Noticed a few points about claiming the line of sight system “Doesn’t work” and I think there may be some factors not being taken into consideration when reaching that conclusion when applied to Phoenix Point.
In a game like Firaxis’s ‘XCOM’ series, I would 100% agree that this would be a problem as in such games the game is hard limiting attacks into a very simplistic:
"Object A attacks ONLY Object B that was hard targeted "
So the outcome of your attack is always either “Hit Object B and apply damage” or “Do nothing”.
Phoenix Point however doesn’t do attack calculations this way. Instead each “Attack” consists of multiple smaller “Attacks” in the form of each projectile, and the game does a much purer application of damage to whatever each individual projectile collides with, so even if the projectile misses what the player had hoped to hit as the projectile continues if it then hits something else, it will apply damage to it… and this fundamentally changes everything as the attack logic is now:
Projectile X attacks Object ‘Y’ <Where ‘Y’ is whatever that particular projectile collided with>
So in a single attack action, your unit can in effect be inflicting attack actions on a half dozen different objects, be they cover, enemy, friendlies or scenery objects… heck if you attack a enemy with low enough health with a weapon that fires multiple projectiles your attacks can kill them after the first few projectile hits, and then proceed to damage enemy units stood directly behind them.
How this changes things like what is effective for line of sight and how it’s used for overwatch and/or return fire purposes is that in the process of a single attack, your first initial projectiles fired can actually travel toward the enemy, collide with potentially obstructing objects between you and the enemy and remove them whilst your attack is still in progress, giving the projectiles from that same attack following behind them nothing else to hit except the enemy.
This is why some weapons are MUCH more useful in certain situations than they initially first appear if you were only to use ‘XCOM thinking’. A low damage per projectile automatic rifle that fires 8 bullets per attack is essentially giving you 8 individual attacks per action, with each attack having the potential to remove obstructions which then lets the other attacks in that same action continue on hit whatever is further on, remove that and allow the remaining projectile attacks to continue on further.
The implementation of line of sight used in Phoenix Point is designed around how this actual game works, just because before you start your attack you can only see a tentacle protruding from somethings head, doesn’t mean that the only thing that can be hit for the duration of the entire attack action is that tentacle… the game attempts to make sure that units are aware of any part of a enemy so that they can take action and do damage (or expose) that target following the behaviours of this game.
If the game didn’t have these systems behave the way they do now, I’d sure be annoyed at the developers for not having something that worked for the nuances of their own game by the 3rd time by heavy weapons units refused to take a easy kill on a enemy by blasting right through the enemies cover and then hitting them and killing them with ease, just because all they had to go on to know the enemies exact location was a elbow.
A few bugs? Half of my playtime is F12 stuff. FiraXCOM1 got away with murder. It doesn’t mean it should be an accepted standard.