Xcom: sometimes they just are just destined to miss

[Strazdas]

hmm, interesting. maybe there was some "hidden" random event taking place due to the movement (the spawning of alien blobs is partially randomized, for example), or the mechanic isn't quite as well understood as the modding community thinks it is..thanks for the hint, anyway.

it could be that moving 1 tile changed the shooting chance (albeing at such small number that rounded up it made no difference) which ran the random seed into motion and moved away from a bad roll.

 

[Kathinka]

hmm, interesting. maybe there was some "hidden" random event taking place due to the movement (the spawning of alien blobs is partially randomized, for example), or the mechanic isn't quite as well understood as the modding community thinks it is..thanks for the hint, anyway.

it could be that moving 1 tile changed the shooting chance (albeing at such small number that rounded up it made no difference) which ran the random seed into motion and moved away from a bad roll.

that's another possibility. but as far as a i know, the xcom modding community figured out that the chances work with whole numbers between 1 and 100.
but again, i'm not an expert or a modder, i'm just curious and read what's going on at the xcom nexus because i'm still hoping for that mod that will introcude random maps x)

 

[Johnny Impact]

It's not actually random. There's a formula the game uses to calculate hit/miss. Thus, a shot on turn X from position Y at alien Z will always be a hit, or always be a miss. Reloading doesn't help. Pretty sure Firaxis did it that way to prevent people reloading every turn until they played the "perfect" game.

 

[Bertylicious]

awright, my savescumming friends, here is it xcom works:


when you start a mission, the computer rolls up a list of random numbers from 1 to 100.

it then saves those numbers in a long list. lets say we have

66
10
99
37
65
...

you fire at a grey one with a 70% chance hit probability. the computer now looks up your first number. it's 66, so below 70. a hit!
next, you have an exeptionally difficult shot, with a 12% hit chance! you take the risk, next number in line is the 10. despite all odds, you have hit again!
in the following round, an easy opportunity arrises. 95% hit chance! sure of your success, you fire and, due to the 99 being next in line, miss! being mad at the cheap cheating bastard AI, you reload the safegame from before and repeat.

however, all of the numbers that were previously used up already are now back in the list that is stored with your safe game! no matter how many times you reload that shot, it will always be a 99 roll on a 95% chance.

so no, shots aren't "destined to miss". it's just a mechanism to prevent savescumming. a good decision as i find, since it's a cheat in my oppinion. you are trying to turn a 95% chance into a 100% chance. if you are hell bent on exploiting the mechanism, perform any other, less important action with a dice roll, to "use up" the random number that's next in line, preventing you from making the hit.


ironman is the only way to play anyway! haha

I've been in that situation and taken the shot from a different tile, usually one pace to the left or right whilst staying in the same cover, which has hit the target.

hmm, interesting. maybe there was some "hidden" random event taking place due to the movement (the spawning of alien blobs is partially randomized, for example), or the mechanic isn't quite as well understood as the modding community thinks it is..thanks for the hint, anyway.

Maybe it rolls for each tile or something? I know that if I do the same thing I get the same outcome.

 

[Strazdas]

hmm, interesting. maybe there was some "hidden" random event taking place due to the movement (the spawning of alien blobs is partially randomized, for example), or the mechanic isn't quite as well understood as the modding community thinks it is..thanks for the hint, anyway.

it could be that moving 1 tile changed the shooting chance (albeing at such small number that rounded up it made no difference) which ran the random seed into motion and moved away from a bad roll.

that's another possibility. but as far as a i know, the xcom modding community figured out that the chances work with whole numbers between 1 and 100.
but again, i'm not an expert or a modder, i'm just curious and read what's going on at the xcom nexus because i'm still hoping for that mod that will introcude random maps x)

not being a real fan of mods (i play 99% of games in vanilla mode) i dont loom the nexus so i wouldn't know.

