Low Aim Rookies

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Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Jacke »

For officers I like Technicals for Haven Advisors and Shinobis and Holotargetter Sharpshooters for Squad officers. Conflict for Shinobis is they want Oscar Mike for stealth escort missions but Focus Fire for other missions.
Goumindong
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:04 pm

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Goumindong »

Ithuriel wrote:
Wait what? I think it's arguably the most important stat in the game, by and large... there is only one class that truly doesn't rely on aim (grenadiers) and two that don't heavily rely on aim (technicals, assaults). I can see the argument that stealth shinobis don't need aim, but Swordmasters definitely do- both to make their choppy choppy reliable, and to ensure hits against high-defense aliens (also I really like training my stealth Shinobis into pistol skills, so I highly appreciate good aim on them- I've managed to run a Destroy the Monument mission with 2 stealth Shinobis, one heavily trained into pistols; they together wiped out 10 enemies including my first Archon and ADVENT took a total of 5 shots the entire mission). Rangers hands down live and die by their aim; Gunners have Hail of Bullets, but everything else they have relies on aim (if a gunner with 60 aim suppresses a target, the target just walks away and doesn't care). Snipers need decent aim though tbh it's less important than a Ranger; they get so many aim buffs they only need 65+ Aim. Specialists shoot fairly regularly, Assaults appreciate aim so they can shoot without being adjacent to the target as well as stungun people.

...wait now I think about it- does suppression end if they move? I thought it did, but that could be me being used to LW1
No. You have it backwards. Aim is the least important stat in the game. Every class has a bevy of abilities that reduce or negate the impact of aim. And those classes that do heavily rely on aim are easily prioritized for aim bonuses.

On top of this classes have 2(assuming you take ablative HP) slots for which they can equip items that negate the need to aim (grenades of various sorts, or tracer ammo if you really have to shoot).

The difference between an average rookie and the minimum is 10. What this means is that if you make 10 shots in a game(so long as these shots are not bound to 0 or 100 for either which reduces the advantage of the aim bonus) with that rookie you will expect that one will miss as a result of the aim reduction.

That is not particularly impactful unless you're consistently shooting "must hit" shots.

To continue:

A rookie has between 55 and 75 aim at the start and gains at least 2 points on first level up. So the minimum aim a squadie can have is 57. Assault rifles, pistols, and smgs have a bonus of 20 at point blank, so the minimum aim a squadie can have at point blank (ignoring sharpshooter) is 77. A shotgun gives +40 and every class except the gunner and sharp can equip them. That makes 97.

The most aim dependent class is the sharpshooter. A sharpshooter is most likely to equip your better scopes but can also afford to take death from above and so equip a stock. That is +15-25 aim. Then as they level up they can take dgg for another +10. Sure they lose out o precision shot but that puts them in the same point as a base aim rookie. At sq a 59 aim sniper is actually in kind of a bad position. But by lcpl they will have 79 aim from a basic stock and scope... Which is 89 or 99 with height advantage. Good enough to plink any exposed unit you can find (which is not that hard to generate with a sharpshooter really). At cpl this will be 102 to 112 AWC can help as well (lone wolf/steady hands are good options). If you really in truely cannot abide only a 100 aim Sharp you can go with holotargeting. Which, while it will produce much lower aim on your sharp will eventually(god they take so long to develop) turn them into a fairly good scout.

The second most aim dependent class is the ranger. But they're terrible so stick any you get in your havens and ignore them the rest of the game. Legit though they can both barrels which is a shotgun type weapon for +40 aim (I.E. Minimum aim soldier guaranteed a graze). But again they literally have four skills dedicated to aim (grazing fire, walk fire, executioner, locked on) and the shotgun. And if necessary they can indeed shoot+steady if you really need that extra oomph.

After that is probably gunners... Because gunners have a lot of really cool abilities that require to-hit rolls... But at the same time a low aim gunner has access to literally 5 skills that increase aim in some capacity (all on different tiers) and 2 (maybe three? Not sure if saturation requires a to-hit on cover) skills that ignore to-hit completely! Plus area suppression for barely caring about your aim because you just want them to ineffectually shoot back.

I might do the rest of the classes later but really ther is no problem with low aim soldiers. High aim is nice certainly but it's not going to make or break your play. Give them some freaking frags or flashes or smoke and have something to when you don't want to shoot.
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Jacke »

Aim is vital and Rookies starting out with an average of 65 is barely passable.

The problem there are almost always more enemy than friendlies, so your soldiers from the start have to deliver much more damage that gets sent at them. Get wounded, then there's red fog and the risk of another injury causing death. And then there's the strategic level, where wounded soldiers are out of service for both missions and upgrading in the GTS or AWC. And KIA's have to be replaced.

