Covering Fire as a lvl 1 Offensive AWC perk

[NoDebate]

Normal overwatch should be a option when you learn Covering fire. that was problem from LW1.

Or change functionality of Covering Fire to be similar to Suppression.

Targeted effect that triggers on any non-move action the target takes but, doesn't apply the aim penalty.

Ignores cover bonus as a trade-off? Half-cover bonus? No aim penalty on reaction shot?

[Sines]

Possible change to Covering Fire to make it more useful. Make it act like a reactive Suppression. The idea of Suppression is that you're firing at an enemy to give them few opportunities to act. Covering Fire is similar, it shoots at just the right time to disrupt your enemies. Whether or not it hits, the enemy still ducked behind cover (from a story perspective, not a mechanics perspective) to avoid the shot, and now has less time to aim their shot, and no time to perform the more complex actions of their special abilities.

It'll still be chancey, since you don't pick whom it applies to, but it costs less ammo than a real suppression, and all but guaranteed to do something (as compared to when the enemy wisely doesn't move). Sure, there are sometimes when you just want to ensure enemies stick still, so there are times when you'd prefer to just keep the regular Overwatch, but I think this would make Covering Fire feel like it's better to have it in most circumstances, as compared to it's rather iffy status right now.

If a unit has Covering Fire and Suppression it would function as stacked Suppression. That's a hell of a thing against a single target, and not a bad perk choice. It might be a bit powerful on Area Suppression, but Gunners don't get Covering Fire naturally, and it's okay for some AWC perks to work really well with a given class build.

[Antifringe]

And yet, someone else tested exactly the opposite. The armory don't show a difference, it's only on the tactical map that the items are added so you won't see the effect in the armory.

When you tested it on the field, how much mobility did you have with both soldiers. I'm not talking about number of tiles but the real mobility number (you possibly can't see it without a mod like additional icons) because number of tiles is a fraction of the mobility number and rounding errors could cause both soldiers to cover the same distance with actually a different mobility value.

Anyway, this is from the 1.2 patch notes so i think it settles the point.

- X2Effect_TemporaryItem will now ignore "SmallItemWeight" ability. Things that give free items should no longer cause mobility penalties (e.g. Flashbanger, Smoker perks).

I have no idea why JL said that, but I am telling you that I empirically tested that immediately after reading your post. Both soldiers had a mobility of 15, one of them had BOTH of the perks, and one of them had neither, and they both ran exactly the same distance on the map. If you re-read my post, you'll see that I specifically tested it on the tactical map. They had exactly the same movement range. One of them had BOTH perks, so that would be a -2 mobility, which is guaranteed to reduce linear distance by one tile (mobility is in meters and tiles are 1.5 meters).

Just going from what I have directly observed, I'd say that JL is either in error or there is a weirdly specific combination of events needed to trigger the bug.

[johnnylump]

I tested it in the tactical layer and saw a difference in move distance from the same tile. It does not show up in the soldiers' mobility stat in the strategy layer. Regardless, the way the fix is set up, it only matters if the small item is applying the weight "ability" so there won't be any weird movement bonuses out of it.

[Antifringe]

I double checked this because it is driving me nuts. I even cooked up a specially rigged ini file to make it easy. It turns out that Smoker and Flashbanger are decreasing movement, it's just that my first test ground had just the right arrangement of terrain that it wasn't easy to see (flat out distance wasn't affected, but off-diagonal tiles were, but said tiles were blocked by terrain).

So okay, I was wrong and the others were right. Looking forward to the fix, because these were some of my favorite AWC powers until I learned this.

[Manifest]

Not sure why covering fire does not ignore cover bonus. It always should have as you are shooting at someone coming out of cover to fire at you. Makes it a good perk and makes sense. Should've been this way since eu...

I don't think it ignores the cover bonus, but I think it doesn't have the standard OW penalty, so it's like you shot a standard shot at them. I don't use Covering Fire so I could very well be wrong, but I thought that's how it worked?

