Reaction Fire works?

[dekaydence]

 My soldier with a flamer had reaction fire turned on and set to inferno, then an alien appeared and walked right in front of him. Nothing happened. Witnessed similar situations a couple of times.

[H-Hour]

You'll probably want to read ShipIt's post here which explains how reaction fire works.

Inferno costs 20 TU, so you would not be able to use the reaction fire until the alien used 20 TUs in front of your soldier. For quicker reaction fire you want to use firemodes with low TU cost.

[dekaydence]

Didn't know that. Thanks

[Telok]

Not that it may also be that the alien has to spend the TU within your soldier's RF range. Your soldiers won't RF out to the full range of their weapons, they only shoot if the %hit chance is over about 40% or so. Or perhaps it's a range based on the range of the weapon, I've certainly seen flamer equipped soldiers not RF (candlelight, 8 TUs) aliens within their range who moved into view and shot them with plasma rifles.

It also seems that an alien breaking LOS/line-of-fire at any time for any reason may reset the RF/TU count. I haven't experimented to see if switching soldiers and acting with a second soldier before returning to the first soldier can reset alien RF/TU counts.

RF is an area that has a big "Needs testing" sign hung on it.

[Triaxx2]

It seems strange though, that an alien running the entire distance forward, straight a sniper, using far more than 18 TU (2.4) doesn't trigger reaction fire.

Do aliens crouch? I haven't noticed it but I seem to get a lot more reaction fire on my troops moving crouched than walking.

[Anarch Cassius]

Maybe this is improved in 2.5. They definettely crouch more in 2.5.

More RF when crouching makes sense. You're either moving at reduced speed or standing and crouching, thus using more TU. In 2.5 I've been blasting the crap out of aliens via RF after learning the tactic watching them fry my troops.