A word on third person camera aiming and BB brawls

[Aotearas]

Just once again was the victim of a nasty pecularity with the game's aiming system.

 

Picture the following: two BBs are brawling at close range. And I mean close range, like 1km apart at best, the kind of brawl where ramming isn't only an option but depending on the HP trade pretty damn favourable and something you don't want if you happen to be the healthier ship and would probably win the duel as long as it doesn't come into full contact fisticuffs.

At such close ranges, you can't even depress low enough in gunnery perspective to aim at the ships waterline. But that's not much of an issue, since aiming in normal free-cam/third person view allows you to depress the guns just a bit lower than in gunnery zoom (why that is I don't know, but its a thing).

So you aim in free-cam at the waterline of the enemy ship and fire ... and whooooosh, all you shells fly harmless OVER the enemy ship.

 

 

Wat?

 

 

Congratulations, you just missed a battleship sized target, superstructure and all, ~1km away from you, by shooting over it ... even though you aimed for the waterline.

 

 

To reiterate: wat?

[xxNihilanxx]

1 minute ago, Aotearas said:

Just once again was the victim of a nasty pecularity with the game's aiming system.

 

Picture the following: two BBs are brawling at close range. And I mean close range, like 1km apart at best, the kind of brawl where ramming isn't only an option but depending on the HP trade pretty damn favourable and something you don't want if you happen to be the healthier ship and would probably win the duel as long as it doesn't come into full contact fisticuffs.

At such close ranges, you can't even depress low enough in gunnery perspective to aim at the ships waterline. But that's not much of an issue, since aiming in normal free-cam/third person view allows you to depress the guns just a bit lower than in gunnery zoom (why that is I don't know, but its a thing).

So you aim in free-cam at the waterline of the enemy ship and fire ... and whooooosh, all you shells fly harmless OVER the enemy ship.

 

 

Wat?

 

 

Congratulations, you just missed a battleship sized target, superstructure and all, ~1km away from you, by shooting over it ... even though you aimed for the waterline.

 

 

To reiterate: wat?

 

I am probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here but, just in case, you do know that in close range brawls you can scroll out to minimum zoom and that will allow you to aim your guns considerably lower?

[ForlornSailor]

10 minutes ago, xxNihilanxx said:

I am probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here but, just in case, you do know that in close range brawls you can scroll out to minimum zoom and that will allow you to aim your guns considerably lower?

 

I think, thats what he did? When I read right. However: If you are really too close - the turrets cant turn (physically) that low and the shells wont lose that much hight on shot distance. Thats why those shots fly over or at best hit the superstructure. Been a victim of this myself. Pretty sure its "working as intended"

[Aotearas]

16 minutes ago, xxNihilanxx said:

 

I am probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here but, just in case, you do know that in close range brawls you can scroll out to minimum zoom and that will allow you to aim your guns considerably lower?

 

I prefer my zoom to be static, hence why I use free-cam aim which lets me depress the guns lower without having to change my gunnery zoom.

 

Not that it should make any difference if I aim via gunnery- or free-cam, aiming at waterline is aiming at waterline and somehow the game sent all my shells flying well over the target.

 

Seen this happen often enough in such brawls to know that it's a consistent issue. Once I was literally right next to an Iowa in my Izumo (as in we just barely didn't touch on our driveby!!!), he fired and managed to have his shells fly over my Izumo even though his gun barrels practically pointed straight at my ship's hull.

 

For something like that to happen there simply has to be something seriously wrong with the aiming system (possibly the automatic aim correction) that just goes completely haywire when trying to shoot at something this close.

 

4 minutes ago, ForlornSailor said:

However: If you are really too close - the turrets cant turn (physically) that low and the shells wont lose that much hight on shot distance. Thats why those shots fly over or at best hit the superstructure. Been a victim of this myself. Pretty sure its "working as intended"

It is most definately NOT a problem with physical gun depression.

 

 Even if the guns wouldn't be able to depress low enough to hit the waterline at ~1km range, that still wouldn't explain how the shells suddenly go high enough to even fly over a battleship's superstructure at such short range.

[MortenTardo]

Yep. Dont zoom all the way out, but enough to see the guns and you can lower them enough to hit the citadel. 

[ColonelPete]

24 minutes ago, Aotearas said:

Just once again was the victim of a nasty pecularity with the game's aiming system.

 

Picture the following: two BBs are brawling at close range. And I mean close range, like 1km apart at best, the kind of brawl where ramming isn't only an option but depending on the HP trade pretty damn favourable and something you don't want if you happen to be the healthier ship and would probably win the duel as long as it doesn't come into full contact fisticuffs.

