Stealth during Infiltration.

[Sparks]

So it puzzled me for a while - your characters duck into cover and whatnot during combat, but they waltz around during Infiltration when trespassing.
I've knocked out a few guards at the beginning of the first non-scripted mission, it raised suspicion and led to a prolonged firefight, which in the beginning of it led me to believe it's a more combat orientiered game.
But on a redo I've managed to successfully stealth it, checking doors and peeking behind walls. But now I've tried to stay behind a table, the guy walks back and - counter to what I expected, notices my agent standing tall ready to catch a bullet.
Are you just supposed to abuse high cover and enemy lines of sight and half-cover during Infiltration is not a thing? Or am I not understanding something?

[kingts]

Originally posted by Ingrett:

So it puzzled me for a while - your characters duck into cover and whatnot during combat, but they waltz around during Infiltration when trespassing.
I've knocked out a few guards at the beginning of the first non-scripted mission, it raised suspicion and led to a prolonged firefight, which in the beginning of it led me to believe it's a more combat orientiered game.
But on a redo I've managed to successfully stealth it, checking doors and peeking behind walls. But now I've tried to stay behind a table, the guy walks back and - counter to what I expected, notices my agent standing tall ready to catch a bullet.
Are you just supposed to abuse high cover and enemy lines of sight and half-cover during Infiltration is not a thing? Or am I not understanding something?

Ingrett, this is not a long engagement game. This is a pure stealth game. Get in, tasks done, and get out. Take down is your biggest offensive weapon, like Invisible Incorporated.
Abuse any advantage you can. Trespassing should be used to get a task done and then go out of trespassing. The Combat does not favor long engagements. The opposing agents, forces, do not miss because that is how their Awareness system of can't miss possibilities really hurts your agents in long fire fights. Distance can help you avoid shots with enhanced ability choices, but its not X-com. Your asking for trouble if you get into firefights.

Plus unlike X-com's Longwar, it is not designed for army management. The Agents are do the same thing, all have the same ability choices.
In my review, I thought they had a nice template to build, on, but they had internal issues and I am not sure if this game will expand beyond its crude start.

Get the task done, in and out...Best advice I can tell ya

[Sparks]

I am aware what the game is and familiar with the concept. And I didn't really ask for advice. If I were to distill my rant to a simple question, which I should've probably done:
Why don't Agents utilize half-cover during Infiltration in order not to get spotted?

[obliviondoll]

This can be rationalised pretty easily. At longer distances, a figure standing about or walking around normally just looks like a person, not a specific person who probably shouldn't be there. If they're crouching behind a table and creeping about on tiptoes, they actually look more conspicuous for doing so. By "hiding" that way when you're not actively doing so to avoid bullets in open conflict, you're actually making yourself more likely to be identified as someone out of place.

It's one of those things that might be nice to have as an option, but doing it in a "realistic" manner would make it feel worse in many cases. Duck behind a table so the enemy walking into the room doesn't see you, and a different enemy gets alerted because you're visible through a window from a distance. You still get spotted and the radio call alerts the guy beside you just the same, except you also set off a guard on a nearby rooftop who is "out of range" to identify you normally and might not have noticed anything amiss if you cleared the first guard effectively (silenced overwatch).

Also it's a common trope in spy movies and stuff where the spy character wanders around the enemy base like he owns the place and someone walks in while he's rifling through papers on a desk. You can headcanon this mechanic as being that sort of situation. You're not there to hide, you're there to search for evidence, and just happen to be walked into while you're distracted wondering if this file is the one you need.

[kome360]

Originally posted by obliviondoll:

This can be rationalised pretty easily. At longer distances, a figure standing about or walking around normally just looks like a person, not a specific person who probably shouldn't be there. If they're crouching behind a table and creeping about on tiptoes, they actually look more conspicuous for doing so. By "hiding" that way when you're not actively doing so to avoid bullets in open conflict, you're actually making yourself more likely to be identified as someone out of place.

It's one of those things that might be nice to have as an option, but doing it in a "realistic" manner would make it feel worse in many cases. Duck behind a table so the enemy walking into the room doesn't see you, and a different enemy gets alerted because you're visible through a window from a distance. You still get spotted and the radio call alerts the guy beside you just the same, except you also set off a guard on a nearby rooftop who is "out of range" to identify you normally and might not have noticed anything amiss if you cleared the first guard effectively (silenced overwatch).

Also it's a common trope in spy movies and stuff where the spy character wanders around the enemy base like he owns the place and someone walks in while he's rifling through papers on a desk. You can headcanon this mechanic as being that sort of situation. You're not there to hide, you're there to search for evidence, and just happen to be walked into while you're distracted wondering if this file is the one you need.

Okay, but when you're in a closed room and need to be ninja-stealthy, flattening behind walls is far more preferable to just opening doors. Maybe add a stance system; acting all stealthy just makes you stick out if there is someone looking at you from afar, but at least you don't get spotted by opening a door from the side.

[obliviondoll]

Originally posted by kome360:

Okay, but when you're in a closed room and need to be ninja-stealthy, flattening behind walls is far more preferable to just opening doors. Maybe add a stance system; acting all stealthy just makes you stick out if there is someone looking at you from afar, but at least you don't get spotted by opening a door from the side.

Yeah, like I said, it's a "rationalisation" for the way the game works, not that conventional stealth is never a good idea. You'll notice part of my explanation was "it makes for scenes like you see in spy movies".

And adding a stance system would hit the exact problems I mentioned in my post.

Go from "casual" to "stealth" stance, duck behind a table so the enemy about to come into the room won't see you, but give yourself away to an enemy on a nearby rooftop who you didn't realise was in position to see you in stealth. They were far enough away that your casual stance didn't alert them, but seeing a dude ducking into cover makes them take a closer look and realise you don't belong there. That's exactly what they'd have to do in order to make it work, and it would cause as many problems as the current system while being harder to code and more complex to play.