Spring RTS Engine

Modern artillery also does this.

105mm+ artillery will almost certainly be seperate (probably bagged) charge. This could be inmplemented in Spring having several differnt ranged weapons with the same stats otherwise, if there was better support for locking out the weapons that were not in that range bracket.

Doomweaver wrote:What if we increase the gravity on a map... and increase the projectile speeds to compensate. What effect would that have? That should make it so the cannon can fire just as far, still using the high trajectory, but it would be lower. Of course, this would make the projectiles hit faster, but if it looks better, it might be worth it.

If you increase the gravity, then you must increase the muzzle velocity correspondingly to attain the same maximum range... and in that case, you're firing the exact same firing arc, but it would move faster.

This does _not_ fix the problem.

Alternately, we could implement wind resistance in the engine. That would make a colossal mess of the targetting code, but it would change the firing arcs to be generally lower... maybe. Haven't thought about it enough.

actually I could see a 'medium trajectory' being a useful fucntion; right now weapons on low tradjectory aim using an angle of incident between 0 and 45 degrees- which is good for hitting a moving target, because the projectile spends the least time in the air, but poor for firing over terrain, or for that matter wreakage.

Having an option to make all aiming take place from 45-90 degrees would cause most shots to lob over wrekage or terrain inconsistancies.

Strider wrote:actually I could see a 'medium trajectory' being a useful fucntion; right now weapons on low tradjectory aim using an angle of incident between 0 and 45 degrees- which is good for hitting a moving target, because the projectile spends the least time in the air, but poor for firing over terrain, or for that matter wreakage.

Having an option to make all aiming take place from 45-90 degrees would cause most shots to lob over wrekage or terrain inconsistancies.

45-90 is high trajectory.

maybe 20-60 degrees would be good for arty? so its effective at long range but not at short AND can fire over stuff

You know what would be really cool? If we had a button to switch between them.

i hope tahts a joke...we have one

Min3mat wrote:i hope tahts a joke...we have one

Which I personally think is a travesty of micromanagement. It should be unit-defined.

You mean unit defined as in yes/no or unit defined as in script wise to judge whether it should or shouldn't be?

Pxtl wrote:

Strider wrote:actually I could see a 'medium trajectory' being a useful fucntion; right now weapons on low tradjectory aim using an angle of incident between 0 and 45 degrees- which is good for hitting a moving target, because the projectile spends the least time in the air, but poor for firing over terrain, or for that matter wreakage.

Having an option to make all aiming take place from 45-90 degrees would cause most shots to lob over wrekage or terrain inconsistancies.

45-90 is high trajectory.

While this is true high trajectory as defined now in the game is to fire the shot way the hell off the screen, and then have it come crashing back down without crossing the interveening distance, but taking a really long time in doing so.

I'm proposing that there be a game option of 'medium trajectory' which fires shots in what would be considered in the real world to be 'high trajectory', and that it's proporties would be a cross between the games 'low trajectory' (in terms of the shots having a flight path and high accuracy) and the games 'high trajectory' (in terms of the shots having some ability to clear obsticals and having increased flight time)

I'm tentatively refering to it as 'medium trajectory' because it's half way between the XTA high trajectory of straight up all the time, and low trajectories 0-45 degree angle firing (coincidentally it would be impossible to distinguise low trajectory from my 'medium trajectory' at maximum weapon range (since it uses a 45 degree firing angle for both) and difficult to discern my 'medium trajectory' from the XTA 'high trajectory' at 0 range because they will both be firing straight up.

Strider wrote:

Pxtl wrote:

Strider wrote:actually I could see a 'medium trajectory' being a useful fucntion; right now weapons on low tradjectory aim using an angle of incident between 0 and 45 degrees- which is good for hitting a moving target, because the projectile spends the least time in the air, but poor for firing over terrain, or for that matter wreakage.

Having an option to make all aiming take place from 45-90 degrees would cause most shots to lob over wrekage or terrain inconsistancies.

45-90 is high trajectory.

While this is true high trajectory as defined now in the game is to fire the shot way the hell off the screen, and then have it come crashing back down without crossing the interveening distance, but taking a really long time in doing so.

I'm proposing that there be a game option of 'medium trajectory' which fires shots in what would be considered in the real world to be 'high trajectory', and that it's proporties would be a cross between the games 'low trajectory' (in terms of the shots having a flight path and high accuracy) and the games 'high trajectory' (in terms of the shots having some ability to clear obsticals and having increased flight time)

I'm tentatively refering to it as 'medium trajectory' because it's half way between the XTA high trajectory of straight up all the time, and low trajectories 0-45 degree angle firing (coincidentally it would be impossible to distinguise low trajectory from my 'medium trajectory' at maximum weapon range (since it uses a 45 degree firing angle for both) and difficult to discern my 'medium trajectory' from the XTA 'high trajectory' at 0 range because they will both be firing straight up.

I'll go ahead and make the assumption that you're requesting this to correct the idiocy of Punishers et al. firing straight up to hit a unit right next to it, instead of firing at the unit.

The better solution, IMHO, would be to make guns act smart - give them a fixed muzzle velocity (or even a variable muzzle velocity, though that muddles things a bit, so we'll stick with fixed for this example), fixed minimum and maximum barrel elevations, and have them fire in a way such that they hit their target with the least total travel distance of the shell.

An easy way to do this: if the target is within the gun's "personal" line of sight, it fires low trajectory; if it is further out, it fires high trajectory.

The more difficult way would involve essentially replicating the calculations that artillery computers carry out, except modified to fit the Spring environment. This might add in way too much processor time use with little gain when compared to the easy way.

However, I may be misunderstanding why you want this change. If it's just a desire for a different fixed range of barrel elevations - we can already do this with unit tags, no?