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Balancing smoke grenades

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MonkeyHead:

--- Quote from: Nomad on September 26, 2014, 02:23:06 pm ---Just another one idea about smoke. Probably the most "realistic", but I don't imagine whether it is difficult to implement.
What if smoke could be semi-transparent? If there is only 1 square of smoke on LOS then an object has, say, 75% probability to be spotted. 2 smoke squares on LOS means 50% to see it. 3 squares - 25%, and only 4 squares of smoke make you totally invisible.

--- End quote ---

That idea has some legs. Maybe it will mean that an alien can not see you from a distance, and instead needs to be close to spot you - however, with "clairvoyance", that would be kinda meaningless.

TBeholder:

--- Quote from: Nomad on September 26, 2014, 02:23:06 pm --- What if smoke could be semi-transparent? If there is only 1 square of smoke on LOS then an object has, say, 75% probability to be spotted. 2 smoke squares on LOS means 50% to see it. 3 squares - 25%, and only 4 squares of smoke make you totally invisible.
--- End quote ---
That's not how optics (or physics at all) works.
Also, perhaps it's enough to use distinctions between "visible" targets - i.e. anyone in the first layer of smoke falls between "obscured" and  "clear sight": still can be acquired from the outside, and partial obscurement doesn't interrupt RF timing but is targetted badly, much like ones painted by someone else (rather than precisely aimed at and sniped like clearly seen tarrets).

Nomad:

--- Quote from: TBeholder on September 26, 2014, 10:00:52 pm ---...Anyone in the first layer of smoke falls between "obscured" and  "clear sight": still can be acquired from the outside, and partial obscurement doesn't interrupt RF timing but is targetted badly...

--- End quote ---
And someone in the second layer of smoke does the same, but is tageted even more badly, and so on: the deeper into smoke, the more badly. IMHO it's almost the same mechanism of applying a penalty to every shot which doesn't have a clear sight - however slightly impoved.

To be honest, I don't quite understand why you contend that's not how optics works.

In general, I suggest there are 2 sides of this "smoke coverage problem":
1) how somebody in smoke cloud must be visible (or not), and
2) how he must be targeted.
And the easiest way is to penalize both.
Something like that...

"Clairvoyance" can spoil everything, of course.

madrsihands:
I agree the smoke grenades are overpowered.  It's like they should equip the Firebird with a dry-ice dispenser because I use it so much on landing.

My guess why the smoke grenades are so necessary with this version are because of how hard it is to develop an intuitive cover system that clearly designates degree of cover like the xcom reboot.  Plus a lot of ranged weapons do a lot of damage, such that I throw out the flamethrower but I'm still using human snipers upto to the 50th mission.  One thing I don't understand why the alien AI's don't do is immediately throw a grenade or fire indiscriminately into the cloud, seeing as obviously all the humans are concentrated inside.  Another thing that makes it hard is that the action points are so low that it's dangerous to run for cover and not have enough to reflex shoot.

When I first played xcom it took me a while to understand what smoke grenades were.  I thought they were sort of like flashbangs, you use them before you breach, especially in an area where you know the enemy is camping, heavily armed, well entrenched, and prepared.  I didn't think it would be something you would use on yourself as your vision would significantly reduce making aiming difficult, but this is not so in the game where neighboring troops outside the cloud can precisely tell their comrades where to fire.  The game loses a lot of realism when smoke grenades are now the first thing I throw out upon landing and remains isolated in a nice safety bubble by my ship.

Some simple things that could be done are to make the alien's ranged weapons less powerful, or lower the probability of getting hit over such a large distance, though even aliens with plasma blasters will just go full auto and still proceed to kill my guy from across the map.  It's a shame to see such a large collection of human weapons go ignored as soon as I develop laser rifles, which basically make all the other weapons obsolete due to how light they are.  The combat needs to be more diversified so that different weapons are useful on different occasions and there is not just one go-to weapon like the laser rifle.  There should also be some sort of sneak option that lets solders get close to an alien so they can use one of the melee weapons.

My favorite idea is to make the alien ranged weapons have a special sci-fi function such that they can only deal lethal damage after the bullet travels a certain distance.  This would permanently exclude them for doubling as close-range weapons and would either encourage aliens to rush the human or actually try to retreat to a lethal firing distance, a problem that does not arise in standard human combat.

mikehg:
I'm playing 2.6-dev at the moment (built from source a while back, but as far as I've gathered nothing has changed since). Stun damage from smoke is effective, but still not enough in my opinion.

My suggestions:

1) Time units add stun damage, not just movement. A person sitting still in smoke doesn't accumulate stun damage. Simply counting up TUs instead would make a lot of difference - no more aimed shots from sniper rifles.

2) I think movement should be penalised in smoke, maybe taking 50% more TUs. Maybe negate the penalty for the rest of the turn if IR visor is used.

3) Firing positions should be revealed from within / behind smoke. I'm not a programmer, but this is roughly how I imagine this working:

If a human fires while hidden from the aliens' LOS by smoke, the square they are on (or one chosen by probability distribution, so probably accurate or nearby, occasionally further away but still hidden by smoke) is marked as a low value target until either an alien gets LOS on that square, or some limit like 5 turns elapses (in case the player keeps adding more smoke).

In practise this would mean that aliens would shoot into smoke if you've been firing from it and they couldn't see soldiers / civilians. Area effect weapons would present a big risk, and you could only fire relatively safely if you kept moving.

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