Warzone 2100 Forums

This is a touchy subject to post in the first place, because while it isn't a bug (and thus probably doesn't go on the tracker) it isn't what is commonly associated with feature suggestions, either.

Artillery in this game has the very ugly habit of firing on hostiles very close to friendly units or structures.
While the former is somewhat forgivable the latter most certainly is not, especially in the case of stationary batteries which apparently cannot be given orders at all and occasionally fire on seemingly random targets.
This post was of course inspired by recent frustration, specifically the seething anger that developed while, in singleplayer, watching my howitzer emplacements shell enemy long-range tanks hugging the walls of my base(!), then switching targets to faraway construction units while the enemy was moving through the breach and attacking critical infrastructure(!!).
While such a situation can be resolved by deploying dedicated anti-tank units it still cost me more nerves and resources than I cared to lose.

They can be controlled by sensor tanks.

Also AI tanks hugging walls should be fixed.

Probably the minimal radius should be further increased so that they always attacked the faraway construction units.

Not sure how exactly to avoid friendly fire with clear rules taking into account both splash radius and accuracy radius without causing the "my MRAs aren't firing" frustration in other situations. One more per-weapon flag?

Not sure how exactly to avoid friendly fire with clear rules taking into account both splash radius and accuracy radius without causing the "my MRAs aren't firing" frustration in other situations. One more per-weapon flag?

i know this might sound like a silly question but can't you just turn friendly fire off so even if your own artillery units are firing close to your own structures or units they wont take any damage even if they get directly hit or are just within the splash radius, i know doing that could be considered a bit of a crutch but it really is the simplest way to deal with this problem and its the same method that most other games use to tackle the issue of friendly fire.

This is an interesting discussion. I think most other RTS games have far less friendly fire. In case someone wants to play around with this, I added a new flag in d75ccdea67fb48f41b370a0c15cea3b6703f344e that allows people to make certain weapons not have friendly fire.

Friendly fire is a tactic some players use to help them destroy hard to get at structures by sending fast units to sit next to a structure they want to destroy.

Is there any way to allow artillery to deal damage to anything - friendly or otherwise - it hits directly or deliberately targets while dealing no or greatly reduced damage to friendlies within splash radius?

Per wrote:This is an interesting discussion. I think most other RTS games have far less friendly fire. In case someone wants to play around with this, I added a new flag in d75ccdea67fb48f41b370a0c15cea3b6703f344e that allows people to make certain weapons not have friendly fire.

interesting, well that should help some because although its rare i have on occasion had my own units killed my my own artillery when the enemy is hugging my units and my artillery opens up and my units get caught in the cross fire, should also help with flamers which probably also cause friendly fire with the patches of fire they leave on the ground, not that I'd know mind you since i have never used them because they are basically useless and can't even beat scav's, well on campaign mode anyway not sure how they are on skirmish.

Is there any way to allow artillery to deal damage to anything - friendly or otherwise - it hits directly or deliberately targets while dealing no or greatly reduced damage to friendlies within splash radius?

doesn't artillery do that already anyway ??

Also talking of artillery the ability to force fire or fire blind into areas you can't see might also be helpful, I can think of a few occasions on campaign mode where the ability to do this could be quiet helpful, now most other games that have artillery in them usually have a button for this that allows you to fire a salvo to where even you want even if you can't see your target so long as the intended coordinates is within range, either that of you just hold one of the buttons and force fire.

Blind fire has a problem with dramatically increasing the Satellite Uplink's usefulness to the point of probably making it absurdly OP if you've got an Archangel battery or five squirrelled away somewhere.

Blind fire has a problem with dramatically increasing the Satellite Uplink's usefulness to the point of probably making it absurdly OP if you've got an Archangel battery or five squirrelled away somewhere

correct me if I'm wrong here but doesn't the Satellite Uplink give you the ability to see the whole map anyway, so if you have a bunch of Archangel batteries as soon as you get that spy satellite operational you enemy's base is toast anyway, so given that wouldn't that make your point kind of mute unless jammers can hide your stuff even from the uplinks spy satellite.

In any event i wasn't really thinking in terms of skirmish anyway i was more considering campaign when i made that suggestion, not to mention that only mobile units can blind fire turrets can't, or at least that is how it is in other games that have this ability.

Also isn't the real issue with this that having a spy satellite that lets you see everything is overpowered in combination with Archangel batteries which could be considered to be overpowered in of them selves.

It's explicitly mentioned in the Satlink's description and in the guide that this thing only has a limited spotting range for artillery.
It won't fire at everything it sees, only at whatever is within (I believe) a 26-tile radius around it.

That's not a very good spy satellite is it, one would assume that if you can see the whole map that your guns would be able to fire at everything within there range, although i can see why there would be an artificial limit because that would be way overpowered when you have artillery with ranges as big as the entire map you are playing on.

Which is half the point of the Archangel.
The idea is that map-range artillery strikes are already represented by the LASAT.

I've noticed sometimes, even when taking into account the direction and speed the enemy units were moving, there's still no reason the artillery should have landed 4 shots square on the sensor tower they're linked to, when the enemy was nowhere near it, nor could have gotten anywhere near it if they wanted to before the artillery shots landed. I'm not so sure there isn't a bug here. Seems far too many shots are landing square on structures nowhere near the fight for it to be taken into statistical account.