At such close ranges, you can't even depress low enough in gunnery perspective to aim at the ships waterline. But that's not much of an issue, since aiming in normal free-cam/third person view allows you to depress the guns just a bit lower than in gunnery zoom (why that is I don't know, but its a thing).

So you aim in free-cam at the waterline of the enemy ship and fire ... and whooooosh, all you shells fly harmless OVER the enemy ship.

 

 

Wat?

 

 

Congratulations, you just missed a battleship sized target, superstructure and all, ~1km away from you, by shooting over it ... even though you aimed for the waterline.

 

 

To reiterate: wat?

Never happened to me. Where did the shells land? At 15 km?

I have a hard time shooting over allies close to my ships, but that is usually around 2 to 3 km. At 1 km that should be impossible.

[Exocet6951]

Add to that the fact that at close ranges, sometimes the target locking just...stops for a fraction of a second and you have a very frustrating experience in CQC brawls, where there winner tends to be the one that manages to cheese the system the most, while having the least technical issues.

RIP my ship that one time my back turret decided to snap to the other side of my superstructure for no reason.
RIP.

[Aotearas]

4 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

Never happened to me. Where did the shells land? At 15 km?

I have a hard time shooting over allies close to my ships, but that is usually around 2 to 3 km. At 1 km that should be impossible.

 

No idea where my shells eventually landed because in that instance the enemy ship managed to ram me and I didn't quite have the time nor presence of mind to try and check where the shells went.

 

With 6k HP and a perfect broadside angle for my rear turrets that BB would've died had the shells not decided to try and go for the moon, so it was understandably a bit frustrating at that moment.

[Profilus]

Doesn't freecam(right click) leave the aimpoint at last position it has when you rightclick??

[ColonelPete]

3 minutes ago, Aotearas said:

 

No idea where my shells eventually landed because in that instance the enemy ship managed to ram me and I didn't quite have the time nor presence of mind to try and check where the shells went.

 

With 6k HP and a perfect broadside angle for my rear turrets that BB would've died had the shells not decided to try and go for the moon, so it was understandably a bit frustrating at that moment.

Sound like a serious issue of bad luck or bad bug...

[Aotearas]

5 minutes ago, Profilus said:

Doesn't freecam(right click) leave the aimpoint at last position it has when you rightclick??

 

I mean free-cam as in the normal third person perspective and opposed to gunnery cam, not free-looking camera. Changed the thread title to reflect that.

[Donnerturm]

Vor 1 Minute, Aotearas sagte:

 

I mean free-cam as in the normal third person perspective and opposed to gunnery cam, not free-looking camera. Changed the thread title to reflect that.

The solution really is to zoom out a couple of notches. I understand that you prefer your zoom to be static, but it doesn't work like that. Whenever I get in a close-quarter's situation I zoom out already. I think 3 steps back from maximum zoom is the threshold, where you can move your view more freely.

[Aotearas]

18 minutes ago, Donnerturm said:

The solution really is to zoom out a couple of notches. I understand that you prefer your zoom to be static, but it doesn't work like that. Whenever I get in a close-quarter's situation I zoom out already. I think 3 steps back from maximum zoom is the threshold, where you can move your view more freely.

As I already said you can also depress the guns freely in third person perspective, same as when zooming out in gunnery perspective.

 

I know it works, because that's what I'm using since forever, including BB brawl drivebys where any amount of zooming out in gunnery cam doesn't work because you have to pre-aim your guns due to turret traverse limitations and thus you wouldn't even be able to look at the enemy ship.

 

It's just that for some reason the aim goes on the fritz when trying to do that at extremely close range and the game for some reason decides to send the shells so far over the target that no amount of "can't depress guns enough" explains how the shells suddenly fly way over the target.

[wilkatis_LV]

1 hour ago, Aotearas said:

But that's not much of an issue, since aiming in normal free-cam/third person view allows you to depress the guns just a bit lower than in gunnery zoom (why that is I don't know, but its a thing).

Scroll back a bit and you can get a lower depression view while zoomed in aswell (I know you know it but whatever).

 

Important part here would be - I think it's only your view that goes lower, guns will still fire at the upper belt / deck bcuz depression.

 

1 hour ago, Aotearas said:

So you aim in free-cam at the waterline of the enemy ship and fire ... and whooooosh, all you shells fly harmless OVER the enemy ship.

Yeah, that sounds like pretty accurate BB dispersion depiction

 

My best guess it's largely to do with what I mentioned above + how large would vertical dispersion be at close range due to how high your shells velocity at that point is.

Thus you get the deck line shot which can go far beyond the target - RNG rolls all shells going a tad bit high and you get 0 hits

[Aotearas]

14 minutes ago, wilkatis_LV said:

Important part here would be - I think it's only your view that goes lower, guns will still fire at the upper belt / deck bcuz depression.

