Petition: Remove Projectile Terrain Collision

Personally I have no issue with hills, but projectiles hitting shot blockers is annoying.

I believe that the flak projectiles don't actually aim for the models themselves but at their feet? Could be why elevation makes such a difference

Anyway... The Sturmtiger is the worst culprit for this - its rocket will detonate on trees, fences and even (crewed or uncrewed) support weapons. Since its first shot is the deal breaker, this can make a huge difference to its viability

Seeing as very few of you have a good idea of how projectiles work and exist in Company of Heroes, let me give you a simple explanation.

There are several different collision types used among the projectiles to define how they interact with the game engine. These include tp_homing (the standard for vCoH tank shells and HHAT rockets—this is why you’d see them turn on a dime and round a building corner to smack their target), tp_artillery (will not home onto the target, but will hit their target directly if a hit is registered by the engine, ASSUMING THE TARGET DOES NOT MOVE--basically, a hit rolled by the engine removed all scatter from the equation, per se), tp_thrown (phases through buildings and shot blockers—grenades, stickies, and PIATs), and some others that weren’t too commonly seen.

There is no way to modify the collision types of the projectiles during their flight from the barrel marker of the weapon that fired them into their target of choice. Projectiles can be made to phase through certain object types such as environmental objects, infantry, and vehicles (this is why the Puma was sucha bitch to hit and kill in vCoH, especially with RRs—no hitbox and an object type that most projectiles were set to phase through unless a hit was rolled by the weapon targeting it). However, bear in mind, this is over the projectiles entire flight path, and will define it's behavior versus every last target of that type in the game.

If projectiles were made to ignore shot blockers, the ground, and buildings etc, we would have a mass of auto-firing stickies, if you will. Remember how annoying it was to have a vet2 rifle squad nail a sticky into the ass of your Tiger from 40m away, through a building? That will be every tank shell, flak shell, and HHAT rocket. Now, there is a setting under a given weapon’s behavior extension called artillery_force_obey_los that essentially prevents the weapon from targeting any object behind a shot blocker (tp_artillery and tp_thrown are hardcoded within the CoH engine to act as artillery, targeting anything within range of the weapon, ignoring whatever objects lie in between the weapon and the target—eg., why the StuH would constantly fire aimlessly into buildings if there was an enemy target visible on the other side). This would prevent that by default. However.

The game would then devolve into a ground-targeting free for all, with everyone and their dog hiding behind shot blockers at max range and spamming the ground attack command at enemy units with their new phase-shifting shells. It would be non-sensical, a ridiculous new level of micro strain, and even if you ignored shot blockers—fight out in the open—we’d still have really retarded crap going on, like ISU-152s launching phase-shift nukes through a mountainside to whack your blob of vetted Grenadiere in the nuts—that doesn’t sound fun for anyone, now does it?

The other issue is if Relic forgets to put this behavior into effect for even one weapon, it will be a massive balance pain in the ass until hotpached.

Tl;dr, my vote is no. As a coder, and as a player who’s not a part of the ubermensch 1v1 auto mustard race, this would make the game absolutely frustrating and no fun whatsoever for the average joe—e.g., the other 90% of the playerbase.

EDIT: Fix'd to be Mr. Nicetyniceynicepantsguy. Remember, help your local forum--don't be a Vetlolcake!

Seeing as very few of you have a good idea of how projectiles work and exist in Company of Heroes, let me give you a simple explanation.

There are several different collision types used among the projectiles to define how they interact with the game engine. These include tp_homing (the standard for vCoH tank shells and HHAT rockets—this is why you’d see them turn on a dime and round a building corner to smack their target), tp_artillery (will not home onto the target, but will hit their target directly if a hit is registered by the engine, ASSUMING THE TARGET DOES NOT MOVE--basically, a hit rolled by the engine removed all scatter from the equation, per se), tp_thrown (phases through buildings and shot blockers—grenades, stickies, and PIATs), and some others that weren’t too commonly seen.

There is no way to modify the collision types of the projectiles during their flight from the barrel marker of the weapon that fired them into their target of choice. Projectiles can be made to phase through certain object types such as environmental objects, infantry, and vehicles (this is why the Puma was sucha bitch to hit and kill in vCoH, especially with RRs—no hitbox and an object type that most projectiles were set to phase through unless a hit was rolled by the weapon targeting it). However, bear in mind, this is over the projectiles entire flight path, and will define it's behavior versus every last target of that type in the game.

If projectiles were made to ignore shot blockers, the ground, and buildings etc, we would have a mass of auto-firing stickies, if you will. Remember how annoying it was to have a vet2 rifle squad nail a sticky into the ass of your Tiger from 40m away, through a building? That will be every tank shell, flak shell, and HHAT rocket. Now, there is a setting under a given weapon’s behavior extension called artillery_force_obey_los that essentially prevents the weapon from targeting any object behind a shot blocker (tp_artillery and tp_thrown are hardcoded within the CoH engine to act as artillery, targeting anything within range of the weapon, ignoring whatever objects lie in between the weapon and the target—eg., why the StuH would constantly fire aimlessly into buildings if there was an enemy target visible on the other side). This would prevent that by default. However.

The game would then devolve into a ground-targeting free for all, with everyone and their dog hiding behind shot blockers at max range and spamming the ground attack command at enemy units with their new phase-shifting shells. It would be non-sensical, a ridiculous new level of micro strain, and even if you ignored shot blockers—fight out in the open—we’d still have really retarded crap going on, like ISU-152s launching phase-shift nukes through a mountainside to whack your blob of vetted Grenadiere in the nuts—that doesn’t sound fun for anyone, now does it?

The other issue is if Relic forgets to put this behavior into effect for even one weapon, it will be a massive balance pain in the ass until hotpached.

Tl;dr, my vote is no. As a coder, and as a player who’s not a part of the ubermensch 1v1 auto mustard race, this would make the game absolutely frustrating and no fun whatsoever for the average joe—e.g., the other 90% of the playerbase.

EDIT: Fix'd to be Mr. Nicetyniceynicepantsguy. Remember, help your local forum--don't be a Vetlolcake!

Agree most of the part, except that I hate when my own AT guns keep 'team-killing' my own units and destroying all the green cover I have when it engage[Espeically infantry-wise]. And the only solution is to hold-fire and wait till the tanks appear which could be an pain in an ass to dealt with [Micro intensify] and pray to RNGesus.

I would like to see Relic make AT-gun completely ignore infantry target or at least provide option to not to engage.

+1 to this but I'd also like to see shots actually penetrate, for example, a hedge or a wooden fence. It's annoying to see flak shells being completely stopped by some leaves and branches that appear to have a force field and take no damage instead of being shredded into pulp.