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[Sirus]

It's really not a complicated system though :|

[Furtuka]

Yeah, no offense but what's hard to understand about those? It's not like you have to calculate the numbers by hand.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'm not sure. You'd think it would be easy, but a lot of the time when I move to what looks like a decent firing position, the chance to hit is terrible or LOS is blocked.

Maybe I should try to figure out how to make Fraps video work.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Good news. I figured out how to make the XCOM work by turning off the OpenGL thing.

The video-recording is still in mere 29-second snippets. Aggravating.

[Tres_Huevos]

Unless you have aiming angles turned on the full defense bonus from cover is always applied except in cases where you're flanking them. So there are poor firing positions, and flanked. Using explosives to destroy their cover is a reliable way to get good shots.

[Mageziya]

Distance is important in aim. Even if you're in full cover, that Sectoid two tiles away can still kill you with ease.

[GreatWyrmGold]

GWG's III
Part III: Never Gonna Let This Down

Operation Spectral Priest...What are we on now, hexux?
We advance. Ruiz discovers a xeno on turn 2, eating a reaction shot. She gives better than she gets, dealing three damage to the xeno's one. Owusu strides out into an uncovered position to deal a miss. The xeno's buddy gives him a boosy, helping him crit Owusu into oblivion. Hudson finishes the alien, Ruiz advances, missing the first alien's companion. That xeno kills Ruiz, panicking Hall (the farthest away), who shoots (and misses) Hudson. You know, I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a differential rate of panic results based on difficulty. On Easy, no one ever shot a friend and shooting enemies was frequent; here, it seems like every third or fourth panicker shoots at a buddy. Hudson spots a trio of advancing xenos and misses the reaction shot; the shot xeno returns the favor more accurately, with a Panic-Plas^TM shot that panics Hudson despite only dealing one damage. He shoots back in panic, a miss. Hall advances, killing that xeno but triggering a squad of three more. Hall complains about a single xeno flanking his position seconds before getting plasma-pasted all over the road. Hudson advances, takes a scratch from a reaction shot, and empties his assault rifle at a xeno...who clings to life with one hit point. Hudson avoids fire, circles the car he's hiding behind, and chucks his grenade at two xenos. He promptly gets killed.

Operation Spectral Priest Heptux
I try a hybrid advance; one person on each side does the cautious, Overwatching advance I normally do, but Owusu and Hudson do a dashing aggressive advance. Also, the squad clusters together a bit more. A xeno runs forward, not triggering Overwatch but yes killing Owusu in one shot. Its buddy kills Hudson, panicking Hall,  The two bastards are a bit out of grenade range, so Ruiz shoots one...dealing one damage. The other one gets buffed and kills Ruiz in one shot.
Hall advances, dodges a reaction shot, and discovers is foe (the aforementioned wounded sectoid) is again just out of grenade range. So he shoots it. Lethally. Another one, glowy-headed, blows up the chunky little thing Hall was using for cover (note the past tense). Hall advances to a nearby car and drops the buffed bastard to one health. The xeno, no longer glowy-headed, advances, shooting Hall for one damage and panicking him. It gets re-buffed, and shoots for another one damage. Hall Socks the now-2-hp bastard...for one damage.
(For those who have forgotten, Socks was the nickname of Anastasia Smirnova, my best Assault in my first playthrough. Verbing it means I'm moving a soldier adjacent to an enemy and shooting it.)
The xeno gets buffed back to two health (DAMMIT THAT'S CHEATING!), five others move into view, and the one Hall nearly killed runs past him before dealing a lethal shot.

I think I have a good reason to stick to Easy.

Unless you have aiming angles turned on the full defense bonus from cover is always applied except in cases where you're flanking them. So there are poor firing positions, and flanked. Using explosives to destroy their cover is a reliable way to get good shots.

What is flanking, anyways? I've done it sometimes, but I haven't figured out exactly how to flank.

Distance is important in aim. Even if you're in full cover, that Sectoid two tiles away can still kill you with ease.

Well duh. But I've advanced often, only to discover that the hit-chance is exactly the same.

[Furtuka]

Flanking just means theres no cover in between the shooting guy and whatever they're attacking. So like if they're right next to them, or behind them.

[GreatWyrmGold]

So...all my time trying to get soldiers on both sides of enemies was for nothing?

[Sirus]

Well, not really. Sometimes the easiest way to flank is to get the enemy taking cover against one of your dudes, and then move another one around to a side the alien doesn't have cover from. Spreading your dudes out like that also minimizes the amount of damage you can take from alien explosives.

[Parsely]

Owusu strides out into an uncovered position to deal a miss.

You should never, ever, ever be out of cover. Ever. Except on harder difficulties where you actually need to take those risks from time to time.

Unless you have aiming angles turned on the full defense bonus from cover is always applied except in cases where you're flanking them. So there are poor firing positions, and flanked. Using explosives to destroy their cover is a reliable way to get good shots.

What is flanking, anyways? I've done it sometimes, but I haven't figured out exactly how to flank.

You get around their cover. Cover protects you in more or less a half circle in front of you (180 degrees). If you get past that point, the enemy is flanked.

*gets out marker*


-----------------------------------         Key
l                x                       l         = Cover     
l    x                           x       l         A  Allium     
l           =====                   l         x  Enemy NOT Flanked               
l  o            A              o        l         o  Enemy is Flanked
l                        o               l
------------------------------------

Height doesn't matter. No matter what altitude you're at, if you're in a position marked "x" in relation to the Allium, he is not flanked.

[Tres_Huevos]

While we're on the general topic of hitting things from what I understand, and these are just my own deductions, I haven't actually researched this, you have a base 20% chance to hit. Add together your aim and bonuses from things such as scopes, light plasma rifles, or height advantage to get your offense score. This is added to that base 20%, and then you subtract the enemy's defense score (cover (20 for low/ 40 for high/ double those if hunkered down), flying and height advantages, naturally armored enemies, ect. ) add in range penalties or bonuses as appropriate for the weapon (which I've never bothered to figure out actually numbers for, just close good, far bad, except with snipers) and that's your hit chance.

I may be wrong about the base 20% chance, though, it's been a while so I might be mis-remembering some numbers.

Also, you have a bonus to critical hitting flanked or exposed (not in cover at all) aliens, unless they're hardened, such as closed cyber disks.

EDIT: Thinking about it more, I think Remalle is correct. I guess I need to play more XCOM.

[Remalle]

I'm pretty sure it's just your aim, plus any relevant bonuses or maluses.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I tried the Alien Base mission again. It crashed faster than before I tried Sean's modding. Well, actually slower, because the game was a lot slower.

[EnigmaticHat]

It gets a tiny bit exponential when you get below 10% to hit.  As in the rate of decay will get lower until 1%, which is the lowest possible hit chance.

But for the most part its just a flat attack minus defense.  The only part that's really opaque is the distance modifier, most everything else can be figured out through the interface.

The really important numbers to remember are that partial cover is +20, full cover is +40, and hunker down is +20 AND immunity to crits (aka partial cover hunkered down is defensively slightly better than full cover).  Also mutons and most aliens that cannot take cover get innate defense, so a muton in full cover can result in some really low hit chances.

If misses are giving you trouble, remember that you don't always have to shoot.  A general rule of thumb is that if missing would likely result in someone's death, don't shoot.  Figuring out useful things to do besides shooting is a big part of how you play I/I, with another part unfortunately being throwing yourself at the early levels until the RNG plays nice.  An optional part is figuring out midgame win-button strategies like all SHIVs or snipers+tolerance of boredom.