Is main gun elevation modeled?

[markshot]

And if so what would be the max elevation of a Tiger's main gun in degrees above the horizontal?

Thanks.

[A Canadian Cat]

Weeeeellll sort of. The gun on the model is limited in how far it can move but the actual ability to fire the gun is not restricted. It does cause some odd situations in close with elevation (buildings) where the shot does not follow the barrel of the tank gun.

This is done to avoid having to program the Tac AI to move the tank to take a shot. A part form being challenging to program it could also lead to TCs moving tanks out of cover and expose them to danger that the player was trying to avoid and thus unhappy players.

To compensate for this tanks have a longer engagement time for targets that are close in.

[Bud Backer]

That’s cool info, @IanL! Never knew that. 

[Hapless]

It also works with min elevation: this is a M36 Jackson just after firing from a hull down position.



Take that physics!

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, Hapless said:

Take that physics!

Hee hee LOL - that does illustrate what the results look like quite nicely.

That picture kinda looks like the gun could and should have been lower - hummmm

[Hapless]

Yeah. Apparently the Jackson can depress its gun to -10 degrees, which would make sense seen as though its a Tank Destroyer that's supposed to be fighting hull down (being open topped helps- means the breech isn't smacking into the turret roof!). Not sure if this graphical oddity is an issue with the model or if it is actually depressed -10 degrees and its hard to tell.

Its a little off-topic, but interesting to see the projectile created at the end of the barrel and not where the breech should be. The shell tracers are bigger than the barrel, so I guess it would look weird everytime it fired if you could see the tracer going through the barrel, not to mention how that might interact with any collision logic going on.

[SimpleSimon]

A little bit of abstraction is probably necessary to better emulate the nuance of things like key-hole shots from a hull down position. 

[Bulletpoint]

8 hours ago, SimpleSimon said:

A little bit of abstraction is probably necessary to better emulate the nuance of things like key-hole shots from a hull down position. 

The rest of the game doesn't work like that though. If you want a hull down position, you need to place the tank very precisely. Same with keyholes - if you're not at the exact spot, you won't get line of sight. It can be done, and then you get an advantage. But when it comes to gun elevation, the game works differently...

[Pelican Pal]

6 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

But when it comes to gun elevation, the game works differently...

I suspect its almost entirely do to with AI problems. TacAI is only reactive and there is no strategic AI whatsoever so it would certainly cause a ton of problems in any scenario that wasn't a flat plain. Not just for the "AI player" but for the player themselves as 60 second turns would lead to some hilariously bad situation where it would take ~3+ minutes to slightly angle a tank.

 

Personally I would like an exaggerated limit on elevation rather than none. Essentially allow tanks to fudge elevation dramatically, but maybe not fire directly below themselves or nearly vertically into a 5 story building.

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, Pelican Pal said:

8 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

But when it comes to gun elevation, the game works differently...

I suspect its almost entirely do to with AI problems. TacAI is only reactive and there is no strategic AI whatsoever so it would certainly cause a ton of problems in any scenario that wasn't a flat plain.

But in scenarios, it's the designer who places enemy tanks and guns. Good designers check LOF to make sure the guns can target the areas they need to target. If elevation were modelled, the designer would just see a little "out of elevation" under the target pointer for certain locations.

I'm not saying Battlefront are stupid for not including elevation. I'm sure they have their reasons - all I'm saying is that I personally don't really understand why.

Edit: I should also in all fairness say that I don't have much of a problem with lack of elevation restriction. It's extremely rare that I see situations where it looks silly (like in the video above). I'm just curious about the design decision.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[Pelican Pal]

10 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

But in scenarios, it's the designer who places enemy tanks and guns. Good designers check LOF to make sure the guns can target the areas they need to target. If elevation were modelled, the designer would just see a little "out of elevation" under the target pointer for certain locations.

And no vehicles ever move during a match?

[Bulletpoint]

6 hours ago, Pelican Pal said:

16 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

But in scenarios, it's the designer who places enemy tanks and guns. Good designers check LOF to make sure the guns can target the areas they need to target. If elevation were modelled, the designer would just see a little "out of elevation" under the target pointer for certain locations.

And no vehicles ever move during a match?

