Seriously what happened here?
We have an "elite" unit assembled by the earth governments to fight the aliens because the army couldn't do anything (wish i saw the army, can they even hold the rifle?).
You're actually sort of second-line, last resort folks, I gather -- basically the regular forces *lost*, so a previously decommissioned is being reconstituted under your leadership.
[quote
as alway i first start on very easy. expecting it to be more of a walk in the park. but my soldiers can't hit an alien unless they are basically point blank to them. while aliens can hit me from very far away. reaction fire is rubish. even if soldier kneels and doesn't move the alien keeps popping out shoot him and then goes back. what is this supposed to represent? what does this say about soldiers?[/quote]
RF triggering, at least judging from 2.4-dev code, depends upon (among other factors, such as visibility and having ammo, of course)
- the number of TUs that the target's action requires
- likelihood of hitting friendlies (under normal conditions, no more than 5% is acceptable, with freaked-out humans accepting a higher likelihood; but an insane alien will completely ignore the possibility of hitting other aliens; I've even seen one kill the alien standing right next to him)
- likelihood of hitting enemies (min. 30%)
- having a faster weapon (in terms of TU cost to fire) for the 'outdraw' test
The TU tests make it more difficult to RF against a fast shooter, e.g an alien with a plasma pistol. Laser rifles are fairly useful for RF; they're pretty fast firing, are quite accurate (so more likely to pass the likelihood checks), and have good range and OK damage.
If you don't have laser rifles yet, you should probably consider making heavy use of IR goggles and the grenade launcher / rockets so you don't need good LOS, and also the flamethrower -- if you can get reasonably close with 12 TUs left, an Inferno blast is extremely lethal (one blast is modeled as about 60 shots; each shot does modest damage, but...). Very good for taking down individual aliens in modest-size rooms or hallways.
I move my best sniper guy to an average room length (using cover as much as i can). he is crouched, aimed shot- chance of hitting is 9%. move him a bit closer. ah now chance increases to 22%. seriously ? 22%?!? Sniper "expert", from Earth's best (on VERY EASY difficulty level)? I understand the need to make the game interesting. and the option to upgrade the soldiers. but if the soldiers are crapy so should be the aliens. i9nstead they can easilly hit my soldiers from across the whole map.
I haven't really seen the aliens be crack shots. With heavy lasers, laser rifles, sniper rifles and the nanocomposite armor I currently prefer to engage them at long range; the alien plasma weapons are pretty damaging but have significantly worse spread than the human weapons at that tech level. The needlers and particle beam weapons seen a bit later are pretty nasty, but medikits make a huge difference between 'wounded' (which impacts accuracy, incidentally) and 'dead' so long as there's a little cover to hide behind.
The odds computation is quite the approximation, and (presumably for reasons of computational cost) doesn't do something like, say, fire 50 imaginary shots using the actual firing code and see how many would hit. It's dodgy where complex-shaped cover is around. Move the camera view if you aren't sure.
some tips on how to proceed and if anyone knows if there is a way to fix the numbers in some file or something. because i got stuck on very easy on 3rd mission (&first terror site) with primary aliens (the orange suited guys). they just wiped out my whole squad (from their edge of the map and).
Don't rely very much on RF, at least initially. It's better to take a shot and then duck behind some cover where they won't be able to see you without burning a lot of TUs (typically corners, or the same wall with the window/doorway). RF isn't exactly spectacular from the aliens' perspective, either.
You also have access to IR goggles, grenades and rockets without any research -- scan with IR goggles to see through walls (to a degree), use the grenade launcher etc to hit enemies through windows and around corners. They can see *you* through walls, and will tend to fixate on the closest one -- even if the closest soldier is on the other side of a windowless, door-less wall and there's an opening on the opposite wall. Also, grenades in the belt or holster can be moved to the left hand with very little TU cost.
Medkits should also be standard equipment -- one soldier can provide very substantial healing on another for 20 TUs cost, and as noted earlier, injured soldiers aren't as effective shots anyway.
Research-wise, you should probably prioritize the laser weapons (very precise, good firing speed, good range, somewhat decent hitting power), and the upgraded armor (once you recover a suit of alien medium armor; you'll be much more survivable with it, so much more likely to be able to attain decent skills).
The .pk3 files in the 'base' directory appear to be Zip archives. Within the '0ufos.pk3' are many of the data files that affect these things, such as how many TUs each weapon takes to fire in various modes or what their spread is (i.e. imprecision). You could make your weapons faster-firing (reduce the time values) or make the plasma pistol less accurate (increase the spread value), for instance.
