1.4 Some feedback notes

[Swiftless]

Before I begin let me just say that I'm loving the 1.3/1.4 update. I'm really into the game with this patch.

Feedback/Observations/Comments:

1. Intel Raid missions late game really kinda suck. I can't exactly remember what month I'm in offhand but I'm at predator armor, researching plate and I've fielded some mag weapons. I had an Intel raid mission that I successfully ended up defending and clearing the map despite having some bad luck. I ended up with Muton Centurions, three of them, on one side of the map and had to clear a mech1 pod before I could scoot over to get the Mutons locked down and in control. It was some bad luck because the placement of the rebel building and the window positioning in relation to the incoming enemy pods left the rebels within flanked from the opposite side at all times. It was also unfortunate that I had the mech pod in the way before I could get on top of the Mutons. What really struck me, outside of the bad luck was that it felt completely ridiculous that I was facing down Muton Centurions with unarmored rebels. The flanking certainly didn't help anything but regardless all of my rebels were gunned down in a turn and a half by the Mutons (including a veteran sniper that was the haven advisor). Even though the rebels had laser rifles, to three two AP Muton centurions they might as well have been pea shooters, if the rebels could even hit (was lucky on one overwatch shot hit on a Muton for 2 points of damage before they found cover and gunned the rebels down). Essentially for the Mutons it was a turkey shoot, as the saying goes. I thought maybe in the future I could just evac the rebels out to spare them but then realized the Mutons would have just taken out the asset and that the rebels essentially served as hit point sponges to save it. So five dead rebels and a sniper later and with a couple of hits to the intel asset I was finally able to lay control down on the Mutons and clear everything but I had essentially zero chance of saving the rebels, which really just doesn't feel great having the deck stacked that high against you. In comparison the Rendezvous missions where you're using unarmored rebels are balanced on the rebels, which makes them entirely reasonable. Not sure if there's a great solution to this but I wanted to make note of it.

2. Squad cohesion seems fairly pointless right now. There are two points to this, the UI clickfest when trying to assign squad members as haven advisors (such a PITA) which I know nothing can really be done about it afaik. The second point is that the nature of the changes in 1.3 have made it such that I'm cycling out squad members on such a frequency that squads no longer make any sense. I may have one or two members from a particular squad and the rest are fill-ins that are either from multiple other squads or just whatever I have free in the barracks and I'm just constantly running that way unless I shut down mission runs completely and wait for wounds to heal up; which isn't going to happen.

3. This is something more of a sub-point to issue number 2 above but is an area that I'm a little fuzzy on and is unique to my campaign since I've turned the Graze band down to 2. So again, I'm into plate armor research and mag weapons (I've unlocked coil weapon research but chose the armor first) and I've seen three grazes occur in my entire campaign so far (I wrote them down to keep track). Two have been shots on Advent and one was against one of my soldiers. I bring this up because it means I'm taking more wounds (see point 2) but it also seems like turning the Graze band off also severely gimped Dodge, if it wasn't already an issue. I have a number of soldiers who have picked up high dodge perks both from normal class selection and AWC perks and on all of the shots that these high dodge characters have taken, not one of them has been a graze. We're talking taking shots with Evasive, +dodge PCS, hard target and high natural dodge values. Not once have I seen a graze against these characters, which would seem statistically improbable. Which is why I separated this point from point number 2 because I realize it may be unique to me and I don't have enough data to declare 'strangeness' with any confidence. However, bias aside, it does seem to feel weird that soldiers are taking full hit damage with Evasive up. It could also be that I don't fully understand the implications or interaction of Graze and Dodge. At any rate I would think that Evasiveness would be way more effective compared to what I'm seeing atm and I'm fairly disappointed at its performance. If Evasive isn't effective at at least downgrading a first hit into a graze then any perk with +10 to dodge would become highly circumspect in its value.

[Thrombozyt]

3. This is something more of a sub-point to issue number 2 above but is an area that I'm a little fuzzy on and is unique to my campaign since I've turned the Graze band down to 2. So again, I'm into plate armor research and mag weapons (I've unlocked coil weapon research but chose the armor first) and I've seen three grazes occur in my entire campaign so far (I wrote them down to keep track). Two have been shots on Advent and one was against one of my soldiers. I bring this up because it means I'm taking more wounds (see point 2) but it also seems like turning the Graze band off also severely gimped Dodge, if it wasn't already an issue. ...

This is acutally untrue. Low graze band makes it easier for XCOM, because graze band helps in low% situations. Higher graze means more shots from controlled enemies grazing to chip off HP which means you take more wounds. On the flip side, low graze helps when you have high% shots because they are more likely to inflict full damage. Turn the graze band up to 100 and every shot that isn't dodged grazes and it becomes nigh impossible to win as XCOM.

So by tuning graze to 2, you made it easier for yourself. Just like you do when you enable red fog for both sides compared to no red fog at all.

