Range Indicator For Vehicles

Seeing as it's patch time I see a chance for a small but potentially very impactful QoL change I've been thinking about for a while.

There are a few long range but mobile units in the game that have visual range indicators when you select the unit: the three snipers and the OKW Flak Halftrack jump to mind. They also show up when targeting abilities on units such as mortars and when selecting structures with 360 fire such as the Schwerer Panzer Headquarters.

These indicators could be a very useful positioning aid for vehicles, especially very long range tank destroyers. Tank engagements often involve dancing around their maximum range to avoid snares and enemy tank fire so I can see a lot of utility in them. They'd also be useful for positioning tanks to attack ground against static targets like bunkers and OKW trucks.

If it's straightforward to do maybe it could be put it in the balance preview mod? If it's generally liked in practice keep it, if not remove it before the patch goes live.

Important note: the rings only show if you select only one unit. You can test this if you build two snipers in a custom game and select both. Ring overlap can't happen.

I've put a few visual mockups together to give an idea what this would look like.







Thoughts?

I disagree. The lack information is a handicap responsible for exactly those thrilling moments when you give chase after someone (and many more situations).

You can already view the ranges on the map using attack ground, it's just unnecessarily awkward.

I like it

The range indicator would be a nice touch. I don't think it's visually distracting and quite frankly, this game could always use more intuitive, available information.

However, for units with abilities with different ranges, you'd really want to make sure everything was consistent and accurate. Every ability that may differ from weapon range would need to not clash with the indicator. Although that's really only the main caveat I can think of.

That said, in my experiences my struggles with vehicle range is more about whether or not a specific object is actually blocking sight/shots. The size and shape of sight/shot blockers (and associated pathing restrictions) very often don't line up with their visual representation. I've had many a vehicle blind themselves to the front by being too close to a tree trunk.

While a TrueSight based indicator that blocks out the parts the vehicle can't see (like Steel Division) would be great I'd be very surprised if CoH 2's patching tools can do that. The change as proposed is just a matter of adding Sniper/Flak HT rings to the full vehicle roster. Even that might not be possible.

I agree with this.

Hopefully MrSmith will see this in short order and be able to tell us if this is even possible.

Agreed with Red. Adds far more in flavor and flair than will be gained in functionality.

Do you oppose range indicators on other units? Snipers, AT guns, et cetera?

For most units a range indicator is the "you'll miss" threshold.

Added some clarification to the main post about what happens when you select two vehicles at once. The game's already got a way to handle it.

I would quite like to see range tings for min/max range on the us fighting position rifle grenades. Static range markers for emplacements are a must. I like the idea of them on vehicles too, but I can see why some players would prefer having to “eyeball” ranges to make things more skill based.

But I think we can all agree that Mim/max range rings for emplacements is a good thing to add. They could even disappear once the emplacement is built, but would still be extremely helpful to placing them, yet unobtrusive once built.

That'd be nice but I don't know you could make one emplacement display an arc and a full ring.

That'd be nice but I don't know you could make one emplacement display an arc and a full ring.

Possibly a modification to the arc indicator that shows the MG arc followed by a longer range arc to show the MIN/MAX range of the rifle grenades. It might not be a full circle around the fighting position, but it would still work to show the player the rifle grenade impact zone.

BTW, rifle grenades are super fun in real life. I have an M7 launcher and some rubber dummy grenades that I can launch off my M1 Garand with blanks! It is stupid fun and actually rather cheap! If you have any standard AR-15 type rifle you can do the same thing because the flash hider is sized to accept any 22mm Nato type rifle grenades, which are copies of US WWII rifle grenades. So all you gotta do is buy the dummy rifle grenades for about 25 bucks and some blanks for about the same and you can go have a blast shooting a faux grenade all day long!

A quick google search will show you all you need.

On the topic of REMF Rifle grenades, they actually had a launcher for the M1 Carbine that was able to use the same grenades as the one for the M1 Garand, so there's really no reason that they switch to an M1 Garand to launch the grenades.

Sorry, just a bit off topic, but interesting.

Possibly a modification to the arc indicator that shows the MG arc followed by a longer range arc to show the MIN/MAX range of the rifle grenades. It might not be a full circle around the fighting position, but it would still work to show the player the rifle grenade impact zone.

It sounds like the USF AAHT one: that's a circle with a firing arc in it. Maybe they could reuse that.

While a TrueSight based indicator that blocks out the parts the vehicle can't see (like Steel Division) would be great I'd be very surprised if CoH 2's patching tools can do that.

It might be possible with a bit of co-operation between the map, scar, and the attribs. Thus, I dont think it would be currently possible. The breaker here is the map, as re-doing all the maps would be a chore, and not possible without some help with relic.

However, im not sure what the problem is with the normal sight? That communicates the range aswell.

Not very well and not at all when the normal sight of your units overlaps.

overlaps.

Yeah, thats the main issue with it communicating range. I would recommend a elastic range-reticule that only displays when sight has been over-lapped, but im not sure thats possible without modifying the source code. Maybe a scar wizard could do it, but im not sure.