First death, incredibly soured.

Tac1
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First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

This game is beginning to infuriate me with the overwhelming reliance on luck to portray any challenge. This campaign was going so well, despite a constant slew of crashes and the poorly designed UI causing rampant miss-clicks, up to this last mission where I encountered my first death.

Advent item recovery from a moving van, ambushed two pods of trooper/sentry/sentry and sectoid/engineer/trooper, with a pair of rangers L.Cpl, a Sq.Grenadier, a L.Cpl Specialist, and a L.Cpl Shinobi. Grenadier frags the first pod, obliterates it instantly, rolling 3, 4, 4. Specialist Sentinel overwatch triggers, hits Sectoid for 4, Trooper for 2(Graze). Decide to chain Light Em Up with Walk Fire to pick off the other two.

36% to hit, 56% with graze on the Engineer, miss. Walk Fire for 66%, 86% with graze on Engineer, miss. 44% to hit, 66% with Graze on Trooper, miss. 76% to hit, 96% with graze on trooper, grazed for 1 and kills. Sectoid and Engineer run their turns, third pod activates and comes in, no yellow alerts. Trooper/Trooper/Officer, Trooper overwatches.

Shinobi fleches the Engineer and blows Concealment, takes Overwatch. 22% to hit, hits for 3. Drop free reloads, Light Em Up and Walk Fires between 30-80% on the Sectoid, narrowly kill him with three 1 damage and one 2 damage grazes. Flashbang the entire second pod, Specialist Overwatch.

Advent turn. Sectoid wastes a turn raising a Zombie. Officer marks and fires at my Ranger for 4% to hit, 4 damage. Trooper fires at my Ranger for 2%, hits for 4, he's killed outright. First death of the campaign. Wasn't to a misplay that caused a flank. Wasn't to a high risk/high reward rush that backfired. He died for the same reasons I left Darkest Dungeon, because luck overrides tactics. And this has become a stupidly consistent issue, that nearly every mishap I've encountered in a campaign just boiled down to "I did everything right, but they still had a 1% chance, so fuck it" and it's killing any care I have to even bother.

Why bother putting in the effort when this game is just going to arbitrarily punish me at random. I'm told the AI doesn't cheat, but watching them nail 1-6% shots for full damage back-to-back five times straight is so obnoxious it guts any sort of enjoyment I might have for the rest of the mission, assuming I don't just drop the game then and there.
Dwarfling
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Dwarfling »

You are beggining to infuriate me every time you post. It's always the same: "it's bad luck, not that I'm not good at the game".

Everybody has gotten hit at 10%, everybody misses an 80% at least once per mission (I practically count on it) and everybody has graced a 95%.

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nmkaplan
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by nmkaplan »

Something is wrong with these numbers you're giving. Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the graze mechanics, a shot that is 1%-10% at face value should never hit for full damage, yes?

On the other hand 4% for an officer firing at a solider in high cover, without hunker, aid protocol, or other defensive buffs, seems *incredibly* low. Unless you're omitting defensive buffs in your story, there's no way that officer had only a 4% chance to hit. That implies the officer's inherent aim was 44, which can't be right.
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8wayz
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by 8wayz »

You need to analyse how you ended up in the situation in the first place.

All those grazes you landed could have been better spent as actions with some critical examination of the battlefield. Also aliens will never take a 2% shot so I am not sure if Perfect information is right in that case. You need to consider that the best defence is often to just break line of sight and leave 1 unit with high defence/dodge as bait.

I would strongly suggest to drop the graze band to 0. Currently the mod is balanced so that the graze band heavily favors the AI - they have higher Defence and Dodge, numerical advantage (meaning that you will have to take more shots to take them all down, hence more rolling RNG), higher HP (again, more shots to kill them), a big chunk of your soldiers have negative Defence and/or Dodge (so the aliens will have better chance to receive better results on the graze band) and other factors.

Hence, a lot more of your shots will be grazes and misses than compared to the shots taken by the AI. Keep in mind that removing the graze band is not enough - you will need to also increase the Aim progression of your soldiers, as the AI will have too high of a defence for some of them to hit it without the graze band.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

Officer has 75 aim, -20 for the flashbang, -45 for the high-cover, I just assumed the rest was distance penalties. I'm told they actually have range penalties/bonuses in LW2, but nothing I have in-game says anything of the such except for PI displaying obscene hit-chances at certain distances (68% through high-cover, from one tile away). But I've consistently seen the AI take shots that, at least for the player, aren't even long shot but an outright waste of an action, which I think may be the graze band. Their actual to-hit might be 4%, but their graze displays as 20%, which is a hit-percentage I'd expect the AI to take frequently, even if it's only for a glance-dance.