[RookieAutopsy]

I have to say I quickly stopped trying to use squads too for the same reasons. Due to AWC, Officer School and Medbay time, they very quickly get messed up and theres no point trying to maintain any cohesion. So all missions I do are just 'whoever is available at the time' as manpower is the number one thing I am short of. Im not really sure if there's a way to solve this, outside of having such a huge roster you can afford to have teams sat idle waiting for their squadmates.

[Antifringe]

About dodge chance with low graze band settings...

I play with 0% graze band and noticed the same thing, and did some empirical testing. It turns out that the issue is a UI one, not a combat one. I took a soldier with 40% dodge and consoled in a bunch of health and had her eat a bunch of shots. I never once saw the Graze the popup, but I did see lots of shots doing impossibly low amounts of damage (e.g. a trooper hitting and only doing one point of damage). You're getting your dodges, it just doesn't look like you are.

Also, I agree 100% about the squad tool. The fact that it interferes with haven advisorship makes it useless. Even without this handicap, I don't think I'd use it much. I make teams out of whatever is available. I don't see this as a 1.3 issue however. I always played like that, because mission count has always been important, and the way you do lots of missions isn't by having rigid pre-boxed teams.

[MacroNova]

If Advent has a 30% chance to hit you, it means all their rolls in the 20-30 range are grazes. If you turn the graze band down, all those shots become full hits. So it's not at all surprising that you're taking more wounds.

[nmkaplan]

About dodge chance with low graze band settings...

I play with 0% graze band and noticed the same thing, and did some empirical testing. It turns out that the issue is a UI one, not a combat one. I took a soldier with 40% dodge and consoled in a bunch of health and had her eat a bunch of shots. I never once saw the Graze the popup, but I did see lots of shots doing impossibly low amounts of damage (e.g. a trooper hitting and only doing one point of damage). You're getting your dodges, it just doesn't look like you are.

This is actually super interesting. Does this mean that the "Grazed!" flag only pops up in the specific instance when a graze is caused by a d100 roll within 10% of the to-hit%?

That grazes caused by full hits that are "downgraded" by the dodge stat never show up in the UI as "Grazed!"?

[Lyzak]

If Advent has a 30% chance to hit you, it means all their rolls in the 20-30 range are grazes. If you turn the graze band down, all those shots become full hits. So it's not at all surprising that you're taking more wounds.

From what I understand, if ADVENT has a 30% chance to hit you, it means all their rolls in the 20-40 range are grazes. Graze band is the graze-band setting on both sides of the hit-miss barrier. Graze isn't inherently against you; it turns some of your hits into partial hits but it also turns some of your misses into partial hits. And same goes for the enemy.

And this is all before taking into account the "dodge" stat. It does strike me as confusing that "graze" and "dodge," despite being entirely different things, are both indicated by the same UI cue: "grazed." Lots of people are confused as to the exact mechanics behind the graze band, dodging and critical hits.

[MrAnimaniac]

Since the graze-band covers both sides of the actual hit-chance, lowering it has two implications: 1. you won't catch a bullet that often and 2. if you catch a bullet, it's more likely that it will do full harm.

If you want to answer the question if the average damage done is lower or higher with graze, you have to take a look on the ratio of graze-damage (A_G) and normal damage (A_N).
If 2*A_G > A_N, than the average damage done (A) is actually higher with graze. If 2*A_G = A_N, than the average damage done with or without graze is the same.
(You can derivate this quite easy via A=A_N*p_N + 2*A_G*p_G with p_N = p – p_G, with p being the in-game shown hit-chance and p_G the graze-chance. http://ufopaedia.org/index.php/Mechanics_(LW2))

Unfortunately, I have no idea about the ratio of graze damage to normal damage. But if I'm not mistaken, my grazing Assault Rifle shots mostly applied 2 damage points. So I assume the ratio could indeed be 1:2. Therefore, only regarding the average damage done, it would be negligible if you allow or disallow graze.
Keep in mind that this does not regard solder abilities. E.g. Rapid Reaction profits from graze while shots above 90% (assuming p_G = 10%) are disadvantaged. So if graze makes the game harder or simpler could depend more on how you like to play.

[Saph7]

2. Squad cohesion seems fairly pointless right now. There are two points to this, the UI clickfest when trying to assign squad members as haven advisors (such a PITA) which I know nothing can really be done about it afaik. The second point is that the nature of the changes in 1.3 have made it such that I'm cycling out squad members on such a frequency that squads no longer make any sense. I may have one or two members from a particular squad and the rest are fill-ins that are either from multiple other squads or just whatever I have free in the barracks and I'm just constantly running that way unless I shut down mission runs completely and wait for wounds to heal up; which isn't going to happen.

Squad benefits are actually pretty significant if you build them up over the course of the campaign. The infil bonus especially really makes a difference.

Keeping squads together takes a bit of effort, but you can make it work. I try to have 3-4 squads on mission duty at any one time and 1-2 squads on rotation - if the officer is training or there are a bunch of wounds, take the opportunity to put the rest of the squad members in for AWC time.

