Broken Arrow: Notes on stealth and visibility

Results of some testing done in scenario edtior. All testing is done on 1.0.7 version of the game.

 

Forests

Being in the forest gives you additional 2x stealth modifier, multiplicative. So 3 stealth unit in forest becomes 6 stealth, meaning that enemy unit with 2000m vision will see it from 330m. HOWEVER, this bonus goes away after unit is spotted – if you’ve been revealed, you’ll be seen even from 2000m, until you’re hidden (not seen by any enemy again). Meaning that if you’re 1 stealh unit 1500m away from infantry with 1750m vision, and you get revealed by something like 2000m vision recon team getting 1000m away from you, you won’t get forest stealth bonus back even after unit that revealed you goes away, as long as there’s any other unit that sees you (innate unit stealth still applies). Forest doesn’t give any cover.

Buildings

Buildings also give 2x stealth bonus, and also give what looks like 75% ‘cover’ value. It reduces all incoming damage by 75%, except from weapons with ‘ignore cover’ stat, usually sniper riles. Yes, it means that 100% ignore cover heavy sniper rifles from some recon units will do more damage to infantry in building than a 100mm cannon.

In-forest interactions

For in-forest encounters – no idea about the formula, but with Alt button it looks like 1000m vision unit sees 110m in forest and 2000m vision unit sees 140m. However, in testing, that 1000m units sees 1 and 3 stealth units at the same time at 90m and loses sight of stealth 1 unit at 110m and stealth 3 unit at like 95m. 2000m vision unit sees 1 stealth unit at 110m and loses sight of it at 140m, and 3 stealth at 90m and loses sight of it also at like 95m, same as 1000m vision unit. (that’s all assuming no one starts shooting at each other, which in practice they will at 90m guaranteed even if both at hold fire)

Moving also seems to ifluence this a bit? So if two same units are both in forest, and one walks towards other, stationary unit will see moving one first. In other scenarios, I saw no difference between moving stealth and stationary stealth.

Other notes

Default vision check (when you press Alt with nothing selected) is 1000m. You can use it to check distances at least somehow when you don’t have any of your units to reference from (force attack on G button has ruler, but it checks from unit’s current position and not all units have it)

Also, shooting seems very quickly lower your stealth value, and can even lower it below 1 if you keep firing (so you’ll get spotted even beyond enemy’s vision range). Shooting from forest and using supressed weapons seems to slow down this a bit, I think by around the same amount?

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