I'm not sure why I haven't raised this before because it has frustrated me for sometime. Maybe not wanting to rock the boat. But my frustration has reached it's limit to speak out.
The shot dynamics, whatever you wish to call them, does not make sense. I have someone with 46 shot skill and someone with only 26. Yet the difference according to an aimed shot is always the same. On a snap shot it is only a few percent. I essentially have a marksman who is only a few percent higher to hit his target on a snap shot than, let's say a rookie. And on an aimed shot no difference. Both say 85%,or 75% depending on the weapon. In practice the accuracy is marginal yet someone with a 46 shot skill over a 26 shot skill has say, haven't done the exact maths, 40% something greater chance.
Just fed up with the shot stats meaning very little when they should mean a substantial amount. Annoying when you put a lot of time in to tactics and equipping and then the shot system is so flawed.
I hate saying this. Steve is a top bloke, I've grown to become fond of you all.
Yep Steve, I feel the same about gun shooting accuracy as Xeno. I get fed up losing a game down to a seemingly random game of chance when using guns. This game's strength is in strategy and making intelligent decisions. A certain ammount of chance is good but the amount of dud shots I get is really frustrating. More accuracy would be most appreciated. Op fire inaccuracy bothers me less but when I commit a unit to fire and every shot misses, then the next is the same etc, ahhhgggh!!! When you actually hit the enemy is feels such a rare thing. More likely to hit the poor fellow next to you on your own side. Increased accuracy would improve the game. I always thought the wild miss shooting to be unrealistic. Worth trying out an accuracey improvement, gets my vote Steve.
I think I'm detecting some kind of subtle undercurrent of displeasure with the accuracy of shooting? :) Fair enough, it probably needs a good look at it.
I guess the first thing to decide is how the accuracy should work, or more specifically, the following:-
1) How much influence should the gun, the shooter, and the type of shot have on the overall accuracy?
2) How much of a random element should be added?
3) How accurate should the "physical" shot be, based on the "final" accuracy value after taking into account the gun, shooter, and shot type? And if a shot is inaccurate, how far should the bullet deviate?
[I'll have to cut this post short as the PC I was writing on just had a hard-disk crash, but I managed to rescue the above. I'll write more soon].
On 1) I think the gun, shooter and type of shot should have major influence, the great bulk of it IMO.
On 2) Some but not much.
On 3) Not quite sure what you mean in the first part of that question. On deviation it should definitely be reduced. I take it that the units have some military training, but on many occasions you have to wonder whether it is the first time they have ever fired a gun, as they can fire as if they have their eyes closed, so wild the shot can be. ;)
I think you misunderstood my first question, but I didn't phrase it very well; I meant what proportion of each should affect the shot, i.e. do they all contribute a third. However, my question is irrelevant to a certain extent anyway, since each weapon has seperate accuracy values for each type of shot.
Anyhow, I'm just reminding myself of all the settings as they are. Basically, the shot skill for an average unit is 35-40, which is randomly adjusted by +/- 10, so a normal unit will have a shot skill ranging from 25-50.
So if we take the two extremes, an accurate shooter with (say) as Las Rifle and a the worst shooter with (say) Heavy Laser:-
I suppose my main question is, ignoring the specific numbers I've mentioned, what do you think should be the chance of both types of unit getting a 100% accurate shot?
I thought you had put Heavy Laser accuracy too low but checking actually you have it too high! It is 34%. Although I rarely use heavy laser, probably for this reason, should a weapon be that low in accuracy. It therefore comes down to mostly luck whether you hit or not. I thought it was 65% for some reason.
Ahh right, I see what you mean Steve. The unit probably should have greater influence on the accuracy of a shot, the random sway of +/- 10 I didn't know in fact and seems quite high an effect on a unit's shot accuracy. But then saying that, looking at the weapon stats once again, I'm surprised on how low the vast majority of those are, I had forgotten.
Oops, I was originally going to use the Marsec pistol in my example, but I changfed to Heavy Laser but forgot to update the %.
But anyway, I think I've overcomplicated things. The main question is, given that we think the units accuracy is so poor, what should be the overall % chance that an average unit with an average weapon (say an SP-30) will shoot an aimed shot perfectly accurately?
An average soldier firing an aimed shot with a sniper rifle, 80%. A good shot 90%. An excellent shot, 95%.
So with a pistol then probably 60%, 70%, 75%
I'd like the deviation of shots to be much tighter as well. At the moment I tend to move any units out of the wide field of fire as I'm worried a wildly stray shot might hit one, which isn't very realistic, it's like oh no! blind Bill with his Blunderbuss is about to fire! Stand completely clear. :D
In answer to Henoh, I think we need to change it. If it goes wrong, get problems we can either fine tune it to make it work better or simply reverse things back to the original system. But I think it will work out for the better. The accuracy just seems broken with wild shooting. Also there have been other changes, didn't Steve make it harder for us to kill when shooting? Can't remember whether it was armour changes or damage. But it was to encourage more involved shoot outs. After that change it meant if you actually managed to hit your foe with current lack of accuracy he blooming well survives quite easily. One shot kills are rarer than they used to be, combined with lack of accuracy is just frustrating. I always take AP100's where I can, just make sure of a kill.
Robsraiders I feel went over the top with his posts, and said as much, but I also agreed with some of what he said. This is why I raised this because I have felt it myself albeit to a lesser extent and think it does need a re-think. I know Pete feels the same way. Rabid what is your view bud?
