Overwatch is ridiculous.

[Shockwave]

Overwatch is implimented supremely badly in this game. So much so I can't fathom what the developer was even thinking. It's almost a wasted action.

1. Overwatch isn't your full attack.
This is a problem because overwatch , at its core, is simply delaying your turn. Hunkering down and waiting to execute your turn at a later time. The fact that if you overwatch with full movement you only shoot once whereas if you move and attack you might be able to attack twice. This makes overwatch much weaker for no good reason. The team that has a good defensive position should have an advantage. Not so in this game. The team that rushes headlong in at full run seems to have the advantage.

2. You can overwatch into a wall.
The "cones" should be blocked by walls and pillars in a way that shows you they are blocked by walls and pillars. I've overwatched through a door (that is open) where I am on the left of the door and had an enemy run across the door to the right hand side of the door and then shoot me without overwatch triggering. Presumably because it thought the door was there or something... but the enemy shot through it fine.

3. Overwatch doesn't make your solider step out to fire. Utter stupidity. If you can fire like that on your turn you should fire like that on overwatch. It is simply delaying your attack (which is already a disadvantage giving the enemy team time to act/heal/ etc)... the idea that you don't shoot around your cover on overwatch is obscene.

4. Overwatch doesn't trigger in the open sometimes.
I've been behind a single tree of cover, put overwatch out about 45 forward right as far as I could. The enemy moves into where the cone was, and shoots me twice.... no overwatch. Then moves perpendicular to me and the overwatch triggers (so he was in range of the cone). overwatch needs to trigger before the enemy can shoot.. that's literally the point of it. If they can enter your cone and shoot first then it's not overwatch.

5. Overwatch triggers one at a time.
I had two soldiers overwatching the same window. Enemy runs left to right behind the window. First solider shoots and connects. Second solider shoots AFTER he has made it all the way across the window and the shots hit the wall. Again.... ridiculous. Multiple soldiers all waiting to waste the next guy coming through a door,etc should ALL shoot.

It's really too bad It took me 2 hours of trying to figure out just how bad the battles are implemented in this game 2.2 hours and no refund. I expected much better battle mechanics than this.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Shockwave:

Overwatch is implimented supremely badly in this game. So much so I can't fathom what the developer was even thinking. It's almost a wasted action.

Yeah.

Originally posted by Shockwave:

1. Overwatch isn't your full attack.
This is a problem because overwatch , at its core, is simply delaying your turn. Hunkering down and waiting to execute your turn at a later time. The fact that if you overwatch with full movement you only shoot once whereas if you move and attack you might be able to attack twice. This makes overwatch much weaker for no good reason. The team that has a good defensive position should have an advantage. Not so in this game. The team that rushes headlong in at full run seems to have the advantage.

To be fair - it was the same in XCOM, although it was MUCH more useful there due to how mechanics of that game compliment each other.

Originally posted by Shockwave:

2. You can overwatch into a wall.
The "cones" should be blocked by walls and pillars in a way that shows you they are blocked by walls and pillars. I've overwatched through a door (that is open) where I am on the left of the door and had an enemy run across the door to the right hand side of the door and then shoot me without overwatch triggering. Presumably because it thought the door was there or something... but the enemy shot through it fine.

Yeah.

Originally posted by Shockwave:

3. Overwatch doesn't make your solider step out to fire. Utter stupidity. If you can fire like that on your turn you should fire like that on overwatch. It is simply delaying your attack (which is already a disadvantage giving the enemy team time to act/heal/ etc)... the idea that you don't shoot around your cover on overwatch is obscene.

It technically can do that, and it should, but for some reason it is very inconsistent and will work whenever it feels like it, which is not often. So... Yeah.

Originally posted by Shockwave:

4. Overwatch doesn't trigger in the open sometimes.
I've been behind a single tree of cover, put overwatch out about 45 forward right as far as I could. The enemy moves into where the cone was, and shoots me twice.... no overwatch. Then moves perpendicular to me and the overwatch triggers (so he was in range of the cone). overwatch needs to trigger before the enemy can shoot.. that's literally the point of it. If they can enter your cone and shoot first then it's not overwatch.

Yeah...

