Weapon Ranges as Hard Limits (currently) vs probabilistic limits

Not to mention the obvious effects that terrain elevations should have on projectiles.....

So to polish your idea, units wouldn't engage beyond maximum range but generally flat trajectory projectiles should continue some distance outside that engagement range, with damage sloping off there would be no accuracy as the unit wouldn't have actually fired upon something that far away. The projectile would just continue its trajectory until brought to earth.

The range indicator should display the maximum range for a unit's weapon. The problem with displaying something less than that is that players will have to memorize actual maximum ranges, and gain a large advantage from doing so. And if units don't automatically engage at their actual maximum range, but wait until a target is closer than actually necessary to hit the target, then players could manually fire to greatly extend units' ranges.

Range indicators should display the maximum range, and units should automatically fire at maximum range. But as OP suggests, it could work to make some weapons more accurate as enemies get closer.

My input doesn't compute??? All units currently engage at maximum effective range. The question or mystery is where does the round go when a unit misses??? Aiming at somethings foot of big toe makes no sense. So like I said flatter trajectory weapons which bots and vehicles use, should continue some distance beyond that range with damage sloping off you can't really say the accuracy of the projectile drops. Since at this point the round was already inaccurate and is simply following it's original trajectory. All units should be accurate within their shown range, but when a round missed albeit from a targeted unit dying before impact, or the target strafes it from a change in direction, those rounds should continue for some distance instead of magically disappearing at that maximum effective range line.

Artillery and naval really doesn't fall under these settings as they are arcing their shots to achieve maximum range, and really can do nothing to fire any further...... also as knight mentioned explosive rounds don't lose effectiveness at any distance.

I feel this is an important topic worthy of more discussion so sue me I'm bumping it!!!

Point & Logic: Valid

Result & Purpose: Invalid

Just have it the same as TA. Problem solved.

how is the result and purpose invalid??? Its known as collateral damage, an effect of any firefight. Magically disappearing rounds seems a bit more invalid to me. This setup was a great thing in TA ...

I'm certainly in favor of this idea. I think that if certain units (not artillery for start) came with a sort of overextended range that would allow them to hit artillery, even if not for a lot of damage, and that this would push artillery into the role of anti-static-defense instead of anti-unit, which I do believe the devs planned on doing (not 100% positive).

Am I the only one who thinks that the idea stated in the OP is backed by flawed logic? (No offence) If the towers can turn their 120 into weaker 160, then the sheller would turn his 160 into a weaker 213.33 and STILL out-range the towers and frustrate you. Except he'd be frustrating you for a longer period...

And then there'd be a need to implement a whole level of AI and interface control to deal with engaging at various ranges, and a major balance headache from comparing damage at max ranges versus damage at optimal ranges, and deciding which to buff and which to nerf... All that for no actual gameplay effect, other than hampering "outrangeing" (which IS a long-standing tradition of the legacy which PA is attempting to inherit, and which is there for good and deep reasons, I should add) by making it happen at non-optimal ranges and thus being much slower than a normal engagement, and adding laughably distant semblance with real life into a game that already plays around with planets and their orbits while paying minimal regards to astrophysics.

Effective range play is primarily a privilege of non-strategy games. To be exact, "one controlled entity per one player" games, such as air/space/tank simulators and shooters. This is mainly because automated control of range is niether advanced nor involved enough to maintain the concept of non-optimal ranges as something beneficial to gameplay, and manual control of entities in numbers appropriate for strategy games in aspect of their firing ranges is more likely to be regarded as an opposite of fun by an average player.

And, beer4blood, what you're suggesting doesn't look that good either. PA's engine doesn't exactly have spare computer resources to throw away for the sake of resource intense cosmetic mechanics. No matter how optimised it gets in the future, with wide range of players' hardware, and galactic scale in mind every damn iteration counts, and even if there's were any resources to spare, which is almost a conceptual contradiction for a large-scale multi-player strategy, there are higher priority cosmetics out there...

Sorry about sounding so harsh, but really, those two gimmick-ideas aren't something to even consider for a game as demanding to both player's hardware and developer's manware as PA. Neither of these two resources is likely to run out of things to be spent on within development->release->support timeframe of a game to the point of being wasted on gimmicks.

