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Double Tap often breaks (mostly on gunners)

Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 8:54 am
by rift
Without taking any action, my bullet wizard will say "Double tap: available". I take one shot and it ends the gunner's turn. This happens VERY frequently, maybe 20% of the time when I try to use DT with a gunner. This does not seem to be a problem on my DT snipers, or at least I don't recall it happening a lot.

Does anyone know anything about this issue? Any help would be appreciated. I've attached a save file with a bugged DT on the gunner - taking the shot with the gunner results in a kill, which ends his turn.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0rJ0 ... WZlckM0SjA

Re: Double Tap often breaks (mostly on gunners)

Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 4:46 pm
by szmind
A word of explanation: if you get a kill with the first shot of a double and there are no more aliens in range of the soldier: who would you like to shoot at??? Obviously the turn ends after this first shot! This is no bug but a logical consequence.

That is the case in your save. I loaded your save and everything is OK. I took both shots of a double shot. I must have a different random seed cause my first shot is a miss, then I get the second of a 'double' and get a kill.

Re: Double Tap often breaks (mostly on gunners)

Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 9:53 pm
by rift
szmind wrote:A word of explanation: if you get a kill with the first shot of a double and there are no more aliens in range of the soldier: who would you like to shoot at??? Obviously the turn ends after this first shot! This is no bug but a logical consequence
Thanks for your response.

First, if that's how your DT behaves most of the time, then either your game is more broken than mine, or you just haven't used DT much. What you say is actually not logical because additional enemies can be revealed later in the same turn.
Also, just today I killed the only visible enemy with a DT sniper on the first shot, and then the sniper was sitting there waiting to take a second shot with NO enemies in sight. The sniper could not move or reload, or do anything else on the second action except take a second shot but there were no more enemies. And if you end the turn without taking that second shot, DT is available the next turn. This is the normal behavior of DT. It has no conditionals such as how many enemies are visible and whether the first shot is a kill. If your soldier info screen (F1) says ' DT available' , your soldier's turn should not end after the first standard shot, period. DT description confirms that:

"Allows a second action restricted to Standard Shot, Precision Shot, or Disabling Shot as long as the first action was a Standard Shot, Precision Shot, Disabling Shot, or Flush provided no costly actions were taken."

Anyway, sometimes this bug happens to my snipers too, but it clearly favors my gunners for some reason.

Re: Double Tap often breaks (mostly on gunners)

Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 10:43 pm
by szmind
Thanks for sharing your experience. I use DT quite often. Most of my gunners have it :) I do not find the described behaviour a bug. Just noticed it and got used to it. You maybe right that it happens to gunners rather than to snipers. On gunners always from my experience (and I use it often so I can tell 'always'). I have only 1 sniper but never had a chance to kill the single enemy in sight with the first shot. Though I think I can recall DT sniper with a pending second shot (maybe from prior LW campaign) but never a gunner.

Still regarding the save - I was able to take two shots :) So no bug here :)

And I would not say that losing the second shot when there is nobody in sight 'breaks DT'. Come on, how often are you able to draw a berseker from out of sight or flush an enemy luckily and you lack this second DT shot? Or reveal a new pod in the middle of a turn, drawing new enemies in sight (that would be a tactical mistake rather - you can't blame broken DT for it :) Think it over :)

Re: Double Tap often breaks (mostly on gunners)

Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 1:39 am
by rift
szmind wrote:Or reveal a new pod in the middle of a turn, drawing new enemies in sight (that would be a tactical mistake rather - you can't blame broken DT for it :) Think it over :)
Whether you call activating a new pod mid-turn a tactical mistake is irrelevant. Sometimes it's inevitable, but that should be irrelevant to whether a second DT shot is granted during the turn.

But I wasn't even talking about those rare cases when you activate new pods mid-turn. I'm talking about much more common situations, e.g. aliens from the SAME pod are completely hidden behind cover, and can be revealed during the same turn by destroying cover.

Here is an example. In the first clip the gunner with Double Tap only sees the floater on the left. He doesn't see the chryssalid on the right because of crappy LOS and a small piece of cover in the way. Gunner kills floater and no second shot is granted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNBa3OMxOJQ


In the other clip I've destroyed the piece of cover, so now the gunner sees both the floater and the chryssalid, and a second shot is granted after killing the floater with DT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBLvn5FoeQU

So you're right about how it works - DT is granted only if after the first shot the soldier has a visual on any additional enemies, regardless of anything else that follows in the same turn. If that's by design, I guess it would be wrong to call DT 'broken', but then the perk description is incorrect for not listing this exception. But the mechanic is BS because the game basically decides for me that I will not need that second shot, when this is obviously not true in many situations.

Bottom line is, when there are multiple enemies in sight, thy player can choose whether to use the second DT shot. If no extra enemies are visible at the time of the first shot, the game doesn't give me the choice, even though DT is 'available'. That impedes the tactical planning of the turn, especially when it involves destroying cover to reveal enemies, and then firing at them. And no, you can't always destroy the cover and make all aliens visible from the beginning of the turn. Sometimes the DT gunner has to take the first shot to kill the only visible alien on OW, but then the gunner can't use the DT later in the turn, because the game stupidly steals the second shot from said gunner because it doesn't have the foresight of the player. That's just stupid. Think it over :)

Anyway, the other issue is the insufficient description which made me think DT is broken because it doesn't specify a very common exception to when DT is actually available.

Re: Double Tap often breaks (mostly on gunners)

Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 9:12 am
by szmind
You are right about the tactic with covers. Good point. My lack of imagination here - probably because I mostly use scouts to take off overwatch fire :)
rift wrote: If that's by design, I guess it would be wrong to call DT 'broken', but then the perk description is incorrect for not listing this exception.
I found sth like this about vanilla version:
http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/Double_Tap
"The second shot must be executed immediately after the first shot, so it's highly recommended to have sight on at least two enemies before shooting"
So it is rather a mechanism from vanilla - though description in vanilla also did not tell about it I think. Only from experience could a player learn it.

Re: Double Tap often breaks (mostly on gunners)

Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 5:41 pm
by rift
Interesting, good catch. I only played vanilla for a short time, and now I never know which feature comes from vanilla and which from LW.

It would've been better if DT worked something like this - grant the second shot, if anyone in the squad has sight on any other enemies. If nobody sees aliens, then end the turn.

Well, at least now I know how it works exactly, so I know what to expect. Thanks for helping me understand.

Re: Double Tap often breaks (mostly on gunners)

Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 3:58 am
by rift
Wait a minute, I just found out that this behavior of DT not triggering was supposed to be fixed in Beta 14!

http://ufopaedia.org/index.php/Change_L ... 2C_2014.29

under Fixes it says:
"Fixed: Double Tap won't trigger when no targets in view, or you are out of ammo. "

This means that the LW devs tried to make DT trigger successfully regardless of visible enemies or ammo.

Double Tap still triggers even if the first shot depletes ammo - the soldier is just standing there not able to take any action other than ending the turn. So that works as expected, but the other part where DT doesn't trigger when "no targets in view" still behaves as in vanilla, so that part wasn't actually fixed. OR it was fixed in Beta 14 (I don't know because I never played that version), but then it got 'unfixed' in a later version, and now in 1.0 it behaves as in vanilla.

So, according to that changelog, it should NOT work as in vanilla, but it still does in the cases of no visible enemies. Am I misunderstanding something here?