"Tab" targeting issues

[b00ce 160]

another problem in game:

Currently amount of players inside of vehicles decrease power of vehicles.In other words gunner and pilot in chopper or plane is less effective than only pilot with another magic manual fire.Most players prefer fly alone as well as tankers.2 1 player tanks can do more job than 1 with driver and gunner.It also relayed to TAB issue.

Should be absolutely opposite.

I beg to differ, an Apache without a gunner cannot use the chain-gun as effectively as a fully crewed one and I've had issues locking without a gunner; same for the tank a single tank that can move and shoot at the same time will always beat 2 tanks that have to stop to shoot.

And as for the farmer shooting down the helicopter, it isn't hard and I fail to recognize how it has anything to do with the Apache's targeting system.

[.kju 3245]

kotov is right about the reality of playing arma in PvP and actual gameplay.

Even worse you fail to realize the abuse hurts casual/new players most and makes the player base smaller in the long run (or even short).

Sadly no good player does multi crew chopper or tanks as single crew is a lot stronger due to the excessive strength and simplicity of the TAB lock system.

However removing (TAB) locking and radar from all units that don't have such capabilities in the real world, would already help a good deal.

Another good tweak is to remove the radar signature from some units completely like motorbikes or even smaller cars and trucks.

In addition one could make some units always have only a white radar signature (aka no friend-foe recognition).

Of course BI could do this and that, yet this is the OA suggestion forum and it is unlikely to see (such major) changes.

All these tweak could easily be done within the existing system - even more one could duplicate classes

and let AI/COOP player stick to the abusive system, and let PvP player use the new classes that offer better gameplay instead.

---

In OFP the commander had a command cursor to assign targets.

The 2-target menu is messy as it lacks context and contains way too many items.

However it can still be used in some situations to assign targets easily that you don't actually see (in that moment).

Also in OFP the TAB/locking system worked somewhat different as well.

So references to OFP, especially such incomplete and faulty comparisons, are inappropriate.

Edited February 21, 2012 by .kju [PvPscene]

[NoRailgunner 0]

PvPscene lets try some other over-simplification, shall we:

Most pvp players are using all cheats/tricks to be on top of any list/statistics and/or to be the first who get some achievements/gratifications.

Most pvp players use "teamplay" only to their own advantage.

Most pvp players like to have a balanced gameplay eg BLUFOR vehicle/weapon system is 1:1 the same like an of OPFOR vehicle/weapon system and vice versa.

Now go find some other over-simplifications.... :D

How realistic the targeting procedures can be made without annoying the player eg "almighty" radar, TAB-lock or menu fumbling?

"PvP vs other players" is inappropriate. ;)

[.kju 3245]

What is your problem mate? You feel offended? By what?

Of course every good player will (ab)use the available game mechanics as much as possible.

Just like SP/COOP players use walls/houses/ranged weapons and other abuses to waste AI easily.

Or do you see often 10 humans vs 10 AI scenarios? And otherwise people complain about AI being

super human with crazy spotting and aiming skills.

Feel free to ask the CTI/Warfare experts about TAB lock and the major effect on gameplay.

A plane in the air or chopper in arma can easily annihilate ground vehicles among large distance

with a single key press and the ground vehicle having basically no way to escape or hide.

With the introduction of badly tweaked flares most AA missiles are almost incapable of hitting air units.

Do you realize that most clan/league missions removed tab lock weapons from vehicles, or did not use

choppers or planes at all since OFP due to their superior nature.

Do you realize that TAB locking is the essential skill in Warfare after abusing AI shortcomings at the game start.

Yes yes but we all live a nice dream world and actually never play the game but only rage in forums

about arma not being realistic enough.

Also these complaints by players are actually fantasy and have nothing to do with actual gameplay.

[Beagle 684]

I rarely agree to PvPscene but in this issue I have to agree that he(?) is spot on.

Add to it that AAA is ineffective in the game too...I always see the differcen when playing DCS...you do not see the hidden zu23 in the town and when you see he tracers its often too late and in 1 second you have a christmas tree of failure lights in the pit and some missing parts on the fuselage and wings...Ever tried to shoot down a A-10 with ZU-23 in ArmA?

[max power 21]

I think with minimal hit and penetration materials, one could lower the hitpoints of the a10 safely without making it unreasonably vulnerable to small arms fire.

[Beagle 684]

I think with minimal hit and penetration materials, one could lower the hitpoints of the a10 safely without making it unreasonably vulnerable to small arms fire.