Besides the primary weapon, everything else is either limited by resources or cooldowns. Delivering effective damage to the enemy reduces risk, wins battles, and wins the war. And Aim is the gatekeeper to hitting with the primary and many secondary weapons.
JackDT
Posts: 44
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:07 am

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by JackDT »

It might be worth noting that beta tester joinrbs is playing L/I with a houserule that he can't use the GTS to pick classes -- only to promote rookies to random classes -- and doing fine. Lots of ways to make bad stats work.
Goumindong
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:04 pm

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Goumindong »

Jacke wrote:Aim is vital and Rookies starting out with an average of 65 is barely passable.

The problem there are almost always more enemy than friendlies, so your soldiers from the start have to deliver much more damage that gets sent at them. Get wounded, then there's red fog and the risk of another injury causing death. And then there's the strategic level, where wounded soldiers are out of service for both missions and upgrading in the GTS or AWC. And KIA's have to be replaced.

Besides the primary weapon, everything else is either limited by resources or cooldowns. Delivering effective damage to the enemy reduces risk, wins battles, and wins the war. And Aim is the gatekeeper to hitting with the primary and many secondary weapons.

No. While it's not as bad as the base game, trading shots is almost always a recipie for disaster. It does not matter whether your aim is 55 or 75.

High aim is nice. But low aim is not a significant limiter. Not only are there valuable things to do many of the most valuable do not require aim at all.
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Jacke »

It's not always risky trading shots, but sometimes it is and doing so with an Aim of 75 is a lot better than 55. And unless it's a long mission, resources will still be used as well as some cooldown abilities. But there's going to be XCOM shooting, moreso on the long missions when resources have run out and cooldowns aren't all available. Especially if once a pod is activated, fall back and overwatch is used to get more shots in the open on enemy. Aim really matters. Tactics can be adjusted to reduce the impact of low aim troops, but higher aim means more tactics are possible and when shots need to be made, they're more likely to happen.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 167
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Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Saph7 »

Goumindong wrote:The second most aim dependent class is the ranger. But they're terrible so stick any you get in your havens and ignore them the rest of the game.
If you're filling your squads with low-aim soldiers and not going to any effort to buff it then yeah, you're going to think rangers are terrible. On the other hand, if you pick a high-aim soldier, give them all the aim buffs you can and go the overwatch Ranger build, then once he hits Gunnery Sergeant you'll be reliably hitting 3+ shots per turn. My best OW ranger was consistently killing/disabling 1-2 enemies per round, and he could do it every turn with no cooldowns or consumables.

And quite often you DO want to trade shots. You'll often be in positions where you're engaged with 1-4 enemies at midrange where you really don't want to close in on them due to the risk of activating a second pod. In these cases 75 over 55 aim is a 20% chance of turning a miss into a graze and a 20% chance of turning a graze into a hit. That's not negligible, particularly once you level up and gain multi-shot skills.
Goumindong
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:04 pm

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Goumindong »

Saph7 wrote: If you're filling your squads with low-aim soldiers and not going to any effort to buff it then yeah, you're going to think rangers are terrible. On the other hand, if you pick a high-aim soldier, give them all the aim buffs you can and go the overwatch Ranger build, then once he hits Gunnery Sergeant you'll be reliably hitting 3+ shots per turn. My best OW ranger was consistently killing/disabling 1-2 enemies per round, and he could do it every turn with no cooldowns or consumables.

And quite often you DO want to trade shots. You'll often be in positions where you're engaged with 1-4 enemies at midrange where you really don't want to close in on them due to the risk of activating a second pod. In these cases 75 over 55 aim is a 20% chance of turning a miss into a graze and a 20% chance of turning a graze into a hit. That's not negligible, particularly once you level up and gain multi-shot skills.
No. Rangers are bad because they do not do anything that prevents my team from trading shots at the enemy. Nor do they prevent failure cascades. Nor do they scale particularly hard (Like assaults do). Nor do they do the actual thing that you need to have happen against 1-4 enemies at mid range that you don't want to close against (which is reduce their ability to return fire, because -30 aim on an enemy is much more valuable than +20 aim on you). Nor do they have guaranteed abilities. Nor do they clear cover...

If you've got some number of enemies at mid range and you have to sit there trading shots with them due to the risk of activating a second pod then you want another gunner with Hail of Bullets.

