Missile Accuracy: A Mystery

[Didz]

Well I'm with Rhedd on this point. There is no question that missiles carry farther when fired from higher ground. It was specifically demonstrated in the original STW tutorials and has been true in every TW game since.

The 'target in range' sensor 'green arrow' understands this and will flash green at the effective range that missiles can reach the target which is actually slightly less than their maximum range, and the fire at will control will therefore kick in earlier if the unit is on higher ground than its target.

Interestingly, the maximum effective range of a missile used by the target sensor is not the maximum missile range, particularly for black powder weapons and you will see shot carry much farther and kill enemies far beyond the allowed distance.

What puzzles me is why people think this has changed. Is there any justification for this?

I know other things have been dumbed down for MTW2 like morale and fatigue. And more recently John has highlighted in his thread that the expereince system has been undermined presumably to make the game easier to understand for junior players, but is there any evidence that they have also nerfed the terrain effects too?

Actually, this doesn't demonstrate that the unit is allowed to fire from any further away at all, it only demonstrates that the unit climbing the hill can't fire from the same distance the one above it can, which we can easily determine through physics anyway.

If what you are trying to test is whether the unit on high ground gets the 'Green Arrow' earlier than it would if it were on lower ground then surely the simple solution is to pitch two units of exactly that same type against each other and see if the one of the hill starts firing first. If it does then it obviously got the 'Green Arrow' first.

I've certainly fought battles on the coastal mountains of northern Spain and had camel gunners firing at targets on a beach half way across the map. In fact my issue would be whether at that range a musket ball would still have enough kinetic energy to do any harm.