Originally posted by Shockwave:

5. Overwatch triggers one at a time.
I had two soldiers overwatching the same window. Enemy runs left to right behind the window. First solider shoots and connects. Second solider shoots AFTER he has made it all the way across the window and the shots hit the wall. Again.... ridiculous. Multiple soldiers all waiting to waste the next guy coming through a door,etc should ALL shoot.

Yeaaaaaaaaaah...

Originally posted by Shockwave:

It's really too bad It took me 2 hours of trying to figure out just how bad the battles are implemented in this game 2.2 hours and no refund. I expected much better battle mechanics than this.

Its only overwatch's implementation that is bad, the rest is alright.
It is pretty much widely accepted among PP players that overwatch is the single most useless action you can take at any single time, to the point that the only time it is optimal to use it is when your snipers unlock -1 AP Overwatch and gain ability to overwatch with 1 AP weapons even when all out of action.
Otherwise yes: this game is just as much of Alpha-Strike junkie as XCOM was - you dish out as much damage as possible, as soon as possible, and you are rewarded for it with collective Will drain of enemies as their allies die, eventually causing mass panic which allows you to snowball them even more.

IMHO there is no way to fix this without keeping at least some of the jerkiness around, as many of these issues come directly from Realistic Ballistic Simulation that PP prides itself on.

[Mr Knee]

One overlying context I will say is that overwatch use is conditional and shouldn't be used as a matter of principle and should only be used when tactically beneficial. If in any situation that overwatch is the "weaker" option then don't use it. In some cases overwatch is important.

Originally posted by Shockwave:

1. Overwatch isn't your full attack.
This is a problem because overwatch , at its core, is simply delaying your turn. Hunkering down and waiting to execute your turn at a later time. The fact that if you overwatch with full movement you only shoot once whereas if you move and attack you might be able to attack twice. This makes overwatch much weaker for no good reason.

re: "The fact that if you overwatch with full movement you only shoot once"
Nothing to stop you from shooting once and then overwatching or moving to a better position and then overwatching. If you choose to simply overwatching without using your other AP first is a decision you made and not a fault of the game.

The general rule is If you can move and shoot and get good hits on the target then you should do so. If you can stand still and shoot twice then you definitely should.

But where overwatch is usually strategically better is:

a) when the enemy is behind cover.
Set up the overwatch so that the attack happens when the enemy is not behind cover and you have less cover potentially blocking bullets.

This is kinda like in X-COM where the odds of hitting was 50% as the enemy was behind "Full cover" but would increase to 70% if you shot via overwatch once the enemy had moved from behind it.

b) against some melee enemies.
Rather than shoot your assault rifle from 20 squares away, set up the overwatch so that the enemy is circa 8 squares away. This will maximise the number of bullets hitting the target. Especially when using less accurate weapons like the MG machine gun.

Additionally with Arthrons with shields. If the Panda has his shield positioned between you and his body, any shots will hit the shield and do zero damage. You will do more damage if you see up the overwatch so that you shoot in the second after he has put his shield away and therefore all bullets will hit the Panda's body. Most Arthrons with shields tend to have low health.

c) sometimes moving to a new location behind cover and then setting overwatch decreases the risk to your soldier if the enemy needs to move to hit you back.

So for example, if the enemy has a weapon that has a 3AP cost to shoot, moving so that the enemy has to burn 1AP + 1 square before they'd get line of sight again means you nerf their ability to shoot you. And where overwatch is usually cheaper then 3AP, you will then get a shot off whereas they won't. And then you will have a chance to shoot on your go.

Originally posted by Shockwave:

The team that has a good defensive position should have an advantage. Not so in this game. The team that rushes headlong in at full run seems to have the advantage.

Depends on the mission. There are certain missions, especially base defence ones where playing defensive and setting up several soldiers to overlap their overwatches is the way to go.

Some missions are better being aggressive, others more cautious.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Originally posted by Shockwave:

2. You can overwatch into a wall.
The "cones" should be blocked by walls and pillars in a way that shows you they are blocked by walls and pillars. I've overwatched through a door (that is open) where I am on the left of the door and had an enemy run across the door to the right hand side of the door and then shoot me without overwatch triggering. Presumably because it thought the door was there or something... but the enemy shot through it fine.

I think the reason why you can overwatch into a wall is because most walls are destroyable so is showing what you would be able to theoretically hit if the wall wasn't there. There has been a few occasions where I had both a heavy and an assault overwatching a door, the heavy triggered first and his shot missed but the weapon destroyed the wall. That then meant the assault could blast the Panda from close range with his shotgun. Incredibly satisfying when it happens.

