Use a smaller hitbox for human buildables when checking for friendly fire

[illwieckz]

Related Problem issues:

It's very easy to do friendly fire on some buildables like turrets as humans. Since humans use rifles player is expected to intuitively believe a bullet could go between two buildables.

Idea:

While we may keep the current hitbox size when hit by aliens to give them a chance, it may be possible to implement a smaller hitbox for the friendly human team in a way friendly fire is not disabled but it's easier to shoot between buildings without destroying its base.

I guess we may even not implement it as friendly hitbox but as human hitbox. In a potential human vs human game humans have enough precision with their rifle to accommodate a small enemy buildable hitbow.

Since aliens use close attacks or complex projectiles (spit), the large enemy hitboxes are good to keep. They also probably don't need smaller hitboxes for their own buildables.

[sweet235]

As weird as this would be, I like the idea. We hear complaints about humans hitting their base frequently.

But I'm not sure if and how we should implement this.

[VReaperV]

Related to this, can we do the same for battlesuits as well? Sometimes I hit them despite clearly shooting through empty space next to them.

[Viech]

I'm undecided on this. Friendly fire isn't fun and this would maybe be a good change to alleviate it. It is however a bit complex and, since the effect is invisible, could easily lead to inconsistencies in the code (between the many types of traces we do for various purposes: all of them would have to be "assigned to a team"). There is also a tendency that humans defending their base is too efficient and too frustrating for attackers at the time; this could only get a bit worse through this proposal.