[Mooncabbage]

I know it's possible to use a PCS to change the minimum hit chance for a reaction fire shot, but would it be possible to make this a setting? I hate the idea of using a PCS as a bandaid. It makes sense that it might be something you do in the Guerrilla Tactics Centre, since it's kind of a tactic you might want to adjust to your personal taste. Or just make it a standard option. This would mitigate a lot of problems with reaction fire in general.

[ORIONOX]

Personally, I'm much more in favour of making the Overwatch chips into a Weapon Mod instead of a PCS, perhaps raising the cost a bit in the process.

While making these chips a weapon mod instead of a PCS would make Overwatch a bit stronger, I have little problem with Overwatch being VERY strong within it's niche, given that niche is not as ubiquitous as it was in XCOM 1. On some missions, yes it's amazing. But Long War 2 has several key factors that prevent Overwatch from being as potentially game breaking as it was in XCOM 1.

-First of all, the AI can act on scamper now, which makes Overwatch walls still have an element of risk (as opposed to XCOM 1, where it was BAR NONE the best way to activate a pod).
-Secondly, mission timers and reinforcement waves provide a limitation on Overwatch builds and tactics. It's strong, but not always the best choice, as it was in XCOM 1. Just like Stealth build Shinobi may excel at sneak-hacks and related missions, but are poorly suited to retaliation sites.
-Thirdly, iirc JL and the Long War team modified the code so certain units tend to move first, such as zombies (cannon fodder) and Lightning Reflexes equipped units. This gives the AI more reliable tools to breach Overwatch walls than in XCOM 1. Especially since these Overwatch chips explicitly STILL FIRE against Lighting Reflexes units.

Put simply, XCOM2's greater moddibility and tactical-changes compared to XCOM1 has given the Pavonis team far more tools to properly balance Overwatch. It's not the game-balance migraine it used to be.



Finally, I have another reason to want a weapon mod instead of PCS for this.... One I find a bigger pet peeve than poor AWC procs:
Shotguns.

As it stands, the game's lack of a reaction fire range stat makes Overwatch with Shotguns a complete farce. Soldiers will fire their shots at units across the map that they have almost no hope of ever hitting. All it does is waste ammo. And to correct this requires assigning a PCS slot to the soldier. SMGs face the same problem, though to a far lesser degree. Dedicating a soldier's sole PCS slot to this feels rather punishing, while there are three weapon mod slots that can be used.

Possible change to Covering Fire to make it more useful. Make it act like a reactive Suppression. The idea of Suppression is that you're firing at an enemy to give them few opportunities to act. Covering Fire is similar, it shoots at just the right time to disrupt your enemies. Whether or not it hits, the enemy still ducked behind cover (from a story perspective, not a mechanics perspective) to avoid the shot, and now has less time to aim their shot, and no time to perform the more complex actions of their special abilities.

It'll still be chancey, since you don't pick whom it applies to, but it costs less ammo than a real suppression, and all but guaranteed to do something (as compared to when the enemy wisely doesn't move). Sure, there are sometimes when you just want to ensure enemies stick still, so there are times when you'd prefer to just keep the regular Overwatch, but I think this would make Covering Fire feel like it's better to have it in most circumstances, as compared to it's rather iffy status right now.

If a unit has Covering Fire and Suppression it would function as stacked Suppression. That's a hell of a thing against a single target, and not a bad perk choice. It might be a bit powerful on Area Suppression, but Gunners don't get Covering Fire naturally, and it's okay for some AWC perks to work really well with a given class build.

you sirs are making a lot of sense here. Have you suggested it to the devs? I'd love to see both these ideas implemented.

[Skyfire]

Just a heads-up for anyone who this is bothering - particularly those who don't want to have to use a PCS slot for the patch - XcomLW_SoldierSkills.ini contains this line:

Code: Select all

REQUIRED_TO_HIT_FOR_OVERWATCH=1 ; any to-hit chance below this won't trigger overwatch

Assuming that it works as advertised, changing '=1' to '=25' or '=50' will give all your soldiers the PCS bonus without needing to use an actual PCS for it.

