Visibility
From Starsonata Wiki
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
- Visibility will be defined as the number of pixels away someone with no radar can see you.
- "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.
- Engine visibility and visibility from shooting will be emissive.
- 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.
- 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.
- Total base visibilty = emmissive visibility + reflected visibility
Cloaking
- 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
- Radar still has detection and vision.
- Vision instead of being a range will be an optical modifier.
- You can see something visibly if the distance is less than totalbase visibilty * vision * cloak reduction.
- 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.
- You can also detect a ship if you can see it.