Gun elevation

[hcrof]

Why is everyone talking in absolutes?

If elevation was modelled it doesn't have to be as restrictive as in real life - it just has to be enough to stop situations that are obviously stupid.

Sometimes, if a building wasn't cleared properly or if the defender is outflanked you do get tanks right next to buildings full of infantry (It happened to me yesterday) so you do get unreallistic situations.

Also, a 2 or 3m minimum range is basically so you can't stick your tank barrel inside a building before shooting - it has nothing to do with arming ranges for the rounds

[Other Means]

Sergei, why do you think the AI wouldn't be able to handle it? It's not like it just checks the LOS map for LOS and that's it - there's already a tactical layer on top of that. This would be another parameter.

And I don't think it'd affect playability that much. You'd soon learn that you don't set up on the back of the Matterhorn and expect to be able to shoot the ground in front.

I think tactical nuances like this are what elevates CM above other games. Using units effectively and realistically is what makes it fun. Learning that Soviet bloc tanks can't get hull down very well because of their low profile - but that low profile brings other advantages - is as important as knowing your AT4s from your AT-4s.

[TheVulture]

Sergei, why do you think the AI wouldn't be able to handle it? It's not like it just checks the LOS map for LOS and that's it - there's already a tactical layer on top of that. This would be another parameter.

/QUOTE]

But this kind of problem is something the AI already doesn't really cope with. An AI tank will shoot at targets in it's field of fire, run away from a serious threat, and otherwise advance or not as the AI plan dictates. It doesn't (as far as I am aware) have a concept of there is a target at X that I can see but not fire at, and need to reposition to find a suitable firing position. In fact I can't think of any situation in the game right now where a unit has LoS to a target but can't engage it, with the exception of ATGMs with minimum ranges, and the AI there makes no attempt to move the ATGM out of minimum range to engage (quite reasonably, since vehicles are so much more mobile than ATGM crews). They just don't fire instead, and sit around looking for other targets or hiding.

But gun elevation limits will hurt an AI that can't do that. In marginal cases it may be obvious to a human player that a tank on a slope can move forwards or backwards 10 feet to reach level ground that allows it to engage an enemy tank, and the issue of finding suitable firing position really isn't an AI strong point anyway. I'm pretty certain no such code is in at the moment, which means either the whole issue of identifying targets in LoS but not LoF and finding nearby firing positions that enable them to be targetted (including whether it is worth bothering for a fast moving target at all) is something that needs to be coded, or that the tanks will just sit around doing nothing being unable to fire at a target despite being 10 feet away from a good firing position.

Again, there is probably nothing insurmountable about this. It just takes time. And therefore has to compete with the rest of the wish list.

[Other Means]

Oh agreed - it can be done but should it take precedence?

Knowing the number of server purely dedicated to holding the TODO list now require a specialised cooling system as the cloud of steam from the existing towers was starting to affect weather patterns in Maine - probably not.

[Thomm]

Well, nobody knows the list except BFC, so do not hope for an answer.

I hope for gun elevation restrictions (at least in the sense of preventing almost vertical shooting) and peeking around corners in the CM:SF engine, which obviously will see another year of development until all CM:SF modules are out.

Best regards,

Thomm

[akd]

But this kind of problem is something the AI already doesn't really cope with. An AI tank will shoot at targets in it's field of fire, run away from a serious threat, and otherwise advance or not as the AI plan dictates. It doesn't (as far as I am aware) have a concept of there is a target at X that I can see but not fire at, and need to reposition to find a suitable firing position. In fact I can't think of any situation in the game right now where a unit has LoS to a target but can't engage it, with the exception of ATGMs with minimum ranges, and the AI there makes no attempt to move the ATGM out of minimum range to engage (quite reasonably, since vehicles are so much more mobile than ATGM crews). They just don't fire instead, and sit around looking for other targets or hiding.

But gun elevation limits will hurt an AI that can't do that. In marginal cases it may be obvious to a human player that a tank on a slope can move forwards or backwards 10 feet to reach level ground that allows it to engage an enemy tank, and the issue of finding suitable firing position really isn't an AI strong point anyway. I'm pretty certain no such code is in at the moment, which means either the whole issue of identifying targets in LoS but not LoF and finding nearby firing positions that enable them to be targetted (including whether it is worth bothering for a fast moving target at all) is something that needs to be coded, or that the tanks will just sit around doing nothing being unable to fire at a target despite being 10 feet away from a good firing position.

Again, there is probably nothing insurmountable about this. It just takes time. And therefore has to compete with the rest of the wish list.

There is, however, an example of the inverse in the game. If the AI has LOS to a target that it doesn't want to get shot by, it will move out of LOS to that target. Maybe something similar could be used for elevation limits, e.g.

