Agree it doesnt needs to be blocky think of the c&c 1 turrets something like this. A easy shape that looks good.
I totally agree with "give the turrets a skirt" (grapehead) and the two posts above this one. It is just a big game design error to disappoint the players expectations ("Haha, now I'm gona hit you. Zong! What!? Fu..ing invisible wall! I hate this game!" ...)
I agree with the "change the model if this is a problem" crowd. The cover provided by turrets provides an important gameplay mechanic. Engineers are supposed to be able to make cover, and Empires is supposed to involve fortified positions... Changing anything that makes it harder to fortify and easier to rush as fortifications are going up is very, very dangerous. Additionally... don't forget, shrink the hitbox and turrets become harder to hit directly, especially if they're on an elevated spire/wall/box or somesuch that makes it difficult to hit the ground around them. Changing the hitbox in this case would have massive balance repercussions. It is absolutely not worth altering turrets (which have a major gameplay role) to appease snipers (who are supposed to have a minimal gameplay role.) Making snipers better at the expense of making turrets harder to construct is a particularly bad idea. If the realism really bothers people, fine, change the way turrets look to make them fit their hitbox better... but I don't think changing any gameplay mechanics here, even slightly, is a good idea.
you can't justify something that is quite blatently a bug that doesn't make any sense at all, i.e bullets getting stopped by thin air. the game would be just as fun if people couldn't hide behind turrets, but it would make a whole lot more sense. we can put player clip boxes around turrets so that vehicles don't get stuck. a few extra collosion models won't make a whole deal of difference. I kid you not, i watched a game yesterday as a sniper, prone behind his buddys turret, but very obviously missing it, fired about a dozen shots into the turret hitbox because he didn't understand that he was hitting it. I just thought "this guy shouldn't have to put up with this shit. no commercial game would allow this."
Player clip boxes are static, placed in hammer, and you can't predict where turrets would be plopped down.
I agree that it is an issue. I disagree that reducing the turret's hitbox is a reasonable solution; it would be easier, simpler, and more logical to change the turret's model to match the existing hitbox, without having any potential balance impact to worry about. As I see it, the hitbox is working exactly the way it's supposed to; it's just that when the model was made, they forgot to take the intended hitbox into account, and made the turret look too small. This is relatively easily fixed by changing the turret model. Strongly disagree. If the turret hitbox was smaller, a single sniper could essentially prevent engineers from setting up defensive turrets anywhere nearby. This would be particularly noticable in e.g. the bridge area on Slaughtered. I just don't see any reasonable justification for enhancing the role of snipers and making turrets harder to place. In particular, doing it because of what is basically a graphical issue strikes me as a particularly bad idea. And, again: Making the hitbox for turrets smaller also makes them harder to hit. Why do you want that? What makes you feel that this gameplay change (turrets harder to place but tougher to hit once they're down, snipers enhanced) is a good idea? You haven't really provided any reason for it; you've just noted that there's a graphical issue with turrets, then leapt to requesting a fairly radical gameplay change.
I just had a weird though about the NF mg turret, In the BE one the hit box goes all the way into the ground, but what about the NF one? Sometimes you see a BE ml shooting at a NF mg turret only to have to missile go right through the middle of the turret. I wonder if it would be possible to shoot someone through there also? Normally I aim for the head, but I might try that the next time I play.
it seems a lot of players dont know that u can prone in empires, because all here keep saying "when the hitbox is smaller we have no cover!". if the hitbox is smaller u can still prone behind the turret! i thought this too.
All I want is to have the turret model match the turret hitbox. Whether that means modifying the model, or modifying the hitbox is of no issue to me.
If you want cover, build a wall. A turret should not be some kind of cover spike, its a turret and meant to be a turret. I think it's a paradox to say that the model should be changed to fit that of the collision model, It's like saying that a painting should be made to fit the frame. The collision model was built to fit the turret, how could you even consider changing it around? Switching the discussion to that it would only help the scout at the expense of that poor old engineer building his innocent little turret is IMO a bit naive, the poor little engi does not need more mechanics, like some of you would like to call it, in his favor, while the sniper does. Not only that, but this has nothing to do with the poor little engineer vs a sniper, it's about a damn square hitbox around a triangle shaped structure that is pretty much exploited as cover and blocking material that is not based on the actual turret shape. It looks, feels primitive and makes poor gameplay. If anything the collision model is made out of 12 tris because of performance issues, in which I replied I'd rather have 5 proper turrets than 20 crappy ones. Easier, simpler and more logical? Ok wait, this is nonsense of the first degree, the turret itself was made out of a high poly model, I don't know how many polies, but it could be all the way upto 10k and you want this to be more like it's collision model of 12 tris? This is skewed logic, it is much more logical and easier to fix the hitbox that was made to fit the turret, it takes less time, is a hundred times easier to do and actually makes sense and does not rape the design just for the sake of fakely adopted game mechanics. Balance impact? This is exaggerating, there is no balance impact, the engineer can't even shoot while he should, if it was considered into the balance of the game, than why have there been collision model improvements made to other stuctures without any balance changes on the other side during 2.0. Surely it's because it was never an intended feature to have primitive collision models and the improvements were actual improvements, not changes in balance. I really don't see why some of you would like to cling to crappy features/bugs and then involve things that make no sense in the discussion insake of not making an improvement, that is the correct word in this case, you guys don't want the collision model to improve for the sake of having your little turret act as cover. "please don't make the turret collision more accurate, I like it when people can't hit me even though they should." Most people call these features annoying as hell, it's not fun being confronted with invisible walls and is generally conceived as a limitation or even bad/poor design. Ok so if we want realism we should go play outside, where i would reply, if you want your game mechanics to be based on big square blocks maybe you should go back to the play games made on the torque engine in 1998.