I believe there is a line of sight issue where the enemy has to be in line of sight for a period of time before triggering. Depending on the enemy and their stealth and what cover is on the battlefield, sometimes it doesn't trigger.

By the way, some weapons have a minimum overwatch range, especially some of the Heavy weapons which won't trigger if the enemy appears a couple of squares in front of you.

Originally posted by Shockwave:

3. Overwatch doesn't make your solider step out to fire. Utter stupidity. If you can fire like that on your turn you should fire like that on overwatch. It is simply delaying your attack (which is already a disadvantage giving the enemy team time to act/heal/ etc)... the idea that you don't shoot around your cover on overwatch is obscene.

Your soldier definitely does step out and shoots, but not guaranteed. Again it comes down to line of sight. Logically if you are hiding behind a tree, you wouldn't necessarily see the enemy through the tree in which to trigger the overwatch. Obviously if on your own go and you tell your soldier to shoot then you are telling them to look around the tree / wall etc

Originally posted by Shockwave:

4. Overwatch doesn't trigger in the open sometimes.
I've been behind a single tree of cover, put overwatch out about 45 forward right as far as I could. The enemy moves into where the cone was, and shoots me twice.... no overwatch. Then moves perpendicular to me and the overwatch triggers (so he was in range of the cone). overwatch needs to trigger before the enemy can shoot.. that's literally the point of it. If they can enter your cone and shoot first then it's not overwatch.

Some enemies have high-ish levels of stealth so that if your assault has perception of 32 and the Panda has 25% stealth then you will only spot them from 24 squares away and not the full 32 squares. Depending on the Panda, this concept can have an impact on overwatch triggering.

Originally posted by Shockwave:

5. Overwatch triggers one at a time.
I had two soldiers overwatching the same window. Enemy runs left to right behind the window. First solider shoots and connects. Second solider shoots AFTER he has made it all the way across the window and the shots hit the wall. Again.... ridiculous. Multiple soldiers all waiting to waste the next guy coming through a door,etc should ALL shoot.

I will hazard a guess the first soldier got a line of sight on the Panda first which is why they shot first. Game mechanics is such that only one soldier will be doing the overwatch animation at a time. There is a certain logic to this. If both soldiers are capable of doing enough damage to kill the Panda and both shoot at the exact same time, people would complain that two sets of overwatch were used when a single overwatch was needed (and doubly so if a second Panda then turns up and walks through the now used up overwatch of the second soldier).

I think it would be more problematic if all solders did fire at the exact same time.

Worth noting though that different weapons appear to take a different amount of time to shoot when the overwatch is triggered. A pistol might fire within the equivalent of 0.2 seconds after triggering, an assault maybe 0.5 seconds while a heavy weapon and sniper rifle might take the equivalent of a second. Something to consider when you are using a narrow cone through doorways and windows.

[Shockwave]

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

One overlying context I will say is that overwatch use is conditional and shouldn't be used as a matter of principle and should only be used when tactically beneficial. If in any situation that overwatch is the "weaker" option then don't use it. In some cases overwatch is important.


re: "The fact that if you overwatch with full movement you only shoot once"
Nothing to stop you from shooting once and then overwatching or moving to a better position and then overwatching. If you choose to simply overwatching without using your other AP first is a decision you made and not a fault of the game.

Fault is an odd word. it is a terrible game design. Again, overwatch is giving up your movement to hunker down and wait for an opponent to approach you. If an opponent can move towards you... AND fire twice at you, while you can only fire back at them once then that's a bad mechanic. The defender should have the advantage.

You can mindlessly defend anything as "it's the mechanic the developer chose" but it doesn't make it a good mechanic.

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

But where overwatch is usually strategically better is:

Who cares. Nobody was asking this or wondering or wasn't competent to figure out when it would be better to use the crappy mechanic.. but it doesn't make the crappy implimentations outlined above any less crappy.

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

Depends on the mission. There are certain missions, especially base defence ones where playing defensive and setting up several soldiers to overlap their overwatches is the way to go.

Not talking about specific missions. Speaking generically about two teams at opposite ends of an arena with various cover. The game mechanics seem to favor the team that attacks rather than the team that defends. The fact that some missions may take advantage of the (again) bad mechanics doesn't make them good mechanics.

