What are "Guns" (and "Protector") exactly ?

[BlueTemplar]

"Guns" as unit types are mentioned in at least 2 places :

1.) In the Leader "Gun Tactics" family-less skill :

Improves the combat performance of this specific type of troops.

2.) In the terrain combat modifiers : "Guns" have maluses attacking in Mountains/Ruins, but Entrench and attack cross River/Escarpment/Glacier/Canyon like "Infantry".

So, are these both the same ?

Is 2.) for the Foot Movetype only : MachineGun // Bazooka + Manpad // Artillery + Anti-Tank Gun + Flak Gun ?

Is 1.) also for the Wheeled/Tracked "Guns" : Mechanized Artillery + Rocket / Missile / SAM / Atomic / ICBM Launchers and the Logistics moved Automated MachineGun / Turret ?

Something else ?

P.S.: What is this "Protector" TROOPTYPE, that seems to have -50% Attack and -25% defense in all Landscapes except Ruins ?

[Mina]

Guns should only be Artillery/AT/Flak, but I'm not 100% sure

Protector is mobile shield generators though, they're tracked units that have no direct combat ability.

[zgrssd]

Units have a Movement type (Foot, Wheel, Track), a Combat type (Infantry, Gun, Tank) and a binary hardness (Soft/hard target).

However of those 3, only the movement type is currently shown.
While you are pretty unlikely to get infantry that uses anything but foot (or wheel for motorized) movement type, Buggies do fight as Tanks but move as wheeled. So you have to treat those 3 as seperate things altogether

[Soar_Slitherine]

In the current non-beta version of the game, rocket and missile artillery and nuclear launchers use the Tank Tactics skill, but they were changed to use Gun Tactics in beta 1.07.02.

[BlueTemplar]

In a way, this is even more confusing now. (Not to mention the term "gun" being used elsewhere for something very different.)

I suggest renaming this TROOPTYPE to "Artillery" (though it's still not ideal if Flak Gun / SAM Launcher are concerned too) and the Artillery model type to "Towed Artillery" (since for the modern kind of artillery, it's going to be at least towed around by some kind of (xeno?)beast of burden, not by infantry itself ! Or would that be confusing because it would seem to require dedicated player-controlled trucks ? I guess that there's no way to fix this inconsistency, really...)

Originally, the word "artillery" referred to any group of soldiers primarily armed with some form of manufactured weapon or armor. Since the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, "artillery" has largely meant cannons, and in contemporary usage, usually refers to shell-firing guns, howitzers, mortars, and rocket artillery. In common speech, the word "artillery" is often used to refer to individual devices, along with their accessories and fittings, although these assemblages are more properly called "equipment". However, there is no generally recognized generic term for a gun, howitzer, mortar, and so forth: the United States uses "artillery piece", but most English-speaking armies use "gun" and "mortar".

And maybe rename Anti-Tank Gun to Anti-Tank Cannon ?

A howitzer /ˈhaʊ.ɪtsər/ is generally a large ranged weapon that stands between an artillery gun (also known as a cannon outside the US) – which have smaller, higher-velocity shells fired at flatter trajectories – and a mortar – which fires at higher angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like other artillery equipment, are usually organized in groups called batteries.

[Trifler]

My suggestion is to just change all current instances of "Gun" in the tech tree to "Cannon". It would then be correct.

For unit weapons:
- Changing the unit name "Howitzer" to "Artillery" makes sense to me. I've always called them "Artillery" anyway.
- I don't think the name of the AT Gun needs to be changed.

[BlueTemplar]

So, your final suggestion is to change *all* "Guns" to cannon, *except* AT Gun ? Why not ? [EDIT (Whoops, I misread, not *really* all.) : And why just in the tech tree ?]
(For consistency, and being easier on new players, wouldn't you want them to be changed everywhere ?)

Howitzer isn't *actually* a model *type* name, but it *is* a name that can pop up for model *line* name for (towed) Artillery (which is already named this way).
(I've seen an even worse example : IIRC it was "Rocket Launcher" for a Bazooka... even though there's already a completely different model type named Rocket Launcher !!)

