Rifleman Archive

Decided to try out Cover and Conceal Shot for a while on TCEP3 last night.

First Cover, "Urban style". LOL. I was in Coronet.
Went into the cantina and tried to take cover. As someone else stated, even the white "non-attackable" NPC's brake cover or makes it impossible to get cover. So I was thinking; "Hmm, there's LOS (Line Of Sight) active now". So I tried hiding behind a wall and other objects. Even entering another room. No dice. No cover. Bugged it ingame. I think if they want to have LOS in the game they should do it properly, so that you CAN take cover if noone is around to see you. After all, if I try too shoot that person breaking my cover, in the other room, I can't.

Went outside, and found a spot sufficiently away from anything to take cover. A group of white NPC's was about 80 meters away. Took cover, an attackable NPC (Corsec trooper) spawned a couple of meters from me, immediately breaking cover. He went away. Took cover again, and started to crawl towards the white NPC's. It was much better this time. I crawled right up to the first NPC and he didn't see me. Crawled around between the NPC's for a little while. Then I was spotted, and cover broke. Went back to my starting position, and did this several times. At one time another player ran past me, and my cover didn't break. That was pretty cool. :-)

Having a pet or vehicle out, I couln't take cover. Always getting the message something was close enough to see me. Taking cover and then calling a pet or vehicle always broke cover.

I went out into the field. Taking cover and shooting at an animal never work. The animal charges right at your position, and when it's within 15 meters the cover breaks.

NPC's is better. A few of them charged right at me and broke my cover. But most of them would run towards my position, stop at a distance that didn't brake the cover, and just stand there while I shot at them. Of course, anything else than Conceal Shot will break the cover, and with the painfully slow wind-up/cool-down time on the Conceal Shot it can take some time. And sometimes Conceal Shot won't work on the first try. You get the wind-up, and some time during the wind-up a sort of electronic burp sound, and then nothing. Another thing I will never understand, besides the whole warm-up/cool-down thingy, is the annoying "jet-sound" you get in addition to the yellow bar filling up on the screen. :-)

In the mountains south of Bela Vistal I happened upon a medium pirate camp, with two pirates standing talking at the entrance to the camp. I'm uphill from them, so I find a good spot where I'll have a clear shot all the way. I have also turned off the so called "auto-attack-feature", because it is so flakey and makes me shoot at a lot of things I don't want to shoot at. Take cover, and then fire my first Conceal Shot at one of them. He runs towards me and stops about halfway up the hill. I'm a little slow with my next shot, and suddenly he just turns around and runs back to his mate. Trying to shoot him in the back during this time does nothing, and the word "Retreat" is over his head. When he reaches his mate his health "magically" jumps up to 100%. And then it's like I'm not in combat anymore. Maybe this is why they have removed the peace command, they have built in some sort of "auto-peace"-thingy? And what is that "Retreat" thing anyway? I've seen animals do it too. Anyway, we do this a couple of times and it's the same every time. Picking up the pace with the Conceal Shots I'm able to hold him in place and kill him. Same thing with his mate. Good thing is cover never broke during this.