ICARIO
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// Battles

Vision & Detection

You can only fire at what your units can see! In combat, most of the map starts hidden, and is revealed only as your units see it. This guide covers how an Icaroid draws line of sight, how far it can see, terrain that can inhibit sightlines, what gives a hidden unit away, and how the shared fog of war remembers ground once you've scouted it.

Shared vision

Icaroids on the same side share combat data. Anything one of your units can see, all of them can see and shoot at, subject to range and line-of-sight restrictions. Since vision is a team resource, a single spotter on high ground can light up targets for the whole force behind it.

That makes a dedicated scout far more useful than its weaponry may indicate, and it makes blinding the enemy's scouts or staying out of their sightlines entirely a real tactic.

Line of sight

Each unit calculates its line of sight separately, though the resulting data is shared with the whole team. Sight is a straight line from the center of the observer's hex at the top of the unit's chassis to the center of the target hex (at the top of any unit present there). Sightlines are fundamentally a height contest. Each Icaroid has a sighting height, computed from the elevation of its hex, its tallest mobility component's height + core height, and any weather, destruction, and/or terrain sightline-effecting height effects. If any hex on the line between two units stands "taller" (hex height + weather/destruction/terrain sightline effects) than the line of sight passing over it, the view is blocked and neither can see the other.

Detection is usually symmetric: if you can see them, they can see you, whatever the height difference between you (barring sensory impairment effects). Standing on high ground raises your line over intervening Terrain & Environment; ducking behind a tall hex, a wall, or a woodland canopy breaks it. There is one exception: anything in an adjacent hex is always visible, no matter the terrain - nothing can sneak up right beside you without being spotted.

Sight is also a firing line
Direct-fire weapons obey the same line of sight as detection. If you can't see it, you can't shoot it. Indirect-fire weapons arc over blockers, so factions with a focus on indirect weapons can concentrate fire very effectively. However, they tend to want dedicated spotters, which can be killed to force them out into the open. The firing side of this is in Line of sight & cover and How Damage Works.

Sight range

Clear line of sight still only reaches so far. An Icaroid's base sight range comes largely from its brain. Brains add their thinking rate to how far the frame can see, and certain components and glyphs extend it even further. Whatever the total, effective sight is hard-capped at 16 hexes: no single frame sees further than that, however it's kitted out.

The Indirect Sensors effect provides perfect vision to hexes in its radius, ignoring sightlines. Stealthy factions in particular can be countered by a good indirect sensor web; the strength of the effect dictates its range. Indirect sensors are almost always shorter-range than direct sightlines, however. Sensory Disrupted, on the other hand, shrinks your sight range; beware long-ranged enemies using this effect to shut down counter-fire!

Terrain effects

Visibility effects almost all take the form of a height modifier. Every Terrain & Environment layer (the base type, weather, and destruction effects) contributes a height modifier, and those modifiers stack into the hex's total obstruction.

  • An obstruction between you and a target blocks line of sight. Woodland (+4), fog (+4), a blizzard (+4), or smoke (+6) all stand tall enough to cut most ground-level sightlines.
  • An obstruction on the tile a unit is standing in instead conceals that unit. The obstruction's size is subtracted from the unit's height, so a unit hiding in fog or woodland is harder to spot. However, it also sees and shoots less of the field, trading effective targeting for concealment. Indirect-fire units can use concealment to keep themselves safe while lobbing shots at a target, but direct-fire weapons may not be able to land shots effectively from concealment. Depressions count too. A sunken crater from a powerful blast or a dust flat reduces the effective height of a terrain hex, concealing units standing there just like an obstruction would, but unlike obstructions depressions will not block line of sight over them.

Weather and cover can provide tactical advantages, but you must be prepared to make use of them. Clever use of combinations of indirect sensors, indirect fire, weather control, and terrain alteration weapons to shift the battlefield to your advantage can win battles, either by forcing close engagements or preventing the enemy from drawing clear sightlines.

Being seen

Detection goes both ways: the same height that lets a tall frame see over terrain obstructions also makes it easy to spot. By default an Icaroid can be picked out from roughly twice its height in hexes away; a squat height-3 frame stays hidden until something closes to about 6 hexes, while a towering height-12 Titan is visible from almost anywhere on the map, and is almost impossible to hide.

Consider height carefully when designing your units. Not only does the height of your mobility component dictate the slopes you can safely climb or descend, but you usually want your heaviest guns to be in range of an enemy while not allowing effective return fire. A very tall sniper is extremely effective if it can outrange and outrun its opponents, while a unit mounting only melee weapons generally wants to be as low to the ground and sneaky as possible so it can't be shot until the fight is up close and personal. Several glyphs and components shrink a frame's detectable profile further.

The fog of war

Ground you've never seen is completely shrouded; you can't see its terrain type or height until someone on your team can draws line of sight to it. Once you've seen a hex, it's remembered: it stays on your map as dimmed, last-known information even if you can't see it anymore. However, that memory is not live data. It won't reveal an enemy walking through the remembered hex, and information about temporary weather or terrain destruction effects may go out of date.

You don't start completely blind. Your whole deployment zone is known ground (see Deployment & Setup), and anything your units can see from where they're deployed will be immediately visible when the battle begins.

Putting it together

Vision is shared across your side. Line of sight is dictated by your height, construction, and brain, and is capped at 16 hexes. Terrain can limit that range based on a variety of height-modifying effects, while tall frames can both see and be seen regardless. Seeing a hex ones keeps it in memory. Win the sight game and you'll have the opportunity to shoot first and pick your target; lose it and you eat fire from an enemy you can't attack easily in return. Pair this with Terrain & Environment for what blocks a line of sight and Movement & Positioning for how to get your scouts and weaponry to the best positions.