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

I think the reason why you can overwatch into a wall is because most walls are destroyable so is showing what you would be able to theoretically hit if the wall wasn't there. There has been a few occasions where I had both a heavy and an assault overwatching a door, the heavy triggered first and his shot missed but the weapon destroyed the wall. That then meant the assault could blast the Panda from close range with his shotgun. Incredibly satisfying when it happens.

Which doesn't address what I said really at all. There are countless games i've seen that block out your firing cone (AOW planetfall is one) showing the area that is blocked. If it becomes unblocked great but in the example I gave it did no look blocked at all to me but the computer clearly thought it was blocked. graying out the sections of the cone that are blocked by cover would be an improvement.

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

By the way, some weapons have a minimum overwatch range, especially some of the Heavy weapons which won't trigger if the enemy appears a couple of squares in front of you.

Did not encounter that but if that is true then the orange cone should not appear close to the solider.... it should be grayed out until the minimum range.

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

Your soldier definitely does step out and shoots, but not guaranteed. Again it comes down to line of sight. Logically if you are hiding behind a tree, you wouldn't necessarily see the enemy through the tree in which to trigger the overwatch. Obviously if on your own go and you tell your soldier to shoot then you are telling them to look around the tree / wall etc

BS. Uttter 100% BS. Sorry but on your turn (not overwatch) the tree does not block line of sight to the badguy You can click on him and shoot step out to shoot him. You don't have to perform a "look" action to look out from cover to see whose out there. Again, if you can do that on your regular turn (meaning your peeking around the tree to know he's there I guess) then you should be doing that on Overwatch.

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

I will hazard a guess the first soldier got a line of sight on the Panda first which is why they shot first. Game mechanics is such that only one soldier will be doing the overwatch animation at a time. There is a certain logic to this. If both soldiers are capable of doing enough damage to kill the Panda and both shoot at the exact same time, people would complain that two sets of overwatch were used when a single overwatch was needed (and doubly so if a second Panda then turns up and walks through the now used up overwatch of the second soldier).

But that is unrealistic in any real life scenario. Either A) your soldiers are not psychic, both see the enemy and both fire not knowing the other soldier is also firing. In real time war this is confusing and EXTREMELY hard to coordinate if both soldiers are ordered to cover a certain vector:

OR

B) If they are trained so well they are in perfect sync and Solider A knows Solider B is supposed to fire first then he would wait until solider B fired, see if the solider was dead and THEN Fire... BUT NOT IF THERE WAS NO SHOT..... I could see the mechanic working that solider A never fires because he doesn't have a shot... but not that he fires into the brick wall that the enemy has run behind because he waited to see if he was dead. That's just nonsense. If they chain fire then the 2nd soklider needs to trigger overwatch on LOS again when the first animnation is over and if the enemy isn't in LOS then it doesn't trigger at all.

All firing at the same time is the most realistic and least cheesy.

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

Worth noting though that different weapons appear to take a different amount of time to shoot when the overwatch is triggered. A pistol might fire within the equivalent of 0.2 seconds after triggering, an assault maybe 0.5 seconds while a heavy weapon and sniper rifle might take the equivalent of a second. Something to consider when you are using a narrow cone through doorways and windows.

Thanks for outlining this even CRAPPIER mechanic then... if a weapon takes X time to shoot that means it takes X time to raise and aim... if I see someone and raise my weapon to my eye, look down the sight and oops.. he got behind cover... I don't fire.... at least in real life.

[Bobucles]

Yeah, overwatch sucks pretty bad. Take your attacks during your turn. If you don't have good attacks, duck behind big heavy walls. If you have bad attacks and the enemy is dangerously close, use war cry for defense. Overwatch is a last resort, and a very disappointing one at that.

[Bone White]

I'm glad for this in a way, it makes the use over overwatch situational, rather than a cure-all.

[Shockwave]

Originally posted by Bone White:

I'm glad for this in a way, it makes the use over overwatch situational, rather than a cure-all.

I suppose if you suspend all disbelief, and throw out everything you know about good tactics to try to form yourself to the game's arbitrary mechanics... but I can't turn off my brain like that.

It's like buying a castle siege game and finding out the bigger and stronger you build your castle walls the faster the enemy breaks through them.... It's just so out of left field.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Shockwave:

Originally posted by Bone White:

I'm glad for this in a way, it makes the use over overwatch situational, rather than a cure-all.

