Xcom: sometimes they just are just destined to miss

[Kekkonen1]

I'm usually the guy who shuns hard challenges in games and like to save/reload, but I found in Xcom that I werent having fun until I started playing it on ironman-mode, then the game starts for REAL! Man this game is great!

Although I did a huuuge mistake that really made me depressed yesterday. Playing ironman on classic difficulty, it was towards the end and my one psychic super-soldier got mind-controlled. Now this wasn't a huge problem, I had 2 fully levelled snipers ready to shoot the bastard the next round. But, when I went to shoot the alien with my snipers, I had forgotten that mind-controlled allies can also be targeted, and since the mind-controlling alien was the last one alive I didn't bother checking where I aimed, so I shot my best soldier dead =((( My sniper was so happy about it as well, I guess that is the only time I wished I could have reloaded.

Also, I switched to controllers as well for pc, aside from when you want to change soldiers names, controllers actually work better.

 

[Bostur]

One thing I don't like however is that the percentage lies I spent 3 turns firing at a guy when I had a 45% chance to hit every time and missed all 3 so that cannot be 45% cause at least 1 of those shots should have hit.

As far as I can tell there's about a 16.6% chance of missing that shot 3 times in a row. It's unlikely yes, but it's common enough that it should happen regularly. Maybe even several times in a mission.

 

[Yureina]

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. >_>

 

[VondeVon]

That explains it! Sort of. I saved, killed a guy then sent another guy far away by accident. I know, I know, but I was getting murdered well enough for my choices without being murdered for my accidental finger twitches too.

So I reloaded, took exactly the same shot to kill the first guy... and missed. Huh? Is there a built in auto-troll for the first shot after reloading? I hadn't moved my girl at all, nothing had changed in the battlefield...

 

[veloper]

So another cheater has discovered the random, but not randomize timer, number generator in XCOM.
Good for him.

What's far more interesting is what factors are multiplied in the randomizer. The coordinates of the soldiers? The turn? The map?
Could there be a way to repeat hits and misses without reloading?

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

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,

Ok, off topic entirely but i've heard this game is pretty good so is the 360 port any good? It sounds like something a lot more suited to a mouse and keyboard and my laptop is so, so shit :/

Anyway dice rolls. Gotta love them! Fucking you over with absolutely ridiculous hit chance managing to miss anyway and the enemy randomly scoring 5 crits in a row...

Fuck you Risk Factions! You're scum! Always with your 11 vs 2 with the 2 really hurting me and destroying my perfect advance...

Try the demo to see

Failing that, i can confirm the game works just as well on the controller as on a mouse (i have the 360 version). Possibly being slowed down because of having to use a cursor instead of a mouse is a non-issue since it is turn based.


Also BOO to the OP! I frown upon such play styles ¬_¬

I'm playing on the 360 an its awesome.

I actually agree about the save scumming, I don't do it oftern but when you is at the end of a terror mission and that one shot stops the bad guy from killing 4 of your team and the stupid civies near them, well you really want it to hit, not miss on a 95% chance. I think a reload is warranted. If they didn't want us to reload saves they shouldn't have put auto misses in the game

also on this, those fucking Chryssalid's, if they couldn't move half way across the map in one move and mow everything down with melee, this wouldn't be such a problem, god damn vip's just pick horrible places to hide.

 

[Doclector]

Ok, off topic entirely but i've heard this game is pretty good so is the 360 port any good? It sounds like something a lot more suited to a mouse and keyboard and my laptop is so, so shit :/

Anyway dice rolls. Gotta love them! Fucking you over with absolutely ridiculous hit chance managing to miss anyway and the enemy randomly scoring 5 crits in a row...

Fuck you Risk Factions! You're scum! Always with your 11 vs 2 with the 2 really hurting me and destroying my perfect advance...

I haven't played the PC version, but the xbox version controls fine. To be honest, controls on consoles aren't as big an issue for turn based strategy as it is for real time, especially when movement is tile based.

The random number god strikes again. I agree that save scumming is a bad way to play a game, but I really have to start remembering to save at the beginning of every battle. Why? Because dammit, until I manage to train up one of the rookies into a decent medic, Richards is all I've got.

 

[VondeVon]

That explains it! Sort of. I saved, killed a guy then sent another guy far away by accident. I know, I know, but I was getting murdered well enough for my choices without being murdered for my accidental finger twitches too.