Naw, you can see that in third person camera view the guns depress to the same minimum elevation as when fully zoomed out in gunnery view. You just zoom in and aim at the water as near as you as possible whilst zoomed in, right-click and see how low the barrles are pointing, then exit gunnery zoom and aim without gunnery zoom and you'll find you can depress the guns lower.

When comparing fully zoomed out gunnery view gun depression the same way it will show the maximum gun depression to be the same as when trying to aim at the same point in third person camera.

 

 

And yes, I'm fully aware that battleship mainbatteries can only depress to some point, but that point is still far lower than what it takes for shells to fly well over a battleship sized target at ~1km range, even bad vertical dispersion can't be the reason for that, much like @ColonelPete said: if you can hit allied ships at ~2km whilst aiming at ships well beyond them (meaning you elevate the guns), then how the hell do you NOT hit a ship at ~1km even though you're aiming as low as the guns can go? Doesn't add up.

[_Flagada_Jones_]

Usual WG RNG...

Sometimes when i shot close target, i clearly see all my shells going deep in see just 1 km away from ennemy ship.

[ShinGetsu]

In such a situation, I usually zoom out to the "just behind the turret view". I never encountered any issue this way.

[NothingButTheRain]

2 hours ago, Aotearas said:

Just once again was the victim of a nasty pecularity with the game's aiming system.

 

Picture the following: two BBs are brawling at close range. And I mean close range, like 1km apart at best, the kind of brawl where ramming isn't only an option but depending on the HP trade pretty damn favourable and something you don't want if you happen to be the healthier ship and would probably win the duel as long as it doesn't come into full contact fisticuffs.

At such close ranges, you can't even depress low enough in gunnery perspective to aim at the ships waterline. But that's not much of an issue, since aiming in normal free-cam/third person view allows you to depress the guns just a bit lower than in gunnery zoom (why that is I don't know, but its a thing).

So you aim in free-cam at the waterline of the enemy ship and fire ... and whooooosh, all you shells fly harmless OVER the enemy ship.

 

 

Wat?

 

 

Congratulations, you just missed a battleship sized target, superstructure and all, ~1km away from you, by shooting over it ... even though you aimed for the waterline.

 

 

To reiterate: wat?

This sounds similar to an aiming bug where some artificial limitation to gun despression gets forced, resulting in the gun overshooting and possibly even surpassing its maximum gunrange (which can also be artificially set, which in WoWS actually is done as well) due to what I believe was some bug with positive and negative elevation.

You perhaps tried to push the gun arcs WAY down, it flipped from - to + and WAY overshot instead. I mean, why else would your aim behave this way?

[Aotearas]

2 hours ago, NothingButTheRain said:

This sounds similar to an aiming bug where some artificial limitation to gun despression gets forced, resulting in the gun overshooting and possibly even surpassing its maximum gunrange (which can also be artificially set, which in WoWS actually is done as well) due to what I believe was some bug with positive and negative elevation.

You perhaps tried to push the gun arcs WAY down, it flipped from - to + and WAY overshot instead. I mean, why else would your aim behave this way?

Variable overflow, eh?

 

Now I'm getting Civ II flashbacks, damn you Ghandi!

[NothingButTheRain]

1 hour ago, Aotearas said:

Variable overflow, eh?

 

Now I'm getting Civ II flashbacks, damn you Ghandi!

I'm not saying this is it (obviously), but it would explain these specific symptoms and as it's kinda a weird problem I wanted to at least have it mentioned.

If this is the case, it's a bug.

[lup3s]

I had the same thing occur yesterday with Missouri while doing a drive-by against a FdG.

1st turret hit, 2nd turret shot waaay above the superstructure, 3rd turret hit - didn't change my aim between shots 

[El2aZeR]

19 hours ago, Aotearas said:

damn you Ghandi!

 

[BLUB__BLUB]

I suppose you have found a bug there. Never had that problem.

I even managed to shoot a DD (Mutsuki) from ~0.4km or so, in a New York.

Went really well, used the two front turrets and blasted him clean out of the water, as expected.

[Miessa3]

1 hour ago, El2aZeR said:

 

jeah that sneaky hypocrite is always the one that will nuke you in the end.

[NothingButTheRain]

2 hours ago, lup3s said:

I had the same thing occur yesterday with Missouri while doing a drive-by against a FdG.

1st turret hit, 2nd turret shot waaay above the superstructure, 3rd turret hit - didn't change my aim between shots 

2nd turret on the model is set a bit higher compared to the fore and aft turrets, so still plausible.