Spring RTS Engine

OK, I'm not sure if this is the right place to put it, but I want some discussion about the tactical value of hills, in real life and in RTSs like Spring.

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Books about military strategy and stuff always say that high ground is better, and that always seems to be the common concensus in games, with units often gaining bonuses on hills. Why does this happen? Is it because you can see farther higher up because of the earth's curve? Does being on a hill make it easier to see enemy units behind cover? I wouldn't think it would. Those effects seem so negligable that they couldn't possibly rationalize trying to take a hill.

So it must be something else. You could theoretically shoot a projectile farther down a hill than up a hill, but I would think that that effect would also be sorta negligable, only really affecting the angle that you have to fire things. I guess it would also slightly improve the accuracy of the people on the hill, because their bullets' arcs would be a little shorter, but again, I would think that it would be negligable.

It is much easier to charge down a hill than up a hill, and that seems like it would have a noticable effect, because that would mean that the people at the top of the hill would have more time to kill the people at the bottom of the hill before they reach the top. But when all of the weapons have a lot of range, there is no reason for storming the hill when you can just shoot the people at the top from the bottom. Maybe a hill is only useful when the range of the weapons is less than the distance from the bottom to the top.

Is occupying the top of a hill only a morale thing?

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So what about in Spring? I know that units get an artificial los and range bonus when they are at higher ground (or at least they used to) but that was supposedly pretty small.

Units in Spring take longer to go up hills than down them, and that might do something. But most units have just as effective weapons moving as stationary, so, disregarding the slight range increase of units on high ground, if the unit on the top of the hill can shoot the unit charging up the hill, the unit charging up the hill can also shoot the unit on top. Maybe in Spring hills are only useful if you put units with range as high as the distance from the top to the bottom, and the hill is being assaulted by units of smaller range, so that there is a period of time where the units with hill-slowed movement are trying to get within range of the units at the top of the hill that are attacking.

Does it have something to do with the units' profile changing? Well vehicles always face the same direction in relation to the terrain, so any two vehicles of the same type facing each other would present the same profile, no matter what the terrain is like. I think.

But kbots always remain upright, right? So they would present a different target on the bottom of a hill than on the top, right? Since the units at the top are firing downward, it's as if the units at the bottom are leaning forwards, and since the units at the bottom are firing upward, it's as if the units at the top are leaning backward. And since the projectiles usually hit the units while traveling downwards, the units at the top of the hill would present begger targets than the ones at the bottom!

But doesn't Spring use hitspheres anyway?

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Thoughts?

Peewees shoot further on hills, that's probaly it.

Not only pewees, besides units shooting down the hill can pretty much shoot in any formation given that the hill is steep enough; units that want to shoot on high ground need to use high trajectory or form a line so they won't cross their line of fire. This doesn't matter for beam weapons, but plasma cannons and EMGs have noticeably longer ranges and advantage of high ground starts to show.

So yeah, it's kinda good to be on a hill. Not THAT good, but still good.

imbaczek wrote:Not only pewees, besides units shooting down the hill can pretty much shoot in any formation given that the hill is steep enough; units that want to shoot on high ground need to use high trajectory or form a line so they won't cross their line of fire. This doesn't matter for beam weapons, but plasma cannons and EMGs have noticeably longer ranges and advantage of high ground starts to show.

So yeah, it's kinda good to be on a hill. Not THAT good, but still good.

In war, any advantage is one you take.

Hills make the Better Traps - Mine and keep them under constant Artilleryfire & Moral Bombing :D ..

Units in Spring take longer to go up hills than down them, and that might do something.

You sort of answered your own question...


I won't bore you with tons and tons of details, but the same principle applies to the air. High ground is a better defensive posture. Therefore a more economical posture.

Generally, better LOS, physics, movement can be hindered, but that depends upon the high ground. Also control of hills can be used to mask movement.

It's only recently much of warfare has changed dramatically. That's why the air war is so important. He who controls the skies is able to anticipate the movement of his foe. And even now you can't really separate the ground war from the air war anymore. The sky has become the new hill.

In the US at least SOP is if there is any heavy fighting involved on the ground you call in air support. Hit them from the "high ground" mop up later with ground forces.

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Okay, I lied. I still consider this short but quit now if you don't want to read the rest...

Frankly pretty much all RTS's don't emulate this well just because of distances and theatres of operation found in the real world. (Of course even that has changed quite a bit thanks to urban warfare, most squad based fire fights occur at a range of 150m or less. (Compare that to a century ago, they used to line up in formation and shoot at each other from 1000 yards away.)
RTS's compared to real warefare is sort of like comparing paintball to small arm fire fights. They are an abstract of that which is real. I have a few firearms for instance that can accurately engage a target at ridiculous distances.

My Sako for instance is a bolt action rifle, and only holds three rounds. But I can put five rounds into a target smaller than 8cm at 550 meters. And really that's nothing, some real sniper rifles ccan accurately engage a man sized target at 2500m.
My AR can empty a whole magazine into a 10cm area at 300m, and rather quickly too. Whereas paintball, you are lucky if you can hit a man sized target at 35m. Ship bombardment can fire miles and miles. Shoot, ASM can travels vast miles now.

Try to translate this to an RTS, you will see what I mean. Suddenly my rifle put in an RTS game could shoot several screens across an RTS map. Tanks could engage whole forces 3 or 4 standard size mapsaway from them. We won't even go into missles and nuclear weapons. The range and damage is unfathomable unless you actually see one go off. Let's just say whole maps would be gone in an RTS.

Anyway, weapons generally are nerfed, and the "sandbox" we play in is too. But the basic principles of warfare can still be seen.

Hills mean Hammerzeit (or Thuds).
Ballistic units should get a range advantage.