-if target is spotted but exceeds minimum elevation limits, move forward until target is within limits

-if target is spotted but exceeds maximum elevation limits, either ignore if not a direct threat to tank, or reverse until target is within limits, out of threat range, or out of LOS.

[c3k]

Gents,

A lot of good ideas here. Here's my perspective for whatever it's worth. I play WeGo mainly. Having 60 seconds of out-of-control makes a high fidelity elevation model a non-player. My support for that is the following: I know an enemy squad is in a depression. I suppress them. I advance an M1 to eliminate them. The gun cannot depress enough, yet the bullets leaving the coax at a large angle destroy/eliminate the enemy infantry.

If the "fudge" of bullets leaving at a large angle were not present, that M1 could never have fired on the infantry.

Here's the leap of faith; in real life (yeah, that opens up a counter-argument, but go with me for a bit), the driver could've/would've advanced forward a few tenths of a meter or whatnot to allow the weapons to bear on the target. As a WeGoer I cannot do that. So the lack of realistic bullet/shell ballistics when leaving the muzzle actually lead to a MORE realistic simulation.

To have a totally realistic simulation of depression/elevation effects would need a much more granular elevation map. Minor terrain undulations would be needed. The sharpness of contours would need to be rounded. I'm sure there are other requirements.

Does the CMSF system have a perfect simulation of these effects? Of course not.

I do not think rigid depression/elevation simulation is a solution.

Whatever solution is promulgated needs to address two opposing requirements; it needs to disallow firing at targets which could not be reached by a real weapon system and it needs to allow my GAME unit to fire at targets which cannot be hit by the GAME unit right now, but probably could be hit by a real unit.

I look at the current solution as a compromise. Any other idea will also be a compromise, but would have to be a BETTER compromise.

Regards,

Ken

[Fūrinkazan]

I think we should consider if this feature si worth the time that developers would spend on it and if the ai can handle it.

I think this would change urban combat a lot. This is one of the great difference between the old cm and the new engine. I had to adapt myself and my tactics to a much more detailed environment. On one of the first scenarios i played, my infantry was stopped by snipers on roof of buildings, and i had a lot of problems to find a shooting position for my tank. I had to play it several times to find a good solution. Even without the elevation, it's harder to hit buildings and to find good angle.

I feel it's frustrating when you defend and your infantry is destroyed by a tank placed at 2 meters of the wall and 3 floors lower.

You can target a wall at 1 m, but what happens when you shoot ?

If it's a HE shell, the result is an explosion at 1 m of your tank. You may damage your vehicle (optics, gun, ERA etc...).

What would be the result with the 100 mm gun of a bmp3 and its thin armor ?

If we take a humvee equipped with a grenade launcher for exemple. I think there is also a minimum range. The grenade is made to detonate at 15 m minimum to avoid the shooter being killed by his own weapon.

During the war in Lebanon, Tsahal used canister against infantry. It was the best type of ammo for urban combat because you could shoot your own tanks without risks of damaging them.

This would change our tactics to make them more realistic i believe.

Tanks would keep the great roads under their fire, infantry would clean the area with the help of bradley or bmp, when the opposition is too strong, you would use arty or air support.

In the game, you don't have to destroy all the houses to clean them, because you can use one tank very close. One shot and the game is over.

If you compare to real life there si a huge difference. The Israeli had to destroy entire areas of a town to get rid of the defenders, and it was a long and hard process.

If you ambush a tank by its side in a 3 m wide street, the tank cannot turn its turret to reach you. It's possible in the game and that's a great disadvantage for infantry. Minimum range would be an abstraction to simulate the fact that the tank cannot turn its turret in narrow streets.

I believe that the AI can handle this because it must already do it now. It must find firing position and it must adapt to the changing battlefield.

It could be a benefit for the AI by preventing it to get too close from buildings and attacked by AT teams.

I'm not asking for the exact copy of real life, but i think that minimum range for guns and grenade launchers and elevation would make urban combat much more interesting, fierce and challenging.

[Thomm]

Funny: I was running little tests on the subject yesterday and targeted the top floor of an eight-storey building with a Bradley from some 100 meters away. Due to the mixed up degrees-of-freedom of the launcher (bug!), the launch happened off-axis and landed squarely in the top floor of the building next to the target!!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Wengart]

including realistic gun elevations is most likely too harsh. It not only creates problems for wegoers, but will require some extensive work on the A.I However, if some very generalized limitations were included it could work. For example, the main gun's are prevented from firing at the fourth floor of a building if its in the street in front of the building. I'm not sure on what this angle would be, but it would help. Furthermore, the main gun could have a minimum range of perhaps just a few meters in front of it.

But, honestly, I believe infantry have enough of an advantage currently with the initiative they get from being in a building.