This is called a counter. A pretty hard counter at that.

They are SUPPOSED to be in RTS games, that's how units interact. If they all could more or less take each other on then there's no point in having different units.

I agree with that the op idea is silly having less than effective ranges, its overly complicated and doesn't exactly make to a good fit.

Now I believe you aren't grasping my concept . How is what I suggest complicated??? The animation is already there, the rounds need to only finish their trajectory, and a formula added for decreasing damage outside of engagement ranges. They did it 16 years ago in TA you're trying to say it's impossible now?? TA did it in the days when CPUs used megabytes instead of gigs. No sir not that difficult.

Something makes me doubt that TA used complex physics in it's trajectory calculations. For starters TA's world was square, the PA's "worlds" are spheric, it's like a "warped disk" It's very unlikely that they are using 3-d trajectories with gravity for ground to ground combat, but even 2d math of a warped disk is notably harder. I didn't code the thing, but I'd be surprised if the majority of projectiles weren't "faking" the real flight routine, by just moving from the known starting point to the known ending point in what looks like a straight line on user's screen. The ending point of "collateral" damage is unknown, it'd have to be calculated, not to mention the fact that just the chance of there being a "collateral hit" would mean that the game can no longer fake the trajectory calculations of any shots with a chance for collateral. For TA it was as simple as continuing a line, for PA that'd be continuing a pseudo curve aka line in a warped space, OR resorting to actual 3-dimentional physics for things that could otherwise be easily faked. Well, then of cause, we could fake the whole collateral thing by sending random shots at random points "not on the target" at random times. But even that, while looking noticably weird, would need at least some consideration of target's location, and add several truly unnecessary iterations to each and every shot of each and every unit on each and every battlefield in a 64 players galactic conflict game. No sir, that's not easy any more. (I'm not mixing this up with something else am I? They did promise 64 players in the same real time galactic strategy didn't they?)

Supreme Commander wasn't anywhere near "light" on PC resources, Supreme Commander 2 wasn't either and I doubt that PA will be, especially seeing how it has much larger scale, and more physics to keep in mind. On top of that there's a lot to do for the team as it is. I don't think that spending effort and engine's "load" on a gimmick that isn't as simple as it might seem to be at first glance is going to help the game.

Heck, when did such gimmicks help revolutionary games at all? At best those gimmicks can make you "clone of starcraft number 100502" look a bit more unique than those "different" 100500 games that didn't have any designing to do either. In all other cases, devs are better of polishing their game's design, not their game's "toenails"...

It's not a gimmick for one it's a representation of realism. Everything is already in game for it to work aside from dissipating damage.

And yea I believe 40vs40 is the limit. Also you should read around galactic war is a meta game. The trajectories are already there so your argument of round worlds blah blah blah holds no water.

Go buy TA and play it. Watch the projectiles continue my friend. You are seriously over thinking this. To that point that your are forgetting what is already in game. It only lacks two formulas to work sir.

Also gravity did play a part in TA a well as wind, and tides. All of that is sixteen years old. It really isn't that difficult. Also notable part of the pa team helped develop TA so I think they could easily handle it.......

I don't see where you're pulling random shots at random times from either. The projectiles merely finish their already pathed route. Missing the intended target either because it was destroyed before impact, or because the target was given a move order that made it miss. But you're fine with poof magical disappearing shots??

TA was fully physics modeled. I can't imagine why you wouldn't believe that. PA is as well.

TA and PA both have various projectile types that go in arcs or straight lines. I don't even know what you're trying to say.

PA has promised 40 concurrent players.

You have a point in there, ranges are now modified by planet curvature.

Could you try to restate what you're saying, because I read your post but I have no idea what you're trying to say for most of your paragraph besides speculating on some theoretical game system that doesn't exist.

Even wind affected projectiles in TA.

They do use 3-d trajectories for ballistic weapons in TA and PA. Shots can go below and above their intended target if the target moves.

Glad I'm not the only one he confused

Seriously, how far ahead of its time was TA?

It's just completely ludicrous how much effort went into the mechanics of that game.