Aliens getting free shots

[dimvision]

Hello there, LW1 fan here, now playing LW2 and am loving it so far, Except for one thing is that when a pod patrols into you they get free shots.

Now I understand it's because of the new yellow/red alert system, when aliens hear gunshots they go into yellow alert and if they patrol into you they can get free shots. I'm really not liking this free shots, already lost 5 soldiers because of this (playing on legend ironman btw). I mean why not just make them active then? This is much worse imo they patrol into you free move, when they spot you they scamper for cover another free move, and now they get free shots at you. If they're active they at least they have to double move to get to you, following basic alien AI they first blue move then yellow move.

This free shot mechanic is ruining LW2 for me is there anyway that I can remove the free shots? Through a console command or something? If this persists I'm going to get a rocket in the face I can just... feel it.

[redscare]

You're playing in the hardest setting and complain the game is hard?

Anyway, hope someone can help you, the beauty of modding is playing however you want. Also rest assured the free shots are always standard, not special abilities, so no rocket in your face.

[Inemuri]

I'm loving the free shots the aliens get. I've had two soldiers one-shot due to them in my campaign so far. Makes it feel like anyone can die at any moment. Makes me nervous before a mission starts, which is what I want from XCOM.

[dimvision]

I'm not really complaining about the difficulty, beta 15 is much harder imo but it felt fair there are no free shots with the exception of seekers but that is due to a bug IIRC.

This FREE shot mechanic feels like I'm being cheated especially those advent mecs they love to charge when they activate, get FREE flanks in my troops emphasis on the FREE part.

Good to know that I won't get a rocket to the face, i assumed this because I get suppressed and marked all the time upon actvation.

[JLtheking]

I don't have the file in front of me now but it should be in LW_Overhaul.ini. Search for "REFLEX"

Also, reflex shots have a variable chance of happening based on difficulty. IIRC 0% on Rookie, 20% on Veteran and 33% on Commander+.

Mod those to 0 if you don't like them, but I'd suggest adapting your tactics around them. Make less noise (by using less explosives), making intelligent guesses as to pod positions and positioning your troops in cover appropriately.

Hope it helps

[ShockmasterFred]

I love this mechanic because it makes scouting so important and means you have to be aware of whole battlefield at all times. If I am in a firefight, and I have scouted out 2 of say 3 directions a pod could engage me from, and haven't seen a pod in those 2, then I know I want all my soldiers to end their turn in cover toward direction 3 to avoid flanks and activation shots. I would encourage you to embrace the jeopardy this mechanic brings and learn to work around it. That said, if you despise it, you can always edit it out. Good luck either way!

[Manifest]

I'm loving the free shots the aliens get. I've had two soldiers one-shot due to them in my campaign so far. Makes it feel like anyone can die at any moment. Makes me nervous before a mission starts, which is what I want from XCOM.

I mean you might as well just insert a mechanic that rolls a dice that randomly kills one of your soldiers every mission if you break stealth. It'd end up in a similar level of control for that suspense.

It takes away player agency, and I'd rather it was replaced with something you could react to.

[sambezi]

Death to the rookies I want to get my hands on that sweet ass patch

[NephilimNexus]

"Itchy Trigger Tentacle" was a LW1 option. I suspect you're seeing something similar here.

[trihero]

While annoying I think it improves the game by forcing you to consider cover at all times. Often in vanilla I would just station troops out in the open because with no active pods, it's impossible for them to get shot at. It felt a little bit silly tbh. Of course I would find cover as soon as an actual pod showed up.

You do have agency - maintain cover at all times, overwatch when possible when not in battle. And again the name of the game is long war, you're kind of expected to take wounds/injuries and keep replacing men and women. On top of these things, it's a skill check because really good players have some sense of where pods generally are and how to avoid pulling too many of them.

[Goumindong]

In a sense yes. And maybe if aliens were restricted in their initial movement. But otherwise what happens is that

1) They patrol into you. This is a movement
2) They take their spread movement to head to cover. This is a second movement
3) sometimes they shoot at you. This is a third action.