[RookieAutopsy]

I do like the idea of Squads. The benefits are nice and its fun to build the squads from a RP perspective, they're just hard to maintain.

You either pay the price of an idle AWC or Officer School or troops sat around waiting for their squadmates if you try and hold them together.

Squads for me have a more dynamic flow as individuals join and leave them, for a number of missions at a time (as they obviously become available together after action, barring wounds) and maybe what I would like to see is some interface to see the most common squads (this is obviously recorded for Esprit de Corps to work) centred around each officer you train. Say, you pick the commanding officer for the squad and it brings up the most active members (with activity degrading the longer they don't accompany the officer) as their squad. In a sense for the troops to be auto assigned squads based on who they most often go into combat with.

The squad list would be the officer list and each soldier is displayed under the officer they served longest with, with ties going to the one they most recently fought under. Something like this would also allow you to make the most out of Esprit de Corps which is currently somewhat invisible.

If I had any modding skill I might be tempted to have a go at something like this myself.

Also yeah, why the restriction for advisors not to be linked to any squad?

[Tuhalu]

Since the graze-band covers both sides of the actual hit-chance, lowering it has two implications: 1. you won't catch a bullet that often and 2. if you catch a bullet, it's more likely that it will do full harm.

If you want to answer the question if the average damage done is lower or higher with graze, you have to take a look on the ratio of graze-damage (A_G) and normal damage (A_N).
If 2*A_G > A_N, than the average damage done (A) is actually higher with graze. If 2*A_G = A_N, than the average damage done with or without graze is the same.
(You can derivate this quite easy via A=A_N*p_N + 2*A_G*p_G with p_N = p – p_G, with p being the in-game shown hit-chance and p_G the graze-chance. http://ufopaedia.org/index.php/Mechanics_(LW2))

Unfortunately, I have no idea about the ratio of graze damage to normal damage. But if I'm not mistaken, my grazing Assault Rifle shots mostly applied 2 damage points. So I assume the ratio could indeed be 1:2. Therefore, only regarding the average damage done, it would be negligible if you allow or disallow graze.
Keep in mind that this does not regard solder abilities. E.g. Rapid Reaction profits from graze while shots above 90% (assuming p_G = 10%) are disadvantaged. So if graze makes the game harder or simpler could depend more on how you like to play.

Because the graze band turns exactly as many hits into grazes as it turns misses into grazes, you could naively assume that the average damage take is exactly the same.

However, each point of armor absorbs 2 points of initial damage in a graze situation (although a graze or hit always does at least 1 damage). This makes the combination of the Tactical Vest and Predator Armor very strong on your soldiers. Anything less than 8 points of damage only removes 1 hp when grazed!

For example 7 points of damage vs 2 armor and graze = 7/2 = 3.5-2 = 1.5 and round down to 1.
Without a graze, 7 points of damage vs 2 armor is a 5 point wound!

In practice, the graze band combined with armor creates a situation where you take survivable wounds instead of crippling ones, which makes the end game quite easy. This is one of the reasons why Formidable was nerfed into 2 points of ablative instead of 1 armor. Being able to stack up to 4 points of armor (with Warden Armor) is just super strong.

[MacroNova]

I realize that the graze band covers both sides of the to-hit chance. I was focusing on the hits that were turned into grazes because those are the shots that can result in more wounds if the graze band is turned down.

It's also wrong, in my opinion, to look at average damage. What we really care about is the prevalence of shots that pierce ablative armor. It doesn't matter if every single soldier gets hit with 2-3 damage every mission, if they have sufficient ablative hp to absorb the shots. Getting hit less often with more more damaging shots will naturally lead to more wounds.

[Swiftless]

I realize that the graze band covers both sides of the to-hit chance. I was focusing on the hits that were turned into grazes because those are the shots that can result in more wounds if the graze band is turned down.

It's also wrong, in my opinion, to look at average damage. What we really care about is the prevalence of shots that pierce ablative armor. It doesn't matter if every single soldier gets hit with 2-3 damage every mission, if they have sufficient ablative hp to absorb the shots. Getting hit less often with more more damaging shots will naturally lead to more wounds.

Which precisely describes my experience. Most of the shots I'm eating are penetrating ablative when they do hit. I've turned the Graze band up to 10 and I'll see how that rides in comparison. I'm still a little fuzzy on how effective Dodge actually is but we'll see. There's some concern on my part as Antifringe pointed out that my perception has been muddled with because the UI's being a little ***** about reporting when grazes actually occur. Which will make it harder to witness even though I'm aware of what's going on. I'd love to see it report when a dodge actually occurs. I seem to remember the Vanilla game doing this where snakes would register dodges all the time so I dunno if I was imagining that or something changed.

[MrAnimaniac]

What you guys wrote regarding graze in relation to armour and ablative armour sounds logical and right. Therefore I did the math for armour and it shows, that the average damage done with graze is at least about p_G*Armor smaller (p_G is the graze band).

On the other hand de-buffs like shredder get more likely applied with graze, but since not every enemy has this perk, it is pretty much unlikely that this might turn the tide.