Reaction Fire

[battles_atlas]

Hi, just download this yesterday - great work. Just have a question though: how does reaction fire work? My understanding is that it allows your soldiers to fire back if they're attacked during the alien's round, but so far even though i have it enabled none of my men seemed to have returned fire, they just stand there getting shot. Am I doing something wrong?

[battles_atlas]

No one has any advice? I've been playing again today and still have yet to see one of my guys with reaction fire enabled actually use it. Please someone help me out here.

[Jarkill]

I'm having the same issue - only seen one of my soldiers return fire once, and I couldn't see how to choose shot type (except in the alternate hud).

I'm guessing it's either bugged, nerfed, or you need to have extra TU's over from the current turn or such (the reserve shot function?)

[Hertzila]

Only advice I can give you is to equip your guys with laser rifles, I've had my agents using RF with them semi-regularly. I think it's bugged or the devs have gone way overboard with nerfing IMO.
Also based on my experience, just activating the RF from its button is enough, I haven't seen any advantages with the reserve shot button (what does it actually do, anyway).

You change the RF-firemode by pressing the shoot button and checking the small box next to a firemode.

[Jarkill]

I know that, but for some reason the circle wasn't there when I played with the normal HUD. Naturally I realise now that this was because I was right clicking the reaction fire button (Haven't played in a while because I only download the standard releases and the savegame bug was irritating me).

I fail.

Also, I believe the reserve fire function is so that you can always have move the maximum distance but still have time to shoot a certain shot at the end. So you don't have to do maths in your head, I suppose.

Also glad that according to the changelog they've fixed carrying over from previous missions (in 2.1, it would pretend it carried over but it didn't, blargh)

I didn't mean that you needed the reserve shot function, just that I believe reaction fire actually carries over from whats left of your current turns TU's instead of next turns (or some such) and thus if you don't have enough you can't shoot.

So yeah, try using reaction fire without advancing your unit and see if that helps.

Reaction fire being nerfed would be a lot less annoying if the aliens weren't cheating bastards.

Gets especially silly when you need to end every turn looking at a wall so that aliens don't abuse popcover or whatever. If that still works.

[ajoin]

Can one of the staff-people please inform us if the reaction system is really bugged or is it really supposed to be that bad. Like several posts also i am having trouble with it. I always save TU's for a snap shot or for a full barrage of shots but whenever an alien comes from behind a corner where one of my agents is stationed to guard the place he just doesnt do anything. What happens next is that my agent gets killed and i get frustrated.

please gives us some info

[Sarin]

I gave 2.3 a good long play and have to say...RF is NOT bugged. The problem is that starting soldiers are just lame. From what I can tell, there are two things the matter in RF, Mind stat of soldier and TU cost of RF shot...once you get better soldiers, RF becomes quite reliable and deadly.

[ChemBro]

I gave 2.3 a good long play and have to say...RF is NOT bugged. The problem is that starting soldiers are just lame. From what I can tell, there are two things the matter in RF, Mind stat of soldier and TU cost of RF shot...once you get better soldiers, RF becomes quite reliable and deadly.

Same for me. RF works like it should.

[Jarkill]

Doubt it. Used it before - my sniper fired 3 shots on separate turns, then refused to do anything at all for the next 4 turns (yes, I reloaded).

This was with the enemies coming closer, so I doubt he/she was losing accuracy.

[Battlescared]

Don't rely on it.  Develop better tactics without it.  Seriously, I saw reaction fire was bugged and just decided to never trust it like Ive done in other games like this.  I use my points on my turn to press the advantage.  I keep tabs on the enemy, position my guys for surprise attacks on their flanks, try to get them to walk into ambushes where they have zero points for reaction fire and I can unload full clips into them. 

If anything, the AI is too weak.  RF isn't needed to win.  Just better strategy.

[homunculus]

[...]Seriously, I saw reaction fire was bugged[...]

is it really bugged or is it just not working the way you would expect?

