This is the pre-alpha, don’t forget. I’m sure buildings and structures will get their own (hidden) hp and armor levels in time.
I don’t forget it, but you shouldn’t forget that this is a straight away copy of xcom and we all know it has even its dlc released and a single shot can still destroy buildings 
just hope it will change in this to something more logical but it seems logic is not a strength of today’s developers
Don’t worry there will be pink viewfinder for you, so you could sit and think what was logic behind that. 
This is true, but is more of a problem of line of sight and the game not using view cones. This game really need to implement view cones and angles to be perfect and very different from Fireaxis crap. The field of view is very important on the original games and what made possible to stalk and hide from enemies.
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I do believe you are talking about limited vision range. That is something very different from view cones, which is a restriction on peripheral vision for units.
Those who “went under” (felt to lower floor) had better chance of survival. Yes, with return of fire and enemies instantly attacking lone soldier - those who e.g. quickly jetpacked to high towers had quite of trouble to live.
Its good high ground rush is balanced by these mechanics. There should be bonus in visibility, free aming from top with no obstacles but then member (like southpark memberries) that they have same angle advantage when shooting at you up and you usual don’t have much cover up there.
But thanks @JulianG for introducing limited perception via fog of war.
Because of ballistic. Bullets never fly in straight line except the case it shot vertically down. They are not laisers
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But this is not a Simulator of real life.
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I agree, but that doesn’t make it vastly easier to aim at a target at a lower elevation (beyond other factors that were listed in my original post)
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OMG. It does make it easier, because build a curve is much harder, then just point with a gun.
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Have you looked at the ranges shooting happens in PP?
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Sniper shooting range is long enough. Rest of classes can be
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This is because bullets travel in an arc. The shape of that arc depends on multiple different things, but when shooting from up high the bullet has to fight against gravity less compared to how you (most likely) sighted in the gun on level ground.
Likewise if you move closer to the target compared to what the gun was zeroed at you’re going to be shooting lower than where you’ve aimed. Here’s a good breakdown of all of this (and probably better explained), but it’s because of this stuff for why snipers will actually build bullet charts for how specific rounds perform in their gun.
While it’s true that bullets are affected by gravity, it takes a long while before it’s a noticeable difference. Most games with a +aim modifier are simply counteracting the +defense modifier you get for cover. Physical bullet simulation does both of these inherently. You don’t get a defense mod for cover, the bullet went straight at your heart, it’s just that your chest was behind a bulldozer. PP also covers the effects of fighting in a cluttered environment, as you can have cover from debris without even behind tucked in behind something. Being higher up let’s you ignore more of that.
In Firearms combat, being on the high ground is often not as advantageous as it sounds. The allies in ww1 learned that lesson. For one, if you’re dumb enough to stand up going OVER a hill, you just made a perfect paper target of yourself to lower enemies. If the incline has any real steepness, the folks higher up are shooting at a smaller potential target, as the upper body covers the lower for targets downhill. Shooting uphill at someone, their entire body remains exposed for far longer. Of course, they were charging in the open, where as being in cover up high DOES make a difference, as does armor.
Snipers like being up high because they operate as detached units and often are tasked with finding targets of opportunity, and being able to see more of their area is advantageous more than any sight picture advantage (and also, the sight picture advantage is more related to the distance their shooting at, where small elevation changes could mess up their shot, which is not nearly as big a deal at 10-20 yards).
TL:DR Outside of the element of surprise, having the high ground is a wash vs. low ground. Ability to shoot over low cover is taken in exchange for more visibility, and game simulates it inherently without needing + or - indicators.
Last thing, we don’t have soldier skills yet, which very well may include aim bonuses for being up high.
What do you mean it’s a long while before it’s a noticeable difference? The article talks about how in 300 yards it’s an ~6in swing, which can easily make you miss what you were aiming for (headshot, unarmored spots, etc). Games over-simplify things as even ray-casted shots aren’t a perfect model for bullet trajectories (though it’s FAR better than a hit/miss or hitscan system), but there’s a reason why so many rounds are fired in combat per kill and it isn’t only because of suppression fire.
As for hills/height, it depends on all sorts of things. This is why there’s the “military crest” that one would want to go along so as to not highlight themselves. But it is by no means “a wash” vs low ground in real life. Most people don’t even know they need to compensate more for aiming up, while when aiming down at a target you’re still likely to hit them so long as you aim center mass. I’ve done fire drills where we had to move up and it was interesting to see how as we got closer our rounds were hitting lower and lower compared to where I was aiming. Which means the rounds would have been more and more likely to be hitting cover had the target of been behind even a relatively low wall, and this is before factoring in the different aim points for needing to shoot up.
Now of course engagement ranges in PP, XCOM, etc are extremely short. If engagements happened at those ranges it wouldn’t be as important. But this is a scaling/balance thing as engagements generally don’t happen at such ranges (likewise shotguns don’t have such crazy spread as shown in games). A person can reasonably engage a target at 25-50 yards (and beyond), yet good luck having a soldier in a game engage a target at those ranges. So if games are going to shrink engagement ranges then they also need to properly shrink ballistics. In XCOM EU/EW the entire map for one of the supply UFOs is 118x52 tiles. Even if each tile was 1.5m instead of the commonly viewed 1m, that’s still only 177m (~194 yards) from one end to the other; completely within a realistic engagement range (the M16 has a max effective range rating of 550m for point targets and 800m for area targets). So by scaling down engagement range they very much need to also scale down the ballistics.
My point involved the fact that we are shooting across the street at crabs, which means a 6 inch drop at 300 yards is immaterial. Most urban engagements occur way within the max range of a rifle, around 100m. At 100m, M855 ammo with either an m16/A2 or an m4 is close to zero drop (relative to a torso).
It’s absolutely true that elevation requires aiming adjustments. And yes, it’s more misleading adjusting aim uphill. Aim is something that CAN be changed however, but the differences in target size can’t. I’m also assuming for the moment that noone is moving. Assaulting down a hill at a fixed position, especially if they have cover, is not going to give you any advantage other than speed. And if there’s any support fire from a stand-off position further back, it’s even worse. Having the high ground with modern weapon systems does not have the same meaning it once did with arrows or early firearms, or even early mechanized/artillery. The main advantage of the high ground is in intelligence. The other advantage is an increase in the range extreme, but that’s a very situational thing.
With both side dug in, the advantage of height in anything except very extreme angles is minor when dealing with nothing but firearms. Stuff like grenades are a whole different story.
I see your point about scaling, but I disagree. I don’t see a good reason to artificially condense physics to simulate a firefight occurring at 10-20 yards in game into one occurring at 70. It would needlessly complicate things, and cause a huge disconnect between what you see vs what the game tells you is happening. Maps can be made with much larger empty zones that can work for those distances without hitting the uncanny Valley.
These are just my opinions, and no hostility is meant. Also, good call on the shotgun, that always bothers me in both games and movies. Especially the 5 foot shots that show someone peppered with holes all over their torso instead of the fist sized hole they’d really have in their gut. Shotguns serve a purpose, but it’s not, in reality, a purpose of just pointing in a target’s general direction and expecting to hit anything, lol.