Quote Originally Posted by alpaca
Nope, what you describe is because the collision mechanism uses a much less detailed model than is actually shown on screen (and probably because calculations aren't exactly exact).

Try it out if you want, use a halberd unit against swordsmen and you'll see that a lot of the time instead of actually killing anybody the halbierdiers will try to push back the enemy with the back of their stick.
You would have a point but... what coder on Earth would make a collision model extend further than the chrome (that is, the graphical eyecandy extravaganza model) ? Makes absolutely no sense.

I certainly agree with you that the "animations" used in battle calculations must be very simple stick figures and skeletons and so on, and not the complex polygons that make up the models we see, but there's no point in making the skeletons extend further than the polygons strapped onto them. It doesn't make the calculations any easier, and it would make "ghost fighting" even more prevalent than it is right now... No, I think the air swording is a testimony that either a collision model is used and buggy, or that there is no collision at all, just models told to do this and that when attack rolls go this way or that.


By the same token, I think the push back thing is just the animation halberdiers use when their attack roll fails, or the opponent attack rolls fail maybe, the equivalent of the parry/block for shielded units, not a symptom that they need more space for their anims... 2handers are on the whole unconcerned about slashing through the guts of 3 of their comrades to hit the one guy they're targetting, for example . Another example of this is pikemen when you take away their secondary attacks : they poke-poke-poke through enemies 1 inch away, looking like idiots, when your spacing reasoning would have them move back the length of their pike to strike efficiently.

Admitedly, my theory doesn't explain why some animation sets are better than others, or the former 2H bug for that matter... I guess we'll have to organize a meeting between Mr. Lusted and Mrs. Scopolamine in a few months to know the truth