Hi, I just started replaying UFO:ET and one of the things that bugs me is the way visibility and fog of war works.

If I remember correctly X-Com had a system where your chance of seeing what was in a square was random, or maybe based on a stat, but if you had a clear line of sight and enough light you could see quite far. You could see an alien all the way across the map if you were lucky.

UFO:ET has a system where how far you can see is based on a fixed number, say 10 squares ahead, and the aliens can always see further than you. This means every battle I usually find enemies by being shot at first, and stupid scenarios like not being able to see something directly in front of me.

Would it be possible to change it to something more X-Comish?

Another issue is angle of sight. Aliens sneaking up from the side when I should be able to hear them or notice them. I assume that when a soldier is looking in one direction he is also looking occasionally to the side, and doesn't stare straight ahead.

All this makes the human side have an artificial, unrealistic disadvantage which has to be worked around.

Is visibility/detection moddable?

Yes, it is. And best of all: it is rather easy to do. I used Bman's 3.04 mod and edited the sight range to this:

Human/Day 20
Alien/Day 20

Human/Night 10
Alien/Night 11

I made this because i saw no reason why in broad daylight aliens could see further than man, it's not that all humans are shortsighted
For the night i gave the Aliens a tiny advantage (maybe they have heatvision? ) but nothing big.

Works fine and looks much more realistic!
If you want i can send you the modified file, but it is really easy to change it yourself, simply follow Bmans tiny tutorial in the readme.

That doesn't change the fact that you're still incredibly short sighted. It just makes the aliens short sighted too. You should be able to see right the way across the map standing on a hill - meaning you won't get fog of war in areas you can see, though you won't be guaranteed to detect aliens in those squares.

I am liking B-Man's mod, it's new and it's challenging, but I keep thinking that engine wise, X-Com was so much better. Eg, the weapons are simply unbalanced. They changed around TU costs in such a way that turns are too short to allow good strategy but too long for realism. You get basically two shots with the shotgun and if you miss you barely have time to take cover.

Apart from the graphics ET is simply inferior and once I've finished this mod I'll go back to the '94 game.

Maybe you haven't played X-Com lately, but you cannot see accros the whole map, even in daylight. A sight range of 20 in daylight is probably about right. In the night, your sight range is reduced to maybe half of that, and the range in which you detect aliens is even less.

just thought that i'd point out that XCOM's visibility system was not random -- it was based on a fixed number. during the day, sight was even between XCOM and the aliens -- 20/20 squares respectively. at night, it was 9/20 squares respectively.