Do Scopes, Lasers, Steady Weapon affect Rocket Scatter?

[Manifest]

I was just browsing Reddit and while the Rocket Scatter spreadsheet and the fact that aim affects it is relatively well-known by now, it seems nobody knows if aim buffs work with rocket scatter (except for PCS aim which is pretty much taken for granted), so could we get clarification on this now? Do

Scopes?
Stock/Steady Aim?
Weapons Stats? (Lasers/Hunter Weapons)
Tracer Rounds?
Soldier Aim Perks (Steady Hands, Lead By Example, ShadowStrike?)
High Ground Perks? (High Ground/Damn Good Ground/Depth Perception), unlikely, as these seem to depend on the targeted unit and rocket's target tiles)

work on rocket scatter?

I think at the very least it'd be cool if steady weapon reduced scatter like in Long War 1, it was definitely a cool/interesting mechanic.

[Arcalane]

I believe JL has stated before that weapon mods only apply to the weapon they're equipped on, so rockets would not benefit from mods installed on your primary weapon.

[LordYanaek]

Does aim even affect rocket scatter at all? Seems like it's always 4 base scatter, -2 with perk (down to 2), +2 after moving (up to 6 without the perk or 4 with the perk).
Now, maybe i don't have techs with high enough aim for it to have an impact.

[juplaa]

I believe JL has stated before that weapon mods only apply to the weapon they're equipped on, so rockets would not benefit from mods installed on your primary weapon.

Yeah he said it in this topic: http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... ket#p27504

So basically only aim and PCS should affect scatter. I do wonder if tracer rounds help, as they seem to boost your base aim, not your weapon aim.

[LordYanaek]

So does someone know the math behind aim and scatter relation? Is it even possible to drop below 2 tiles scatter? In LW1, with good aim and steady weapon (it was a basic soldier ability that everyone had) it was possible (thought annoyingly difficult) to get perfectly accurate rockets. Is it still true?

[Arcalane]

I suspect it's possible to get 0 scatter, because when I was looking at the underlying code in the ini files (I haven't inspected the actual rocket .u/.uc unrealscript files yet) it referenced making rolls.

How many rolls? 4. You know what the perk did? Reduce the number of rolls by 2.

What I think is happening is that it does some kind of roll and if it gets above/below a certain number based on aim/range/etc. then the rocket will scatter one tile in a random direction. It then does another roll, and another, until it's out of rolls.

So functionally the minimum is always zero; the maximum always ranges from 2 to 6. If your Tech has really low aim, they have a very high chance of a full six-tile scatter, but if their aim is really good then they might manage that magical zero.

ED:

Okay, so I dug down into the scripting (X2Ability_LW_TechnicalAbilitySet.uc) and took a peek or two. As I suspected, mostly right!

The game checks the character's Effective Offense against a d100 roll. If the result of that roll is higher than or equal to the Effective Offense, the scatter value is incremented by 1. This continues until a full set of rolls (2-6) have been made.

Effective Offense starts off by being the character's Aim. It's then reduced by 30 if the character has moved this turn, and further reduced if the shot is long range (-3 per tile beyond range 9). If your Tech has 70 Aim innately and is taking a shot at a target 14 tiles away (-15), you want 2-4 rolls below 55. Doable. On the other hand if they moved before firing, you want 4-6 rolls below 25. Not great odds!

The game then picks a random direction for the scatter (so that you don't end up with a weird situation whereby two scattering rolls cancel each other out) and boom, rockets happen.

[Manifest]

It's then reduced by 30 if the character has moved this turn, and further reduced if the shot is long range (-3 per tile beyond range 9.)

So if you move/blue move your aim decreases AND the number of rolls increases? Also everybody seems to be disregarding the aim perks. It seems that steady weapon only works on your primary, but the aim ability or steady hands might work.

[Arcalane]

It's then reduced by 30 if the character has moved this turn, and further reduced if the shot is long range (-3 per tile beyond range 9.)

So if you move/blue move your aim decreases AND the number of rolls increases? Also everybody seems to be disregarding the aim perks. It seems that steady weapon only works on your primary, but the aim ability or steady hands might work.

Correct.

But, Steady Aim is granted by a primary weapon modification, and those explicitly only apply to the weapon they're installed on. You could easily check by equipping a soldier with a pistol and another weapon that has a stock. The pistol shouldn't get an aim bonus for steadying the primary (and if it does, it's a bug).

I think it might be possible to do a relatively accurate move-and-fire if Psi-Inspire works as it did in vanilla.

[Manifest]

It seems that steady weapon only works on your primary, but the aim ability or steady hands might work.

Correct.

But, Steady Aim is granted by a primary weapon modification, and those explicitly only apply to the weapon they're installed on.

I know, I mean "Steady Hands", or "Aim" not "Steady Aim". Aim as in "Hunker Down and get 20 aim" as you might receive those from the AWC relatively frequently.

[The Boz]

Wait... if I'm reading this right, a moving technical has both penalties of -30 on ALL scatter rolls, and making SIX of them!?
WHAT!?

[LordYanaek]

He will make only 4 with the perk, but yep you better fire without moving.
And Aim is probably good for techs. Too bad you don't see the AWC perks before choosing who will become a tech as aim will be pretty useless to some classes. Well, at least it seems to be rather frequent so getting a tech or two with aim might be possible.

Thanks again Arcalane

[Arcalane]

Wait... if I'm reading this right, a moving technical has both penalties of -30 on ALL scatter rolls, and making SIX of them!?
WHAT!?

Correct. Like I said, if your tech has 70 Aim, then moves and fires a rocket at a target 14 tiles away, then they need to make 4-6 rolls of less than 25. For each roll of 25 or higher, the scatter increases by 1. If you somehow get really lucky, you might still get 0 scatter... but it's far more likely you'll get at least 2, probably 4-5.

[The Boz]

Yep, I am *so* modding this nonsense out.
probably will just increase the perk to reduce number of rolls by 5.