Again on reaction fire

[Telok]

Using this save under v2.5(I think it's the right one, Dam map with 3 snipers and 3 plasma rifles). I've run it five times now and have some data. One note is that my snipers are using Aimed Shot at 20TU, this is a new compile but I don't know if it's an artifact that got in the code or a reversion from the 24TU it had in my last compile.

All the sniper action is across the full length of the dam, soldier spawn fence to past the fence on the opposite end. All the plasma action is from the soldier spawn fence to targets near the pipe on the near side of the dam proper.

Interesting actions
1) A taman provoked two sniper RF at 26% chance to hit when he uncrouched, dropped a weapon, and spent 16TU moving. This is RF obviously working as intended.

2) A hovernet fired three shots without moving. Two snipers had 24% shots, one fired and the other didn't. Shooter: speed 23, accuracy 35, mind 35, sniper 32. Non-shooter: speed 24, accuracy 30, mind 34, sniper 31.
This same hovernet fired 3 shots without moving for the next five rounds. The same two snipers failed to RF until that last round. Same shooter RFed, same one didn't.

3) One taman fired two plasma rifle full-auto blasts. Three snipers at 25% chance to hit didn't shoot. Two of the three soldiers armed with plasma rifles did RF a shevarr who fired a plasma blaster burst (16TU), they had 20% chances to hit.

4) A hovernet moved and fired two shots, two snipers with 27% chances to hit did not RF. The second shot hit one of the snipers. A shevarr moved at a longer range and the wounded sniper took a RF shot at 15% to hit. Next round the hovernet fired three shots again (30TU), but neither sniper took RF that round or the next round when it fired two more shots and moved. Those RFs would have been at 27% and 16% for the wounded sniper.

% chances of RFs taken, these do not include the "Interesting actions" shots taken or not.
Sniper: 20%, 26%, 25%, 23%
Plasma Rifle: 20%, 25% (twice), 23% (one soldier did and one soldier didn't)

Action TUs and %s or RFs not taken, these do not include the "Interesting actions" shots taken or not.
move 5, shoot 16, 15% chance
move 9, shoot 28, 25% chance
move 20, shoot 10, 10% chance
move 2, shoot 20, 27% chance (two soldiers)
move 32, 23% chance
shoot 30, 10% chance (blocking thin pole), 23% chance, and 24% chance
shoot 28, 15% chance
shoot 32, 23% chance (two soldiers)
shoot 24, 25% chance
shoot 28, 10% chance (wounded sniper, at plasma rifle range)

So um... I can't see any real pattern in all this. I did note that sniper rifles with a 45%+ chance to hit will take unobstructed RF shots. There seem very little chance for RF at chances less than 25%.

[H-Hour]

Dam has a lot of clutter that can complicate visibility (and thus your results). Try skirmishing on the attached map which will provide unobstructed visibility. If you've never set up a new map, place the .bsp file into /base/maps and have a look at /base/ufos/maps.ufo in a text editor. You can create your own /base/ufos/maps_temp.ufo, copy the dam mapdef from maps.ufo, and edit the names to match test_reaction.map.

[Telok]

Is that "clutter" the fence posts? Because that's the only thing I can see here. I did note the one instance where a post blocked one of three possible shots.

I am trying to account for those posts, but almost every single sniper shot was into the same area. On #2 both snipers had equally unobstructed LoS and full TUs available. On #3 the plasma rifle soldiers were using the snap RF which takes 8TU compared to the alien provoking by using 16TU, but they only shot once each and never hit the alien. On #4 the LoS were not blocked by anything and the hovernet could obviously get a good line to the soldiers for 30TU multiple times.

I'm using the Dam map because it allows me to force the AI to stay at range and provoke RF. I'll check your map but don't expect any changes. By the way, shooting plasma rifle bursts and sniper aimed shots across the dam did not provoke RF from the aliens, ever. But 3/4 of the time that I used medkits did provoke alien RF.

[H-Hour]

The test_reaction map will force the aliens to stay a decent range away.

Our visibility traces are minimal. I think we only draw one line between the alien and the soldier. If that line is obstructed, the alien is "not visible" regardless of whether or not other parts of the alien are visibile or if the thing obstructing that single line is very tiny. That means it's easy for very small obstructions to cause anomalies in the visibility.

There may be some kind of chance-to-hit calculation going on for reaction fire. You'd have to dive into the RF code to find out.

[Telok]

The test_reaction map will

Man, that map isn't going to work. I can't control enough variables to get a good idea of what's going on.