As for analyzing, the last game session took me an hour and a half, in which I did two missions. If I spend any more time evaluating every little detail in every action in every turn, I'd never finish a mission in one sitting.
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8wayz
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by 8wayz »

Yep, that is the other big downside of the graze band - it makes the AI more bold, turning impossible shots into low-probability ones.

By analysing I mean just that single mission and what you could have done differently to limit bad RNG and enemy shots. It helped me learn to identify when to hunker down and use Aid Protocol, some things that are rarely used on lower difficulties or in the original XCOM 2.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

For analyzing, I'll use my second to last mission as an example.

VIP rescue, 6-man operation. Sq Sharpshooter, Sq Assault, three Rookies, Sq Ranger. Sharpshooter took a rooftop turn 1, rest of the team moved up. I tunneled on the three-man pod to my right (sentry, engineer, trooper) and didn't think it over when I moved my three rookies up to better cover. Next turn, they are flanked by a drone, concealment breaks, and the fight starts with both pod and drone a turn sooner than I intended.

I spent about fifteen minutes considering movements and options, working out who can do what, where, the odds, and what happens next if that fails. In the end, I settle for my assault going in after the Sentry(blue move), my ranger moving to a roof to take shots at the Engineer, a rookie grenading the trooper, and my other rookies focusing the drone. My sharpshooter didn't have line of sight, so I steadied with the stock.

Sentry dies to an 8-damage crit. Engineer barely survives after taking 4 damage. Trooper dies to a 5-damage grenade. Drone takes 2-damage from a grenade, and I move my other rookie closer for a better shot, which was a mistake. I left him flanked by the engineer, and didn't even get a better range bonus. He fires, hits for 3, drone dies.

Next turn, Engineer fires at my rookie, but misses despite a 54%(74% with graze) shot. Second pod of Officer/trooper/trooper moves in from above near the objective, yellow alert at my assault, but misses. Rookie moves up, finishes off the engineer. The other rookies move up, flashbang the entire pod. Assault dashes up to prepare for the next turn, sharpshooter takes a 28% shot, misses. Ranger fires at the Officer, hits for 4 on a 34% to hit.

Officer fires, misses. Trooper overwatches, other trooper fires and misses. Ranger fires again for another 34%, hits again for 5, Officer dies. Assault pushes up, but I settle for throwing a frag instead of risking him pushing in alone and being left out of position against the remaining trooper. Trooper dies to 4-damage frag, two rookies move up while the third overwatches. Trooper runs the overwatch and dies to hit for 3-damage. Though, for some reason, I had line of sight on the trooper until the grenade lands, then he vanished. No idea why, but it didn't seem to affect anything, unless the trooper also lost sight and that was why he ran the overwatch.

VIP is escorted to evac without encountering the drone, last remaining enemy.

Shouldn't have moved the rookie and let him be flanked by the engineer, that was stupid. Shouldn't have been so impatient with the rookies on my third turn in concealment, and I should've put my sniper on the forward left building, so he could actually get line-of-sight and not be useless for the first half of the fight. Otherwise, I did fine. I nearly obliterated the first pod in one turn, second pod was thoroughly controlled and stomped in two turns, and nobody even got hurt.

The difference between this and my last mission, is that RNG didn't slap me in the teeth.
Swiftless
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Swiftless »

Some game play videos of your extreme luck would be interesting and/or entertaining. We've all been hit by 1% chance hits...but there seems to be something about your luck in particular. I've definitely had my own experiences about requiring an entire 5-6 squad to kill one lowly T1 grenadier over multiple turns but I've persevered and had my own spectacular luck in landing shots on targets if I so choose to freely roll the dice. Usually now I end up stacking the deck in my favor so I don't have as many issues with annoyingly lucky advent peons.

