(Note: I know this is lengthy, skip to the bottom for my exploratory questions.) I love the physics-based artillery in TA and SupCom. However, both of these games used a flat terrain model which made projectile paths easy to calculate. In PA, this is not the case. I have been thinking about situations in which projectiles may misbehave if there is not enough attention paid to the targeting algorithms for artillery structures. For instance, assume you have two bases on a reasonably size planet; think the size of the pitch trailer planet. Assuming there are long-ish range artillery emplacements (including unit cannon and such), they will be firing a significant distance over the horizon to hit their targets. If the projectiles are fired in a slow high arc akin to SupCom, then the targeting algorithm will need to take into account the arc of the planet's surface and quite possibly the changes to gravity by taking a high sub-orbital trajectory. This is assuming a prograde equatorial flight path and low planetary rotation rates. However, if you change any of these factors, the equations get much more complex in order to achieve an accurate firing solution (as far as my limited understanding of orbital mechanics and projectile paths go). The problems seem to get more pronounced the smaller of a planetary body you begin to fight on. Think about fighting with artillery on a small moon. In order to hit an opponent, on the other side of the moon, the artillery would need to fire a high enough arc to achieve a 1/2 orbit, but it would also need to make sure it did not fire too fast to escape the moon's gravity well. If it did fire too fast, the shot would be lost and fall back to the parent body which might have unintended friendly fire consequences. If the shot was fired at the right angle, it might miss the enemy's base entirely and travel a full orbit to hit yourself (i.e. shooting a bullet so fast you shoot yourself in the back of the head). If you go even smaller, say to an asteroid, the smallest artillery would be able to fire shots to escape the tiny gravity well of an asteroid. Obviously this renders them useless, but if you happened to build one anyway, would the artillery emplacement "know" it couldn't hit targets? If so, would it just sit there idly forever? Would it "know" it could shoot off the asteroid and hit the planets below? If it didn't know it couldn't hit targets, would it try to fire anyway only to cause unintended mayhem throughout the system?
I take 3 things away from this post. 1: artillery can miss its target depending on the circumstances. I feel that this might make sense. I don't think artillery should be able to miss by several miles or half of an orbit of a planet or anything of that distance, but I do think that this might make sense from a game play perspective. This would probably make things interesting and invoke interesting strategies. Knowing that artillery will function worse or better in certain environments might cause players to react and plan differently. Shakes things up. 1 some what leads into 2: artillery should work differently depending on where it is built. Low gravity = longer range. This makes sense to me. It also makes battles over small moons and asteroids eve more fierce. and finally 3: artillery should be able to fire between planets, asteroids, moons that orbit around each other. I want this to be true so badly. THIS WOULD BE AWESOME!!!
Exactly. I feel like it would be an interesting gameplay element to be able to build artillery bases on a moon and bombard the planet below, especially if the moon was tidally locked like our moon. That way, the land on the front side of the moon would have a strategic value. I am just concerned that the algorithms that control what an artillery piece thinks it can hit might break down under certain odd circumstances, but I guess that's what alpha/beta is for.
I appreciate it, but that is only a side note to the primary purpose of my topic. I'm mostly trying to address the complexities of targeting algorithms in a physics based, multi-body environment. Is nobody else worried that there might be circumstances in which the artillery can't figure out what to do?
I suppose that it's a concern of mine, I just honestly have no idea how to fix it to make everyone happy. On asteroids you could make it such that that artillery is just too big for such a small asteroid. On planets and moons, make the coverage of a certain artillery building equal to a certain percent of the planets surface area. Then you would never have to worry about complicated algorithms. Chalk it up to artillery rounds only having so much "gunpowder" or something.
Unless the moon is immensely large to practically be its own planet, and thus have a gravitational field strong enough to even pull artillery shells down to the ground, artillery should be all but useless on moons/asteroids. The reason being that the shells would have so much kinetic energy that they would escape the moons gravity field instead of hitting their target. Even for low tier artillery. Moon environments would be one of those places you do not want projectiles, you would want primarily lasers especially if it is a moon similar to the one we have. Which frankly is not that small of a moon considering how big it is in relation to our planet, but still has very low gravity itself.
I guess there's a couple options. One of which stated above is NOT allowing certain size artillery on smaller planets. I assume each planetoid will have a "mass". Each artillery could only be built on planetoids having a certain mass, and that way its targeting algorithms wouldn't allow its projectiles to escape the planet. On the other hand, you could have it so that you could build any artillery anywhere, and it could fire (assuming it could mechanically turn) in any direction, including straight up. It would obviously only do this in a low gravity environment where its projectile could escape and then land on another planetoid. I absolutely love this idea. Building high powered cannons on asteroids and then flying them around like they're units? Sign me up... But yes, it could be very complicated. I think the bullets/shells/missiles should use calculations right before they fire, and they should be accurate enough to prevent extremely random behavior. Obviously artillery shouldn't be pinpoint, but it should know whether its shot is going to land on the same planet or not, and if you tell it to attack something which it can't hit, it should let you know. I'm imagining when you're placing artillery seeing a red aura on the minimap which represents everything it can hit on that planet.
