the picture represents the current behaviour of a gunship, that is aiming on a target on a cliff. this is really annoying - could it be fixed, so that the gunship wont shoot at the cliff while its over the lower ground?

It's because they fly at a certain height above the ground where they are. Azure_Rampart is a nice example for that, too.
Changing the height might lead to balance issues.

I don't think balance should be centred around broken gunship behaviour. Games can always rebalance their gunships if flying higher when shooting over cliffs is a massive issue, or a new tag could be added to choose between the behaviours.

sorry for double post within /features, i thought i puttet in there

edit: and i dont think its a balance issue, its a failure

The problem that a plane can't shoot uphill things is no a balance issue. But possible solutions might be. E.g. (if attacking) plan flies so high that it is above the target -> you could exploit such a simple implementation by attacking some point on a high mountain and so overfly enemy territory without being able to be shot.

Would it be difficult to put gunship weapons on turrets that can only pivot vertically, but not side-to-side? This way, the gunship still has to be facing its target, but if there is a height difference, the turrets can compensate?

Attached is a crappy picture. Prpl LaZ0rs r turrits.

Wouldn't it be better if gunships assumed the their attack height above the height of the unit they're attacking rather than above the ground directly below them?

+1

Could be avoided by only allowing them to rise when they area near their target, and have a faster fall rate when their height is more than it should be and their not attacking.

+1 on AreaFire's idea.
more natural, more logical.

the other way:
imagine eg, the gunship is down the cliff, and X over ground, then you order it to attack, so it hasto lift up in place to be X over the unit to attack.. kind of silly.
plus i dont see hte pro of this.

+1, thats what i thought and should be easy to fix or?

Well if you'd want to measure the attack height just based on the target's height level you're going to have the problem like the other way round. If you're attacking a target next to a cliff or even in some kind of "hole" you'll get new problems. Either the gunship will scratch over the ground of the cliff (as it's told to fly low) or it won't hit the target in the hole / ditch because it's not flying high enough to hit it...

So you'd need sort of a dynamic behaviour which only takes over when the current behaviour would fail...

But maybe it would be more easy to do some traces to check if there is a line of fire and if not make the gunship circle back / more fast until the target can be fired at again...

The pivot the weapon thing is no solution though as it doesn't change that the hill simply is in the line of fire once the gunship crosses the cliff - there's no help in weapon aiming which even already should have been applied anyway (didn't check the respective TA scripts lately)...

Measure gunship height relative to max(height of ground below gunship, height of target)

You still need to do this dynamically depending on distance to target or else it could be exploited.

I really would just rather see aircraft climbing higher to attack targets on hills in general - gunships are particularly bad, but they're hardly unique in this problem. Aiming upwards is fail, because the unit will pound shells into a mountainside.

Well of course you would only do that when the target is in range and the gunship is firing.

Yes, that's what I meant. Only use this maximum when in firing range (two dimensionally), use just the ground height otherwise.

Watch two gunships attack each other.

is there a mod, where gunships are able to attack air?

There is no reason too assume there never will be, it would be a poor justification for any development decisions.

THIS.