How stealth seems to work.

[PM]

Each ship has perception defined in its AISettings. Standard playerships have 4.

Armor segments (seem to) have a default stealth value of 4, unless overriden. For example, stealth armor has 6.

Ships have stealth value equal to the armor segment with the least stealth value. For example, a ship with three segments of stealth armor and one segment of blast plate has a stealth value of 4, not 6.

Ships in nebula have a +2 bonus to stealth and a -4 malus to their perception.

When a source ship's perception and its target ship's stealth match, the source can see the target up to range 100 away.

When the difference betweeen (source's) perception and (target's) stealth is non-zero, maximum detection range is modified by roughly 50% per level, to a minimum of 6 or a maximum of 500.

When target exceeds detection range, it will disappear from LRS and cannot be targeted (even if mostly visible onscreen). If range is close enough to be visible on your screen, the target may flicker if it is only a short distance past detection range. Further away, the target is almost completely invisible.

Code: Select all

 diff = perception - stealth

 diff | max range
------+-----------
  -4- |    6
  -3  |   13
  -2  |   25
  -1  |   50
   0  |  100
   1  |  150
   2  |  225
   3  |  340
   4+ |  500

[Atarlost]

The nebula effect is way too big then. It should probably lose the perception penalty entirely or reduce both to 1 so the net effect is the same as stealth armor. Stealth armor, or at least the EU stealth armor, has a good value for making interesting fights.