Do you thinks this is fair?

One of my soldiers takes a shot at a enemy and the enemy’s return fire kills my soldier.
Now I’m frightened of shooting at them should I use harsh language?

Return Fire is indeed a sensitive subject at the moment. At the moment it all works in the Pandorans’ favour; Arthron RF can oneshot you from the midgame onwards, and Phoenix RF will crash your game if you nail a kill with it!

rf 2 op plz nerf

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Be careful about mindfragers on your soldiers who have return fire, they fire back too. My assault/heavy once had mindfrager, I tried to get it with pistol (as game suggests) and my sniper soldier who fired was blasted to smithereens by return fire.

Needs work then? I find it unfair that your soldier dies on their turn by return fire. Dying by stupidity is one thing but dying by dice roll is another.

Mind fraggers are reported to be easy to kill but sometimes not so easy. I had one that took two bashes from my heavy and a sniper shot before it died. Amazing that my soldier was still alive.

It need save the game before battle start or restart the battle won’t hurt :sweat_smile:
It’s matter how you approach them, I won’t deal with them by frontal attack. Wait till you found 4-6 siren with sick-la (syclla) as their support in battle :dizzy_face:.

Seems less an issue with RF and more one of the Arthrons having an OP weapon. RF has been nerfed to death already.

Not to be unduly harsh, but yes, it’s fair. When you were taking the shot you could see kind of a roundy arrow, meaning return fire. You could also check the info on the enemy’s weapon to see what kind of damage it could do and it’s effective range. If you had taken the shot from a longer distance (beyond the effective range of the enemy’s weapon) it would not return fire (and you would not see the roundy arrow above his icon). Also, you can target the arm with the weapon to disable it.

(This aside from the ongoing discussion as to when return fire should happen, before or after the attacker gets back into cover).

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I think it is half of its perception, so for an Arthron 10 tiles.

Definitely when the attacker is back in cover as no return fire could be quick enough or stupid enough to fire while being fired upon.
You wait for the bullets to stop whizzing past the top of your head before sticking that head up.

I don’t mind what they change about it really, or even if they do. Was just acknowledging the controversy of the issue at the moment so I could do my joke about the RF crash bug lol.

There’s a lot of unbalance in this game but I don’t think RF is an offender as it just requires a change of tactics. I certainly prefer it over the “dynamic” (ha!) difficulty mechanic which amounts to little more than more armour/DPS, which just makes me feel like the whole mechanic is a waste of time and the Pandorans might as well come up with nothing but giant impenetrable balls of armour that just roll over your troops, bases and havens and be done with it.

Sorry for getting a little off topic OP, but that rant’s been building a while and the convo got close enough to the subject matter lol.

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You are probably right - TBH I just look at the whether the return fire icon is there or not before taking the shot, and my SOP with :crab: is arms off first.

That’s one way of looking at it. The other is that to take the shot from cover you expose yourself to enemy fire, and this is what RF currently reflects.

It is just a game mechanics. Once you learn it you start using it in your favour :wink:

Not that xcom games need to be “fair” but I too think RF is a bad design. Not because it can potentially kill you (thats the good part) but because you can not bait it because it does not need Action Points (like too many things) and because the icon is bugged and does not always show.

Imho the game would be less challenging without return fire.There’s lot way you can do to counter this perk, it’s fun skill as well if you use them wisely and funny to watch too at dumb AI shooting their own teammate :sweat_smile:.

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Yep, that does happen sometimes and it’s annoying, to say the least.

In the case of RF, IMO it wouldn’t make sense for it to cost APs. There is no margin to make it worthwhile to pay for before end of turn and subtracting its cost from next turn would be an even worse deal.

I even kinda liked it more the way it was before the patch and I would have preferred it had been changed the other way around - that RF would activate only if another teammate was being shot at, perhaps limiting it to only the closest soldier/panda with RF being activated.

You could then bait crabs to attack a heavy armored soldier (+armor boost from engeneer) and pick them off with sniper/assault on RF.

In this case I don’t see 0 AP cost as an issue because it’s not something that the player can do at will during their turn (as opposed to, say, mindcrush).

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Whatever you want to tie it to, it being unlimited is pretty stupid and needs a change for more options to counter play.

I’ve found numerous occasions the icon is not there and they still return fire. Bit of a pain in the ass but I’ve no moral qualm restarting a mission if I’ve lost someone due to a bug.

Been seeing a lot of that myself. Seems like when my guys come around a corner and can just barely tap an arthrons leg… perfect chance to do some damage, right? Nope. Being hit causes it to turn, despite the icon not being there, and then it fires on my guy. Seems like it flinching from taking a hit causes it to get an angle to take the return fire shot at my guy… or something along those lines.

Of course i’ve also seen a lot of missed shots when things move after ordering my guy to take a shot… perfect shot lined up to knock off the arm? Fire! Wait, how’d its idle animation make it move during my turn…

I like the idea of RF needing action points left over or for the soldier to have to be in overwatch for RF to be triggered. Both of these make sense. A lot more sense than a soldier or enemy having a potentially free fatal shot.

For me RF is another depth layer, nothing unfair.

Only very dangerous RF I notice are crabs with AR 6*50 damages, not sure I even seen a Triton with RF and a shotgun.

Firstly those crabs are dangerous even without RF. Secondly they are just another layout of caution to apply, some example:

  • Take care destroy their weapon first.
  • Blow up an arm handing the weapon but that’s harder than blowing up the weapon, those AR 50 damages are very big.
  • Use domination or panic just to disable RF.
  • Ensure use Half cover to shoot at, it avoids the side step and will ensure enough bullets are lost.
  • Use temporary Armor increase before to try short range shoot.
  • Shoot from longer range.
  • Shoot with stealth.
  • Ensure stun before.
  • Be sure to shoot kill, don’t believe what show the game it is the average, do the compute on minimum damage and evaluate well RNG factors.

Out of those crabs I don’t see anything else with very dangerous RF. Well weaker AR need caution anyway, but you can use similar tricks.

The game doesn’t need any simplification with enemy RF nerf. For player that’s another matter, previous RF was perhaps better and even could be boost a bit to disadvantage less burst weapons.

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