[Sines]

Just a heads-up for anyone who this is bothering - particularly those who don't want to have to use a PCS slot for the patch - XcomLW_SoldierSkills.ini contains this line:

Code: Select all

REQUIRED_TO_HIT_FOR_OVERWATCH=1 ; any to-hit chance below this won't trigger overwatch

Assuming that it works as advertised, changing '=1' to '=25' or '=50' will give all your soldiers the PCS bonus without needing to use an actual PCS for it.

Well that's interesting. Probably go in and change that to somewhere between 20 and 30. At the very least, I'm going to start keeping a closer eye on my perfect information readout.

[JulianSkies]

Just a heads-up for anyone who this is bothering - particularly those who don't want to have to use a PCS slot for the patch - XcomLW_SoldierSkills.ini contains this line:

Code: Select all

REQUIRED_TO_HIT_FOR_OVERWATCH=1 ; any to-hit chance below this won't trigger overwatch

Assuming that it works as advertised, changing '=1' to '=25' or '=50' will give all your soldiers the PCS bonus without needing to use an actual PCS for it.

Well that's interesting. Probably go in and change that to somewhere between 20 and 30. At the very least, I'm going to start keeping a closer eye on my perfect information readout.

Remember that is a minimum that applies to everyone, including aliens.

[Sines]

Remember that is a minimum that applies to everyone, including aliens.

Ah, might be a bit less tempting then. I just wanted a way to make Shotgun overwatch a bit more tempting.

[Skyfire]

Remember that is a minimum that applies to everyone, including aliens.

Definitely something to keep in mind, yeah.

On the other hand, Lightning Reflexes explicitly ignores it (config is 2-3 lines down in the same file), so you can still bait out the overwatch shots with that, and all the other OW-breakers are completely unaffected. Shoot them, flash them, suppress them... it's not hard to clear when needed.

More importantly, an alien not taking an overwatch shot at you is only a downside if you subsequently give them a better shot. Otherwise, it just means that ~7% chance of an unlucky hit on a dashing soldier is now a 0% chance because the enemy didn't pull the trigger.

There's a pretty reliable rule of thumb in this kind of situation: getting rid of low-percentage outcomes for both sides comes out as a net buff to the player, because the player is better at rigging the playing field so the odds are in their favour.

[Mooncabbage]

Thanks for the heads up. It'd be nice to have it as an ingame option rather than a hidden config, but it'll do for me

I'm not sure if I should set it to 25% or 30%? 25% is a nice round number, but for some reason 30% feels good too.

[Manifest]

I don't think it ignores the cover bonus, but I think it doesn't have the standard OW penalty, so it's like you shot a standard shot at them. I don't use Covering Fire so I could very well be wrong, but I thought that's how it worked?

No, actually, nevermind. I just tested it and it applies both the standard OW penalty and the cover penalty. This is horrific.

From a gameplay standpoint the reason you give OW shots a penalty is so that you don't get free 100% shots easily.

From a narrative standpoint OW shots have a penalty because the target is moving, even though they're out of cover.

Making Covering Fire suffer the OW penalty as well as the cover penalty flies in the face of balance and realism.

[JulianSkies]

I don't think it ignores the cover bonus, but I think it doesn't have the standard OW penalty, so it's like you shot a standard shot at them. I don't use Covering Fire so I could very well be wrong, but I thought that's how it worked?

No, actually, nevermind. I just tested it and it applies both the standard OW penalty and the cover penalty. This is horrific.

From a gameplay standpoint the reason you give OW shots a penalty is so that you don't get free 100% shots easily.

From a narrative standpoint OW shots have a penalty because the target is moving, even though they're out of cover.

Making Covering Fire suffer the OW penalty as well as the cover penalty flies in the face of balance and realism.