This is a general Issue with all aircraft in ArmA...the hitpoints still are the same as it was in the countermeasureless A2 era when hitpoints were basically your countermeasure. With the introduction of CC this should have been changed ASAP especially since fixed wing aircraft don't have any damage model including subsystems like fuel and engine systems etc. that could fail

[max power 21]

This is a general Issue with all aircraft in ArmA...the hitpoints still are the same as it was in the countermeasureless A2 era when hitpoints were basically your countermeasure. With the introduction of CC this should have been changed ASAP especially since fixed wing aircraft don't have any damage model including subsystems like fuel and engine systems etc. that could fail

I agree. But weren't the aeroplanes really hard to shoot down (in terms of hit points) in previous games? I can't remember, but I get the impression the a10 and su25 had lots of hitpoints, too. Regardless, I think with countermeasures, penetration materials and such it would be safe to reduce the hitpoints of fixed wing aeroplanes and even reduce the damage of some anti-aircraft weapons! I guess this is not really a tab targetting issue but more of an issue with the grotesque power of aircraft in general. It's just a shame that these aircraft in this game can't see the ground when they are cruising at high altitude, out of the range of these short range dangers.

[PlacidBox 10]

While I realise this is mostly a troll post, I'll give some sane answers.

PvPscene lets try some other over-simplification, shall we:

Most pvp players are using all cheats/tricks to be on top of any list/statistics and/or to be the first who get some achievements/gratifications.

This really depends on your definitions of 'cheats' and 'tricks,' Is using tactical view to look over walls a cheat, even though it's very much a feature of the game? Decent pvp players will use everything available to them, it's part of competition, you don't randomly place things as 'off limits' just because it doesn't give an enemy a chance to shoot back at you.

If there's things pvp players find too powerful, they attempt to fix them to make pvp more interesting, both for new players and themselves.

Most pvp players use "teamplay" only to their own advantage.

CO-OP players should do the same, too. When you're given an objective, you try your hardest to complete that objective. If it's more effective (i.e. an advantage) to solo around ignoring your team, you do that (hence many of us preferring missions that require good amounts of team work to complete the objective.)

Most pvp players like to have a balanced gameplay eg BLUFOR vehicle/weapon system is 1:1 the same like an of OPFOR vehicle/weapon system and vice versa.

No, most PvP players are fine with asymmetry. However, we want /interesting/ game play, vehicles that are more effective /should/ be harder to use. Currently tanks and aircraft are literally trivial to be super effective with. This makes it boring to be both on the receiving and giving end for us. We'd like to see it fixed.

[NoRailgunner 0]

AI communication is a bit different to human (players) communication so how can BIS make targeting enjoyable realistic with and without AI as crewmember?

Is it possible to have more userfriendly options for players/server admins and mission designers to achieve how they want to play missions in A2OA/A3?

How much BIS devs know about military stuff they have done or working on? How much time they have to research and inform themselves about advantages/disadvantages of different systems? Which and why certain compromises/workarounds have to be found + implemented?

Crucial question:

Would Armaverse be more successful if BIS would care more about casual gamers or realism fans?

[-=seany=- 5]

AI communication is a bit different to human (players) communication so how can BIS make targeting enjoyable realistic with and without AI as crewmember?

TBH I think they have managed pretty well at this from the beginning. More options for pvp aspect will be welcome. It does irk me how dogmatic player v player fans can be though. Coop players have no problem allowing the game to have options to make PVP more enjoyable. But a lot of the time this not go the other way. People who don't like or play coop, or who want pvp to be more popular seem some times to be on witch hunt to kill anything that makes the game more intuitive to play. Mostly these things are to do with making the AI more usable, or just making the game more accessible. Some would be happy to just tear perfectly good functions out of the game regardless of the mess it makes of other peoples play style. Because they think it will some how make more people get on pvp games.

Would Armaverse be more successful if BIS would care more about casual gamers or realism fans?

Again, I think the balance is fine as it is and alienation will occur if they go too far one way or the other ( of course this does not rule out adding more options for the user to choose the level of realism they like). I know a lot of these changes are to do with trying to make PVP more popular, but I personally believable that PVP will never be as popular as coop, as it is just the kind of game Arma is. The people who are filling coop servers are by their nature (generally) casual gamers and are not interested in the amount of caution and organised play required to make a good pvp game most of the time.

Edited February 22, 2012 by -=seany=-

[Die neunte Seele 10]

is there anything that would restrain us from giving some radical cure to the "pro"/"veteran" difficulty level by

1. disabling tab completely

2. disabling the 2-lock and hiding the 2-target list

3. disabling all kinds of auto-locking from hand-held weapons

4. disabling the radar completely or exept air contacts visible in aircraft/AA-tanks

5. giving some very very small hitbox to right-click lock?

