In the Random scenario, sometimes crabmen spawn on top of buildings and have LOS to almost the whole map. They seem to “return fire” on any attack they can see, meaning they spray bullets on everything all the time. Maybe a tiny bit OP.
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super OP, since they’ve got infinite bullets.
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They are rubbish shots. However, we have not put the perception/evasion/stealth/mist/darkness stuff in the game yet - there are a lot of systems to be implemented.
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My full heath assault was critted to death from a return fire shot from the distance where he couldn’t even see the fire returner crabman. Maybe the enemies aren’t tune very well atm, don’t know.
Maybe cut the return fire distance/damage by half to make more a feature than a problem.
A toggle in case you want to conserve ammo would also be nice.
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This could really be useful. At the end of the mission, we need all the ammo that were previously wasted in return fire with so poor chance to hit.
I totally agree with mrmonocle about the “Toggle Return fire” option.
However, I would not give this option by default. I think this feautre represents a cold blood of someone who has at least some experience in battle. I do not know yet how the level system will be (as the old XCOM or something different), but I think a Rookie should spend at least a willpower point to toogle off this feature (removing this cost at some veterany rank).
On the other hand, for the alien/mutants side, they should have also limited ammunition to prevent the return fire spamming (just to make them reload could be enought), or limited it to only one return fire per turn.
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It’s similar to overwatch issue, but the problem here is with wasted ammo.
I would see the options as - squad leader issues orders to soldiers on the pre-mission briefing:
- shoot any enemy attacking any squad member (default),
- return fire on enemy attacking only given squad member,
- shoot only the enemy that squad member has high chance to hit,
- duck and cover, no reaction fire at all.
The non-default options could be unlocked after a specific training done, some rank achieved or special equipment has been developed.
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You could probably make a case for the opposite side too. A Rookie should spend a willpower point to be able to return fire instead of hunkering down and fight the urge to wet themselves 
That said, I’m not sure how green the “rookies” will be supposed to be lore-wise.
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I agree that currently, crabmen being able to “return fire” from across the map means that if you climb the tower, you’re going to see two or three crabmen on the very far side of the fort that’ll get a bunch of free shots every turn. Even if only one in ten hits, if there’s three of them, that’s a damage or two per turn.
Now, whether that should be resolved via some overarching limit on return fire, greater LOS limitations on crabs, enemy ammunition… that’s a trickier question.
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Welp, for starters enemies definitely should have the very same ammo restrictions as we do, provided they basically use the same technology we do – from what we’ve seen so far visually, they appear to use ballistic weapons with ballistic ammo, i.e. incorporate human technology rather than invent their own from scratch.
Wether or not that is enough in terms of balancing, that is indeed a much trickier question, and one I thankfully won’t have to contend with. 
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I didn’t think the Crabmen had infinite ammo…I certainly saw crabmen in my games last night not using their guns late game and opting to come at me with shields (I’m talking about the Crabmen which had guns and shields), which told me that they had run out of ammo.
As for a toggle for Return Fire, before the end of your turn, if you choose something in your inventory other than your gun (i.e. medikit) then you won’t return fire. I found this out the hard way 
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I feel this is a good answer to the question. When other mechanics make it in to combine with the mechanics i think things are going to get really interesting.
I really like return fire as it’s a very simple way of abstracting the simultaneous fire of the opposing teams in such fire fights and makes good placement that much more important.
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If they don’t have infinite ammo, they have far far more than we do. And don’t seem to need to reload.
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maybe, who knows. I didn’t really look into this build that deep.
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I’m pretty sure the final game will give limited ammo to enemies, and if I remember correctly Unstable Voltage said on Discord that having Return Fire activate just when certain parameters are met is in the roadmap. It just haven’t been implemented, yet. Furthermore, they haven’t implemented any kind of fog of war yet which makes it kinda nuts at the moment.
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Maybe it was too soon to show some things in the build… Why bother to have return fire included when there is so much things to be implemented around it? Just thinking loudly. It is a pre-alpha build after all, and it already achieved what was supposed to: increasing desire for more content and great game
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What’s not logical for you?
Already you can turn off return fire. You simply replace a assault rifle with a grenade or medkit. I do not know why I would need an additional function to shutdown return fire?
You go further and find a assault rifle and give it to someone else (heavy or sniper).
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Return fire is absurd …
Return fire (by the enemy) is way over the top. This could be dealt with by limiting the number of times they can return fire during any one turn, but limiting their ammo & forcing them to re-load would be my preferred option.
I feel like an overwatch system would work better…What I’m thinking:
1)Having a setting in which to return fire: A simple parameter that you can set to determine when troops fire back. When they have a 50% chance hit, 75%, 85%, etc.
2)Have this firing chance (Opportunity could be its name) take place over the entirety of the enemy’s turn, as opposed to just when they fire. So, if they run into the line of site, poke out from behind cover to take a shot.
Another mechanic to combine with this might be to have a setting of how aggressive you want to act.
-The less aggressive; the more defensive the soldier will behave. For example, if shooting from behind cover, perhaps the soldier could lose accuracy (widening the cone of fire), while improving their chances of not getting shot (they’ll expose themselves less when popping out of cover)
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