How exactly does cover work in Frozen Synapse?

Question

How close do you have to be to cover for it to count as being "behind cover"? It can't be just the presence of cover at any point between you and your opponent, or else it would be meaningless because you would both have cover at once.

So how close do you have to be to cover for actually count as cover? Or is it that if you're close enough to cover it doesn't count as cover for someone else.

Ridiculous case: 2 machine gunners across the map from each other shooting through a window equidistant from each of them. Who has cover? Let's say the window is 1 pixel closer to the red gunner. Who has cover in that case?

Answer

When a unit is behind cover, the amount of time between when an enemy unit spots the covered unit and when the enemy unit starts firing is increased. If, under normal circumstances, the two units would have equal time between spotting and firing, the unit behind cover will have the advantage and will win the engagement.

Whether or not a unit is considered behind cover depends on both units' distance from that cover. If the cover is more than two thirds the distance away from a unit, that unit will take longer to start firing.

Consider the following: a green machine gunner and a red machine gunner have spotted each other at the same time with cover somewhere between them.

  R----------|--------------------G      Red has cover  R---------------|---------------G      neither have cover  R--------------------|----------G      Green has cover

And in the case of two objects of cover or wide cover...

  R--|          ~          |------G      Red has cover  R----|          ~          |----G      neither have cover  R------|          ~          |--G      Green have cover

Note that the only distance that matters is that between the unit and the closest edge of cover. I don't believe anything between that closest edge and the unit being fired upon makes affects the outcome.

I deduced this from testing within the game using the level editor. In cases where neither unit has cover, green (team 1) always wins. I hope this is limited to the level editor.

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