Range Rings

Everyone here knows what range rings are: They determine how far ranged units can excecute an attack on a target, and as a concept, has coexisted with wargaming from the beginning. They serve the purpose of abstracting real battlefield conditions.

Even with the advent of home computers, there was little the earliest computers could do to leverage computing power to reduce abstraction over tabletops. The earliest computer wargames were simply ports of their tabletop cousins. Ever since then, despite the abundant increase in home computing power, wargames have done little to evolve how weapon ranges are projected.

The reason I created this topic is because I notice much of the discussion on projectile ballistics and gravity is over concerns like weapons 'shooting way outside of their range' and what implications that has on balance. This made me question just what range is.

In real life, weapon ranges are determined by a combination of the following factors: energy, gravity, drag(however miniscule), fuel(for rockets), earth's curvature, other line of fire obstacles(like hills), accuracy, the human element(which won't be a factor in this game.), and any other I missed out. Real life doesn't have range rings- that's an artificial construct invented to simulate all the above.

Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander introduced to us simulated projectile physics, further reducing the abstraction which traditional wargames are stuck with, yet both games also had hard range rings to prevent units from firing over certain distances. Total Annihilation played with this a little by increasing the ring of units on higher ground, but either way, these rings did not represent the unit's actual simulative capabilities(which contradicts how the old wargames tried to simulate the real battlefields); their cannons' muzzle velocities and gravity would have allowed them to lob shells much further. You could see this with the exploiting of artillery in Total Annihilation to allow them to fire much farther than their artificial maximum range. In this case, the purpose of range rings is to maintain balance; which makes sense due to the presence of straight trajectory weapons potentially having unlimited range.

But with Planetary Annihilation introducing real map curvature solving the issue of strait trajectory weapons potentially having unlimited range, this makes me question the relevance of hard range rings altogether. What if a game was balanced through pure simulation? and that all displayed unit maximum ranges merely represented their simulative capabilities(muzzle velocity, gravity, etc.).

I'm not expecting this thread to alter the course of this game's direction so much, which may or may not already be too far in. But I want to gauge this community for how important it feels hard range rings are to a game. Is it a solid concept, crucial to maintaining a game's balance? Would removing it reduce the overall fun? Or are we just stuck attached to an archaic concept?

Have units in PA have range spheres that only show up when they are touching the ground or some kinda surface, that way they will mold to the planet surface when the unit moves around terrain.

Possibly have the terrain and gravity mold the sphere based on what it can actually hit from where it is.

Direct fire energy weapons would have range spheres due to attenuation and dispersal. Shells would have parabolas (can't shoot up nearly as far as you can shoot sideways) and would increase range on high ground.

Missiles would be stupidly complicated, with acceleration, speed, turnrate and flight time. Would you apply Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation? (acceleration is higher the less fuel remaining)
=P

This is a cool concept unless it makes my computer lag. Then I don't want it.

I disagree with Jseah about missiles being complicated. For the sake of gameplay they don't need to be. Give them a fixed lifespan and however far they can get in that time is their range.

If beam dispersal is accounted for that means beam weapons would also need to have reduced damage with range. That would be a pain. I suppose that problem could just be ignored though.

Rockets might also have a range sphere where they will explode from not hitting anything, and for missiles it might constitute the range that the missile can track.

As for things like artillery shells, the sphere touching the ground could be the absolute maximum range.

If the unit can't shoot directly up (perhaps a piece of artillery), then you have more of a range donut.

Linear weapons also have an effective limited range. It's called the horizon. Taller lasers naturally get more range.

It is possible to limit weapon ranges by limiting the projectiles. Lasers and plasma shells may fizzle out after a distance, and missiles could have a limited flight time. These would be more important for small units, which depend on fairly specific ranges for unit balance.

There's nothing wrong with having strategic weapons vary wildly in different circumstances. It just means you need more types of strategic guns, right?

lol, could be!