1) It's a much shorter range than the Dam. I normally lost one or two soldiers (and more wounded) to enemy fire on the first turn, making it hard to tell if they used RF and what the %hit chance was. A starting sniper with 20 sniping and 22 accuracy had 30% to 33% chances to hit on this map, on the Dam a 30s skill sniper has ~25% chance to hit. There's no range issues here and range is one of the aspects of RF that I'm trying to quantify.

2) The aliens charge. If an alien advances towards the soldiers and provokes RF in the middle of the movement I can't tell what the %hit chance was. The Dam was good for this because the AI couldn't charge and had to move laterally. Plus they're so clumped up that I can't always tell which alien is being shot at.

3) Skirmish is lousy for this. I use 3 sniper rifles and three plasma rifles on the Dam so that I can tell who is getting RF at what ranges and %s. With skirmish I'm ending up with one or two of each weapon and I can't always tell who is shooting what.

I think a Dam map with the railings edited out would be much better for this. Then I could compare my current information with the edited map information and we could get a feel for how much the railings actually contribute.

[H-Hour]

Here's an adjusted file. Aliens are now the same distance from your soldiers as on dam map. Aliens can not charge. I've set up an invisible wall. You can shoot and see through it, but aliens will stay on their side.

You can choose your own squad for Skirmish. When selecting the map, there should be a Team tab on the right. Choose that and then click new. You'll get a squad equipment window to equip your soldiers.

There are three "hostile" firing channels and two "safe" firing channels. You spawn looking down the two safe ones. This should let you position just the soldiers you want.

[Telok]

Ok, this version of test_reaction is pretty near perfect. I fooled around with skirmish, that's not perfect but it is useable. I'm now running six random (I didn't bother to check their stats) newbie soldiers through it. I have some very preliminary data on sniper rifle RF.

The walls are 67 squares long, aliens use the first 7 squares and the invisible wall is at square 8. If you limit the aliens to Phalanx weapons then the only things shooting at you are the hovernets. Well one alien had a sniper rifle and another had the light-weight minigun, but that was over about 10 runs through the map with 12 aliens on the map each time. I station my soldiers at square #58 (9th square in from the end) and set up the sniper rifle aimed shot RF. Accuracy is surprisingly consistent, soldiers with 10 points difference in sniper skill and three points difference in accuracy only vary by one or two percentages in the reported %hit. Wounded soldiers were taken off RF, dropped their weapons, and got to play decoy.

Aliens at square #1, accuracy 22%, 37 out of 45 possible RF shots taken
Aliens at square #2, accuracy 23%, 17 out of 40 possible RF shots taken
Aliens at square #3, accuracy 23%, 16 out of 40 possible RF shots taken
(Gap in the data here, aliens don't like to hang around in squares 4 and 5)
Aliens at square #6, accuracy 25%, 11 out of 23 possible RF shots taken
Aliens at square #2, accuracy 26%, 9 out of 14 possible RF shots taken

Now since hovernets take 10TU to fire a shot or burst and my sniper rifles take 20TU to RF then I ought to get RF after every second shot or before the second shot if they moved. That’s true about 60% of the time, the rest of the time they are making or have just made their third shot when the RF occurs. This bit is really kind of hard to quantify due to the speed things happen at.

One thing I can confidently report is that enemies in the line of fire are not considered when a soldier takes RF (if a hovernet provokes RF but a taman is blocking the LoS your soldier will shoot through the taman). I do need to check if that is true with allies though.

After this I'll start checking longer ranges. Then I'll go and do other weapons, I do know that MGs will RF at %hits as low as 2% but the maximum range they will RF at is lower.

[Telok]

I reconstituted the Phalanx soldier team so they all have 20 to 22 sniper and accuracy skills. These guys never have more than 1% difference in their %hit chances. All shots are Aimed Shots with Sniper Rifles.

Previous team at square 58 had 89/141 RF chances taken (63%)
This team at square 58 has 77/167 RF chances taken (46%)
This team at square 62 has 127/237 RF chances taken (53%)

When everything that shoots back is dead I check the %hit reporting.
At 23% and 24% reported chance to hit I got 56/272 hits (20%)

Once again I need to mention that RF occurs almost half the time after a hovernet has moved and shot twice or has shot three times.

I did also find two interesting occurrences. First was the message "An alien has revitalized" followed by a bloodspider standing back up. It had already taken two sniper rifle hits, and putting it down again took two more hits.

The other was a crash out of skirmish to the menu that generated an error code in the console. "ERROR: CL_ParseServerMessage: Illegal server message 10 (last cmd was: 9, eType: 23)" If this is useful, good. If not then feel free to ignore it.

