Jebu

Thanks for the replies, cleared things up for me. I knew the weapon damage varies from the listed value, but didn't know it can be down to 0, so I assumed the cover reduced some damage.

How much does kneeling in cover help when you're under fire? I'm thinking of low obstacles that don't obstruct the view completely, like rocks, small trees, low brick fences and the such. Obviously the chance of hitting you is lower when you're kneeling, and the shot could hit the thing you're behind. What I'd like to know is, does the object you're kneeling behind lower the chance to hit even more. Like when behind a low brick fence, the enemy should only see you from waist up, or less. Does the enemy try to hit your visible part, with lower chance of success? Or does the shot have normal chance to hit, but it might go for your legs, which are behind the fence, thus making the shot hit the fence? Another thing, does the cover reduce the damage from a successful hit? I've seen my non-armoured soldiers get shot with plasma weapons (probably pistol though), receiving 0 damage. The soldiers were usually kneeling beside something, like a landing gear of the Skyranger. On the sidenote, I recently found out about the difficulty bug, and downloaded xcomutil to fix it. So I'm for the first time playing in (real) Veteran mode, and the soldiers definately need to stay in cover as much as possible.