I do not see any way this would make gameplay worse, but it would

-make gameplay more realistic by changing peoples ingame behaviour

-enlarge the players community by not pissing off the beginners

-introduce a use for skills that cannot be used as long as tab is implemented -> more fun

-make the game more demanding -> more fun

-bring the gameplay mechanics into some balance and expecially fix the all problems with the infantry-vs.-tanks and aircraft-vs.-vehicles balancing

-introduce behind-the-lines and stealth gameplay as well as

-giving people the abitility to hide with vehicles -> both leading to some psycho "real war tension"

-make some missile system related bugs vanish (eg. linear bomb path)

-create a base for teamplay by making a human tank/aircraft gunner more effetive than some AI.

Just giving some longer locking time to all the Tab-weapons would maybe hide the problem a bit better and weaken the support for those who want to get rid of it, but it does not fix the problem in any way. Why? Read the list of benefits again and ask yourself, if they'd be there this way.

//Edit: The experiences which influenced my thinking about this come from MP-Warfare, but i claim this problem to exist and influence any MP mode in a similar (strong) way.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Die neunte Seele

[enforcer1975 0]

is there anything that would restrain us from giving some radical cure to the "pro"/"veteran" difficulty level by

1. disabling tab completely

2. disabling the 2-lock and hiding the 2-target list

3. disabling all kinds of auto-locking from hand-held weapons

4. disabling the radar completely or exept air contacts visible in aircraft/AA-tanks

5. giving some very very small hitbox to right-click lock?

I do not see any way this would make gameplay worse, but it would

-make gameplay more realistic by changing peoples ingame behaviour

-enlarge the players community by not pissing off the beginners

-introduce a use for skills that cannot be used as long as tab is implemented -> more fun

-make the game more demanding -> more fun

-bring the gameplay mechanics into some balance and expecially fix the all problems with the infantry-vs.-tanks and aircraft-vs.-vehicles balancing

-introduce behind-the-lines and stealth gameplay as well as

-giving people the abitility to hide with vehicles -> both leading to some psycho "real war tension"

-make some missile system related bugs vanish (eg. linear bomb path)

-create a base for teamplay by making a human tank/aircraft gunner more effetive than some AI.

Just giving some longer locking time to all the Tab-weapons would maybe hide the problem a bit better and weaken the support for those who want to get rid of it, but it does not fix the problem in any way. Why? Read the list of benefits again and ask yourself, if they'd be there this way.

//Edit: The experiences which influenced my thinking about this come from MP-Warfare, but i claim this problem to exist and influence any MP mode in a similar (strong) way.

Your wishes are already reality to some degree. It's called A.C.E.2

[On_Sabbatical 11]

If we're going to rely on modders to make big changes,BIS will never do something about it ... modders can also make A3 :D

Besides most of servers run vanilla mod ...

[Serclaes 0]

is there anything that would restrain us from giving some radical cure to the "pro"/"veteran" difficulty level by

1. disabling tab completely

2. disabling the 2-lock and hiding the 2-target list

3. disabling all kinds of auto-locking from hand-held weapons

4. disabling the radar completely or exept air contacts visible in aircraft/AA-tanks

5. giving some very very small hitbox to right-click lock?

I do not see any way this would make gameplay worse, but it would

-make gameplay more realistic by changing peoples ingame behaviour

-enlarge the players community by not pissing off the beginners

-introduce a use for skills that cannot be used as long as tab is implemented -> more fun

-make the game more demanding -> more fun

-bring the gameplay mechanics into some balance and expecially fix the all problems with the infantry-vs.-tanks and aircraft-vs.-vehicles balancing

-introduce behind-the-lines and stealth gameplay as well as

-giving people the abitility to hide with vehicles -> both leading to some psycho "real war tension"

-make some missile system related bugs vanish (eg. linear bomb path)

-create a base for teamplay by making a human tank/aircraft gunner more effetive than some AI.

Just giving some longer locking time to all the Tab-weapons would maybe hide the problem a bit better and weaken the support for those who want to get rid of it, but it does not fix the problem in any way. Why? Read the list of benefits again and ask yourself, if they'd be there this way.

//Edit: The experiences which influenced my thinking about this come from MP-Warfare, but i claim this problem to exist and influence any MP mode in a similar (strong) way.

1. It would break commanding the AI.

2. It would not reflect the capabilities of a Longbow Apache or any other vehicle with that kind of guidance/detection system.

[On_Sabbatical 11]

1. It would break commanding the AI.

You can always select the AI and designate target for him using mouse,and for far AI that are not near you .... i think they're supposed to do things themseleves.

2. It would not reflect the capabilities of a Longbow Apache or any other vehicle with that kind of guidance/detection system.

The Apache doesn't acquire targets by itself (helmet system) ... they can add the helmet reticle and players can use right click to designate targets .... and they can also add a TV system for gunner.

