Petition: Remove Projectile Terrain Collision

+1 especially for the sake of Sturm Tiger and p47 strafe.

Yep, +1 to subject

Because hedges obscures line of sight, and that makes perfect sense. This is a matter of projectiles being poorly animated/programmed to collide with the ground every time it tries to shoot at something elevated. If the tank with high ground advantage was slightly more accurate, fine with me. In no realistic scenario would someone nail the ground in front of the target every time because they can't compute a difference in height.

You have to consider what is between you and the enemy unit at all times in this game. It's no different than how with infantry combat you have to think about cover between you and the opponent.

You know that being on the low ground means your shots are more likely to not hit your opponent. Therefore it becomes a part of your tactics: controlling the high ground means you are better protected, while attacking from low ground will be much harder.


You have to stop looking at the game with an a-move mentality. The best part of this game is that where your unit is standing is actually fucking relevant to how it performs. If you position an artillery piece next to a house, it might hit the house instead of where you wanted it to. If you try to throw a grenade, it may get caught up in buildings or hedges in its path. You have to think about these things all the time in this game.




Also, tanks generally don't have much ability to adjust their aim in terms of verticality. A few degrees of pivot at most. Not to mention that units on high ground are literally more difficult to hit with any sort of ranged weapon and that has been true for thousands of years or warfare whether you're using bows, guns or tanks.

Is this also what's causing random fire to blow up mines and other explosives that are concealed on accident? That drives me crazy, I go through a lot of trouble to place them perfectly for my opponents enjoyment.

You have to consider what is between you and the enemy unit at all times in this game. It's no different than how with infantry combat you have to think about cover between you and the opponent.

You know that being on the low ground means your shots are more likely to not hit your opponent. Therefore it becomes a part of your tactics: controlling the high ground means you are better protected, while attacking from low ground will be much harder.


You have to stop looking at the game with an a-move mentality. The best part of this game is that where your unit is standing is actually fucking relevant to how it performs. If you position an artillery piece next to a house, it might hit the house instead of where you wanted it to. If you try to throw a grenade, it may get caught up in buildings or hedges in its path. You have to think about these things all the time in this game.


Also, tanks generally don't have much ability to adjust their aim in terms of verticality. A few degrees of pivot at most. Not to mention that units on high ground are literally more difficult to hit with any sort of ranged weapon and that has been true for thousands of years or warfare whether you're using bows, guns or tanks.

Agreed that it's good that how current system rewards use of terrain, but disagree that what you're describing is really how it's working. Right now it's less that players with better elevation get in advantage, and more that tank behavior has profound troubles even on nearly flat terrain with just tiny hills. In this sense it's less like cover mattering for infantry and more like the pathing problems that vehicles have suffered from. Like pathing problems,it certainly DOES promote more micro, just not in a good way.

Also, I know that certain aspects of OKW base defense are unfair, like how they outright deny so many air abilities, but with the current system they will often do nothing but fire into the dirt against ground units no matter how they are placed. So at the moment they are broken against air strikes (in an OP way) and broken against ground units (in an UP way). Building the Flak emplacements would become more viable if their behavior got reworked, nothing too extreme, just make it so that it requires a bit more elevation for them to fire helplessly into the dirt.

I say keep it the way it works now, but make it less extreme, so you actually need a discernible terrain advantage to benefit from it.

You know that being on the low ground means your shots are more likely to not hit your opponent. Therefore it becomes a part of your tactics: controlling the high ground means you are better protected, while attacking from low ground will be much harder.

...

Also, tanks generally don't have much ability to adjust their aim in terms of verticality. A few degrees of pivot at most. Not to mention that units on high ground are literally more difficult to hit with any sort of ranged weapon and that has been true for thousands of years or warfare whether you're using bows, guns or tanks.

The advantages of high ground

A) slightly more exposed surface area on the lower target, since altitude gives you a chance to hit the top of the target
B) explosives are more effective since there is more exposed ground around the target to hit
C) whoever is on low ground may have to look in to the sun*
D) gravity has a higher effect on upward moving projectiles compared to those being fired downward*

*not a factor in coh

A


B


And using the gun depression argument isn't valid since a tank on a hill would have an equally hard time (if anything a harder time) depressing downward versus shooting up. Like I said a high ground accuracy advantage would be ok, but a tank shooting in to a hill right in front of it over and over again is not kosher from a gameplay perspective, and not the slightest bit realistic either.

your art made me happy

Agreed. There are a few things in this game that make me think Relic thought it was making Men of War or something - projectile collision with terrain, TrueSight™, vehicles colliding with buildings and doing damage - but they're glitchy and hard to understand and they don't work in any standard fashion and it can be hard to tell if a bush is hiding your dudes or if a hill is going to block shots or something because the other 90% of the game is a more traditional RTS where if you roll a hit you get a hit and if you roll a miss you get a miss and so on.

Since this game will never be a detailed simulation like Men of War, it should focus on getting rid of this stupid glitchy stuff that doesn't make it better and just makes it more annoying.

The advantages of high ground

A) slightly more exposed surface area on the lower target, since altitude gives you a chance to hit the top of the target
B) explosives are more effective since there is more exposed ground around the target to hit
C) whoever is on low ground may have to look in to the sun*
D) gravity has a higher effect on upward moving projectiles compared to those being fired downward*

I demand that you post those picaso paintings onto your 1st post!

