requests regarding aircraft LOS, attack

[mecha]

For the next release I was wondering if it would be possible to make it so that aircraft LOS has a max depth value. I have been experimenting with setting aircraft cruisealt values really high ie 1000 and seeing how this effects gameplay. aircombat in WD and FF is awesome, -huge smoking death spirals to the ground but air to ground assault does not work, mainly because in the aircraft attack run, the aircraft will not adjust its altitude to get closer to the target. This wouldn't be an issue if aircraft altitude settings could be controlled in game (in the same fashion as the 'repair at 50' button works except using 'low altitude' and 'high altitude' as options. This brings me back to LOS, aircraft at high altitude will attempt to attack ground targets if they can see them since LOS is currently implemented as a cylinder of infinite height around the aircraft. This also presents an unfair advantage in terms of recon abilities.
Having the ability to define a max LOS depth (so that LOS is still a cylinder but only goes down for say the radius of the horizontal LOS) presents intriging tactical possibilities. i.e. in WD, the U-2 and the M-55(spyplanes) could have very high LOS abilities and could do their surveilance from very high up. For the defender this means that having higher altitude air defence such as patriot missile launchers and enhanced radar to target these high aircraft is more important (esp against B-52s and like). Imagine having to run combat airpatrols up high and worry about securing airspace while waging a combined forces ground assault.
In FF this also presents the possibility of combined space and ground warfare with the option of using 'in orbit' (high alt) battleships as bombardment platforms in conjunction with low level recon.
What I would like is these modifications: max LOS depth, and ability to control altitude (two levels max, otherwise too complicated)

[GrOuNd_ZeRo]

Well, i'll have to say I completely agree here, currently air units have major problems with targetting , esspecially in maps with high hills such as CPIA and Brazillian Battleground.

Also, unguided weapons don't work at all unless they are ballistic, but ballistic units don't have smoketrails.

[mecha]

with the smoke trails I was refering to the units that are killed and fall to the ground sorry.

I also noticed that in normal air combat, aircraft seem able to be able to pursue others across a wide variery of altitudes so perhaps attacks 'out of the blue' from high altitude to low altitude could be possible without changing combat scripts at all (provided they can 'see' something is down there)

perhaps the multi altitude ability could be a new FBI tag ie 'highAltInc=500' (high altitude increment) so that when highaltitude is selected, effective height is cruisealt+500 otherwise it is just the default cruisealt
Cheers

[Dwarden]

would be nice ...
gives good change to get various airplanes groups defined by altitude
ultrahi (orbital)
hi (spy planes or hi alt bombers-fighters)
med (classic aiplanes)
low (helicopter, low alt support like A-10) ....

forgot mention ultra low (hovers :)

[Nemo]

1) this sounds super cool. True 3d combat for the Final Frontier mod, and sweet dogfighting in WD.

2) has anyone tried playing with low CruiseAlts? I'm trying to make a hovertank that strafes, by making a gunship with a very very low cruisealt, but its resulted in a few crashes, or more often, just didn't do anything.

[TARevenger]

incorperating radar into aircraft could also be considered as well, ability to scout out radar contacts and mark them as hositle units (the unit fires at the aircraft) or normal structures for bombing runs or long range weapons to attack.

[Gnomre]

incorperating radar into aircraft could also be considered as well, ability to scout out radar contacts and mark them as hositle units (the unit fires at the aircraft) or normal structures for bombing runs or long range weapons to attack.

OMFG

[Kuroneko]

incorperating radar into aircraft could also be considered as well, ability to scout out radar contacts and mark them as hositle units (the unit fires at the aircraft) or normal structures for bombing runs or long range weapons to attack.

OMFG

omgwtfbbq?! Aircraft radar units! *downloads*

[Kuroneko]

2) has anyone tried playing with low CruiseAlts? I'm trying to make a hovertank that strafes, by making a gunship with a very very low cruisealt, but its resulted in a few crashes, or more often, just didn't do anything.

Problem with cruisealt is that if you come to a steep slope: it'll just go up regardless of anything since the unit is 'flying'

[Nemo]

Yeah, I've run into that as well. Any brainstorms on how to make a strafing hovercraft would be much appreciated.

Laugh @ planes with radar <_<

[zwzsg]

incorperating radar into aircraft could also be considered as well, ability to scout out radar contacts and mark them as hositle units (the unit fires at the aircraft) or normal structures for bombing runs or long range weapons to attack.

OMFG

omgwtfbbq?! Aircraft radar units! *downloads*

o_O

Have you forgotten all about Total Annihilation official unit set?

Or is it some sort of subtle double irony I don't get?

[Min3mat]

double irony :)

[Pxtl]

Imho, I've always thought the best approach would be to have an actual 3d mouse pointer for aircraft, similar to Homeworld. But that would be annoyingly complicated. Maybe the mousewheel could be used for altitude (although it's already used for zoom).

As for radar, I'd just change sight/radar/targetting cylingers to be a very tall ellipses instead of cylinders. Make that a rule for every unit, not just planes.

[FizWizz]

...As for radar, I'd just change sight/radar/targetting cylingers to be a very tall ellipses instead of cylinders. Make that a rule for every unit, not just planes.

I thought LOS already eats up too much cpu time as it is, using ellipses would just make it worse.

[IMSabbel]

Well, then make is spheres.
You need the one square-root anyway, and the additional 2 instructions can be latency masked. It wont be slower.

Although i noticed that flying aircraft are something that slows the game down in enormous amounts. disproportionally enourmous amounts.
i got full cpu load with a test of 1000 brawlers in flight (actually more, but the gamespeed slowed down...), and only 15-20% were LOS, the majority was "simtime" and "slowunitupdate"

[SwiftSpear]

OMFG

omgwtfbbq?! Aircraft radar units! *downloads*

o_O

Have you forgotten all about Total Annihilation official unit set?

Or is it some sort of subtle double irony I don't get?

Considering the link is the the arm peeper air scout, build by cavedog (and included in every build of TA that I can remember) I'd guess maby not so subtle double irony...

[mecha]

the reason I suggested cylinders is so that the extra load on the cpu, as well as the load on the SYS coders would be reduced... The aircraft are already high speed so I doubt that a nonelliptic LOS would be that noticeable.

[Pxtl]

...As for radar, I'd just change sight/radar/targetting cylingers to be a very tall ellipses instead of cylinders. Make that a rule for every unit, not just planes.

I thought LOS already eats up too much cpu time as it is, using ellipses would just make it worse.

I'm no expert, but afaik the reason LOS takes long is not because of the complexity of range calculations, but the complexity of dealing with obstructions (such as terrain). Altering range to be 3d based shouldn't be as bad as all that.

The math goes from range being defined as

Code: Select all

in range iff: range > √(x├é┬▓+y├é┬▓)

to

Code: Select all

in range iff: range > √(x├é┬▓+y├é┬▓+nz├é┬▓)

where n is the distortion wrt z - larger n stretches the ellipse vertically.

[mecha]

Sounds like doing a vertical LOS wouldn't be too hard then. Combine this with selectable in game flight altitudes and you have some awesome options for mod development and tactics

[Dragon45]

Even if it wasn't "too hard" to do, then the bottom line is that we are simply making one of the most time-consuming tasks around even more time-consuming. Horrendously counter-intuitive.