Revision as of 16:16, 8 October 2009

Visibility is a measure of how well others can see your ship. Higher visibility means you are more clearly seen from a farther distance away. Contrastly, with lower visibility, others will have to get quite close in order to see you. Items with a visibility stat raise your visibility by the indicated amount. Thrusting raises your visibility by the amount listed on the engine, and shooting raises visibility by 10,000 for a few seconds.

New Visibility System

Basic Visibility

1. Visibility will be defined as the number of pixels away someone with no radar can see you.
2. "visibility" tag will now mean emissive visibility.  The light that emits from a ship or an item on a ship. Almost all items will still use this tag.
3. Engine visibility and visibility from shooting will be emissive.
4. Add a new tag called "reflectivity".  This represents how much sunlight and radar will be reflected by a ship or item.  This will mostly be used on ship hulls.  Some items can also use it, like solar panels.
5. The visibility that comes from sunlight on a ship is equal to (sun visibility * ship reflectivity * 500)/(distance + 500).  In 3d, brightness is proprtional to 1/distance^2, but if you consider a sun to be in 2d and only emit light in a plane, then brightness will be 1/distance.  The *500/+500 will mean at zero distance, the visibiltity is full, at 500, it's 1/2, at 1000, it's 1/3, at 1500, it's 1/4, etc.  This will provide a nice dropoff.  Visibility from suns is now also multiplied by the cloaking percent of any cloak that is activated on a ship.
6. Total base visibilty = emmissive visibility + reflected visibility

Cloaking

1. Cloaks have a cloaking stat which is for detection and an cloaking visibility stat which is for visibility.  The first is applied to detection while the second is applied to visibility.
   

Radar

1. Radar still has detection and vision.
2. Vision instead of being a range will be an optical modifier.
3. You can see something visibly if the distance is less than totalbase visibilty * vision * cloak reduction.
4. Detection is still a range that your radar will detect at.  You can detect a ship if the range is less than or equal to detection * ship reflectivity * cloaking factor.
5. You can also detect a ship if you can see it.