Tbf, I think the lower % to hit the tankier enemies is just the games way of representing their armor being too tough for your weapons to break through, but the developers were too lazy to add an animation for it so it just says 'miss'. Should say 'blocked' while having your troops hit them or something.
Only that's not how it works, is it?
The alien armour applies this 'to hit' penalty to all weapons, even the most powerful alien and XCom weapons in the game.
Also when the armour penalty causes you to miss, the shot physically misses and has a good chance to destroy scenery instead. That does not correspond to a shot being blocked.
Unlike the originals, armour never degrades. In the originals, your/their armour could absorb damage, but would mostly then be damaged in the process. Even the most powerful armour would be rendered ineffective if you kept hitting it (in the same place). I miss this. It was a good system and it worked.
It's bizarre that this game represents armour for the player by giving more HP, but on the aliens by giving a 30% chance to miss your shot entirely.
It's also bizarre that people defend this design choice as 'logical', when it blatantly isn't.
Also I'm not sure why people like missing a shot from point blank range. This doesn't happen much in other games. It seldom happened in XCom1 if you used burst fire (oh wait, no burst fire in X:EU). Yes we all missed shots in XCom1, but a soldier with full TU available would make a mess of any enemy at point blank, with any appropriate burst fire weapon.
Also LOL at the "ducking and dodging" comment. Give me an AK47, run straight for me (starting a ways away), and see what my chances of missing you are. You can duck and dodge all you like
And I've never fired a weapon! We are to assume that elite soldiers can miss an alien running *straight* towards them?
No, I'm happy that this is pretty much the only game I've ever played that gives a 50/50 chance to miss close range enemies. And I've played a lot of TBS, btw.