I suppose if you suspend all disbelief, and throw out everything you know about good tactics to try to form yourself to the game's arbitrary mechanics... but I can't turn off my brain like that.

It's like buying a castle siege game and finding out the bigger and stronger you build your castle walls the faster the enemy breaks through them.... It's just so out of left field.

To be fair - xcom devs saw OW as an issue too. Overwatch there developed as a safe, cheesy tactic from the get go and remained so in XCOM 2. Their solution to combat it was to introduce tight mission timers to force players to rush ahead and not just camp in a well defended position.

PP instead settled to just nerfing the mechanic to sh*t, on top of the technical quirkiness of the whole thing...

[Voland]

Originally posted by Artek General:

Originally posted by Shockwave:

I suppose if you suspend all disbelief, and throw out everything you know about good tactics to try to form yourself to the game's arbitrary mechanics... but I can't turn off my brain like that.

It's like buying a castle siege game and finding out the bigger and stronger you build your castle walls the faster the enemy breaks through them.... It's just so out of left field.

To be fair - xcom devs saw OW as an issue too. Overwatch there developed as a safe, cheesy tactic from the get go and remained so in XCOM 2. Their solution to combat it was to introduce tight mission timers to force players to rush ahead and not just camp in a well defended position.

PP instead settled to just nerfing the mechanic to sh*t, on top of the technical quirkiness of the whole thing...

Yes, OW crawl was really bad in Firaxis Xcom on release. They added the Meld canisters in EW, and continued with that in Xcom2 with timed missions and all that to address it.

I don't think it's fair to say that they "nerfed" OW in PP, more like the game systems and quirks sort of come together to make it inefficient, because you can't free aim during OW shots, and there is ballistics and weird Pandoran movement (Tritons crawl, Sirens slither, Crabs move just so that the shield can block a lot of incoming shots, etc).

Having said that, it's very far from useless if you learn how to use it, as are most things in PP.

Edit: especially in TFTV, where Belial came up with a lot of abilities that make it more useful (like 1AP and double OW for snipers, and Synedrion OW focus that increases acc +50%). Also TFTV Scorpion is devastating in OW where the projectile can go through any obstacle without losing strength.

[Shockwave]

Originally posted by Artek General:

Originally posted by Shockwave:

I suppose if you suspend all disbelief, and throw out everything you know about good tactics to try to form yourself to the game's arbitrary mechanics... but I can't turn off my brain like that.

It's like buying a castle siege game and finding out the bigger and stronger you build your castle walls the faster the enemy breaks through them.... It's just so out of left field.

To be fair - xcom devs saw OW as an issue too. Overwatch there developed as a safe, cheesy tactic from the get go and remained so in XCOM 2. Their solution to combat it was to introduce tight mission timers to force players to rush ahead and not just camp in a well defended position.

PP instead settled to just nerfing the mechanic to sh*t, on top of the technical quirkiness of the whole thing...

Cheesy? How is defensive positioning cheesy? Real military operations in small teams pretty much do what you term an overwartch crawl. Solid tactics. In no way cheesy. Setting up a good ambush is very satisfying in Xcom. Taking it away with the nerfed mechanics in PP or the short timers on every mission in Xcom2 was just bad design.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Shockwave:

Originally posted by Artek General:

To be fair - xcom devs saw OW as an issue too. Overwatch there developed as a safe, cheesy tactic from the get go and remained so in XCOM 2. Their solution to combat it was to introduce tight mission timers to force players to rush ahead and not just camp in a well defended position.

PP instead settled to just nerfing the mechanic to sh*t, on top of the technical quirkiness of the whole thing...

Cheesy? How is defensive positioning cheesy? Real military operations in small teams pretty much do what you term an overwartch crawl. Solid tactics. In no way cheesy. Setting up a good ambush is very satisfying in Xcom. Taking it away with the nerfed mechanics in PP or the short timers on every mission in Xcom2 was just bad design.

Well that's exactly why - it is too good, and ruins the balance if the game, which is what the game is meant to be first above many things, realism included

The way xcom is setup is that forcing enemy pods walk into you rather than the other way around gives you a massive advantage, allowing you to steamroll aliens all the time as long as you just overwatch in a corner and let their pods just stumble into you. It is effective, but is ultimately boring and overshadows any other mechanics and depth the game has to offer, which is considered bad design too.

