Artillery and why having the higher ground does jack

[smartie]

Ok here's the problem. The range of the cannons is artifically limited by how far the cannons think they can shoot and not by how far they actually can shoot.

If you put some cannons on top of a mountain their range will be the same as a cannon at the bottom of the mountain.



I set all the cannons on attack ground at their maximum range and took control of one of the cannons. Arching the shot just barely I can shoot farther then the supposed maximum range.



Here's an outside view to compare the angles. Note that all the guns except the one I was shooting are pointed flat.



Here's how much of an angle you need to shoot to the corner of the map. Looks like it's about 25 degrees.



I built a bertha down at ground level and had it shoot up at the hill and had the berthas on the hill shoot back at him on the ground. For some reason he had an easier time of hitting them than they had of hitting him. When it was over he had killed off two of them and damaged a third before being destroyed.



It's really stupid how artillery is implemented right now in the game. It would make a lot more sense if the shot power of the berthas was dropped a bit and their maximum range was actually the range of a 45 degree shot. The advantage of height should be taken into account too so you can shoot targets further off from on top of a mountain. Another way you could do it is to keep most of the speed of a bertha shot, but limit their maximum firing angle to something around 25-30 degrees. Again, make the max range actually the maximum range the cannon can shoot and increase the firing range appropriately when you are shooting to lower terrain.

[Min3mat]

what can i say! but at the micro level with guardians you'll notice on the radar the higher one will win, berthas are too long range for the hills too offer any protection!

[zwzsg]

Yes, the range of ballistic gun isn't the theorical maximum range they'd have if aimed at 45°. That's not a bug, that's normal.

Making the range of all ballistic weapon the max 45° range is a bad idea: It would make the range of many units terribly many times more long than they are now and would turn balanced inside out. For instance fidos would have intercontinenal epic gun.

Decreasing the speed of shots so that the range fixed in the tdf can only be reached at 45° is a bad idea, because not all ballistic weapon are supposed to be mortars. Some shots are fast and straight, other are slow and lobbed. If we follow your idea, fidos role would be completly change, from fast weapon able to even hit planes, to some sort of suppression fire.

I agree that having shots range limited by the gravity and ballistic law can be a nice idea, but the balance of units must be kept, and straight fast short ranged shots must be kept too.

Here is what I propose:
- Make the range of a unit limited by the minimum of ( range specified by the range tag , range physically possible to reach)
- If the range tag is lower than the 45° range, then it would work like now
- If the range tag is higher than the 45° range, then the 45° range would be used, would be drawn in a different color, and the unit would recognize it can't fire that far and wouldn't try to fire)
- If there is no range tag specified, or maybe if there's a new tag "freerange" or something let the range be only determined by gravity. So any new units can use that and have its range determined only by the physical law.

You raised another problem, which is that by now it is possible to get extra range by taking direct control of a gun. Note that in TA too if you micro alot a bertha you can make it fire further than its max range (hint, in TA, aim at the feet). That doesn't bother me much since the extra range you get is compensed by the extra micro time you have to devote and the lack of precision you get when aiming manually. However it's true that it would be better if the berta refused to fire over the value in is range tag even in direct manual control.

And all this has been discussed in http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1469

[Torrasque]

I think the max and min damage should be modified by the altidude of the gun. (I don't really mind of the gravity)

Because, if you build a gardian on a big hill, he will be only able to shoot in hight trajectory.
Why?
if the y on my ascii picture is the limit the gardian can shot, it will not shoot because the trajectory is impossible (exepte with HT), but it make non-sense that it can't shoot longer...

G
--------
xxxxxx|
xxxxxx|
xxxxxx|
xxxxxx|
xxxxxx|
xxxxxx|____ y

[smartie]

I wasn't saying that every unit in the game should be changed to lob shells in that manner. I was only refering to the artillery units. Fido's, and most tanks shouldn't be able to aim their guns upwards enough to shoot across continents. The example you gave of Fido's shooting down planes would never have worked in TA. They couldn't aim their guns up at a high enough angle. The only reason Fido's can serve an anti aircraft role is because that type of thing is screwed up in spring. Anyways, Bertha's really shouldn't be able to aim higher than 30 degrees or so (it's hard to tell from the top view in TA). However it is done though the maximum range of the unit should correspond to where it can actually shoot. Not an arbitrary value.

