Airstrike left/right question

(Buckshoe) #1

So, when you throw an airstrike, I know generally what path it will take on the ground depending on where I am, but does anyone know what determines whether it comes in from left to right or the other way round.

Tbh I dont actually know if this makes much of a difference, but I was thinking that when you do an airstrike from outside the other teams wall (like on fuel dump say) and you drop it down at the base of the wall so they cant see it, wouldnt it be better if the airstrike comes in from thier side of the wall first as this would mean that more of the length of the airstrike would be on thier side.

?

Anyone know much about this?

I’ve just started with fieldops tbh and I am still learning the ropes. But I did try this out a bunch of times and there did seem to be a pattern to the direction the airstrike takes. I just dont know what. Btw it doesnt just always go one way wherever you do it, (right to left say) but if you go to the same place and do the same airstrike it will always go the same way. I was thinking that maybe the direction is somehow related to your position on the command map or something?

(Buckshoe) #2

btw just to clarify I am not talking about the whole airstrike going parallel to the line of sight from where you are to the canister thing okay.

(pgh) #3

Hrms… kinda know what you mean half and half.

Afaik doesnt it always come in from the same place? Basically, I know that if you throw it straight down looking down itll be like:

>> >> >> XoX >> >> >>

>> = Airstrike coming in and area of hitting.
XX = Players head upon dropping.
o = Canister.

Easiest way to test this m8 is just do a /devmap oasis, /give all and just spam away and see if theres a pattern.

(Loffy) #4

Hi
I’ve been thinking about that myself.
I remember in RtCW it was possible to control the line of the air-strike. The line was determined by the way you were facing at the moment the pilot’s voice said “On my way!”. The line was 90 degrees to your nose-line (the way you were looking).
I might have misinterpret the whole thing though, since it was some time ago.
In ET, I do not know.
// Loffy

(Loffy) #5

Woa, 500!
I want a special sign: “1337 Spammer” above my picture.

(Buckshoe) #6

Yeah, I’m not talking bout the line of the strike but about its orientation.

I did actually go on some maps and test this out and every time I do that I see a different pattern. Starting to think it is random tbh.

Btw does anyone know if it makes a difference?

Like say you have a:
|
>>>X|>>>
|

or b:
|
<<<X|<<<
|

with
X canister
> airstrike
| wall

And say that you are allies and axis are on other side of wall from canister. Will one be better than the other?

(Buckshoe) #7

ack
should be more like:

…|
>>>X|>>>
…|

etc but ignore the . they are for (badly done) spacing

(pgh) #8

Well imagine Oasis City wall.

You can drop it as Axis from Water Pool side with your left/right side touching the wall (eg, facing out of the map) and either way its gonna kill whats at the wall area more or less… I really cant see, and never expereinced, a difference in whatever way the plane drops from… and tbh, wouldnt suprise me if it WAS random like the SPREAD of the Airstrike… always get fragged inside buildings (even with no openings), been fragged at least 10 times standing at Allies City Spawn as a strike is dropped near city wall, yes, wall. :slight_smile:

Tbh m8 it doesnt make much of a difference and tbh your best bet is really just to launch over the area you wish to attack rather than take it by suprise… half the time the canister fails and ur dead before you can regroup for a diff attack and when an area is cleared from a strike its much easier to kill in the confusion with an smg or grens. :x

(CM..Punk) #9

The airstrikes don’t come in from the air at all, it’s just explosions on the ground…

(Sick Boy) #10

The direction in which the explosions fall is completely random.

The smoke from the cannister,however, always goes to the south. This can be important if you want to hide the smoke by blocking it (lay the cannister on the north side against a wall. If you throw it you will have smoke along the path you threw it, which is ofcourse not ideal if you want to hide the smoke :slight_smile: ). The weird thing is, the smoke travels through the wall, but still it will be less visible from our side of the wall (if it’s high enough) :eek2:

(Ragnar_40k) #11

With RtCW it was possible to direct airstrikes. But I never tried this in ET, since I don’t play FO that often.