Ballistic units already have the benefit of not having their rockets/lasers blocked by every little area of the terrain.

You know...

Having ballistic weapons instead of said direct fire crap.

Play Spring 1944; hills are king.

The reasons for hills==advantage (in real life) have already been summed up by Risasi, and even in AA the small range advantage and ability to shoot over things makes hills a valuable tatical position.

Radar. You have much better coverage if you build it on hills. Range bonus really matters sometimes; I can remember a game on cooper hill with Noruas where my popup could hit his, but his couldnt return fire, and it cost him the game.

If your unit is behind a hill, its range of fire is restricted. It (generally) can't shoot through the hill, or over the hill with great accuracy. A mobile enemy can keep outmatched units behind cover until backup arrives.

If you control the hill itself, you can fire down in any direction. The enemy can't use the hill as cover anymore. From what I've seen, this is the principle reason hills are useful in Spring.

Hmm... so it seems that both in an RTS and in real life, the reason a hill (and high ground in general) is tactically valuable is because it is easier to go down than to go up, compounded with the slightly better range/accuracy and the fact that your vision is less affected by terrain.

There are then 3 reasons to seek high ground, both in real life and in an at least somewhat realistic strategy game:

-Intelligence purposes, because vision is less affected by other terrain, and you can see slightly farther.
-Garrison purposes, because a unit can be deployed from the hill to wherever it needs to be during combat faster and theoretically using less fuel. This would work better in Spring if units actually travelled faster downhill, instead of just slower uphill.
-Combat purposes, because a unit can do more damage to units on lower ground during combat.

The third reason needs to be analysed more though... I think it can be broken down further though. The reason a unit sitting on a hill during combat is more effective than a unit travelling uphill during combat is because the unit travelling downhill has:

-Better accuracy in real life, and better range in Spring
-Assuming it has a better range than the unit travelling uphill (which it will even if it is the same kind of unit in Spring) the travelling uphill unit will be fired upon for a longer amount of time than it would be if the whole thing occurred on a plain. It is interesting to note that if the unit on the hill were travelling downhill, or if the unit travelling uphill can currently fire on the unit on the hill, this reason is completely cancelled.

And in Real Life, weapons don't have a range where they work perfectly and then a range where everything is completely un-targettable. So in Real Life, the reason hills are easily defendable is because the unit travelling uphill will be fired upon with greater accuracy, and itself will fire with slightly less accuracy for a longer period of time

This is all very interesting from a game design and map design standpoint...

It means that a value of a hill is determined by its height in relation to everything else in the world or on the map, how steep it is and close to contested areas (like metal), and other stuff relating to how valuable it is as a defensive position.

In Spring how effective it is as a defensive position is determined by both its height (for range bonuses) and by for how much longer the unit storming the hill would be fired upon and not able to fire back, compared to on a flat plane/plain. This has to do with the (modified by the hill) range of both units, and the storming unit's speed travelling up the hill.

So if in a mod you want to make the existing hills more valuable in combat, decrease the speed and decrease the range.

Arco wrote:If your unit is behind a hill, its range of fire is restricted. It (generally) can't shoot through the hill, or over the hill with great accuracy. A mobile enemy can keep outmatched units behind cover until backup arrives.

If you control the hill itself, you can fire down in any direction. The enemy can't use the hill as cover anymore. From what I've seen, this is the principle reason hills are useful in Spring.

Oh, yeah, there's also the reason of cover. You can't fire through hills, which makes them useful to have near the edge of your base, because then the units on the friendly side of the hill will be protected from assault from anything that doesn't go over the hill and have to deal with whatever is on the top or go around and have to deal with being fired on with whatever is on the top.

That is a reason to control hills, and put stuff near them on the bottom, but not a reason to neccesarily put an army on the top.

But I thought of another reason to put an army on the top, from a cover standpoint. I didn't think of it before because its only valid on a curved hill, not on like a conical hill. A hill that the cross section looks like a half circle, instead of a hill:

Most units have higher firing points than their hitsphere's center. So if there is a bulge between it and the enemy, the bulge provides more cover to them if it is closer to them and more to the enemy if it is closer to the enemy.

A half circle hill where a unit is farther away than the bottom from a unit on the top, turned so that both of them appear to be at the same elevation, appears to be a big bulge near the unit at the top of the hill.

But if the bottom unit reaches the bottom of the hill, the bulge would benefit them both equally, assuming they are both the same unit. It would be different. If one of them had the same hitsphere but a taller firing point, it would be able to cancel much more of the enemy cover than vice versa.

IRL being on top of a hill denies an enemy advancing up the hill cover, as your angle will allow you to see and fire upon him behind cover which he would be able to successfully use on level ground.

IRL hills are the law.

If you have any weapon with explosive capabilities it's FAR easier to drop them on someone lower on a hill then it is to lob them up at someone higher on the hill. A rocket aimed upwards that misses the on hill target from a point lower on the hill will fly off harmlessly into the sky, a rocket aimed downwards will hit ground somewhere, if not on target likely enough to do damage to the target or at very least allies below the target. Also, anything that is ripped off or falls off the hill will roll down not up, so if we're talking about foot soldiers storming the hill they can be seriously threatened and impeded by opponents heaving rocks, barrels and crates down the hill. furthermore, if the hill is difficult to climb then you basically can't force your opponent off it, meaning they can just sit there and you either have to wage an expensive time consuming siege for a bunch of guys on a hill, or you have to move on and risk that they won't attack your supply lines for some reason after you are gone. If you move slow and in the open, like you do when you climb a steep hill, you are a good target, and your opponents on top don't have to move anywhere, they can hide and pick you off when you are most vulernable.

Artillery has problems hitting hills.. The artillery has to get a direct shot for it to be effective, otherwise it goes down so far nothing is hurt...