The main idea and ,this is is what kills fun, is that you should kill what you can see... or have on the aircraaft radar ... but then bis will need to work on interiors so till then let's say what you can see :D

[max power 21]

Although the wording is vague, when they say the longbow system can 'track, classify, and prioritize' targets, it sure sounds like it can 'acquire' targets automagically. How could it classify and prioritize targets if it did not acquire them?

[[frl]myke 14]

Although i'm not a expert about military systems, i doubt it has something to do with magic. With radar imaging it is easily possible to get a radar signature from any vehicle. From there it is only a small step to check a database to compare with known radar signatures to identify and classify radar contacts. Think of it like fingerprint identifying in CSI. ;) Link this with JSTARS and AWACS and then "TAB-locking" isn't as unrealistic as people tend to think. Longbows even can share their data which enables each Longbow to fight targets not recognized by themself.

[max power 21]

Myke;2112882']Although i'm not a expert about military systems' date=' i doubt it has something to do with magic. With radar imaging it is easily possible to get a radar signature from any vehicle. From there it is only a small step to check a database to compare with known radar signatures to identify and classify radar contacts. Think of it like fingerprint identifying in CSI. ;) Link this with JSTARS and AWACS and then "TAB-locking" isn't as unrealistic as people tend to think. Longbows even can share their data which enables each Longbow to fight targets not recognized by themself.

Recently high tech diagrams were released by wikileaks on this very subject. Brace yourself, because it may shock and discredit you.

Mickey Mouse hands, divining rod... looks pretty much like magic to me, [FRL]Myke.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Max Power

[dm 9]

The Apache doesn't acquire targets by itself (helmet system) ... they can add the helmet reticle and players can use right click to designate targets

What part of it uses fucking RADAR do people keep failing to understand.

Jesus, would we be having this much trouble if we were arguing for Mi-28N to have its search radar kept?

People need to read up on millimeter wave radar, and the sort of things its capable of before mouthing off about how systems like Apache needs visual on target before engaging. I'd break out yet ANOTHER facepalm, but I was told I was "over using" it (not possible for this thread).............

Pro-tip: the radar on Apache is good enough that it can lock on to a 60mm mortar. Yes, something as small as one of these:

Edited February 28, 2012 by DM

[[frl]myke 14]

Recently high tech diagrams were released by wikileaks on this very subject. Brace yourself, because it may shock and discredit you.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-4jXqwIdbjR4/T0yTrfMog_I/AAAAAAAABSA/LgUu1sS4MRI/s640/longbowMagic.jpg

Mickey Mouse hands, divining rod... looks pretty much like magic to me, [FRL]Myke.

LMAO...good find, i stand corrected, Min Power. ;) :p

[kotov12345 10]

as Die neunte Seele suggested simple solution which can be implemented using mission and without mod.Is that possible to over-white TAB to lock engine with another layout like mando-systems but without any keys to lock ?

May be someone from BIS will help ?

[enforcer1975 0]

If we're going to rely on modders to make big changes,BIS will never do something about it ... modders can also make A3 :D

Besides most of servers run vanilla mod ...

ArmA lives from mods...sadly. Quite a few features in the game were mods first. Someone wanted thermal vision, he made a thermal mod, suddenly the game also had ( an improved ) thermal after the next patch, same for countermeasures, there were never any to begin with... I'd love to have an ACE like vanilla game, but that would scare a lot of casual gamers although this is the wrong game for casual playing :)

[NoRailgunner 0]

Just search for radar + developments: The TRACER system's design is predicated on Lockheed Martin's operationally proven foliage penetration (FOPEN) system, which was developed specifically to detect vehicles, buildings, and large metallic objects in broad areas of dense foliage, forested areas and wooded terrain. The radar's advanced detection capability suppresses background clutter and returns from stationary objects, while revealing the positions of mobile and portable targets. Over the course more than 1,000 operational missions, the low frequency FOPEN radar system's detection and tomography capabilities have proven extremely robust against a variety of targets and foliage environments. Would be great if BIS could implement some jamming features that are not magic devices. Something where players have to fight a electronic warfare within usual combat/shooting.

[On_Sabbatical 11]

Although the wording is vague, when they say the longbow system can 'track, classify, and prioritize' targets, it sure sounds like it can 'acquire' targets automagically. How could it classify and prioritize targets if it did not acquire them?

I'm not a longbow expert,but i'm sure that in this case the longbow will lock on friendly units ... unless you want to convince me that ArmA's super-mega-ultra-ouch-aie-ow-high blufor have transmitters on them that prevent that.

And ,ofcourse, this can't justify TAB,we need a system that allows the pilot to lock through his helmet using right click on hitboxes.