[DarkRain]

The other was a crash out of skirmish to the menu that generated an error code in the console. "ERROR: CL_ParseServerMessage: Illegal server message 10 (last cmd was: 9, eType: 23)" If this is useful, good. If not then feel free to ignore it.

That depends, how old is your build?

[Telok]

That depends, how old is your build?

November 30th build.

At square 66 the soldiers took 70/144 RF shots offered by aliens. The %hit reports were 18% to 22% and RF was taken on aliens at both extremes.

Soldiers are not going to shoot through another soldier to RF, but may hit other soldiers due to the weapon spread.

Soldiers will shoot through one alien to RF the one behind it. I'm not sure about shooting through 2 aliens. This may also be because sniper rifles are "through wall" weapons.

I'll do the next test at square 70, three squares beyond the end of the wall. After that I'll move to machine guns and then assault rifles.

Finished a MG test.... Interesting.
At square 62 a MG using the short burst has a reported 1% chance to hit. 61/357 chances at RF were taken. Actually that number is significantly lower than I'm reporting. The MG short burst takes 14TU, so a hovernet that fires three times should provoke twice. Also the soldiers have 29+ TU available and should be able to RF twice. Of those 61 RFs taken exactly three were doubles, and there were lots of triple shots from hovernets, easily a third of RF chances I recorded.

The interesting bit is that the RFs taken came in clusters. Data

Code: [Select]

set{1} 4/5, 1/5, 1/5, 0/7, 1/9, 0/3, 1/12, 2/3. set{2} 6/6, 6/18, 6/6, 6/6, 0/24, 1/15, 0/50, 1/27, 1/15. set{3} 1/3, 3/3, 1/6, 1/6, 2/3, 1/3, 2/3, 0/36, 6/12, 6/12, 0/18, 0/29.
Also, the hit rate of MGs is pathetic compared to sniper rifles. They compare to heavy slow SMGs, and really only seem to work at SMG range. Plus it takes 3+ hits to down an unarmored taman. I'll do assault rifles in a few days. MGs are just too depressing to deal with.

[DarkRain]

Alright, illegal server message bugs should be fixed in latest builds, but now I noticed: a blood spider stunned by sniper rifles? That doesn't seem right.

[Mattn]

in general this is right and can happen - but not for bloodspiders of course. there should be a restriction. i think this happens if a particular threshold is reached (hp verus stun value).

[Telok]

Some data on the assault rifles. It took a couple of tries to get a RF range here, this set is at square 45 with %hit chances at 11% to 15%. Because the snap shot RF on ARs is 8TUs I tracked how many times the hovernet fired and how many times the soldiers could respond. I only counted hovernet shots, not movement which never seems to provoke RF any way.

At square 45 the soldiers took 21 out of 530 RF shots. I think one of them might have hit. And I'm seeing shot clusters again.

Code: [Select]

set[1] 1/1, 6/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6
set[2] 1/6, 0/12, 0/10, 0/14, 0/10, 0/10, 0/4, 1/8, 2/11, 0/8, 0/8, 0/10,
0/6, 0/9, 0/6, 1/6, 0/6, 2/9, 0/9, 0/6, 0/6, 0/9, 3/9, 0/9, 0/9, 0/9, 0/9
set[3] 0/12, 0/12, 0/12, 4/6, 0/18, 0/18, 0/15, 0/10, 0/12, 0/8, 0/10, 0/9,
0/9, 0/9, 0/9, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/8, 0/6, 0/4, 0/4, 0/4, 0/4, 0/4,0/6, 0/6, 0/6,

[DarkRain]

in general this is right and can happen - but not for bloodspiders of course. there should be a restriction. i think this happens if a particular threshold is reached (hp verus stun value).

I know that when hp <= stun actors are stunned, here the question is: where the stun damage is coming from? robotic actors have a hardcoded immunity to stun_gas and additionally all booodspider and hovernet variants are scripted with a very high (999) resistance to both stun_gas and stun_electro, not to mention that sniper rifles don't cause stun damage in the first place (@Telok you weren't using stun weapons right? at least didn't mention stun weapons at all in your previous posts), so it seems something isn't right.

[H-Hour]

Two ideas.

1. I know from my tests before that any weapon will do 1 damage even if an alien resistance is more than the damage. So perhaps it's just hitting those very tiny thresholds of 1-2 stun damage.

2. When aliens are "hurt" at the start of the map, are they given any stun damage?