Bottom line is - What does Krenzo want to do with the turret collision boxes? No point in arguing if Krenzo rolls up here and goes, "You! Make me a new collision box for the turrets."
Actually I think a better bottom line is, who the feck is going to make it. That's the bottom line for 98% of the suggestions that aren't retarded.
The idea behind these threads is to make it known that this is an issue that players are not completely happy with and would like changed. The discussion that follows either proves or disproves the initial suggestion, and adds ways to either improve the original suggestion or disprove those improvements. My first comment if I have not posted before: I agree that the hit box is rather large, and engineers should not have perfect cover while making turrets. My second comment is on the solution: I think this is more difficult to balance than one would initially think. Yes it is annoying to hit nothing but air when your crosshairs are on someone's head with no visible obstruction. but being able to, say, shoot under the turret also introduces using turrets as cover for tanks when using a rocket launcher. The gren would be extremely difficult to hit with cannon fire, as most of the blast would probably be taken by the turret. Then again, the turret not having collision all he way to the ground may also make it possible to hit people by shooting in front of a turret, and the splash would travel underneath, unobstructed. I think this issue would bring about significant changes in how the game is played, as it would affect so many different ways that the collision box is abused atm. I know I've both seen and done this before: build turrets, and then decon them, and make a wall using this. It disappears after about 30 seconds, but it's still long enough to stall a tank rush or stop someone from being run over. This can be solved by making turrets have no collision box until they are built, kind of like unbuilt bridges, but that then creates a problem of not being able to attack them while they are being built. Or possibly making it so that they disappear right away if they are engineer turrets? Anyhow, there is a lot more to this than just getting sniped and not getting sniped. Put some thought into it and add some constructive thought please people. On a side note: What krenzo wants with the mod is not the issue in a suggestion/bug thread. If he doesn't want the suggestion/bug isn't really a bug, it can simply be shot down or ignored. The point is to gain popular vote for the idea, and prove that it will be good for gameplay. Dunno if I said that at the top or not, and I'm too lazy to reread what I wrote.
I just find it ironic that scouts are bitching about invisible walls, when scouts themselves do go invisible. Fail scouts, fail. I wouldnt say switching gameplay for realism is as strait a line as you guys paint it too be. I mean if you want too roll the realism route jesus you can make an ENITRE VEHICLE FACTORY out of thin air. Altering the turrents would indeed affect the gameplay, thinner turrents would also make it more difficult for tanks to shoot by far too list another another affect of gameplay. And I doubt we need yet more tanks getting stuck on turrents as I believe (solokiller right?) said earlier. I dont really belive this is that big of an issue, as is the sniper population isnt that big, and the good sniper population is even smaller. I'm not paricular about having more people want too roll scout either because empires is all about active manpower IMO, its why we build forward barracks (and co.) time spent running across half the map is time wasted, scout waiting 5 min for that 1 kill is time wasted. If you have 10 guys on your team but only 5 on the front line, you loose. If you have 10 guys on your team but 5 are scouts, you still loose. meh I think I got a little off-topic sorry about that, I blame work for making me tired
Lets not forget that a person who snipes using a weapon not intended for sniping reported this as a bug.
It's just silly having this unexplained and nonsensical hitbox on the object. It's not readily apparent to the player, so it sucks from a design point of view, it makes no sense in the fiction, so it sucks from a continuity perspective, it doesn't appear to be intentional, so it looks like a bug, and it's used a lot in the game, so it's arguably an exploit. Which is why I want it fixed, despite the fact that I rarely have to deal with it. It makes the mod look bad, and eats away at the level design areas of my brain like a necrotising virus.
Your argument fails. If it's not intentional, why was the collision model specifically designed not to have vehicles stuck on them then? That issue was specifically adressed in a patch, so it is intentional.
