Gunships elevation

Copy pasting from discord so it does not get burried.

I wondered about improving gunship ascension/descent mehanics, but I don't know the backend well enough so I'll ask:

Can it be easily done to make gunships adjust elevation based not only on altitude of their current position, but based on maximum of the current position, projected position based on current velocity and attack target?

The will of this change is to help gunships ascend hills faster and more smoothly, by predicting they are going to move uphill. It should be based on attack target as well to help with forced attack against for example raised gauss on a spike. Gunships should be able to raise to fire upon it - currently they can fail to do so.

Locust/Revenant/Krow being the worst offenders here.

Guess so, I just thought that finding closest vertex is more expensive to compute than max of 3 depths at distinct locations.

At first, I thought this was going to be a discussion about how easy it is for gunships to be taken down by standard raiders (a few glaives, played well, can take down a revenant easily), but I also approve of this direction.

oops

The game is balanced around gunships flying close to the ground though, letting them choose their height would significantly nerf flex AA and possibly create usability issues (gunship is within range but can't fire because its too high and you forgot).

is cylindrical range more expensive? will it cause a lag creep?

Anarchid can you please expand your knowledge? Space elevator because you will use transports to put units way up into the air?
You do realize that you need something to keep them there.

Putting certain limits on how high your gunships/planes can go will fix your fear no worries.

If you thinking of space elevator this doesn't mean the gunships/plane elevation selection strategy will be wrongful. It's just a small impediment that can easily be fixed by making placeholders have a spherical range instead of cylindrical ones. You never tried to bring a method of solving any incoming bugs to the thing that I proposed and you just highlighted the issues just to cover-up the main idea like it's a faulty one.

Don't be that pessimistic Anarchid because in programing there isn't a thing that can't be fixed, and I tell you this from somebody word who has at least 10 years of experience in the field.

quote: If you thinking of space elevator this doesn't mean the gunships/plane elevation selection strategy will be wrongful

To be straight, this is just one of the many ways in which your proposal (arbitrary player controls for gunship altitude combined with cylinder range for all weapons) does not lead to your goal (players actively microing this for fine tactical advantages).

Another, and quite more disastrous, would be that the correct tactic for any use of such gunships would be spending all of their free time to ascend as far as possible out of the reach of ground units. And if you impose an artificial ceiling to such ascent, then this new ceiling simply becomes the cruise altitude of the new gunship system. Essentially this amounts to using their behaviour as-is, but letting them fly higher.

Not only does this proposal completely destroy flex-aa and all ground interactions for no reason, it is also not even an improvement over zenfur's proposal.

(Which is quite reasonable; i can't find any too glaring holes in it for now. You could perhaps build a space elevator with zenfur's prposal though by having an armed transport target an enemy unit carried inside another armed transport, who is targetting a unit inside the original transport, causing both transports to constantly oscillate higher and higher to reach their target)

quote: Don't be that pessimistic Anarchid because in programing there isn't a thing that can't be fixed, and I tell you this from somebody word who has at least 10 years of experience in the field.

It is perhaps unkind of me to mention that, but this made me laugh.

even if youre right Anarchid the way it is allayed to Forever may antagonize him.. and saying this may even catch flack.. i have this sinking feeling another forum war will start.. not that his skin cant handle that.. but he has to be allowed a means to feel like he makes sense in some way so he can then fold or adapt his debate with a mutually assured intelligence score

telling someone they have a flawed position and then ripping the rug from under them assures a higher stake on any exit
it would be more diplomatic to at-least notice the good intentions and merits of the goals of Forever before rebuffing the exploitable concepts.

idk maybe nobody owns ideas anyway.. maybe they are like stars and all you can do is find them if you look in the right places.. then they cant belong to anybody and dont reflect who we the observer are.. if we are unbecoming of belief it may still not save us from feeling belittled and diminished by lofty logic's and your both very smart fellows