This is the part that feels unfair. Aliens essentially get a dash move and shot. And saying "Well just be in cover" isn't a good answer because much of XCom 2 is ensuring that enemies that can shoot back cannot do so effectively by way of suppression and flash and stunning. Cover is not a savior from getting one shot crit killed and any mechanic that is going to significantly increase the number of shots you might take is going to increase casualties in a way that you have little to no control over.

A mechanic that randomly killed your units at the end of a mission would not be acceptable, even if it were just a 1% chance. But this mechanic is just that... except its done in the middle of a mission and so can contribute to a cascading failure).

Screw "realistic" its not fun.

[xwynns]

They can not shoot at you with those actions unless they have either seen corpses or heard things that you did. All they can do is defensive stuff if they just walk into you without being on alert.

I don't think they do it nearly enough on Legend.

[Goumindong]

They can not shoot at you with those actions unless they have either seen corpses or heard things that you did. All they can do is defensive stuff if they just walk into you without being on alert.

I don't think they do it nearly enough on Legend.

Immaterial. They still get three actions. It still feels unfair. Its still pointless and bad randomization. I would rather face more enemies with more painful abilities than i would randomly get killed by enemies.

Its also not true. Aliens will shoot at you if they patrol into you while you're concealed.

[NephilimNexus]

1) They patrol into you. This is a movement
2) They take their spread movement to head to cover. This is a second movement
3) sometimes they shoot at you. This is a third action.

I have yet experience this even once. Bug report time?

[Goumindong]

1) They patrol into you. This is a movement
2) They take their spread movement to head to cover. This is a second movement
3) sometimes they shoot at you. This is a third action.

I have yet experience this even once. Bug report time?

Do you play on easy? Its disabled on easy.

Otherwise i don't know what to say, everyone in the thread agrees its happening. And its in the ini files to happen 30% of the time on legendary and 20% on veteran.

[NephilimNexus]

Do you play on easy? Its disabled on easy.

Nope, veteran only. Here is what I have seen:

1) Pod is discovered during player's turn. Pod breaks formation, dives into cover. That is their only free move.
2) Pod runs into player during aliens' turn. Pod breaks formation, dives for cover. That's one move, and since it's the aliens' turn, they shoot with their second move. Just like normal.
3) Pod runs into player during player's turn. Pod breaks formation, dives for cover. That's their one free move until the player's turn ends.
4) Sentinels getting free overwatch every turn, even after firing, because LW2 hates us all. It is possible - and this may be a bug or by design - for sentinels to get their free overwatch during the player's turn when their pod is discovered and after they take their free move into cover.

What I have never seen in LW2 is a pod being discovered, aliens moving twice in a row and then firing before the player's turn ends. What I have seen is sentinels in situation #4 taking those free overwatch shots against the player while it is still the player's turn.

[GavinRuneblade]

Do you play on easy? Its disabled on easy.

2) Pod runs into player during aliens' turn. Pod breaks formation, dives for cover. That's one move, and since it's the aliens' turn, they shoot with their second move. Just like normal.

You are counting this different from Goumindong. He counts it like this:

Move 1: alien moves from out of visible range into visible range
Move 2: alien scatters into cover
Move 3: alien shoots from cover

Essentially his argument, and please let me know if I misspeak @guomindong, is that scatter being a free move during the player turn is fair and fine. Scatter being a free move during the alien's own turn is not fair. When they scatter on player turn it prevents cheese. When they get a free third action on their own turn it is cheese. They should move and shoot, or move and move, but not move move shoot.

[JLtheking]

This is an interesting discussion because of the AI pod patrol mechanics.

On the player side, by LW standards, you are expected to only and always blue move into cover, even with no activated enemies on the map.

The AI pods do not make it a point to patrol into cover. Thus, they rely on the free scamper move to emulate them smartly positioning when combat happens. In a sense, if the pod patrols into you and activates during their turn, the scamper emulates their blue move, and the shot (which only has a 20-33% to happen depending on difficulty) the yellow move.

In vanilla XCOM and XCOM 2, it is always beneficial for the enemy pod to patrol into you to activate, versus you moving up into them, because they then lose the rest of their turn. This is also why, sans anti Beaglerush maneuver, letting them patrol into your concealed squad for activation in vanilla was always better than you breaking concealment on your turn.