Of course they sometimes move, but then they often end up in places where there's no LOS or the vehicle is not properly hull down anyway. Because the scenario designer can only tell the vehicle to move to a painted zone on the map - even if you only paint one tile as destination for a specific vehicle, that's 8x8 metres. The final position it ends up cannot be precisely controlled.

In any case, the designer can just send the vehicle to a position without need for extreme gun elevation/depression. While giving orders, you have to pay attention to the terrain in the first place. Elevation changes is part of that..

[ASL Veteran]

23 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

But in scenarios, it's the designer who places enemy tanks and guns. Good designers check LOF to make sure the guns can target the areas they need to target. If elevation were modelled, the designer would just see a little "out of elevation" under the target pointer for certain locations.

I'm not saying Battlefront are stupid for not including elevation. I'm sure they have their reasons - all I'm saying is that I personally don't really understand why.

Edit: I should also in all fairness say that I don't have much of a problem with lack of elevation restriction. It's extremely rare that I see situations where it looks silly (like in the video above). I'm just curious about the design decision.

I think you actually understand the situation completely, but because 'you don't have much of a problem with elevation restriction' you can't identify it as a problem.  However, the fact is that you don't actually know if you have a problem with elevation restriction because it isn't in the game.  Sure, you can eyeball your tanks and assume that they would always fire when you want them to, but inevitably there would be situations in the game where you might assume that a vehicle could fire and it wouldn't.  It would just sit there doing nothing and in some instances where you exposed your vehicle to enemy fire by carefully positioning it in a location where you assumed that it would fire I'm sure your response to that would be - well I won't assume, but most players would immediately post to the forum that the game was broken.  However, let's just assume for the sake of argument that Bulletpoint is always going to be 100 percent accurate in his assumptions about when a tank will be able to fire and when it won't.  How many other players will make a mistake at least one time when positioning their vehicles?  80 percent?  50 percent?  20 percent?  How many posts do we already have on the forum about 'my tank won't fire' and elevation restrictions aren't even a factor?  

I don't know how many scenarios you have made … perhaps you have made a few, but the idea that a designer can just spend hours upon hours micro positioning tanks at every point that they will occupy or potentially occupy just to check for elevation restrictions is pretty comical.  It already takes many hours of work to create an AI plan (many aspiring designers don't even try and make their scenarios H2H) and in some of the bigger scenarios you will probably not be able to position tanks individually since an AI group will contain several tanks in it.  It's already difficult enough to get all the tanks in one AI group to point in the right direction when you want them to let alone individually checking for elevation restrictions.  That's not even considering the fact that any given vehicle might choose a different action spot to stop at when arriving at any given waypoint.  That's also ignoring the fact that tanks in AI groups can be given orders where they individually stop in spots between waypoints designated by the designer - for example I can give a tank platoon an Advance order from one location to another and half the tanks will move and then stop somewhere in between waypoints - where?  Don't know and I have no control over where they stop.  How about the AI in Quick Battles?  The guys who do all that work creating Quick Battle maps have no idea what the player is purchasing.  It is simply impossible for an AI plan for a Quick Battle to account for elevation restrictions.

So, don't get me wrong, I would love to have elevation restrictions in the game as much as the next guy.  I would also love to have elevation restrictions in terms of where vehicles can move since all tanks can negotiate any terrain grade no matter how steep - short of cliffs of course.  They also don't lose any speed while driving over said elevations.  However, I also recognize and accept the reasons BFC has given as to why they haven't included these things.  We were actually able to convince them to put some sort of penalty into the game for some of the extreme examples which crop up during city fighting so at least they added that in, but to have historically accurate elevation gun restrictions is probably never going to be in the game.

[Bulletpoint]

5 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

I think you actually understand the situation completely, but because 'you don't have much of a problem with elevation restriction' you can't identify it as a problem.  However, the fact is that you don't actually know if you have a problem with elevation restriction because it isn't in the game.  Sure, you can eyeball your tanks and assume that they would always fire when you want them to, but inevitably there would be situations in the game where you might assume that a vehicle could fire and it wouldn't.  It would just sit there doing nothing and in some instances where you exposed your vehicle to enemy fire by carefully positioning it in a location where you assumed that it would fire I'm sure your response to that would be - well I won't assume, but most players would immediately post to the forum that the game was broken.  However, let's just assume for the sake of argument that Bulletpoint is always going to be 100 percent accurate in his assumptions about when a tank will be able to fire and when it won't.  How many other players will make a mistake at least one time when positioning their vehicles?  80 percent?  50 percent?  20 percent?  How many posts do we already have on the forum about 'my tank won't fire' and elevation restrictions aren't even a factor?  

