Shell arcing

Something that I have disliked from SupCom is that many units will attempt to fire directly at enemy targets that are behind parts of the terrain, when their max range suggests that they are capable of arcing their shells over many obstacles.

While direct fire is better in most respects arcing projections should still be accessible to units if direct fire is not an option.

That would make High arc units, which are already situational, even less attractive if direct fire units could do the same thing, I'd rather see better pathing to solve this.

Mike

Or all long range units could be either direct or indirect fire, depending on the situation. Spring games generally let you choose, though a 'automatic' toggle (maybe by default) so the unit can decide by itself could be good.
If you want indirect fire only units, then it should not be the only thing that differentiate them from the others. For example, the most powerful artilleries could be always indirect fire, or rapid-fire/fragmentation artilleries meant to shoot at a large zone.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if tanks and other short(er) range units don't have the elevation to do that. Some of them may even use beam weapons instead of ballistic projectiles anyway.

Imagine Sup1/FA T1 artilleries being DF units.

Well for max range they would still need to fire at 45 degrees, but I don't see the problem with that, they could be tank destroyers in that mode.

Seeing as how they already destroyed tanks en masse I don't think they needed that... Besides, if regular tanks could DF, what point would walls have other than restricting movement?

Just to clarify, DF = Direct Fire (which normal tanks do), Artilleries do the exact opposite.

Isn't the problem that the terrain check is quite bad in SupCom and makes units blindly hit a hill infront of the unit?
With proper terrain check this shouldn't be so much of a problem.

In Spring, terrain blocks Line of Fire, while features(wrecks, trees) and friendly units can be set to block projectiles and be avoided aswell.

Uh, no. that’s precisely the point of having direct fire AND arcing units. So they’re different, and good in different situations. What’s the point of having terrain that can block shots if all units can just shoot over it?

This forum is full of bads.

There would be no ideas at all if nobody suggested, so your going to have to accept the bad with the good.

Where's the ignore feature? Please god tell me this forum has an ignore feature.

100% correct.

Just have sensible and rational discourse for and against each idea. Once an idea has been shown to be bad, move on.

In this case, OrangeMike happens to have been Johnny-on-the-spot and provided a good reason why the idea should be avoided.

im sorry if i set higher standards for people than they set for themselves.

That aside, let's try to keep direct where direct belongs and indirect where it belongs. Units swapping between the two in-combat may result in two complete different subsets of units that are useful for one purpose but complete trash for another. I don't want my tanks to attempt indirect fire if they are complete garbage at it, even if they don't have another path of fire to the enemy.

In agreement with what some other people said: give it a good line of sight system and it becomes a moot point.

It's not that, it's the arrogant jerk "lol ur a baddie" attitude for people not constantly being brilliant.

Only thing I do want to make note of is that the curvature of the map needs to be taken into account regarding DF weapons. I know this has already been discussed somewhere on this forum but I cant find it.

I don't understand what he means by better pathing.
First of all I guess he implies that units should check if there is terrain in the way so they don't fire into a hill between the unit and the target. I agree it should be that way.
Secondly, I guess he suggests that when a unit is in range but is not in Line of Fire the unit should move so the enemy gets in Line of Fire.
The shortest route to get Line of Fire is hard to calculate in many situations.
In order to gain Line of Fire on an enemy below a cliff the unit could either go to the edge of the cliff and shoot down or go around the cliff.
The simplest way I guess is to have to unit path towards the target location of the enemy and stop to fire when the enemy is in Line of Fire while the player should be able to A-move(Fight in Spring, Patrol in TA) to the edge of the cliff and once the an enemy is in Line of Fire the unit stops and shoots at it.

I think all units should be able to do this to some degree, but be clamped at the lower/higher ranges meaning that while a tank would still be able to fire over a speedbump, you'd need artillery for anything too high.

This I what I had intended in the end.

What I don't get however is why artillery is supposed to not be direct fire when that how they worked in TA, artillery at least should be able to go down to a low degree in accordance with their minimum range.

Any angle above 45 degrees should only be used when there is a large obstacle in the way, otherwise shells take too long to get to their target, especially as we won't have map crossing artillery.

Tanks should probably stick to 45 degrees and below.

Mechanical reasons. Maybe the weapon can't aim that low and fire without tipping over the artillery, or tearing the turret off.

In any case: balance reasons, and variety. Make indirect-fire weapons behave differently to direct-fire ones.

If artillery is smart enough to aim low unless it won't reach, then tanks will be pretty irrelevant and we'll spam nothing by mobile howitzers.