Apparel - Camouflage

[Yoshida Keiji]

While a colonists gear has no visual effect, except for the Bowler hat. I like to play my games by dressing pawns according to the biome and season. For example, if I play in Ice Sheet, I prefer to tailor white clothes. While if I play in high tree density maps, I give my pawns brown dusters.

I think this player effort should be rewarded by providing additional defensive stats.

[Penguinmanereikel]

Not a bad idea.

[maculator]

+1
When I saw the title I thought "meh I don't want ghilli suits etc.", but giving bonuses depending on color (material) to vanilla clothes is a good idea.

[Penguinmanereikel]

+1
When I saw the title I thought "meh I don't want ghilli suits etc.", but giving bonuses depending on color (material) to vanilla clothes is a good idea.

Plus, ghilli suits could also be implemented as military wear.

[killermen962]

That'd be pretty cool.....

New stat for shooter called "Contrast". The more your clothing differentiates from the land, the higher the contrast and easier to shoot.

Me wants.

[Vlad0mi3r]

While a colonists gear has no visual effect, except for the Bowler hat.

High quality and material type cowboy hats also add bonuses to social interactions.

How would you implement the bonus the only way I could see it working is by reducing hostile weapon range for the Pawn in camo. Harder to see have to get closer. I don't think it would be an easy task.

Maybe someone who has made Mods along these line could chime in and let us know. (yes there already is a Ghilli suit mod)

[SpaceDorf]

The problem is not to apply fitting bonuses.

The real problem is deciding when to apply them.

Every Pawn is wearing camouflage.

Nick is wearing Jungle.
Charles is wearing Desert.
Jon is wearing Winter.
Paul is wearing City.

Soooooo How would you technically decide how the contrast stat works ?
Applying it to the targetted pawn ( or to be more exact ... every pawn ) is easier than having the shooter decide ..

[Limdood]

The problem is that every pawn already knows where every other pawn is.  They automatically target and shoot, and their chance to hit is not based on awareness of the target, but on cover, distance, and skill.  Until the game simulates actually being unaware of enemy pawns, I don't see a way to include camo in a way that makes sense.  Camo helps people to not be aware of you, it does very little once someone is aware of your EXACT position already.

[SpaceDorf]

So dood .. either we install true fog of war.

Or we take the words "awareness" and "chance to hit apart".
( to be clear I like the concept of camouflage and situational modifiers )

Class please open your Players Handbook on Page 42, Combat Modifiers.

The following example.

Jon is trudging along in the jungle with Nick.
It is afternoon and Jons Winter camo is sparkling like christmas decoration while Nick just melts into their surroundings.

Charles is going to play a prank on both of them, with his dirt brown desert armor he has taken cover behind a tree.
As Jon and Nick get clother Charles starts to grin and loads his painball gun.

Jon is still looking like a ghost haunting a gothic party, so Charles aims at him and puts two painballs square across Jons Chest. Jon and Nick squint their eyes in the direction the paintballs came from and think that tree over there might have some Charles stuck to it ..

In our example everybody just entered combat range of each other.
Jon wearing white stood out :
Charles had no problem locating and shooting him.
Jons to-hit modifier actually suffered for wearing colors in stark contrast to his surroundings.
While Charles gained a bonus through seeing Jon clearly.
( Charles got a big boost to hit for Jon, because Jon had no cover and was like a lantern at night )

Nick on the other hand was harder to see, so Charles had a lesser chance to hit him, even though Nick had no Cover. ( his situational camouflage value lowered Charles to hit chance )
So Charles did the sensible thing and shot the guy he was more likely to hit.

Nick and Jon could barely make out Charles by themselves because Charles was really hard to see through his cover next to the tree and his shilouette being blurred by having a similiar color than his cover.
( lets say he wore camo for dark brown desert, before you guys start bickering about that shit, instead of the question at hand. )


So why did that stupid Dorf only modify the to hit value ?
Because in the end it is the only Value that matters.

So lets define this mythical value then :
It is the summary of all given factors, no matter how you call them, that describe the chance in percent for a shooter to hit his target.

These Modifiers are at the Moment :

Combined Modifier
Distance ( vector between shooter and target )
Stuff being on that vector ( commonly known as cover )

Shooters Modifiers
Skill ( of the shooter )
Weapon ( range, quality, type ... the usual )

Ability to see/hit target -> Summery of Targets passive modifiers.

Cover ( partly blocks line of sight between shooter and target, see combined modifiers ..)
Position ( moving, on the ground, standing ) sadly we only have marginal influence over that.

Visibility ( behind cover, in darkness, matching color to surroundings, smoke )

Finally we have something to pin camouflage on.
To calculate this, we have to define an area at the end of the LoS Vector.
3x3, 8 tiles the target can directly interact with + his spot.

Now after being done with checking line of sight, and recognizing the cover that will modify our to-hit-change,
the shooting function now also has to check those 9 tiles for their color and the color of stuff containing those tiles.
( items, floors, buildings, pawns )
These colors now have to be evaluated on how high the contrast between them and the camouflage the pawn is wearing or not.

So Jon in the middle is white, all the surrounding tiles are green .. the sum of contrast is high .. Jon is easy to spot.
Even hiding behind a brown sandbag Jons White uniform would still be easier to spot than Nicks Green one.
Nick on the other hand has a low surrounding contrast .

Charles to hit chance for Jon rises because Jon knows nothing about camouflage.
Nick does and because of this Charles to hit chance for Nick decreases

Now we have a defined awareness.
Charles is more aware of where Jon is than he is with Nick .. even though both of them have the same distance to Charles.

Now AI Decission comes into play and evaluates which to-hit chance Charles should go for.

Charles shoots the guy he can see better.

An additional Value we could put into the calculation is Movement Speed, which is a mixed bag.
Awareness of the Shooter Rises more the faster the Target moves, because Predator Brain like moving things.
The Shooters skill on the other hand has to balance out the raw speed of the target to extrapolate where Target and Bullet should meet, which gets harder the faster the target is. ( we could be lazy now and just say .. meh .. they cancel each other out, lets not waste cpu cycles on that )


So questions how camo could be used ingame ?

[Bolgfred]

So, when my colonist is dressed completely grey, wearing a grey hat and doesn't move... does anybody standing next to him getting  cover bonus like behind a rock chunk?

[SpaceDorf]

If he uses the grey pawn as cover then yes.

Bearing in mind, that the attacker then has a hightened chance to hit the cover instead of the pawn I don't think this makes much sense.

If Cptn. Greybeard is wearing a shield, this would be standard procedure