 

[Kathinka]

hmm, interesting. maybe there was some "hidden" random event taking place due to the movement (the spawning of alien blobs is partially randomized, for example), or the mechanic isn't quite as well understood as the modding community thinks it is..thanks for the hint, anyway.

it could be that moving 1 tile changed the shooting chance (albeing at such small number that rounded up it made no difference) which ran the random seed into motion and moved away from a bad roll.

that's another possibility. but as far as a i know, the xcom modding community figured out that the chances work with whole numbers between 1 and 100.
but again, i'm not an expert or a modder, i'm just curious and read what's going on at the xcom nexus because i'm still hoping for that mod that will introcude random maps x)

not being a real fan of mods (i play 99% of games in vanilla mode) i dont loom the nexus so i wouldn't know.

i play my xcom vanilla too, as most of my games (save full conversion stuff like hidden source). the only thing i use and really love is the toolboks, because it fixes so much console-legacy bullshit that ended up in the pc version too. you can deactivate disappearing corpses, make the camera free spin, deactivate the splash movies each time you start up the game, and more useful stuff like that. also, you can deactivate that panicking soldiers will shoot their own team mates. personally i left that on because i don't want to reduce the difficulty, but it's something that ticks lots of people off.

 

[Strazdas]

hmm, interesting. maybe there was some "hidden" random event taking place due to the movement (the spawning of alien blobs is partially randomized, for example), or the mechanic isn't quite as well understood as the modding community thinks it is..thanks for the hint, anyway.

it could be that moving 1 tile changed the shooting chance (albeing at such small number that rounded up it made no difference) which ran the random seed into motion and moved away from a bad roll.

that's another possibility. but as far as a i know, the xcom modding community figured out that the chances work with whole numbers between 1 and 100.
but again, i'm not an expert or a modder, i'm just curious and read what's going on at the xcom nexus because i'm still hoping for that mod that will introcude random maps x)

not being a real fan of mods (i play 99% of games in vanilla mode) i dont loom the nexus so i wouldn't know.

i play my xcom vanilla too, as most of my games (save full conversion stuff like hidden source). the only thing i use and really love is the toolboks, because it fixes so much console-legacy bullshit that ended up in the pc version too. you can deactivate disappearing corpses, make the camera free spin, deactivate the splash movies each time you start up the game, and more useful stuff like that. also, you can deactivate that panicking soldiers will shoot their own team mates. personally i left that on because i don't want to reduce the difficulty, but it's something that ticks lots of people off.

yes, those anti-console mods are a thing that is pretty much the only mods i use.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Another thing I also hate about the game, I can never tell if I will have any sight of the enemy before I move my guy. Just when I think I move my guy for a clear shot at the enemy, for some reason, my guy can't see him...I can't fire...BUT THE ALIEN IS RIGHT NEXT TO ME! All my guy has to do is look at him! -_-

Has that last part ever happened to anybody? It's pretty common for me. I wish this game had a way of letting you know when you will finally be able to see and fire at an enemy BEFORE I move. Otherwise I just save scum until I do because that's just retarded.

It doesn't happen a lot, but the game occasionally has real issues with LOS. I had a similar situation with a surrounded Muton who I just couldn't see for some reason. He maimed two soldiers before we finally took him down.

 

[daveman247]

Man, I didn't realize people hate savescuming so much around here XD

I'll say, im pretty sure the AI just outright cheats at times. Hitting and killing soldiers from across the map when they were in heavy cover, shooting and killing soldiers that should have been hidden... Its like every now and then the game decides you are doing too well and needs to bend you over for a bit...
These problems only came up once i jacked the game up to classic difficulty.
That said i still love the game, nothing else quite like it

snip

Yup i've had that problem a few times too. It gets even more aggrovating when they can see you but you can't see them! -_-


Hopefully if there is a sequal they fix these issues as well as taking how cover/ bullets work back to the drawing board, maybe taking what the cover is made of into account or something (wood, stone etc).