[HellToupee]

like arty units, i was in a game once where the 2 bases were basically in range of each other, i was able to take control of an arty unit on my lines and be able to shoot deep into his base.

[zwzsg]

Actually, it was in TA that I shot down planes with Fidos

[Warlord Zsinj]

Perhaps an artificial modifier similar to the one torrasque suggests is the best way to go, rather than fiddling with gravity values?

[[K.B.] Napalm Cobra]

Nice looking map though.

[smartie]

I really thought I would have remembered fido's shooting down airplanes in TA, so I assumed you were talking about spring. So does that mean the shots that missed went sailing across the map then too?

Warlord: It's not fiddling with gravity values, I'm suggesting lowering the power of the gun and making the radius in which it can fire on targets to be as far as the gun can be shot when you are controling it.

[KiviGerbil]

u are completely missing one point.

guns have a min and max angle their structure allows them to fire. i remember BMP-2 tanks having problems with their minimum angle, while going up cliffs.

T-72 can use their cannon to fire artillery fire, accuracy is another matter.

but still, TA is not that much of a realistic game. and my suggestion is to make certain unit have an artillery flag. (i'm not sure, but zwzsg did suggest this too?)that makes them fire differently.their ranges limited by the angles they can use, gravity and height between the gun and the target. there would still be a bit of things needed to be done to keep ranges in control. cos' like this, the range of a bertha would be insane. i believe a max-angle setting would work in that case.

remember that with increased range the inaccuracy increases, the more the bullet has to fly the more it can get lost.

howitzers and such fire low trajectory bullets, if u take a look at the dispersion pattern it should not be a circle.

/------\
|-------|---------X
\____/

an ellipse, where the gun is X

mortars are supposed to fire high trajectory bullets, their dispersion pattern should be a circle,

/---\
|---|-----X
\---/

if we could use a different range system for artillery units we could add a bit more depth in the game

[Min3mat]

*drools* that would be AWESOME...but what to class fidos as??? :S

[Felix the Cat]

We could go with Smartie's suggestion and add in two new tags somwhere for maximum and minimum angles of fire. The Big Bertha might have a max angle of 30 degrees and a min angle of 5 degrees - so if you put your Berthas high on a hill, they'll be able to shoot farther, but beware, because units at the bottom of the hill or on the hill will be invulnerable because the Berthas can't hit them! Likewise, this might help make the AA a little bit more realistic: if we give the Flakkers a min angle of 15 degrees or so, they would still be able to shoot at air units, and at ground units higher than them, but not at ground units on the same elevation.

The engine would then pre-calculate all weapon ranges based on the maximum and minimum angles and gravity.

[Min3mat]

sounds good to me :)

[SJ]

Stuff can already shoot longer when they are on hills although we kept the value small since this feature doesnt exist in TA. When we release our own formats it will be possible to set this value per weapon and achive most of what you want without the problems other approaches would bring.

[Min3mat]

Could you increase the increase in range of units when they go higher please

[KiviGerbil]

actually, having higher ground does something good.
check this out

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=showitem&ID=1111

at some point u see me building two pop-up guns, check how they fail to destroy anything on the higher ground, i tried targetting manually the ground behind the llt and everything, but, no luck

[FLOZi]

Stuff can already shoot longer when they are on hills although we kept the value small since this feature doesnt exist in TA. When we release our own formats it will be possible to set this value per weapon and achive most of what you want without the problems other approaches would bring.

What will the value be? A modifier, presumably? Or perhaps a maximum figure to be interpolated to?

[Triaxx2]

I think in that instance Kivi, that you have to aim just infront of what you're targetting, but I can't see the video.

[KiviGerbil]

actually, in my video the cannons are much lower than the target, and they can't shoot that high/far, not even with high trajectory