Spotting

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I wanted to post this response about the spotting questions mentioned in the Fading Suns Universe topic.<p> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Keep in mind that spotting is not random, it's linear so a 1 point camo advantage over your opponent's spotting means you will always be invisible to him. Since the highest spotting in the game is a 10, you only need to go to 11 to become unspottable.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><p>and<p> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Then is there any specific reason stealth ships had their camo of 10 in EFS raised to 100 in Nova?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><p>and<p> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>You know, looking back over the last few posts, I am curious, why is the camo for the Raider set at 100 and not 12?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><p>Here is what Richard states about spotting on his website:<p>BUG: For ground, air and naval units, spotting does not work as described in the manual. Basically, in standard EFS it hardly works at all, and you rarely have any difficulty seeing enemy units, even if they have high camo. [In Nova, this has been fixed, and spotting works quite nicely.] <p>The distance at which the "mist is cleared" from terrain is: (spot / 2) - 1 (rounded down, minimum 1). So a Scout Tank, with spot 7, can clear the mist at a distance of (7/2) - 1 = 2 hexes. This is also the maximum range at which the Scout Tank can possibly spot an enemy unit, but it won't necessarily be able to spot a unit within this range, except at the beginning of the game, when it will automatically spot any enemy units within this range.<p>Exception: cargo pods (which have a spot value of 0) have no spotting ability whatsoever.<p>In case you want to know all the gory details of how spotting works, here they are:<p>Each unit has a random number between +2 and -2 added to its camo at the start of the game, or when it is built. (This is the only thing about spotting in the manual which is actually correct!) The number has an equal (20%) chance of being -2, -1, 0, +1 or +2. This is the only random element in spotting. There is no random element at the time that spotting is resolved.<p>When spotting is resolved, the modified camo value is multiplied by a terrain coefficient from unitspot.dat, to give what I call the "Final Camo". The terrain coefficient depends on the terrain type, the planet type and the movement type (of the unit being spotted). The "Final Camo" is compared with a "Final Spotting" value:<p>Final Spotting = (2 x Spot) - (4 x Range), where "Spot" is the basic spotting value of the spotting unit (as defined in unit.dat), and "Range" is as you would expect (an adjacent unit is at range 1, etc). If Final Spotting is greater than or equal to Final Camo, the unit is successfully spotted.<p>Furthermore, each unit has a "Maximum Spotting Range", which is the maximum distance at which it can ever spot (regardless of camo) and is also the distance at which the "mist is cleared" from terrain:<p>Maximum Spotting Range = (Spot / 2) - 1 (rounded down, minimum 1). <p>Units which begin the game within the Maximum Spotting Range of an enemy unit are automatically spotted (regardless of camo). Here's another way of calculating Final Spotting. Any unit with an even spotting value has a Final Spotting of 4 at its Maximum Spotting Range. Any unit with an odd spotting value has a Final Spotting of 6 at its Maximum Spotting Range. For each hex closer it is to the target, add 4 to Final Spotting.<p>HOWEVER (and this is where the bug lies) there is a problem with additional terrain layers. Each hex has a base terrain layer (ocean, grass, arid grass, desert, tundra or ice) and possibly one or more additional terrain layers (trees, mountains, hills, river, delta, road and city). The camo value is multiplied by the terrain coefficient for the base terrain layer and by the coefficients for the additional layers (if any). But, each time it multiplies by one of these additional terrain coefficients, the program seems to divide by 2. [In Nova, we've adjusted for this.] In addition, the coefficients for cities ("structures") seem to have no effect at all. [Not much we could do about that.]<p>For spaceships, spotting sometimes works as described in the manual, but often doesn't. In theory, it should not be possible to see Stealth Ships until they're involved in combat. In practice, they can frequently be seen anyway, so they are not very useful. [In Nova, Stealth Ships have a camo of 100, which seems to work - they can only be spotted when involved in combat.]<p>Units being transported as cargo can use their spotting ability. [In Nova, Spies on board Naval Transports are very useful for hunting down enemy submarines.]<p>Units are automatically spotted when they're involved in combat (but units which started the combat unspotted receive a +3 agility bonus for the duration of the current combat). If you move units into a hex containing only unspotted enemy units, you'll see the message "Ambush!". If you move units into a hex containing only unspotted neutral units, you'll be warned and given an opportunity to cancel the attack. <p>Spotting is on a House-by-House basis, so a unit spotted by one House will not necessarily be spotted by other Houses. Once spotted, a unit remains visible to the spotting House until it moves, no matter how many turns this is, and regardless of whether that House still has a unit nearby. [Note: since units cease to be spotted when they move, a Stealth Ship can attack and then jump to another planet, where it will no longer be spotted.]<p>In addition, Richard has this about UNITSPOT.DAT:<p>When spotting is resolved, a unit's camo is multiplied by a terrain coefficient from this file. A coefficient is given for each combination of terrain type, planet type ("tile set") and unit movement type (i.e. the type of unit being spotted, not the type of unit doing the spotting).<p>Where a hex contains more than one type of terrain, e.g. grass and mountain, the two (or more) values are multiplied together. Note, however, that, due to a bug, each time the program multiplies by a value for an additional terrain layer, it then halves the result. This means that the values given for all but the basic terrain types should be set to double what you really want them to be. For example, in Nova we've set the value for foot units in road hexes to 2.0. This means that roads have no effect on the camo of foot units. Also, the coefficients given for "structures" (cities) seem to have no effect at all.<p>I'm sure Richard can comment on this more if needed, but this seems to answer the questions John and Russell had asked.<p>Matt