In the current build the game labels show “possible damage” and “likely damage”, and this isn’t that intuitive to understand how likely or how possible that damage is. This would be easily fixed if the labels showed the percentage of how likely to do that damage would be. For example show “80% likely to damage”, and “40% likely to damage” instead of the current tags.
Not sure if that is even technically possible due to how the damage and hit changes are calculated. Less reliable damage and to-hit prediction is the downside of having LoS-based simulation of bullets travelling to the target instead of pure chance-based to-hit and damage calculation.
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Personally, I think the current representation is better than a numerical one.
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The way it works now, the game already calculates a % of doing certain damage and then labels it “possible damage” and then it calculates a better % of doing damage and labels it “likely damage”.
What I’m saying is that it would be better if the label had that % it already calculates so people can know better what to expect.
I bet on 75% of the players misunderstanding that % as “chance to hit”.
Could be a toggle with default off, I’m just not sure I would use it.
That’s the idea. To keep things familiar with XCOM players, and provide useful tactical information at the same time. The main difference is that, instead of a chance of completely completely hit or completely miss, it gives you the % chance of doing X amount of damage.
I’d say it’s technically possible, worst case it’s a problem of calculating “Area under visor”, but, while I’m a big fan of XCOM games (old and new), I’m wondering if we really need a precentage displayed when we already have first person aim, which I find more immersive.
I’d be ok with percentage displayed when you take the shot in third person, in order to save time, but that’s about it.
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Yes, I know it’s a bit of a necroposting but there are a lot of posts discussing this topic and I don´t see the need to create a new one 
The thing is that, after those two BB, I think I prefer having a % chance to hit in the UI. It don´t has to be an elavorated one like the old one with estimated damage and all, only a flat chance to hit per bullet, if the UI shows me a X% and my weapon shot 3 bullets, each bullet has this X% to hit.
That was discussed in other topics too, but right, now free aiming is the optimal way to shoot, and this hurts the pace of the game slowing it. I think regular shots should be without the first person view, one, two mouse clicks and shot. You still will have free aim if you want to shoot to destroy cover or anything, but it shouln’t has any zoom (maybe different zoom for different weapons accuracy).
I think free aiming is the optimal way to shoot because of the ability to disable body parts, because you always want to cripple the enemy, and you will pixelhunt to achive that no matter what, but in a gunfight you won´t be able to spend a whole minute aiming the different body parts, so I think if the enemy is too far that you need a x10 zoom too see it, maybe the option to pixelhunt limbs must be under an ability that cost will points (because you are focusing targetting in the middle of a the fight), This ability was implemented for the the sniper in the old demo build.
I think that will help speeding the pace of the game, a % chance for regular shots, to help you decide which enemy do you want to shoot, a free aim mode to soot in the general direcction (if the enemy is really close you still can use the free aim to target especific limbs), and a “paper doll” abillity to shoot limbs from far away using will points.
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+1 and return of more then one fire mode
Please add AUTO fire with less percentage (3 shots in a sequence) for convenient weapons (since mini gun uses all the time) and more costly precision shot for all weapons. Default as it is should be SNAP (as in over watch, return fire). Auto fire is very useful for close combat range until melee weapons are introduced and aimed shot would help long distance call. EW style of keeping it to sniper (costly precision range) and close combat (assault) classes was a bit artificial and much limiting.
Unfortunately, I fear that a “% chance to hit” Ui feature is basically impossible given the “simulated ballistics” approach that PP is going with. You’d need some sophisticated AI/programming to be able to calculate that based on how much of the gribbly is within the red/yellow circles.
I do agree with you on the aiming system potentially hurting the pace of the game. I hope it can be streamlined in the future.
It is. Possible and likely damage are based on hit chance probability. Game simulates few shots and gives this estimation.
We did try this system initially. The game ran a monte carlo simulation to determine the hit probability of the shot. The main issue was that the probability shown was based on an average, so wasn’t accurate.
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Hmm. Well, then…if % chance to hit can be shown on the UI, I’m all for it.
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Question then: what is the % on the crabmen with return fire for?
It is a good question - I’m inclined to agree that if the players don’t have it, neither should the enemies. At this stage, I don’t know if it will stay. I assume, and probably @JulianG can confirm, that the return fire figure is still based on a Monte-Carlo simulation. It is the probability that the shot will hit and not that they will actually return fire - as that is a binary decision based on a ruleset, as far as I am aware.
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What I would like to see is for the UI to actually divide the area of the circle that’s filled with the target divided by the overall area of the circle, and get a percentage that way. That would not be based on an average. That would work with the new targeting system and be very nice to have IMO.
getting a good enough edge detection algorithm for that isn’t easy though.
This is an interesting and difficult discussion. Initially we had a % chance to hit, an estimated damage range and a % chance to kill. A common misunderstanding was that the damage range would apply if the hit landed (similar to XCOM) - but it doesn’t work like this. The estimated damage is based on a combat simulation taking everything into account over a full burst of shots. So here is why % chance to hit is very misleading
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You have to take into account the burst - since each shot has the same chance to hit. There is no easy way to extrapolate likely damage from each individual chance to hit in burst - and it is the likely damage that is the more relevant information.
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The chance of hitting a specific body part may be more useful information than general chance to hit. We could extrapolate chance to hit the targeted body part in the free aim mode and putt it in the body part targeting box. However, this doesn’t give you a good estimate of damage to general hit points (since shots may well hit other body parts).
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Chance to hit is only one factor when evaluating a shot. Other key factors are burst number, weapon damage, shredding probability per bullet, armour piercing value, armour values of various exposed body parts, the possibility to penetrate cover, and the possibility to destroy cover. The current damage estimation system takes all this into account because it runs a full simulation.
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Given all the other factors involved, knowing that a chance to hit is, say, 56% for one target and maybe 61% for another target doesn’t really give you useful information. The granularity is misleading.
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The two shot distribution circles in free aim mode actually give you better information than numbers, because you can see at a glance your rough chance to hit in general, and chance to hit a specific body part., likelihood to hit a friendly, how much environment cover there is. It’s very analogue rather than digital, but enough to make good judgements.
Having said all that, there are people that just like numbers. I must confess, I am one of them. I want to find a way to present some numerical information which isn’t confusing or misleading - at least as an interface option you can turn on. One issue at the moment is that the monte carlo simulation we are running for damage estimation is not accurate enough, but we are working on ways to improve it without causing performance issues with the game.
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Personally, I’m fine without a %age chance to hit.
As the system stands, the shot distribution circles give you a pretty good indicator of how likely you are to hit something - if the creature fills the circles, you’re likely to hit it and if there’s not much of the creature within the circles, you’re likely to miss it. Based on that information, you can free aim your weapon to either try to take out a specific body part and risk having shots go wide, or reduce your chance of hitting a specific part to maximise the chance of all your bullets hitting the creature.
Similarly, for long range shots, if the circles completely obscure the creature, I simply assume that my likelihood of hitting it are significantly lower than if I can make out certain body parts.
‘Real World’ squaddies don’t have a HUD display telling them that they have a 61% chance of hitting the gunman hiding on that roof - they make an educated guess based on how much of the target they can see, how far away it is and their experience of previous combats. I LIKE the fact that PP gives us a similar ‘real world’ style experience, and leaves it down to me to decide whether the shot is worth the ammo or not.
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OK, I can fully live with graph representation as-is.
What I do miss are AUTO and AIM, more shots per buck and more aim with higher “price”. I see no justification why this was removed in EW and should be kept that way, with exception to oversimplify game with one fire mode.