Archer and Glaive as AA

So its not silly when warriors do the same? Or rippers?
Almost all (if not all) riots are flex aa.

I'm pretty sure glaive range is not cylindrical.

Archer is a riot, so they are supposed to hit air. Thank you for starting an Archer feedback thread.

Rippers are relatively poor AA because their turret tracking isn't fast enough even for gunships. That probably makes it impossible for them to target planes even if they are able to hit them technically.

cylinderTargeting has a height. 5.0 just means it can target 5 times as high up as it can far away.

quote: Rippers are relatively poor AA because their turret tracking isn't fast enough even for gunships. That probably makes it impossible for them to target planes even if they are able to hit them technically.

Yeah, this guy thought so too.
**laughs in perfect micro**

I wouldn't entirely trust the wiki. I'm pretty sure Cannon weapon type has two limits on its range:

• Physical limit. Does a firing solution exist for the weapon's muzzle velocity, projectile gravity, and target position?
• Range, plus a height boost. I fiddled with Cannons a while ago and found their range to be a cylinder against higher targets and a cone against lower targets. They receive a height boost but don't appear to receive a height penalty.

The tag heightBoostFactor is responsible for the range boost when shooting lower targets. It looks like all Cannons use some default calculated in the engine based on other properties of the weapon. Some Cannons, such as Archer, Ripper and Glaive, have high enough muzzle velocity for a firing solution to always exist. This causes them to have what looks like cylindrical range, while units like Hermit and Sling quickly hit the firing solution limit when aiming upwards.

It looks like heightMod controls the 3D shape of weapon range, with heightMod=1 being a sphere, heightMod=0.5 being an ellipsoid that is twice as high as it is wide, and heightMod=0 being an ellipsoid with poles at infinity (aka a cylinder). The wiki is saying that, by default, Cannon range is an ellipsoid 25% higher than it is wide, not a cylinder. I actually doubt this is true since that would put Nimbus (240 cruise alt) out of range of Glaive (185 range), yet I have seen Glaive shoot high Nimbus at quite an angle.

The description of cylinderTargeting makes no sense in light of its default (zero). My guess is that zero is interpreted as no effect, so its effect does not matter much for ZK. The weapondefs indicate that use of this tag is copypasta, or perhaps, cargo cult. There are no values of cylinderTargeting between zero and one. It seems to mostly be used on spherical weapons, where cylinderTargeting=1 is redundant, and AA weapons, which have so much range that you won't notice them not shoot at aircraft 3x higher than they can usually fly. It is nice for Charon launching though. Archer has cylinderTargeting=1 and 255 range so can shoot at Nimbus. Perhaps this tag should be used to solve things such as slow rockets running out fuel before they hit targets at extreme elevation.

As for gameplay effects, we're probably seeing the outcome of increased predicative aiming. Ripper will be able to hit aircraft more often if it starts aiming before they enter range. Ground units hitting aircraft is by design. Ground and air are supposed to be interacting with each other in ways beyond hard counters. This is intentional. Perhaps some of the weapon tags could be better understood and then used to nerf some outliers, but overall I think it's fine.

quote: However, I'm not sure if the Spring engine uses a parabola for this. It certainly doesn't use this particular parabola, otherwise glaives would reach their maximum horizontal range at a 45 degree firing angle, which they don't

Adding to the complexity here are aiming arc limits, targeting restrictions, and projectile expiration. Glaive's physical range is actually larger than its targeting range. Impaler's physical range is larger than Starlight's targeting range.