Why is the arc for arty so ridiculously high up?

It's a nerf to the Pelter's ability to replace the laser tower.
It's a buff to artillery's ability to shoot over walls and cliffs. ("Pelter wars, now with more wall!" -Planetary Annihilation Beta)
It's an aesthetic upgrade on large planets.

the latest of @ZaphodX's productions should be enough.

really it's an aesthetic issue. (as I pointed out above, to obtain the same airborne duration while lowering the arc, all you have to do is reduce the projectile speed). And if there were any orbital units in that game there would have been arty passing through those units making it's ridiculousness all the more obvious.

Actually it would hit the orbital units a day deal damage... yay simulated projectiles

I haven't checked the files but if it's not specified that they interact with orbital then no they won't.

The current high arc was originally implemented as a fix for the beta days when pelters were insane OP and were used endlessly in both attack and defense. Incidentally they've been worthless ever since, but at least people don't pelter creep anymore. One more on the long list of quick fixed things that are still in a defunct state!

Oh you mean UBER actually intend for the arc to be lower they just haven't gotten around to it yet?

No they just won't /aim/ at orbital. I've seen peters hit air units before by mistake.

Actually arch are pretty finicky IIRC, I remember Stuart was having difficulties with our artillery bot because there were only like two settings I think for him to set it to. (Basically high and low) though Uber has the whole engine on their side and can change that bit themselves. Wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to keep it for some odd reason.

no. you don't get what I mean.

OFC the dev would have thought about pelter's projectiles colliding with air. that's as old as TA probably. at least as old as supcom.

however I think it highly likely that they never could have even imagined it may reach orbital and as such have not listed orbital layer in what it can hit.

check the files to see how this works.

one of the uses is splitting ally and enemy into two different damage categories. (E.G. walls let projectiles through when you're allie but block them when you're enemy)

and then there's how much damage dealt from category to other category.

Nope, there aren't... I've been working with unit/weapon/ammo .jsons for months now, remember.

There are Armour values, but only two, one is for the ubercannon and the other is so aircraft don't damage an air factory.

ah, well, my mistake, today I learned

Don't worry about it.

Nanolathe's explanation is probably the right one. It seems the muzzle velocity is pretty much constant for arty ( I could be wrong about that though), which means you've only got 2 angles you can hit a target with.
One is going to be very high for targets that are close by, while the other is going to be very shallow for targets that are close by. If you want to have a similar, reasonable arc for targets at any range, you would need variable muzzle velocity, which it seems isn't being used.

Maybe it's because the arc would be fairly difficult to see if it didn't curve so much. Also as the projectile is a physical, simulated object so a higher arc gives it a greater chance of hitting the intended target instead of an object in the way.

i dont know but i imagine an artilery firing a projectile with low arc and low speed would look rather silly ... what is that? a slowmotion artillery were the projektile looks like it just could fall down at anytime?

depends. changing arc hight changes time 'till impact very very slowly at first and then crescendo.

Whereas changing projectile speed changes time 'till impact as a constant and starts of very fast.

so even with a drastic change to the arc you would only need to reduce speed a tiny bit to get the same time 'till impact.

not true they were very visible in SupCom with it's lower arcs.
also SupCom featured tiny yellow dots for projectiles at the strategic view, with a bigger variation of the dots for some of the tech 3 projectiles and some (very nasty for their level) t2 projectiles.

Do you have difficulty in seeing low arc projectiles? If they're hard to see, then you can fix that by making the projectile/trail stand out more.

That is correct, however the point at which most of your shots can't be blocked is a significantly lower angle than what's currently there.

i personally like the high arc... it's 'purdy'!

and... does it give the target an opportunity to possibly roll out from under the shell?

we've been over this three times already .....

haven't you thought of reducing projectile speed?

personally I don't find the high arc to be pretty at all.

it takes me out of the experience.

makes me wonder if PA really does look that much like spore during these moments of doubt.

Spore was Purdy