Their sole redeeming quality is "both barrels" and later, (if you're able to keep the lightning reflexes tactical DE off the table) some minor overwatch.. But they aren't even the best class at overwatching (that would be Assaults with CCS)
trihero
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Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 7:01 am

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by trihero »

Rangers are amazing. Light'em up is essentially +70% aim (doubles whatever aim you have) without a cooldown, and they simply start with the ability. It helps a lot when doing cover trading, and in particular is great against enemies who don't take cover (mechs, zerkers, archons, etc). Walk fire is essentially hail of bullets without a cooldown.

Killing lots of enemies with overwatch prevents problems before they occur. Assaults with CCS are terrible at midrange overwatch, and not always even that reliable at close range overwatch due to lack of cool under pressure (I'm usually getting 50-60% chances on CCS procs).

Both barrels is icing on the top allowing you to massacre mutons and other monstrosities that appear early in the game before your "best" answers to those are available.

Sure you need things like cover destruction, but you also need someone to take full advantage of cover destruction. Blowing up cover doesn't do you any good if all you have are SMGs to fire at the remaining enemies. Rangers do that exceptionally well with no cooldown double shots. Snipers are inflexible unless you have both serial and high ground, which are not exactly widely available.

At some point you just want volume of fire instead of expending cooldowns/limited items, and rangers fill that role very very well.

And they can carry flashbangs like anyone else and in fact I do that quite a bit until they reach rapid reaction, thus preventing "failure cascades" and preventing the enemy from doing nasty things.

If you have so many complaints about rangers, I'd love to see you complain about specialists. There are often times many maps without any mech enemies to hack, and then they are super garbage compared to rangers. An aid protocol every other turn does little to prevent your team from injury since the enemy just finds your weakest defense member anyways.

Sooner or later, especially when you play on legend, a hail of bullets doesn't kill an enemy in one shot anymore. And then you feel the difference between a ranger who is unlimited by cooldown and a gunner. Turns out shooting twice a turn is much better than once a turn.
Kizaray
Posts: 28
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2017 6:16 am

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Kizaray »

I play with hidden potential at 100% and not created equally enabled. For me I bring them on missions to level up then turn them into psy ops with a few officer perks. The reason i do this is psychic soldiers are the best haven managers. This is late game focused but it works great when you get them going.

Early game i make them my pack mules and bring my smokes, flashbangs and grenades.

This strategy has worked great for me so far. Plus a psy op can work wonders in a rendezvous mission.
Goumindong
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:04 pm

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Goumindong »

Ithuriel wrote:
Manifest wrote: I don't think anything that specifically buffs OW aim occurs before the 70% penalty.
Can you confirm or deny this? As far as I know, the 70% (60% for dashing) penalty occurs after ALL penalties. If this was the case, wouldn't this also imply that Hair Triggers apply after the penalty?
Goumindong wrote:
At CPL Lockdown is +15. I am not sure but I think it applies after the General overwatch malus.
As above, can you provide a source (Pavonis or ini files) for this?
While ini diving for something else i found this in LW_overhaul.ini

; Note these will be multiplied by 0.7 after being added to other to-hit bonuses, so they should usually come out to +5, +10, +15 after rounding
TRIGGER_BSC_AIM_BONUS=7
TRIGGER_ADV_AIM_BONUS=14
TRIGGER_SUP_AIM_BONUS=21
Manifest
Posts: 236
Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2017 6:30 pm

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by Manifest »

Goumindong wrote:
Ithuriel wrote:
Manifest wrote: I don't think anything that specifically buffs OW aim occurs before the 70% penalty.
Can you confirm or deny this? As far as I know, the 70% (60% for dashing) penalty occurs after ALL penalties. If this was the case, wouldn't this also imply that Hair Triggers apply after the penalty?
Goumindong wrote:
At CPL Lockdown is +15. I am not sure but I think it applies after the General overwatch malus.
As above, can you provide a source (Pavonis or ini files) for this?
While ini diving for something else i found this in LW_overhaul.ini

; Note these will be multiplied by 0.7 after being added to other to-hit bonuses, so they should usually come out to +5, +10, +15 after rounding
TRIGGER_BSC_AIM_BONUS=7
TRIGGER_ADV_AIM_BONUS=14
TRIGGER_SUP_AIM_BONUS=21
Noice. I wonder if this happens with everything.
trihero
Posts: 1099
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 7:01 am

Re: Low Aim Rookies

Post by trihero »

I'm pretty sure it does, I remember testing cool under pressure in vanilla and your overwatch shots effectively have +10 slapped on them. The overwatch multiplier might indeed apply after all penalties/bonuses, but I'm pretty sure behind the scenes they just increased the bonus to whatever number necessary to make it do exactly what it says it does on the tooltips with the multiplier.
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