So I reloaded, took exactly the same shot to kill the first guy... and missed. Huh? Is there a built in auto-troll for the first shot after reloading? I hadn't moved my girl at all, nothing had changed in the battlefield...

you will always get the same results if you do the same things

But that's just it. I didn't. A shot which worked the first time, failed after reloading. I did nothing different. That's why I went looking online to see if it was random or there was some sort of reload-discouragement in play.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

But that's just it. I didn't. A shot which worked the first time, failed after reloading. I did nothing different. That's why I went looking online to see if it was random or there was some sort of reload-discouragement in play.

That's not possible, actually. The random seed generator generates a new number every time you call it. So say you have a sniper take a shot, and he has a 75% chance to hit, and you roll a 5 or whatever and thus miss. That number is now a 5. Every time you call that number, it's a 5. So if you immediately reload and attempt the shot again, it's still a miss. This is what leads a lot of people to erroneously believe the game has a ludicrous miss rate, and accounts for all the "I missed a 90% shot 50 times in a row herp derp!" posts.

What could have happened is you reloaded, had someone ELSE take an action on that 5 (say, you had your heavy take a shot), and when you returned to the sniper a new number was called.

 

[VondeVon]

But that's just it. I didn't. A shot which worked the first time, failed after reloading. I did nothing different. That's why I went looking online to see if it was random or there was some sort of reload-discouragement in play.

That's not possible, actually. The random seed generator generates a new number every time you call it. So say you have a sniper take a shot, and he has a 75% chance to hit, and you roll a 5 or whatever and thus miss. That number is now a 5. Every time you call that number, it's a 5. So if you immediately reload and attempt the shot again, it's still a miss. This is what leads a lot of people to erroneously believe the game has a ludicrous miss rate, and accounts for all the "I missed a 90% shot 50 times in a row herp derp!" posts.

What could have happened is you reloaded, had someone ELSE take an action on that 5 (say, you had your heavy take a shot), and when you returned to the sniper a new number was called.

Again, no. Unless the system re-rolled by tabbing through the dudes to find the right one, I did nothing different. I know that you'll probably say 'well that's not how it works so you must have' and any other day I'd agree with you... but I can't shake the fact that the whole reason I came online looking for answers was because a simple uncomplicated reload (I only had 3 dudes possible to use and one was a sniper and thus going nowhere) had an unexpected consequence. I'm just going to have to continue on being irrationally convinced, because the more time passes the more the memory is corrupted.

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!

 

[DoPo]

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!

Hmm, I've yet to play Xcom, so I may bo off, but it seems that the action could have moved the sequence forward. Hence why the different behaviours.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

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.

 

[Fappy]

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

I just finished Ironman mode and let me tell you... I wish I could have savescummed. The game throws too many bugs and unfair bs at you to play it straight without going into a epileptic fit. Multiple times I had entire groups of enemies spawn directly on top of my squad... like, in the center of the fog of war.

 

[Kathinka]

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

 

[volkmar77]

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

I just finished Ironman mode and let me tell you... I wish I could have savescummed. The game throws too many bugs and unfair bs at you to play it straight without going into a epileptic fit. Multiple times I had entire groups of enemies spawn directly on top of my squad... like, in the center of the fog of war.

While you are correct that the game can have some annoying problems, the one you describe is not exactly one of them but a consequence of how aliens move.

They move in blocks without animations (nor stopping on the way) until they come into contact with your troops. Some aliens, like Crysalis and floaters can move a loooooong way so what happened here is that a group of unseen aliens moved in a block and their movement ended smack center of your squad, where they got sighted and this triggered the little animation/free move the aliens always get. You could think this way of moving is a bug, but it is how all aliens move, so there it is

 

[Strazdas]

So I found something while playing xcom enemy unknown. Sometime you just have to miss no matter how many times one reloads a save, that shot will always miss and I mean always. It doesn?t matter who takes the shot.

So what I do is reload the save and have one of my riflemen take the miss shot and then have my sniper fire, works every damn time

That is because of the random number seed. they load a randomized mechanism to load a random number. wnhe you reload that mechanism remains laoded in memory, this you roll exactly same number every time. in fack some games like civilization 4 give you a checkbox whether you want that or not. if you let the seed to remain static you ultimately destroy reloading to win a 10% chance hits, which is what you seem to be doing. and yes shooting with another guy does roll the same bad seed and your next guy rolls a new random one which can be good or bad. thats just how mechanism works.
now on that note, i got nothing agaisnt save scumming in singleplayer, but i never do it myself, i find that totally removing any fun from the game. games are not fun if there is no challenge, i may as well watch a movie with a lot of shooting.

capcha: worship nothing
wrong, worship random seed.

 

[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.

 

[Kathinka]

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.