When viewing it this way, the reflex move aliens get seems to be fair. In practice though, with the nature of the game already having the odds stacked against you, with the aliens often outnumbering XCOM, this feature seems to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

If you had a purely tactical match where aliens and XCOM had an equal amount of balanced units on a death match battlefield, you would not see this complaint about the reflex actions arise at all. Problems arise when you have 6 other unactivated pods on the map that respond to the sound that you make, when you have strict timers pushing you towards the objective, and the fact that it involves a soldier getting killed by an event you did not expect and arguably did not have Counterplay makes the feature feel unbalanced.

All in all in a vacuum and in a purely tactical fashion I think the reflex system is a good addition. BUT due to the overwhelming odds stacked against XCOM imo it is fine if XCOM gains a buff or two over the aliens. Pavonis though seems to disagree and have a philosophy to balance in favor of the aliens, by virtue of the fact that XCOM is played by a thinking player whereas the aliens is run by an AI which is often imperfect and inefficient.

Thankfully though, we can mod the feature away if we disagree with it.

[Goumindong]

Do you play on easy? Its disabled on easy.

2) Pod runs into player during aliens' turn. Pod breaks formation, dives for cover. That's one move, and since it's the aliens' turn, they shoot with their second move. Just like normal.

You are counting this different from Goumindong. He counts it like this:

Move 1: alien moves from out of visible range into visible range
Move 2: alien scatters into cover
Move 3: alien shoots from cover

Essentially his argument, and please let me know if I misspeak @guomindong, is that scatter being a free move during the player turn is fair and fine. Scatter being a free move during the alien's own turn is not fair. When they scatter on player turn it prevents cheese. When they get a free third action on their own turn it is cheese. They should move and shoot, or move and move, but not move move shoot.

Almost. Scatter is a necessary mechanic to manage the AI resource expenditure. Aliens ought to scatter when they patrol into you and when you patrol into them. However, if they then shoot you at the end of this on their turn they have violated the spirit of the game.

I don't mind it when you're concealed. As otherwise the patrol into ambush is terribly OP and because you're in control of when the aliens patrol into you. Similarly i can see it as an argument for when there is no time pressure and also no aliens active. Because in this situation you're still able to force the aliens to patrol into you.

But i do mind it when not concealed and under time pressure or with active aliens. Because there ought to be a choice that players have to make for every potential negative consequence. When you're concealed you can see the enemies and so can trade off advantage(all those concealed OW shots) for disadvantage(potential return fire). When you're not concealed and under no time pressure and no aliens are on the field then you're similarly advantaged. (you can simply take your blue move and then OW)

But when those situations aren't the case things change. No longer is there a tradeoff to be made. If you're locked down by time you have to move forward. If you're patrolled into or you patrol into them is simply happenstance. Even with a phantom you're at the whim of how far you can go/how far they can go. If you're locked down by other enemies then its the same way. Roll a dice to determine when/if they run into you. Not even a phantom can save you from this. Not even knowing that enemies are likely to patrol into you can save you from this

The AI pods do not make it a point to patrol into cover. Thus, they rely on the free scamper move to emulate them smartly positioning when combat happens. In a sense, if the pod patrols into you and activates during their turn, the scamper emulates their blue move, and the shot (which only has a 20-33% to happen depending on difficulty) the yellow move.

Well no. Because the pod was in a location that was too far away for you to engage previously. Their starting point is not the point where they patrol into you. At the very least this gives them one and a half moves (moving from start patrol to end point then spreading outwards at a 90 deg angle from the engage point to cover)... which is two moves in xcom.

It would only be fair for them to shoot if the cover that they're able to take is limited by the distance the pod was at before it patrolled into you. And even then it would fail the first and most important gameplay test of tradeoffs; Xcom is not a game about rolling dice, its about choosing which dice to roll. Any time you take that away from the player you're making the wrong design decision.

Edit: Another way to think about it would be to minimize the difference between the two potential (optimal) situations with regards to a players actions. Given that a player can choose to open new ground on their first move or not then patrolling into an enemy with your first move is optimal. If they patrol into an enemy on the first move, they have a full turn -1 blue move action before enemies retaliate. If the enemies patrol into them they should have a full turn before enemies retaliate.