(Sick Boy) #12

With RtCW it was possible to direct airstrikes. But I never tried this in ET, since I don’t play FO that often.[/quote]

As already pointed out a lot of times in this thread , this is not about in which line the airstrike falls (which you indeed can control), but given that line, is the first explosion on the left or right edge of that line. :slight_smile:

(DG) #13

the bomb line comes in perpendicular to the “line” between you and your smoke canister when the pilot says “on my way” (or thereabouts).

there isnt anything else anyone needs to know, surely?

(Blade_187) #14 

RotatePointAroundVector( bombaxis, dir, lookaxis, 90 + crandom() * 30 ); // munge the axis line a bit so it's not totally perpendicular

Looking at the source code it seems that the airstrike line is not always 90 degrees! :eek: According to the above (found in g_weapon.c) it can be between 90-120 degrees!
Finally I have a good excuse for not hitting anything :clap:

As for which way the planes come, I always thought they came from left to right (assuming you are facing the smoke marker), but not tested this at all.

(Loffy) #15

Hm, I sense my knowledge-level is rising.
It seems the line of the air-strike is a little random. I never knew that. Thanks! (That explains alot to me.)
But is the air-strike
a) perpendicular to the direction where you look when the pilot says ‘on my way’ (like I have always thought), or
b) "perpendicular to the ‘line’ between you and your smoke canister when the pilot says ‘on my way’
?
Given that I am often wrong, and people on this forum are very smart, I think that my version (a) is wrong.
// Loffy

(pgh) #16

Righty, all your doing is talking about the same thing.

We know say, drop canister there itll hit there and there.

What we want to know is what direction will it hit it from, not where.

Eg, ------------XXXX-------------

XXXX = Canister, and Airs comes in ------------ path.

BUT, will it come from —>--->–XXXX—>--->— OR —<---<—XXXX—<---<— eg, from Left OR Right. And he wanted to know if it really makes a difference apart from an extra half second to get cover which doesnt help anyway tbh as itll just randomly kill ya. :slight_smile:

(Buckshoe) #17

Yeah we arent talking about that and tbh I am pretty sure there will be another topic with that in it and what happens anyway is what I said earlier:

“btw just to clarify I am not talking about the whole airstrike going parallel to the line of sight from where you are to the canister thing okay”

goes parallel from the line of sight from where you are to the canister at about the time when the pilot says affirmative. (with added randomness stuff.

Okay, apart from that, the thinking behind the whole question was wondering whether the length of the airstrike is shortened by going up hills (and therefore maybe some walls)

Dont airstrikes on flat ground seem more spread out to you? Maybe this is just my imagination I dont know.
If someone who can read and understand the game code could find the right bit and check that’d be great. It just depends how they have done this. If the spacing of the explosions is a set horizontal value then it wont matter, but if the spacing is a set length along the face of the brush/texture/surface thinger the aristrike is happening on, then it does.

Or maybe its a whole other thing. Dont really know.

(Buckshoe) #18

also

Code:

RotatePointAroundVector( bombaxis, dir, lookaxis, 90 + crandom() * 30 ); // munge the axis line a bit so it’s not totally perpendicular

Looking at the source code it seems that the airstrike line is not always 90 degrees! According to the above (found in g_weapon.c) it can be between 90-120 degrees!
Finally I have a good excuse for not hitting anything

As for which way the planes come, I always thought they came from left to right (assuming you are facing the smoke marker), but not tested this at all.

The one thing I am sure of is that the planes dont just always come in the same direction. Whats that dir variable in that code do? :slight_smile:

(Blade_187) #19

It’s a random pass direction! Says so in the code about 3 lines up from the bit I posted which I didnt see before :rolleyes:

Now, looking a bit further at it, and to try to guess at answering your question, it would seem from the following snippet of code from the air strike function, that the spacing between each ‘bomb’ has a slightly random factor to it. (this snippet is from the ‘for( i = 0; i < NUMBOMBS; i++ ) {’ loop)


bomboffset[0]		= crandom() * .5f * BOMBSPREAD;
bomboffset[1]		= crandom() * .5f * BOMBSPREAD;
bomboffset[2]		= 0.f;
VectorAdd( pos, bomboffset, bomb->s.pos.trBase );

There doesn’t seem to be anything that would shorten the spread because of a wall etc… It does mention ‘non-uniform scenery’ but says that it will just fall on top of it.

I could be totally wrong of course!

(Buckshoe) #20

nice one m8

:slight_smile: