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Archer and Glaive as AA

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3 years ago
Both archer and glaive have cylindrical range. For glaive this is usually a non-issue as projectile speed is low so it can not really hit planes. Archers however can snipe bombers from the sky. Is that desirable? Maybe set them to NOTARGET so they do not even aim at planes? Otherwise it looks silly when a blob of archers just snipes two phoenixes from the sky.
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3 years ago
So its not silly when warriors do the same? Or rippers?
Almost all (if not all) riots are flex aa.
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3 years ago
Rippers can not shoot bombers afaik, and that is because they do not have cylindrical targeting set. So while they could in principle maybe reach that high, they simply can not do that in time that bomber flies over. Archers have decent range and cyl targeting => they can shoot bombers no problem.
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3 years ago
I'm pretty sure glaive range is not cylindrical.
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3 years ago
I'm pretty sure it is.
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3 years ago
Archer is a riot, so they are supposed to hit air. Thank you for starting an Archer feedback thread.
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3 years ago
quote:
I'm pretty sure glaive range is not cylindrical.

quote:
I'm pretty sure it is.

I'm pretty sure Glaive range is a weird 3D shape whose 2D cross-section is approximately but not necessarily exactly a parabola, heavily elongated vertically such that it reaches as high as the physics of the bullet allow.
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3 years ago
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.
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3 years ago
Ok guys, instead of hypothesizing just look @ the code. First, refresher on what it does is here https://springrts.com/wiki/Gamedev:WeaponDefs

There are 2 targeting shapes: cylinder and sphere. Then there is ballistic traj. No strange ellipsoids=)

Now to the units: Glaive range is actually NOT cylindrical. Ripper range is not cylindrical, neither is e.g. Mace. In fact vast majority of non-AA units do not have this flag set.

Here is the full list of units with cyl range that are not dedicated AA:
dronefighter.lua: cylinderTargeting = 1 - who cares about com drones
dronelight.lua: cylinderTargeting = 1 - who cares about com drones
gunshipheavytrans.lua: cylinderTargeting = 1 - no problems there AFAIK
planefighter.lua: cylinderTargeting = 6 -- arguably also AA case
planeheavyfighter.lua: cylinderTargeting = 1 -- arguably also AA case
shipscout.lua: cylinderTargeting = 1 - this gives it AA capability, quite OK imo
striderdetriment.lua: cylinderTargeting = 1 - who cares
amphimpulse.lua: cylinderTargeting = 1 - ARCHER
shipassault.lua: cylinderTargeting = 5.0 - huh? (that is on main weapon btw)

So, as I pointed out, Archer having cylinderTargeting set just like siren, and practically no other unit, points out that the idea was for them to be able to hit e.g. ducks that are like VERY DEEP. Whether it is actually a good idea or not... I'm quite certain that being able to hit air is a negative side-effect.

My suggestion would be to mark units for not targeting airplanes at all. IMO that would be easiest and most reasonable. Second best would be to give them spherical range like all other riots and slightly better range to compensate for depth.

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3 years ago
cylinderTargeting has a height. 5.0 just means it can target 5 times as high up as it can far away.
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quote:
Here is the full list of units with cyl range that are not dedicated AA:

You are somewhat incorrect. This is the list of non-AA units with weapons with cylinderTargetting explicitly defined to be nonzero.

However, all MissileLauncher type weapons are inherently cylinder range anyway. You can see this by building a Stinger on a very tall spire and see its ground range shrink; meanwhile a Fencer, with much smaller defined range, will be able to shoot at the Stinger from the ground, from outside Stinger's range.This also applies to unguided MissileLaunchers (what ZK terms "rockets") such as Recluse.

So at least these non-AA units, in addition to the ones you listed, can target high-altitude planes with impunity:
Fencer, Scalpel, Harpy, Likho, Puppy, Ogre, Duck, Dante.

Additionally, rocket launcher units such as Ronin will refuse to target planes iirc, but will gladly shoot at gunships, again, at arbitrary altitude.
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3 years ago
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**
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3 years ago
The archer's tactics and strategy section on the wiki still describes the water canon archer instead of the new sonic archer.

Arbitrary ground units being able to snipe planes out of the sky isn't a new phenomenon. I guess they could be slapped with a "no target air" tag, but that wouldn't be consistent with all the other flex AA. I imagine that units like ronin don't target planes for their own good, aka, because the'd never hit anyways.
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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.
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quote:
I'm pretty sure Glaive range is a weird 3D shape whose 2D cross-section is approximately but not necessarily exactly a parabola, heavily elongated vertically such that it reaches as high as the physics of the bullet allow.

The physics of ballistic projectiles would make the range a parabola. https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.16965 says the equation for the envelope of points reachable with a projectile of initial speed v_0 aimed at any angle, is y equals (R^2-x^2)/2R where R = v_0^2 / g.

(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.)
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3 years ago
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.
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3 years ago
Guys, please, I'm not complaining about ground units hitting air when it makes sense (and for most units it does). Archer is quite strong as is, and being able to snipe Phoenix and Thunderbird bombers does not help it (of course shooting diving ravens is OK).

EErankAdminAnarchid thanks for pointing out that thing about fencer, makes it more better!
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