Overwatch was crap during epic release, was crap during Year One release, and is crap now.
Honestly, I really wish you guys would just fix this shit before anything else. PP needs a functioning overwatch system much more than it needs a fluffy interceptor minigame. I still find my dudes shooting walls and shooting my other dudes right in the back. Also the game does a terrible job of sequencing multiple overwatch shots. Sometimes I’ll have an enemy walk in front of 3 overwatching dudes and only the first 2 guys get a chance to fire before the enemy managed to get to cover without triggering the 3rd shot.
Yea 95% of the time they just hit some sort of cover. Maybe it’s possible to make them react a little earlier and slow down time even further. Completely stopping the enemy while the shot takes place would be too OP I think. Not an incredibly easy fix.
I think that overwatch is made good enough. It is still powerful tool to shoot enemy in his turn. Enemies are quite dump and they run often in overwatch cones.
Only thing requiring fixing is explanation how to use it effectively and how to avoid situations where your soldiers shot at obstacles or friendly teammates. I think that wiki tried to explain this nuance, but well - this should be in game, as not everyone is searching for such information on the wiki.
Actually, imho, OW is better and much more flexible that it is in games like XCOM (where it will trigger randomly against the first enemy that moves). If you know how to handle it, you can use the OW cone to specifically target certain enemies, and it’s also pretty easy to avoid the common ‘OW keeps shooting cover’ problem. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll just refer you to the ‘Overwatch’ section in my Phoenix point: some helpful hints for xcom players
True. I do like the system. I’ve been more mindful of how I set up my cones again after reading Yokes post. I actually don’t really use OW all that often and have been quite careless when I did
So… Keep it unintuitive and explain why is it so unintuitive instead of making it intuitive? Cool.
Cones give the flexibility, not sequential response.
At least this is in line with other features and solutions. “This is bad design and behave not how you would expect, but after you play a while you will learn how to trick it to do what it was supposed to do.” Consistency is good, right?
Just reminded stupid OW bug in another thread. OW is only triggered by enemy movement (enemy animation, to be precise). Overwatch closed doors is the most intuitive tactical option I can imagine, yet is worth shit because enemy can open door without triggering his own animation and shot you in a face ignoring all the cones in the world.
You think it is a bad design. I don’t. Pretty much from its inception in response to player complaints about the old way OW worked in the BBs, I’ve liked this. It’s flexible, it’s extremely intuitive to me (I’ve never had a problem with it) - and once I realised that the ‘animation lag’ could result in my squaddie firing at cover, I simply reset my OW cones to catch the advancing Crabbie after it passed that cover: simple.
I haven’t had time to play the new cones, so I can’t comment directly on them, but certainly with the old cones, if eg. a Siren appeared, I could set my Sniper Cone up in such a way that it would only trigger when the Siren moved, rather than getting set off by everything around it. Occasionally that wouldn’t work bc something would cross in front of the target, but usually it worked fine.
So for me personally, it has always behaved how I expected it to behave, and the few foibles that it does have are easily dealt with. I find it much more flexible and targetable than OW in any other TBS game that I’ve played, which is why I like it.
That is not what I would call intuitive, not to mention situations where enemy doesn’t leave the cover from the other side. This is just not intuitive and you will learn it the hard way. For me, this is one off the things that puts me off. Sure I can “handle it”, but it is one of those things that makes me feel that I am not fighting cosmic threat, but a game engine. I should adapt to enemy tactics, not mechanical quirks.
I am not sure what tactical option ‘animation lag’ and sequential firing give. You seem do defend it and “because it is better than in XCOM” is kinda week argument.
All I can say is that I prefer this OW system to any other I’ve encountered in a TBS.
It lets me decide exactly where I want to direct my attention and it even lets me say: “Focus on that dangerous enemy, not the one beside it.” Doesn’t always work, because it has its limitations, but it works for me.
Doesn’t work for you: that’s a shame, but other than trying to help by suggesting how I deal with the stuff you’re complaining about, I don’t see what else I can do.
And ‘it’s better than XCOM’ is a pretty decent argument in my book. XCOM used to be my favourite game, but I haven’t played it for nigh on 2 years now, ever since PP came and blew it out of the water for me. So I like this game precisely because (for me) so much in it is so much ‘better than XCOM’, it outweighs the extremely long list of things I wish they’d fix/rebalance/address.
Doesn’t stop me working tirelessly to get them to fix those issues, though
I general, I do prefer cones over other TBS solutions I’ve seen, that’s for sure. (edit: after second thought maybe original UFO “reaction fire” is equaly fine).
I compare current “cones with animation lags” to what I think is more intuitive: “cones without animation lags” . I agree cones are better than XCOM OW, but that is just unrelated to how intuitive current system is.
Yes, and execution in case of multiple soldiers focusing the same enemy is: “wait for it… wait for it… wait for it… aaaand he’s gone behind the wall, oh no”
I wish OW should trigger to shoot at the same time instead of waiting in a queue, I don’t care about losing magz, I take the consequences.
And devs, please fix those overlapping asset such as triton elbow because some of wall looks thinner and made triton body part overlap to the wall *which I think is the cause that triggered the OW mechanic to shoot over the wall. Thanks, sorry for my English.
OW is broken because of the position state of the soldier.
Even with overwatch, you soldier stands “weapons down”. For that reason, when an enemy is passing, your soldier gets aim slowly with it’s weapon and shoot. If there are obstacles, doors, windows, you probably miss the enemy because of that delay.
I asked this million times to fix that because it’s very important for tactical choices and very easy problem to solve. It’s totally stupid as it’s now.
I was always under the assumption that reaction shot was timed based on how wide the cone was. Whenever I used a thin cone, my shots lined up exactly as I’d wanted and seemed quick… but wide cones were wacky as fuck, slow to react and often firing at cover. Wide cones worked well at extremely close range, and thin worked better the further they were away. Also trying not to get cover within the cone helped.
For those reasons, it’s always better to use all TP’s to kill everything rather then waiting at overwatch.
As the enemies got tons of armor and HP after early game and our weapons do not get any updates, OW is not something deadly at most cases if just all your squad not fire and hit one target. As you can’t target at OW, I only find it useful with snipers against weak faction units.
If you can’t kill a target at OW and it continues what it does after that, there is no point.
I am with you on this one. It feels like playing around systems that don’t work quite as intended, rather then learning mechanics. And it is frustrating to order soldiers to watch door way, only for them to start setting up once the enemy already run through it.
No easy solutions though - my instinc would say, have a soldier shoot as soon as he sees enemies, but that would mean them shooting before enemy fully exposes himself. Either way, it’s getting the feel of the system and learning to predict what will happen.
The limitations of setting OW (objects blocking line of fire, centre of mass targeting, etc.) are very easily worked around. In that sense, it’s similar to the regular firing of weapons. Painting this mechanic as broken suggests simulation ballistics adopted by PP just aren’t your cup of tea.
“Downing weapon at overwatch” is purely a visual issue. Adding an “overwatch” posture would mean creating extra animations for ALL weapons / soldier models. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s a (relative) waste of time and effort? The OW lag is so that soldiers don’t fire as soon as the tiniest tip of a tentacle is visible. By how much to “lag” is a balancing issue.
“Not your cup of tea” is just an expression - means not something you like.
This is a game which uses simulations as you said. So, this is not visual issue. As the soldier loses time to point the gun, the firing lags. If soldier was hovering the weapon already, they could start to fire.
No it’s not extra animation too, they will just make the soldier at firing position before he push the trigger.
(edit: after second thought maybe original UFO “reaction fire” is equaly fine).