Question: Can you hit the wrong ship?

[Teckelmaster]

Hello,

eversince i play this, i was wondering, if you could actually hit another ship than the one you actually aimed the flying shell at.

Lets say your guns are pointed at a BB, the shell has that BBs name on it, but by incident it hits another ship nearby? I have had so many occasions where it appeared visaully as if a shell struck the wrong ship, but it didnt do any damage. I have never noticed a ship taking damage by a shell aimed at another ship. Did anyone do so? I have been sunk by my own destroyers torpedoes though, i think. as they fired in the general enemies direction and my bb ran into the line of this thing. So i think im 90% positive, that on torpedoes it works.

Is it 100% RNG or is it hitscan? Just curious. loved both HW1 and HW2, so i wonder which path this dev crew goes?!

Teckelmaster out

P.S.: Sorry if i warm up something already discussed elsewhere, but i couldnt find an answer to thi specific question.

Edited November 27, 2019 by Teckelmaster

[Steeltrap]

As far as we can tell, no.

They appear to be doing an abstracted calculation of whether you score a hit, where the hit is, and what effects it has. They then render it in the engine.

For a shell to hit another target, it would need to 'exist' in its own right in the simulated environment and a 'hit' would occur if there wrer a collision between the shell and something else in the environment, namely a ship.

The shells don't 'exist' as best we can tell. They are visual effects representing calculations already made before they appear on screen. Thus they only have the potential to 'hit' the target at which they are aimed, because that is the only ship that exists in the calculation.

I have seen shells of mine pass clear through another ship close to the target.

You might find this thread interesting:

 

[Teckelmaster]

Thank you very much.

I noticed that thread and tried to work myself through it, but i just didnt find if i could hit the wrong ship. That is a lot clearer now and perfectly represents my observations.

This is just one thing i noticed here and there (and i am very slightliy disappointed, tbh), that though my shells very much looked as if they were accidentally making a destroyer go for  a dive, they just did not.

Since it is a very rare occasion any way, i think i can live with it

Thanks again!

Edited November 27, 2019 by Teckelmaster

[Steeltrap]

4 minutes ago, Teckelmaster said:

Thank you very much.

I noticed that thread and tried to work myself through it, but i just didnt find if i could hit the wrong ship. That is a lot clearer now and perfectly represents my observations.

This is just one thing i noticed here and there (and i am very slightliy disappointed, tbh), that though my shells very much looked as if they were accidentally making a destroyer go for  a dive, they just did not.

Since it is a very rare occasion any way, i think i can live with it

Thanks again!

You're welcome.

I think we did discuss hitting other ships by accident, but it's buried in all the other stuff. 

I simply applied what we'd learned to your specific question which was easier for me to do as I'd been involved in the other thread.

Cheers

[Mooncatt]

Yup assaid above, it doesn't exist yet. I've had water impacts directly over a non targeted ship. I'm sure it might exist one day but I think that kind of thing is low on the priority list atm

[Hellstrike]

Torpedoes are the exception to that. Once launched, they can hit anything in their path, including friendly ships. I lost more than one DD while attacking from multiple directions due to that.

[SacaSoh]

I'm not a game dev nor trying to be an armchair one but I do believe it isn't *that* hard to have it implemented (or at least it isn't much computationally intensive): Supreme Commander had it with thousands of units at the same play field 10 years ago (e.g. a shell from an artillery piece can hit an airplane).

I think the change would be to have the bullet trace a random path inside with chance defined by circular error probable function, this function (that defines the ellipse that could be hit by the shells) depending on the factors currently affecting accuracy at the time of the shot.

So the shot is aimed at a target, it fires and takes a random initial moment based on the CEP function or whatever defines the precision, but then it "exists" and an eventual intercept with anything (i.e. wrong target) would trigger a ballistic penetration/damage test.

Edited November 28, 2019 by SacaSoh

[Steeltrap]

On 11/29/2019 at 4:33 AM, SacaSoh said:

I'm not a game dev nor trying to be an armchair one but I do believe it isn't *that* hard to have it implemented (or at least it isn't much computationally intensive): Supreme Commander had it with thousands of units at the same play field 10 years ago (e.g. a shell from an artillery piece can hit an airplane).

I think the change would be to have the bullet trace a random path inside with chance defined by circular error probable function, this function (that defines the ellipse that could be hit by the shells) depending on the factors currently affecting accuracy at the time of the shot.

So the shot is aimed at a target, it fires and takes a random initial moment based on the CEP function or whatever defines the precision, but then it "exists" and an eventual intercept with anything (i.e. wrong target) would trigger a ballistic penetration/damage test.

The problem is they aren't simulating the path of the shells at all. Their method makes it unnecessary, but does reduce realism in the sense it's as though the firing ship and target are the only two in the universe.

I can't see them ever introducing it unless they were to add it in some way, your suggestion being one of them, for any shells their system has determined is a miss. As things stand, I suspect misses are represented by a finite number of visual representations to save on any computation requirement. I've been watching and noticed the "one ahead, one astern" pattern, for example, and there are others.

[Majorkong]

I'm pretty sure that I've scored hits on ships that where too close to the ship that I was aiming at.

[Mooncatt]

10 hours ago, Majorkong said:

I'm pretty sure that I've scored hits on ships that where too close to the ship that I was aiming at.

the game doesn't work like that. the shell flight graphics are a mere eye candy simulation. the algorithm has already determined if you will hit your "targeted" ship as your shell leaves the barrel. any other possible targets nearby don't exist once that algorithm has been calculated and your guns have fired (this is my understanding)

[Blothorn]

I doubt this is a priority as it very rarely happened historically--I recall one instance at Guadacanal and nothing else. There's a lot more sea than ship, so a sensible CEP around a target is usually not going to encompass much else. (And a CEP approach isn't very realistic--fire control errors dominate ballistic inconsistency at naval ranges, and fire control errors aren't random.)

[Steeltrap]

On 12/3/2019 at 10:04 PM, Majorkong said:

I'm pretty sure that I've scored hits on ships that where too close to the ship that I was aiming at.

I suspect you think you did but didn't.

I had a case where an enemy transport was almost rubbing alongside enemy pre-dread BB I was firing at. I saw a few shells go THROUGH the merchant and then splash near BB or hit it.

Based on all we believe we know, I think we can say it is completely impossible to hit any ship other than your target.

Cheers