The Importance of Inaccuracy

My thought is this, today, in our world, the technology exists to guide the projectile after it has left the barrel. While I agree that even the best barrels in the world are not perfectly accurate, once you start guiding the projectile that becomes less of a problem.

guys lets talk about the accuracy thing and how units are all a one-hit kill currently.

I agree with most points

If the target is stationary, your basic dumbfire artillery shell can be expected to fall surprisingly accurately. I learned this when playing this game: http://cannonbang.sourceforge.net/ as a 5 year old.

The guys from the movie "October Sky", (based on real story) also learned it.

Since WW1, artillery has been fired accurately from the first round. In WW1, artillery was attacking enemy positions 50 metres from allied troops.

It's not a good situation, I agree, but it is a good simulation, and that's what is more important. The defence of the target is to move.

While the argument "robots can't be used as the explanation for everything", in WW1 you had very limited computing power from the guys running the gun, in comparison to the power of a CPU, which is capable of performing many hundreds of thousands of calculations per second.

In addition, the CPU is perfectly capable of adjusting the calculations based on the condition of the gun. In other words, while robots can't be used as the explanation for everything, in this case you have a calculation which was expressed 100 years ago, the variables expressed in that calculation and a CPU perfectly capable of performing those calculations. It doesn't matter about the condition of the gun. The computer just needs the initial equation, a feedback on whether or not the target was hit and the computer is away and laughing.

What you're saying is that stationary targets shouldn't be hit 100% accurately from the first shot.. Predicted fire has been used for a century for precisely that purpose, and it pre-dates the development of smart munitions.

On all other fronts I agree, but indirect fire is the one weapon which should be 100% accurate, all of the time.

Then I will go back to my original point. Do you sacrifice build time and cost for highly accurate weapons, or do you sacrifice highly accurate weapons for reduced cost and build time?

There should be room for both. But the high cost advanced units should be built with advanced factories. Basic factories should specialise in cheap and fast production.

You are historically correct about the ability of a calculated shot to be accurately placed. However, what would be realistic is not necessarily best for gameplay.

Consider that the entire PA game is compressed into a much shorter time frame than a realistic conflict, and with very few individual pieces that are, strategically speaking, very close together compared to their movement speed than realistic tanks and infantry on a continent or in a region. The effect of introducing "realistic" ranges, accuracy, and splash would be to make artillery the absolute lord of the battlefield.

Which would be realistic, since artillery largely still is in fact the central and most important asset in modern warfare. But unlike in real war, PA players don't have cities to capture or political objectives that will involve infantry, and so on and so forth.

My point is that an argument from realism depends upon the game being a true simulation, which PA is not. A game like Wargame, a semi-realistic Cold War gone-hot strategy game, gives an argument from realism a lot more traction.


However, for PA you have to start from a gameplay model and build upward from there. Not a simulation of reality. The gameplay effect of having "realistically" accurate artillery in conjunction with the truly unrealistic time scale and other unrealistic factors would be undesirable.

Realistically accurate artillery, for example, fails to model the poor quality of information available in realistic combat scenarios. In RTS games, including PA, confirmed information is useful not just strategically, but for targeting, and in real time. Realistically most artillery shells are fired at nothing by mistake, or in a suppressive capacity rather than for effect, or as a covering fire or defensive fire.

The high quality of targeting information from visual contact in PA would make realistic artillery ridiculously efficient general-purpose weapons, not just as artillery fire support.

only Indirect Fire units should have Inaccuracy(Arty), and long-range units(Battleships),some bombers too

Oh my God thank you. I was reading this thread and clawing my eyes out as I watched people that I respect stoop to arguing that this game should be a certain way because it would be more realistically accurate.

This post voids the last page and a half of posts. And that superb OP? You're right and for the right reasons too! I just hope you're good at this game and we can be friends.

"These robots are advanced and perfect, it doesn't make sense. This game should be based on my conjecture about the future." This makes me cringe, how do these people live with themselves?

I see inaccuracy currently in game.......

no.

just no. kill 5 ants with 1 come back and we talk.

But surly a tanks should have the accuracy to be highly effective against enemy tanks?

Differences in ordinance should really help determine how one unit is effective against another, like:

Shells are powerful and fast, but have little to no predictive fire and no tracking.

Thus making them ineffective against fast targets that are not moving directly at them, however they could be improved by making their shells slower or by having them use less predictive fire, thus making them less effective against moving targets and especially small targets like bots or planes.

maybe you don't watch animations but I see units under shoot constantly. Yes you can kill five with one, we call it micro. Used to annoy the piss out of ppl in ta with one ak

And if five die to one aren't they inaccurate???? Isn't that the point you're attempting to make??? That there needs to be inaccuracy??? And I can kill five ants with one dox but not with another ant

OMG learn to chill, the point is you currently can't micro in PA, not when you compare it to FA, all the sudden whatever micro you do in PA becomes filmbsy in comparison.

And i said ants not bots. ants generally one-hit-kill each other. microing a unit in that senario is just about as worthless as playing an fps (in my opinion) where you just kill one guy, then die once. Then your utra-concise actions didn't change the overall course of things.

I'm saying it's laking especially in a game that makes the effort to simulate the projectiles.

what's the point if it always hits (counting the bugs that will be fixed down the line out) ?

Well it's not too bad if it always hits, more like how it always kills.

With perfect accuracy you end up with a battle of attrition, albeit very quickly due to the damage, so there can be no retreat.

Only war.

That's not inaccuracy, that's units not leading thier target. Otherwise they always hit exactly where they were aiming.

Mike

Thus being inaccurate....... accuracy= hitting your target. I can click attack and lead shots when necessary, but I know how you girls hate micro

No. That is not accuracy. Think of it this way, they still hit exactly where they were aiming.

Mike

granted in being a technical finicky ****, but..... accuracy is defined as the ability to hit your target moving or not. Yes they fire at where the unit was but that's not hitting your target therefore inaccurate. Only missile units in ta were accurate100% that is......

You're exactly right Accuracy is defined as hitting your target, and the problem is that units don't target other units, they target LOCATIONS, which they hit perfectly every time.

Mike

Agreed. Also, I find inaccuracy in rts games more annoying than anything. Too much 'luck' based gameplay.