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Fog Of War is not the range of an unit as far as I understand,
but is there a way to see how much FOW range an unit/building will reveal?

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You're using terminology I'm unfamliiar with; do you mean "sight"? As in, the ghost's "ocular implants" upgrade increases their sight by +3 and their (weapon) range by 1? – Raven Dreamer♦ Oct 30 '10 at 23:41
Oops, corrected that now. I mean Fog Of War, which is indeed Sight. – Tom Wijsman Oct 30 '10 at 23:48
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TomWij: Fog of War is not the same as sight. "Fog of War" describes the gray fog the player sees when they don't have sight in a particular area. This is why your question is confusing everyone. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Oct 31 '10 at 2:35
Yes, that's the question that made me ask this. I'm started wondering how FOW compares to an unit's range. – Tom Wijsman Oct 31 '10 at 9:12

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up vote 7 down vote accepted

To answer the question as stated "How does Fog Of War work in StarCraft 2?" it works by preventing you from seeing changes to stationary structures (i.e. buildings, destructible rocks) in places that you do not have vision or sight. It also prevents you from seeing units that are out of sight entirely.

To answer the question you probably actually meant, which is how does sight work, each unit has a specific sight value. For example, the Mutalisk has sight of 11 even though it only has a range of 3. A Siege Tank also has a sight of 11, but a range of 7 in tank mode and 13 in siege mode. A probe on the other hand only has sight of 8.

Non-flying units also cannot see up a cliff, so terrain plays a factor. There's also certain terrain (smoke things on Metalopolis, some tall grass) that prevents seeing past them, so they can be used to hide units for an ambush.

Air units' sight is unaffected by terrain, so they always have their full size. Additionally air units can be seen by ground units even if they're flying over a cliff, so they cannot abuse the high-ground to snipe ground units below (but they can use the high ground to quickly run away)

Additionally Colossi are unique in that they behave like a ground unit as far as what they can see, but they behave like an air unit as far as being seen (i.e. if they are on top of a cliff, they can still be shot at from below, assuming they're in range).

I think that covers everything, but I might be missing a thing or two.

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I wasn't sure until I looked it up while writing my answer, but a Siege Tank has sight range 11 even when in tank mode. – Lee Oct 31 '10 at 14:35
@Lee I didn't meant to imply that the sight ranged changed in siege mode, only the attack range, but it probably wasn't clear. – Davy8 Oct 31 '10 at 14:36
Should be clarified now. – Davy8 Oct 31 '10 at 14:39
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Yes, there is. Unfortunately you have to use the Starcraft II Map Editor. Load up the editor and press F7 to open the Data window. Ensure the Data Type dropdown is set to Units. It's helpful to display the Object List as a tree (press the button to the right of the Data Source dropdown). It should be fairly obvious how to select the desired unit; just ensure you have open the Melee folder. The sight range value you're looking for is at the bottom of the Stats tab.

Viewing units' sight range using the StarCraft II Map Editor

If that sounds like too much effort, Liquipedia maintains a list of units and their sight range. Buildings also have varying sight range.

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If you want to know how to compare these values to weapon range using the map editor, just ask. – Lee Oct 31 '10 at 14:30
Thank you for showing me a part of the editor. :-) – Tom Wijsman Oct 31 '10 at 16:31
Interesting to note that in starcraft 1, sight range was available on the unit HUD. (And the optic flare reduced that number from whatever it was down to 1) – Raven Dreamer♦ Oct 31 '10 at 17:07

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