and your on the 3rd level of the building. That viper has a 100% chance or a 0% chance now the equations are not listed so I assume its a LoS thing.

Anyhow if you wana say it has to do with luck fine thats your thing. Just understand there is much more behind it. Call it pseudo redirection. I just dont like putting my troops in a situation where luck would be the deciding factor. Then again sometimes ya just have to.

Though why the game doesnt take real randomness into account I have no idea. Maybe thats why we have Ironman.

Anyhow hope your next runthough turns out better. Dont give up! The world depends on you!

Perhaps I was not clear when I said that was not within the topic of this thread. Let me be clear - shut up about the game not having real randomness, it's not on-topic for this thread.

[Shakaw]

Actually I am gonna ammend my statement.
If you play the game like a shooter, expecting every shot to hit, then it's very much luck based. If you have an 80% shot then you RISC that the shot misses. The game gives you many tools to hedge that risc, possibly bringing that 20% to 0. Hedging costs, and the best players can walk that fine line of acceptable risc/good payoff, thus eliminating the "luck" element

[gimmethegepgun]

Essentially, success in XCOM revolves around telling the RNG to go screw itself. You take actions that remove the random component as much as possible. Guaranteed damage from grenades, stocks, and abilities like combat protocol are the main way of accomplishing this, and of course 100% shots once you stack enough aim for that. In addition to the chance to hit, there's also the damage range, which also needs to be sufficient for your purposes.

And always have a backup plan. If you have to use something dependent on RNG, or if your non-random capabilities aren't sufficient to dispose of the enemies, then have something available that you can use as a backup plan (usually a mimic beacon).

The rules of XCOM are as such: 1. Your attacks will always have the worst possible outcome (be it missing, being dodged, or rolling minimum damage). 2. The enemy attacks will always have the best (for them) possible outcome.
Thus, use 100% reliable means to kill your enemies when you can, and do whatever you can to prevent the enemy from attacking you (kill, disable, or distract) because any hit will result in wound time or death.