Mortars and custom psi

[Bobit]

Don't take me too seriously cuz I haven't modded anything yet. But it seems like it would be nice to have and (maybe) easy to program this feature:

• Arcing attribute set to 0 = current "false" behavior
• Arcing 1 = current "true" behavior
• Arcing 2 = uses a high arc, as with a mortar. If your opponent (and you) don't have a roof above them, you can shoot them.Only really balanced with/as a victory/defeat timer, or with limited ammo.
  
• Arcing 3 = doesn't use a projectile, as with psi attacks. Simply targets the target directly if it hits, and doesn't target anything if it misses. Does not require LoF

Also it would make sense if you could use the attributes of the target (if any) to determine accuracy, as with psi attacks. So there might be a Decay spell which is easy to  resist for strong soldiers.

[ohartenstein23]

Getting arcing trajectories to work properly has been a bit troublesome, so making this behavior more complex is not a very attractive proposal. However, all of what you suggest is either possible or already implemented in some form:

• Arcing 2 is a feature that I've been working on in the form of "artillery strikes," where an attack will create a projectile that falls down from the top of the map. Whether or not it requires line of sight would be up to the modder. Not finished yet, but shouldn't take too long for me to pick up on again.
• Arcing 3 is just a damaging psi attack right? That's already possible in OXCE and some mods use it like the Staff of Heart Grip in X-Com Files.

[Bobit]

Thx for the info, maybe I'll use it someday.

[The_Funktasm]

Getting arcing trajectories to work properly has been a bit troublesome, so making this behavior more complex is not a very attractive proposal. However, all of what you suggest is either possible or already implemented in some form:

• Arcing 2 is a feature that I've been working on in the form of "artillery strikes," where an attack will create a projectile that falls down from the top of the map. Whether or not it requires line of sight would be up to the modder. Not finished yet, but shouldn't take too long for me to pick up on again.
• Arcing 3 is just a damaging psi attack right? That's already possible in OXCE and some mods use it like the Staff of Heart Grip in X-Com Files.

Ooh! Noted.

[jtgibson]

Arcing 2 is a feature that I've been working on in the form of "artillery strikes," where an attack will create a projectile that falls down from the top of the map. Whether or not it requires line of sight would be up to the modder. Not finished yet, but shouldn't take too long for me to pick up on again.

Deliberate bump, rather than starting a new OXCE suggestion thread.  Has there been any progress on this front?  I was rather disappointed with the "mortars are just bows with extra steps" from a certain mod and wound up blowing up my crew by thinking that the mortars would shoot at a 45-degree angle or better over my landing ship (needless to say I rolled back that mission).  While it's an imperfect solution to have straight-down shots, it's still a better solution for mortars than behaving like Javelins in front-attack mode. =)

I'd still love a proper 45+ degree mortar arc that increases the arc toward vertical the closer the target is from the maximum range.  Is the underlying mechanical issue based on a tile grid problem or a projectile physic problem?  Not knowing the guts of the physics engine, I figure the low arc was a harder problem to solve than the high arc would be, since the low arc has to try to hit the collision box in the middle of the target tile, but the high arc only concerns itself with landing on the target tile at all.  (I guess the raytraced "No Line of Fire" was probably the hard part, thinking on it at bit.  That could probably be ignored entirely for the player, but the AI units might self-destruct if they didn't have that system implemented.)