[Arizael]

I hate the Xcom pod activation mechanic. I played the vanilla with all pods active. And I find your arguments completely invalid.

With All pods active much worse stuff would happen. I had Sectoid coming from fog and immediately launching mind control, while being overwatched by his Advent goons. With LW mechanics, the pods scampers into sub-optimal cover and than SOME of the advent forces MAY take standard shot if certain conditions are met. And than it is you turn.

The cold hard fact is that, XCOM is the culprit of having unfair advantage when encounter happens. Because your entire squad gets to act first every single encounter. You can destroy their cover and kill them before they get a shot fired. You can take superior position and overwatch/supress them in their sub optimal post scamper cover. You can run and gun and shoot them to face before they realize what's happening. You can flash bang them, so they never get to use their shiny abilities and will spend rest of their miserable lives trying to do something useful with their aim penalty. And you can rely on your absolute priority every single time.

Compared to this, the occasional "free" standard shot is nothing. Plus the fact that it gets effectively countered by proper scouting and covering your flanks.

[Eugene]

Its not only shots, i just encountered an archon and he instantly flew above my squad and marked 4 guys with an ability that will shot them on the next turn if they stay on the same spot, and it was a 7 units patrol squad with few units goes into overwatch + they did a few shots. And the pod even not walked into my sight range he teleported into it. So no, fuck this mechanic i dont want to deal with this bs.

[Inemuri]

I'm loving the free shots the aliens get. I've had two soldiers one-shot due to them in my campaign so far. Makes it feel like anyone can die at any moment. Makes me nervous before a mission starts, which is what I want from XCOM.

I mean you might as well just insert a mechanic that rolls a dice that randomly kills one of your soldiers every mission if you break stealth. It'd end up in a similar level of control for that suspense.

It takes away player agency, and I'd rather it was replaced with something you could react to.

Even if you removed the alien's free shots, if you're unlucky you can still lose soldiers through no fault of your own. That's part of XCOM's DNA. For me, it's central to what makes the game great. It creates tension, since you can lose anyone at any time. And it also means (if you don't save scum) that campaigns feel like a real war, rather than victory after victory until you've won.

In my LW2 campaign I've already lost loads of soldiers and missions, where as in the vanilla campaigns I finished I tended to only lose a couple of soldiers and one or two missions at most, and if I lost more it meant the whole campaign was lost.

I think some people criticise XCOM unjustly because they don't realise that it's okay to have failures, and so cheat themselves out of the fully experiencing the game. Soldiers dying unfairly is part of the game. One of the things that makes LW2 so good is the way it enhances this aspect of XCOM. You can have significant failures along the way without needing to start again. It's such a refreshing change from other games, where almost universally any failure means you have to retry or restart.

[JLtheking]

I guess ultimately the discussion comes down to a debate between different philosophies.

In most tactical/strategy games throughout history, players are used to being in control of everything. Everything that happens, is a result of the player's (or his opponent's) actions. If something good happens, it's a result of good strategy. If something bad happens, the player made a mistake (or the opponent outwitted the player). This is a very good thing as it gives the player a sense of control over the game. He can directly see what was the mistake that led to his downfall and work to improve.

This paradigm has been so prevalent that it is part of basic game design. You must feedback to your player what he is doing right or wrong. If at any time the player feels like the game cheated him, the game is at fault for failing to either explain game mechanics fully, or it is a fault in the game. The only exception is if the AI is coded specifically to cheat, for example in higher difficulties in grand strategy, AND the player knows about this and accepts it.

XCOM Blurs this basic game design by introducing RNG to each and every shot. It does this to emulate real combat scenarios where risk and reward are more subtle, where concrete rules like those of chess pieces are not suitable. Even then, XCOM still works to provide the player a sense of control over RNG with either overpowered abilities or guaranteed to happen abilities (grenades, combat protocol, stocks). Even when RNG causes you to lose a soldier, game mechanics are complicated enough that either the Player can recognize a mistake he made somewhere (and thus feels less salty and instead humble about it), or it happens rare enough to not be an issue.