[Dietrich]

If not realistic gun elevation overall, why not leave depression as is but impose realistic (or somewhat realistic) limitation on elevation? That way, hull-down wouldn't be made problematic, and firing at the upper floor of a building from the street below would be disallowed.

[Battlefront.com]

Sorry I'm coming into this late. Busy week on top of a really great 6 day head/chest cold. Yippie!

I've skimmed this thread and here's the short answer to the question about us putting in gun elevation/depression restrictions:

No.

It's a massively difficult problem for the AI to handle, not to mention the gameplay ramifications. As is often the case, I see that some people have casually dismissed these issues as either not existing or being worse than the existing behavior. Since I've had detailed discussions with Charles about this since the early days of CMx1 (gun elevation/depression isn't restricted in CMx1 either), I'm going to have to go with Charles on this one. For some reason I suspect he knows more about the difficulty

Personally, I was a bit surprised when Charles said he wasn't going to code elevation/depression restrictions into CMx2. This was back, oh, 2-3 years ago I would guess. I figured with all the better data on hand and less abstraction that it would be easier to deal with than with CMx1. But it makes sense that it isn't since the primary problem is AI logic. Having things be more or less exact doesn't make the AI programming task easier.

When I asked Charles if he ever thought he'd code elevation/depression into CM the answer was "no". You guys who have been hanging around here for 10+ years know there are very, very few things which Charles categorically rules out. There are even fewer that I tell you about

If you guys don't understand what the big deal is about it, that's fine. Just remember that not understanding the problem isn't the same thing as the problem not existing. After all, I don't understand why we can't have cold fusion but apparently it's got something to do with physics

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

BTW, this quote from TheVulture back on Page 1 of this thread is spot on:

Imposing the restriction no doubt would be pretty trivial. But there's always more to it than that when making games.

Restricting the gun elevation is a piece of cake. It's everything else that's difficult.

The truth is that the number of times a gun elevation problem actually comes up in a game is not very significant. If it were, then the balance of pros/cons might shift enough to have the restrictions implemented without any UI or AI work. In other words, it's more of a theoretical problem than an actual one. Consider that this problem has been around for 10+ years (think of how many millions of gameplay hours that adds up to!) and then think of how often this comes up for discussion. That says a lot.

Steve

[Fūrinkazan]

Steve,

I was quite sure that the answer would be no for gun elevation and that's not a problem for me.

When i was playing with CMBO for exemple, i did not attach importance to this.

If i do now, it's your fault

You gave us a much more detailed environment with high buildings, and the new game engine is so much better that things that didn't matter before can now bring new questions.

When we had three soldiers to represent a squad we could accept more abstraction.

I think there was a problem like this when infantry could shoot through multiple floors of a building and you changed it.

In CMBO, tanks were blind, so they had problems to see infantry in buildings.

In many battles i could assault tanks from very close without being detected by the crew.

Now that tanks "see" better this is much more a problem i think.

In fact, i don't care about gun elevation

I think this is not the problem. I joined this thread because a tank that was very close to a house killed my infantry which was on the third floor and i thought this was too unrealistic.

Maybe if vehicles had a blind spot on their top or if they couldn't "see" through the floors this would avoid strange situations like this. If they can't see the infantry, they can't shoot it.

Today, on a QB, one of my bmp's was in a very narrow street and there was

no space on each side of the vehicle. I think that infantry hidden in a building beside this bmp would be out of reach. And it would be more difficult for a T72 with is long gun. This is why i thought that a minimum range would be a solution to avoid impossible shots from the side.

Of course, i can understand that this can bring a lot of problems for programmers and that you don't want to spend time on this but i think there's a solution that doesn't need to have a detailed gun elevation model.

I can accept abstraction as long as the result is not too far from reality.

This can be a detail for many players and i understand this, but i love wargames and CM series because of those details that make them interesting and challenging.

[Battlefront.com]

Furinkazan,

You gave us a much more detailed environment with high buildings, and the new game engine is so much better that things that didn't matter before can now bring new questions.

Believe me, I know the feeling When we made CMBO we had to do all sorts of things that 2D games didn't do because of the graphical and 3D nature of CM. But of course it was impossible to do everything that was needed. Some problems were due to the hardware, many due to development time. Even though CMx2 is much more detailed than CMx1, and CMx1 is so much more detailed than anything else, we are still limited by hardware and development time. I had hoped gun elevation/depression restrictions would be possible in CMx2, however as I've said it's not going to happen for a long time (if ever) because the primary reasons for it not being in CMx1 are the same for CMx2.

Each individual crew member in a vehicle has his own "arc" to see the world around him. When crews are buttoned they can only see what the collective arcs show, unlike CMx1 that simply reduced the chance of spotting something when buttoned up. This means a tank which has only forward facing vision blocks is blind to the sides and rear when buttoned up. Vehicles don't have overhead vision so engaging an elevated target very close is not likely (there is one situation with fast motion that theoretically could, but I doubt it happens in reality).

