Smoke grenades and LOS refreshment

[Rodmar]

Hello,

In v2.5, it seems that firing a smoke grenade triggers two effects (or the same one):
- the smoke prevent LOS in the current and following turns (the alien beyond the smoke disappear);
- the "memory" of all previously spotted aliens on this turn is lost, even if they shouldn't be connected to the smoke.
These two effects are most probably caused by a new calculation of all the LOS.
Of course, if you send (again) a scout ahead, or if you still have a LOS on either alien population, then they don't disappear (or they reappear) on this turn, and every soldier can then fire through the smoke with no apparent prejudice (not tested with lasers).
Better wait for sending the scout when you fire several smoke grenades!

Given that the "scouting remanence" (or scouting memory) is a classical mechanism of any turn-based tactical game (though the "guided artillery" effect is not so realistic), I'd say that this immediate reset we experience with smoke grenades is a not wanted side-effect.

Suggestion: what I'd prefer, if technically possible:
When either party fires a smoke grenade, then,
- On the same turn, LOS is re-computed only for the enemy side (as regard to reaction fire). Scouting memory
- On the next turn, LOS is (logically) re-computed for any side.

If LOS can't be selectively re-computed for a given side only, perhaps it could possible to save all spotted aliens before re-computing all the LOS, and then restore "saved" aliens (this would generate a blink, perhaps?).

A choice must be made between (turn "0" is when a smoke grenade is fired)

• altering the realism and the balance on this turn "0" (allowing our soldiers to see through the smoke, while preventing the aliens to do so), and
• loosing the classical scouting memory for the rest of this turn "0" (loosing all previously spotted enemies not in LOS anymore).

  Or has it been made already?

[anonymissimus]

I always thought it's feature. It's not too hard to exactly record the positions of several aliens in memory (the player's real memory) by counting fields and then firing into the blind. Sometimes a blind sniper shot at a spawn point even works, if you're desperate as all are hidden. The hit and die sounds tell whether something is hit or dies.

[Rodmar]

If the dead would be in LOS (without the smoke), its weapon also appears on the ground!

As I said, the "problem" is less the blinding smoke cloud than the loss of -any- previously spotted alien, even in the opposite direction. The trick of having one or two scouts to (realistically) circumvent the smoke clouds effects (scout and run, or, as you say, fire in the blind through smoke) is of no help if the lost aliens are not "concerned" by the smoke, around a corner, etc.: you probably doesn't have any spare scout for them, or the spotting soldier ran out of TUs, etc. What if all the LOS were recalculated dynamically as soon as a soldier faces another direction ? It's quite the same here, each time you launch a smoke grenade; and this can be more than once a turn.

Now, I learned to either neutralize the aliens one by one, or to pay more attention of all known positions before I fire a smoke grenade AND I know that I have only one scout for one or two given attack directions.

My problem (for indirect fire, for leaving my soldiers under proper cover, to set a reaction fire ambush) is still to remember in which room of which house the spotted (now hidden) enemy was minutes ago. Sometimes, I forget!

[DarkRain]

Problem here IMHO is that we aren't consistent with visibility checks, for example: as you mention moving a soldier so that some (or all) aliens are out of LOS keeps the aliens visible, on the other hand if the only soldier that currently sees some aliens is killed, the aliens only seen by that soldier disappear immediately, anyway if we ever make a decision about this, we should apply it consistently everywhere.