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Wiki says lightning weapons can miss (like widow.. which can miss) make felon have a higher chance to miss when targeting air? |
If Widow misses, then it's a bug, and you should report it. I assume you're talking about this:
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Lighting is somewhat inaccurate but should reliably hit any large unit. |
The wiki can be wrong or misleading. Some lightning is inaccurate and some isn't, just like rockets or cannons. That page seems to predate projectile lights and could do with updating.
I don't want to make Felon less accurate against aircraft because one of the core principals in Zero-K weapon design is that weapon behaviour is independent of what is being targeted. This rule can intentionally be broken in large consistent ways, such as with anti-air weapons only firing at air, but it should not be broken in subtle ways. Increasing sprayAngle against aircraft breaks this rule.
Another way of phrasing this principal is to look at the difference between a unit's mechanical capabilities and how the unit uses those abilities, or unit AI. The principal states that, mechanically, units are able to aim and fire in some set of directions. In this case of plasma cannons these directions may be unevenly limited based on the terrain, to ensure that the unit doesn't shoot beyond its range. Mechanics that limit targeting can only limit the direction of fire (except for anti-air). The parameters of a weapon when it is fired (such as spray angle) can't depend on what the unit is targeting because, mechanically, the unit should act as if it is just firing in a direction.
Adherence to this principal is an easy way to avoid weapon designs that create conflict between two other core parts of the design: smart unit AI and physical simulation. For example, this principal prohibits a weapon that "charges up" as it maintains fire on the same target. Since enemies block weapon fire, the optimal use of this weapon would be involve targeting units (or even the ground) at the back of a pack of enemies, so as it kill or damage multiple enemies without 'switching' targets. Adding this weapon puts a lot of strain on unit AI, and the behaviour of such a unit AI would look silly. Reformulating a mechanic in a way that doesn't depend on 'targets' or 'enemies' often leads to something with fewer silly implications when optimised by unit AI.
There are a few ways that the principal of target independence is technically violated. It is more a guideline for avoiding fighting unit AI, rather than a strict rule.
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While range doesn't depend on there being targets, nearby enemies do give units the ability to aim weapons at positions above the ground. The ability to do this without enemies present would let many units overshoot their range.
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Homing missiles seem to violate the principal, but like anti-air, they do so in a strict and consistent way. How the weapon aims and fires is unaffected, and the projectiles themselves have simple behaviour that moves them towards a unit regardless of its type.
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Dominatrix would seem to violate the principal, but it depends on how you phrase it. It is still free to shoot capture beams in any direction. It just so happens that the capture beams can cause it to take control of an enemy unit, and that taking control of an enemy unit gives it a large reload penalty. There are still a few unit AI problems here (two Dominatrix may rather get two enemies to 99% at their full DPS, then capture both) but they are largely mitigated by the parameters of the unit.
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Does it look like lighting? It looks like a purple non-descript beam of energy to me. Then again I don't play with max graphical settings. |
Felon may have been designed even before slow damage gained a monopoly on purple. The lightning is functional and looks ok, but there would be better ways to communicate what it is doing. Perhaps it could have a zigzag beam based on the appearance of the shield shader.