 

[Johnny Impact]

Personally, I welcome save scumming. While Xcom really is fun and addicting, the hit chance percentages are pure bullshit! One time I had a Heavy pretty close to the enemy who was also out in the open. Guess what the hit chance was? 33%! Are you kidding me? I'm 2 squares away from the alien with a freaking heavy plasma gun and I only have a 33% chance of hitting the guy?

The Heavy's weapons are categorized as Medium range, which means they actually get less reliable at short distances like 2 tiles.

I didn't play the original xcom but I heard that there use to be free aiming for guns like there is for grenades or rocket launchers. I hope they bring that back for the next xcom game. That would be sweet.

Yes. Same sort of destruction you get with alien grenades and rockets in the remake, but you could achieve the effect by shooting at scenery. In the early game you had to use doors, climb stairs, stuff like that. In the late game you could make doors and "elevator shafts" wherever you damn well pleased thanks to the miracle of plasma weaponry.

 

[Tamrin]

It's intentional actually, the developers wanted to keep people from doing something called 'save-scumming' in XCom, which is basically when you reload saves repeatedly to get the best possible results each time. Here's an article explaining it. To quote for those not wanting to read the entire thing:

"There?s a reason for this. Technically speaking, it?s because XCOM randomizes its numbers from a seed that?s saved at the outset of a scenario. That seed determines what happens thereafter, and once you?ve memorized a certain play sequence, if you choose to repeat it, it?s doing so in essentially non-random terms."

"What Solomon and the design team at Firaxis are trying to prevent is the sort of play-through where you save and reload for every action to get the results you want. Did one point of damage instead of two? Reload. Didn?t hit that sectoid peeking around a corner? Reload. Can?t find the best position to get the highest-percentile shot? Reload. That?s no way to play a game, or at best it?s a tedious one. What?s XCOM without risk and consequences?"

So there you go.

I guess that makes sense, since I totally did that in the original X-Com. Sometimes I just didn't like losing half my team to a single shot when I was raiding a landed alien battleship. >_>

this is the only time i ever really do save scumming, due to the annoying ass "fog of war", the aliens never pop out unless you move forward on the map, and there has been multiple times they've caught me with my tail between my legs because there was absolute shit cover for some of my guys (or a few of them were too close, so a fucking muton could grenade the shit out of them, or explode the car, etc...)

otherwise i generally just play the game

Yeah... that. That is something that has particularly gotten on my nerves while playing the game. I can deal with fog, but that they don't do shit until you stumble upon them has annoyed me. It ruins my tactics when let's say, I choose to place snipers on rooftops only to discover aliens hiding up there and blasting my people in the face with ZERO cover. Like a football coach throwing out his playbook and telling his QB, "#%&$ it! Just improv and try not to get hurt". I've lost my best guys twice because of this and it never gets better T_T

 

[VondeVon]

I suppose it's possible that the second time around I slapped the sniper on Overwatch before taking the shot... but then why, when I reloaded and took the shot again without touching the sniper, did the first guy continue to miss...? Argh!

Let's say you went through 4 actions in a turn, and got a 5, a 35, a 91, and a 72.

Originally, the 5 went to the sniper. He missed.

After your reload, you put the sniper on overwatch. Then, you take a shot with your support. He calls the same 5 the sniper would have. It's a miss.

In order to properly save scum and cheat the result, you'd have to have someone eat the bad result, then return to your highest chance soldier and have him shoot on the higher result.

Try doing a Groundhog Day with a turn. Go through the actions, then reload, and reload, and reload, and chance the actions very slightly each time. You'll see what I mean. You are correct that I am going to tell you that you do not have the one copy of XCOM that behaves differently than everyone else's. It's just a question of understanding how the random seed works.

My ultimate recommendation, though, is to not save scum. XCOM is most rewarding when you play it with the potential for failure, and trying to juke the random seed is annoying and time consuming. Just accept your miss and live with the consequences.

Huh, I didn't know the numbers were fixed in order instead of to person. Interesting.

Thanks for the info, but don't tell me how to enjoy my game.