Change peripheral vision / size of cone with armor, not vision distance

[erutan]

IMHO the main considerations for armor should be cost and weight vs protection.

Right now the game incentivizes small arms to use high vision range armor in detriment of their rational weight/protection preferences (they're only carrying small arms AND are the ones in the line of fire). It's weird that my rocket launcher guys are using wolf but my riflemen buzzard.

How about the difference between armor vision ranges is nothing or 1 tile, but the cone of vision gets impacted greatly? That seems much more realistic to me (peripheral vision being limited) and adds some flavour without becoming the defining characteristic. Squadsight obviously negates the impact to a certain extent.

[Lt_Parsons]

I support the idea to use peripheral vision cone to differentiate between armors.

Only maybe just not rid completely of vision range differences, since advanced armors suppose to have built-in night-vision filters, or something like that.

Actually, there is settings for this in "armours_gc.xml", they just ignored atm, i think, but worked in some earlier builds. Global vision cone defined in "config.xml".

[Gauddlike]

Currently (18.2) most armour has a 90 degree view angle, probably because it fits well with turning in 45 degree steps.

The exceptions are predator at 60 degrees and sentinel at 100 degrees.

[erutan]

That's useful. We could cut jackal down to 70 and wolf to 80? Not really a massive difference but some flavor perhaps. Or cut predator down even more (as long as it's > 45 that is what counts) to make the change more significant.

[Lt_Parsons]

I tested, how it actually works in 18hf2.

Results (huge png everywhere, sorry):

1) sight range = 16, global sight angle = 90

- armor angle 140

- armor angle 120

- armor angle 90

- armor angle 60

2) sight range = 16, global sight angle = 120

- armor angle 140

- armor angle 120

- armor angle 90

- armor angle 60

It does not work right.

I should check if it persists in 18.3, to be sure, and write bugreport on that.

[Gauddlike]

So is the global angle overriding the armour setting there?

That's how it looks to me from the images at least.

[Lt_Parsons]

Not quite.

Seems to me, sight angle is always 90, armor setting ignored. But with global set to 120 instead of 90, in 1-2 first tiles from soldier it is using 120, but then for most of fov field still uses 90.

[Gauddlike]

On the images you posted the 120 degree arc is clearly wider at all distances than the 90 degree one.

Compare the tiles that are greyed out by the tree on the left in the 60-90 and 60-120 images or the bush on the right for 140-90 and 140-120 for example.

I think it is less obvious because only tiles that fall inside the view arc by a certain amount light up but there is definitely an angle increase right out to maximum distance, it is just tied to global angle not armour angle.

With a larger difference between the angles the change is easier to see.

The 30 degree angle change is only going to give you at most a three tile difference (at 16 range, may be less when taking into account partial tiles not lighting up) when you consider going from 90 to 180 degrees is a difference of nine or ten tiles.

[Lt_Parsons]

View range - 16

Blue - soldier

Black - 120 arc, according to photoshop

Orange - 120 global arc, as in screens above

Green - 90 global arc, as in screens above

There was minor differences in photoshop rendering if you rotate line left or right, plus some minor half-transparent rescale artifacts, i didn't draw them here for clarity sake.

Also, while taking those screens, on far edge of vision was some asymmetric differences on some view ranges, i took 16 as range, that had least of such artifacts.

Do i need to test or clarify something more here?

Point is, nor armor angle, nor global angle do not work properly.