PP actually had a genuine chance to do it better here, where pod activation is not a factor, but dropped the ball hard. I don't even know how to fix it, as all the issues come directly from ballistic simulation system. Even if we just did it the xcom "I shoot anything that moves nearby" way - your soldiers would end up shooting trees and barrels all the same, even more so than usual. And so the mechanic is just inherently shafted big time. You could give soldiers +50% accuracy when Overwatching and it wouldn't fix anything.

[Shockwave]

Originally posted by Artek General:

Well that's exactly why - it is too good, and ruins the balance if the game, which is what the game is meant to be first above many things, realism included

The way xcom is setup is that forcing enemy pods walk into you rather than the other way around gives you a massive advantage, allowing you to steamroll aliens all the time as long as you just overwatch in a corner and let their pods just stumble into you. It is effective, but is ultimately boring and overshadows any other mechanics and depth the game has to offer, which is considered bad design too.

Then make a better game with better balance. Removing or nerfing good tactics and good strategy is bad game design being used a crutch. Make the enemy stronger or X com weaker etc. But not allowing people to use their brain and think through logically what the best tactic to use in a situation is not only terrible design it helps to dumb everyone down in general.

Again it's akin to making a castle defense game and then saying "oh, you build strong walls to defend your casltle... well that's smart but it keeps the bad guys from killing you so we're going to only allow you to build wall structures with massive holes in them that let armies pour in.

Sure it makes for more action/combat but it's just flagrantly stupid.

[Original Cast Recording]

Overwatch is just one way to disrupt the absurdity of each side moving all their units before the other side can do anything. The fact it isn't always preferable to shooting on your own turn doesn't make the game any less realistic. Turn-based combat games are only realistic when you ignore the parts that aren't.

[Odzianna]

While I do like that you can give your soldiers firing lines instead of shooting everything that moves... The system is flawed, yeah. I usually only use Overwatch if i have a Sniper with a pistol as Overwatch is then for free.

Or during a base defense... it is quite satistying if you have 21 soldiers all aiming at the only entrance the Pandorans can take. Overall, though? Yeah, you are way better off using all your points for movement or literally anything else.

Enemy humans are quite fond of Overwatch, as I noticed. These guys walk 3 steps across the street, in the open, and Overwatch right there, fully exposed. pandorans seem much better at it, they can even set their Overwatch up so that their units step out of cover

[Mr Knee]

Originally posted by Artek General:

To be fair - xcom devs saw OW as an issue too. Overwatch there developed as a safe, cheesy tactic from the get go and remained so in XCOM 2. Their solution to combat it was to introduce tight mission timers to force players to rush ahead and not just camp in a well defended position.

PP instead settled to just nerfing the mechanic to sh*t, on top of the technical quirkiness of the whole thing...

I can't help but think that if PP had branded Overwatch as "Reaction Shot" and went with the narrative (as per the 1990's original) that your soldier will take a pop shot at anything that moves at the corner of their eye then maybe the expectations would be lower and more acceptable.

And I do wonder if PP could have had two forms of overwatch where one is as per now (reaction) and a slightly more expensive version (ambush) where there is better reaction times and better accuracy - that way you can set up your sniper to properly cover an area, ie, all ready for an enemy to come around the corner with the rifle primed to shoot.

To be honest, I don't mind if the mechanic is deemed "nerfed" as I am not sure the developers wanted it to be a main mechanic to be cheesed all the time and was only supposed to be used 20% of the time in certain situations. Not sure I agree with the sentiment it is necessarily broken as some people think.

[Voland]

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

And I do wonder if PP could have had two forms of overwatch where one is as per now (reaction) and a slightly more expensive version (ambush) where there is better reaction times and better accuracy - that way you can set up your sniper to properly cover an area, ie, all ready for an enemy to come around the corner with the rifle primed to shoot.

Re better reaction time, there actually is already, if you play Vanilla :)

If you set the animation speed to fastest your OW shots will be done at super fast speed, while the movement of the target during OW is constant at all settings (always 10% of regular speed). So that works like faster reaction time; it's very noticeable with multiple OW shooters using burst weapons.

We fixed this in the last TFTV update, reducing the movement of the OW target further when animation speed setting is lower than the fastest one.