How is crouching with cover supposed to work with "ducking?"

[Rhysavus]

To explain this more, I am finding entirely random cases where characters will dive/duck/crouch when crouched behind cover and they take incoming fire (Instead of just staying at the normal crouch and taking a handful of shots to the slightly exposed area).

Is this supposed to be an Evasion roll occuring in my favor or am I not doing something right with pressing against the wall?

Thanks.

[jong]

evasion is RNG dependant/ random, you can save right before ending your phase and you can see your character dodging or getting shot if you reload the save point. scouts have the highest chance to evade while other classes rarely evade (unless you use an order to increase evade chance). Also note, you do not have to be behind cover like sandbags, your scout can duck anywhere as you might have seen enemy scouts do.

[Hexerin]

Yup, every unit has a very small % chance to Evade an incoming attack. This applies to all incoming attacks (both single-target and AoE) except for Interception Fire (attacks on enemy units moving within range). You can even Evade against Reaction Fire attacks, hilarious as that is.

[busards]

Crouching and evading (or ducking if your prefer) are both independant.

Crouching (sandbags or trenches) gives immunity to headshots and gives a -20% malus to the attack power of any incoming attack no matter the direction of the attack.

Evading is the dodge mechanic. It also gives immunity to headshots and a -70% malus to the attack power of incoming attack (if they hit). Each unit has an evasion stat and every time they're shot at (no matter if you're standing in the open or crouching at a sandbag), the unit has a chance to evade (their evasion stat in percent).
That said, there are ways to prevent an unit to evade:
- shooting from behind at more than 25 range or so.
- shooting while not being spotted by any enemy (can be extremely complicated to tell, usually all sight lines blue or no sight lines at all is enough but sometimes there can be other more complicated factors to take into account).
- undodgeable shot potential.
Also, units crawling in grass don't evade (they're already lying as low as possible).

[Rhysavus]

Thanks for all the answers. I just found that the Evade roll was happening before I had any real case to say that it existed while it was still explaining to take cover behind walls and sandbags.

Thanks, everyone!