[Battlescared]

I wasn't sure, Homunculus, so I just decided I would try to learn to fight without it.  I relied on it all through the XCom series and most games like this, but I decided I wanted to learn some new tactics.  So far I have no issues with RF and I'm not having trouble beating the enemy without relying on it.  I have killed an alien recently with it, and man was I surprised when it happened, so it does trigger eventually, but nothing I would rely on. 

What I tend to do is set my snipers up for long range firing and let them draw some enemy fire while I send the forward troops around the flanks.  If they get hit, I heal them up and go back for more.  It's nerve wracking getting so close and personal with them sometimes, but it's fun and feels good to dump a clip into them at point blank.

[dodon]

...RF is NOT bugged. ...

as it roughly behaves like this description, does not damage other parts of the game (with aborts, memorycorruption, segfauilts...) and is quite predictable for something with several random parts.

... Seriously, I saw reaction fire was bugged ...

as it has contradicting code, miscalculations, some parts of this description are not implemented.

Disclaimer:
My tactic does not rely on RF, but it works quite well, when I need it.
I play with the trunk-version and spent some time looking at the RF code (so I'm quite shure about the bugs)

[Jarkill]

Reaction fire is even pointed out as one of the game tips "Sometimes when you move a unit, it'll trigger reaction fire on another unit" or something like that.

It's not a bug, it's a feature 

But yeah, the "spend same amount of points + penalty" and the way reaction fire is suggested to work is GREAT personally, except that it doesn't work.

Theoretically if you have a, say, knife and are standing behind a door and someone walks in and you snap shot them at 4tus + say 3 tu penalty (7 total) and the guy walking in tries to use a full auto machinegun fire (25 tu)... should he fire first, or get stabbed first? (Not even sure if the knife thing is possible, just making an example). Would the knife get multiple stabs before the machinegun started firing?

Regardless the way it currently works is that you'll rarely ever use reaction fire, regardless. More accurately, the way it currently doesn't work.

Of course, turtling is still perfectly possible if you just pop out of a corner and nail the target, and even safer than reaction fire, so I'm not sure why reaction fire is punished so much. Reaction fire trades the target not being able to pop in and out of sight (cannot use cover) for the exact same effect for the wielder theoretically (out in the open to be able to reaction fire in the first place).

[Ufanatic]

Theoretically if you have a, say, knife and are standing behind a door and someone walks in and you snap shot them at 4tus + say 3 tu penalty (7 total) and the guy walking in tries to use a full auto machinegun fire (25 tu)... should he fire first, or get stabbed first? (Not even sure if the knife thing is possible, just making an example). Would the knife get multiple stabs before the machinegun started firing?

It would probably go like this:

1. (If you had sight of the MGunner before he entered the room for 7 TUs) -> ONE knife-stab
2. (Since it his his ACTIVE TURN, he can do anything he wants!) -> full-auto MG on knife-wielder
3. (If knife-wielder survives lol) -> a ton of knife-stabs at MGunner


If it were the other way around (Knife-wielder walks in) it would be like this:

1. A ton of knife-stabs at MGunner
2. (If MGunner survives and knife-wearer had used ~25TUs in sight of your team) -> full auto-fire at knife-wielder

Of course, turtling is still perfectly possible if you just pop out of a corner and nail the target, and even safer than reaction fire, so I'm not sure why reaction fire is punished so much.

In most cases that will work pretty well. Sometimes it really doesn't since aliens are suicidal bastards. E.g. what good is hiding behind a corner with no working RF if an Ortnok just closes in on you and finishes you off with a brutal head-butt. ;-)

I have killed an alien recently with it, and man was I surprised when it happened, so it does trigger eventually, but nothing I would rely on. 

Lol. I actually saw my MG-dude fire off a 14TU burst in RF once, killing the alien who was like 40 yards away halfway under cover behind a piece of Ufo-junk.
I also was very surprised when my crappiest soldier with an assault-skill of 21 fired off an aussaultrifle RF-snap shot through two doors of a house and killed the alien that was walking behind the house!

Then again like you say, you just cannot rely on it. The same two soldiers have also been kneeling with plain sight on alien "walk-bys", that MUST HAVE used up at least some 20TUs, and they did absolutely nothing.