the (many) things that determine a weapons range are:
1) the speed of your projectile. higher speeds will counteract gravity more increasing range (think of a slow bullet vs. a fast moving bullet fired from a gun).

2) the projectiles own gravity settings.

3) the launch angle of the projectile as specified by the main weapon entity file.

4) IF the projectile should detonate on impact w/ the ground or not.

5) if the projectile should roll along the ground (instead of detonating) then its TimeToLive is a major concideration as well as the amount of the firing tanks momentum to apply to the projectile (if any). notice how Rolling Grenades (and plasma mines) will travel farther the faster you are moving when firing them? those are good examples of this.

6) the gravity settings as specified by the current map/ level as modified by the sabot file. weaponry on the moon tends to be more accurate at longer distances and have a much longer range than on other maps. R-Grenades, machine guns and plasma cannons are much more deadly when used on the moon.

7) the projectiles tracking abilities. higher tracking power will counteract gravity to a certain extent and increase overall range.

8) the height of the terrain that youre sitting on vs. the height of the terrain youre target is sitting on who you are aiming at. The bomb lobber has much increased range and accuracy if youre sitting at the top of, say, The Ramp firing at someone on the lower area under you.

9) the probably largest factor however with the way that TM is designed is the angle you are currently at when firing. thats where the real skill and strategy comes into play, especially with weapons like the MRL and the peashooter. youll need to USE THE TERRAIN to range your weapons .

LDA did this on purpose to make the game more challenging and exciting. you need to be tilted down a touch to effectively use the MRL, for example, against someone in front of you and need to angle yourself upwards a bit to increase your effective range to hit someone farther away.

as you can see there are A LOT of things to compute for such a feature to work well. granted its all just "number crunching" so a computer should be good at it, but its not currently an option. it may be however in future versions.

this is probably WAY more than you wanted to know, but this being the modding forum and all it seems like good info to have out and available anyway.

about the only way for a sighting system to work as of now is the laser sight feature as used on a few weapons such as the massdriver. the massdriver is NOT effected by gravity settings and isnt effected by much else either (as is dictated by its weapon and projectile files). it is a hitscan weapon meaning that it just simply fires straight to the end of its range. laser sighting systems like that are handy on weapons that pretty much "just shoot straight ahead".

hope this helps/ explains something to someone .

Another long-winded (while bored) posting by JV

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Let the rocks roll and the battle commence. BZ The RPG. Check out the site! Loads of Tread Marks support and AddOns. (Under Heavy Construction) The non-TM areas of the site have been resurrected!

I just wanted to verify that you (JVortex) are different from the Vortex I saw recently, who said he was not you (did that make sense?). I ask because I believe I saw something in a thread about JVortex formerly being Vortex - but having to change because of a lost password or something to that effect. So I thought it possible that JVortex may play as Vortex, in addition to the Vortex I saw last night.

and i just found out a couple days ago that there was a player going by vortex. that isnt and hasnt ever been me. ive been JVortex from the beginning on the board here and play online (when im able to, derned ping...) as DNX*JVortex.