I don't know how many scenarios you have made … perhaps you have made a few, but the idea that a designer can just spend hours upon hours micro positioning tanks at every point that they will occupy or potentially occupy just to check for elevation restrictions is pretty comical.  It already takes many hours of work to create an AI plan (many aspiring designers don't even try and make their scenarios H2H) and in some of the bigger scenarios you will probably not be able to position tanks individually since an AI group will contain several tanks in it.  It's already difficult enough to get all the tanks in one AI group to point in the right direction when you want them to let alone individually checking for elevation restrictions.  That's not even considering the fact that any given vehicle might choose a different action spot to stop at when arriving at any given waypoint.  That's also ignoring the fact that tanks in AI groups can be given orders where they individually stop in spots between waypoints designated by the designer - for example I can give a tank platoon an Advance order from one location to another and half the tanks will move and then stop somewhere in between waypoints - where?  Don't know and I have no control over where they stop.  How about the AI in Quick Battles?  The guys who do all that work creating Quick Battle maps have no idea what the player is purchasing.  It is simply impossible for an AI plan for a Quick Battle to account for elevation restrictions.

So, don't get me wrong, I would love to have elevation restrictions in the game as much as the next guy.  I would also love to have elevation restrictions in terms of where vehicles can move since all tanks can negotiate any terrain grade no matter how steep - short of cliffs of course.  They also don't lose any speed while driving over said elevations.  However, I also recognize and accept the reasons BFC has given as to why they haven't included these things.  We were actually able to convince them to put some sort of penalty into the game for some of the extreme examples which crop up during city fighting so at least they added that in, but to have historically accurate elevation gun restrictions is probably never going to be in the game.

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I understand better now. The point where I disagree is that I place zero value on quick battles against an AI plan, so I did not understand why elevation might matter in that kind of game. The few times I played quick battles, i faced an enemy force of AT guns placed inside a forest or a force made up of a forward observer with several modules of artillery and not much else. In case the enemy had tanks, they suicidally rolled towards me and never really had time for elevation problems

It's possible they fixed some of those things later because I haven't tried quick battles for a long time now. But that's what I didn't understand - i only thought of scenarios and PBEMs.

Edited December 14, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[markshot]

I just found a huge repository of information on the Tiger:

https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/nazi_germany/Panzer-VI_Tiger.php

But despite many pages, no where does it mention what max/min main gun elevation was.

I asked, because I am playing CMFI "To Catch a Tiger".  The Tiger (immobilized) sits close to a bridge/river bed.  Both flanks are very steep.  Now some of the flanks are out of LOS due to the convex curve of the terrain.  But even that which is in LOS would require a significant elevation to shoot at from the horizontal.  So, in effect, I was asking might I be safe from the main gun even when in LOS?

I have learned much more about CM than my question originally intended.

Thanks.

[Bulletpoint]

6 hours ago, markshot said:

I just found a huge repository of information on the Tiger:

https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/nazi_germany/Panzer-VI_Tiger.php

But despite many pages, no where does it mention what max/min main gun elevation was.

Here's a guy who says he knows, and quotes a source:

"Tiger I

It should be -8/+15 degrees

Tiger Tank Owner's Workshop Manual by Bovington Tank Museum

Pg 115"

https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/144089-tiger-i-and-ii-gun-traverse-angles-are-incorrect/

[markshot]

So, that answers it.  In RL, the stationary tiger is not much of a threat to infantry on the steep sides.  I don't think there was TC MG on the top.

Although, I still don't think my infantry could have approached within zook range.  But I think, the defenders might have been taken out by my squads, and then use a mortar to smoke the tank, allowing zooks and ATG to be ready when it cleared.

Thanks for looking it up!