But then Rabid uses brute force, his trademark, and a great one, rocket launchers and auto cannons don't need too much accuracy! ;) But an excellent tactical opponent too. I wouldn't be surprised if he was an architect. Design, and then destroy in his spare time.
What's happened to Henry's Cat? Like his namesake, run and found a new home.
Although taking up Pete's issue, I remember recently firing 3 shots at a unit with 23 armour with a Marsec autogun and not killing him, yet he killed me the next turn with one shot with a Marsec despite having 36 armour.
You have a great game here Steve, and I greatly appreciate everything you have done, you are a top banana, so don't take any of this criticism about aspects of the game anything personal. It is because I love the game I dare to speak out. And it is because you are just a wise and wonderful leader you listen to us and don't tell us to f**k off. :D
Ha, not at all, it's good to have these debates. Besides, the forums have been too quiet lately, it's good to see some chat. And StellarCon sounds like a great idea. :)
I've just been reminding myself of how the system currently works. I'll try and keep it as breif as possible, but I think it's important since its what happens for inaccurate shots that I think needs changing:-
1) Add up the unit's shot skill and the weapon accuracy to get a total chance of accuracy. This is the the % chance of an accurate shot, although it is clamped to between 15%-85% 2) Decide if the shot is accurate by "rolling a 100-sided dice" and comparing to the total chance of accuracy. 3) If it is accurate, still adjust it by a random angle between -1 and 1. 4) If it is not accurate, adjust the shot by a random angle from between 0 and (bear with me) "dice roll - total chance of accuracy, divided by 3". So if the total chance of accuracy was 80, the dice roll was 92, the shot would be adjusted by a random angle from between 0 and "92 - 80 / 3" (i.e. 4 degrees), randonly either left or right.
So, a few things to note from this:-
* With a sniper rifle or Las Rifle, even Blind Bill (lol) has pretty much the maximum chance of getting an accurate aimed shot as much as anyone. * Even an average unit (shot skill 35) with an SP-30 has a 75% chance of getting an accurate aimed shot. * Blind Bill (say shot skill 25) with a Heavy Laser still has a 59% chance of an accurate aimed shot. * IIRC, point 3 above was added to prevent snipers picking off units from the other side of the map. * Maybe the maximum chance of accuracy (currently 85%) should be inceased to 95%? * I could also, say, halve the innaccuracy adjustment * Of course, this is all talking about aimed shots. Obviously, weapons have far less accuracy for snap/auto shots. Is this a problem?
Architect! I?m not but I?ll take that as a compliment.
My love for rocket launchers and auto cannons means the shot accuracy doesn?t bother me so much, but my take is that whatever changes Steve makes, it?s the same for everyone so it levels the playing field. Although in defence heavy games, it would skew things in favour of the side defend if opportunity fire was too accurate
Happy to try anything but the current system suits me fine.
I'm not so sure; with #3, any unit with a sniper rifle or Las Rifle has an 85% chance of directly hitting a unit from right across the other side of the map. Also, any average unit (shot skill=35) with a sniper rifle has a 78% chance of hit directly on opportunity fire.
#3 was introduced since the game was getting too unbalanced in favour of defensive play: a couple of units with sniper rifles on opp-fire were killing anyone that poked their head round the corner.
This thread has gone a bit quiet. I propose I tweak it slightly by increasing the maximum accuracy to 90%, and slightly reduce the inaccuracy for inaccurate shots. We can see if that improves things.
Does this increase the accuracy of all weapons? An issue of mine is that the far lower weapons nobody uses, they are like museum pieces. I make games at 50% in order for us to use them. But the vast majority of people play at 100% or above so everyone uses Marsec Autoguns or at least M400's. Unless you are Rabid. ;) The others are mostly superfluous. Let's bring them up a bit at least so they are viable in most games otherwise what is the point.
Tightening the angle of shot is a must. It is a novelty when you first play and you see a shot fly off in a ridiculous direction but when you take the game, well, semi-serious let's say, it takes the piss. It's not as bad as when I first played, that was outrageous some of the shots. But it came down. For me it needs coming down more. I know Pete is the same on this.
Yes, it will slightly increase the accuracy of all weapons (when an innacurate shot is made). You're right, most of the weapons are probably not even used. Why would anyone bother buying a marsec pistol? But if I increase their accuracy, they just become the same as another weapon.
Anyway, I'll make the change I sugested and we'll see how that goes.
Actually it was a couple of snap shots, so no not aimed, but still a smiper rifle that was closer to hitting my own unit standing a distance away than the intended target. :D
Well it is due to this I have been using mostly 75 AP grenades, I do of course still use pistols and rifles i.e marsec autogun and marsec pistol, the most effective, and on that sniper map I like to go full heavy laser + armour hehe, I tend to use snap shots instead of aimed especially if enemy has armour, need to get those extra hits in, and if failing to do there is still AP left to run behind cover, grenades are less rng dependent bur doing cover shooting also mitigates RNG, I've got one good idea, make smoke grenades be able to explode IN TURN instead of end of turn, this way its possible to get around a corner without worrying about opp fire, and so experimenting with raising accuracy shouldn't be a big problem?
And with this low accuracy, its always advantageous to have multiple opp gires opposed to just 1, so maybe at least 1 hits hehe *looks at Stardrive alien ravine map*