----

EDIT : The UI also uses different names for "formation types" and model types,
it makes sense for : Heavy Tank = Heavy Tank + Tank Destroyer + Monitor Tank,
(though maybe *here* the first "Heavy Tank" *should* be named differently from the second - in keeping with the other 2 tank formations, the first should be "Heavy Armour" instead ?)
but it gets slightly weird for formation types with only one model type :
(Ok Machinegun = MG is fine.)
Motorized Transport = Truck
(Buggy = Recon Buggy is fine too, but why the abbreviation is now the other way around ??)
Light Armour = Light Tank
(Armour = Medium Tank & Assault Gun : mostly fine, maybe call it *Medium* Armour for even more clarity ?)
RPG = Bazooka (where does the Manpad goes, I forgot ?)
(Mech.Artillery = Mechanized Artillery, another abbreviation.)
Motorcycle = Motorbike Infantry

----

P.S.: We've noticed that the manual was wrong (or at least very misleading) about :
"Ranged attacks see their mm divided by three due to the likelihood of a proximity instead of a direct hit." (p326)
Attacks during Regular Attack (at least on the offense ?) *also* see their mm divided by 3 for artillery units ! (At least for towed artillery, which was the only one I've checked ?)

But this makes sense :
As Trifler pointed out elsewhere, artillery howitzers are supposedly always using them for indirect fire (45°+ angle),
(remember that artillery cannot attack units that have broken through !)
while tank howitzers are supposedly always using them for direct fire (45°- angle) !

[zgrssd]

I would be happy if the game just mentioned these things on the unit card:
- movement Type (already there)
- combat Type (what we are talking about)
- Hard Target Yes/No (usefull for some alien Lifeforms)

[Trifler]

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

So, your final suggestion is to change *all* "Guns" to cannon, *except* AT Gun ? Why not ? [EDIT (Whoops, I misread, not *really* all.) : And why just in the tech tree ?]
(For consistency, and being easier on new players, wouldn't you want them to be changed everywhere ?)

Because I'm specifically talking about how the tech tree uses the word "Guns" to refer to vehicle weapons and artillery (i.e. cannons), and does not include infantry weapons, even though those are also guns. AT Gun is not something on the tech tree, and is a model. The term "AT Gun" is used IRL to refer specifically to a towed anti-tank cannon. It is not a generic usage, but a specific one. I am not directly opposed to "AT Cannon", I just dont' see any need for it. I spoken to countless people who think the tech tree naming is messed up, but nobody who's been confused about what an AT Gun is.


Howitzer isn't *actually* a model *type* name, but it *is* a name that can pop up for model *line* name for (towed) Artillery (which is already named this way).
(I've seen an even worse example : IIRC it was "Rocket Launcher" for a Bazooka... even though there's already a completely different model type named Rocket Launcher !!)

Ok then nm about the artillery.

[/quote]

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

P.S.: We've noticed that the manual was wrong (or at least very misleading) about :
"Ranged attacks see their mm divided by three due to the likelihood of a proximity instead of a direct hit." (p326)
Attacks during Regular Attack (at least on the offense ?) *also* see their mm divided by 3 for artillery units ! (At least for towed artillery, which was the only one I've checked ?)

But this makes sense :
As Trifler pointed out elsewhere, artillery howitzers are supposedly always using them for indirect fire (45°+ angle),
(remember that artillery cannot attack units that have broken through !)
while tank howitzers are supposedly always using them for direct fire (45°- angle) !

I said I need to evaluate them again based on what Gary told me.

[Trifler]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

I would be happy if the game just mentioned these things on the unit card:
- movement Type (already there)
- combat Type (what we are talking about)
- Hard Target Yes/No (usefull for some alien Lifeforms)

BlueTemplar sent me a link here from a discussion we were having on YouTube about game terminology. I was never interested in combat type, so I dunno why I'm here.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, as we've already stated here and elsewhere :
Small arms are "guns" too !
(Though the game only seems to use "small arms" for Soft weapons, and never "guns" ?) (Except in the composite word "machinegun" of course...)

----

EDIT :

- Hard Target Yes/No (usefull for some alien Lifeforms)

Yeah, sometimes you do get some animals with traits where it says that they are for instance "considered as hard targets with polymer armour" or something like this, but other times...
BTW, aren't ALL Hard armors getting a Soft HP penalty ?
Arachnids don't, but the game says that they have a "very hard carapace"...
EDIT2 : Yeah, no, I just checked, despite this text blurb, Arachnids have a Soft armour... (and that's why no Soft HP penalty ?)

Getting further offtopic, but "Max attacked", which IIRC determines how many times a unit can counter-attack during a combat round before starting to get (quadratically ?) increasing penalties on its (tactical) attack value, would be nice to have too ?