Also I've noticed after having started a ton of then aborted campaigns that the opening months are especially brutal for Advent being able to hit your troops with low percentage chance shots and because it's Advent and there's more of them than you it makes sense they'll take those chances. I'm sure it has as much to do with player perceptual bias as it does that LW2 puts you in a hole to climb out of in the terms of Advent troop capability vs. Xcom troops. Eventually you get enough tools that you can mitigate most of the randomization although missions can still go all pear shaped for the best of us.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

I recorded a few runs earlier, but the footage seems corrupt and won't play. I'll see about finding a fix and documenting gameplay later, but right now I think I need a good break from this game. 7 dead before April 12th and lasers massively delayed by an utter absence of Scientists has left me drained and wanting to play something braindead and simple for a bit.
gimrah
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by gimrah »

I suspect some of these hit chances are not correct, possibly because of mods. The displayed hit chance represents the middle of the graze band. So if it shows 70% to hit, you actually have 60% to hit cleanly, 20% to graze and 20% to miss completely (before crit and dodge rolls). I've no idea whether Perfect Information reflects this correctly, especially if you use other UI mods.

Some of this is questionable tactics. Don't take on 2 pods at once if you don't have to. If I understood correctly, your ranger was killed by a 4 damage shot, which either means he'd already been hit or he didn't have ablative plating. A static firefight with equal numbers with no flanking by you is unlikely to go well even with flashbangs etc. This is a game of risk mitigation: give the enemy enough low % shots and eventually they will hit you. So make these low %s even lower and allow fewer of them.

Contrary to advice above, I recommend leaving the graze band on. I don't believe it disfavours XCom and I do believe it decreases rage. It essentially means that XCom will take more chip damage (much of which can be absorbed by ablative) and fewer clean hits which may kill outright. The difference will be significant provided you only allow the enemy low % shots on you.
Phaseless
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Phaseless »

As Long as hits on low percentage shots don't mass up, it's to be expected. Man is very bad at judging probabilities. You don't notice the 50 shots that miss on a 2% shot, but the one shot that hits, you notice. And deem it unfair.

If low probabilities never occured , there's be no Cancer, no lottery winners and no People struck 4 times in their lifetime by lightning.
They gotta occur at some Point and since we consider anything below 5% as practically impossible (which makes sense because it's reasonable 95 times out of 100), it hurts all the more when it does happen at that Point.

I'm slowly beginning to learn to live with this. In part by trying to eliminate even 2% chances of something very bad Happening, in part by taking the hit without blowing up my temper. When something bad happens, I try to see the big Picture, all the times I have had luck and my part that lead to the unlucky occurence. Also one death is not crippling at all for a campaign. Half a squad or a complete squad gone, that's a different Story.

Gotta think risk/reward. If you have to decide between a 2% Chance of disaster or playing it safe and using a resource you have available (time/stun or whatever), ask yourself if the risk is worth it. In case you are very low on that resource, it might be worth it. But if you have plenty of it, playing it safe but lengthier might be the better choice. I personally don't have the Patience myself quite often. And it's quite infuriating if that lack of Patience then leads to a KIA that could have been avoided.
Psieye
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Psieye »

Tac1 wrote:"I did everything right, but they still had a 1% chance, so fuck it"
You have a rather lax definition of 'right' in my book. "If you gave the enemy a 1% chance, you've fucked up" is the motto I play by - i.e. if Advent are raising their gun at all (after leaving them alive), your tactics are suboptimal. I don't live up to it often, but it keeps me cool when the RNG screws me over: there is always something I could have done better. There's a bizarre habit a lot of players have (and really, even people outside games) - retreat is never thought of. You can back down and still get what you want.
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Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

It's not reasonable to wipe every pod you ever come across turn-1. If I have a 5-man team against a 4-man pod, make five attacks and just one of them survives, I'm not apt to say "Well, I fucked that up. Should've tried harder to roll a 4 instead of a 3 on that Sentry". That's just idiotic. If I kill all but one, and that one has red-fogged at 1 health, been flashbanged, and everyone has high-cover, I'm not going to kick myself for him not also being dead.

'Right' in this game has the issue that you can make the best decisions and still fail, for things you have no absolute control over.
Steve-O
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Steve-O »

@Tac1:

One thing I haven't seen you mention in this thread: What difficulty are you playing on?

