Experience: GSF 98% completion

Ship - Novadive

Armor Components - Lightweight Armor

Stats:

-Shields 1040

-Shield Bleed 0.00%

-Max Health 1050

-Damage Reduction 0.00%

Match: Domination.

I was burrowed up against the Satellite alignment component (either green or red) at the zenith of the Satellite, farming for 4 minute defensive medals and a gunship shot me through the Satellite Alignment Component. I was shot through the satellite. The alignment component is not a clippable object or something you can shoot through or fly through. I would know because while I sat there, I was shooting it and my blasters were hitting it because I was bored. I had no reason to move to engage the gunship, I had the advantage if they came to me given my loadout.

So is this a cheat? Did this other player crit with their ion railgun so significantly that their Ion AOE one-shot me when they hit the turret near me?

My mind was utterly blown, literally and metaphorically.

One thing you'll learn is that the folks that bother to run the ion/rail gs are typically better at it than the ones that run rail/protorp or some similar config.

A sat offers you some protection - but ion hits with a radius so you can't just cover and assume you're safe.

In your situation I would think one of two things:

Either someone else hit you from an angle you weren't noticing (ie above/below)

Or ion splash was high enough to finish a damaged ship.

One thing you'll learn is that the folks that bother to run the ion/rail gs are typically better at it than the ones that run rail/protorp or some similar config.

 

A sat offers you some protection - but ion hits with a radius so you can't just cover and assume you're safe.

 

In your situation I would think one of two things:

 

Either someone else hit you from an angle you weren't noticing (ie above/below)

 

Or ion splash was high enough to finish a damaged ship.

There's no way an Ion AOE crit is enough to kill a scout at full health/shields. And that was the only ship in the vicinity, and I distinctly remember the player's name popping up in chat when they blew me up at that moment. I was looking at them and they were greyed out with the hash marks indicating broken LOS.

But it is what it is. I know GSF is highly unoptimized compared to other parts of the game so maybe something really really weird happened. Just curious if it happened to anyone else at this point.

Ok so you are not going to like this explanation, but this is neither a bug, nor a cheat. It is working as intended. What is happening here is a matter of perspective. They are shooting you through the gap in the satellite fins. When you are far away from the satellite fins the gap is nearly non-existent and it treats it as such from your perspective. The gap just is way to small to shoot through from a distance, but when you are right next to it the gap is massive especially by comparison to the tiny ship you are shooting at because of the perspective of distance. Could you imagine the game telling you that you can't shoot through this very obvious gap because the guy you are shooting at can't shoot at you because the gap from his perspective is smaller than your ship?

You would have screen shots for days showing the greyed out thing while a ship is in the wide open middle of this gap and people saying WHAT?!?!?!

In the end it is simply a matter of distance and perspective and working as intended. If you were close to the gunship the fins would look the way it does for him and you would be able to shoot him just like he shot you. Right through the gap.

There's no way an Ion AOE crit is enough to kill a scout at full health/shields. And that was the only ship in the vicinity, and I distinctly remember the player's name popping up in chat when they blew me up at that moment. I was looking at them and they were greyed out with the hash marks indicating broken LOS.

 

But it is what it is. I know GSF is highly unoptimized compared to other parts of the game so maybe something really really weird happened. Just curious if it happened to anyone else at this point.

I just realized what you meant --- the real question is why the heck you thought that was safe.

I fly through that little gap between the fins, tho it does need particular angles. If a ship goes through that, rails will too.

People that know how to strafe can use cover so they can expose just enough to fire a shot without peeking out too far. If this was a scout vs gs its not like you'd be in range so relying on reticle to check cover is a bad practice anyway.

I've been the scout and shot people through the gap in the fins, and I've been the gunship that has shot people through the fins --- the big difference is while I know I'm doing it in scout, I'm probably too far zoomed out in gunship to notice how fancy I'm getting (when I use the reticle to know if shot is decent or not).

I couldn't quite tell from your situation whether this will match your fact pattern, but in fact it IS possible to shoot through the satellite in a very limited scenario.

If you are directly resting against the inner section of the satellite, beneath the large "disc" top, because of the way the camera works, it is possible to rotate and have the satellite disappear, allowing you to shoot at people within that area.

It is a very limited arc, but it is in fact possible (I've done it personally on accident before I figured out what was going on). I don't know if this is considered an exploit or not, but I find it personally distasteful.

Now, I should say that most of the time someone thinks they are getting hit "through objects," they are generally wrong. However, it is in fact possible in this limited situation to shoot someone through a satellite.

Your camera, your gun origin points, and your ship hitbox are three separate entities. Just because your camera and guns don't have line of sight to something doesn't mean that your hitbox doesn't have line of sight to something.

Usually people using cover are deep enough into cover so that these differences don't matter, but if you're trying to be sneaky, or push right up to the edge, you need to be very precisely aware of all three locations (camera, guns, hitbox) work for the individual ship you're in, in order to avoid precisely this sort of event. Mastering this is one of the challenging elements of top level gunship-chess strafing duels.