For what's worth my overwatch specced Ranger is doing 70% chance shots against enemies in full cover, but she was quite literally built from the start for that and I picked a soldier with high aim.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Covering fire is always put at low levels of perk trees. It is useless there. When you level up then , you are selecting a perk that worsens your character rather then make it better. The only reason you would take it is that far in the future it might start being usefull. I am still not fully familiar with lw2 perks, but in lw1 when I redesigned perk trees for myself I would make sure covering fire is only available after you have had choices like opportunist, sharpshooter, and sentinel. Once you have those and high aim, then covering fire is somewhat viable.

I just don't understand that perk. How could it have survived unchanged since EU? How could the people making it think the perk might be good.? Covering fire should give you a higher accuracy shot against high a unit in cover then a straight out offence shot is, otherwise there is no point in having it.

There is this mod I discovered yesterday. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =714941290. It is called improved overwatch by Isms. It adds an ability called smart overwatch, which lets you pick a cone on the area you want to overwatch. It is an option that I always wanted overwatch to be. I have always found it annoying when I put a soldier on overwatch to keep a particular alien in its place, when an another wanders in and the solider shoots at them instead. Here you can actually watch that alien instead. You may hope the alien you are watching will move, but if they fire instead at least covering fire would give you some option to hit first.

[Surrealistik]

The PCS for Overwatch thresholds is a horrid, ugly kludge; different OW commands keyed to the threshold%s should be the baseline.

Also yeah, early Covering Fire without any supporting perks is crap.

[Jacke]

...early Covering Fire without any supporting perks is crap.

...and the Ranger gets it at LCpl and the Specialist gets it at Cpl. At least with an AWC perk the soldier likely has greater aim and perhaps other overwatch supporting perks.

[Bill]

I'll just leave this here in case anyone else wants it.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... earchtext=

[aedn]

For what's worth my overwatch specced Ranger is doing 70% chance shots against enemies in full cover, but she was quite literally built from the start for that and I picked a soldier with high aim.

Sadly, i found out the hard way that my two below average and average aim rangers are not worth a damn as overwatch spec. Ones an major ranked officer due to needing an officer and not having a lot of options at the time. Granted they are only TSGT's at the moment but they flat out suck at the present time. I tend to just move them danger close and use the shotgun more often then not.

[cmdrspyker92]

Covering fire has needed a buff since the LW1 days. Its a situational perk that has pained us forever.

I've always liked the idea of it ignoring 50% of the cover bonus when taking the shot. But with XCOM2s more open and robust code, something like the target you shoot at getting -10 aim / crit till the end of the next player turn might be doable (on the grounds that the shoot is intended to be disruptive and prevent the enemy from doing bad things to your squad).

Might be wise to get a mod to post a poll somewhere, on whether or not players think covering fire should be buffed. Just so the Dev team can gauge the differential

[Manifest]

Covering fire has needed a buff since the LW1 days. Its a situational perk that has pained us forever.

It wasn't as much of a problem because opportunist existed. That means that OW against an enemy in cover was still just as good as shooting at them, so OW was almost always as good as just shooting at the enemy.

The nerf from Opportunist into Cool Under Pressure, while probably warranted, has made situations where Covering Fire is worse than a standard shot in accuracy, among other things (e.g. the target can't be picked, and OW can be perk-countered), which should never happen.

Because Opportunist was heavily nerfed into a new skill, Covering Fire should get a relevant buff.

[RapidFire]

The PCS for Overwatch thresholds is a horrid, ugly kludge; different OW commands keyed to the threshold%s should be the baseline...

I agree, and the kicker is having to pay 5 supplies for the privilege when the commander could just yell and tell them not to take those shots. It should just be a setting somewhere, even it has to just go in the LW2 options, this way I don't have to also tellADVENT how to take good overwatch shots. I'll probably edit the cost down to 1 or 2 supplies, since I don't think I should have to pay anything to give a blanket order to my troops.

As a workaround, can we mod a second PCS slot? Of course, it would take a little self-discipline not to use both after you get plenty of PCS mods, but given Pavonis' band-aid approach, that's a small price to pay.

[Zerikin]

I might go in and just disable covering fire and grenade perks from the AWC if I do another campaign. I've never been a CF fan and grenade perks are almost as bad for most classes.