If the answer is anything other than "Rookie" my advice would be to lower the difficulty and try again. Seriously. There's no shame in playing the game on Rookie. LW2 is balanced to be HARD on the EASIEST difficulty setting.

Step it down, play until you can manage on Rookie without getting "beaten by the RNG," then work your way up to whichever difficulty level you like from there. Playing on the easier settings gives you the leeway to learn how to win in The Long War.

Long War 1 (for XCOM1) was harder on Rookie than the EW vanilla game on Classic. I haven't actually played XCOM2 vanilla at all, but I assume it's a similar set up here. If you're really as frustrated as you claim to be, don't let pride stand in the way of your enjoying the game.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

Started on Rookie to get my bearings, made it as far as December before suffering any serious injuries. Bumped to Veteran after my third campaign. I tried Commander and Legend a bit ago, but ran into constant issues of a single Drone needing focus-fire from the entire squad to deal with by grazing it to death.
Psieye
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Psieye »

Tac1 wrote:It's not reasonable to wipe every pod you ever come across turn-1. If I have a 5-man team against a 4-man pod, make five attacks and just one of them survives, I'm not apt to say "Well, I fucked that up. Should've tried harder to roll a 4 instead of a 3 on that Sentry". That's just idiotic. If I kill all but one, and that one has red-fogged at 1 health, been flashbanged, and everyone has high-cover, I'm not going to kick myself for him not also being dead.
You've misunderstood my point. EVEN IF NOTHING DIES, they should have 0% chance to do any harmful action on you. The "I gotta kill everything" mentality is exactly how to lose control. It's not unusual for me to have 10 active enemies and still consider the situation under control as they can't harm me.
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Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

I don't see how that is even possible. I've had suppressed, flashbanged Troopers firing through high-cover and still have some chance to hit. The only time I've ever seen a 0% to hit was a flashbanged, suppressed, red-fogged Officer firing through high-cover at range, and even then maintained a 14% to graze. Which surely Ablative will deal with a graze or two, but it isn't practical to have up to a dozen of those shots fired in any given mission, even it spread around the team. Eventually even that gets through.

This is further compounded by the issue of Advent's habit of focusing fire. One graze I can handle, but nobody survives three or four of them in quick succession. I've lost more than a few operatives to 1 and 2 damage being dealt five times in a single turn. I've honestly begun debating the usefulness of vests for Ablative armour, when the enemy either blows through it outright with a single shot or chips past it and beyond with graze-spam.
Psieye
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Psieye »

Tac1 wrote:I've had suppressed, flashbanged Troopers firing
Stop trying to debuff their aim and buff your def instead. There's a reason why I value smoke grenades over Sting flashbangs. 45 (high cover) + 20 (smoke) + 20 (Aid Protocol) ="anyone who doesn't have OVER 85 aim just gives up". You know you've succeeded when they just stand still and OW instead of shooting. Don't have those options? Hunker. 45 (high cover) + 30 (hunker) = "anyone who doesn't have OVER 75 aim just gives up". That means in the earlygame, even a rookie can make enemies give up if there isn't a Sectoid or Officer around. Oh sure, they'll try to OW crrep forward. A Gunner may suppress. But they're not shooting and that gives the rest of your squad (who should NEVER BE SEEN on the previous turn) time to get in position for frags and 100% hit chance shots. The timer may be an issue if you do this too often, but it's useful to do for the occasional pod.

Question: do you use a mod that shows exactly which tiles the enemy can and can't see?
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Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

I have a mod to show line of sight, but I don't use it a lot. It seemed like a nice idea at the time, but in practice I find it causes massive frame-rate crashes and I spend more time fighting with it to properly display elevation and eventually give up and just try to 'guess'.

As for smoke and aid protocol, I honestly don't use either at all. Given my terrible luck, it seemed a better use of my time to pack frags and try to just obliterate the enemy with one attack, then flashbang to shut off abilities and weather whatever comes next. I've tried smokes before, but found a nasty habit of just having myself area-suppressed, flashbanged, and psi-attacked at every turn. By the time my turn comes, half my squad couldn't hit someone standing next to them, can't move without being Reaction Fired, or are actually mind-controlled and standing precariously on my flank.

