Profile of Hannibal

Alright. Did some testing with Vipper's mod.

The current scatter model seems to be correct, which means the simulation should come very close to what we would observe in-game.

It looks like the angle scatter is chosen with equal probabilities for every angle as well.
I have not quantified it (yet), but from what I have seen there does not seem to be any preference for shooting more towards the targeted squad. The Puma fills the half circle in front of it quite nicely and evenly.
Also it looks quite funny.


(bottom Puma was shooting to the right obviously)

Incorrect that's the MG76 and will be featured in the cold war coh3

CoH3 confirmed!

Arent there a lot of times when a projectile passes thru a vehicle and hits the ground behind it? So you end up with an AOE rear armor even shooting from the front?

Quirky as CoH2 is, I think this happens from time to time. Or at least sometimes the shot just seems to miss the hitbox and hits the ground below the tank.
AoE penetration is yet not implemented, neither is deflection damage. At least for the showcased scenario of medium vs medium, they are very rare events or do not happen at all, respectively.

Another issue is then that it is unclear how AoE hits are calculated. Do they just take the shortest route to the target (and here to the target hull or center?) or do they check for multiple points. For example, if a shot lands next to a vehicle's front part, is AoE calculated only against the frontal armor (shortest path) or also against a potential rear armor where it might penetrate? Since it is AoE, the latter would be logic, but it is also harder to implement. And maybe they did not do it that way, we don't know.

wow, that's some really great work right here, congrats!

with regards to the scatter model i'm actually doing some in-game testing atm using modded weapon profiles, similar to what you proposed (reducing either scatter angle or distance to zero and vice versa). in addition, setting the aoe damage profile to fall of linearly from, say, 10 at 0 m to 0 at 10 m provides a handy tool to measure in-game distances between point of impact and a target by simply monitoring the damage numbers via cheat mod.
using this i can say now at least that for horizontal scatter the probability distribution seems to be flat, i.e. a shot is equally likely to land anywhere between dead center and the max scatter distance. i'll do some testing for angular scatter tomorrow and see if the same applies here, too.

Thank you very much!
Vipper has written a small mod that I still need to find and test for the angle scatter. I'd recommend using one of the range maps for quick testing, although your method seems to be more precise.

The elephant does not have a different hit box all hit boxes are split 50% 50%.

When it comes to scatter the I would test lowering the accuracy of the weapon to 0 and counting how many shot actually hit vs stationary and vs moving vehicle.

That would give a more accurate approach.

By chance I tested the Elefant. The split is not 75/25 as JohnSmith said, but also seems to be 50/50.

The problem with your suggestion is that it does not help too much.
To make this work it needs knowledge of the target's hit box, your have to angle it correctly and also set the distance perfectly. And afterwards you're waiting and counting like a moron (because you need a lot of shots), put everything into a calculator and the only info you get is if the above model is right or wrong, but it would probably not help anything to see how the shots are distributed.

Having a modded unit would need first a bit of work to manually assign the impacts after you let the unit shoot in the background and wander off somewhere else. The rest can then be done by automated analysis and looking at the values would already give a model of how shots are distributed. This could also then be applied to all units and also does not need further info about a potential target that could scew the data.

I am not sure that we communicate correctly.

The hit box is divided into 2 halfs. A front half and rear half. A unit firing perpendicular (90°) to a vehicle can hit either the front half or back half with equal chance.

In addition I do not see the problem with linear scatter since it helps scoring collision hits since the projectile travel loner. Without it shot can fall sort.

You can PM about a MOD and I see what I can do, although my modding skill are limited that does not sound difficult.

As for Hitbox size I think one can use the map editor to measure hit boxes.

Well fuck me then. I just tested it and it really is half of the hit box.
I always assumed the frontal hit box to be very small and the frontal hits from a flanking maneuver come from a whacky hit detection.

Well, it makes the above data wrong, but at least this is a relatively easy fix. The core simulation still stands though.

I'll write you a PM about the mod.

You are right that the horizontal scatter is not affected as much. In some instances it can make smaller differences though. The most important thing though is to find out about the angle scatter.