LW2 forces this RNG on each and every pod revealed. It pushes the player's sanity to the limit. Suggestions such as not using grenades, intelligent positioning around potential pods, aren't always applicable to any and all situations. In many cases, they are a luxury to think about. When you NEED to use explosives to clear the current pod you are engaged with, saying that using less explosives to play around this reflex mechanic is not a valid excuse. You ALWAYS should prevent damage that you can prevent now than potentially preventing damage that might never come. The mechanic is already so punishing that an optimal strategy players use sans timers is to sit still in high cover and spam 20-35% shots on remaining enemies while the rest suppress, rather than perform a flank, simply to prevent revealing a pod.

That is why the reflex mechanic is unfair to the player. The player often has no control over when, where from or even IF his soldier will get shot. It thus feels bad for the player and according to the above mentioned game design paradigm, should be considered a flaw in the game, not the player.

You mentioned that LW2 is designed such that failure is acceptable and can be played around. This is of course valid and a good thing, props to the dev team for that. But it doesn't excuse the fact that this mechanic punishes the player for a situation he arguably does not have control over.

Imagine you're playing an alternate version of chess, and every turn a dice is rolled and a random piece is knocked off the table. No matter how well you play, you cannot play around this mechanic, and eventually you're going to lose games if the dice chooses to knock off an important piece. Now, one might argue that this dice is fair because it applies to both players, that it gives the losing player a chance to recover, that it is "immersive" and simulates whatever, and a whole lot of other reasons why they designed this mechanic. But at the end of the day, it makes the player feel bad and is a bad mechanic.

The reflex mechanic is not as bad as that example, and I even talked about its virtues and was in support of it in a previous post. But I hope this presents the opposing view well.

As someone said in this thread (or some other, can't remember), XCOM isn't a game about rolling dice. It's about choosing when to roll the dice when it is favorable to you. The reflex mechanic introduces dice that are rolled independent of the player's actions. The player has no agency to respond to it and thus why it feels so bad to lose to it. Saying that soldiers dying unfairly is part of the game is like saying the above chess game you losing pieces randomly is a part of the game. Yes it is, and that makes it a bad game. No one would want to play that chess game.

[Manifest]

Even if you removed the alien's free shots, if you're unlucky you can still lose soldiers through no fault of your own.

The keyword being you had to be unlucky, and even then it usually was in your power to stop it (by giving up the objective or something). These things shouldn't happen with such frequency as to expect them on every mission. You should lose and suffer by your own hand, when you fail that 99, knowing full well there's a 1% chance it can happen. Not every mission when you hope those fresh pod ~20% shots don't crit.

[Inemuri]

As someone said in this thread (or some other, can't remember), XCOM isn't a game about rolling dice. It's about choosing when to roll the dice when it is favorable to you.

I'd say you try and minimise the chances of a failure, but you cannot eliminate them. The only way to do that is to rely on guaranteed damage, much of which Pavonis has mostly removed in LW2. To allow the player a strategy that minimises the chance of failure to the point that it is effectively eliminated means you lose the feeling of being in a real battle. You lose the tension and uncertainty, a campaign with both lows and highs and the stories that emerge out of those moments.

I appreciate that some people don't like this uncertainty. Most gamers want skilled play to always be rewarded because they like to win. And therefore they don't like aspects of XCOM in which they are forced to face loss and effectively want it reduced if not outright removed. I suspect that Firaxis wish they could make the game more uncertain, but to appeal to the mass market vanilla must cater for such players. Thankfully, Pavonis isn't under that obligation.

Saying that soldiers dying unfairly is part of the game is like saying the above chess game you losing pieces randomly is a part of the game.

It's not a good analogy to compare XCOM to Chess. A better analogy is to compare it to poker, and people are screwed by RNG in poker all the time -- more than in XCOM! -- and yet people still play and love the game. Yes, it's more difficult for a poker player to understand what they did wrong, because the game can provide bad feedback: sometimes the wrong actions are rewarded and the right actions are punished. Sometimes players feel justifiably cheated. But that doesn't outright make poker a bad game or its design somehow inherently flawed. It just makes it a different game to something like Chess where the player has complete control. Some people like Chess, some like poker.