XCOM EU Free Aim !

[miked79]

Id love to see Free Aim back in the game. I remember in the original you could aim anywhere u want. (instead of the rifles always needing a target). You could take out a wall or a barrier to give another 1 of ur soldiers line of sights.

I know the grenades and launchers have like a blast radius. But I would really like to see the ability to fire my weapons whereever i see fit.

 

For instance I was playing a mission and I was in building that was combined with another building. Aliens on one side of the wall, and I was on the other. And I had a solider on the alien side outta time units. I woulda like to blow a hole in the wall and get all up in there! But unfortunately i couldnt, and he was left to parish.

[PepprmintButler]

It has been discussed by the devs, said they took it out for balancing reasons, so arguably balancing that mod could be tricky.

Unless someone is making a huge breakthrough right now, we're still very far from accessing this kind of game mechanics anyway. Will prabably come at some point though, since quite a lot of people seem to want it.

[cdsparey1]

Anything is possible. most likely in one year the modding community would have completed changed the hole game. It will probz be a third person shooter by then hahaha!

[PepprmintButler]

I was playing with abilities, and was surprised to see that the Sectapod's Destroy Terrain ability, which is exactly free aim, can be added to soldiers/armor and it works.

It just does.

Try putting =eAbility_DestroyTerrain instead of a =eAbility_None in the kevlar armor line, start a game, and aim away.

 

Weeeeee, I guess ?

As stated earlier I'm actually not a fan of the idea of putting free aim in, I think it takes away a big chunk of the tactical challenge that you can just spend 1 shot destroying the enemy's cover and play shooting range with the next, instead of flanking.

Edited October 16, 2012 by PepprmintButler

[GeneralArmchair]

As stated earlier I'm actually not a fan of the idea of putting free aim in, I think it takes away a big chunk of the tactical challenge that you can just spend 1 shot destroying the enemy's cover and play shooting range with the next, instead of flanking.

That's easily fixed by adding multiple levels of resiliency to cover. If the aliens are hiding behind the "full cover" of the large "soup-of-the-day" chalkboard in the local restaurant, then you SHOULD be able to spend 1 shot destroying it and blasting the exposed alien with the next. If the aliens are taking cover behind a brick wall, the odds of you vaporizing their cover with that one shot should diminish accordingly. If they're hiding behind a piece of UFO alien alloy wreckage, then you should pretty much be wasting your time trying to destroy the cover.

 

 

If the devs think that free-aim is overpowered and breaks the game, then they have only themselves to blame for making their world out of paper-mache. I was surprised when a mere frag grenade destroyed the exterior wall of a UFO. Dumbfounded when stray fire did the same. The exterior walls were nearly invincible in the classic game. It took a blaster launcher to punch a small single tile hole in the wall. The interior walls were only slightly weaker. A heavy plasma could melt them, sometimes....after like a full magazine's worth of attempts.

Edited October 16, 2012 by GeneralArmchair

[PepprmintButler]

You have a point.

I saw somewhere (prolly an unpacked map upk) that there are environmental "health" values attached to tiles, so it would not be so much about adding resiliency levels as it is about tuning them, which looks significantly easier. I might be wrong though, it's too late for my brain to funciton properly.

[GeneralArmchair]

I suppose the first step would be to re-enable free aim as an overpowered mechanic in a paper-mache world. The next step would be hardening that world to realistic levels so that you can't simply tunnel through everything with basic assault rifles. It would certainly help make the cover system more realistic. What the cover is made out of should be extremely important, while it currently is almost a non-issue. In a better system, the choice between the man sized "soup-of-the-day" sign and a chest high cinder-block wall next to it is a no-brainer. But in their weird system currently implemented, the soup sign is better simply it is "full" cover rather than "half" cover. Edited October 16, 2012 by GeneralArmchair

[Ichthyic]

are maps randomly constructed, or are they one of several presets each time you do a mission?

 

if randomly constructed when you enter a mission, it might actually be EASIER to modify the hitpoint values of terrain and actually have it work right when a map gets constructed. heck, if it can be isolated, it's likely to be a single table file of terrain hp values that can just be adjusted in a day.

 

OTOH, if there are literally dozens of preset maps... that's a whole lot of work to edit every single bit of terrain on every map to give it the right hitpoint values.

 

I'm guessing it's the latter, given that the devs decided against free aim.

 

....

 

" The exterior walls were nearly invincible in the classic game."

 

IIRC, something even made mention of this during one of the missions? Something about "don't bother trying to shoot down alien walls" or something like that.

 

god I loved that game. I think that, and the original Panzer General really turned me on to turn-based strategy.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Sir_Toejam

[kayttaja]

I once ran my heavy next to a sectoid thinking I'll blast him away easily, turns out he missed a ~80% shot. Luckily he blew a hole in the outside wall, and my assault guy was behind it! Damn it was sweet! :dance:

[GeneralArmchair]

are maps randomly constructed, or are they one of several presets each time you do a mission?

 

All the maps are preconstructed. I'm not sure how the game handles pre-round damage. I don't know if it randomly blows stuff up at the start or if it loads up a preconstructed "damaged" map.