Cheating with Sniper Rifles etc

[Vault_13]

Ok, I've got a few snipers in my party, one of them can use demolitions as well. The thing I will talk about can be easily reproduced whenever you see an enemy who is seen on screen but haven't attacked you yet. I did this with robots in Abandon Railway and different critters like badgers and gila monitors in Prison.

I have my sniper get close enough to the target so it gets in shooting range of the rifle and attack him. This mostly leads to two things: 1) enemy gets damage, combat doesn't start. I can kill him and other enemies who are around this way; 2) enemy gets damage, the combat starts and ends the same second so I can continue my shooting practice.

Sometimes enemies realize the trick and start approaching the party so I enter the normal combat, but this is rare. In other words I don't think this should work that way. It's a turn based game, no ?

[Fellby]

As soon as the first shot hits them you should be drawn into combat. That's what always happens when I do the same thing o.O

Are you doing anything other than just attacking them?

[Vault_13]

I play in Supreme Jerk mode. Have no idea if it means anything in this situation. I just attack the enemy with my sniper ranger, nothing special. In previous builds this would cause battle initiation immediately. This build was the first one to introduce such "feature" .

I guess my party is too far from the enemy for combat to actually start.

[Tangaroa]

I can confirm this bug, at least for the Slicer-Dicers in the rail yard. Ranger difficulty.

Did you centercode it?

[Vault_13]

I used to centercode everything but then I got lazy .

[GiantDoosh]

I used to have this problem in prior builds and have not had it in this build. I'm using snipers with range 45, so pretty far. I'm not sure if that is as far as the snipers you guys are using in this build.

Also, when I was having the problem in the older version I also had a herd of goats following me around. I found a thread saying that each animal "follower" was treated as a separate group (e.g. not part of your party nor the enemy group) and that it was messing with combat start/stop. As soon as I killed off my followers all of the combat weirdness stopped (combat not starting, combat starting/stopping multiple times).

Granted, my experience is anecdotal and far from proof. It also could be totally unrelated to what you're seeing.

Did you, by chance, have any animal followers when experiencing this bug?

[Vault_13]

In the matter of fact I do! At first I had three cows with me, and now I'm wondering with two goats (one died in the process, I guess)! Might be the case. Anyway this requires fixing anyway, right ?

[Tangaroa]

I believe I had NPCs, but no animals/robot followers at the time.

[AhmNee]

I've had my sniper one shot someone out on the edge of a group and it didn't start combat. It's been rare but it's happened. Sort of like the guy was dead before he could cry out. I only run the one sniper so I may not be getting it as often.

[GiantDoosh]

I've had this as well. I recall it happening in one of the infected maps where the enemies are reasonably spread out.

[otherunicorn]

I don't think it is a bug. Silencers are available for the guns. What would the point of a silencer be, other than to allow one to shoot without starting combat.
Nonetheless, I have only had this happen once, with one bullet. Period.

[Tangaroa]

I did it ~8 times with a slicer dicer before combat initiated. Then it activated and wiped my party Which was, incidently, when I discovered there is no way to run away/leave combat (I was low level at the time)

[Markkyss]

Arkansas .. This man is a sniper. Guess where he is. The Minefield. That place you go during the first chapter of the wasteland survival guide
TIP: do not kill him when you are getting the mine and going to the playground for Moira.

[Fellby]

Arkansas .. This man is a sniper. Guess where he is. The Minefield. That place you go during the first chapter of the wasteland survival guide
TIP: do not kill him when you are getting the mine and going to the playground for Moira.

Die slaver scum! Or was it a bounty on his head later?

[Joby]

We've been making a number of tweaks to combat and you should have a much more natural experience of starting combat in the release. Thanks!