Stealth is still bugged

Stealth is still bugged. My Infiltrator/Sniper has 100% stealth. When I have them selected, detection rings do not appear at all around enemy units, rather than appearing at the minimum detection distance of 5.

Completely paralyzed units also still have normal detection radii.

Enemy units still have perfect invisibility when they are not detected, but enemies cheat and have perfect vision of our units. My infiltrators are routinely sniped from across the map while “not detected”, even when no units are anywhere near them.

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Enemies spot your units just like you spot them. They can shoot you even while not seeing at what they shoot. Listen to the trolls… they have cookies.

No. They don’t. You have to get reasonably close to a Synedrion infiltrator to hear them (getting the red rings). You have to get VERY close to a Synedrion infiltrator to actually spot them. My 100% stealth rated units are always seen and targeted like any of my other units, from any range as long as the enemy has line of sight and is alerted. This is true even when infiltrators end their turn with the “not-detected” icon, and begin the next turn with the same icon.

But, I refer you to the note in the OP of this thread. I would appreciate it, if you would stop following me around harassing me and crapping up my threads.

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I have nothing against you. Just trying to explain mechanics. Have a good… day/night

Don’t hassle, “this” too shall pass

@Kaltorack I dont know if you know but you could have 9000% stealth but if you fire with a non-silent weapon while you are stealthed…your not stealthed anymore after the shot. The only way to remain stealthed to my knowledge is with the Synedrion head bionic that gives your weapons silent attacks.

And I dont even know if it shows you as a red blip to the Pandorans or not. It could be, which could explain why the Pandorans shot your guy.

I second that, its really way harder to spot enemy infiltrators (OK they use silenced weapons all the time) then yours get revealed.

So use crossbow only or use Echo head, as explained. Or shoot and then move, if you use sniper and other classic weapons.

Indeed, more stealth weapons are needed to fully exploit such mechanics.

Ha! This is Gold! You are flat out calling everyone interacting and not directly agreeing with you Idiots and Trolls and then create a thread demanding to be able block/mute/whatever random people. Flagging this as being inappropriate.

Why are ppl like you trying to ruin chill communities? I don’t get it …

I always have the echo head equipped on my stealth soldiers. Hearing about some of MadSkunky’s stealth experiences makes me think that the echo head is bugged. He describes stealth mostly* working as advertised. From what I read though, he was mostly using stealth MELEE builds, whereas I’ve usually used stealth sniper builds. He did mention using the shard shotgun, but it seemed mainly as a secondary weapon (particularly for murdering tar shadows), I was using sniper rifles as primary. So, if echo head is bugged, the different play styles could explain why it is so much more noticeable for some of us, but not others.

*He does mention stealth suddenly appearing to partially fail for no apparent reason in the Synedrion moon shot mission. Even though he did not seem to get revealed, the pandorans started firing at him anyway, but very inaccurately (he speculated that they were getting ‘red blips’, but hadn’t outright spotted him).

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I have to admit that I hadn’t properly considered the possibilities of stealth melee builds. I had thought that the minimum detection distance would make them unworkable and not worth trying. But, reading MadSkunky’s thread… dayum! That looks powerful and fun (I love stealth style in various games)*.

*Although I am curious about the ‘brainless boom blast’ builds people were discussing, because I also like blowing shit up. I wonder if they still work, or if they’ve been patched out of usefulness.

Stealth is poorly explained in the game. It could be that ffiring your weapon, silenced and stealth or not reveals you as a red blip to the enemy. Or it could be something else. Maybe the AI cheats so its more of a challenge to the player. Who knows at this point?

Dident one of the previous patches nerf 100% stealth so that the Pandorans could always have a chance to discover your stealthed operatives? If memory serves stealth caps at a certain number so you are never fully 100% invisible. Add to that Tritons with 60 Perception and they probably have less issues finding your stealthy guys.

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Sort of. They put in a minimum detection distance. It is not well indicated in game (not at all from what I’ve seen, but I haven’t redone the tutorial in a long time, so it could be in there)

We do see little shot indicators even when hidden units fire at us, but trying to fire back based on that would be wildly inaccurate. So yes, I think your theory that the AI is cheating to create a challenge is correct. That’s not cool. It amounts to tricking us into thinking that there is stealth when there isn’t really. There are much better ways to make it challenging. They could make 100% stealth with no minimum detection by have sneaking be a toggle that cuts movement by 1/2 for instance (disabling the toggle for the turn if the soldier moves). In some missions that could be amazing (when there is no time pressure), in others it could be crippling (such as haven defence missions).

But, if some of the things going on behind the scenes are legitimate, then they need to hang a lantern on it. Because playing a game that seems to be blatantly cheating really detracts from the fun.

Minimum visual detection to reveal a stealthed Infiltrator is 5 tiles. Only exception is Vanish, then he can go even on adjacent tiles to enemies without get revealed and this is needed to perform stealth melee attacks to get the Sneak Attack bonus.

But all this is also mixed up with non-visual detection that is separated from the above. These are the “red blibs” we get when we “detect” enemies without to get direct vision on them. The enemies do the same, so are not cheating from this side at least as I have experienced by myself (and no, I don’t use mainly stealthy melee, I mostly use anything in combination with Infiltrator). This form of detection will not reveal an Infiltrator.
Sources to get detected without get revealed are hearing movement in close distance, crossing doors, jumping through windows, mind sense from priest (motion detection module, but only on player side) and also some sentinels with a pretty high detection range, for instance Terror Sentinels roughly 12-15 tiles.
And of course shooting non silent weapons (any weapon except crossbows and melee) and for this is the Echo Head to make any weapon usage silent. Shooting non silent weapons DON’T reveal the shooter but the enemies get a non visual detection.

