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The multi-cone idea sounds like a good experiment. Will need some special handling when the soldier turns, to make sure the long cone covers the whole arc. As a side note, Phoenix Point has this perception - stealth system like UFO series, that does not have a fixed vision distance. You can see big enemies right across a mid sized open map, and they can snipe your vehicles too. It is also advised to assign each team a high perception scout. While realistic, apparently it is not intuitive to some players. Xenonaut's vision cone is certainly simple and clear.

I would like to recommend long and realistic sight ranges, for X2. I have seen this work very well in Xenonauts 1, and think it should be part of the sequel. So far as I've seen, short sight ranges don't accomplish much, aside from making it necessary to research the technology of glasses. In a night mission, it makes sense to have limited visibility, and so you can have a terrible feeling of claustrophobia. But in the day time, it doesn't make sense for aliens to stand outside of your sight range and shoot at you. It's one thing for aliens to hide behind cover, but it feels silly for them to hide in plain sight (they kind of stick out). Sight Radius A lot of people seem to agree they want a reasonably wide vision cone. How wide is difficult to say, but I figure the maximum would be close to 180 degrees. Between 120 and 180, I'd guess. I forgot to account for tunnel vision, a serious issue in battle conditions. 90 or 100 degree vision might be reasonable, in that case. However, short range peripheral vision, as Frutz suggested, might be nice.

Ah right, that recoil is a penalty that should get applied to heavy weapons like LMGs. If the soldier isn't wearing a strength-enhancing armour suit, then the soldier's effective accuracy stat will be further modified by Max(0, (recoil / 100) - strength). Since recoil / 100 < strength for all vanilla weapons anyway, that's yet another bugged formula and wouldn't actually modify anything. New X:CE variables are documented, as for the old stuff, it's of course known, or can be looked up in any case, but it's not documented. There are probably a few hundred variables just in gameconfig/weapons/weapons_gc/aiprops files, and documenting them all accurately would be a lot of work.

Phoenix Point is good example of how introducing new mechanics that deviate from original for sake of change can harm gameplay. Lot of combat problems there came from developer trying to mix things up by introducing XCOM2-based class and abilities, which unfortunately did not turn out to mix well with the design of UFO Defense. The battle is almost entirely skill-dependent at the cost of other tactical elements, and ironically leads to reduced variety in team composition (if you don't go with "correct" build of heavy/sniper or shotgun/sniper, end game becomes near unplayable difficult). Making power difference between rookies and veteran too strong has also led their difference in performance to be too different, making soldiers less disposable and making gamers less inclined to be favourable toward perceived unfairness of aliens. In short, Phoenix Point is suffering because it's been designed as realistic strategy game while new element has shifted the game towards gotta-nuke-everything-in-single-turn puzzle style of XCOM2 battle. While sequel is good opportunity to add additional mechanics that support the original gameplay, I am glad Goldhawk Studio is choosing to build a solid well-proven foundation first, because then the developer can add new elements based on that foundation and also track how it affects game design.

Thanks. I've found the offending map now and it'll work correctly in the next update.

I think LoS should be more of a bubble than a cone. A really stretched oval facing wherever your guy is looking, with 90, 120, and 180 degrees being where you have your long, medium, and short cones of vision respectively. Strikes me as the most realistic take.