That's.........exactly how they worked in SupCom, Seemed to work pretty well too! Allowed for a lot of variety in weapon design.

Mike

They do need a range still to prevent little lasers from hitting targets in orbit or on other planets. And lasers do disperse over distance-they might not reach the horizon on large planets.

To everyone:
Something to keep in mind is that only energy weapons are truly linear. Direct-fire projectile weapons still have to deal with gravity.

Indeed, I suppose energy weapons should go a certain range and then dissipate at their max range like:


I think cybran T2 PD does this.

As for the range, just make it an actual range sphere of the weapons effective damage range.

Missiles in SupCom were not affected by gravity. They had range cylinders IIRC (or at least, I never saw missile units gain range on a hill)

You never said anything about gravity, you mentioned the exact things in the quote(and thus why it's called a Quote) also it's worth mentioning that particularly in the case of [Tracking] Missiles, It's range is not a feature of the Missile itself(IE not in the Projectile's file), range the Range of the weapons deals more so with acquiring a target(as set in the Unit's File), you can easily make a missile that can travel across an 80km map, but if can only be fired off if the target comes in range of the unit.

Mike

That's continuous energy loss. A cool concept for units, but most classical lasers in game keep their full force going until they hit a target. The one in your picture would simply do less damage at longer ranges until it did 0, which gives a completely different kind of unit. (One that would prefer close-ranged combat)

Definately worthwhile to have a few, but I'd still keep the traditional laser weapon in, even if that means a hard cut-off limit.

As I wrote in another post:
Drag affects bullets a huge deal.
After just 2 seconds or 1200 meters a supersonic bullet has lost half its speed.
wikipedia
IRL projectile drag is a major coefficient in reducing the range of artillery.

Following this all ballistic projectiles have a maximum range resembling a parabola.
But IRL a bullet can travel several kilometers while the effective range of the weapon is counted in hundreds of meters.
What is the difference between shooting at a target at maximum range and point blanc?
1. The travel time
It takes much longer time for the bullet to reach a target at maximum range. The target might have time to dodge the incoming projectile. It gets gradually harder to dodge the shorter the distance is.
2. The projectile speed
Without drag the bullet have the same speed as the muzzle velocity when it hits at max range. IRL the drag causes the speed of the bullet to have much lower impact speed at maximum range. This in turn causes the bullet to do less damage and have lower penetration gradually over distance.
3. Magnification of inaccuracy
Small inaccuracies that are caused by the weapon, shooter and/or aerodynamics are amplified over longer distances.
4. Angle of approach
At max range a bullet would arrive at somewhere about 45 degree angle which would make it able to go above hills and elevation. This causes the weapon to be both a direct fire and an indirect fire weapon.

Personally I have no problem with a weapon gradually being easier to dodge at range or doing less damage but I understand that people might be thrown off by it. Personally I think it make gives interesting tactical options where you might want to close the distance to get more accurate shots.
Accuracy however is a random event that I don't have control over. Every miss or every hit should not be critical. This could be mitigated in several ways:
3.a. Gradual Area of Effect damage.
If a miss might still deal a smaller amount of damage to the target, the randomness of accuracy evens out faster and is more predictable. This annoyed me about SupCom AoE. Especially the AoE on volatile structures. You basically had to remember and figure out how much space a t3 pgen and massfab would need in order to not chain explode. If the AoE is gradual then you have the simple rule of "Close=more damage and far=less damage". Although the AoE could have been shown as you placed the building.
3.b. Low damage
If this is a common event the randomness evens out over time.

Angle of approach however makes me wonder where there would be place for artillery if all ballistic projectiles could arc at 45 degrees.
4.a. However if there is projectiles that makes less damage and/or have lower penetration at range then direct fire units might simply be ineffective as artillery while artillery have explosive shells that make the same damage on all distances.

