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Does the armor from Combat Awareness actually do anything?

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2017 12:54 pm
by nmkaplan
I hesitate to fill up the bug report forum with more complaints without being sure, but I noticed something in my ironman campaign, and I'm wondering if anyone else had noticed the same.

I love overwatch spec'd gunners, rangers, and specialists, so I'm running with a bunch of them, and I got a lot of Combat Awareness PCS chips, so they all have them.

Last night my gunner was suppressing, and 2nd pip of armor (he had 1 already from Predator) from Combat Awareness appeared as expected. Then he took a shot to the face from an advent. The armor pip disappeared (again, as expected, since once you take a hit you are no longer on overwatch/suppression).

More importantly, the damage flyover showed "1 ARMOR, 3 DAMAGE". That made me wonder whether the game was removing the overwatch, and therefore the armor, **before** calculating the damage. If so, this makes armor from combat awareness completely useless.

The problem is that I have no way to know what the actual damage roll was, and I've learned not to completely trust the flyover reporters, since I have Perfect Information enabled. It's certainly possible that the damage roll was 5, properly reduced by 2, and the flyover didn't report it correctly.

Seems like it would be easy enough to test for someone with dev chops, though.

Re: Does the armor from Combat Awareness actually do anything?

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2017 6:16 pm
by LordYanaek
You wouldn't even need dev tools. Just removing all damage variance in the ini should work. I've been using a Combat Awareness gunner a lot in my campaign but i never paid enough attention. I mostly use it for the +15 defense though (coupled with Lone Wolf on that gunner, that makes a really annoying target to hit for suppressed ADVENT :lol: )

What i know is that the armor report in the flyover isn't very reliable as it will show the full armor when you hit with an AP round unless the armor was totally negated (so 1 or 2 won't show armor, but 3 will show 3 rather than 1)

Re: Does the armor from Combat Awareness actually do anything?

Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 3:39 pm
by IslamDunk
LordYanaek wrote:coupled with Lone Wolf on that gunner, that makes a really annoying target to hit for suppressed ADVENT :lol: )
This is not a topic-related post, but does Combat Awareness benefit those who are suppressing? I thought it only affects overwatching units.

Re: Does the armor from Combat Awareness actually do anything?

Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 3:53 pm
by Kyrsoh
Suppression is a continous overwatch. If you flashbang or wound a unit doing suppression, you will see an 'overwatch removed' tag above its head. So I guess suppression counts as an overwatch stance.

Re: Does the armor from Combat Awareness actually do anything?

Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 4:12 pm
by LordYanaek
Yes, it does as i see the armor pip appear on my Gunner when she suppresses. It's a very strong combination to get Lone Wolf on a Gunner and add a Combat Awareness PCS if he/she is supposed to sit away from the squad as +25 def when you're behind full cover and the enemy is suppressed makes you almost impossible to hit. She often stood alone in front of the enemies while the 3 snipers behind took care of them and so far only suffered a few wounds, often when some enemy came out of the fog and a Muton suppressed her, thus removing Combat Awareness.

I guess a pair of high base defense Gunners would work even better in such a situation, sadly i didn't consider this when training my rookies and only discovered the power of Combat Awareness after seeing she had Lone Wolf and wondering what good it would do to a Gunner so she's a one-of-a-kind irreplaceable soldier now (too late to train new guys in December).