Sort out overwatch about lwotc HOT 17 CLOSED

JL reverted the change firaxis made on the beagle maneuver and made it so that yellow alert would punish it

from lwotc.

I think major issues are:

• Cool Under pressure completely eliminates the aim malus and allows for crits (which are more common for overwatch because the enemies are typically out of cover)
• Cool Under Pressure makes Sentinel and Rapid Reaction both incredibly powerful relative to normal shooting, since you effectively get multiple "normal" shots often on flanked targets
• Aim and crit stacking magnify the effects of the perks above

from lwotc.

The new WOTC overwatch mechanics are making overwatch ridiculously weak right now. I'm seeing < 20% to hit, even from elevation. It looks like the calculations take into account cover, regardless of which tile an enemy moves to. I'm not sure that enemy overwatch suffers from the same problem, though.

This needs some investigation to work out what exactly is going on.

from lwotc.

This WotC change has been discussed in detail in a number of forums. There is a mod that alters the behaviour back to the base game version, which includes the ability to step out of overwatch when at the edge of range.

I believe the problem arises because the shot occurs in the tile the enemy commenced the move in, as opposed to the tile to which the enemy is moving.

Note the aim malus should be operating correctly for the enemy. It changes the tactical game somewhat as you can use a soldier in high cover as a ghetto lightning reflex runner of overwatch shots regardless of pathing. It may require improving the group of overwatch abilities, or making a conditional one regarding improved shots against units in cover, though I have no insight on how simple that would be to code.

from lwotc.

I was not aware of the mod's existence to revert OW rules/behavior to vanilla. With many LW2 players hopefully switching to LWOTC, it might indeed need some getting used to. If the mod for reverting back to vanilla behavior works well and is preferred, it might be worth including in the list for integration in #67

from lwotc.

I'm going to rephrase my thoughts here.

I don't mind OW being lower on soldiers that haven't spec'd into overwatch perks, although I think that successful overwatch percentages should be closer to high 30s, low 40s. You also have to take weapon range, the soldier's aim, and proximity to an enemy target into account but unless you are super close to an enemy the shot percentage should be roughly 30-40% IMO.

Overwatch for me, should always have a slightly better chance to hit when compared to taking a shot into full cover, and it should be roughly the same if an enemy is in half cover. Any lower than that, and there's not really a point to overwatch, you might as well take the shot into full cover.

Overwatch, at least compared with LW1 is nowhere near as strong in XCOM 2 due to the fact that any damage cancels overwatch, so there's not always a guarantee that your shots will land because you might get targeted by AOE, or grazed by something even when you are in full cover. Then there's also the "thematic nerf" to overwatch, being that you have mission timers on the majority of your missions and you can't just blue-move crawl your way through the map because you will fail the objective.
That's also not mentioning the ever-increasing wave of reinforcements that ADVENT calls in on many missions as well, so I think overwatch should be reverted back to vanilla values IMO.

The thing to consider, if we aren't reverting this change, is potentially having a specialized scope or a reflex sight that will add aim to reaction shots in addition to things like tracer rounds, hair triggers, and PCS bonuses. If you really want your soldier to be good at overwatch, then you need to specialize your weapon and your soldier accordingly, and that could be something to consider.

Just some thoughts.

from lwotc.

So this issue is based on experience with high-rank overwatch specialists. They get a bonus to aim, plus crit, plus multiple shots on units that are typically in the open, plus hair triggers. They typically have 90-100% shots under these conditions, so setting up overwatch traps and drawing enemy units into them was just incredibly strong. Brokenly strong in my view. You could easily do HQ assaults without taking wounds using this approach. It's bonkers.

That said, WOTC behaviour on when overwatch triggers nerfs the technique to the point that overwatch is barely usable, so I definitely want to revert the behaviour back to how it was in LW2 before.

from lwotc.

@pledbrook That would certainly be a welcome change, although I wonder if Gotcha for WOTC would break or not? It is the one mod that I cannot live without since tile counting is stupid

from lwotc.

Gotcha Again may already be broken with overwatch, considering a comment about its behaviour in the integrating mods issue. But yes, it did cross my mind. If that happens, I would seriously consider updating the mod, perhaps publishing it as a LW2 [WOTC] specific version.

from lwotc.

So this issue is based on experience with high-rank overwatch specialists. They get a bonus to aim, plus crit, plus multiple shots on units that are typically in the open, plus hair triggers. They typically have 90-100% shots under these conditions, so setting up overwatch traps and drawing enemy units into them was just incredibly strong. Brokenly strong in my view. You could easily do HQ assaults without taking wounds using this approach. It's bonkers.

We could add back penalties for overwatch at inactivated enemy pods/from concealment. Is that what we should do/try for a start @pledbrook ?

For ideas, this mod here, http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1132067065, "allows the normal reaction fire penalty to be applied to reaction fire shots fired from concealment." (But it also applies to taking shots at unactivated enemy pods wandering into an overwatch trap. In other words, enemies that are "scampering" now take the benefit of penalized accuracy from overwatch attacks).

from lwotc.

I'm confused. As I understand it, the reaction fire penalty is only removed for overwatch shots on reveal. In all other cases, the aim * 0.7 penalty still applies. The problem is that XCOM can get their reaction fire aim to very high percentages even with the penalty.

from lwotc.

Apologies if the mod confused matters more, but mechanically wise, you're concealed, so the enemies don't initially know where the shots are coming from until they see you on reveal, so there's no penalties for XCOM taking shots on surprised enemies. Because the mod makes it so you can overwatch from concealment, I can see where the confusion can arise, but basically it tries to revert to XCOM EU where there's always overwatch penalities in any situation. After that though, you're correct in that it's fair game (penalties applies for now on) if you're not hidden.

The other thing we could do to mitigate the problem is to increase the overall penalties of over watch shots (0.5 multiplier instead of 0.7, for example.) It might make the early game unmanageable, unless we change the hair trigger values so that the basic one makes it like how originally early game is, but the elite ones are reduced, etc.

Then again, this could hurt ADVERT more, maybe give them overwatch perks?

from lwotc.

I think current overwatch is mostly fine outside of alpha striking pods that walk into you. Maybe have overwatch deal half damage to yellow alert enemies. Also discourage ADVENT AI from trying to move unless it is flanked, if someone with high chance to hit is currently overwatching

from lwotc.

Overwatch is very random now. Your overwatch ranger can do 3 high crit chance shots - and can do 0 shots because of damage taking, suppression, etc. I'm using many overwatch specialist in the current run because i'm lucky with high aim specialists. But i have a loot of situations where just combat protocol is much more usefull. The same is with rangers - they can do 3 shots with rapidfire or gamble with 3 potential shots by overwatch.
Overwatch is always a gamble. You can do a loot of damage - or do nothing.

from lwotc.

I think current overwatch is mostly fine outside of alpha striking pods that walk into you. Maybe have overwatch deal half damage to yellow alert enemies. Also discourage ADVENT AI from trying to move unless it is flanked, if someone with high chance to hit is currently overwatching

Now that I think of it, wasn't the "anti-beagle rush" suppose to counter this problem?

from lwotc.

Maybe remove 40% crit from flanking for the overwatch trapping not red alerted pods?

from lwotc.

Leaving Overwatch as is for now. If there's a concrete proposal, we can create another issue. Currently this is just clogging up the issue list.

from lwotc.