As for restricting gun rotation (different than elevation) the same basic problems exist. However, I do think it is possible to have a sphere around the vehicle where its primary weapon can not be fired. In fact, I thought we already had that working I'll double check with Charles.

A note from a previous concern about hull down limitations of gun depression. A main gun will not shoot through solid ground, therefore if the gun can not site a target directly then it can't fire. This greatly reduces the chances of a hull down vehicle being able to shoot at something in real life it couldn't shoot at because it would take some bizarre circumstances (terrain, friendly unit placement, enemy unit location) to allow a vehicle to be hull down and be able to shoot below hull height. Again, a theoretical concern rather than a real problem.

Steve

[Fūrinkazan]

Steve,

Thanks for taking time to answer our question. I Really appreciate that:). It's great to have the opportunity to talk to the people who are making our favorite toys.

I would like to take the occasion of this thread to ask a few questions about the physical model of the game.

In fact very few things bother me when i'm playing. Some have to do with "physics" and the rest with the behaviour of our pixel soldiers. I will post a thread about behaviour (moral, reaction to stress etc..) later.

I'm glad to know that there's a possibility to have that sphere around vehicle to avoid unrealistic use of main weapon. I did a test today but it seems i could target at on meter with a bmp. May i suggest a few meters for bmp and bradles and at least 10 meters for tanks ? I think this would be a good compromise.

- Do you think that tanks will be able to crush walls and trees (with restrictions, of course) ? When i first played CMSF i was astonished to see that my tanks were stopped by tiny walls, huge difference with CMBO.

I was really happy to see that trees could be destroyed by arty. May i suggest that with a fast move order, tanks could crush trees and with slow move they would try to avoid them just like it is now ?

- It's now possible to shoot through friendly vehicle. When the same vehicle is destroyed, it blocks the shells and bullets. Would it be possible to have it all the time ? (I'm asking this because i think it would be interresting for tactics, infantry could hide behind vehicles and the last vehicle of a column would not be able to shoot through the first. A line of vehicles taken by the flank would have problems to return fire efficiently, this is why germans had sophisticated tank formations)

- Would it be possible to have a minimum distance between to vehicles to avoid collision and strange graphic effects.

- With the new engine, would it be possible for tanks to crush little houses ?

A tactic used by germans was to make their engineers destroy a wall of a house to hide a tank in it (protection against aviation, ambush etc..) This could be also an interesting feature. Before CMBO i played with the close combat serie and i remember that you could have vehicle inside russians factories in Stalingrad. Do you think this could be the same in CM in the future ?

- I think it could be fun to have our vehicles having mechanical problems (auto loader broken, engine, computer etc...). The frequency would be decided by the scenario designer for exemple or by the reliability of the vehicle, experience of the crew ...

I was thinking about a Panther attack at the battle of Koursk for exemple, where you could loose more tanks due to mechanical problems than enemy fire.( I really loved when my last tank was stuck in the mud at the moment in needed it the most ) There was somthing like this in close combat : in winter the engine of vehicle could be frozen.

Well, that's a lot of questions, sorry, but it was a long time i was waiting to ask them.

Of course, i guess that you are working on many other things for the game (water, rain etc..) and i'm not asking for this now, but maybe in the future ? You gave us so many surprises and i think the new engine has a lot of great possibilities unexploited.

Those features, i think, would bring much more tactical possibilities, more chaos on the battlefield and... more fun.

[hcrof]

Steve - I know you have given a definate no to the idea of restricting gun elevation but something occured to me about the subject.

I was driving through some hills and thought to myself that it was terrible tank country (yes, that should be on the 'you know you have played too much CMSF' thead ) The reason why: The slopes where too steep and tanks wouldn't be able to elevate their guns.

But it occured to be that no sane commander would send tanks into that country. Likewise - if an AI controlled tank can't fire its main weapon due to elevation restrictions it is probably the scenario designers fault for making an AI plan that stops tanks on steep slopes.

The elevation restrictions can be quite generous - not as restrictive as real life so that a minor mistake won't be punished. However - shells comeing at right angles out of the barrel should not be allowed - its extreme but it happened to me once and it was a huge WTF moment that destroyed a carefully planned ambush.

[Thomm]

However - shells comeing at right angles out of the barrel should not be allowed.

Yes, and it cannot be repeated often enough. If only this aspect was eliminated, the MOUT game would benefit considerably.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Field Marshal Blücher]

I was driving through some hills and thought to myself that it was terrible tank country (yes, that should be on the 'you know you have played too much CMSF' thead )

Oh God, don't get me started.