The advantages of high ground

A) slightly more exposed surface area on the lower target, since altitude gives you a chance to hit the top of the target
B) explosives are more effective since there is more exposed ground around the target to hit
C) whoever is on low ground may have to look in to the sun*
D) gravity has a higher effect on upward moving projectiles compared to those being fired downward*

*not a factor in coh

Just a clarification on point D

The gravity of Earth, denoted g, refers to the acceleration that the Earth imparts to objects on or near its surface. It has an approximate value of 9.81 m/s2, which means that, ignoring the effects of air resistance, the speed of an object falling freely near the Earth's surface will increase by about 9.81 metres (32.2 ft) per second every second.

Gravity decreases with altitude as one rises above the earth's surface because greater altitude means greater distance from the Earth's center. All other things being equal, an increase in altitude from sea level to 9,000 metres (30,000 ft) causes a weight decrease of about 0.29%. (An additional factor affecting apparent weight is the decrease in air density at altitude, which lessens an object's buoyancy.[8] This would increase a person's apparent weight at an altitude of 9,000 metres by about 0.08%)

I don't think that "clarification" is relevant to what is being discussed.

Point D is simply stating that something will lose energy to gravity traveling away from earth and will lose less or even gain energy going in the direction of earth.

The weight of the projectiles is mostly not a factor considering the energy being applied to them. So not that your wrong, it just doesn't matter with whats being discussed.

Ahhh, this AA Halftrack of OKW will maybe hit something ! Its not only on tanks.

+1

I kinda of agree with this, but then I remember how stupid weapons clipping through the ground looked in Dawn of War.

If the projectile could be made to follow the terrain or so.e thing that might work

the okw AA = I have now given up to build this! "NO, do not dig up the ground, destroy the US bunker!!1"

+1

Agreed. There are a few things in this game that make me think Relic thought it was making Men of War or something - projectile collision with terrain, TrueSight™, vehicles colliding with buildings and doing damage - but they're glitchy and hard to understand and they don't work in any standard fashion and it can be hard to tell if a bush is hiding your dudes or if a hill is going to block shots or something because the other 90% of the game is a more traditional RTS where if you roll a hit you get a hit and if you roll a miss you get a miss and so on.

Truesight works very well though, it's buggy on occasion but that's related to a small number of props that blocked shot but not sight, which Relic noted and fixed. Vehicles colliding with buildings existed in CoH1, and actually did more damage back then.

I already explained how hits / misses work but unsurprisingly everyone ignored it. I will repeat though, rolling a hit will hit, rolling a miss may hit. The hits you see on hills, walls, and objects, are all misses.

This. This made this post. Also +_!1

I already explained how hits / misses work but unsurprisingly everyone ignored it. I will repeat though, rolling a hit will hit, rolling a miss may hit. The hits you see on hills, walls, and objects, are all misses.

The problem is, the vast (vast) majority of shots against infantry by projectiles aren't meant to roll a hit. They miss, then scatter near the target and the splash damage takes the target out. Flak weapons seem to be placed low the the ground, if it makes sense- tank shots usually scatter over walls and such, but flak shots hit the wall more often than not it seems (might be perception issue on my part though).

Well the Flak weapons should be changed to the "small arms" profile and be given much higher accuracy anyway. The "ballistic" profile simply does not work for them, it was designed for tank guns, not automatic weapons.

And using the gun depression argument isn't valid since a tank on a hill would have an equally hard time (if anything a harder time) depressing downward versus shooting up.

You would be correct if hills were flat plateaus at the top. See exhibit A below.



Also you have to consider where the strongest armour on a tank is located. A tank on a hill has its best armour facing the opponent, while the opponent on the bottom has some of his weakest. (Second only to the armour underneath)


The advantage of high ground is that you are a much smaller target and harder to hit, while you have full view of your target from up top and they are very exposed. (In melee fights you have leverage, but that's not applicable here)

I realize that some maps have slight slopes that cause issues, but so will any sort of cover or debris in your path. As Someguy has explained, if your tank is hitting the environment *it already missed its diceroll*.

Lets not make this game into SC2. Every diceroll is a risk/reward scenario that you have to consider. One of these is that you have to be mindful of the terrain. It'd be an issue if it was only one unit, but it is very consistent behaviour for nearly all weapons ranging from AT guns to tanks to bazookas.

I already explained how hits / misses work but unsurprisingly everyone ignored it. I will repeat though, rolling a hit will hit, rolling a miss may hit. The hits you see on hills, walls, and objects, are all misses.

Ok, this is what I was thinking too. Especially with the Flak cannon, I don't think the majority of its shots are meant to hit, it's mainly for suppression to prevent early base rushes no? I think some people are confusing actual projectile collision problems, i.e. Sturmtiger shot hits a hill on its way to a target, with intended inaccuracy of flak weapons.

Not that there isn't an issue, but I think completely removing terrain collision isn't the call. Hiding behind tall trees to avoid P47 or Sturmtiger rockets makes sense and IMO should reward players for quickly reacting to these sort of things. The problem comes in with elevation, because I think most players don't have the micro or memory to memorize or change camera angle every time they use an ability just to make sure that they're on the same elevation. Especially when the game is designed to be played from a top down stand-point where it is very difficult to see changes in elevation.