Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post Reply
eastpaw
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 4:50 pm

Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by eastpaw »

So I just got hit by 4 consecutive "impossible" shots.

0%, 5%, 0%, 8% according to Perfect Information. (Or is it Gotcha Again?)

Even assuming that the 0% shots were actually 1% and it's some sort of display error, we're talking about a 0.0000004 probability here. That's a 1 in 2.5 million chance. Could this happen? Certainly. It's just really unlikely, and this isn't the first time I've been hit on a 0%.

Incidentally, another three out of eight of the following incoming shots hit as well, and these were all 0-8% shots. (Though the 3 that hit were all >0%.)

So... this has me wondering if XCom 2 or Long War 2 cheats for the aliens sometimes? As I recall, the original game on a lower difficulty would cheat for the player after they have missed a certain number of shots. Could something like that be happening here?

The other two possibilities are that (a) the chance-to-hit pop-up is wildly inaccurate, and these were all much higher percentage shots and I just had a really bad roll, or (b) the 0% shots were actually 0.x% ones and I just won the lottery, except I got bullets in the face instead of money in the bank.

Does anyone have a clue?
gimrah
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 422
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:25 pm

Re: Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by gimrah »

No cheating in favour of aliens.

Perfect Information isn't always perfect information.
User avatar
SonnyWiFiHr
Posts: 416
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 1:57 pm

Re: Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by SonnyWiFiHr »

If you don't play Legendary.
If you miss shot with big chance hit - game will give you bonus to hit on next shot (not displayed).

Use Perfect information for Long War 2.
The Preacher
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by Psieye »

Even Perfect Information for Long War 2 doesn't always get it right - Faceless attacks are always labelled 100% even if they miss. Also note that sometimes the base game messes up on recognising cover so certain tiles that should be high cover get treated as no cover. This is why I prefer to estimate the odds myself where feasible.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by Jacke »

Perfect Information gets chance of hit wrong on area-of-effect attacks.
eastpaw
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 4:50 pm

Re: Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by eastpaw »

Thanks for the responses, guys.
gimrah wrote:No cheating in favour of aliens.

Perfect Information isn't always perfect information.
Psieye wrote:Even Perfect Information for Long War 2 doesn't always get it right - Faceless attacks are always labelled 100% even if they miss. Also note that sometimes the base game messes up on recognising cover so certain tiles that should be high cover get treated as no cover. This is why I prefer to estimate the odds myself where feasible.
Does it mess up the hit chances really badly? Like display a 10% chance shot as 0%, for instance?

The reason I ask is that even if the "0%" chances were actually something like 1%, that sequence of events is still extremely unlikely to happen. Not actually impossible though, of course.
SonnyWiFiHr wrote:If you don't play Legendary.
If you miss shot with big chance hit - game will give you bonus to hit on next shot (not displayed).

Use Perfect information for Long War 2.
Am using PI for LW2, and that's not the scenario I was talking about.
Jacke wrote:Perfect Information gets chance of hit wrong on area-of-effect attacks.
These were single-target attacks.
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by Psieye »

eastpaw wrote: Does it mess up the hit chances really badly? Like display a 10% chance shot as 0%, for instance?

The reason I ask is that even if the "0%" chances were actually something like 1%, that sequence of events is still extremely unlikely to happen. Not actually impossible though, of course.
I'm not sure how Perfect Information for LW2 displays the slightly unconventional system LW2 uses. The situation you're thinking of can happen like this:
- There are 4 outcomes from shooting: miss, graze, normal hit, crit
- Roll 1d100 against base hit chance, i.e. Shooter's Aim - Target's Def after all modifiers are applied.
- If that RNG roll was within 10 either side of the base hit chance, it's a graze.
- Apply dodge and crit rolls to demote/promote the shot by 1 notch.

So for example, 55 Aim vs 55 Def. That might be a flashbang'd Sectoid (75 - 20) shooting a rookie with 10 innate Def and in high cover (+45 Def).
- Sectoid rolls d100 and gets a 9. That's within +/- 10 of 0 so it's a graze.
- Rookie now rolls d100 against his own Dodge stat. Fails so the shot isn't demoted down to a miss.
- Sectoid rolls d100 against its own Crit stat. Suceeds so the shot gets promoted from graze to hit.

Minor caveat: pretty sure the Sectoid's AI wouldn't have taken this shot in the first place as it sees "0%" without the graze band. Naja would take that shot regardless of hit chance, but not Sectoid.


On a tangent, this is why "reduce enemy crit chance" on Nanoweave vests are highly valued for tanks relying on Combatitives: if the enemy melee lands a hit and succeeds its crit roll, it doesn't matter what the tank's dodge roll was, the attack doesn't get parried. Combatitives gives +90 dodge to melee attacks and will only parry+counter if the enemy attack is a graze or miss.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
eastpaw
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 4:50 pm

Re: Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by eastpaw »

Psieye wrote:I'm not sure how Perfect Information for LW2 displays the slightly unconventional system LW2 uses. The situation you're thinking of can happen like this:
Thanks for that, Psieye. I'm pretty familiar with the LW2 crit/hit/graze/miss system, but a refresher is always nice.

My 4-hit streak was performed by second month Advent troopers at lower elevation against a target in full cover who had Tactical Sense with something like 4-6 enemies in view. These were all standard hits and not grazes.

Basically really pretty unlikely. Before this, I had attributed my sense that the "aliens were cheating" to failings in human cognitive processing - we tend to see patterns where none exist and are pretty bad at dealing with probabilities. But in this case I sat up and paid attention because these 4 hits happened back to back and the displayed hit chances were extremely low.

Cool tip about the Nanoweave Vest, by the way!
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: Does the game cheat for the aliens sometimes?

Post by Psieye »

eastpaw wrote: My 4-hit streak was performed by second month Advent troopers at lower elevation against a target in full cover who had Tactical Sense with something like 4-6 enemies in view. These were all standard hits and not grazes.
Small note: lower elevation doesn't affect hit chances unless the target has Damn Good Ground. The +10 bonus from higher elevation is asymmetrical. Full Tactical Sense is +15 if the target can directly see 5 enemies. Full Cover is +45. So that's +60 to whatever the innate Def of the soldier was.

April Advent troops are M1 - they have Aim between 60 (Gunner) and 75 (Officer).

So let's assume Perfect Information glitched - Advent Trooper/Officer AI shooting at all means the hit chance was above 0%. I'd still expect a lot of grazes as a 10% base hit chance is effectively 0% to hit properly and 20% to graze. More likely the game engine fucked up cover calculations - I've encountered that a few times and will gladly savescum when the game lies to me about the existence of high cover. I wouldn't call that "cheating for the aliens" as I think these bugs can affect the enemy too.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Post Reply