Ever since I stopped using smokes and instead used flashes, I found a lot less of that happening, and the only thing catching me after is just blind luck shots from Advent popping me through cover. Aid protocol, I personally disliked. Too often I'd use it on someone and just have Advent focus four shots on someone else and just obliterate them instead. Just felt like I was picking one person in particular not to be shot, instead of trying to prevent shots in the first place. Usually why my Specialists are either Haywiring drones, Overwatching with Sentinel, or are deploying Flashbangs.
Psieye
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Psieye »

Tac1 wrote:I have a mod to show line of sight, but I don't use it a lot. It seemed like a nice idea at the time, but in practice I find it causes massive frame-rate crashes and I spend more time fighting with it to properly display elevation and eventually give up and just try to 'guess'.
Use Gotcha Again.
Tac1 wrote: a nasty habit of just having myself area-suppressed, flashbanged, and psi-attacked at every turn.
All of that requires your soldiers to be visible. What are you doing letting more than 1 member of your squad be seen while setting up? Area Suppression isn't scary when you can flashbang/shoot to cancel it. A Sectoid get removed with Fleche - bait it back to safe territory so the shinobi has zero risk of revealing a new pod. Otherwise pre-emptively flashbang it, preferably without being seen (grenadier firing-arc is great). Incidentally, if you can't guarantee a kill on a solo Drone (with nothing else active) in 2 actions, you're doing it wrong.

I won't spoonfeed you further. Maybe you'll figure it out while readng my AAR.
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Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

I have Gotcha Again. But it doesn't tell me when the enemy has Line of Sight. As for avoiding being seen, windows. I used to try to avoid line of sight, but I've had most of my attempts ruined by a series of windows lined up together that happen to form a 'shoot through this' tunnel to anyone I value.

And I've had 5 Rookies at 1-tile distance firing for three turns straight without killing a Drone. Gatecrasher is an exercise in frustration, a lot of the time.
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Psieye »

Tac1 wrote:I have Gotcha Again. But it doesn't tell me when the enemy has Line of Sight.
Between that and the LoS preview mod, you can accurately determine what tiles are and aren't visible.
Tac1 wrote:As for avoiding being seen, windows.
Nobody said hiding is easy. Get better at avoiding windows.
Tac1 wrote: And I've had 5 Rookies at 1-tile distance firing for three turns straight without killing a Drone.
Wrong gun.
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Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

Wrong gun... in a mission I have no decision on equipment to bring.
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8wayz
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by 8wayz »

@Tac1

What I think is the crust of the issue is that you either leave visible a soldier with low Defense/Dodge (making it a prime target for the aliens) or you have too many visible for them on their turn and they get trigger-happy.

As pointed out, if your soldier has high Defense, the AI will either go on Overwatch or try to flank him/her. Even enemy Rocketeers and Mutons won't try to use explosives on a single soldier, they look for at least two targets close together.

The other trick is trying to activate pods one by one, to avoid being swarmed if you can help it.

Drones on Commander and Legendary are better dealt with explosives if you do not have 1 or 2 soldiers with a shotgun. Most of the soldiers on Gatecrasher carry at least one frag grenade.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

8wayz wrote:@Tac1

What I think is the crust of the issue is that you either leave visible a soldier with low Defense/Dodge (making it a prime target for the aliens) or you have too many visible for them on their turn and they get trigger-happy.
NCE generally gives me negative-defense troops. My last game alone had 7 of my 8 Gatecrasher Rookies with between -5 and -10 defense, and close to half my starting recruits had negative defense. Can't help that.

As pointed out, if your soldier has high Defense, the AI will either go on Overwatch or try to flank him/her. Even enemy Rocketeers and Mutons won't try to use explosives on a single soldier, they look for at least two targets close together.
I've had troops wiith maxed defense that get targeted just the same. Actually, I can't remember the last time I saw an enemy try a flank that wasn't three tiles away. They always just seem to stand there and exchange fire or move from low to high cover and then shoot anyway.
The other trick is trying to activate pods one by one, to avoid being swarmed if you can help it.
Already doing that.
Drones on Commander and Legendary are better dealt with explosives if you do not have 1 or 2 soldiers with a shotgun. Most of the soldiers on Gatecrasher carry at least one frag grenade.
Every Rookie in Gatecrasher has a frag and flash grenade apiece. I've tried shotguns on Drones before, it's... better than a rifle, I'd say. But barring a critical hit, I rarely kill one without needing to dedicate a sizable portion of my squad.
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