Cover mechanics
IRL in infantry combat you can't see as far as you can shoot. You can't accurately shoot at targets that you don't see nor can you fire accurately at targets far away.
This causes a fire fight at long ranges to be highly random where even a stray bullet can kill.
To safely win an engagement you require many angles of attack, more firepower and better equipment and training. Many people probably think that a fire fight is too random with even odds and that it is hard to use Line of Fire to your advantage.
I'd like to play a large scale game with cover mechanics which is something I think you end up with if you remove arbitrarily set ranges.

The core difference between a regular cannon and artillery is in how much armor you sacrifice to make your gun bigger. That wouldn't change by introducing drag.

Mm... yeah right.
Having both artillery range and tank range be dependant on pure ballistic projectile physics can still allow both roles to exist.
Actually, now I remember that most ballistic weapons in FA have ranges near their physical limit.

I guess its' just a wonky gameplay mechanic with laser weapons and ballistic weapons then. Units with ballistic weapons can take cover behind hills and shoot above them against laser units. On the other hand if laser units are on a hill they can reach everything in Line of Fire.
I guess you can make up whatever fluff reason for the laser beam to disperse at whatever range or rate you wish.

I realise I was wrong to call drag a miniscule factor, after you made those posts on it. I was in a moment of stupor when I typed that and just went by what armchair physicists before you had posted. Apologies.

The definition of artillery is simply anything which operates beyond the effective range of other weapons. The exact method it goes about this has no bearing on the definition.

Come to think of it, none of the ballistic weapons in the original Total Annihilation fired in high trajectory; the weapon distinctions were more between arced and strait trajectory, with the only exclusively high trajectory firing weapons being the vertically launched missile units.

Personally I'd like to see it actually just *tried*. Break away from the standard 'lasers are projectiles with a line instead of a dot', and 'Direct fire weapons don't arc to the ground'.

Give weapons their realistic properties, and see what happens. Make lasers attenuate, and tank shells fall to the ground in an arc.

Lets try to sum it up.
Against laser weapons you can hide behind obstacles while a ballistic weapon could shoot over most terrain obstacles.
Laser weapons have spherical range with lower damage at range and possibly longer range in thinner atmosphere.
Ballistic weapons have parabolic range and if their projectiles can attain escape velocity they can reach other planets.
If kinetic projectile weapons does damage depending on the speed of the projectile it would do less damage when it is on the height of the parabola but more damage the longer it falls down. If aerodynamics cause the projectile to slow down, the weapon would do less damage the longer it travelled in atmosphere but it wouldn't slow down in space.

If units can fire at an enemy before it comes into range, the incoming unit can be hit by a projectile just as it comes into range. If 1 unit is chasing another unit it might not be able to hit the enemy even though it is in range because the slow projectile won't reach the enemy before it has driven out of range. Even if both units have the same range and speed a fleeing unit can kite a chasing unit. In Spring I call this "Kiting with speed" and it gives the defender an advantage and makes positional play more important as you need room in order to kite with speed.
Relativistic ranges:
If the unit speed is added to the projectile speed kiting with speed is not possible. I don't think it necessarily makes the game more complex but it might be exploitable if units have slow projectiles, high damage and relatively high movement speed as they might drive towards their enemy to gain speed, fire and then stop before they enter the enemies range. However if the unit can't stop in time to dodge the enemy fire or if the damage is low then it will hardly make a big difference.

Mm, in the context of the rest of the post, I would have thought that someone would understand that I was adding those properties of missiles to those of the cannon shell. But perhaps I wasn't clear enough.

So I shall refine my statement. Missiles become a very complicated cannon shell that has acceleration, turn rate and flight time (on top of the shell's muzzle velocity, shot inaccuracy and gravity).

Spotters for missile targeting could be weird too. A front line unit paints targets for missile artillery say. A unit could just have a higher theoretical maximum range for its missiles but a limited sight range (which is basically the range of its sensors), thus requiring spies and scouts to find targets for it.