High cover and "leaning out"

Hello,

Let’s start by thanking Snapshot for providing us with this Alpha sneak peek, and hope it will develop into a truly awesome game. I’ve been playing it a bit and like it (notwithstanding expected Alpha bugs/balance issues), but I’d like to point out one thing that has been bugging me : the limited interest of strong covers, mostly building corners.

In the current version, you don’t seem to be able to fire from a high cover position, especially a building corner. TUs alleviate this to some extent since you’re likely to be able to move one tile, shoot and hide again, but this is mitigated by the fact that you’ll be shooting from the open and exposed to massive return fire from the crabs.

I know return fire is a work in progress and won’t be as bad once various detection mechanics have been implemented, but this remains an issue. The ability to lean from a corner is something that’s been increasingly present in video games (not only in Firaxcom, I don’t want to make it a PP vs FiraXcom, but also in infiltration based fps and other shooters) and would definitely fit here.

Does anyone know if it’ll be implemented in the future or if leaving it out is a design choice?

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I cannot speak with absolute certainty, not being a member of Snapshot, but I am fairly sure that firing from high cover will be a thing in the final game.

It would be absolute madness to tell us highly trained soldiers would be unable to lean out of cover in a standing, upright position, after all… every random untrained person can instinctively do that after all. :tophat:

I noticed this it a problem when you are up in an elevated position and the critter is below you - I had my heavy up on a tower and while he could see critters all over the map, there was one below him at maybe a 30-40 degree angle that he couldn’t target. Basically seemed like he couldn’t see over even though he was standing on the edge and didn’t have any LOS issues. I could work around it by using the aim feature and manually aiming at the critter, not sure if that will work for around high cover (probably depending on camera positioning). Definitely needs a little work.

I have not had this issue standing at building corners - in fact, I am pretty sure on a couple occasions my dudes tend to step out, fire, get wasted by return fire, then step back into cover… I will have to retest this to be sure I saw what I think I saw…

+1. High cover shooting is definitely needed and makes sense.

Elevated position is a mess at the moment. I was able to climb a tower to give my sniper a good position, but he was unable to move by even a tile once he was there, except for getting back down. I jetpacked my heavy on a roof, he knelt behind a low cover, and stubbornly refused to get up to shoot, any attempt at manual aiming was giving me a close up of the cover. He couldn’t move on any other tile on the roof either, but he could run across it to jump back to street level.

Regarding corners and covers, I have retried playing and have occasionally been able to shoot from the corner of a building, and sometimes not, in seemingly similar conditions.

a button or prompt to cycle inbetween different leaning out positions might work.

I’m torn. I’ve adapted to the current system, firing from partial cover where possible and then moving into high cover. I also wonder how frequent return fire will be in the final game.

Should be (a lot) rarer.

  • Not every enemy will have a return-fire weapon.

  • Fog of War/perception range implementation will limit the amount of enemies firing at you.

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I’m sure in one of @UnstableVoltage 's videos he said they should lean out even of full cover and iirc his soldier leans round the corner of a building to shoot one of the crabmen?