Enemies are shooting on non visual detected soldiers as we also can do on the red blibs!

The only yet known “cheating” from the AI is even documented in the Tutorial in the wiki (Combat - wiki.phoenixpoint.com):

There is a higher chance that unalerted enemies will patrol in the direction of your undetected operatives. This is the only way the AI “cheats”

TL/DR: Stealth gameplay in PP is much more complicated as many player expected and also not good explained especially in the game itself. IMO it would fill a whole own tutorial to guide the player through this jungle.

And finally, I also don’t know all things about this, the most is experience and learning by doing. I’m pretty sure there is even more behind the scene.

That is strange. I wonder why it seems to be acting differently for you than it is for me. It sounds like others on here have had varying experiences on this too. Ranging from you having stealth work approximately as expected (except that Synedrion moon shot mission you mentioned in another thread). Through my son’s description*, which is similar to what I think Rasvoja is saying, with infiltrators being fired at somewhat less often than his other troops, but still being spotted much farther away than we see enemy infiltrators. Through to my experience, in which I would say that the enemies spot my infiltrators somewhat less than my other soldiers, but still frequently spot them and shoot them from across the map (unless they aren’t alerted, in which case they only notice me if I shoot at them, come within 5 squares, or finish a turn with an alerted enemy still alive, in which case there’s a map-wide alert).

  • He specifically mentioned that he hasn’t gone ALL infiltrator squads.

As I said, I also don’t know all things about stealth and there is obviously more behind this mchenic that have to be discovered and explained.

It is quite some time ago when I did this mission and in the meanwhile I know something more, for instance that passing doors is detected by enemies from pretty far distance (maybe even across the whole map). If I remember correctly than there is a high chance that exactly this happen in this mission. Also, at this time I was not sure that enemies will shoot on detected but not revealed Infiltrators (shooting blindly the position) and this mission was another learning process and also proved this specific behaviour.

Nowadays, with more experience, I can reasonable explain in much more situations why something happen when I use my Infiltrators, not always, but in most situations.

The game still lacks explanations for the whole stealth mechanic and also on the UI side could be more done. For instance, all these rules are also true for any class and not only Infiltrators, but the player has no indication when one of his operatives is spotted or not, this is exclusive for Infiltrators with their special “sneak eye” HUD.

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Yes, I can testify that doors and explosives alert most of enemies, but you are able to see the same, so its honest and mutual.

Yes, but it would be good to have many ways to enhance stealth beside armor/or some mutations.

Perception and Stealth are indicators present in all armor but badly explained, while playing important role. And more perception means better overall enemy spotting and anti stealth.

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Hmmm… I’m not sure. But, that might explain it for some of mine too, but it would be in a bizarre and unexpected manner. It is entirely possible that my units sometimes passed through open doorways/windows in ruined buildings (with no actual door/window in them). It never would have occurred to me that it could break stealth. They need to put in something like the indicators they had in X-Com 2, where it would show you if moving through or into certain areas would reveal your soldier (I’m pretty sure that is one of the things you are getting at).

So badly. It is barely explained in game at all, and the mechanics certainly aren’t clear. I had to go to outside sources to find out what 100 stealth even means. I couldn’t even find outside sources to explain whether 100 stealth interacts with double perception in a multiplicative or additive manner. As I recall tritons have about 60 perception listed. I was thinking it was multiplicatively which would make double perception useless against 100% stealth (60 x 2 x 0 = 0), but perhaps it is additively which would also explain Tritons shooting me from long distance. (60 + 100% - 100% = 60). That still wouldn’t explain infiltrators having the not spotted icon though, so… (shrug)

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Not sure, but I believe broken windows and doors in these ruine maps don’t trigger detection by hearing, I think only doors and windows that are opened/break when passing.

Again, all these hearing-like detection does NOT break stealth, the enemies only hear something, what means they get the position (red blib), but the Infiltrator is still not spotted and keeps his stealth.

Well, you hear the noise when you open doors or jump through glass :wink:

Double perception = perception x 2
Tritons normally have 30 perception but with this mutation they have 60.

Stealth reduces the perception of any enemy multiplicative, so 90% stealth reduces the perception of these Tritons to 60 x (1 - 0.9) = 6.

But there is also the auro-reveal at 5 tiles distance (except vanished), so that any stealth >90% is pretty useless.

They also shoot at detected but not revealed Infiltrators. That’s why the Echo Head is so useful because it prevents hearing detection when shooting any non silent weapon and not only crossbows.

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Interesting. I̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶o̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶o̶u̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶c̶e̶p̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶6̶0̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶c̶e̶p̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶T̶h̶a̶t̶’̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶n̶o̶y̶i̶n̶g̶l̶y̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶l̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶P̶e̶r̶h̶a̶p̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶d̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶ ̶b̶l̶o̶c̶k̶.̶ ̶O̶r̶,̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶a̶b̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶d̶.̶ (I think I was wrong, I just ran into a double perception regenerating triton. I took out his head, stat block = 30 perception. It regenerated, stat block = 60 perception)

I’m not sure what’s going on then, because I always use echo head on my guys that are getting shot. Including the ones getting shot from long distance. Perhaps you are doing a better job of not giving them a chance to shoot at you (killing them faster or using terrain to block LoS). I’m not sure how you could do that in some of those missions with very little cover. But, maybe. (shrug)